Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2033

‘Guys! Let’s do “Combat”, hey?’ The stalker was trying to persuade his fighters. ‘A combat, my father, my father-combat, You didn’t hide your heart behind the guys’ back…’ He had only just started, but then he too fell silent. A stupor enveloped the party. The fighters began to unclench their hands and the circle disintegrated. Everyone was quiet, even Anton who had been raving and muttering the whole time. Feeling a warm and turbid slush of indifference and fatigue filling the emptiness that had occurred in his head, Artyom tried to push it out, thinking about his mission, then telling himself nursery rhymes as he remembered them, then simply repeating: ‘I think, think, think you will not worm yourself into me…’ The fighter whom the stalker had called Oganesian suddenly stood up and brought himself to his full height. Artyom lifted his eyes to him with indifference.

‘Well, it’s time for me. Take care,’ he said taking his leave. The rest dully looked at their comrade, not answering, only the stalker nodded at him. Oganesian approached the edge and unhesitatingly stepped forward. He didn’t even scream, but from below was heard an unpleasant sound, a combination of a splash and a hungry rumbling.

‘It calls… It… calls,’ Ulman said in a sing-song voice and also began to get up. Artyom was spellbound.

‘I think you won’t worm yourself into me!’ He got stuck on the word ‘I,’ and now he simply repeated it, not even noticing that he was speaking aloud: ‘I, I, I, I, I.’ Then he strongly, irresistibly wanted to look down in order to understand whether the heaving mass there was as deformed as it had appeared to him at first. But had he suddenly been wrong about it? Recalling again the stars on the Kremlin towers, distant and beckoning… And here the small Oleg sprang lightly to his feet and, taking a short run, threw himself down with a happy laugh. The living quagmire below chomped quietly, receiving the boy’s body. Artyom understood that he envied him and also intended to follow.

But several seconds later, as the mass closed over Oleg’s head, perhaps at that very moment when it had taken his life from him, his father screamed and regained consciousness. Breathing heavily and exhaustedly looking from side to side, Anton lifted himself and set about shaking the others, demanding an answer from them: ‘Where is he? What’s happened to him? Where is my son? Where is Oleg? Oleg! Olezhek!’ Little by little the faces of the fighters began to regain intelligence. Even Artyom began to become conscious. He was no longer certain what he really had seen as Oleg jumped into the seething mass. Therefore, he didn’t answer, just tried to calm Anton, who, it seemed, felt in a mysterious way that what had happened was irrevocable. And then his hysterics broke into the numbness felt by Artyom and in Melnik, and the others. His agitation and his baleful despair were transferred to them, and the unseen hand firmly grasping their consciousness, was yanked away.

The stalker made several test shots at the bubbling mass, but with no success. Then he told the fighter armed with the flame-thrower to remove the backpack with the fuel from his shoulders and, when told to, toss it as far as possible from the train. Having ordered two others to direct their flashlights on the spot where the backpack would fall, he prepared to fire and gave the go-ahead. Spinning in place, the fighter hurled the backpack and almost flew right after it himself, barely managing to hold on to the edge of the roof. The backpack flew into the air and began to fall about fifteen metres from the train.

‘Get down!’ Melnik waited until it touched the pulsing, oily surface, and squeezed the trigger.

Artyom watched the backpack’s flight while stretched out on the roof. As soon as the shot rang out, he hid his face in the fold of his elbow and grasped the cold armour with all his might. The explosion was powerful: Artyom nearly flew off the roof as the train rocked. A dirty, orange glow of blazing fuel splashing along the platform reached his blinking eyes. Nothing happened for a minute. The squelching and chomping of the quagmire did not weaken, and Artyom was already preparing for it to recover from the annoying unpleasantness and begin to envelop his mind again. But instead, the noise began gradually to move further away.

‘It’s leaving! It’s leaving!’ Ulman bellowed right beside his ear. Artyom lifted his head. In the light of the flashlights he could clearly see that the mass, which recently had occupied nearly the whole huge hall, was shrinking and retreating, returning to the escalator.

‘Hurry!’ Melnik jumped to his feet. ‘As soon as it slides down, everyone behind me, right to that tunnel!’

Artyom was surprised how Melnik could be so certain, but he wasn’t about to ask, having put the stalker’s previous indecisiveness down to whatever had been controlling his mind. Now the stalker was transformed. He was again the sober, decisive commander who did not put up with any arguments. Not only was there no time to think about it, but he didn’t even want to. The only thing that now occupied Artyom was how to get out of this damned station as soon as possible before the strange being that dwelled in the Kremlin’s basements recovered its wits and returned in order to consume them. The station no longer seemed marvellous and beautiful to him. Now everything here was hostile and repulsive. Even the workers and peasants looked down in outrage from its wall panels. They still smiled, but it was strained and sickly sweet.

Having jumped pell-mell to the platform, they tore to the opposite end of the station. Anton had come to completely and ran as fast as the others, so that now nothing was delaying the party. After twenty minutes of mad racing through the black tunnel, Artyom began to gasp, and even the others had begun to tire. The stalker allowed them to slow to a quick march.

‘Where are we going?’ Artyom asked, overtaking Melnik.

‘I think right now we are beneath Tverskaya… We should exit soon toward Mayakovskaya. We’ll sort it out there.’

‘But how did you know which tunnel to enter?’ Artyom was curious.

‘It was shown on the map we found at Genshtab. But I only recalled that at the last moment.’

As they arrived at the station, everything flew from their heads. Artyom pondered. Had his delight with the Kremlin station, with the pictures and the sculptures, and its space and magnitude come to nothing? Or was it some trickery, evoked by the terrible entity lurking in the Kremlin? Then he remembered the disgust and fear that the station had inspired in him when the drug had dissipated. And he began to doubt that these were his real feelings. Maybe the ‘doodlebug’ forced them to feel an irresistible desire to run from there at breakneck speed when they caused it pain? Artyom was no longer sure of his true feelings. Did a monstrous creation of his mind release him or did it continue to dictate thoughts to him and inspire his emotional experiences? At what moment did Artyom fall under its hypnotic influence? And was he sometimes free to make his own choices? And could his choice ever be free? Artyom again recalled the meeting with the two strange residents of Polyanka.

He glanced back: Anton was walking two paces behind him. He no longer badgered anyone about what happened to his son. Someone had already told him. His face had hardened and gone dead, his gaze was turned inward. Did Anton understand that they were only a step away from rescuing the boy? That his death had become a ridiculous accident? But it had brought the others through. Accident or victim?

‘You know, we all most likely were saved only thanks to Oleg. It is because of him that you… regained consciousness,’ he said to Anton, not specifying how this had come about.