Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘Thanks, I didn’t think you’d reach me in time,’ said a dull, hollow voice. ‘I felt… cramped in there.’

Miller spun his chair faster than Homer could look round. The brigadier was standing in the passage, blocking their way out to the station. His hands were firmly clenched together, as if one didn’t trust the other and was afraid to let go of it. He turned his mutilated side towards them.

‘Is that you?’ asked Miller, and his cheek twitched.

‘Yes, for now,’ said Hunter, giving a strange little cough. If Homer hadn’t known him, he might even have taken the sound for a laugh.

‘What’s wrong with you? What happened to your face?’

Miller clearly wanted to ask Hunter about something completely different: he gestured with his hand, ordering the guards to go out. They left Homer there.

‘You’re not exactly in the best shape either.’ The brigadier gave that cough again.

‘A mere trifle,’ said Miller, screwing up his face. ‘It’s just a shame that I can’t give you a hug. Damn you! Where have you…? We searched for you for so long!’

‘I know. I needed… to be alone,’ Hunter said jerkily. ‘I didn’t want to come back to people. I wanted to go away forever. But I got scared…’

‘But what happened with the Black Ones? Did they do that to you?’ asked Miller, nodding at the purple weals.

‘Nothing. I wasn’t able to destroy them.’ The brigadier touched his scar. ‘I couldn’t do it. They… broke me.’

‘You were right,’ Miller said with sudden passion. ‘Forgive me for taking no notice at first, for not believing. At that time we… Well, you remember… But we found them, we burned out the whole place. We thought you were already dead. That they’d… I wiped them out for you… For you. To the very last one!’

‘I know,’ Hunter said in a hoarse, distraught voice. ‘And they knew that would happen – because of me. They knew everything. They could really see people, and every person’s destiny. You have no idea who we dared to raise our hand against… He smiled at us for one last time… He sent them… Gave us one more chance. And we… I condemned them, and you carried out the sentence. Because that’s what we’re like. Because we’re monsters…’

‘What…’

‘When I came to them… they showed me myself. It was as if I looked at myself in a mirror and saw everything the way it really is. I understood everything about myself. I understood about people. Why it all happened to us…’

‘What do you mean?’ Miller stared at his comrade anxiously and cast a quick glance at the door – perhaps he regretted having sent the guards away?

‘I told you. I saw myself through their eyes, in a mirror. Not the outside, but the inside… behind the screen… They lured me out in front of the mirror in order to show me. A cannibal. A monster. But I didn’t see a man. I was terrified at the sight of myself. Something woke up. I’d been lying to myself before. Telling myself I was protecting people, saving… It was lies. I was just a bloody, ravenous beast who tore out throats. Worse than a beast. The mirror disappeared, but it… this thing… stayed. It woke up and refused to sleep anymore. They thought I would kill myself after that. What did I have to live for? But I didn’t. I had to fight. At first on my own… So that no one could see. As far away from people as possible. I thought I could punish myself, so that they wouldn’t punish me. I thought I could drive it out with pain…’ He touched his scars. ‘Then I realised that without people it would defeat me. I was forgetting myself. So I came back.’

‘They brainwashed you!’ Miller exclaimed in an agonised voice.

‘Never mind. It’s over and done with now,’ said the brigadier. He took his hand away from the weals on his face and his voice became dead and empty again. ‘Almost all. That story was finished long ago and what’s done is done. We’re alone here now. We have to pull through on our own. That’s not what I came about. There’s an epidemic at Tula. It could break out to Sebastopol and into the Circle. Airborne fever. The same old deadly plague.’

‘It hasn’t been reported to me,’ said Miller, eyeing him suspiciously.

‘They haven’t reported it to anyone. They’re being cowardly. Lying. They don’t know what to do.’

‘What do you want from me?’ asked Miller, sitting up higher in his wheelchair.

‘You know that. The danger has to be eliminated. Give me a token. Give me men. Flamethrowers. We have to shut down Tula and purge it. Serpukhov and Sebastopol too, if necessary. I hope it hasn’t got any further.’

‘Wipe out three stations just in case?’ Miller asked.

‘To save the rest of them.’

‘After a bloodbath like that everyone will hate the Order…’

‘No one will find out. We won’t leave anyone who could have been infected… or could have seen anything.’

‘It’s a huge price to pay!’

‘Don’t you understand? If we delay just a little bit longer, there’ll be no one left to save. We found out about the epidemic too late. There won’t be another chance to stop it. In two weeks the entire Metro will be a plague barracks, in a month it will be a graveyard.’

‘I have to make sure for myself…’

‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’ve gone crazy? You didn’t believe me then and you still doubt me now. Screw it. I’ll go on my own. As usual. At least I’ll keep my own conscience clear.’

He swung round, pushing aside Homer, who was absolutely stunned, and headed for the exit. But those final words he flung out had sunk deep into Miller’s chest, like a harpoon, and they dragged him after the brigadier.

‘Wait! Take a token!’ He fumbled hastily under his tunic and held out a perfectly ordinary looking flat metal badge to Hunter, who had stopped dead in his tracks. ‘I authorise you…’ The brigadier raked the token out of the bony fingers, stuck it in his pocket and nodded without speaking, aiming a long, unblinking stare at Miller.

‘Come back,’ said Miller. ‘I’m tired.’

‘But I’m just raring to go,’ Hunter said, and coughed again.

Then he disappeared.

Sasha didn’t dare to ring again for a long time: there was no point in annoying the guards of the Emerald City. They must have heard her, and perhaps they had already taken a good look at her. And if at this stage they still hadn’t opened the door that had grown into the ground, it was only because they were consulting, uncertain if they should admit a stranger who had guessed the signal.

What would she say to them when the door finally opened?

Should she tell them about the epidemic raging at Tula? Would they want to intervene? Would they risk it? And what if they could all see straight through people, like Leonid? Perhaps she should tell them straight away about her own, different kind of fever? Confess to someone else what she still hadn’t admitted to herself…

And would Sasha even be able to move their hearts? If they had defeated the terrible sickness long ago, why didn’t they intervene, why didn’t they send a messenger to Tula with the cure? Simply because they were afraid of ordinary people? Or because they hoped the plague would wipe them out? Perhaps it was them who had sent the disease into the Greater Metro?

No! How could she think that? Leonid had said the inhabitants of the Emerald City were just and humane. That they didn’t execute anyone or even imprison them. And that no one even dared to think of committing a crime in the midst of the boundless beauty that they had surrounded themselves with. Then why wouldn’t they save people who were doomed to die? Why wouldn’t they open the door?

Sasha rang again. And again.