Evening had descended, bringing a darkness that arrived slightly earlier than the usual twilight.
Stepping out of the official car, I shrugged off my coat and hung it beside the entrance of Alya's home before slowly entering the living room.
The house was warm, a stark contrast to the biting tundra air outside.
A small cake sat beneath the glow of the electric lamp.
Two candles were nestled atop the white cream, and Laman carefully struck a match to light them. A card was propped up nearby, inscribed with the words: "For the Second."
The moment I saw those words, a fragment of an old memory drifted back to me for some unknown reason.
The days in Beryozovka. The small printing press inside the log cabin.
The acrid scent of ink seeping between the lead types, and our younger selves—not yet thirty years old.
Back then, our lights were meant to drive back the darkness of oppression; today, this light was a blessing for the life of a family.
"Uncle!"
Alya ran to me and wrapped her arms around me in a warm embrace.
Her belly had grown noticeably round.
I let my gaze rest on it for a moment.
In this nation built upon revolution and blood, it felt like a miracle that a new life could still harbor such gentle warmth. And seeing Alya—once that tiny girl—grown so much... that, too, felt like a miracle.
"The second one already," I said, smiling. "Time truly flies."
"Not as fast as it flies for you, Uncle," Alya teased back playfully.
Laman, standing beside her, swirled his glass and added, "Haha, let's set aside talk of work and focus on the good news. Today, we drink, toast, and let ourselves get a little tipsy."
The table was a motley assortment of old military canteens and glass tumblers. Despite their mismatched shapes, there was a strange harmony to the scene.
Wrangel let out a low whistle from somewhere nearby. "To think such a day would come. All of us sitting in one place, holding forks instead of rifles."
Elder Pyotr sat with a wool blanket draped over his knees. His fingers trembled slightly, but his grip on his glass remained firm.
"Back in Beryozovka, who would have thought we'd be toasting with glasses like these?" He raised his glass, the flickering light illuminating the deep furrows on his knuckles. "Back then, I could toss back this vodka like it was water. I was unstoppable."
"Old man, you couldn't drink vodka even back then because of your health," Maxim chuckled, interjecting.
"He's right, he's right!" Alya laughed. "Speaking of drinks, it reminds me of what Grandfather used to say: that every important matter in the world begins under the influence of alcohol."
"Hmph, I never said anything that poetic," the old man grumbled, waving his hand in dismissal. Everyone laughed. For a fleeting moment, it felt as though we had traveled twenty years back in time.
I watched them in silence. Once, in a tiny village, amidst the scent of the same earth, these people had shouted the same manifestos as I had. Now, they all held high offices, and the years had turned their hair to frost, yet strangely, the fire in their eyes remained unchanged.
"Uncle, what do you think?" Alya asked suddenly. "Will it be a girl this time, or a boy?"
"I wonder. Seeing how brightly you're smiling, I suspect it'll be a girl."
"Then you must name her, Uncle."
"That would be too great an honor." I laughed, but my smile soon faded. I stared at the foam slowly settling in my glass, and for no discernable reason, my heart went cold.
Wrangel raised his glass beside me, nudging me. "Ayo, Comrade Chairman. Your face looks like a death mask. Why such a somber expression?" His voice sounded light, like a joke, yet there was a needle of sincerity hidden within.
Pyotr noticed my expression and set his glass down. "Is something the matter? Your face... it looks exactly like it did ten years ago."
I looked away. "It's nothing major."
"Whenever you use that tone, it means there is most certainly something major," Pyotr snorted. "It was the same back then. Every time you said 'it's nothing,' we'd find ourselves covered in blood by dawn. I remember those early days after arriving in Victoria."
At his words, the laughter in the room slowly withered. Alya searched my eyes. She said nothing, her fingers merely turning her glass slowly. The lamplight reflected in the red wine, making the liquid sway ominously. The color was unsettlingly prophetic.
"Uncle," she whispered. "What is happening?"
I remained silent for a long while. The sweetness of the champagne turned to a lingering bitterness at the back of my throat. Finally, I set the glass down.
"...I think I need to rebuild the Union."
Somewhere, a fork froze against a plate. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of unspoken dread. Wrangel's expression didn't change, but his fingers began a slow, rhythmic tapping on the rim of his glass.
Tap. Tap.
It was the only sound in the room.
"Is it the Party?" Pyotr asked first.
I nodded. "Yes. The Party as it exists now is a machine clogged with the grime of exhaustion. It is time to clear the dross and grease the gears."
Corruption, incompetence, and apparatchiks obsessed only with their own seats. If we met war like this, it wouldn't be a fight with rifles; it would be like swinging rotten wooden sticks.
Maxim set his glass down with a heavy breath. "So, you intend to mobilize the OGPU?"
"Yes. If the Central Committee moves directly, it will cause a schism. The OGPU must do it in our stead. We must overturn the organization and purify it from the roots up."
Every eye was fixed on my hands. I felt as though the blood were draining from the veins across my knuckles. I clenched my fists.
"However..." I continued, "If I do this, it will leave scars. Is that a price worth paying?"
Pyotr chuckled at that. "If it is something you are doing, we will bear any price." He tilted his glass toward me. "We are old men now. We aren't the youths of our twenties anymore; we are middle-aged men in our fifties and sixties. What meaning is there in ambition for rank or prestige? The survival of the Revolution and the Union comes first. If you need us, we will simply be there, standing where you require."
Maxim nodded. "In surgery, a patient survives only when the gangrenous flesh is excised. It is a process I have performed countless times as a doctor. But for this patient... it seems you are the one who must hold the scalpel."
Wrangel swirled his glass, murmuring, "We need the right terminology. Administrative purification, efficiency improvement... People are more terrified of the texture of words. Do not use the word 'purge.' Call it a 'realignment.' That would be better."
I offered a thin smile. "I will remember those words."
Alya pushed a glass toward me. Her eyes were still soft. "Uncle, the country must be clean for my children to live well, right? So, I am in favor. But... please, do not hurt yourself too much in the process."
Laman nodded beside her. "Chairman, if the Commissariat of Industry has any data you need, I will hand it all over. This time... I will help."
I was speechless for a moment. The red liquid in the glass truly did look like blood. Did the nation we built always resemble blood so much? The thought flickered through my mind.
I slowly looked up. Pyotr raised his glass.
"Then today..." He smiled slowly. "This is not a simple celebration. This is the day we return to our original intentions."
Glasses clinked. A clear, metallic ring echoed through the room. That sound spread like an ancient vow. The red wine inside the glass surged.
In that reflection, I saw all our faces. Old, yet with a fire still burning in our eyes. That light reflected and swayed on the surface. It looked like hope, yet it also looked like a warning.
But... in that moment, for some reason, I was reminded of a winter night in Ursus long ago. Through the reflection of the log cabin window, my own eyes had watched Wrangel. When I had asked if he would join me to protect Alya, he had nodded. Now, he sat there, smiling as he patted my shoulder.
"Fear isn't a bad thing, Vladimir. Only those who know how to fear can fight without shedding unnecessary blood." His voice seemed to echo in the present. Eventually, everyone emptied their glasses and prepared to depart.
Wrangel murmured to me as he left, "It's going to be exhausting from here on out."
I smiled instead of answering.
Pyotr leaned on his cane and patted my shoulder with his left hand once more. "Take care of yourself. Always walk the middle path; that is what truly matters."
Maxim spoke softly. "Next time, let's talk about books. Not politics."
I managed a genuine smile at that. "I would like that."
Alya stayed behind until the end, clearing the table. I watched her back for a moment. Perhaps meeting her on those white plains of Ursus was the greatest luck of my life.
"Uncle." Suddenly, she turned and looked at me. "Are you afraid?"
I shook my head. "No, it's just... it feels like I'm seeing an old shadow once again."
"Then, we should turn the lights on even brighter," she said. "Shadows shrink the stronger the light becomes."
I nodded instead of replying. She left for her room, her words lingering like an afterglow in the air. Left alone, I picked up a glass. The remnants of the red liquid trembled inside.
My shadow was cast over the glass. As the red and the shadow mixed, it looked exactly like ink and blood had been stirred together.
"Yes," I whispered to myself. "Let's begin again."
Outside the window, the snow continued to fall. I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them, thinking of the vast distances of time we had traveled. Ideals, blood, and people. I knew all too well how easily the things we protected could crumble. But with these people by my side, I was no longer afraid.
Perhaps that was why. In that moment, I drank every last drop of wine remaining in the glass. A bitter taste lingered in my mouth. Very long, and very slow.
*************************************************
Feliksa stood by the window. Snowflakes brushed against the glass pane. Her breath formed a white mist that appeared and vanished on the cold surface.
She wore her uniform jacket over a white silk shirt, a thin black ribbon tied at her throat. She stared out at the dark, extinguished administrative district in the distance. The air in the room was freezing, but she did not shiver.
Dozens of documents were arranged with mathematical precision on her desk. The corners of every paper were perfectly aligned; if even a single page were slightly askew, she would stop to straighten it. It was a compulsion that bordered on obsession.
"Records are order," she murmured under her breath. "When order collapses, blood flows."
She held her pen perfectly upright and uncapped the inkwell. The black liquid swayed quietly. The smell was familiar. It was the scent of the past.
At eighteen, Feliksa had been the daughter of a fallen noble house in Kazimierz. Their house had been vast and hollow, the family crest—once illustrious—hanging on the wall. One day, that crest had been sold at auction. The maidservants wept, and her mother sold her last hairpins. It was then she first witnessed how easily 'order' could disintegrate.
She had sought refuge in books. Sitting atop sacks of flour in the kitchen, she spent her nights reading illegal pamphlets. On Social Equality, Of Bread and Labor, The Theory of Class Revolution. Reading those sentences, she realized something profound.
"The world I was born into is unfair, but the world I die in must be different."
And so, despite her mother's pleas, she had headed for Birmingham at the age of eighteen. All her mother could give her was a worn-out family emblem. It was shortly after the Birmingham Revolution had ignited. There, she heard the sound of gunfire for the first time.
She was afraid, but she did not turn back. Instead, she learned the art of rhetoric. "Comrades, persuasion is faster than a bullet." Her voice was soft, yet it possessed an undeniable steel. The soldiers began to call her the Witch of the Battlefield. Her speeches traveled farther than any round of ammunition.
Then, one night, betrayal arrived. Inside a tent where twelve comrades lay sleeping, one of them drew a pistol. She lived. The emblem was shattered. She was the sole survivor. Since that day, she could no longer tolerate disorder.
She applied to be a Political Commissar, and after having her merits in the rear-command recognized, she was appointed. Before her, everything had to be arranged: the pens on the desk, the spacing between lines of text, the gaze of a subordinate, and even the temperature of the heart. Anything out of alignment was a disease. And she believed she was the doctor tasked with curing it.
Four in the morning. Her secretary knocked on the door.
"Director, I have a report."
"Enter." Her voice was low and serene.
The secretary handed over a freshly printed report. 'Initial Draft for the Implementation of the Anti-Corruption Special Law for Wartime Administration – No. 1.' Feliksa scrutinized it. The letters on the page were pristine.
"Good. It is well-organized," she whispered with a faint smile. "Now, it is time to organize other things."
The secretary asked hesitantly, "By 'organizing'... do you mean a purge?"
She shook her head. "Purge is such a cold word." She stood up and walked to the secretary. "I am merely... smoothing out the sheets of paper that have been tossed about on the desk." Her fingertip lightly brushed the secretary's shoulder. "Do not worry. There will be no blood. It is simply a return to order. Even he would dislike the sight of blood."
The secretary was speechless. Feliksa walked back to the window and opened it. A draft swept in, fluttering the curtains. Her hair swayed slightly. A fragrance touched by the wind enveloped the room—a scent caught on the boundary between faint smoke, perfume, and the phantom smell of iron.
She checked her wristwatch. Pulling out an envelope, she spoke again. "This is the report for the Chairman." On the envelope was written: 'Concerning the Restoration of the Union's Foundations.' She left a final signature with a red pen. Closing the file, she whispered, "They say a person leaves a name behind when they die. I wonder if I can do the same."
The secretary did not understand her words. But Feliksa was smiling. Outside, it was still dark. The sky was a charcoal smudge of black and gray. She looked up at the heavens for a moment. A single white snowflake drifted through the window and landed on the back of her hand. She gently caught it. It melted instantly.
"How pure," she said softly. She began to walk, her shadow stretching long against the floor. "They say shadows only exist where there is light. That is why I believe in the light."
Her stride did not falter. And at that moment, the first sliver of dawn broke over the horizon. A warm light began to bleed across the skyline. She narrowed her eyes, gazing into the radiance.
"May the light shine upon everyone." Her lips curled into a gentle, serene smile.