Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

And it was raining too.

Supposedly it was just water falling from the sky, but the sensation was absolutely incredible. It didn’t just wash away dust and weariness – the jets of hot water from a rusty shower head could do that: the sky water cleaned people on the inside, granting them forgiveness for the mistakes they had made. This magical cleansing washed the grief out of hearts, it renewed and rejuvenated, bringing the desire to carry on living and the strength to do it. Everything was just as the old man had said…

Sasha believed so strongly in this world that under the pressure of her childish sorcery it started breaking through into reality around her. She could hear the light chirring of transparent wings high in the air, and the cheerful babble of the crowd, and the regular tapping of wheels and the humming of the warm rain. The melody she had heard in the passage the day before came back to her and wove itself into this chorus… She felt a painful pricking in her chest.

She jumped up and ran along the very centre of the road against the stream of people, skirting round the sweet little carriage-cars that were stuck in the throng, holding her face up to the heavy raindrops. The old man was right: this really was a wonderful fairytale place, breathtakingly beautiful. Scrape away the patina and mould of time, and the past started to shine – like the coloured mosaics and bronze panels at abandoned stations.

She stopped on the bank of a green river: the bridge that had once spanned it broke off almost as soon as it began, there was no way she could get across to the other side. The magic had run out. The picture that seemed so real, so vivid only a moment ago, faded and disappeared, and in a second all that was left of the beautiful phantom world were the empty buildings, turned stale and dry by age, the cracked skin of the roads, hemmed in along the margins by grass that was two metres tall, and the wild, impenetrable thickets that had swallowed up the remains of the embankment for as far as the eye could see.

And Sasha suddenly felt so hurt and resentful that she would never see that world with her own eyes, that she would have to choose between dying and going back to the Metro, that there wasn’t a single statuesque giant in bright-coloured clothes left anywhere in the world. That apart from her there wasn’t a single living soul on that immensely wide road leading away to the distant point where the sky crept down onto the abandoned city.

The weather was fine and settled. With no rain. Sasha didn’t even feel like crying. It would be really fine now simply to die.

And as if it had heard her wish, high above her head a huge black shadow spread its wings.

What should he do if he had to choose? Let the brigadier go and abandon his book, stay at the station until he found the missing girl? Or forget about her forever and follow Hunter, erase Sasha from his novel and lurk like a spider in its web, waiting for new heroines to come along?

The old man’s rational mind forbade him to separate from the brigadier. If he did, then what sense did his entire expedition make, what sense was there in the deadly danger to which he had exposed the entire Metro? He simply had no right to put his work at risk – it was the only thing that justified all the sacrifices already made and still to come.

But in that moment when he picked the broken mirror up off the floor, Homer had realised that to leave Pavelets without finding out what had happened to the girl would be an act of genuine betrayal. And sooner or later that betrayal would inevitably poison the old man and his novel. He would never be able to erase Sasha from his memory.

Whatever Hunter might tell him, Homer had to do everything possible to find the girl, or at least make certain that she was no longer alive. And the old man set about the search with renewed vigour, occasionally asking people he met what time it was.

The Circle Line station was out of the question – she couldn’t have got into Hansa without any documents. The gallery of rooms and apartments under the connecting passage? The old man searched it from one end to the other, asking everyone he met if they had seen the girl. Eventually someone replied uncertainly that they thought they had run into her, dressed in tarpaulin protective clothing… And from there Homer, unable to believe his ears and his eyes, traced Sasha’s route to the gun post at the foot of the escalator.

‘So what’s it to me? If she wants to go, then let her. I flogged her some good glasses,’ the sentry in the booth answered him lethargically. ‘But I won’t let you through. I’ve already had an earful from the corporal. The Newcomers’ nest is up there. Nobody goes through here. I even thought it was funny when she asked to be let through.’ His pupils, as wide a pistol barrels, prodded at space, without hitting the old man at all. ‘You’d better get along to the passage, granddad. It’ll be getting dark soon.’

Hunter knew! But what did he mean when he said the old man wouldn’t be able to bring her back? Perhaps she was still alive?

Stumbling in his agitation, Homer hurried back to the brigadier’s ward. He ducked under the low lintel of the little secret door, hobbled down the narrow steps, swung the door open without knocking…

The room was empty: no sign of Hunter or his weapons, nothing but the ribbons of bandages dyed brown with dried blood scattered about on the floor, and the empty flask lying there abandoned. And the perfunctorily decontaminated protective suit had disappeared from the closet too.

The brigadier had simply abandoned the old man, like a dog he was tired of, to punish him for his obstinacy.

Her father had always been convinced that people were given signs. They just had to know how to spot them and read them. Sasha glanced up and froze in astonishment. If someone wanted to send her a sign at this very moment, they couldn’t possibly have thought of anything more eloquent.

Not far from the broken-off bridge, an old round tower with an elaborate tip rose up out of the dark thickets; it was the tallest building in the area. The years had not treated it kindly: deep cracks snaked across its walls and the tower was listing dangerously. It would have collapsed long ago, if not for a miracle. Why hadn’t she noticed it sooner?

The building was girded round by an absolutely gigantic bind-weed plant. Of course, its trunk was many times thinner than the tower, but it was more than thick enough and strong enough to hold up the building that was falling apart. The amazing plant wound round the tower in a spiral: thinner branches ran off from the main trunk, and even thinner ones ran off from them, and all together they formed a net that prevented the building from crumbling.

Of course the bindweed had once been as weak and flexible as the youngest and most tender of its shoots was now. It had once clutched at the ledges and balconies of a tower that seemed eternal and indestructible. If the tower hadn’t been so tall, the bindweed wouldn’t have grown so large.

As Sasha gazed spellbound at that rescued building, everything acquired meaning for her again and the desire to fight returned. It was strange, after all, absolutely nothing had changed in her life. But suddenly, despite everything, a tiny shoot of that bindweed had broken through the grey crust of despair in her soul – a green shoot of hope. There might be some things that she could never put right, some deeds that were impossible to undo, that could never be retracted. But in this story there were still many things that she could change, even if she didn’t yet know how. The important thing was that her strength had come back to her.

And now it seemed to Sasha that she had also guessed the reason why the grim monster had let her get away unharmed: someone invisible had held the ferocious beast back on a chain in order to give the girl another chance.