Metro 2034

And now I’m bringing shame to his name.” Leonid made a grimace.

“Did you two argue?”

“How can you argue with the great comrade Moskwin? He is a monument! They banished and cursed me. You know I’ve been a fool in Christi since I was a child. I only liked beautiful paintings, playing the piano and reading books. That was my mother’s fault because she had wanted a girl. When my father had realized that he had tried to get me interested in firearms and the party but it was already too late. Mother taught me how to play the flute and father drove it out of me again with his belt. He banished the professor who had taught me and put a Politruk at my side. Everything in vain. I had already been corrupted to the core. I hate the red line, it was to… Grey to me. I wanted a colorful life, wanted to play music and paint. So my father once let a mosaic be destroyed for educational purposes. With that I learnt that everything beautiful could perish. And he made me destroy it. And so I did. But while I did that I remembered every detail, even now I could still put it together… And since that moment I hated my father.”

“You can’t say that!” Yelled Sasha horrified.

“I can.” Leonid smiled. “Others are shot for it. That with the emerald city… My professor had told me about it.

He had whispered it to me when I was still small.

And so I decided to find the entrance when I would be older. There had to be a place where for what I was for living made sense. Where all live was like back then. Where I wasn’t a small, ugly no good, no white handed prince and no inheritor to the red line but an equal under equals.”

“And you’ve never found that place.” Sasha put away her knife. She had found the core of all his words.

“Because it doesn’t exist.”

Leonid shrugged with his shoulders. He stood up, went to the bell and rang it. “Probably it doesn’t matter if somebody hears me on the other side. Probably it doesn’t even matter if this place even exists. The main thing is that I believe that it exists somewhere. That someone hears me. And that I haven’t earned the right yet so that they would open up.

“And that’s enough for you?”

Again the musicians shrugged with his shoulders.

“It’s always have been enough for the world, so it’s enough for me.”

Homer ran onto the train platform and looked around confused. Hunter was nowhere to be seen.

Behind him Melnik rolled out of the prison, grey and beat down as if the brigadier had received not just his tags but also his from him soul.

Why had he ran away again and to where? Why had he left Homer? He wouldn’t ask Melnik.

Homer was trying to get out of his way before he remembered him. So Homer acted like he wanted to catch up to the brigadier and stepped away hastily. Waiting for a yell from behind. But Melnik didn’t seem to be interested in him anymore.

Hunter had said that he needed Homer so that he wouldn’t forget his former self. Had he lied?

Maybe he had just tried to avoid a fighting polis in his rage which he could easily have lost and what would’ve blocked his way to the Tulskaya. His abilities and his killer instinct were paranormal but nobody could dare to storm an entire station. If that was true then Homer had served his purpose by accompanying Hunter to polis and now he had been pushed from the stage.

And not very soft.

So he had taken part in the end of the story, he had taken part in the final act that the brigadier, or whoever played the main role.

What were these tags? A passport? An insignia of power? A black mark? Forgiveness for all the sins that Hunter wanted to load onto his soul? Whatever it was: The brigadier had ripped the tags and his approval out of Melnik’s hand.

The brigadier’s hands were free to act. And he hadn’t planned to confess to anyone, that what had won inside of him, that monster that had appeared from time to time had won.

What would happen at the Tulskaya when Hunter would get through to it? Would he be able to quench his thirst when he drowned the entire station in blood, yes even two or three? Or would that what he was carrying inside of him grow till it knew no more bounds? Who of the two Hunters had Homer accompanied? The one that consumed the people or the one who fought against the monster? Which one had fallen to the ground at the fight of phantoms at the Polskaya? And who had asked for Homers help after that?

Yes, maybe Homer had another destiny: To kill him.

Was it maybe the small remnants of the old brigadier who had asked the old man for it out of despair? Did he see it all with his own eyes full of horror while the other hunter killed?

He couldn’t take his own life so the brigadier had chosen his henchman. A henchmen who you didn’t have to ask for anything, who had enough intuition to realize it on his own and smart enough to deceive the other Hunter. The second one who was getting more monstrous day after day and didn’t want to die.

But even though if Homer had the courage and waited for the right moment to kill Hunter when he wasn’t looking, what would that accomplish? He wouldn’t be able to stop the epidemic. So was there nothing he could do but keep watching and writing down?

Homer had guessed where the brigadier had gone. That almost mystical order, which apparently Melnik and Hunter were members of. Rumors said that they had their base at the Smolenskaya, the underground of polis. Its legionaries protected the metro and its inhabitants from all dangers that whole armies of common stations couldn’t deal with.

Nobody knew more about this mystical organization. The old man couldn’t even think about entering the Smolenskaya, it was without an entrance like the fortress Alamut. But for what: To meet with the brigadier he just had to go back to the Dobryninskaya. And wait till fate brought Hunter there without stopping, at the place of his coming crimes, the end station of this strange story.

Should he allow him to settle his score with the infected and disinfect the Tulskaya and then act accordingly to his will? Homer had always thought that he had a different role: Not to shoot, but to give immortality, not to judge and to not get involved and give the heroes of his book the possibility to act on their own. But when you’re standing in blood up to your knees it seemed impossible to not get dirty yourself. Now it was lucky that the girl had left with this smart guy. At least he had spared Sasha from seeing the horrible massacre with her own eyes; even she couldn’t have stopped it. He looked at the clock of the station: When the brigadier stuck to his schedule then Homer had only a few hours. Enough time to be alone. And ask polis for to dance with him one more time.

“And how do you want to earn the right to get in?” Asked Sasha.

“Well…” Leonid hesitated. “It’s stupid, I know, but… With my flute. I thought I could redeem myself with it.

You know, music is the first art to disappear. It only exists as long the instruments sounds and in the next moment it is gone without a trace. But nothing grips people as strong as music, nothing hurts so deep and heals so slowly. When somebody touches you with a melody it stays with you for your whole life. It is the extract of beauty. I thought I could heal the wounds of the soul with it.

“You’re strange.”

“But now I’ve realized that someone who is sick can’t heal sick people. If I don’t tell you everything I can never stop them”

She gave him a sharp look. “Do you think that I’m going to forgive you? Your lies, your cruelty?”

“Will you give me one last chance?” Leonid smiled at her. “You’ve said that we all deserve one.”

Sasha was silent. She had gotten more careful.

This time she wouldn’t get swept away by one of his strange games.

She had just thought that he was truly sorry and his words to be true and now… Again?

“Out of everything that I’ve told you one thing is true. There is a cure.” He said.

“Medication?” Sasha turned around; again ready to be lied to again.