Metro 2034

Kachovskaya line must have been high enough to get rid of any infection.

How easily he had let himself be lead astray!

If it was right, what did that mean for the Tulskaya?

What did that mean for Hunter? Sasha hoped that she could make him stop. And she really seemed to have a strange power of the brigadier. But inside of him were two antagonists: The one may have thought about the chain the girl had tried to put him on that it felt like soft silk and for the other it had burnt like glowing iron. Who of the two would be in command of Hunter’s body in the all deciding moment?

This time the Polyanka had no pictures ready for them, whether for him nor for Sasha or Leonid.

The station seemed empty and dead. Was that a good or a bad sign?

Maybe it was just the movement of the air that blew through the tunnel. Blowing away all hallucinogenic gasses.

Maybe Homer had made a grave mistake and there was no more future the Polyanka could show him.

“What does emerald mean?” asked Sasha suddenly.

“An emerald is a green shimmering diamond.” Said Homer confused. “Emerald just means green.”

“Strange.” said the girl sunken in thoughts. “That means that the emerald city really exists…”

“What are you talking about?” said Leonid.

“Oh just… You know.” She looked at the musician again. “I am going to search for it now, your city. And some day I am going to find it.”

Homer shook his head; he didn’t believe Leonid when he had said that he was sorry.

Sasha had been sunken in thoughts the whole time and again and again she had whispered to herself and a few times she had sighed. Then she looked at Homer searching: “Have you written down what happened with me?”

“I… Am working on that.”

She nodded her head. “Good.”

At the Dobryninskaya something was cooking.

Hanza had doubled their guards and the silent and dark soldiers at the entrance held their ground and refused to let Homer and the others through. The notes of the musician nor simple reasoning could impress them. Finally he had an epiphany: he ordered them to connect him to Andrey Andreyevitsch.

After a long half hour finally the radio operator stumbled to them rolling a thick cable behind him.

Homer talked into the apparatus threatening; he said they were the first of the troop of the order. This halfway true statement was enough that they were lead through the station right away.

In the middle hallway it was hot as if somebody had pumped all the air out of the station. Even that it was late didn’t seem to bother anyone because everybody was on their legs.

Finally they stood in the greeting room of the commander of the Dobryninskaya.

He welcomed them, sweating and run down, with dark eyes and an unpleasant smell. The adjutant was nowhere to be seen. Andrey Andreyevitsch looked around nervous when he didn’t see Hunter and he grunted: “When are they going to arrive?”

“Soon.” promised Homer.

“At the Serpuchovskaya a riot is in progress.” The commander wiped over his face and walked from one end of the greeting room to the other. “Somebody told them about the epidemic. Nobody knows for what they should be afraid of and now they are saying that gasmask don’t help”

“That’s true.” Said Leonid.

“At one of the southern tunnels that lead to the Tulskaya a complete set of guards have left their posts.

Cowardly pigs! In the second tunnel that leads to the train with the people from the sect, they are still standing even thought these fanatics have started a siege and are screaming something of a judgment day. And at my own stations hell can rise up at any moment. Where are they? They are our last hope!”

Suddenly you didn’t hear the loud cursing in the station anymore. Somebody yelled and the barking sounds of the guards joined in. After nobody answered Andrey Andreyevitsch he pressed himself back into his office, a little bit later they heard how the bottle neck clanged against the drinking glass. As if he had just waited till the commander would leave the station the red lamp of the telephone on top of the desk of the adjutant started to blink. It was the apparatus with the name of the Tulskaya on it.

Homer hesitated one, two seconds then he stepped to the desk, licked his dry lips and took a deep breath.

“Dobryninskaya here!”

“What am I supposed to say?” Artyom looked confusedly at the commander.

But he was still unconscious. The fainting eyes were like behind a curtain and rolled upwards again and again without a goal. From time to time he had to cough cramped.

The bayonet had penetrated his lung.

“Are you still alive?” He yelled into the receiver.

“The infected broke free!”

Then in this moment he realized that there nobody knew what was going on at the Tulskaya. He had to tell them from the start and explain.

From the train platform he heard the scream of a woman and then machine gun fire. The sounds slipped through the door slit, you couldn’t escape it. Somebody on the other end of the line asked him something but he couldn’t really understand him.

“You have to barricade the exit!” said Artyom hastily. “Shoot them down. And keep your distance!”

But they didn’t even know how the sick looked like. How should he describe them: As swollen, exploded and stinking creatures? Those who had just been infected looked totally normal.

“Shoot them all down!” he said mechanically.

But what when he tried to leave the station himself? Would they fire at him too? Had he spoken his own death sentence? No he wouldn’t get away anymore.

There were no more healthy here. Artyom suddenly felt terribly alone.

“Don’t hang up.” He pleaded.

Artyom didn’t know about what he should talk with the unknown man at the end of the other line.

He started with his in desperate tries to contact them and told him that he had feared that no station in the metro was still alive. He had thought it could have been that he had spoken with a future where nobody had survived. Even that he told the stranger.

He wasn’t afraid to embarrass himself anymore. He didn’t have to be afraid of anything anymore.

The main thing was that he could talk to somebody.

“Popov!” Suddenly he could hear the husky voice of the commander behind him. “Did you reach the northern post? Is… The gate closed?”

Artyom turned around and shook his head.

“Idiot!” The commander spat blood. “Not useful for anything… Listen up. Above us is an underground river. I’ve placed something there… When we blow it up this whole fucking station is going to be filled. The button is here, in the room of the radio operator. But you have to close the northern gate and look if the southern is still standing. The station has to be without a single leak, you understand? I am not drowning the entire metro. And when everything is done you tell me… The connection to the guard post is still working?”

“Yes.” Artyom nodded his head.

“And see to it that you get out in time.” The commander tried to make a tortured smile and then he had to cough again. “It wouldn’t be fair otherwise…”

“And what’s with you? You’ll stay here?”

The commander’s forehead got wrinkles. “Pull yourself together, popov!{I think it means something like boy} Everybody is born to do something. Mine is to drown those pigs. Yours to close the hatch and die from old age. Understood!?”