Chapter 12: Escape

Alexandr – Day 2 – 12:34

I wasn't convinced by Ilia's vague confidence in himself but he was right, we had to move. He counted the rounds left in the magazine of the jealousy-inducing AK-74M. "Fourteen rounds," he said as he noticed my homemade assault rifle. "How many have you got for that?"

I showed him the weapon's open magazine, displaying the clean military grade rounds, and said, "Nothing standard. Only military rounds."

He thought for a moment. "Pop those out. I've got forty-four rounds altogether, we can split them and not waste your money." I agreed and we spent a few minutes transferring rounds from one magazine to another.

I turned to Sofia and looked at her little revolver. "You want my shotgun? Might do better in an emergency."

She jokingly shrugged. "If you're offering, I'm not going to turn it down." I untied it from my bag and showed her how to load it and how the triggers worked before handing it to her. She got comfortable with it before clearly remembering something, swinging the weapon over her shoulder, and reaching into her pocket while excitedly saying, "I believe I have a present for you as well." I stayed silent as I tried to work out what it could be. I'd only just met this person, how could she possibly have gotten me something?

She pulled out a large bullet and held it out in front of me. Initially shooting her a confused look, I looked more closely and glee took over my face. "My lighter!" I quickly snatched it from her hands and asked, "How did you get it?"

"It was in a little service room in the Kurskaya-Revolyutsii tunnel."

Barely listening to her answer, I excitedly flicked the lighter on a few times and stared into the warm orange flame. Her words finally registered and I stopped as I realised that we may have been closer than I thought at one point. "You… you didn't come down the corridor talking about being tired, did you?" She nodded and slowly confirmed with some intrigue as Ilia leant in to listen more closely. I put my hand on my face and said, "Fuck. I ran away from you guys!" We burst into hysterical laughter and joked about it for a time. It wasn't even particularly funny, we were just ecstatic to finally be together so everything seemed oddly hilarious.

Eventually, we decided to make a plan for where to go. I remembered that I'd been supplied with a small map of the metro so I pulled it out of my bag and held it out in one hand in front of them. Our goal was definitely Novoslobodskaya, but we only knew it's vague direction from where we were. We had no other plans, so we simply had to head where we thought we could go. We left the building, having to help Ilia slightly to get him up off the sofa, and moved into the street. I was impressed with Ilia, I couldn't work out how he was able to stand at all after looking at his extensive wounds. I couldn't wait to hear the full stories behind each of them. Plus, he'd snagged a capable and beautiful woman to boot.

I noticed Ilia observe every inch of the street and could practically see cogs turning in his head as he tried to remember something. He moved just past our building and looked down an even smaller side street before letting out a small gasp of recognition and turning back to us.

"I was here yesterday!" He exclaimed quietly as he pointed at the building at the end of the smaller street. "That's the real Bolshoi Theatre!" He then pointed further down the street we were on, "This should lead to the Nazi stations and, I assume, Hansa stations from there."

"Brilliant!" I said as we began to follow his lead. "Let's try to avoid the Nazis this time though, I don't fancy another trip to Lubyanka." Ilia chuckled in agreement. On mentioning Lubyanka, I remembered that Sofia was from the terrible station. I moved up next to her with Ilia on her other side. "Did you not want to go back home?"

She raised a condescending eyebrow. "To Lubyanka? You've been there, you know how awful it is."

"Yeah, but don't you miss your family?"

She had a brief moment of solemn thought before she sighed and said, "I do, but even if I wanted to go back, I couldn't. I'm happy that they're safe, that's enough for me."

"Hey guys," Ilia interrupted quietly. "Might want to keep your voices down. I came across a pack of watchers around here. They're these furry mutants that live up here and are really dangerous."

"Bit like wolves?" I asked to confirm that I'd also come across these so-called watchers.

"Yeah, scary stuff, right?"

"I just showed mine who was boss," I replied bravely. "Fired my shotgun towards them and scared them off. Didn't touch me after that."

"How did you know that would work?" Ilia asked as he tried to hide his astonishment.

"I noticed their wolf-like behaviour so I thought I'd try something that works against them."

He chuckled. "Who knew that those old wildlife books would actually be useful?" I simply laughed and agreed. I was going to bring up that he claimed that there was no point reading them at the time, but I decided that I would rub his face in it once we were back home.

We came to a crossroads and quickly checked each direction. When we saw no threats, Ilia told us that he had gone vaguely right and he came across the pack of watchers, so we headed left and back to the main road where he claimed that he could get us on the right track.

We jumpily checked every window of each ruined building we walked by. Any noises, even sometimes just the wind, made us aim our arsenal at where we thought the noise had come from, often ending up with us pointing in completely different directions. After my encounter with the demon the last time I was on the surface, I didn't want to take any chances and Ilia seemed to have had his fair share of horrible experiences on the surface as well.

When I was in a group in the tunnels I always felt relatively safe. Never completely safe, of course, but safe enough that I could let my guard down slightly. Here, however, it was like we were constantly being watched. Small piles of rubble would noisily fall, icicles would fall off the tops of buildings dragging a handful of snow with them, and sometimes the intact building work of nearby structures would spontaneously fall apart. We didn't see any culprits for any of this, but it felt as though these noises were following us. Any noises we made ourselves became amplified in our minds. The rattling of our equipment, our heavy breaths through our gas masks' filters, and the crunch of our footsteps on the ice and snow. I hadn't noticed it last time, possibly because I was hopelessly naïve about what I would encounter, but every tiny noise made me cringe and worry.

We reached the end of the road and came across the main road. Ilia stopped us as he moved up to the wall of a building on the corner. He slowly peered around but immediately hid back behind the wall, eyes wide in terror. He looked over to us and extremely quietly whispered, "Demon. Up there," while pointing up, indicating that it was perched on a building on the other side of the road.

Equally quietly, I whispered, "Has it," while pointing in the same direction, "seen," while pointing two fingers at my eyes, "us?" while indicating to all of us in a circle.

Ilia nervously shook his head before he leant up against the wall. He lowered his weapon to his side, closed his eyes and breathed out, his warm breath thickly condensing in front of his filter before quickly dissipating. He suddenly seemed in pain as he grimaced and held his side, as if the mere sight of the demon had caused his wound to flare up.

Sofia moved closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder while whispering, "Are you ok?"

He thought for a moment before nodding determinedly and gripping his rifle in both hands again, clearly trying to act braver than he felt. He'd clearly been left with something of a phobia from his previous encounter with a demon, or perhaps just the hauntingly bad opera about them.

The creature's huge wings beat loudly, sending a shiver down my spine as Sofia and I joined Ilia in backing up against the wall and holding our weapons close and at the ready. With enough warning, I felt that we could potentially take it down if we used all of our weapons and probably most of our ammunition, though I didn't particularly want to try. The demon's ominous sounds drew closer but still remained far away as we caught it flying directly overhead and away from us. We remained perfectly still and held our breath as it moved away from us. Its distant roar was soon accompanied by the loud cry of a watcher.

Seeing Ilia somewhat paralysed, I moved past both him and Sofia to move onto the main street. "Seems clear," I whispered to them as I diligently checked up and down the massive road that was littered with car husks. I beckoned them to follow me as I moved out, keeping to the closest wall and constantly checking my surroundings. Sofia quietly muttered some comforting words to Ilia as she gently pulled him along behind me. He tried to act as if he wasn't bothered but was mostly unsuccessful.

We quickly moved down the street, weaving through rusting cars while trying to stay as close to the buildings on the right side of the street as possible. The whines and whimpers of the watcher being eaten by the demon in the distance continued for a little while but were soon silenced once the demon finally showed mercy to its food.

The howls of dozens of watchers resonated through the landscape from the demon's direction. Footsteps pounded towards us and we all froze in place to listen to them. I nervously glanced at our surroundings before deciding that we should get out of sight. The building next to us was little more than a grey, destroyed husk, but it would do. "In here," I ordered as I jumped through one of the windows and hid from the street behind the building's wall. Sofia quickly guided Ilia through another window and they also hid as the footsteps thundered towards us.

The numerous creatures rushed onto the road and charged down it towards our destination. I glanced around and saw at least fifty of them skillfully leaping across cars and over rubble blockages. One of them definitely noticed me as I hurriedly moved back into cover, but it didn't react, it just kept running. Sofia did the same and the watchers just ignored her as well. I was extremely confused until a demon – possibly the same one – swooped down and picked one of them up by its huge claws. It carried the terrified creature off and dropped it from a great height further down the road. There was a skin-crawling snap as several of the watcher's bones broke and it died instantly.

The footsteps died down as the horde rushed away from the demon and it carried the meal back to its nest on top of a nearby building. I poked my head out and saw it busy at the edge of a relatively intact high-rise tower. It must have been feeding its young as it ripped chunks out of the watcher's body and placed them in a small pile of dirt and soil on top of the building.

Ilia gulped and timidly said, "We should… We should keep moving." I could hear a slight quiver in his voice as he spoke.

"Agreed," I replied. "The demon's not looking towards us. We can sneak by if we're quiet. I'll go first." They nodded as I checked the street and hopped out of the window.

"Ilia, we'll be fine," Sofia softly whispered once I'd left. "We're not going to let the same thing happen to you again."

It didn't take long for them to follow me out. Ilia still wasn't as confident as I was used to him being, but he showed a form of renewed strength. While he was never the kind of person to cockily enter a situation with delusions of grandeur about how well it would go, he would usually have more of a pragmatic sense of calm than this; it wasn't nice seeing Ilia so outwardly scared of something and it affected my morale to a certain extent.

I led us carefully down the road as we all kept an eye on the demon. We could have gone through buildings or down a side road, but this was already taking longer than we would have liked so we couldn't spare the time. We moved across from the demon's building. The feeling of our sounds being amplified only grew as we advanced and were painfully aware of any sound made by us, the demon or even the general environment.

The demon stopped its feeding and froze. Immediately noticing this, we hid behind a car and watched through the glassless windows. It quickly turned and looked towards us, scanning the environment around us intensely. We kept our breathing to a minimum and froze in place, not even daring to get more out of its line of sight just in case it noticed the movement. I heard Ilia starting to whimper in pain slightly as he lowered his weapon and held his side again. I desperately hoped that he would quieten down, but I couldn't do anything about it.

Once again, the demon flew off and circled the area around us, leaving us in a brief relative peace. I moved over to Ilia and looked him in the eyes. "Ilia," I quietly but sternly began. "What's going on? We need you on top form here."

I saw deep sorrow and regret in his eyes as he replied, "I'm so sorry. I can't do this. I can't deal with this." He started to hyperventilate as he sat back against the car and clutched his wound.

We had to deal with this fast since we were now on two time limits, the most prominent being the demon was going to come back soon, but also our filters wouldn't last forever. Also, his heavy breathing was going to severely reduce his filter's life. "Come on, man," I began as I improvised an uplifting speech. "We need you with us. You can do it. You've done things that most people would never be able to do." It was difficult to talk about his accomplishments since I'd only heard minor details about everything he'd done thus far.

Fortunately, Sofia spoke up. "Ilia, not many people can say they survived what you've been through. Demons, watchers, Nazis, all of that, and then go on to fight the strongest person in a station almost dedicated to fighting and fucking win. You can do this. I know it."

His eyes flicked between us for a moment. I didn't think that we'd convinced him and I was about to continue on when he took a deep breath and clutched his weapon with both hands again. "Ok. If you say so," he said noncommittally. It was better than nothing.

The demon's wings were still loudly beating far away, so I led the way down the road again with Ilia following and Sofia at the rear. We managed to move past the nest without issue. Being as careful and quiet as we were, it was slow going. We eventually came to a wide-open area in amongst the buildings. The road continued straight in between two once-green parks, one of which housed an empty plinth with its fallen statue frozen over next to it. I could see a couple of entrances to metro stations across the area and I was filled with hope that we'd made it.

Completely dissipating this hope, Ilia pointed to one of them and said, "Pushkinskaya." He pointed to a nearby metal grate. "I came out of it there when you were sent to Lubyanka. We should keep an eye out for Nazis." We moved through the square as quickly as possible while still being careful and quiet.

We didn't have much of an idea of where we were going, but we just kept going down the road and hoped to find a metro station. Past the Nazi stations, there wasn't much bad. We had the choice of reaching Mayakovska, from which we could get to Belorusskaya, to the ring line, and then back home, or we could end up back at Tsvetnoy Bulvar which, as we knew, wasn't too far from Novoslobodskaya. I would have preferred to not go back to Tsvetnoy Bulvar, but it seemed like a better option than spending more time on the surface.

We made decent progress as we moved further down. We hid when we heard noises, moved quicker when those noises were behind us, and generally kept an eye out for any dangers. Through our care, we made it to another clearing and an indistinct metro station in the floor of a large pathway. We rushed down the frozen stairs and quickly came to the hermetic door at the bottom.

Sofia and I kept watch as Ilia slung his AK over his shoulder and loudly banged on the door with his fist. I hated it as I felt that it would draw monsters towards us, but it had to be done. He left it for a couple of minutes before trying again. No answer.

"Uninhabited?" He asked after a few more tries.

"Is there a manual unlock?" Sofia asked without looking back, nervous about the potential of looming mutants.

Visibility wasn't easy at the bottom of the stairs. A small amount of light came in from the overcast day, but Ilia had to use his flashlight to search the walls for anything that could help us. He frantically searched for a while, before saying, "There's this thing." He shined the light on a large metal box with a vertical lever attached to it in the up position. Next to the lever was an off red light and an illuminated green light above it. He tentatively pulled it down, it offering some resistance before it finally gave way and let him manipulate it. The green light turned off to be replaced by the red light below. Nothing happened for a while but during Ilia's defeated sigh, the door started to creak and moan as its decaying mechanisms burst into life. "Yes!" Ilia said excitedly. The door's screeching echoed through the stairwell and Ilia readied his weapon.

The door creaked open towards us. Ilia checked through the door as Sofia and I watched the stairwell. Once the door had opened fully, Ilia checked for a way to close it from the inside before beckoning us in. We obliged as he pulled another lever and the door started to loudly close again.

Our guard lowered slightly until we heard the all-too-familiar howl of nearby watchers. We willed the door to close faster but it wasn't happening. Ilia swore repeatedly as we started to hear the horde's footsteps approaching. The door was half closed but the watchers appeared at the top. They rushed down as fast as they could and Ilia and I let out a few bursts of fire while Sofia prepared to fire at any that got too close. My first bullet hit one in the arm and ripped through its flesh, seemingly penetrating further than my subsequent rounds. About ten of the watchers were already descending down the long staircase towards us as our bursts lit the darkened area up with repeated bright-orange flashes.

Ilia's weapon was seriously impressive, with so few bullets he managed to take down a surprising portion of them with little effort. My weapon had already started to overheat by the third burst and I needed to stop for a moment to let it cool down.

The door's gap was only big enough to let one person shoot at a time and I was the only one in a position to do so. They weren't going to make it through, I was silently rejoicing as I fired a few more ineffectual rounds into the endless horde. One of them hit a pouncing watcher in the foot, it went wildly off course but flew through the doorway just before the gap got too small to pass through. The watcher collided with me, knocking my gun out of my hands and sending me to the hard floor. I let out a scream as my spine took the full brunt of the pain and the watcher composed itself. It noticed what it had landed on and roared in my face.

This was it. I was going to die. I'd survived this long, but this was how it was going to be. Why was I so stubborn? I wouldn't have been here if I'd just listened to Ilia in the first place. The whole scene seemed to play out in slow motion as it reared back its claws to finally end it. It was lit up by a dim yellow light from behind me, making the shadows cover much of its horrible face. An explosion erupted behind me as the room flashed a vibrant orange. The watcher's once-incensed expression was replaced by a cloud of crimson blood as its face was mutilated and its body was thrown off me with force. My ears were ringing from the intensity and proximity of the sound and I was left on the floor wondering what had happened.

Ilia rushed over and fell down onto his knees next to me, shouting something incomprehensible at me as Sofia stood next to him with one of her shotgun's barrels smoking. I was in a daze and couldn't understand anything. Sofia made sure that the immediate area was clear as Ilia tried hopelessly to get me to understand simple Russian. Ilia yanked my gas mask off before doing the same to his own as he kept trying to talk to me. After a few minutes of this, my hearing slowly came back to me. "Alex, please be ok," Ilia said in a defeated tone. "Please, Alex."

I cleared my throat and muttered, "What the fuck happened?"

Ilia's eyes widened and he exhaled in relief. "Jesus, man. You scared me there. I thought you were just gone."

"My back's pretty bad, but I'm ok. Seriously, though. What happened?"

"Sofia shot the fuck out of it with your shotgun. Blew its face right off."

I looked over at her as she snapped the barrel back into place after reloading it. "Thanks," I said timidly as I pulled myself up and sat against one of the station's pillars. The abandoned station – whose decaying sign on one of the walls read 'Mayak', meaning that we had ended up in Mayakovskaya station – was in severe disrepair but looked as though it was once a beautiful place. It was very open, with a moderately tall soot-covered ceiling and wide arches, the pillars of which were only wide enough for one person to sit against each face. The marble floors were dulled and reflected none of Ilia's torchlight but were once brightly coloured tiles with regular square shapes running down the central platform. It looked as though there was once brass lining the inside of the arches, but much of it had been looted already and what was left was dull and often scratched. The station had clearly never been fully inhabited, but some people had lived there in the last few years. A collapsed wooden stand was rotting away towards the nearby with several decaying rat carcasses surrounding it, presumably a food stand, and a campfire lacking in any fuel had been set up in the centre.

Ilia sat on the inside of the closest arch, next to me, and said, "I can't believe we made that."

"Are you alright?" I asked him. "How's your side and all of that."

"You know, constant pain. I'm ok, though. I think I just need a bit of a rest." I nodded in agreement as Sofia handed him his light and sat on the other side of the arch. "How's everyone doing for ammo?"

I looked into my weapon's open magazine with despair. "Four rounds," I replied solemnly.

"Four shells altogether," Sofia said while making sure that she had reloaded her shotgun.

"I've got seven rounds," Ilia said before adding, "plus one in the chamber."

"Ah shit," I said when he mentioned the chamber. The other two looked at me with confusion and worry. "I forgot about the chamber." I started to count my military grade bullets as I said, "I guess I've got five rounds left, then."

"Why's that bad?" Sofia asked.

I finished counting, which resulted in a total of 29 bullets. "I think I fired one of my military bullets at the watchers."

Ilia chuckled and light-heartedly said, "You moron." I conceded and laughed; it was a stupid oversight. "What are the chances that we'll find some ammo around here?"

"Slim to none, I reckon," I replied. "This place doesn't seem too dangerous; it's probably been picked clean."

Ilia thought for a moment. "Alex, you take my gun and put your ammo in it," he said as he put his AK on the floor next to me. "I'll use my revolver anyway since we'll need some light."

I was excited; a chance to use his AK! While trying to hide my excitement, I started removing the rounds from my gun and putting them in the AK's magazine, making sure to eject the chambered round from my weapon this time. "Good idea." The weapon felt great in my hands, it was so much more comfortable to hold than the Bastard was.

"Plus, I've seen how you've been eyeing it up," Ilia added with a small laugh.

"Thirteen rounds," I said once I'd transferred the ammunition. "Just enough to startle a baby nosalis." After putting the Bastard in my bag, which only just fit and turned my bag into a puzzle to get everything back in, I leant back up against the arch and took a few deep breaths. After a short time, I said, "Go on then, Ilia. Since we don't have a time limit anymore, tell me about your adventures."

He slowly recounted in some detail what happened to him after I was taken prisoner by the Nazis. I listened in awe as he told me about his encounters with some of the Nazis, his brief time on the surface, his capture and subsequent escape from bandits, his fight with Ruslan Utkin resulting in his rescue of Sofia, and their massive luck that let them follow me to Teatral'naya. There was an odd gap where he didn't explain much about how he actually got captured by the bandits, but I was amazed nonetheless. I understood even less how he was still alive, but his phobia of the demon made a lot more sense when he explained the full story of his massive wound.

He asked me about my exploits, which sounded much less impressive than his when I explained them. I was almost disappointed because my stories were so underwhelming in comparison. I did make sure to fully explain how great Sofia's family was, though.

Once we rounded off my stories, we got onto talking about how awful the opera was.

"And the title!" Ilia mocked. "One Man and His Demons! It wasn't exactly subtle."

"Maybe we're just not a high enough class to understand its intricacies," I joked.

"Well if that's the case, then I didn't stand a chance," Sofia said. "You guys might as well be the one percent compared to my family in Lubyanka." Though she was joking, she was right. Our lives under Hansa were much better than most in the Metro. We had decent food and a fair amount of space, even the bright lighting improved our quality of life. Her family lived in such terrible conditions; I'd been there and I could barely fathom it. If we could get her back to Novoslobodskaya, Sofia would certainly have a better life than the one that her previous station had promised her.

"What's there to understand?" Ilia replied before beginning to mockingly imitate the director's voice. "Ooh look, I'm so clever because demons are real things as well as figurative things. They represent his internal and external struggles. What a fucking marvel I am."

Sofia and I burst out laughing. Through the tail-end of the laugh, I asked Ilia, "Didn't you desperately want to go to the Bolshoy?"

"I did. It was underwhelming, to say the least. To be honest, I don't think it was worth the trip," he replied with a small laugh.

"Really?" I sarcastically responded. "And I got the impression that you've had a great time." He chuckled before he went into a deep thought as he held his revolver and ran his thumb over a marking on its wooden handle. It surprised me that he would mark his weapon, he cherished that pistol. Despite its age and relative disrepair, it was exactly in the same condition as when he'd first been given it so it was a big deal for him to purposefully carve something into it. I couldn't make out what it was though. I was too intrigued, I had to ask. "What's with the mark on your gun, Ilia?"

He didn't answer for a moment as he froze and just looked at his gun. I thought that he just hadn't heard me, but he showed me the handle with the initials 'ML' carved into it. He spoke in a much more solemn and serious tone than before. "Mary Lagunova." He let out a big sigh before continuing. "I'll spare you the details, but she went through horrible things at the hands of the bandits that captured me. She ended up killing them all with this revolver and saving my life while losing her own in the process. The carving is just a way to remember her."

I hesitated as I struggled to think of something to say. "Shit, man. Do you know how she ended up there?"

"No idea." He continued to speak slowly and with great thought put into each word. "I think it must have been kind of shady though. She was about to give me a fake name, Gal-something, before she told me her real one."

"Gal-something?" I quickly replied. "Galina?" It was a longshot, but it seemed too coincidental.

"I don't know, she only got as far as saying 'Gal'."

"What did she look like?" He described her to me in detail, the image clearly burned into his mind. She sounded exactly like the Galina that I had met. "Christ, I think I met Mary. She was my ticket through to Kuznetsky Most from Lubyanka."

"She can't be, that would be crazy."

"She was into pretty shady stuff as well; she was trying to get through the border with the most bullshit papers I've ever seen. It would be crazier if there were two women within a station of each other that looked exactly the same and went by an alias that at least started with the same three letters." Ilia thought for a moment before conceding and sighing deeply. After it dawned on me that Galina was likely dead, I said, "Fuck. That sucks. I guess none of us would be here if it wasn't for her."

"We'll have a drink to her when we get back."

We sat in silence for some time, Ilia and I completely relying on Sofia to warn us of any dangers as we were engrossed in our own thoughts. Ilia had given her his flashlight and she'd moved to the far end to make sure that both tunnels were immediately clear of any threats.

I shuffled slightly closer to Ilia, tapped him on the shoulder, and whispered, "Nice catch, by the way."

Excitedly, he replied, "I know, right? She's amazing. She was in that club and I genuinely didn't know whether to just sit and watch or go through with my plan to save her."

"I'm glad you did what you did. I reckon she'll do you good."

"You think she even likes me like that?" He replied his wavering voice betraying is slight nervousness. He never was the most confident when it came to actually sealing the deal.

"Dude, definitely. Ignoring the fact that you rescued her from fucking slavery, she clearly cares about you so much." Ilia gently nodded along with my comments, bolstering his confidence slightly. I could see her flashlight coming back towards us, so I quickly said, "You'd better make a move at some point anyway, she's hot."

Ilia quietly chuckled as I shuffled back to my original place and acted as if we weren't talking about Sofia. She returned to us and sat against the pillar opposite to Ilia after confirming that we were indeed alone.

After just over ten minutes of silence had passed, Ilia asked, "Why do you think that this station is empty? It doesn't seem particularly dangerous, the door to the surface works fine, and there's loads of space. More than in most stations. Seems perfect to me."

I thought for a moment. He had a good point, space was at a premium in the Metro, why was an entire station left empty? Trying to think of a safe reason, I pointed down one of the tunnels and said, "The Reich is that way, right? Maybe the Reich and Hansa like having a buffer zone between each other."

Ilia shook his head. "I like the optimism, but I don't think that's it." He suddenly sat up and stared towards Belorusskaya's tunnel. "Did you see that?" He whispered quickly and slowly rose to his feet, using the arch to steady himself, as he continued to stare into the darkness.

I squinted heavily and looked in the same direction, but saw nothing. "What did you see?"

He hurriedly retrieved his flashlight and faced it towards the tunnel. It barely reached halfway across the station and revealed very little. "I swear I saw something," he said in disbelief.

"What did it look like? A nosalis?" Sofia asked.

"No, no," he said cautiously, not taking his eyes off the tunnel. "It was taller. It looked human."

I stood up and readied the AK. We were all completely silent as we nervously watched the tunnel. "I don't see anything," I eventually said.

Ilia quickly shushed me while holding his index finger out to me before going silent again. He suddenly panicked and said, "Did you hear that?" Sofia and I shared a look of confusion before he quickly turned his light around to the Reich tunnel. "I swear I just heard a voice." His voice wavered through his panic.

"I'm not hearing any of this, Ilia," I replied, worried about my friend.

He paused for a moment. "Let's just get the fuck out of here."

We all quickly agreed, gathered our belongings, and rushed towards the leftmost tunnel to Belorusskaya. We were on the home straight, once we reached Belorusskaya, it would be easy to get to Novoslobodskaya as Hansa maintained the ring line well and regularly and often sent railcars between each station.

Nothing in the Metro was quite that simple, though.

. . .

Ilia's light passed back and forth along the floor of the wide tunnel. It was surprisingly empty. While being just as decrepit as any other disused tunnel, there were no bodies, no discarded equipment, and absolutely no light, not even from the usual dim red emergency lights that were often placed above important parts of the tunnels. We started to see spider webs form on the walls and some of the floors.

We came across an open door on the right-hand side with a person's boot coming out from it. Seeing an opportunity to scavenge some equipment or ammunition, we cautiously and silently moved over to it. The room was pitch black, as was everything else in the area, so Ilia and Sofia moved up to one side of the door while I pushed myself up against the wall on the other side, initially forgetting about the webs and briefly getting stuck.

After pulling myself free, I whispered, "Light off?" Remembering Ilia's previous insistence on that.

"I don't think even Nosalises could see in this light," he replied. "We should be fine." He spent a little time plucking up courage before turning into the door and shining his light into the room while aiming his revolver in the same direction. We heard a faint scuttling sound further in as soon as the light hit the opposite wall, but we didn't see any culprit.

As it turned out, the boot and the foot inside it were all that remained of its owner. A trail of blood led away from it and down the dreary, spider web covered corridor. The sheer amount of webbing was incredible, the walls couldn't be seen at all through the thick white substance. The corridor itself still retained its shape, however, as the webs were mostly on the walls with only a few strands going across the width of it.

On the floor next to the leg were a few spent cartridges from the broken AK caught in the webbing on the wall. I was about to fight the spider web to liberate the magazine from it, but Ilia surprised me by retrieving a knife from a sheath on his leg. He handed it to me and allowed me to cut the webs away and pull the magazine free. It was a tough process, partially due to the thickness of the webs but mostly down to the only occasional lighting I was getting as Ilia had to split his attention between me and the corridor. For whatever reason, it didn't cross my mind to just give Sofia my flashlight. The magazine contained five rounds, which was a little disappointing, but I loaded them into my own magazine nonetheless. I was too nervous and couldn't be bothered to the cut the AK itself away, so I handed the knife back to Ilia and prepared to move back.

"Do think that we should see if we can find the rest of the body?" I quietly asked. "They might have had more ammo on them."

Ilia thought about it for a moment, he'd clearly had quite enough of exploring. "Do we really want to find out what ripped this poor guy's leg off and dragged them away?"

"No, but I'd rather find some ammo before we encounter anything at all. Let's just look around the corner."

Reluctantly, they both agreed. Eighteen rounds in the AK, the most capable weapon in our arsenal, wasn't enough, even for the relatively short distance we were due to go.

We nervously clutched our weapons as Ilia led the way with his flashlight. The small amount of webbing on the floor stuck to our boots, meaning that we had to peel them off the floor with each step. We passed what we thought was just more of the wall, but turned out to be an open doorway that had been completely blocked up by the thick spider webs. Feeling as though we were walking into a trap, I continued to follow the other two as they reached the corner. Ilia quickly rounded the corner and inspected the corridor as Sofia moved around him to look as well.

"What the…" Ilia said as I moved up behind them. In the centre of the long and similarly web-covered corridor were two open doorways going to the left and right, with the end turning to the right and the trail of blood, diminishing slightly by this point, leading through the left door. The flashlight's range could only just light up what was at the end of the corridor in the corner. There was some kind of a fleshy mound with several ovular, almost egg-shaped objects around it. There were four small ones, a little larger than my fist, with a larger one, almost three times the size of the smaller ones, up against the corner itself. They moved slightly with grotesque rhythm as if they were blowing in a breeze that didn't exist, and squelched slightly with each minor change of direction. They looked too fleshy to be eggs, but I couldn't work out what they were.

"Ever seen anything like that?" I asked, not expecting much.

Without taking their eyes of the mystery, both Sofia and Ilia simply said, "No."

"Let's just not go near it," Ilia said decisively.

We all agreed and edged towards the left-hand door. As we reached it, each egg-shape on the mound started to rumble slightly. Ilia focused the flashlight on it and each egg split into four and opened up to ooze a sickening green slime. We quickly stepped back and aimed our weapons at the monstrosity as half a dozen or so small spiders crawled out of each large and small egg. We breathed a sigh of relief as they all quietly scuttled away into the darkness of their closest open door.

"Hopefully that's all we have to contend with," Ilia said as he approached the left door again.

Despite the relief, my heart was racing. I regretted ever suggesting that we should go into this place. I wasn't convinced that it would only be spiders here, they wouldn't be able to kill someone and drag them off like this.

Ilia briefly looked over to the right-hand door before stepping into the left doorway and shining his light around the room. He jumped slightly as he heard the same scuttling as before, but didn't say anything.

I approached and looked in as he said, "We've got more of those spider egg things."

The moderately sized room was equally covered in spider webs and in the far right-hand corner were five clusters of these eggs laid out in a similar fashion to the first set. We didn't pay much attention to them as they didn't seem particularly dangerous. There was a small hole, about a metre high and wide, in the closest right-hand corner that led back into the corridor. There wasn't any rubble around it, however, so it hadn't just collapsed; something had made the hole.

Ilia stepped into the room and found that the blood trail moved up the wall to his left and to the ceiling. He briefly lit the ceiling up before doing a double take on it. "I think we found our victim," he said in a worried tone.

The ceiling was a fair bit higher than that of the claustrophobic corridor before, but it didn't feel like it. The ragged scavenger was hanging from the ceiling by what was left of his legs that had been cocooned in the same thick webs. His head, only slightly above our own heads, faced the doorway and was covered in large cuts and bruises to the point where it was barely recognisable as a face. His bloodied hands were free and reaching for the floor, similarly to those of the several skeletons surrounding him in similar positions on the ceiling. The man had clearly been dead for some time, somehow the usual stench of a rotting corpse wasn't present, as if the webbing was preserving or desiccating it, and the blood across his body and thick tattered clothes was completely dry.

"Jesus," Sofia said in disbelief. "What could have done this?"

"We should get out of here," Ilia added.

I threw my AK onto my back using its strap and cautiously moved over to the corpse. "We've got this far," I whispered, "We should get him down and search him, then we can go."

Ilia sighed as he thought it over. "Fine. We'll keep you covered."

I grabbed the hands of the body, thanking my gloves that I didn't have to touch his dried blood, and pulled. It barely budged. His legs, or leg and a half, were firmly fixed on the ceiling. With each tug, I moved him about half a centimetre. Is this worth it? I thought to myself and a continued on with the exhausting and morbid process.

"Hurry it up," Ilia commanded.

Speaking a word in between each quick pull, I replied, "He's. Really. Fucking. Stuck." On the last word, the webs finally let up and his legs broke free. The body hurtled to the ground and I had to jump out of the way to stop it from landing on me. The man hit the ground with a definitive thud that echoed slightly around the room. The corpse's stench suddenly came back and hit us full-force. It was disgusting and I was tempted to put my gas mask on just to save myself from it. I wasted no time in going through his jacket's many pockets, however. Amongst Ilia's multiple requests for me to hurry, I found two full magazines for the AK, sixty rounds altogether and well-worth the trip. Seeing that there were a few things in his trouser pockets, I tried to search them but they were completely welded shut by the webs and I wanted to get out of there in a hurry.

The heavy scuttling came back, closer this time. I quickly stood up and looked around the dark room. Ilia shined his light into the opposite room as I held my heavy AK with one hand and fumbled to find my own light. The scuttling persisted, seemingly underneath us, above us, all around us. Finally retrieving my flashlight, I turned it on and scanned the room. None of us saw anything. I focused in on the egg clusters and watched as their occupants pushed up against the edges. The smaller eggs and three of the five larger eggs opened up to reveal a small horde of spiders as before. From the other two, however, brown-coloured large pointed spines rose out of the centre of the opening at the tops and split them apart, revealing two large and dangerous-looking creatures.

"Guys, guys!" I shouted much too loudly to get my friends' attention as the six-legged creatures scuttled off through the hole in the far wall. Their clustered yellow eyes averted their gaze and their scorpion-esque spine tails lowered as they tried to run away. Their yellow-brown skin seemed to smoke as the spider-like creatures hissed through their huge fangs. "What the fuck are those things?!" I shouted as Ilia turned to look and both him and Sofia backed into the room.

"I don't know!" Ilia responded in a panic, barely audible over the unending scuttling. He looked for the door to the room but it was covered in a thick layer of webs, so we wouldn't be able to close it quickly. The scuttling continued endlessly around us as we edged towards the back wall.

Through another hole in the wall that the egg clusters previously blocked, a similar creature rushed through. This one, however, lacked the tail and instead was covered in some kind of a thick armour of the same colour. I quickly turned my sights to it and let off a wildly inaccurate burst from my rifle towards it. Only one of the rounds made contact, and that ricocheted off the armour and hit the wall behind. It maintained its charge until I focused the centre of the flashlight's beam at it. The armour sent up plumes of smoke, similar to the egg-spawn before, and seemed to blacken slightly. The creature, now halfway between myself and the wall, turned and started to run, but started slow and let out a high-pitched hiss of pain. The armour burned away and completely blackened as the spider creature tried to climb over the egg clusters to get back to safety. It didn't quite make it. Losing all of its strength, it let go and tumbled off the mound, landing on its back and exposing its fleshy underbelly as its legs clawed at the air in its peril. With my arm starting to strain from the weight of my AK, I struggled to lift it but fired a single shot at the body. The bullet spattered dark green blood across its underside and the creature instantly ceased its movements.

The ever-present scuttling continued, however, and I didn't have time to reflect on my small victory. We'd backed ourselves up against the wall and were frantically watching the three entrances into our room. One of the original armourless creatures came into the doorway but immediately fled when Ilia illuminated it and scared it off with two revolver shots.

"Save your ammo!" Sofia shouted. "It looks like the light kills them!"

Feeling stupid that I hadn't thought of this earlier, I frantically switched my light's beam between the two holes, endlessly scaring off the spider creatures that entered them as Ilia did the same with the doorway. We saw a third type, one with armour, albeit thinner looking than that of the other, as well as a sharp tail. Both of our flashlight's beams were shaky as we desperately fended off these creatures and didn't dare move from our position.

"What do we do?" Ilia asked as the terror was taking hold. "We can't stay here forever!"

I quickly glanced around the room with my light, making sure to regularly place the beam back in the entrances to ward off the spiders. Remembering the webbed off doorway to our right-hand side, I shouted to Sofia, "Hold my light!" Slightly confused, she obliged and let one hand off her shotgun to accept the light and continue my warding. Swinging my rifle to my back, I rushed over to Ilia and informed him of my intentions before retrieving his knife from his lower-leg's sheath.

Sofia's shotgun fired a powerful shell out one of its barrels, briefly illuminating the room and blasting one of the unarmoured hatchling spiders out of the more obvious hole in the wall, having apparently gotten dangerously close to her.

Spurred on by the panic, I scrambled over to the covered doorway and plunged the knife into the thick webbing halfway down the opening. The resistance put up by the inches thick substance was immense as the sharp blade had trouble making its way through. I started to carve to the side as fast as I could. The serration of the blade helped its way through but it was tough going as each motion only moved the blade forward a centimetre or so. I frantically carved away at it as the smoke of the burning spiders started to waft over to us. The overpowering odour made me feel lightheaded as beads of sweat ran down my face. I reached the edge of the doorway and started to carve down towards the floor, completely ignoring the continuous scuttling in all directions around me.

I was at the bottom, and ready to call to the others, but a slower tapping made itself known to me once I'd stopped focusing on the carving. Nearly frozen by fear, I slowly turned my head to the right to what I thought was a solid wall. In the darkness, I saw a circular tunnel carved out of the concrete, and something moving inside it. Just as I screamed, "Shit!", the armoured tailless spider pounced at me. The knife loudly clattered to the ground as I pushed my hands towards the monster in a vague attempt to protect myself. Its two sets of vicious fangs, four large teeth on the outside and a full set as a mouth, were millimetres from my face as its sharp legs ferociously scratched along the floor and tried to inch itself closer to me, occasionally clawing at my coat that was just about staying strong. My legs kicked at nothing as I tried to keep its incredible mass away from me, but we were locked in a stalemate. Its bursts of energy moved its clawing fangs closer to me and even nicked my cheek, but I desperately pushed it away as I cried for help.

We were suddenly illuminated and a boot that came out of nowhere made contact with its abdomen, launching it off me with incredible force. The spider slammed into the web-covered door next to us and wriggled helplessly on its back as it started to burn from the flashlight. In my shock, I looked over to see Ilia fire two shots from his revolver that both hit it in its exposed body, killing it instantly.

"Let's go!" He shouted, giving me his revolver-wielding arm to grab onto to pull myself up with as both of his hands were full. I scrambled to my feet as Ilia tapped Sofia on the shoulder to get her attention. I was about to rush through my newly-created door, but Ilia stopped me and went through first as he had the light. I readied my AK and quickly followed him with Sofia close behind aiming her flashlight behind us. Ilia turned to the left and aimed his light down the corridor to stop any spiders from going that way as he pushed me out into the larger tunnel. Once Sofia was out, he backed off and left. Five spiders appeared in the corridor but were stopped by Ilia's light as Sofia scanned the tunnel with hers. I moved over to the hallway's door but found it completely covered in webs and realised that I'd left the knife back in the spiders' lair. Seeing a couple of spiders about to come through the hole that I had created in the web-covered door inside, I fired the rest of my AK's magazine into it before pulling Ilia away.

We just ran away. Sofia's light kept watch ahead of us while Ilia's fended off the innumerable spiders that were chasing us. We sprinted towards Belorusskaya in an effort to put as much distance between us and the spiders as possible. We were fairly sure that we could run faster than them, but it was tough going over the ever-uneven surface of the tunnel.

After five minutes of solid running, we realised that we could no longer hear the distant scuttling and the spider webs on the walls had reduced to their normal level, only containing the smaller and more manageable spiders. We slowed to a stop and rested against a wall as we tried to catch our breath. Ilia and Sofia's lights jumped around the large tunnel as we took laboured breaths to recuperate. Thankfully, we saw no creatures in the darkness whatsoever.

"No more side passages," Ilia stated in a breath. He clutched his side and groaned while continuing, "I've had enough of those." He slid down the wall to sit against it and screwed his face as his pain clearly grew.

I rushed over, lowered myself to one knee in front of him, and put one hand on his shoulder. "Are you alright, Ilia?"

"Yeah," he quickly said on an in-breath. "Just give me a minute." A drop of blood fell onto my knee. Where did that come from? I asked myself as I looked up at the dark and dull ceiling. "Might want to do something about that bite," Ilia said while pointing to my face, likely not noticing my confusion. I took my hand from his shoulder and felt my cheek, pulling away revealing a small amount of my blood from it. Taking off my glove to get a better feel revealed a larger bite on my cheek than I had initially thought, the spider had done more damage than I realised at the time and the blood slowly dripped down my face and onto the floor. "Find the first aid kit in my bag, should be some cloths or something in there," Ilia said through another groan. He leant forward so that I could reach into his bag and pull out the small kit, in which I did indeed find a couple of small but fortunately clean cloths. Taking one, I returned the kit to its place and held the cloth over my cut.

Sofia joined us and asked, "Is everyone ok?"

Ilia nodded as I replied, "About as ok as we can be, I think."

"Thank god," she said, slumping down next to Ilia. "What the hell were those things?"

"Things that are going to make me terrified of spiders from now on," I quickly said as I sat on a flat section of rail opposite the pair. "And side rooms," I added.

Ilia coughed before grinning and saying, "At least that's something."

I chuckled quietly before saying, "Thanks for saving me again, and sorry about your knife."

He dismissed me with a hand gesture and replied, "Don't worry about it. We've been through too much for me to get upset about losing a knife that's not even really mine."

After remaining in place for the better part of ten minutes, we reloaded our weapons, rose to our feet, and continued down the long tunnel. Our pace was slow as we spent an indeterminable time in the darkness of the long tunnel. Sofia returned my flashlight to me and I stowed it away so that we could both comfortably hold our weapons. We took wide berths around any spider webs and doors we came across, open and closed, more through paranoia than anything. I felt safer in our group than I had in previous tunnels, but I was surprised by how nervous I still was. Exploring tunnels was certainly not new for Ilia and me, but after everything that had happened, I was terrified of every ambient sound that the tunnel made.

As we came to the end of a shallow corner in the tunnel, we noticed a small campfire in the distance in the centre of the tunnel. A stand had been set across it that suspended a kettle and four enamelled mugs were haphazardly placed around it on the floor. Four men were sat on uncomfortable chairs just behind their cups, all brandishing weapons of varying quality.

"Must be an outer guard post for the trade outpost," Ilia commented. "Put your weapons away and I'll get their attention." Sofia and I obliged, moving our weapons to our backs as Ilia holstered his revolver. He held his flashlight up towards them and flashed it multiple times as he shouted, "Travellers coming towards you! Not a threat!"

The four men jumped into action, one of them accidentally kicking their chair away as he fumbled to pick up his rifle. Two of them rushed to either side of the tunnel and turned on two powerful, bathing us in blinding white light. A gravelly voice shouted back, "Stop right there!" We immediately stopped moving towards them and tried to shield our eyes from the lights. "What's the password?!"

"Password?" Ilia whispered to us. Both of us shrugged, completely taken by surprise by the request. He turned back and shouted, "We don't know, but we're Hansa citizens!"

There was some quiet discussion before the same voice shouted, "Unload your weapons, reach for the ceiling, and slowly come towards us."

One of the lights turned off, allowing us to just about see the four figures standing across the tunnel on either side of the fire. We obeyed by taking all of the ammunition out of our weapons, putting our hands up, and carefully moving towards the encampment. The four men didn't take their eyes off us during our drawn-out approach.

Of the four guards, two of them looked to be in their late forties, one of them was in his mid-twenties, and the last one could have been no older than seventeen. They were fairly well equipped with two well-maintained AK-74Ms and two RPKs. Their thick clothing was relatively undamaged and they looked well-fed.

Once we reached them, the eldest, who had been previously speaking to us, sized us up briefly before commenting, "You three look like you've been through some shit."

Ilia nodded exasperatedly while replying, "Yeah, you could say that."

"You can put your arms down. I'll take you to the door."

Relieved that things seemed to be easier than expected, we all dropped our arms and began to follow the veteran guard. The others watched us with great interest as we passed through them. Mostly in silence, we made our way further into the tunnel. From the first guard post a kilometre away from the station, we passed another at the five-hundredth metre and another at the two-hundredth, all laid out in a similar fashion with four guards at each. The bustle of the busy station could be heard from the five-hundredth metre and the open door came into view. A small checkpoint, in the form of a metal table with two guards sat behind it, had been set up on the left side of the opening, and beyond led straight into the station. It was clean, well-lit, and full of people. The station didn't offer much room as the roof was low, the slightly tarnished red-brown marble walls were thick, and the arches were small and few in number. Every available space, however, was taken up by market stalls with people rushing to buy everything they could from them.

Our escort took us up to the checkpoint and, after he'd introduced us and we'd thanked him for getting us this far, left to return to the thousandth metre. The checkpoint guards were both in their late thirties and were dressed similarly to the others.

Sat on old chairs, clutching enamelled mugs of tea and disinterestedly staring up at us, the slightly older of the two leaned forward, placed his mug on the table, and said, "You're looking to get to Hansa, are you?"

"I thought that this was a Hansa station?" Sofia asked just before either Ilia or I could stop her.

"Not exactly," he replied, grinning at her lack of knowledge. "We're in a mutually beneficial relationship, but they're actually upstairs. Didn't Danilia say that you were citizens?"

Slightly embarrassed, Sofia took a step back. I pointed to Ilia and myself while saying, "We are. She's not, though."

"Well, this is a free station so you're all welcome, provided you keep your weapons unloaded." He looked to Sofia. "I wouldn't go flaunting your lack of citizenship at their border if you plan on getting in there, though." Sofia nodded shyly. "Otherwise, welcome to the Belorusskaya trade outpost. Best food in the Metro, grown in our very own Dinamo, Aeroport, and Sokol stations." Expecting a long introduction to the station, we waited expectantly for a moment as he leaned back and picked his tea back up. He bobbed his head in the direction of the station. "Go on, then."

We awkwardly nodded and hurried off into the station. Moving onto the tracks, up the wooden ramps and through an archway to the central station, we stared at the tens of traders down the station. The wooden stalls were full of various consumables, from common foods like mushrooms, rats, and dubious stews, drinks such as mushroom vodkas and teas, to more luxurious cuts of chicken and pork and even some vegetables. Despite being from a relatively wealthy station, I'd never seen cucumbers before, but there was a stack of them on a distant stall just on display as if it was nothing. Towards the far end, the black and white tiled floor was significantly less clean, but for good reason. Several pig and chicken pens had been set up in order for the farmers to trade their livestock in this hub. It was, unfortunately, the animal's excrement that had spilt out of their pens and onto the central walkway. For this reason, the livestock had been relegated to the end of the station so that the awful stench wasn't too horrible for everyone else. It obviously didn't help much and the foul smell was pungent in all areas of the station, only letting up a little past the door that we came through.

I'd always thought that this station only traded in meat and livestock, as the animals were reared in the northern stations of Dinamo, Aeroport, and Sokol. However, it appeared as though traders from across the Metro came and sold their wares, and even some of the aforementioned stations had branched out into hydroponics in order to grow these seemingly magical foods. A couple of small restaurants had even been set up on the less pungent side of the station.

"There's so much food!" Sofia commented in wonder. "How do they have so much?"

"I heard that the people around here managed to bring loads of pigs and chickens into these stations before the bombs dropped," Ilia answered as he took position on a nearby wall. "We sometimes get imports from this station in Novoslobodkaya. They sell their stuff all over the Metro."

"Do they sell to the Red Line?" She asked, likely hoping that the answer was no so that she would have some semblance of an answer as to why her family was almost constantly starving.

"I think that they even sell to the Reich," I began, subtly indicating towards a Nazi officer browsing a stall's wares, eliciting a small sigh from Sofia, "so I imagine they do."

Despite the wondrousness of our surroundings, it wasn't a utopia. It was widely known that the station exchanged food for the Reich's prisoners in order to use them on their plantations. It wasn't pretty, but it was what allowed them to maintain their high output of food, and no one could argue with that when starvation was always looming around the corner for every station in the Metro. The four stations were becoming quite the political force simply due to every other faction's dependency on them.

I was tempted to try out some of the food here, but I looked over to find Ilia having to lean up against a wall in order to reduce the effort it took for him to stand and realised that we had to get back to Hansa as soon as possible.

I offered myself up for his stability's sake before moving off but, being his stubborn self, he refused. We proceeded to the centre of the station while desperately trying to ignore the multitude of traders shouting us down in an attempt to sell their generally delicious looking food.

We reached the centre of the station where the large staircase on the right-hand side led up to the transfer tunnel and the end of our journey. Sofia and I helped Ilia up the stairs, as even his stubbornness couldn't carry himself this time.

The short transfer tunnel passed over the tracks of the previous station and the dirty windows looked down at the dwellings that now resided on them. A large amount of people were, with various amounts of effort, passing both ways between the Hansa border guards at the end of the tunnel, simply flashing their passports at them for the most part. The guards, wielding well-maintained AKS-74Us, were dressed entirely in grey with modern body armour and helmets, all standard for the Hansa border guards. Above them was a white banner containing a central brown circle, Hansa's well-known emblem.

"How are Sofia and I going to get through?" I asked Ilia, remembering that I'd lost my papers when I was taken by the Reich.

He retrieved his own passport and said, "Let's just try and get through on mine. Security doesn't look too tight."

"Yeah, right," I said sarcastically. "If there's one thing that Hansa's totally known for, it's lax security."

There were two lines set up, the right-hand line for entering Hansa and the left for leaving, the latter of which was short and moving faster, though not much faster than that of the right-hand line. We got in line behind the ten others in the right-hand line. Each of them flashed their passports, allowing the two guards on our side to disinterestedly glance at them before moving through.

When it was Ilia's turn, he did the same as Sofia and I huddled behind him in an attempt to get through unnoticed. My heart was racing as I prayed that the guards somehow wouldn't notice us. The guards' eyes flicked to his pass before nodding and letting him through. I rushed forwards, but an arm appeared in my way. The tall guard looked down at me and, clearly bored of his job, asked, "Passport?"

Shit. I tried to think of something I could do. Make a run for it? No, that would never work, we'd be shovelling their latrines' waste for the rest of our lives. I stuttered and fumbled before Ilia turned back and got the guard's attention. "Please, sir," he began. "They're with me, they're Hansa citizens. We've been through so much to get here and we desperately need to get home to Novoslobodskaya."

"Without a passport, you're not allowed entry," the guard quickly responded.

"Please let us through," Sofia said. "We need medical attention," she pointed at Ilia, "him especially. Can't you just make one exception?"

Ilia lifted his shirt up to show his massive wound, to which the guard's eyes widened. "He's free to go through, he has the right papers," the guard stated. "You two, however, are holding up the line." He indicated to the growing queue of about twenty people behind us. He pushed Sofia and I back out of the way of the line and the queue started to move forwards again.

"Fuck," I said to Sofia as we leaned up against the wall

She sighed and asked, "What do we do?"

I was halfway through saying, "I don't know," when we saw Ilia barging through the queue to get back to us.

Once he reached us, he said, "God damn it. I can't believe this."

"What are you doing?" Sofia asked in disbelief. "You can, and should, get home!"

"I've spent this long trying to find Alex, I'm not abandoning you two just yet."

"No. This is ridiculous."

"I can manage," Ilia quickly replied. "We're going to have to go over the surface directly to Novoslobodskaya, we know most of the border guards there. An extra gun is always needed on the surface."

"Come on, Ilia," I objected. "We'll be ok. You need to get back."

He sighed deeply and eventually replied, "I know you probably would be, but if I left you and something happened, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. I wouldn't be able to bear the uncertainty of not knowing how you were getting along while I waited in safety." We looked into each other's eyes. I could see that he wasn't going to back down. I understood his sentiment. Not knowing what was happening to Ilia while we were separated was driving me mad. "We should eat here and then head out."

I moved back slightly to let Sofia move closer to him. She put her hand on his arm and gently rubbed it as she said, "Only if you're absolutely sure, Ilia."