Metro 2034

“I am not going with you.” She said and turned to the musician. “He says that there is a cure.”

“He’s lying.” Said Homer unsure.

“You seem to know about viruses more than me.”

Leonid tried to keep hi tone respectful. “Have you explored them? Or gathered you’re on experience with them? So you think that mass murder is the best way to get rid of the epidemic?”

“Where do you know all this from?” Asked the old man surprised and looked at Sasha: “Did you…”

“And there is our new doctor.” Said the musician when he realized that hunter was approaching and made a step back, just to be sure. “Then the complete first aid team is ready and I can go.”

“Wait.” Plead the girl.

“He’s lying!” Whispered Homer. “He just wants to… With you… Even if he’s telling the truth you won’t make it. Hunter will be back with the men in 24 hours. When you stay with me you may still be able to change his mind. And that one…”

“I can’t do anything.” Said Sasha with a helpless voice. “I can’t change anything anymore, I feel it. I have only one choice: I have to make him choose. I’ve got to separate…”

“Separate?” Homer raised his eye brows.

“I won’t need twenty four hours.” She said and disappeared.

Why had he let her go? Why had he shown weakness and let it happened that that crazy wanderer stole his heroine, his muse, his daughter? The more the old man thought about Leonid, the less he liked him. Out of the big green eyes of the musician he could see his lusting looks and when he thought that no one was looking at him dark shadows came over his face of an angel…

What did he want from her? Best case scenario was that he just played the fan of her beauty so that she could be another mark on his list. The disappearing charm of her youth, something that you couldn’t photograph, it would fall of like flower dust.

The girl herself, lied to and used would shake it away and would take long time to get pure again but she would forget the betrayal of this Satan.

But why had he let her go? Out of cowardice.

Because Homer hadn’t just not argued with hunter but not even asked him the questions that

kept him from finding sleep. Sasha was in love so her courage and her not thinking about anything could

be forgiven. Would he have had as much patience with the brigadier if he would’ve asked him?

Homer kept calling him “brigadier” because he was used to it and it calmed him down: That name took the man his cruelty because he was just the commander of the northern guard post at the Sevastopolskaya… But no! The person who cut through the darkness of the tunnel next to him was no longer the same knight. The old man started to realize that his companion was starting to transform himself.

Something terrible was going on inside of him, it was foolish to not want to see it and without hope to tell himself otherwise.

Did Hunter move faster because he wanted to show him the bloody end of this drama earlier?

Now he wouldn’t just destroy the Tulskaya but also the sect that was in the other tunnel and the Serpuchovskaya with all its inhabitants and the stationed guards of Hanza. Only because some of them could have gotten sick. And the Sevastopolskaya could maybe have the same fate in front of them. The brigadier didn’t need any cause to kill anymore. He just needed a reason.

Homer wasn’t able to run behind hunter anymore and like a nightmare watch all his crimes and document them. He had a clean conscience that everything which had happened was in the name of rescue of the Tulskaya, had told himself that it had been a necessary evil. The merciless brigadier was like a Moloch and Homer was too much of a coward to fight against fate.

The girl did seem to want to fight it. While Homer had made peace with the Tulskaya and the Serpuchovskaya transforming into Sodom and Gomorrah, Sasha was reaching for straws. Homer could no longer tell himself that some pills or vaccine existed so that Hunter didn’t have to end the epidemic with fire and sword while Sasha seemed to look for a cure till the bitter end.

Homer was no warrior and no doctor and also to old to believe in miracles. A part of his heart dreamt passionately about a possible rescue and exactly that part he had ripped out of body and let go, with Sasha.

Everything he hadn’t dared to do, he had pushed onto the girl. And found peace in his helplessness. In 24 hours it would all be over. After that Homer would dessert and get himself a lonely cell to finish his book. Now he knew about what it would be.

How a smart animal would find a magical star which had fallen from the sky, how it had eaten it and transformed into a human.

How humanity stole fire but couldn’t tame it and how they did not just burn themselves but how they turned the entire world into ashes. How one hundredth years later the star would be taken away again and how that transformed it back into something terrible that had no name.

The guard let the handful of bullets slip into his pocket and shook the musicians hand strongly as the fulfillment of their bargain. “For a symbolic payment you can even come with us on the railcar.”

“I prefer romantic strolls in the tunnel.” Answered Leonid.

The guard didn’t give up and whispered to the musician: “Now look, just the two of you can’t go through this tunnel without an escort the tunnel. You get one, no argument. And your lady has no papers. But I could get you to where you want a lot faster, where you too could be alone.”

“We don’t need that,” said Sasha.

The musician bowed before her. “We should act like they are our guards. The prince and princess of Monaco are going for a walk.”

“Which princess?” Said Sasha.

“From Monaco. At the Cote d’ Azur…”

“Listen up.” Cut him off the guard. “If you really want to go on foot, then go now. Your magazine in all good faith but the boys got to go back to base. Hey crutch!” He yelled at one of the guards.

“Accompany those two to the Kievskaya. Tell the patrol it is a deportation. Get them to the radial line and then back home.” He turned to Leonid.

“Right?”

“Of course.” He answered and saluted jokingly.

The leader of the guard blinked with his eyes and said. “Any time”

How different Hanza was from the rest of the metro!

On the entire line from the Pavelezkaya to the Oktyabrskaya there wasn’t a single spot where it had been completely dark. Every fifty steps there was a cable that crawled along the wall, an electrical lamp which light reached to the next one. Yes even the secret and escape tunnels that separated themselves from the main tunnel from time to time were lit very well so that they lost their horrors.

If it would have been after Sasha they would have ran to save important minutes, but Leonid convinced her that there was no reason for haste. He refused to explain where he was leading her from the Kievskaya. He marched without any haste and was bored. It seemed that he was a common visitor to the tunnels through which normal mortals could pass to the ring line.

“I am glad that your friend always does what he thinks is right.” He said after a while.

Sasha’s forehead got wrinkles: “What are you talking about?”

“If civilians were as important to him as to you we would’ve had to take him with us. Now we’ve separated into groups of two and everybody does what he wants. He kills, you heal…”

“He doesn’t want to kill anybody!” She said sharp and a bit too loud.

“Of course. It just is his job after all.” He sighed.

“Who am I to judge?”

“So what do you want to do when you’re and adult?” Asked Sasha sarcastically. “Play?”