Metro 2034

The fighters remained silent. The masses moved closer and closer.

“Sasha!” yelled Homer pleading, but she didn’t hear him.

Finally the words dropped: “Nothing will ever change. There is nobody left to forgive me. I’ve raised my hand against… against… I’ve been punished.”

“It’s all inside of you! You can free yourself! You can prove it! Don’t you see? It’s a mirror! A reflection of what you’ve done, one year ago! But now you can do it differently… you can listen… give them a chance and earn your own!”

“I have to eliminate the monster,” said the formation.

“You can’t do that! It is in me, it sleeps in all of us! It’s a part of the body, a part of the soul. And when it awakes you can’t kill it, can’t cut it out! You can only bring it to rest and sing it back to sleep…”

In that moment a dirty and young soldier (this is Metro 2033’s Artyom) stepped through the crowd, pressed himself past the still black rows, grabbed the radio on an iron construction and started speaking. Immediately a suppressor made a clicking sound and he fell to the ground. The crowd smelled blood and howled angrily.

Again the musician started to play his instrument but in the next moment the magic disappeared. A shot erupted, and the flute fell out of his hands as he was shot.

The ends of the flamethrowers spat flames.

Sasha stormed to Leonid and didn’t care for the crowd. The phalanx was now only made out of the barrels of an uncountable amount of guns. They made a step forward.

“No!” she screamed. She stood alone against hundreds of terrible creatures… against a legion of killers: against the whole world. “I want a miracle!”

Suddenly distant thunder sounded. The tomb shook itself; the crowd shivered and even the formation of fighters made one step back. Thin streams started to flow over the ground, from the ceiling the first drops fell, louder and louder the river rushed towards the people…

“A leak!” screamed a voice.

The fighters retreated hastily out of the station and to the hermetic gate. Homer ran with them but again and again he turned to see Sasha who stood still.

She put her hands and face under the water which fell onto her and laughed. “That’s rain,” she yelled .“It’s going to wash everything clean! We can start again!”

The black battalion was already standing behind the gate. Homer had barely made it in time as some of the fighters pressed themselves against the gate to close the Tulskaya and hold back the water—

The door started to give in slowly. Realization broke as Homer started running to get Sasha who was still standing in the middle of the station, but somebody held him back and threw him to the ground.

Then one of the fighters jumped to the door, put his hand through the slit as it grew narrower and narrower as he yelled at the girl: “Here! I need you!”

The water was already at their knees. Sasha’s blond hair disappeared under the water.

The fighter retracted his hand and the door closed.

* * *

The door didn’t open. The tunnel was shaking and on the other side the echo of an explosion barraged against the steel plate. Then it distanced itself again.

Denis Michailovitsch put his ear against the door, listened for a while and looked warily at the wet ceiling.

“We turn back!” he ordered. “Everything is done here.”

Epilogue

Homer sighed and turned the page. There was only a little bit of space left in his book, only a few pages. What should he write on them, what was he willing to sacrifice? He put his hand to the fire, to warm his cold fingers and to calm them down.

The old man had asked to be transferred to the southern guard post. Here, viewing the tunnel he could work better than at home at the Sevastopolskaya between all the dead newspapers. Even Yelena was letting him rest.

Homer looked up. The brigadier sat apart from the other guards, at the furthest border of light and darkness. Why had he chosen the Sevastopolskaya out of all stations? Something had to be special about this station…

Hunter had never told him what had happened at the Polyanka back then. But Homer knew now: It hadn’t been a prophecy but a warning.

After a week the water at the Tulskaya had gradually retreated. The remnants had been pumped away by the giant pumps of the ring line and Homer had volunteered immediately to enter the station with the recon team of the station.

This catastrophe had claimed almost three hundred victims. While Homer turned over corpses he didn’t feel disgust. He didn’t feel anything. He was just searching for her, searched for her again and again…

After that he had sat at the same place for a long time where he had last seen the girl. When he had hesitated, instead of fought, to run to her. To rescue her or to go down with her.

A never ending stream of the sick and healthy wandered past him, into the direction of the Sevastopolskaya and to the healing tunnel of the Kachovskaya line. The musician hadn’t lied: radiation had really stopped the sickness.

And who knows: maybe he hadn’t lied at all.

Maybe the emerald city existed somewhere and you just had to find the gate. Maybe he had stood often enough in front of it and just not deserved to be let in.

Now he wouldn’t see it anymore till “the water retreated”.

But the emerald city wasn’t an ark; the true ark was the metro itself. The last refuge that had kept Noah and Sem and Ham from the dark towering water, the righteous and the villains at the same time. Of every kind a pair. Everybody who still had a score to settle. Believer or sinner.

They were too many. That was apparent, not all could be in this novel. The notebook of the old man had almost no empty pages left. It wasn’t an ark but a small boat made out of paper; it wouldn’t be able to take all the humans on board. But still, Homer felt that he had done it, with careful lines he had brought something important onto those pages. Not about the humans. About the humans.

The memories of all who had died before us didn’t disappear, he thought. When our world is woven out of deeds and thoughts of other people: we’re made out of countless mosaic stones which we inherited from thousands of our ancestors, they must have left a trail in us. We must have received a small part of their souls when we were born. You just had to look closely enough.

Even Homer’s little boat, folded out of paper, out of thoughts and memories would swim along for eternity along the ocean of time, until somebody picked it up again, looked at it and realized that humanity had never changed, yes that it had even stayed true to itself after the end of the world. The heavenly fire that we had once received fought against the wind and hadn’t been extinguished yet.

Homer’s score had been settled.

He closed his eyes and found himself in the flickering, bright light-flooded station again. On the platform were thousands of people. They were wearing elegant dresses like those of that time where nobody had thought to call him Homer. But this time these weren’t just people who had lived in the metro. Nobody knew why the others were there. Something connected all of them…

They waited and looked worriedly at the dark tunnel. And suddenly Homer recognized their faces. It was his wife and his children, his colleagues, classmates, his neighbors, his best friends, even Achmed, his favorite actors… All who he remembered were there.

And suddenly the tunnel was lit by a silent metro train that drove into the station, with bright shining windows, polished walls and oiled wheels. The operator cabin was empty save for a fresh uniform and a white t- shirt hanging there.