Dmitry Glukhovsky: Metro 2033

‘Artyom! Get up, that’s enough sitting! Come, give us a hand.’ Ulman shook him by the shoulder. The fighter handed him a large bundle of wire, and Artyom stared at it blankly. ‘This damned antenna won’t pick up anything,’ Ulman pointed at the twisted six-metre probe scattered on the floor. ‘We’ll try the loop. Over there’s a door to the engineering balcony, a floor below us. The exit is right there on the Botanical Garden side. I’ll stay here with the radio, you go outside with Pashka, he’ll uncoil the antenna, you secure it. Be lively ’cause it will start to get light soon.’

Artyom nodded. He remembered why he was here and he got a second wind. Someone had tightened that invisible crank in his back and that inner spring began once more to unwind. Only a short while remained to the goal. He took the spool and moved towards the balcony door. The door didn’t give, and Ulman had to fire a whole salvo into it before the glass, riddled by his bullets, cracked and spilled out. A powerful gust of wind almost knocked them off their feet. Artyom stepped onto a balcony enclosed by a grate the height of a man.

‘Wow, look at them.’

Pavel extended the field binoculars to him and waved his hand in the appropriate direction. Artyom pressed the binoculars to his eyes and looked over the city until Pavel pointed him in the right direction. The Botanical Gardens and VDNKh coalesced into one, dark impassable thicket, among which rose the peeling white cupolas and roofs of the Exhibition’s pavilions. Only two gaps were left in this dense forest, a narrow path between the main pavilions (‘Glavnaya Alleya’ Pavel whispered timidly) and this. A huge patch had formed right in the middle of the Gardens, as if even the trees had drawn back in disgust from an unseen evil. It was a strange and repulsive sight: a large city like a gigantic life-giving organ, pulsing and quivering, that stretched out for several square kilometres. The sky gradually was being painted with morning colours, and this terrible tumour was becoming ever more visible: a living membrane entangled with veins, tiny black figures crawling out of cesspool exits, running about in a businesslike way, like ants… Ants especially, and their mother city reminded Artyom of an enormous anthill. And one was walking away from the paths – he saw it well now – towards a white round structure standing on its own, an exact copy of the entrance to the VDNKh station. The black figures reached the doors and disappeared. Artyom knew the route all too well. They really were right next door, and hadn’t come from some remote place. And it would be possible to really destroy them, simply destroy them. Now the main thing was that Melnik didn’t fail. Artyom heaved a sigh of relief. For some reason he was reminded of the black tunnel from his dreams, but he shook his head and set about unwinding the cable. The balcony encircled the tower, but the forty-metre wire wasn’t enough to go right round. Tying off the end to the grate, they went back in.

‘I have it! There’s a signal!’ Ulman began to yell cheerfully on seeing them. ‘We have comms! The colonel is turning the air blue, he’s asking where we were earlier.’ He was pressing the headphones to his head, listened some more and added, ‘He says everything is even better than we had thought. They found four installations, all in excellent condition. They had been preserved… In oil, beneath a tarpaulin… He says Anton is a hero. He’s familiar with it all. They’ll be ready soon. We have to report the coordinates. He sends you greetings, Artyom!’

Pavel unfolded the large map of the area that had been divided into quarters and, looking through the binoculars, began to dictate the coordinates. Ulman repeated them into the microphone of his radio.

‘We’ll seal up the station itself too in any case.’ The fighter consulted the map and called out several more digits. ‘That’s all, they’ve got the coordinates, now they’ll do the aiming.’ Ulman removed the earphones and rubbed his forehead. ‘It’ll still take some time, your missile man there is the only one who knows how. But that’s nothing, we’ll wait.’

Artyom took the binoculars and again went out onto the balcony. Something had dragged him to this disgusting anthill, some oppressive feeling, an intangible and inexpressible anguish, like something heavy pressing on his chest, not allowing him to breathe deeply. The black tunnel once more rose up before his eyes and suddenly it was clear, distinct, as Artyom had not seen it even in the nightmares that had pursued him relentlessly. But now it was possible not to be afraid: these vampires didn’t have long to lord it in his dreams.

‘That’s all! It’s taken off! The colonel says wait for the greeting! Now we’re going to fry these black bitches of yours!’ Ulman yelled.

And at that moment the city beneath their feet vanished, the sky disappeared into a dark abyss, the happy cries behind his back abated – and there remained only one empty black tunnel, along which Artyom had strolled so many times… for what? The time thickened and congealed. He pulled a plastic lighter from his pocket and struck the flint. A small happy flame jumped out and began to dance on the wick, illuminating the space around it. Artyom knew what he would see and understood that now he must not fear it, and, therefore, he simply lifted his head and looked at the huge black eyes without whites and pupils. And he heard it.

‘You are the chosen one!’ The world had been turned upside-down. In those unfathomable eyes he suddenly saw in a fraction of a second the answer to everything that had, for him, been left incomprehensible and inexplicable. The answer to all his doubts, hesitations and searches. And the answer turned out not to be what Artyom had been expecting.

Having disappeared into the gaze of the dark one, he suddenly saw the universe with its eyes. New life was being reborn and hundreds and thousands of individual minds were being joined together into a single whole… The resilient black skin allowed the dark one to endure both the scorching sun and the January frosts, the soft telepathic tentacles enabled it to caress any creation and to painfully sting an enemy, and it was totally immune to pain… The dark ones were the true inheritors of the ruined universe, a phoenix that had risen from ashes of mankind. And they possessed a mind – inquisitive, living, but completely unlike the human mind.

But, somehow, it connected with him, with Artyom. He saw people with the eyes of the dark ones: embittered, living beneath the earth, talking back with fire and lead, destroying the bearers of the flag of truce who had been sent to them with a song of peace. And they had wrested the white flag from them and stabbed them in the throat with the shaft. Artyom understood the growing despair at the inability to establish contact and to reach a mutual understanding, because, in the depths, in the lower passages, sat unreasonable, infuriated creatures who had destroyed their own world, who continued to bicker among themselves and who would die out soon if no one could re-educate them. The dark ones were extending a helping hand to people. And again the people seized it with hatred. He saw the desire to rid themselves of these embittered but very clever creations. But he also saw the desperate searches to find one of the unfortunates – one who could become a bridge between the two worlds, who could explain to the people that there was nothing to fear, and who could help the dark ones communicate with them.

He understood that there was nothing dividing people and the dark ones. He understood they were not competing for survival but were two organisms intended by nature to work together. And together – with man’s technical knowledge and with the ability of the dark ones to overcame perils – they could take mankind to a new level, and the world, having ground to a halt, could continue to rotate about its axis. Because the dark ones were also part of mankind, a new branch of it, born here, in the ruins of a megalopolis swept away by war. The dark ones were the consequence of the final war, they were the children of this world, better adapted for the new terms of the game. And they sensed man not only with their customary organs, but also with tentacles of consciousness. Artyom recalled the mysterious noise in the pipes, he recalled the savages who could cast a spell with only a glance, and the revolting mass in the heart of the Kremlin that could assault one’s reason… Man had not been able to cope with their influence on the mind, but it was as if the dark ones were created for it. Only they needed a partner, an ally… A friend. Someone who could help establish communications with their deaf and blind elder brothers – with people. And so began the long, patient search for an intermediary, a search crowned with luck and delight, because such an interpreter, the chosen one, had been found. But, before contact had been established with him, he disappeared. The tentacles of the Commoner looked for him everywhere, sometimes grabbing him in order to begin discourse, but he, afraid, tore away and ran. But he had to be supported and rescued, stopped, warned of the danger, urged on and again taken home where communication with him would be especially strong and clear. Finally, contact could become established and then the chosen one could another timid step towards understanding his mission. His fate. He had been intended for this because he had opened the door to the metro, to the people and to the dark ones.