Metro 2034

CHAPTER 15 By Twos

The old man first cleared his throat irritably, then took a long step towards them.

‘Sasha! I need to have a talk with you!’

Leonid winked at the girl and moved away from her a little, relinquishing her to Homer with theatrical submission. But she couldn’t think about anything else any longer, and while the old man explained something to her, trying to convince her that Hunter could still be talked round, suggesting and cajoling, the girl looked over his shoulder at the musician. He didn’t return her glance, but the faint ironic smile hovering on his lips told Sasha that he saw everything and understood everything. She nodded to Homer, ready to agree with everything he said, just as long as she could be alone with the musician for another minute and hear him finish what he was saying. Just as long as she herself could believe that there was a cure.

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ she said, running out of patience and interrupting the old man in mid-word. She slipped off and ran over to Leonid.

‘Back for a second helping?’ he said, welcoming her back.

‘You must tell me!’ she said, no longer willing to play games with him. ‘How?’

‘That’s a bit more complicated. I know the disease is curable. I know people who have beaten it. I can take you to them.’

‘But you said you knew how to fight it.’

‘You misinterpreted what I said,’ he said with a shrug. ‘How would I know? I’m just a flute-player. A wandering musician.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘If you’re interested, I can introduce you to them. We’ll have to walk a bit, though.’

‘Which station are they at?’

‘Not very far from here. You can find out everything. If you want to.’

‘I don’t trust you.’

‘But you want to trust me, don’t you?’ he remarked. ‘I don’t trust you yet either, that’s why I can’t tell you everything.’

‘Why do you want me to go with you?’ asked Sasha, narrowing her eyes.

‘Me?’ he shook his head. ‘It’s all the same to me. It’s you who wants to go. I don’t have to save anyone and I don’t know how to save them. At least, not like that.’

‘Do you promise you’ll take me to these people? Do you promise they’ll be able to help?’ she asked after hesitating for a brief moment.

‘I’ll take you,’ Leonid replied firmly.

‘What have you decided?’ the old man asked insistently, interrupting them again.

‘I’m not going with you,’ said Sasha, plucking at the strap of her overalls. ‘He says there’s a cure for the fever,’ she added, turning towards the musician.

‘He’s lying,’ Homer said uncertainly.

‘I see you know a lot more about viruses than I do,’ Leonid said respectfully. ‘Have you studied them? Or is it from personal experience? Do you also believe that exterminating everybody is the best way of combating the infection?’

‘How do you…?’ the old man began, dumbfounded. ‘Did you tell him?’ he asked, looking round at Sasha.

‘Here comes your highly qualified friend,’ said the musician, prudently taking a step back as he spotted Hunter approaching. ‘Well then, the ambulance brigade is all here, I’m beginning to feel superfluous.’

‘He’s lying! He just wants to get you to… But even if it’s true,’ Homer whispered fervently to her, ‘you won’t have time to do anything. Hunter will be back here with reinforcements in a day’s time at the latest. If you stay with us, perhaps you’ll be able to persuade him… But this boy…’

‘I won’t be able to do anything,’ Sasha responded gloomily. ‘Nobody’s going to stop him now, I can sense it. He has to be given a choice. To split him…’

‘Split him?’ Homer’s eyebrows shot up.

‘I’ll be back here in less than a day,’ she promised, stepping away.

Why did he let her go?

Why did he weaken and allow a crazy tramp to abduct his heroine, his muse, his daughter? The more closely the old man studied Leonid, the less he liked him. His big green eyes could suddenly cast surprisingly covetous glances, and obscure shadows skimmed across that angelic face when the young man thought no one was watching him.

What did she want with the musician? At best, that connoisseur of the beautiful would stick a pin through the flower of her innocence and leave it to dry in his memory – crumpled up, with all the charm of youth, which was so impossible to remember or even photograph, lost, scattered like pollen. Deceived and exploited, the girl would take flight, but it would be a long time before she could purge herself and forget, especially since this blasted wandering minstrel wanted to win her by deception.

Then why did he let her go?

Out of cowardice. Because Homer was not just afraid of arguing with Hunter, he was even afraid of asking him the questions that were really worrying him. Because Sasha was in love and her audacity and folly could be forgiven. Would the brigadier have shown him the same indulgence? To himself the old man still called him the brigadier – partly out of habit, but partly because it made Homer feel calmer: there was nothing terrible happening, nothing unusual, he was still the same brigadier of the northern watch from Sebastopol… But he wasn’t. The man striding shoulder to shoulder with Homer now was not the same old unsociable soldier of fortune. The old man was beginning to understand: his travelling companion was being transformed before his very eyes… Something terrible was happening to him, and it would have been stupid to deny it, it was pointless trying to persuade himself.

Hunter had taken Homer with him again – this time was it to show him the bloody denouement of the whole drama? Now he was prepared to exterminate not only the whole of Tula, but also the sectarians cooped up in the tunnels and Serpukhov Station too, including all its inhabitants and the soldiers sent there from the Hansa garrison – simply on the suspicion that one of them might have become infected. The same fate could be in store for Sebastopol.

He no longer needed reasons for killing, he was just looking for pretexts.

Homer could only summon up enough strength to trudge after Hunter as if he was mesmerised, contemplating and documenting all the brigadier’s crimes like some nightmarish dream. Justifying himself by the fact that they were committed in order to save people, trying to convince himself that this was the lesser of two evils. To Homer, the relentless brigadier seemed like an incarnation of Moloch, and he had never tried to get the better of fate.

But Sasha didn’t seem to acknowledge fate at all. And if, in the depths of his heart, the old man had already accepted that Tula and Serpukhov would be turned into Sodom and Gomorrah, the girl was still clutching at the tiniest hope. Homer had stopped trying to convince himself that any pills or vaccine or serum would turn up before Hunter stopped the epidemic with fire and lead. Sasha was prepared to keep searching for the cure right to the end.

Homer wasn’t a soldier or a doctor, and above all, he was too old to believe in miracles. But there was still a particle of his soul that passionately desired miracles and dreamed of salvation. He had torn that particle out of himself and let it go with Sasha.

He had simply offloaded onto the girl what he wouldn’t have dared to do himself.

And in his resignation he had discovered peace for himself. In twenty-four hours it would all be over. And after that the old man would desert from his post, find himself a monastic cell and finish writing his book. Now he knew what it would be about.

About how a nimble-witted beast found a magical fallen star, a heavenly spark, swallowed it and became a man. About how, after stealing fire from the gods, man hadn’t been able to control it and had burnt the world to a cinder. About how, as a punishment, exactly one hundred centuries later, that human spark was taken away from him, but after losing it, he didn’t become a beast again – he turned into something far more terrible that didn’t even have a name.

The head of the sentry squad tipped the handful of cartridges into his pocket and sealed his deal with the musician with a firm handshake.

‘For a symbolic additional payment I could put you on a tram,’ he said.

‘I prefer romantic walks,’ Leonid replied.

‘Well, look at it this way. I can’t let the two of you walk through our tunnels on your own,’ said the sentry, trying to reason with him. ‘You’ll have to go with a guard anyway. Your girl hasn’t got any documents… And you could get to where you’re going express, in a flash, and there you are, all alone with her,’ he whispered loudly.

‘We don’t need to be all alone!’ Sasha declared adamantly.

‘We’ll consider it a guard of honour. As if we’re the Prince and Princes of Monaco out promenading,’ said the musician, bowing to the girl.

‘What princess?’ Sasha asked, overcome by curiosity.

‘The Princess of Monaco. There was a principality of that name once. Right on the Côte d’Azur – the Azure Coast…’

‘Listen,’ the sentry interrupted. ‘If you want to walk, come on, get ready will you? A cartridge clip’s all very fine, but the lads have got to get back to base before evening. Hey, Kostya!’ he called to a soldier. ‘See these two to Kiev, tell the patrols it’s a deportation. Put them out onto the radial station and get straight back. All correct?’ he asked, turning to Leonid.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Leonid with a humorous salute.

‘Come again!’ said the sentry, giving him a wink.

How incredibly different Hansa territory really was from all the rest of the Metro! All the way along the stretch of tunnel from Pavelets to October, Sasha hadn’t seen a single place that was completely dark. Every fifty steps there were light bulbs hanging from the wire that crept along the wall, and every one of them gave enough light to reach the next one. Even the reserve and secret tunnels branching off from the main line were well lit, and there was nothing frightening about them any longer.

If it had been up to Sasha, she would have gone dashing on ahead, done anything to save the precious minutes, but Leonid persuaded her there was no need to hurry. He flatly refused to say where they would go on to after Kiev Station and strolled along at a leisurely pace with a bored air: she supposed the musician had quite often been in stretches of the tunnels that were barred to ordinary inhabitants of the Metro.

‘I’m glad that your friend has his own approach to everything,’ he said.

‘What do you mean by that?’ Sasha asked with a frown.

‘If he dreamed as strongly as you do of saving the civilian population, we would have had to take him with us. But this way we’ve split up into pairs and everyone gets to do what he wants to do. He gets to kill, you get to cure…’

‘He doesn’t want to kill anyone!’ she said in a shrill voice that was much too loud.

‘Oh, right, it’s just his job, that’s all…’ He sighed. ‘And who am I to judge him?’

‘And what are you going to do?’ asked Sasha, not attempting to conceal her scorn. ‘Play your flute?’

‘I’m just going to be with you,’ Leonid said with a smile. ‘What else do I need for happiness?’

‘You’re just saying that,’ said Sasha, shaking her head. ‘You don’t even know me at all. How can I make you happy?’

‘There are ways. Just to look at a beautiful girl is enough to improve my mood. And then…’

‘Do you think you know about beauty?’ she asked, squinting sideways at him.

‘It’s the only thing I do know anything about,’ he said with a solemn nod.

‘So what’s so special about me?’ she asked and the wrinkles on her forehead smoothed out at last.

‘It’s the way you just glow!’

His voice sounded serious, but an instant later the musician dropped back a step and ran his eyes over her.

‘It’s just a pity you like such crude clothes,’ he added.

‘What’s wrong with them?’ she asked, also dropping back, in order to detach his ticklish gaze from her back.

‘They don’t let the light through. And I’m like a moth… I always fly towards the flame,’ he said, fluttering his hands with a deliberately foolish air.

‘Are you afraid of the dark?’ she asked, accepting the game.

‘Loneliness!’ Leonid put on a mask of sadness and folded his arms.

That was his mistake. As he tuned the strings, he misjudged the resistance, and the finest one, the most delicate, which might have started to sing in just another moment, twanged and snapped.

The light tunnel draught, which had blown away Sasha’s serious thoughts and made her juggle with the musician’s playful hints, instantly died away. She sobered up and rebuked herself for giving way to him. Surely it wasn’t for this that she had abandoned Hunter and left the old man behind?

‘As if you even knew what that is,’ Sasha snapped and turned away.

Serpukhov Station, pale-grey from fear, was dissolving into the darkness. Soldiers in army gas masks had cut it off from the tunnels at both sides and blocked the connecting passage to the Circle Line, and the station was buzzing like a disturbed beehive in anticipation of disaster. Hunter and Homer were led through the hall with an armed escort, like high-ranking officers, and every inhabitant of Serpukhov tried to look into their eyes, to see if they knew what was really happening and if their fate had been decided. Homer stared fixedly at the floor – he didn’t want to remember those faces.

The brigadier hadn’t informed Homer where he intended to go next, but the old man could guess. Ahead of them lay Polis. Four Metro stations, linked together by passages, a genuine city with thousands of inhabitants. The unofficial capital of the Metro, which was fractured into dozens of warring feudal principalities. A bulwark of science and refuge of culture. A holy sanctuary that no one dared to invade or attack. No one, that is, apart from Homer, the half-crazy messenger of the plague.

But in the last few days he had started feeling better. The nausea had receded, and the consumptive cough that forced him to wash out his bloody respirator had softened a little. Maybe his body had overcome the illness on its own? Or maybe there never was any infection at all? Eh? Maybe he was simply too neurotic about his health; he’d always known he had that tendency, but he had still got so terrified…

The stretch of tunnel beyond Serpukhov was dark and remote, it had a bad reputation. As far as Homer was aware, they shouldn’t encounter a single soul until they reached Polis, but Polyanka, the way station between inhabited Serpukhov and residential Borovitskaya, could surprise travellers. There were numerous legends about Polyanka Station circulating in the Metro: if they could be believed, this station rarely threatened the lives of those who walked through it, but it could damage their reason.

The old man had been here several times, but never encountered anything out of the ordinary. The legends had explanations for that too, Homer knew all of them. And now he was hoping as hard as he could that this time the station would remain as dead and abandoned as it had been in better times.

About a hundred metres before Polyanka he suddenly felt strange. With the first distant glints of white electric light on the station’s marble walls, and the first echo of fractured sounds coming from it, the old man suspected something was wrong. He could clearly hear human voices… And there was no way that could be right. Even worse, Hunter, who in some mysterious way could sense the presence of any living creatures, remained absolutely deaf and indifferent now.

Completely absorbed in his own thoughts, he didn’t respond to the old man’s agitated glances, as if he couldn’t see the visions being revealed to Homer at that moment… The station was occupied? When had they done that? Homer had often wondered why, despite Polyanka’s cramped space, the inhabitants of Polis had never tried to annex and develop the empty station. There was nothing to prevent it but the superstitions – but apparently they had proved a sufficiently weighty reason for this strange way station to be left in peace.

Until, that is, someone overcame their fear of it and set up a tent town here, put in lighting… God, how extravagant they were with electric power here! Even before the two travellers emerged from the tunnel and started walking along beside the platform, the old man had to put his hand over his eyes to avoid being blinded: bright mercury lamps were glaring at full power up under the ceiling of the station.

Astounding… Not even Polis looked so clean and festive. Not a trace of dust or soot was left on the walls, and the marble slabs all gleamed, while the ceiling looked as if it had been whitewashed only yesterday. Homer couldn’t spot a single tent through the arches – perhaps they hadn’t had time to put them up yet? Or perhaps they were going to make a museum here? That would be just like the eccentric cranks who ran Polis.

The platform gradually filled up with people. They took no interest at all in the cutthroat wearing a titanium helmet who was hung all over with weapons, or the grubby old man hobbling along beside him. Looking closely at them, Homer realised that he didn’t have the strength to take another step: his legs had given out.

Everyone who came over to the edge of the platform was dressed up as if someone was shooting a film about the 2000s at Polyanka. Brand new coats and raincoats, bright-coloured down jackets, sky-blue jeans… Where were the old padded jackets, where was the lousy pigskin leather, where was the perpetual reddish-brown of the Metro, the graveyard of all colours? Where had all this wealth come from?

And the faces… They weren’t the faces of people who had lost their entire family in a single moment. They were the faces of people who had seen the sun today and who, well, basically, had started the day with a hot shower. The old man would have bet his life on that. And something else… Many of them seemed vaguely familiar to Homer.

More and more of these incredible people appeared, jostling at the edge of the platform, but they didn’t get down onto the tracks. Soon the entire station was filled from tunnel to tunnel with the trim, dressy crowd. And still no one looked at Homer. They looked anywhere at all – at the wall, at newspapers, at each other – surreptitiously, lugubriously or curiously, with loathing or sympathy – but not at the old man, as if he were a ghost.

Why had they gathered here? What were they waiting for?

Homer finally recovered his wits. Where was the brigadier? How would he explain the inexplicable? Why hadn’t he said anything yet?

Hunter had stopped a little bit further on. He wasn’t even slightly interested in the station packed tight with people out of photographs that were a quarter of a century old. He was staring sombrely into empty space, as if he had run into some kind of barrier, as if there was something hanging in the air in front of him, on a level with his eyes… The old man moved closer to the brigadier and peeped warily under his visor.

And then Hunter struck out.

His clenched fist tore through the air, moving from left to right along a strange trajectory, as if the brigadier was trying to slash someone invisible with a non-existent knife. He very nearly caught Homer, who jumped aside, but Hunter continued his battle. He struck, then moved back, defending himself, tried to restrain someone in a steely clinch, and a second later was wheezing in a stranglehold himself. Barely managing to break free, he flung himself back into the attack. The battle was slipping away from him, his invisible opponent was getting the upper hand. It was harder and harder for Hunter to get to his feet after those silent but crushing blows; his movements became slower and slower, less and less confident.

The old man was haunted by the feeling that he had already seen something like this only very recently. But where and when? And what in hell’s name was happening to the brigadier? Homer tried calling to him, but he was possessed, and it was impossible to get him to hear.

The people on the platform took absolutely no notice of Homer; for them he didn’t exist, just as they didn’t exist for him. They were concerned about something else: they kept glancing with mounting alarm at their wristwatches, puffing out their cheeks in annoyance, talking to the people next to them and checking the red numbers on the electronic clock above the mouth of the tunnel.

Homer screwed up his eyes and looked at it with the others. It was a counter that registered the time since the last train had passed through. But its display seemed unnaturally long, with ten digits: eight digits before the blinking colon and another two – for the seconds – after it. Red dots squirmed, counting off the fleeting seconds and the final digit in the incredibly long number changed: twelve million and something.

There was a scream… And a sob.

The old man turned away from the mysterious clock. Hunter was lying motionless, face down on the rails. Homer dashed over to him and turned the heavy, lifeless body face up with a struggle. Yes, the brigadier was breathing, although raggedly, and he didn’t have any visible injuries, although his eyes had rolled up and back, like a dead man’s. His right hand remained clenched, and only now did the old man discover that Hunter had not been fighting this strange duel unarmed. The handle of the black knife was peeping out from his fist.

Homer slapped the brigadier hard across the cheeks and Hunter started blinking, groaning like a man with a hangover; he propped himself up on his elbows and scrutinised the old man with a blurry gaze. Then he jumped to his feet in a single bound and shook himself off.

The mirage dispersed: the people in raincoats and bright jackets disappeared without a trace, the blinding light went out and the dust of decades settled on the walls again. The station was black, empty and lifeless – exactly as Homer remembered it from his previous expeditions.

All the way to October Station neither of them said another word, the only sound came from the guards assigned to them: whispered conversations and puffing and panting when they stumbled over the sleepers. Sasha wasn’t even angry with the musician, but with herself. And he… But what about him? He was behaving exactly as he ought to behave. Eventually she even started feeling awkward about what she’d said to Leonid – perhaps she had been too harsh with him?

But then, at October, the wind changed. It was perfectly natural. When Sasha saw this station, she simply forgot about everything else in the world. In the last few days she had been in places that she wouldn’t even have believed existed before. But the finery of October eclipsed all of them. The granite floors were covered with carpets, worn completely bald, but still retaining their original patterns. Lamps cast in the form of blazing torches and polished to a high gleam flooded the hall with an even, milky-white glow. People with glossy, gleaming faces were sitting at tables standing here and there, occupied in lazy exchanges of words and pieces of paper.

‘It’s so… rich here,’ Sasha said, bewildered, almost twisting her neck as she gazed around.

‘The Circle Line stations remind me of pieces of pork kebab, threaded on a skewer,’ Leonid whispered to her. ‘They just ooze fat… Yes, by the way! Maybe we could have a bite to eat?’

‘We haven’t got time,’ she said, shaking her head and hoping he wouldn’t hear the eager rumbling in her stomach.

‘Oh, come on,’ said the musician, holding out his hand to her. ‘There’s a little place here. Nothing you’ve ever eaten before even comes close… Lads, do you fancy a bit of lunch?’ he asked, including the guards in the suggestion. ‘Don’t you worry, we’ll get there in a couple of hours. I didn’t mention pork kebabs by accident. The food they make here…’

He started talking about meat in terms that were almost poetry, and Sasha wavered and gave in. If it was only two hours to their destination, a half-hour lunch wouldn’t make any difference. They still had almost a whole day in reserve, and who knew when they would next have a chance for a bite to eat?

The kebabs lived up to the poetry too. But things didn’t stop there: Leonid ordered a bottle of homebrew as well. Sasha couldn’t resist and she gulped down a little glass out of curiosity, the musician and the guards drank the rest.

Later, she came to her senses, jumped up on her limp-feeling legs and told Leonid to get up in a strict voice – all the stricter, because the heady homebrew had made her drowsy, and while they were dining, she had delayed for almost too long before shaking his fingers off her knees. Light, sensitive fingers. Impudent. He had immediately raised his hands in the air – ‘I surrender’ – but her skin had remembered his touch. Why had she driven him away so quickly, Sasha wondered, punishing herself with a pinch. Now she would have to erase this bitter-sweet lunch scene from her memory, shake it up with some meaningless nonsense and sprinkle words over it.

‘The people here are strange,’ she said to Leonid.

‘How?’ he asked, draining his glass in one and finally getting up from the table.

‘There’s something missing in their eyes.’

‘Hunger,’ the musician said categorically.

‘No, not only that… It’s as if they don’t want anything else.’

‘That’s because they don’t want anything else,’ Leonid snorted. ‘They’re well fed. Queen Hansa feeds them. And what’s wrong with their eyes? Perfectly normal languid, apathetic eyes…’

‘When I lived with my father,’ she said seriously, ‘what we left today would have lasted us for three days… Maybe we should have taken it and given it to someone?’

‘It’s okay, they’ll feed it to the dogs,’ answered the musician. ‘They don’t keep any beggars here.’

‘But it could have been given to the nearby stations! Where there are hungry…’

‘Hansa doesn’t go in for charity,’ put in one of the guards, the one who was called Kostya. ‘Let them shift for themselves. We can do without taking on any idlers!’

‘Are you a native Circle man yourself?’ Leonid enquired.

‘I’ve always lived here! As long as I can remember!’

‘Then you may not believe it, but people who weren’t born on the Circle have to eat sometimes too,’ the musician told him.

‘Let them eat each other! Or maybe it would be better to take everything away from us and divide it up, like the Reds say?’ the soldier asked aggressively.

‘Well, if everything carries on in the same way…’ Leonid began.

‘Then what? You keep your mouth shut, spindle-legs, you’ve already said enough to get yourself deported!’

‘I arranged to get deported earlier,’ the musician responded phlegmatically. ‘That’s what we’re doing now.’

‘But I could turn you in to the right people! As a Red spy!’ said the guard, getting heated.

‘And I could turn you in for drinking on duty…’

‘Why you… It was you that got us… And you…’

‘No! We’re sorry… He didn’t mean to say that.’ Sasha intervened, clutching the musician’s sleeve and pulling him away from Kostya, who had started breathing heavily.

She almost dragged Leonid to the tracks, then looked at the station clock and gasped. Their lunch and the arguments at the station had lasted almost two hours. She had set out to compete against Hunter’s speed, and he definitely wouldn’t have stopped for a second… The musician laughed drunkenly behind her back.

All the way to Culture Park the guards hissed baleful comments. Every now and then, following his natural impulse, Leonid attempted to answer them, and Sasha had to hold him back or persuade him not to. The alcohol continued swirling round in his brain, making him bolder and more insolent; the girl had to dodge constantly to keep out of reach of his wandering hands.

‘Don’t you like me at all then?’ he asked, offended. ‘Not your type, is that it? You don’t like them like me, you want muscles… and sca-a-a-ars. Why did you come with me?’

‘Because you made me a promise!’ She pushed Leonid away. ‘Not so that…’

‘I’m not like tha-at!’ he sighed sadly. ‘Always the same old story. If I’d known you were such a prig…’

‘How can you? There are people there… Live people… They’ll all die if we don’t get there in time!’

‘What can do about it? I can hardly move my legs. D’you know how heavy they are? Here, feel… And the people… They’ll die anyway. Tomorrow or in ten days’ time. And me, and you. So what?’

‘So you lied? You lied! Homer told me… He warned me… Where are we going?’

‘No, I didn’t lie! D’you want me to swear I didn’t lie? You’ll see for yourself! You’ll apologise to me. And then I hope you feel ashamed and you tell me: Leonid ! I’m so ash-amed…’ He wrinkled up his nose.

‘Where are we going?’

‘We’ll follow the yel-low brick road. Follow the yellow brick, yellow brick, yellow brick…’ the musician sang, conducting with his forefinger; then he dropped the case with his flute in it, swore, leaned down to pick it up and almost tumbled over.

‘Hey, you drunks! Will you even get to Kiev?’ one of the guards called to them.

‘Thanks for your concern!’ said the musician, bowing to him. ‘We’ll get there on the yellow brick road… and Dorothy will find her way home.’

Homer had never believed in the legend of Polyanka, and now it had decided to teach him a lesson.

Some called it the Station of Fate and venerated it as an oracle.

Some believed that a pilgrimage here at a critical turning point in life could part the curtains concealing the future a crack and provide a hint or a key, predicting and predetermining the path that remained ahead.

Some… But all sober-minded people knew that discharges of poisonous gases occurred at the station, and they inflamed the imagination, inducing hallucinations.

To hell with the sceptics!

What could his vision mean? The old man felt as if he was just one step away from the answer, but then his thoughts got tangled up and floundered. And he saw Hunter again, slicing the air with his black blade. Homer would have given a lot to know what vision had appeared to the brigadier, who he was fighting with, what duel it was that had ended in his defeat, if not his death…

‘What are you thinking about?’

The old man was so surprised, he felt a taut spasm twist his bowels. Hunter had never spoken to him without a compelling reason before. Barked orders, the resentful growling of stingy replies… How could you expect a soulful heart-to-heart with someone who had no heart or soul?

‘Oh, nothing really,’ Homer stammered.

‘You’re thinking. I can hear it,’ Hunter said in a flat voice. ‘About me. Are you afraid?’

‘Not right now,’ the old man lied.

‘Don’t be afraid. I won’t touch you. You… remind me.’

‘Of whom?’ Homer asked warily after half a minute’s silence.

‘Of something about me. I’d forgotten there was something like that in me, but you remind me,’ said Hunter, looking ahead, into the darkness, as he dragged the heavy words out of himself one by one and set them out.

‘So that’s what you brought me along for?’ asked Homer, simultaneously disappointed and intrigued – he’d been expecting something…

‘It’s important for me to keep it in my mind. Very important,’ the brigadier responded. ‘And it’s important for everyone else that I… Otherwise there could be… What’s already happened.’

‘Have you got problems with your memory?’ The old man felt as if he was creeping through a mine field. ‘Did something happen to you?’

‘I remember everything perfectly well!’ the brigadier replied sharply. ‘It’s only myself that I forget. And I’m afraid of forgetting myself completely. You’ll remind me, all right?’

‘All right,’ said Homer and nodded, although Hunter couldn’t see him just at that moment.

‘It all used to make sense,’ the brigadier said with a struggle. ‘Everything I did. Defending the Metro, defending people. People. The task was very clear – neutralise any threat. Annihilate it. That was the point, it was!’

‘But it is now too…’

‘Now? I don’t know what it is now. I want everything to be as clear as before again. I don’t do it just for the sake of it, I’m not a bandit. I’m not a murderer! It’s for people’s good. I tried living without people, to keep them safe… But I got scared. I was forgetting myself really fast… I had to get back to people. To protect them, to help them… To remember. And then at Sebastopol… They accepted me there. That’s my lair. I have to save the station, I have to help them. No matter what price I might have to pay. I think if I can do it… When I neutralise the threat… That’s something really big, something genuine. Maybe then I’ll remember. I must. That’s why I have to move fast, or else… It’s moving faster and faster now. I have to get it done in twenty-four hours. Get everything done – reach Polis, collect a squad together and get back… But in the meantime, you remind me, all right?’

Homer nodded stiffly. He was afraid even to imagine what would happen when the brigadier forgot himself completely. Who would remain in his body when the former Hunter fell asleep forever? Would it be that… Would it be whatever he was defeated by in today’s phantom combat?’

Polyanka was far behind them now: Hunter was racing on towards Polis like a wolfhound that has scented quarry and been let off its chain. Or like a wolf trying to shake off his pursuers?

Light appeared at the end of the tunnel.

They managed to drag themselves to Culture Park and Leonid tried to make peace with the guards again, inviting them all to ‘an excellent restaurant’, but the guards were wary now. He almost wasn’t even allowed to go off to the privy. After an exchange of whispers, one of the escorts agreed to guard them and the other disappeared.

‘Got any money left?’ the man on guard at the door asked bluntly.

‘A little bit,’ said Leonid, setting five cartridges on his outstretched palm.

‘Give it here. Kostya’s decided to shop you. He thinks you’re a Red agent. If he’s right – there’s a passage through to your line here – well, you should know. If he’s wrong, you can wait here for a bit, until counter-intelligence comes for you, and barter with them.’

‘Unmasked me, have you?’ said Leonid, trying to suppress his hiccups. ‘Okay! So be it… We’ll be back again! Thanks for the assistance!’ He flung his arm up in an unfamiliar greeting. ‘Listen… To hell with that passage. Just take us to the tunnel, will you?

The musician grabbed Sasha and set off in front at an amazing pace, even though he was stumbling.

‘How kind of him!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘There’s a passage through to your line here… How would you like to go up on the surface? Forty metres down. As if he didn’t know everything there was blocked off ages ago…’

‘Where are we going?’ Sasha didn’t understand anything at all now.

‘What do you mean, where? To the Red Line! You heard – they’ve caught an agent provocateur, exposed him…’ Leonid muttered.

‘Are you a Red?’

‘My dear girl! Don’t ask me any questions right now! I can either think or run. And running’s what we need more… Our friend will raise the alarm any moment now… And he’ll shoot us for resisting arrest… Money’s not enough for us, we want a medal too…’

They dived into the tunnel, leaving the guard outside. They ran forward towards Kiev Station, hugging the wall. We won’t have time to get to the station anyway, thought Sasha. If the musician was right, and the second guard was already pointing out which way the fugitives had gone…

Then suddenly Leonid turned left into a well-lit side tunnel – as confidently as if he was walking home. A few minutes later flags, metal gratings and sandbags heaped up into machine-gun nests appeared ahead in the distance and they heard dogs barking. A frontier post? Had they already been warned about the fugitives? How was he planning to get out of here? And whose territory started on the other side of the barricades?

‘I’m from Albert Mikhailovich,’ said the musician, thrusting a strange-looking document under the sentry’s nose. ‘I need to get across to the other side.’

‘The usual rate,’ said the sentry, glancing inside the hard binding. ‘Where are the papers for the young lady?’

‘Let’s make it double,’ said Leonid, turning out his pockets and shaking out the last cartridges. ‘And you didn’t see the young lady, okay?’

‘Let’s just do without “let’s make it”,’ said the border guard, putting on a stern air. ‘D’you think you’re at the market? This is a law-abiding state!’

‘Oh don’t be like that!’ the musician exclaimed in mock fright. ‘I just thought, since it’s a market economy, we could bargain… I didn’t know there was a difference…’

Five minutes later Sasha and Leonid – mauled and dishevelled, with a graze on his cheekbone and a bleeding nose – were tossed into a tiny little room with tiled walls.

The iron door clanged shut.

Darkness fell.