Chapter 11: Culture

Ilia – Day 2 – 08:27

The faint crying of a woman outside my room made me immediately sit up and spring my eyes open. The dim bulb that illuminated my temporary bedroom flickered annoyingly as I quickly examined the room. It was only me and the bedroll left. Sofia and my equipment were gone and had been replaced by the indistinct sobbing of a beyond the closed metal door. I could only assume that it was Sofia.

I rushed to the door and attempted to pull the latch up. For some reason, it was much more stiff than it should have been. I had to muster all of my energy to finally wrench it open and accidentally rip it off its fittings. The door slowly opened towards me and showed the darkened corridor with the closed door to the tunnel on my right. The crying continued and I heard bottles loudly clinking together and smashing as they fell to the ground. The hollow echoes of plastic and the clattering of metal receptacles also resonated through the walls.

I unlocked the next door with relative ease and tentatively pulled it open. It revealed my home station of Novoslobodskaya, not the tunnel it once led to. I'd forgotten how clean and bright the civilised Hansa station was. The white electric lights filled me with hope and joy as I briefly shielded my eyes from the sudden glare and bathed in their glory. Under one of the beautifully curved arches before me, the flanking walls being decorated with the incredible Soviet-made and barely discoloured artwork, was my tent; the tent I lived in as a young child with my mother and father. It was exactly as I remembered it; nothing huge, but it made full use of the arch that it was in, even going so far as to attach it to the very top to secure it in place. I stepped through the door and looked at the busy station. People all over the place were going about their usual business and paying me no mind. I looked behind me and found that the corridor I came from had completely disappeared, but I didn't care. The woman's sobbing was suddenly silenced as the hollow clattering of wood falling to the floor sounded through the tent and more bottles of various construction fell over while a strong-smelling clear liquid seeped out from under the tent's entrance flaps. I knew the smell well, mushroom vodka.

I slowly approached the flap and inched it open. Plastic, metal, and broken glass bottles littered the floor and I saw my small wooden chair on its side in the centre of the room, along with a pair of bare, dirty and small feet in mid-air just in front and above it. I moved in and followed the feet up in horror. My mother was hanging by the neck from a short rope in the middle of the tent, where it was attached to the arch for support. Her messy brown hair was soaked in vodka and covered some of her face, but her soulless eyes stared through at me. I screamed at the sight, but not in my usual voice, it was as if I was a child again. My surroundings faded but my mother's body remained where it was as darkness surrounded and enveloped me. I felt so small as she towered over me and I stood helpless and terrified. Her arm juddered and spasmed slightly as her hand curled up so that her index finger was pointing at the floor. She raised her arm in multiple quick and unnatural movements until she was pointing at me. Her mouth slowly opened and she spoke in a slow, layered tone that was much deeper than her normal voice. "Despicable child!"

My eyes shot open as I sat up and screamed in my normal voice again. A small amount of pain rushed through my side but I ignored it as best as I could. A startled Sofia next to me joined my scream and jolted back slightly. I was drenched in sweat as I panted and looked around the temporary bedroom that I found myself back in. The light was on steadily and everything was back to how it had been before. I sat wide-eyed as I tried to make sense of what had happened, I couldn't work it out.

"Ilia!" Sofia shouted, clearly having been trying to get my attention for a while. I quickly turned to look at her extremely concerned face. "What happened? Are you ok?"

It took a moment for me to catch my breath and think about my answer. "Have… Have you always been here?" She nodded as her concern grew. "I mean, while I was asleep, you didn't leave for any reason?"

"I've been sat here the entire time, Ilia."

It felt so real. I remembered the smell of the vodka emanating from the perfect rendition of my tent. The noise of the station, the detail in the room I woke up in. It had to be real. "What's going on?" Sofia asked after, absorbed in my thoughts, I didn't talk for a while.

"It must have been a dream," I eventually conceded. "Unimportant, I guess."

"What was the dream?" She persisted. "Tell me. It's definitely not unimportant."

Realising that she wasn't going to give up, I thought for a moment to remember the details. "I saw my mother." I saw her concern grow further but I continued. "She was hanging from that fucking tent ceiling, staring at me as if it was my fault."

She lifted my hand from the floor and held it gently with both of hers as she looked into my eyes. "It's ok, Ilia. It's not real, it was just a dream."

I ignored her and continued. "My fault. How can she blame me for killing herself? What fucking right does she have?" I started to raise my voice as my anger level rose sharply. "That woman blames me for her shitty coping skills?"

Sofia was slightly taken aback but tried to calm me down. "I'm sure she never blamed you. You were a child, how could she? It was just a bad dream."

"Her eyes said it all! She looked at me with disgust while her selfish fucking body hung there, judging me!" She showed a flicker of fear as I glared at her and spouted my grievances. She let go of my hand and slightly recoiled. "It's not like I could stop her from spending our bullets on her 'special' drink. Yet I get the blame for her being a selfish bitch and taking the easy fucking way out! She ruined my life! I fucking hate her!" Sofia edged further away from me, making me realise that I had been shouting directly at her. I found that my hands were curled into tight fists and my muscles were tensed. I came down from my anger and to my senses by breathing deeply to calm myself down over the next minute. She didn't say a word but instead watched with a slowly dissipating fear as I closed my eyes and let out a final deep breath. I averted my gaze and sheepishly apologised, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take it out on you. This is my shit, you don't need it on you."

She breathed a sigh of relief as I returned to normal before she edged closer to me again and put her arm around me. "It's ok. You're stressed, I get it." She stayed there and comforted me for a few minutes before tentatively asking, "Has this always been an issue with you? The dreams, I mean."

"Not the dreams, but my mother has always been a sore point for me."

"I've not noticed anything come of it in general conversation."

I looked away from her and began to stare at the blank wall in front of me as I explained. "That's because no one usually mentions her. You want to know how I learned to fight well enough to beat Ruslan? Through this. People often used to try and hurt me by bringing up her suicide. They saw me as some pathetic baby that couldn't handle itself. They tended not to anymore after the red mist had descended and I'd beaten them to within an inch of their lives." She didn't say anything, but I felt that she was worried, understandably so. "Sorry for not mentioning all of this shit earlier when you said you'd help me. I understand if you'd rather not go with me anymore."

"No, it's ok," she quickly replied. "I don't blame you at all. It's a traumatic experience and you need to people around you rather than people abandoning you." I looked back at her and found her smiling warmly at me. I half-heartedly smiled back as she continued. "Anyway, I owe you a life debt, so I'm going to try and help you through it. I can at least go some way to repaying you for what you did."

We realised later that we had to move on, after some indeterminable amount of time where I tried to calm down and forget the nightmare. We gathered our belongings and left the room. The door to the passage immediately outside our room opened much easier than the same one in the dream and I almost fell over from the force I put behind it. We entered the main tunnel and began our journey towards Revolyutsii. I guided us with my flashlight as we both held our revolvers ready. There likely wouldn't be any trouble but it never hurt to be safe.

"I'm confused," I said as I looked over the huge amounts of fallen and decaying Hansa troops. "I thought that Hansa owned this station during the war?"

Sofia thought for a moment before hitting upon an idea. "I remember hearing that, while the lines didn't move much overall, the Reds did take Revolyutsii over quite often but were always immediately pushed back. These bodies must be from that process."

"That makes sense, I heard that a similar thing happened the other way around at the Lenin Library."

Sofia looked at the destruction across the walls and ceilings along with the numerous bodies and discarded and unusable weapons. "Are you ok with being here, Ilia?"

"Yeah, I'm ok. I'm at peace with my father's end. Barely knew him anyway."

The tunnel was oddly dark and eerily quiet for one as central in the Metro as this one. I guessed that people generally just didn't use it since the passage to Kurskaya was blocked, so there were no mutants to feed on them either. It was simply us, the commuting rats, and the spiders.

I noticed Sofia deep thought as I led the way. Eventually, she said, "We really don't want to go into Revolyutsii."

"But I have to," I snapped. I wasn't about to come all of this way to just turn away now. "I'm not abandoning Alex."

"I'm not suggesting that. I think I know another way," she quickly replied. Regretting my reaction, I apologised and let her continue. "We can avoid Revolyutsii and go straight for Teatral'naya."

"Are we planning on seeing a show or something?" I joked with a small amount of confusion as to her plan.

"Teatral'naya is only really open to us-" she hesitated before remembering her situation. "To the communists. Sounds the same as Revolyutsii, but it's much easier to get into and look like you belong in the theatre than in there. It would be so much easier to get from the theatre to Revolyutsii than just going straight for Revolyutsii."

"So we bypass it and go in from the other side as if we already belong?"

She nodded. "It still won't be easy, but it will be easier." I agreed with this plan and we continued down the decrepit tunnel.

A disheartening tunnel collapse blocked our path, but we noticed an old train carriage in its corner that ran right through. We moved up to it and noticed the flakes of rust that had fallen off the carriage's open door. Someone had been through recently. I illuminated the inside and scared off dozens of spiders that were forming webs across it. The seats were covered in the opaque webbing but the central aisle was nearly completely clear, another sign of someone's presence, hopefully Alex's. Sofia climbed up first and painfully helped me up through the door. As we moved through the occasional spider web, we noticed the skeletons in various positions at their times of death around the carriage. I tried not to think about it but Sofia was clearly having a harder time. I gently pushed her forward and we quickly exited out of the other door. We saw a discarded length of pipe on the floor nearby that was covered in spider webs and had clearly only been left there in the last few hours.

We moved further through the tunnel until Sofia pointed out a door on the right wall and said, "I think that's it."

"Are you sure?"

"No. But it looks like the place I've heard about."

We slowly moved over to it as I asked, "How do you know about this way?"

"I've lived on the Red Line for almost all of my life, that's twenty-three years of hearing stories that other soldiers told my father and brother. The watches would change regularly as people were transferred from station to station. Several of the soldiers mentioned this route that they used to smuggle people into and out of the Red Line."

I was fairly satisfied with this answer and we reached the door. It opened with ease and revealed an unlit and narrow passageway. It showed some level of use, but nothing regular and certainly nothing recently. Alex must have gone straight for Revolyutsii; I was tempted to argue that we should just follow his perceived route, but eventually decided against it after actually thinking about the implications.

The corridor itself was relatively uninteresting, anything of value had been scavenged long ago and all that was left was the decomposing concrete and miscellaneous pipes of the passageway. We were careful and silent as we moved down it, only using my flashlight sparingly so as to try to not alert anyone that might have been coming the other way.

It took some time, but we made it through to a doorway that had no door on its hinges. Instead, a large section of rusting blue scrap metal covered it completely. Holstering my weapon and getting Sofia to shine my light on it, I gently pushed it forward to look through. Warm light flooded in and I could hear the gentle murmurings of a busy station. The passage opened into an old train carriage and the metal 'doorway' had been cut out of its side to disguise it. Quickly, we pushed it opened and rushed in before replacing the cover. We found ourselves overlooking a small alleyway through a cramped area full of hastily constructed but nevertheless large buildings. Making sure all of our weapons and equipment were as non-threatening as possible, we moved to the end of the carriage where an open door led down to the alley. Two Red soldiers rushed past us, not paying attention to anything around them.

Wait. One of them wasn't a Red soldier. His clothes, his run, and his general look seemed familiar. Alex! I turned back to Sofia and quietly but excited said, "That was Alex! Let's follow him!"

"Ok, ok. We can't draw attention to ourselves, though," she quickly replied.

I reluctantly agreed and we briskly walked after them. We quickly lost sight but could hear their loud boots stomping on the ground as they found their way through the tight streets of the wealthy station. We eventually made it to a large entrance hall to the 'Bolshoy' theatre. Alex and his companion had just got past the ticket inspector and moved through the heavy curtains into the theatre.

Without thinking about it, I quickly moved to the back of the five-person long queue and turned to the following Sofia. "I'm going in, I don't mind if you don't want to spend the money to come in as well."

"Nonsense! I've wanted to see this place for ages."

"Me too, you know. I've heard about it from traders, it sounds amazing."

The queue moved relatively fast as those that had been before paid their respective amounts quickly and those that couldn't afford it simply left the queue in a huff. My side was flaring up again from the chase as the quick walking had turned into more of a jog at the end and put some stress on it. I wanted to sit down but there was no seating nearby; Sofia had to help me but quickly realised it looked a bit strange and so linked arms with me to pretend that we were going as a couple. In a couple of minutes, we reached the front.

"Six Bullets," the bouncer said bluntly in his gruff voice as he sized us up. Thinking that it was surprisingly cheap for the remade Bolshoi, I handed him the six bullets and prepared to move on before he put his hand out to stop us. "Each." I was about to complain at the ridiculous price, but Sofia seemed to sense it and quickly handed him six of her bullets so that we could get in without a fuss.

She helped me stagger through the heavy curtain and we came to the large and famous theatre. Despite the reasoning for my presence, I was excited to finally be there. I'd wanted to go there for so long just to experience some old traditional theatre since I was too young to appreciate it before the bombs dropped. We had no idea what was on that day, but it was sure to be something good based on the venue's reputation alone.

We slowly moved through the central aisle and looked for Alex, quickly spotting him on the end of a row towards the middle of the right-hand set of seating. I did want to try and sit next to him, but he was on a row of Red soldiers so there was no way that was going to happen. I worried about what he had gotten himself into. Why was he with those soldiers? Where did he get the weapons and equipment at his feet? Surely he wouldn't have been as crazy as to join the Red Army. I looked at him as I walked by and caught his eye. He was in much better shape than I was expecting, he barely looked different from when I'd last seen him at the hands of the Reich. He seemed slightly world-wearier but otherwise ok. I felt relief at that as he gave me a quick and subtle smile. I knew that we wouldn't be able to talk so I didn't break stride, but I whispered to Sofia amongst the rabble of the crowd, "I saw him. I fucking saw him!"

"Great," she whispered back. "Let's get a seat and plan." I agreed and we found a couple of spaces at the end of a row a couple of rows ahead of him on the left-hand side. She took my bag and AK and helped me sit before placing the bag at my feet and my AK between my legs.

"Thanks for helping me pathetically walk," I said with a grin once we were settled. I glanced back at Alex who was occasionally glancing back at me. I could see that he didn't want to be there but his companion seemed to be plucking up some sort of courage to talk to him.

"Well, you should really be resting all of those wounds, but that's not really an option so this is the next best thing." She warmly smiled and put her arm around me so that we could whisper closer. "Which one is he, then?" I described him and subtly pointed my head in his direction as he chatted to his new friend. "Right. Any ideas?"

"Absolutely none," I said with a sigh. "Looks like he's got himself in with the Reds somehow."

"They're not exactly known for letting people desert."

"Yeah, and I'd prefer it if none of us were executed."

"It would be nice," we both lightly grinned before going into a silence while we thought. "Maybe we should wait until after the show, then see where he goes and see if an opportunity presents itself."

I nodded in vague agreement as I tried to come up with a better plan but came up blank. "Plus, we get to see the show this way," I said with a grin once I finally conceded.

She laughed. "Exactly. Win, win."

We settled in and waited for a few minutes while the final seats filled out. My thoughts drifted to Alex. I was so glad to see him ok, even if I was slightly jealous that I had apparently suffered much greater pain than him. Relief washed over me when I realised that this endeavour wasn't completely hopeless. I'd been through so much to get to him and I was terrified that he might have succumbed to the hardship and misery of the Metro. Through a string of help, my own determination, and ultimately luck, we'd come together in Teatral'naya. Now all we had to do was figure out how to leave together.

Out of a lack of any constructive ideas, I reflected on how much money the theatre must have made. The whole theatre was full and, from what we could work out from overhearing other people's conversations, it seemed as though these performances were regular and often full. I worked out that if 100 people went, slightly fewer than were actually crammed in the theatre, then they would have made 600 bullets for the show. Six hundred. I couldn't fathom that amount of money. Even trying to imagine them split into magazines of thirty didn't make it any less incomprehensible, and even that was much less than what they actually would have made.

After some time, a staff member moved down the aisle and put out the mercury lamps lighting the seating area up and the crowd's chatter slowly subsided. The curtains were slowly drawn with a quiet high-pitched squeak as a jaunty piano tune started up. The open curtain revealed a mostly empty stage with an old grand piano on the right being played by an old man who was relatively well dressed but in darkness and so was quite hard to see. Five scantily clad women entered the stage from either side, all of the same height with the same long black hair and slim build, and began to dance skillfully in a line in time with the fast music as an enticing introduction to the show. They mixed traditional dances with ones that they were clearly more unfamiliar with as they eventually settled into a background dance while a well-groomed and sharply dressed middle-aged man in a suit confidently strode onto the stage.

His deep voice boomed over the music and the tapping of feet behind him. "Welcome, fellow theatre lovers, to my new opera! I have dedicated it to the great Comrade Moskvin in honour of his continued successes in unifying the Metro." I glanced over to Sofia and just managed to catch her rolling her eyes in the extremely dim lighting. "Witness now, the physical and psychological struggle of… One Man and His Demons!" He bowed before leaving the stage, shortly followed by the five women peeling off one-by-one to their respective stage exits.

We were subjected to three long hours of this opera, though it felt like a lifetime as every second ticked painfully by without any respite. We sat through unconvincing actors in terrible costumes trying to play demons, themes that were either so subtle that they were intangible and pointless or were blaringly obvious and simple, and the unintelligible screeching that they tried to pass off as opera singing. I'd heard that opera was hard to understand in the first place, but this didn't seem anything like the old operas that I'd been told of in the real Bolshoi Theatre.

The story followed a man who had a dark past, although they never even hinted at what that past was, who had to live with figurative demons as well as travelling across the surface and fending off real demons. I never did work out what his end goal was. Both the real demons and figurative demons were represented by the same actors so it got quite confusing when, at the end of the play, he pulled a machine gun on a figurative demon and killed it, only to have it come back a scene later as a real one that he somehow killed in the same way. It was clear that neither the director nor the actors had ever come across a real demon and I desperately wanted to correct them on how easy they seemed to think they were to kill. Maybe I was just bitter that we'd paid twelve bullets to get in, but I resented the whole thing.

At the end, the director came back on stage with the entire cast of undeservedly happy actors and signed it off. "Thank you all so much for coming and lighting up this small section of the dark Metro!" He bellowed. "You are all so beautiful and so wondrous! Nothing can hurt us when we share this love!" I thought to myself, I have an AK that begs to differ. "Thank you, Teatr! Thank you!" Him and the entire cast bowed several times before the piano played them off, accompanied by the excited clapping of the crowd's standing ovation, before someone turned on the individual mercury lamps in the aisle.

Sofia and I nodded to each other with determination before quickly standing up and moving into the aisle. She had to help me to my feet slightly, but we made it before anyone else. Alex and I stared longingly at each other as we approached and were pushed to move faster from behind. We reached their row and politely let them go before us so that we could follow directly behind.

Alex's companion was saying complimentary things about the opera before they moved in front of us and said, "Now, onto Okhotny Ryad. You, me, and two others are going with a supply train to Lubyanka from there."

Lubyanka? He couldn't go back there. Surely he only just got out of there alive last time he was there. His noncommittal responses and general demeanour showed that he did not want to go with them.

We tried to follow as soon as they got out of the aisle but the rest of the row barged in front of us, partially due to social conventions but mostly due to the grizzled soldiers' arrogance. Alex and his companion rushed off through the exit of the theatre along with those in front of them. We tried to push through the crowd, but it was difficult to keep sight of them as they moved through opened curtains of the narrow doorway and people started impatiently trying to push through, often accidentally jabbing my side and causing a significant amount of pain that I desperately tried to ignore as we pushed through the arch. The crowd's mutterings seemed to indicate that they were pleased with the so-called opera. I couldn't see how; I thought it was rubbish.

We left the theatre and followed Alex. They got easier to spot as the crowd dispersed across the station's platform to go to their various homes and commitments, but we still had to walk quickly to keep up with their urgency. They moved through the small market area and avoided the various peddlers on both sides trying to rip them off in various ways. Their goal seemed to be a set of escalators on the far side of the station which presumably led to the Teatral'naya-Okhotny Ryad transfer tunnel.

As we closed the gap, I started to overhear their conversation.

"So, as a good communist, I broke the first Nazi's nose as I shot his friend with his own shotgun." Alex said, utterly entrancing his companion in his clearly made up stories. "The final one just ran away once I stared at him for long enough." I found listening in oddly enjoyable, he hadn't changed much and I liked that; life suddenly felt slightly more normal.

We continued to listen to his ridiculous alleged feats and, after a few minutes, the pair reached the open vestibule and began to move up it. By this point, it was only us two following Alex and his escort even relatively closely so we had to move far enough back to not draw suspicion. I noticed the unfamiliar man glancing back at us a few times but I didn't think much of it as we moved through the tunnel that was cluttered with the living areas of the moderately well-off.

After moving up the escalators at the end of the tunnel that led to the station, we emerged in the centre of the station and noticed that, being less of a tourist hotspot, the Okhotny Ryad station was much less well-kept than that of Teatral'naya. The square-patterned ceiling was covered in copious amounts of soot and the whole platform was much more militarised since this station was a part of the actual Red Line and had a direct link the the Nazis. Red Army soldiers were rushing back and forth, trying desperately to complete their jobs before they were reprimanded for being sloths. I took note of the available exits of the station. It was a relatively open platform since few people lived there but the space was mostly taken up by personnel and supplies. Over these, however, I could easily see that there were routes to the surface on both sides of the station through unmoving escalators. A few doors were seemingly randomly placed along the walls across from the tracks of both sides of the station and unfortunately seemed like they were in regular use from their clear pathways and clean hinges.

As soon as we reached the final step up, Alex's companion stepped out in front of us.

"This is a restricted area. Who are you?" He sternly asked. Alex was a few paces behind him, having only just noticed that he had stopped to face us. I noticed he was somehow holding his Bastard gun despite him losing it to the Nazis. No, it was much too clean, it must have been new. He clearly just liked that style of weapon.

Surprised by the confrontation, I hesitated and stuttered before finally saying, "Just travellers. We were exploring Teatr and ended up here."

"Let me see your documents." The man glanced back at Alex, who gave him a smile that thinly veiled worry.

"We'll just go. Sorry for intruding."

I began to walk off but he grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back to him. "Let me see your documents," he repeated with growing frustration. Alex moved towards him as we fumbled for an answer and the man pulled the machine gun from his shoulder, beginning to grip it as threateningly as possible without going as far as to point it at me. He glared at me with a piercing stare of growing anger and mistrust. I pretended to search through my pockets as I thought of a plan, but when neither of us could come up with anything, the soldier said, "Sergei, grab the girl. We'll take them for questioning."

I didn't know who he was talking to until Alex started to move towards Sofia after a moment of himself clearly forgetting as well. Despite the peril, I was oddly proud of Alex for having thought to give a fake name. Alex nodded and held his weapon close as he tentatively approached her. I noticed him slowly and quietly load it with a full clip of military grade rounds behind the soldier's back. He didn't pull the slide back yet as that would cause too much noise. I noticed the blast door at the far end of the station slowly began to open, we could only presume that a surface team was either heading out or coming back. "Any time today would be good," said the impatient soldier still staring at me.

Alex trembled slightly as he lifted his weapon and aimed its wooden stock at the soldier's head. He hesitated for a moment before finally yelling, "Run!" and slamming the heavy stock into the side of his companion's head.

We didn't think about what had happened, we just bolted for the escalators to the surface at the far end of the platform as the soldier collapsed before us. The surprised soldiers all around us fumbled to find weapons that they'd left in various places as they were bored from the previous lack of action. I swung my AK from my back to my hands and held it tight as Sofia pulled out her revolver and Alex clumsily pulled the oddly satisfying slide back on his replacement Bastard. The garrison force got their act together and opened fire as we ducked into a group of large supply crates. The station was awash with officers shouting 'cease fire' as we'd run into the middle of an ammunition dump that could have blown up the entire station.

The crates were in a disorganised mess and made navigating the maze a near impossible task. We had to keep an eye on the ceiling to make sure we were heading in the right direction. We could hear boots stomping around the platform and the various orders being barked by a clearly confusing command chain.

We suddenly exited the supply crates and found ourselves in front of the slowly closing blast door. Two guards stood in our path but a quick burst of fire from my AK soon made them run for cover on one side of the door. They ineffectually fired at us but we kept running, ignoring every instinct telling us to be terrified of the bullets skipping along the ground at our feet from multiple panicked sources.

We made it through the door while it still had a way to go before it was fully closed and charged up the escalators. I fell behind a bit as I couldn't run as fast and I was repeatedly checking the opening. When someone appeared in the narrowing entrance, I fired an inaccurate burst at them, causing two bullets to hit him in one leg. He screamed in pain and collapsed just shy of the doorway, effectively blocking it off as it finally closed. I turned back to follow Alex and Sofia as they were putting their gas masks on while running up the escalator. I did the same, feverishly looking at the door behind me, just in case the Reds began to open it again.

When I reached the very top, the door made pained whines as it began to open, having probably gotten more use than it ever had had before. Alex and Sofia waited for me as they stared at the collapsed road that shouldn't have been at our level. We were in a tunnel that split to the left and right to stairs that led to the street level. The wall that should have been in front of us was completely open and showed that the earth below the road had crumbled and given way so that the road was in an unnatural ditch of radioactive and half-frozen water.

I reached the pair and tried to catch my breath, but we heard shouting from behind the creaking door, so we had to move quickly. We went for the right set of half-intact stairs and rushed up them to street level. The light was nearly blinding again but the numerous grey, depressing clouds stopped us from going completely blind.

I quickly glanced around our surroundings and immediately noticed the Kremlin's walls on my periphery before turning back to face the opposite direction as fast as possible. "Do not fucking turn around. The Kremlin's right behind us!" I commanded, noticing how strange it felt to talk through the muffling gasmask.

Alex nodded but Sofia asked, "Why? What's so bad about the Kremlin?"

"We've only heard stories from our stalkers, but they say that if you look at the Kremlin's stars then you'll go mad or something. I don't really know, but I'm not going to risk it."

She agreed and we moved a small amount down the road before Sofia stopped. "Fucking hell," she exclaimed in awe as she looked directly upwards. "How high does it go?"

"The sky?" I asked between breaths. She nodded, engrossed in the sight, and I just said, "Forever, I think."

Boots started to rush up the escalator down below so I grabbed her arm and said, "We have to go," before pulling her away from her trance and rushing down the still street. Alex followed as we didn't think about where we were going and simply moved away from the Kremlin. We quickly clambered over some rubble that once formed an archway to a side street between destroyed buildings. The blockage wasn't too high but, in my haste and weariness, I slipped on some loose debris, fell onto my back and painfully slid down to the bottom. It hit the bruising around my wound and I winced through the pain as I collapsed to the floor. My breathing became laboured as I noticed my gas mask's visor begin to gather moisture. I lost my energy to move and carry my heavy equipment so I just laid in place and tried to muster up any possible energy.

I could hear the shouting of the Red Army hunters as Alex and Sofia reached me and hurriedly pulled me up to my feet by my arms. Alex pulled my arm around him and hauled me down the narrow street as Sofia searched for anywhere to briefly hole up. I let out a heavy cough and realised that my mask's filter must have been wearing down. We staggered to the end of the street and came to a once-grand five storey apartment building. None of its windows were in place and most of its architecture was unrecognisable but we could tell that the brickwork was once very impressive. As it stood, however, it was simply one of the more intact buildings in the area.

Sofia shoulder barged through the wooden front doors which broke apart with ease and surprised her. She pulled out her revolver and quickly scanned the entrance hallway before beckoning us into the safety. My coughing was getting heavier, more frequent, and more painful as my sight was being obscured by more condensation across my visor. We stumbled through the doorway as Sofia moved through the decrepit reception and checked out the first room. She jimmied open the flimsy door and quietly called us in once she'd quickly checked that it was clear. We moved into the surprisingly small living area. The whole thing had been looted of any electrical equipment and everything else had been ruined by whoever had done it.

Alex eased me onto the dilapidated sofa and crouched to my level as I continued coughing. "What's up with you, man?" He asked with concern

I struggled and wriggled uncomfortably to get my bag off and push it towards him. Between my deep coughs, I managed to say, "Filter… In there… Please."

He quickly understood and reached into my bag to find the small filter at the very bottom. I held my breath as he quickly unscrewed the filter on my gas mask and replaced it with the new one. The sound of the plastic rubbing up against plastic was amplified in my gas mask to the point where it was uncomfortably loud. As soon as the filter was sealed in place, Alex gave me a concerned thumbs-up and I took in a much air as possible as I held my chest and sank into the sofa.

"Thanks," I weakly said after I'd taken a few breaths. It took just over a minute of concerned silence, but I eventually stood up and smiled with glee at Alex, though he couldn't see much of it through the mask. I spread my arms open and moved into a big hug, our gas masks' filters collided at first but we navigated around them and simply embraced until my wound got too painful and I had to stop and sit back down as I groaned a little. "It's so fucking good to see you," I said as I relaxed slightly.

"Same, man. I can't believe we finally found each other." He glanced over my slightly pathetic situation and said, "No offence, but you look like shit. What happened to you?"

I let out a small laugh. "You know," I showed him each of my wounds chronologically as I went through each of them, "Nazis, demons, watchers, bandits, fights to the death. The usual."

He sat down next to me and briefly examined each of them. "Christ. I'm so sorry, Ilia. I can't believe I got you into this."

"It's alright. When we get back, consider us even for you putting up with me all of these years." I smirked, though he couldn't see it, as I noticed him glance up at Sofia. "Sorry, you guys haven't met. This is Sofia."

"Nice to meet-" He cut himself off as he showed a look of deep thought and confusion. "Sofia?" She nodded tentatively. "Ever been to Lubyanka?"

She glanced at me and I shrugged with confusion. Where's he going with this?

She hesitated but nervously said, "I used to live there. Why?"

"Sofia Fedorova?"

Her eyes briefly widened. "How do you know that?"

"You're the daughter of Mikhail and Elena, and Boris's sister?!"

"Yeah. How on earth do you know them?"

"They helped me out at Lubyanka and asked me to make sure you were safe. Really nice people."

She moved closer to him and lowered herself down to our level on the sofa. "They're ok?! That's great news!"

"As fine as they can be in Lubyanka. How did you and Ilia even come across each other?"

I was going to give a modest recollection of the story, but Sofia jumped in before I got a chance to speak. "In Kitay-Gorod, a horrible place by the way, there's a fighting ring where the contestants fight to the death." Alex glanced at me with an eyebrow raised. "I don't know what they win normally, but Ilia fought the best fighter they'd ever had. It was so tense with punches and kicks flying all over the place, but Ilia had him on the ropes. That's when the guy pulled a fucking knife on him, totally against the rules by the way. Luckily, Ilia was prepared with his own knife, so they fought like that for a while until Ilia beat the shit out of him and won me my freedom from the horrible station leader."

Alex nodded along as he listened intently before looking over to me. "Damn, Ilia. That's pretty cool."

I shrugged. "It did also fuck me up even more than before."

"Yeah, he's had a rough time," Sofia added.

"I can see that," Alex replied, looking me up and down once more. "How are you holding up?"

"I'm conscious right now and that's all that matters," I answered, realising that there wasn't much point in complaining right now since nothing could be done. "We should move off soon, I don't know how long we have left on these filters."