On one fateful day in 1914, the world as a whole decided that a Serbian killing an Austrian could only be remedied by Germans killing Russians, despite numerous people explaining this made no sense. For an adolescent such as Klaus Schmidt, his country of origin being at war with his country of residence is all the justification needed to fling him into the depths of a St. Petersburg prison for the foreseeable future. And, sure, why not pin a few murder charges on him while they were at it? Salvation makes its way to him two years into his sentence when a corrupt aristocrat offers to get Klaus pardoned in exchange for a favor. Nothing he's unaccustomed to. Just a murder. With an end finally in sight, Klaus neglects to mention that despite the records, he has never actually murdered anyone before. But how hard could it be, really? One slip-shod assassination later, Klaus finds himself on the run from a corrupt aristocracy wanting to tie up loose ends, a clandestine British organization that paid good money for a German scapegoat, the Tsar's secret-police, his not-so-secret-police, Russian Bolsheviks, Ukrainian anarchists, Georgian bank robbers, Siberian gangsters ...and adding insult to injury, he has good reason to suspect that this Rasputin fellow he was supposed to kill didn't quite stay dead. As Klaus prat-falls through history, he wonders if the prison cell they were keeping him locked within, was actually keeping everyone else locked out. But with all these groups vying for his fate, Klaus begins to wonder if instead of running for his life ...why not fight back? After all, what better time and place to find something to fight for than in the midst of a revolution?