Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘That would be amusing, if the human race that destroyed itself with the atom, is saved by the atom too.’

‘There’s nothing amusing about it,’ said the old man, giving him a stern glance.

‘It’s like the fire that Prometheus stole,’ the musician explained. ‘The Gods forbade him to give fire to humans. He wanted to drag man out of the mud, the darkness and stagnation…’

‘I’ve read it,’ Homer interrupted acidly. ‘ The Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece .’

‘A prophetic myth,’ Leonid remarked. ‘The Gods had good reason to be against it. They knew how it would end.’

‘But it was fire that made man into man,’ Homer objected.

‘And you reckon that without electricity he’ll turn back into an animal?’ the musician asked.

‘I reckon that without it we’ll be thrown back at least two hundred years. And taking into account that only one in a thousand survived and everything has to be rebuilt, brought back under control and studied all over again – at least five hundred. And maybe we’ll never recover. Why, don’t you agree?’

‘I do,’ Leonid replied. ‘But is it really just a matter of electricity?’

‘Well what do you think it is?’ Homer erupted, throwing his hands up.

The musician gave him a strange, long, lingering glance and shrugged.

The silence dragged on. Homer could definitely regard this outcome of their conversation as a victory for him: the girl had finally stopped devouring the impertinent rogue with her eyes and started thinking about something else. But just as they were getting very close to the station, Leonid suddenly declared:

‘All right. Why don’t I tell you a story?’

The old man tried his best to appear exhausted, but he replied with a gracious nod.

‘They say that beyond Sport Station and before the ruined Sokolniki Bridge, a dead-end tunnel branches off the main one, running down at a steep angle. It ends at a metal grille, with a tightly closed hermetic door behind it. They’ve tried to open the door several times, but never got anywhere. And any solitary travellers who set out to find it almost never come back, and their bodies are found over at the far side of the Metro.’

‘The Emerald City?’ Homer asked, twisting up his face.

‘Everybody knows,’ Leonid carried on, taking no notice, ‘that the Sokolniki Bridge collapsed on the first day and all the stations beyond it were cut off from the Metro. It’s usually believed that no one left on the other side of the bridge was saved, although there’s absolutely no proof of that.’

‘The Emerald City,’ Homer said, waving his hand impatiently.

‘Everybody also knows that Moscow University was built on unstable ground, which was only able to support the immense building thanks to powerful cold generators working away in its basements, freezing the swampy earth. Without them it would have slid into the river a long time ago.’

‘A stale old cliché,’ the old man put in, realising where all this was leading.

‘More than twenty years have gone by, but for some reason the abandoned building is still standing there…’

‘Because it’s hogwash, that’s why!’

‘Some rumours say that what lies under the University is not just a basement, but a large strategic bomb shelter that goes ten storeys down, and apart from the cold generators, it contains its own nuclear reactor, and living space and connections to the closest Metro stations, and even to Metro-2…’ Leonid made terrible eyes at Sasha and she smiled.

‘I haven’t heard anything new yet,’ Homer growled contemptuously.

‘They say there’s a genuine underground city there,’ the musician continued dreamily. ‘A city in which the inhabitants – of course they didn’t die – have devoted themselves to the collection of lost knowledge, crumb by crumb, and the service of beauty. Sparing no resources, they send out expeditions to the picture galleries, museums and libraries that have survived. And they raise their children so that they don’t lose the sense of beauty either. Peace and harmony reign there, and there are no ideologies apart from enlightenment, and no religions apart from art. There are none of those ugly old-style walls, painted in two drab colours with linseed oil paint. Instead of the crudely barked commands and warning sirens, the loudspeakers broadcast Berlioz, Haydn and Tchaikovsky. And absolutely everyone – just imagine it – can quote Dante from memory. And these people have managed to stay the same as they were. Or no, they’re not the way they were in the twenty-first century, but like people were in ancient times… Well, you’ve read about that in Myths and Legends …’ The musician smiled at the old man as if he was feeble-minded. ‘Free, bold, wise and beautiful. Just. Noble.’

‘I’ve never heard anything of the sort!’ exclaimed Homer, hoping that the cunning devil wouldn’t win the girl over with this.

‘In the Metro,’ said Leonid, looking intently at the old man, ‘this place is known as the Emerald City. But according to the rumours, its inhabitants prefer a different name.’

‘And what’s that?’ Homer erupted.

‘The Ark.’

‘Drivel. Absolute drivel!’ the old man snorted and turned away.

‘Of course it’s drivel,’ the musician responded phlegmatically. ‘It’s just a story…’

Dobrynin had been overrun by chaos.

Homer looked around, perplexed and frightened. Could he be mistaken? Could something like this be happening at one of the calmer stations of the Circle Line? It looked to him as if someone had declared war on Hansa within the last half-hour. Peeping out of the parallel tunnel was a freight trolley with dead bodies piled up on it higgledy-piggledy. Military medical orderlies in aprons were dragging the bodies onto the platform and laying them out on tarpaulin sheets: one had been separated from its head, another one’s face had been reduced to pulp, the intestines were tumbling out of a third…

Homer covered Sasha’s eyes. Leonid filled his lungs with air and turned away.

‘What happened?’ one of the guards assigned to the threesome asked in a frightened voice.

‘It’s our watch from the large junction, with the Special Service Line. Every last man’s here. No one got away. And we don’t know who did it.’ The medical orderly wiped his hand on his apron. ‘Give me a light, will you, brother? My hands are shaking…’

The Special Service Line. A cobweb thread line that ran off behind the Pavelets radial line station, connecting four lines together – Circle, Grey, Orange and Green.

Homer had assumed that Hunter would choose that route, which was the shortest, although it was guarded by reinforced Hansa units.

What was all this bloodshed for? Did they open fire on him first, or did they not even spot him in the gloom of the tunnel? And where was he now? Oh God, another head… How could he do something like this?

Homer remembered the shattered mirror and what Sasha had said. Could she be right after all? Was the brigadier trying to restrain himself, trying to avoid killing unnecessarily, but unable to stop? And when he broke the mirror, was he really trying to strike the hideous, terrifying man that he was gradually turning into…

No, what Hunter had seen in the mirror wasn’t a man, but a genuine monster. That was who he had tried to crush. But he had only shattered the glass, transforming one reflection into dozens.

Or perhaps… The old man watched as the orderlies moved from the trolley to the platform… carrying the eighth man, the last… Perhaps it was the man who was still staring bleakly out of the mirror? The old Hunter? And that Other… was already on the outside?