Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

Sasha shuddered and shook her head.

‘See how unpredictable everything is, Pete,’ he said, talking to Sasha’s father again. ‘There was a time when you used to have your rivals in love court-martialled. Thanks, by the way, for not having me executed, merely banished for life. But life is long, and circumstances change. And not always to your advantage. I’ve come back, even if it has taken me ten years longer than I planned.’

‘It’s never an accident when someone goes back somewhere,’ Sasha whispered, repeating her father’s words

‘How very true that is,’ the fat man jeered. ‘Hey, who’s there?’

At the far end of the platform something bulky and ponderous rustled and fell, then there was a kind of hissing sound and the stealthy footsteps of a large animal. When silence fell again it was a false silence, frayed and tattered. Like her kidnapper, Sasha could sense something moving towards them out of the tunnel.

The fat man snapped the breech of his gun, went down on one knee beside the girl, pressed the butt into his shoulder and ran a trembling spot of light over the closest columns. Hearing the southern tunnels come to life after they had been empty for decades was as spine-chilling as seeing the marble statues waking up in one of the central stations of the Metro.

A blurred shadow flitted across the beam of light just as the beam was turning away – it wasn’t human, though – the shape was wrong and the movements were too agile. But when the light moved back to the spot where the mysterious creature had just been, there was no trace of it. A minute later the beam, fluttering wildly in panic, caught it again – only twenty steps away from them.

‘A bear?’ the fat man whispered in disbelief, pressing the trigger.

Bullets lashed into the columns and started rattling against the walls, but the beast seemed to have dematerialised, and not a single shot found its target. Then the fat man suddenly stopped firing senselessly, dropped his automatic and pressed his hands to his stomach. His flashlight rolled off to one side, casting a cone of light that crept across the floor and lighting up his corpulent, hunched-over figure from below.

A man stepped unhurriedly out of the gloom, walking with incredibly soft, almost soundless steps in his heavy boots. In a protective suit that was too large even for a giant like him, he really could have been taken for a bear. He wasn’t wearing a gas mask: his scar-furrowed face and shaved head looked like a scorched desert. Part of the face, with hard, coarsely defined, manly features, was even rather handsome, but it looked dead somehow, and Sasha couldn’t repress a shudder when she looked at it. The other half was simply repulsive – a complicated tangle of scars transformed it into the half-mask of a folk-tale monster, perfect in its ugly deformity. But even so, apart from the eyes, his appearance was repellent, rather than frightening. A half-crazed, prowling, probing gaze enlivened the stiffened face. Enlivened it, but didn’t bring it to life.

The fat man tried to get to his feet, but immediately collapsed on the floor, screaming in pain, shot through both the knees. Then the gunman squatted down beside him, put the silencer on the end of his long pistol barrel against the fat man’s head and pulled the trigger. The howling broke off instantly. But for a few seconds the echo wandered under the vaults of the station like a lost spirit, bereft of its body.

The shot had thrown the fat man’s chin up, and now Sasha’s kidnapper lay there turned towards her. Instead of a face he had a damp, gaping, crimson crater. Sasha huddled back and started whimpering in horror. Slowly and thoughtfully, the terrible gunman turned the gun barrel on her.

Then he looked round and changed his mind: the pistol disappeared into its holster and he stepped back, as if trying to disown what he had done. He opened a flat flask and took a pull from it.

A new character appeared on the small stage illuminated by the dead man’s fading flashlight: an old man who was breathing heavily, clutching at his ribs. He was dressed in the same kind of suit as the killer, and looked absolutely absurd in it. When he caught up with his companion, the old man immediately collapsed on the floor in exhaustion, not even noticing that everything around him was awash with blood. It was only later, when he came round and opened his eyes, that he saw the two mutilated bodies and the mute, terrified girl hemmed in between them.

Homer’s heart had only just calmed down, but now it leapt again. He couldn’t express it in words yet, but he already knew for certain: he had found her. After so many nights spent in fruitless attempts to picture his future heroine, trying to imagine her lips and her wrists, her clothes and her aroma, her movements and her thoughts, he had suddenly met a real person who matched all his requirements perfectly. Of course, until now he had imagined her quite differently… More elegant, more well-rounded and certainly more grown-up. She had turned out to be much more sinewy, she had too many sharp corners and, glancing into her eyes, instead of languorous, enveloping warmth, the old man encountered two cold splinters of ice. She was different, but Homer knew it was his mistake, he had failed to guess what she ought to be like. Her trapped look, her face distorted by fear and her manacled hands intrigued the old man. He might be a master at retelling yarns, but he hadn’t been granted the talent to write tragedies of the kind that this girl must have suffered. Her helplessness and hopelessness, her miraculous rescue and the way her destiny had been woven into their story meant that he was on the right track.

And though she hadn’t spoken a word yet, he was ready in advance to believe her. For after all, apart from everything else, this teenage girl, with her white, tousled, carelessly lopped hair, pointed little ears, soot-smeared cheeks and exposed, sculpted collarbones – surprisingly white and vulnerable – with her childishly plump, bitten lower lip, was beautiful in a very special way.

The old man’s curiosity was mingled with pity and a surprising tenderness. He moved closer and squatted down beside her. She huddled away and squeezed her eyes shut. ‘A little savage,’ he thought. He patted her on the shoulder, not knowing what to say.

‘Time to go,’ Hunter butted in.

‘But what about…?’ Homer asked with a nod at the girl.

‘Never mind. It’s none of our business.’

‘We can’t just abandon her here alone!’

‘Simpler to shoot her,’ the brigadier snapped.

‘I don’t want to go with you,’ the girl said, suddenly pulling herself together. ‘Just take the handcuffs off. He should have the key.’ She pointed to the shattered, faceless mannequin.

In three swift movements Hunter frisked the body and pulled a bunch of steel keys out of an inside pocket. He tossed them to the girl and looked round at the old man.

‘Is that all?’

Still trying to postpone the parting, Homer spoke to the girl.

‘What did that subhuman brute do to you?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, fiddling with the lock. ‘He didn’t have time. He’s not subhuman. Just an ordinary human being. Cruel, stupid, spiteful. Like all of them.’

‘They’re not all like that,’ the old man objected, but without any real conviction.

‘All of them,’ the girl said obstinately, wincing as she got up on her numbed legs. ‘It’s all right. Staying human’s not that easy.’

She’d certainly got over her fright very quickly! She didn’t lower her eyes any more, now she looked at the men with a lowering, challenging gaze. She walked up to one of the corpses, carefully turned it face up, arranged its arms on its chest and kissed it on the forehead. Narrowing her eyes, she turned to Hunter and the corner of her mouth trembled.