The Reckoning in Irkutsk

The safe house in Irkutsk was a place stripped of all warmth and humanity. Its walls were bare, stained with damp, and the air smelled of stale cigarette smoke, boiled cabbage, and defeat. Dmitri Volkov was shoved roughly into the bare, cold room, stumbling before he caught his balance. He had spent four agonizing weeks making the perilous journey north, a ghost flitting through the wilderness. He had been hunted by Qing cavalry patrols, but worse, he had been shunned by the very Mongol tribes he had sought to champion. They now saw him and his foreign ideas as a curse, the source of the terrible retribution that had befallen them. He was a man utterly alone, his revolutionary ideals frozen and shattered by the harsh reality of the steppe.

Behind a stark metal desk sat Colonel Ivan Morozov, the head of the Okhrana's Far East operations. He was a man carved from the Siberian winter, with cold, pale eyes and a soul insulated by layers of cynicism and cruelty. He smoked a cheap, pungent cigarette, the smoke curling around his head like a shroud. He did not invite Dmitri to sit.

"So," Morozov began, his voice a low, gravelly monotone that held no trace of welcome. "The 'great intellectual.' The political agitator from St. Petersburg who was going to set the steppe ablaze with the fires of revolution. He returns with his tail between his legs. Your coded reports ceased two weeks ago. We presumed you were dead. It would have been a tidier outcome."

Dmitri shivered, a tremor that was only partly from the cold seeping through his tattered coat. He tried to muster some semblance of his former dignity. "The situation… evolved, Colonel," he said, his voice raspy. "The Qing general, Meng Tian, he is not a brute like Yuan Shikai. He is cunning. He laid a trap for us at the Wolf's Jaw Pass."

Morozov blew a perfect, contemptuous smoke ring towards the ceiling. "And your brilliant protégé, this Mongol goddess Altan, walked right into it. Is that not so? You were given resources, Volkov. You were given gold, weapons, and our best intelligence. You were tasked with creating a bleeding ulcer on China's northern border, a perpetual insurgency that would drain their resources and halt their expansion. Instead," he leaned forward, his eyes glinting with malice, "you created a folk hero who was soundly defeated in her first major engagement and is now a fugitive with a handful of starving followers. You have failed. Utterly and completely."

"We didn't fail!" Dmitri protested, a spark of his old fire returning. "Altan outmaneuvered him! She saved her own life and the lives of her best men with a brilliant bluff! She is still a symbol! The people still whisper her name!"

"She is a symbol of failure!" Morozov slammed his hand on the desk, the sound like a gunshot in the small room. "A symbol that the Qing, even their 'honorable' generals, can defeat! St. Petersburg is not pleased, Volkov. The Tsar is pouring money into this venture, and he sees no return. Your little war of pinpricks and clever telegraph pranks has been an amusing sideshow, but it has not halted their consolidation of the north by a single day. Their railways are still running. Their Iron Census is proceeding. Conventional guerilla warfare, your preferred method, has failed."

Dmitri slumped, the last of his fight draining out of him. He knew it was true. The grand, romantic rebellion he had envisioned had dissolved into a desperate flight for survival. He expected to be dragged out, shot, and dumped in an unmarked grave. It was the standard price for such failure.

Morozov leaned back, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the first. He studied Dmitri for a long moment, a predator contemplating its wounded prey. "However," he said, his tone shifting slightly, "your comprehensive failure has been… instructive. It has shown us that the new Qing Empire cannot be bled by conventional means. It is too resilient, too organized. Therefore, we must resort to unconventional ones."

He gave a curt nod to the guard at the door. The door opened and a third man entered. He wore a civilian doctor's coat over a plain suit, and his face was utterly forgettable, save for his eyes, which were as cold and emotionless as a shark's. He carried a locked metal case.

"Dmitri Volkov," Morozov said with a hint of mock formality, "this is Doctor… well, his name is not important. He is from a special projects division in the Ministry of War. He has traveled a long way to bring you a new weapon. A weapon more powerful than dynamite, more terrifying than any ghost on a wire."

The doctor placed the metal case on the desk and opened it with a small key. Inside, nestled in precisely cut grey foam, were several sealed glass vials. Each contained a small amount of a dark, granular powder.

Dmitri stared at the vials, a knot of dread tightening in his stomach. "What is it?" he whispered. "A new kind of poison?"

The scientist spoke for the first time, his voice as dry and academic as a lecture hall. "In a manner of speaking. It is an enhanced, weaponized strain of Bacillus anthracis. Anthrax. This particular strain has been bred in our laboratories for heightened spore resilience against sunlight and arid conditions. Its lethality in livestock is nearly one hundred percent. It is exceptionally potent against horses, sheep, and cattle. A single vial, properly dispersed in a major river or a series of wells upstream from the main grazing lands, can wipe out the herds of an entire region in a matter of weeks. The animals will sicken, their blood will turn black, and they will die by the thousands."

Dmitri recoiled from the desk as if the vials were radioactive. The blood drained from his face. "Anthrax?" he gasped. "You want me to unleash a plague? This… this would destroy the Mongols as much as the Qing! It would poison the land itself for years!"

"Precisely," Morozov said, a flicker of cruel satisfaction in his eyes. "Your previous efforts were too targeted. Too… clean. This is a weapon of chaos. We no longer seek to support a surgical insurgency led by a romantic heroine. We seek to make the entire northern territory an uninhabitable, diseased wasteland. We will destroy the Mongols' herds, their source of food, wealth, and transport. This will create a famine on a biblical scale. The starving, desperate tribes will have no choice but to raid Qing settlements for food, creating the very chaos we desire. The Qing will be forced to pour immense resources into containing both the plague and the resulting mass uprisings. Their northern frontier, instead of being a secure base for their ambitions, will become a festering, open wound."

Dmitri shook his head, a wave of nausea sweeping over him. "This is monstrous," he whispered. "This is not war. This is… evil."

Morozov's face hardened, his eyes turning to chips of ice. "Do not speak to me of evil, you naive little revolutionary," he hissed. "You came to us full of romantic notions about freeing the Mongols from Qing tyranny. This is the price of their 'freedom.' This is the reality of the great game. It is not played with pamphlets and ideals; it is played with poison and plagues." He stood up and leaned over the desk, his face close to Dmitri's. "This is your last chance, Volkov. You will take these vials back to your 'goddess' Altan. You will use your influence, your charisma, to convince her to unleash this upon her own land. If you succeed, you may yet redeem yourself in the eyes of the state. If you refuse…" he gestured to the silent doctor, "…the Doctor here always requires new test subjects for his work. The choice is yours."

Dmitri Volkov looked from the cold, ruthless face of Colonel Morozov to the dead, emotionless eyes of the scientist, and then down at the glass vials of plague nestled in their case. They looked so small, so innocuous, yet they held the power to create a hell on earth. He had been pushed far beyond his idealistic fervor, beyond his comprehension of right and wrong, into a new, terrifying reality where survival was the only morality that mattered. To save his own life, he had to become a monster. He had to become a herald of pestilence and unleash a biblical plague upon the world.