Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034

‘Sasha?’

The girl looked back, and her gaze met Homer’s: he looked frightened, and angry, and surprised. Sasha smiled: apparently she had missed the old man.

‘What are you doing here?’ He couldn’t have asked two young people trying to make a quick getaway a more stupid question.

‘We’re going to Dobrynin!’ she answered, catching her breath and slowing down slightly so the old man could catch up with them.

‘Don’t talk nonsense! You mustn’t… I forbid you to!’ But his prohibitions, gasped out through strenuous puffing and panting, made no impression on her.

They reached the check point at Borovitskaya before the border guards had warned it about their getaway.

‘I have a warrant from Miller! Let us through, and make it quick!’ Homer told the officer on duty coolly.

The soldier opened his mouth, but then without even taking time to gather his thoughts, he saluted the old man and stood aside.

‘Did you just lie?’ the musician asked Homer politely when the checkpoint was far behind them, lost in the darkness.

‘What difference does it make?’ the old man snarled angrily.

‘The important thing is to do it confidently,’ Leonid said appreciatively. ‘Then only the professionals will notice.’

‘To hell with the lectures!’ exclaimed Homer, frowning and clicking the switch of his flashlight, which was already running down. ‘We’ll go as far as Serpukhov, but I won’t let you go any further than that!’

‘That’s because you don’t know!’ said Sasha. ‘A cure has been found for the sickness!’

‘What do you mean, found?’ asked the old man, breaking step and starting to cough. He gave Sasha a strange, fearful kind of look.

‘Yes, yes! It’s radiation!’

‘The bacteria are rendered harmless by the effects of radiation,’ explained the musician, coming to the rescue.

‘But microbes and viruses are hundreds or thousands of times more resistant to radiation than human beings! And radiation impairs the immune response!’ the old man shouted, losing control of himself. ‘What nonsense have you been telling her? Why are you dragging her off there? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen now? None of us can stop him now! Take her away somewhere and hide her! And you…’ Homer turned to Sasha. ‘How could you believe… a professional?’ he said, spitting out the last word contemptuously.

‘Don’t be afraid for me,’ the girl said in a quiet voice. ‘I know Hunter can be stopped. He has two halves… I’ve seen both of them. One wants blood, but the other is trying to save people!’

‘What are you talking about?’ exclaimed Homer, flinging his arms up in protest. ‘There aren’t any different parts any more, there’s a single whole. A monster locked inside a human body! A year ago…’

But the old man’s retelling of the conversation between the man with the shaved head and Miller did nothing to convince Sasha. The longer she listened to Homer, the more certain she became that she was right.

‘It’s just that the one inside him, who kills, is deceiving the other one,’ she said, struggling to find the right words to explain everything to the old man. ‘It’s telling him there’s no choice. One is driven by hunger, and the other by anguish. That’s why Hunter’s so eager to get to Tula – both halves are dragging him there! They have to be split apart. If he’s offered a choice – to save without killing…’

‘Oh God… He won’t even listen to you! What’s pulling you to that place?’

‘Your book,’ Sasha told him with a gentle smile. ‘I know everything in it can still be changed. The ending hasn’t been written yet.’

‘Nonsense! Gibberish!’ Homer babbled in despair. ‘Why did I even tell you about it? Young man, you at least…’ He grabbed Leonid by the arm. ‘I beg you, I believe you’re not a bad person and you didn’t lie out of spite. Take her. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You’re both so young and so beautiful… You have a life to live! She mustn’t go there, do you understand? And you mustn’t go there. You won’t stop anything either, with your little lie…’

‘It isn’t a lie,’ the musician said politely. ‘Would you like me to swear to it?’

‘All right, all right,’ said the old man, brushing aside his protestations. ‘I’m prepared to believe you. But Hunter… you’ve only had a brief glimpse of him, haven’t you?’

‘But I’ve heard plenty,’ Leonid said with a wry chuckle.

‘He’s… How are you going to stop him? With that flute of yours? Or do you think he’ll listen to the girl? That thing inside him… He can’t even hear anything any longer…’

‘To be honest,’ said the musician, leaning down towards the old man, ‘in my heart I agree with you. But it’s a young lady’s request! And I am a gentleman, after all.’ He winked at Sasha.

‘Why can’t you understand… this isn’t a game!’ Homer burst out, gazing imploringly at the girl and Leonid by turns.

‘I do understand,’ Sasha said firmly.

‘Everything’s a game,’ the musician said calmly.

If the musician really was Moskvin’s son, he genuinely could know something about the epidemic that even Hunter hadn’t heard. Hadn’t heard or didn’t want to tell? Homer suspected that Leonid was a charlatan, but what if radiation really could destroy the fever? Against his own will and against all common sense the old man started gathering together proofs that he was right. Wasn’t this what he had been praying for for the last few days? Then the cough, the bleeding mouth, the nausea – were they merely symptoms of radiation sickness? The dose he had received on the Kakhovka Line must have extinguished the infection.

The devil certainly knew how to tempt the old man! But assuming it was true, then what about Tula, and what about Hunter? Sasha was hoping she could change his mind. And she really did seem to have a strange kind of power over the brigadier. But while one of the parties warring within him might find the bridle the girl was trying to throw over him as soft as silk, it would sear the other like red hot iron. Which of them would be on the outside at the decisive moment?

This time Polyanka chose not to put on a show for him, or for Sasha, or for Leonid. The station appeared to them stark and empty, as if it had given up the ghost long ago. Should Homer take this as a good omen or a bad one? He didn’t know. Possibly the draught that had started up in the tunnels – a shadow of the winds rambling about on the surface – had simply swept away all the stupefying vapours. Or was the old man perhaps mistaken about something, and now he didn’t have any future for Polyanka to tell him about?

‘What does “Emerald” mean?’ Sasha asked out of the blue.

‘An emerald is a transparent green stone,’ Homer explained absent-mindedly. ‘So to say something is emerald simply means that it’s green.’

‘That’s funny,’ the girl said thoughtfully. ‘So it does exist after all…’

‘What do you mean?’ the musician asked with a start.

‘Oh, nothing really… You know,’ she said, looking at Leonid, ‘I’m going to search for that city of yours too. And I’ll definitely find it someday.’

Homer just shook his head: he still wasn’t convinced the musician was sincere in his repentance for filling Sasha’s head with nonsense and luring her to Sport Station for nothing.

But the girl was still absorbed in her own thoughts: she whispered something and sighed a couple of times. Then she glanced at the old man quizzically.

‘Have you written down everything that happened to me?’

‘I’m writing it.’

‘Good,’ she said and nodded.

Bad things were happening at Serpukhov. The Hansa guard at the entrance had been doubled and the morose, taciturn soldiers flatly refused to let Homer and the others through. Neither the cartridges that the musician jangled under their noses nor his document made the slightest impression on them. The situation was saved by the old man, who demanded to be connected with Andrei Andreevich. A long half-hour later a signal officer arrived, unreeling a thick wire, and Homer menacingly announced into his telephone receiver that the three of them were the advance guard of a cohort of the Order. This half-truth was enough to get them escorted through the hall, which was stuffy, as if all the air had been pumped out of the station, and entirely sleepless, even though it was the middle of the night, to the reception office of the commandant of Dobrynin.