Chapter 13: Restitution

Ilia – Day 2 – 19:12

So close. We were so close to home. I still couldn't believe that we were moving away from Hansa once again. Why did I think that we would get through while missing two passports? That was stupid of me. I must have just hoped that the world would be on our side and grant us entry despite Hansa's reputation with stringent borders.

With our spirits low, we trudged through the tunnel back to Mayakovskaya, having initially intended to simply go up to the surface from Belorusskaya and finding out that the exit had been completely blocked by the station's owners for safety purposes. We were nervous about the potential resurgence of the spiders, but we gave any doorways a wide berth and managed to avoid them.

Soon, we were approaching the empty station once more. Except this time it wasn't empty. I stopped the others and turned my flashlight off as we reached the end of the tunnel. In the centre of the platform, the campfire had been lit. The flame's warm orange light flickered seductively across the station. A man was sat cross-legged next to it facing us and idly smoking a fresh cigarette. He had no possessions to speak of and his dark vest and trousers were ragged and dirty. His greying hair had once been shaved but was starting to come through on top of his filthy middle-aged head.

I watched him for a moment, trying to discern whether he was a threat or not, until Sofia whispered, "What do you see?"

Confused at this man's presence, I replied, "He's just… sitting there." There was something strange about him. He seemed completely at peace and unafraid of the deserted station. He wistfully stared up at the ceiling and blew the occasional smoke ring.

"Who's-", Alex began, but I shushed him when the man shuffled in place. It wasn't threatening, but any movement put me on edge.

"You two stay here and keep an eye out," I said as I began to move towards him. "I'm going to see what's up."

While clambering up onto the platform, I heard Alex and Sofia quietly discussing the situation, but I ignored them and hid behind one of the station's pillars. Keeping my revolver ready, I peered around the corner at the man. He hadn't moved, and seemed utterly content with his life. I pulled out my flashlight and looked back at Sofia and Alex to silently communicate my plan to get his attention. They looked incredibly confused, but I continued regardless, knowing that they were nearby if I needed help.

I looked back at the man and quickly flashed my light at him a few times while saying, "Friendly?"

He locked onto my voice and said nothing, but instead simply beckoned me over. I tentatively moved out of cover, clutching my revolver with unease. He continued to beckon impatiently as I slowly approached him. I didn't dare take my eyes off him in case it turned out that he was hiding a weapon of some kind.

Taking another drag of his cigarette, he asked, "What is your name, young man?" His deep voice felt oddly optimistic as he spoke.

Stuttering and floundering, I replied, "I-Ilia," as I reached his fire.

"I'm Matvey. Sit down. Let's have a conversation, no one seems to come by this station anymore." I fought my distrustful instincts and took my place opposite him. "You have no need for that weapon," he said as he lifted his arms. "You see? I have nothing here to threaten you with." I nodded along but didn't let go of my revolver. After a short time of silence, he asked, "What brings you here, Ilia?"

I was about to tell him, but instead responded with, "Is that any of your business?"

"It is no one's business but your own. I am merely curious. You've clearly suffered as a result of your travels." He indicated to my tattered clothes and visible wounds. "I was just interested to see how you got here. You've never known a life other than this one of pain and mistrust, I suppose. Were you even alive before the bombs dropped?"

I nodded gently. "I was. Not for long, though. I don't remember what the world was like before we lived down here."

"Oh, it was wonderful." He looked away as he started to reminisce. "Of course, we didn't realise it at the time. Back when we resented these stations for being overcrowded with busy people on their commutes. It's strange, we sometimes felt as barred from the surface as we do now. Have you been to the surface?" I nodded, listening intently. I enjoyed hearing stories about Moscow before the war. Though, it was always bitter-sweet since I knew that we wouldn't return to that life in my time. "You've seen the number of cars up there, yes? At certain times of the day, those cars would have been just as stationary as they are now, simply because there were so many of them all trying to go to the same places. So, we were forced to use the Metro to get around at any speed." He paused for a moment. "Sorry, I'm rambling." He looked me up and down before saying, "I hope you don't mind me saying this, Ilia, but you strike me as a troubled man."

I was slightly taken aback by the sudden directness of his statement. "What do you mean?" I tentatively asked, unsure of whether I actually wanted to hear the answer or not.

"There's a lot of anger inside you, isn't there? Is it something you've done? No… It's about someone else. You value your friends dearly, that much is clear from the way that you came to me alone and left them in relative safety. You've gone through a lot for them, haven't you? But one doesn't develop bonds like that through a simple life. No, you carry a great weight with you. Outwardly, you believe that it wasn't your fault, but it occasionally creeps into your consciousness that it was. Now, what is 'it', I wonder."

"Ok, stop talking now," I ordered, visibly shaking. How did he know this much about me? Surely as much as he'd said couldn't be inferred from just my appearance.

"Maybe it was your childhood?" He continued, staring into my eyes as if trying to see into my soul. "Were you bullied? Not quite… Or, at least, that wasn't 'it'. What station are you from?"

I nervously swallowed and said, "N- Novoslobodskaya." I felt compelled to tell him, but I wasn't sure why.

"Ah, Hansa! You would have been too young to fight in the war, correct? But your father, there's the story. I can see your life before me now. It's not your father that bothers you, it's your mother. She's the sticking point. I can only surmise that you're so close to at least one of your friends because their family became yours. Yes, that's 'it'."

"You don't want to get into this," I said, starting to grit my teeth.

"I see that this has been something of a sore point for you, hasn't it? I don't know why you feel so responsible for your mother's demise, but you have to realise that it's all a matter of perspective."

I waited for a moment, expecting him to elaborate. "Perspective?" I questioned when he said nothing more. "She's dead. She's not coming back. No amount of fucking empathy is going to change that."

"That is true, but the reasons behind this are always up for debate."

"None of that matters!" I interrupted, getting frustrated with the crazy man. "Here's the facts: my father's dead, my mother's dead, Moscow's dead. A change of perspective can't change the things that I've been through to get to this point. The Nazis, Communists, Monsters and everything else; they're real." I lifted up my shirt to show him my wounds. "This isn't going to change."

Keeping calmer than myself, Matvey responded, "You know that that's not what I'm saying." He seemed to talk down to me like he was a disappointed teacher. "I'm saying that shifting your viewpoint can help you understand why things happen the way they do. Think about all of the people you've met in your travels. Your Nazis, Communists and what have you; they all see things differently to you. As an example; from your point of view, the blame for your mother's death rests nearly entirely on you."

"I knew that something was wrong," I interrupted again. "I should have done something."

Ignoring my interruption, Matvey continued. "Let's see it from Alexandr's perspective instead, or indeed, any of your friends at your home station. What they see is a child put into dire circumstances through no fault of his own." I was about to say something, but he quickly shushed me. "And how about Kira's?"

Confused and worried, I asked, "How do you know my mother's name?"

He ignored me again and spoke through my question. "She was locked in an endless loop. Depression quickly took hold of her when the love of her life never came back, the vodka seemed like the only thing that would keep her sane. When she saw the effect that her drinking was having on you, she fell deeper and deeper until she couldn't take the guilt anymore. The fact that she struggled to provide for you sent her back round in the cycle."

"So you agree with me?" I asked, finally getting a word in. "She was on a knife's edge and I could have done something."

"You were, what? Five, six years old? It was out of your control, it was out of anyone's control but your mother's."

I sat in silence for a moment, contemplating everything that he had just said. "Who are you?" I asked uneasily, confused about how he knew so much about me and my family.

"I don't believe that that's important right now. Just think about what I've said." He pointed behind me. "Your friends appear to be waiting for you."

I quickly turned my head around and saw Sofia and Alex approaching cautiously. "Who are you talking to?" Asked Sofia.

Pointing back at Matvey, I replied, "What do you mean?" Both of them looked between me and Matvey with increasing confusion. I turned back to him, but there was only darkness in his place. Both he and the fire had gone, as if they'd disappeared, leaving only the desolate husk of the long burnt-out campfire. "What the fuck?" I muttered as I leaned forward and hopelessly scrabbled at the floor where he once was to find some semblance of his existence.

"Ilia, you're scaring me," Alex said sternly. "What's going on?"

"He was here, I was talking to him," I rambled.

"Who was here?"

"Matvey! He was talking about perspectives and shit." I turned back to the other two and stood up, panicked. "You didn't see him?" How could they not see him? His fire was as clear as day and he was talking back to me. Were they going crazy?

They shared a worried look before Sofia said, "This place isn't right, let's leave."

We headed for the hermetic door to the surface for, hopefully, the final time. I dwelled on what Matvey had said, regardless of whether he was real or not. Barely paying attention to the outside world, I followed Alex and Sofia's movements as I tried to make sense of him. He knew my mother's name. Did they know each other? Why was he so reluctant to tell me who he was? None of it made sense. I was all too aware of the supernatural in the Metro, but I'd never heard of a ghost conversing with the living. And, if he was a ghost, wouldn't Sofia and Alex have seen him as well? No, this was something very different. Maybe I was in even worse shape than I originally thought and had started hallucinating. It felt too real, though. I could have sworn that I felt the heat of the fire but, looking back on it, I wasn't so sure. Something was very wrong with either the station or my mind.

Alex shoved the AK into my arms, breaking me from my trance, while saying, "We've got a mag each." He threw his bag off and pulled out his Bastard gun once more so that he could transfer the thirty rounds from his AK magazine into the Bastard's. "Just hold it together for us, ok? We'll talk about all of this when we get back."

Still barely paying attention to my surroundings, I replied, "Yeah, sorry. I'll be alright."

Once he was done, he handed me another AK magazine while saying, "This is all of my money. Might as well have it in an emergency since we don't have much ammo overall." I accepted the generous offer, loaded a single bullet of mine to top off the magazine, and put it away, ready for an emergency.

Alex loaded his weapon and pulled back the slide as he determinedly said, "Ready," to Sofia. We all donned our gas masks before she pulled down the lever to set the door's mechanism in motion.

Terrified of the watcher horde that we had so narrowly avoided before, we watched the opening intently as it revealed the few mutants that we had killed on the frozen stairs. We were tempted to leave the door open and simply run for our lives across the surface, but we decided that it was better for the Metro as a whole if we waited for it to fully open and close it once we were outside. We'd heard stories about the brave defenders of Paveletskaya, where the hermetic door to the surface had broken, and we weren't about to make another means of ingress for the surface creatures. Fortunately, no such terrors befell us and we managed to leave the station with relatively little drama.

From Alex's Metro map, we knew the vague direction that we had to travel to get to Novoslobodskaya, so we moved down the main road that Mayakovskaya's entrance was situated on. Based on the station's relative location on the map, we made an assumption that it would be on the next main road. It wasn't destined to be a long walk, but it was paired with the usual nerves and terrors of the surface.

We moved quickly as our filters were well-used by this point and we didn't want to get caught out. It took us ten minutes of tense silence and minimal breathing to reach the first large main road. Carefully, we looked down the huge four-lane road. If anywhere was home to a relatively major station, it had to be this. We didn't like the small amount of cover offered by the spread out decrepit buildings and surprisingly small number of rusting cars, but we took a few steps down the pavement regardless.

One of the taller buildings on the left-hand side had completely collapsed and fallen into the road, unfortunate for us as we were relatively sure that we had to get through it to get to our destination.

About to move forward to see if there was a safe way through, we looked more carefully at the windows of the fallen building. There were countless watchers staring at our small group. We all seemed to notice them at the same time and tense up while raising our weapons. Suddenly feeling very exposed, we silently inched across the huge road to the other side and sped up to move away. We didn't have the ammunition nor the ability to get out of a fight with that pack in one piece.

We sped up our pace and power walked away from the road in any direction that wasn't towards them. A distant howl caused us to speed up into a full-fledged run. As it turned out, the howl wasn't directed at us, but we didn't know that and instead ran for our lives. We didn't take any more left turns for the paranoid fear of more of those creatures appearing to block our path.

The massive road split into three, one raised highway in the centre with a smaller road on the ground either side. The highway was a complete no-go as, unsurprisingly, it had collapsed in a huge number of places. Many of the supports had broken and the bridge structure was broken scattered across the ground.

Sticking to the ground-level road, I noticed Alex's breathing start to become more laboured. None of us had long left, we had to get down fast. I rushed the other two on and found the first right turn to a major road, my thinking being that we'd be much more likely to find a station entrance on a main road than otherwise.

My breathing joined Alex's and I started to find it hard to focus on finding an entrance. The three of us rushed as fast as we could down the road, carefully examining each and every ruined building for any respite. We didn't even care if we found another Nazi station at this point. Alex and I struggled to keep pace as Sofia went ahead to scout the road for us. That was until her filter's luck finally ran out. Coughing and spluttering, she feverishly pointed out a partially collapsed but once impressive redbrick building. Four huge arches made up its face but much of the three storeys above had collapsed in on itself. The red Metro 'M' logos on its front renewed my hope and we rushed to it as fast as we could.

We didn't pay much attention to the fact that the building was likely minutes away from a full collapse and just helped each other to power through the broken glass doors, past the rusting ticket gates, and down the dangerously destroyed escalator. Everything was a blur and I had little recollection of what had actually happened by the time we reached the huge steel sliding doors blocking our ingress. The three of us combined our current pathetic strengths to turn the locking wheel and slide open one of the doors before rushing in and desperately locking it behind us.

We'd made it. Wherever this pitch-black airlock was, we weren't going to die from suffocation. We each ripped our gas masks off and hunched over to cough as loudly and disgustingly as possible just to clear our throats and take in the relatively fresh air.

After nearly ten minutes of this, Alex exhaustedly asked, "Where the fuck are we?"

I reluctantly turned my flashlight on and scanned the area. It seemed deserted, no passport checking desks, no supplies, not even a chair. Just two sets of sliding doors, a few cobwebs, and an open ventilation shaft.

I moved over to the next door and wearily said, "I guess we should have a look."

We moved through the second door and found a very wide set of stairs leading down with dulled brass handrails on each side. At the bottom was a corner that led to the left, to more stairs down and a strangely familiar sight on the right side. The wall was taken up by a huge stained-glass window. The design's colours had faded and several bits of glass had been smashed, but the greenery it showed was still something of a beautiful sight.

"Do you recognise that, Alex?" I asked, not quite being able to place where I'd seen the design before.

With a nervous certainty, he replied, "Yes. You don't?" I shook my head. "It's fucking Tsvetnoy Bulvar. We're back where we started."

I took a step back. "No way," I said in disbelief. Taking a deep breath, I whispered, "Let's be more careful than we ever have. The Nazis could still be here."

"What happens if they are?" Alex quickly whispered back, a distinct fear penetrating through his voice.

"We'll have to go through them somehow. We can't go back to the surface. At least we're only one tunnel away from home."

Alex sighed before cautiously stepping down the stairs. "Ok, let's check it out." We took an extraordinary amount of time to get to the bottom. Alex peered around the corner first and his eyes widened. "I don't think Nazis are going to be a problem here."

Sofia and I joined him and stared down at the massacre. Nazi bodies were strewn across the station, covering it and themselves in their own blood. They weren't killed by bullets however, this was something much worse. Clear signs of biting and feasting were evident across all of them. Some were missing entire limbs whereas others were proudly displaying their entrails to the world. We briefly wondered what could have possibly caused this when Alex turned on his light and illuminated several large holes formed in the station's platform; perfectly round holes that had been dug through concrete and marble. We both immediately knew what this meant.

"Where did those come from?" Sofia asked with distinct worry.

"Lurkers," I said succinctly. "We've run into them before. Think small nosalis. They hide in those tunnels and listen to movement up top, then they pounce on unexpectant prey."

"We'll have to be quiet," Alex added. "Really quiet."

"Just move slowly, avoid the holes, and stick together," I ordered. "We should be ok." I didn't quite believe my own words, but I tried to exude some form of bravado.

Alex and I led the way, holding our rifles with one hand and our flashlights with the other. My AK was heavy on one hand, but I could just about manage to keep it somewhat ready. The massacre was clearly fairly recent, much of the blood was still wet and it was a task to not slip on it when descending the stairs. The scurrying all around us made us twitchily scan each of the dozen holes spaced out around us, our thinking being that they couldn't surprise us if we watched literally every hole. The shadows formed by our lights hitting numerous ruined corpses were frustrating and blocked a lot of our views of the floor.

Sofia's shotgun fired, briefly lighting up the darkened area and scaring both me and Alex shitless. I let out a small scream and turned to see a lurker being blown away in a cloud of its own dark red blood. The brown and hairless mole-like mutant seemed to squeal in its final breath as it hit the station wall and remained still.

After waiting for more to turn up for a moment, Sofia shakily loaded a shell into her weapon and nervously whispered, "Only these two shells left."

We inched across the station, discovering more holes and desperately trying not to turn our backs to any of them. The concentration was exhausting. As I began to feel as though I couldn't keep it up for much longer, we came to the end of the station and moved towards the opening to the tracks so that we could get into the train tunnel to home.

Alex led the way, heading towards the two bodies lying across the relatively narrow gap in the station's wall. He lifted his foot to step over one of the bodies before checking his footing. He froze just before his foot hit the floor. The impatient scurrying beneath us became louder as the creatures seemed to come closer extremely quickly. Alex simply screamed, "Shit!" before a lurker leapt out seemingly from beneath the corpse and attached itself to his leg. Its arms wrapped around his leg as its teeth buried into the thigh muscle. It pulled him down towards the ground as we rushed over to him. I tried to catch him but missed when he completely lost balance in his agonised screams and his face collided with the solid floor, his flashlight and Bastard Gun breaking as they hit the ground at the same time. The vicious crack of his nose breaking sounded through the tunnel and he was suddenly being dragged back. I leapt over the corpse and found Alex halfway down the lurker's hole that was hidden behind the deceased Nazi.

Dropping my flashlight and letting my AK swing freely from its strap, I quickly grabbed Alex's arms and tried to pull him out. Sofia started to help, but upon hearing the screeches of more lurkers about, she picked up my light and watched the other holes for a source. As I pulled on Alex's arms, his torment and suffering only grew, resulting in even louder pained cries. My strength was failing me, he was over halfway into the hole and I couldn't seem to pull him back even slightly. I stopped thinking and put all of my focus into him.

He came an inch towards me. The monster was letting up. With renewed strength, I pulled even harder and felt him come slightly closer. Alex clearly couldn't form any semblance of conscious thought in his agony, but I was winning. I tugged again and again until, finally, the monster let go. Alex came flying towards me, still deafening me with his tortured crying. Nearly falling over from the sudden weight on me, I lay him on the floor and moved to check his leg wound.

The world around me started to come back into focus as I confusedly pawed into the darkness of the station floor. Sofia was standing guard having just shot a lurker in the head with her revolver, her shotgun on her back since it had apparently run out of shells. Three dead lurkers lay before her and everything seemed to quieten down slightly, save for Alex's slightly diminished whimpering. I couldn't check his wounds in the dark, so I asked Sofia to shine her light over us.

I didn't immediately realise what was wrong, I was just confused. Only when I tried to touch his leg in disbelief did I finally accept what had happened.

"Is it bad?" Alex asked with a significant amount of effort.

I had no idea what to say, I was at a loss for words. That lurker had eaten through his leg to the point where it had completely come off. Even further than that, it had clearly had a go at the rest of him as everything up to his stomach was bloody and ruined.

"We need to get you out of here," I said nervously.

Straining to lift his head up, Alex looked down at the rest of his body. Like me, he didn't immediately understand what had happened, but his eyes widened massively as soon as he realised. His head hit the floor again and he started to hyperventilate and swear on every out breath.

"This isn't real, right?" He urgently asked. "It just looks missing, it can't actually be missing. Tell me it's not missing!" His own pain silenced him as he groaned and tried to move a leg that no longer belonged to him.

I moved up to look him in the eyes and, out of not being able to find anything better to do, sternly said, "We're leaving, everything's going to be fine." He quickly nodded through his pain so I turned to Sofia and ordered, "Take my AK and cover me. There should be a safe side passage down the tunnel a little."

She nodded and accepted the weapon. I hauled Alex up, wrapping my arm around his body while he wrapped his own around my neck to support himself. We didn't realise how tough it would be at first, so Sofia had to eschew covering us and help Alex walk by doing the same on the other side.

It wasn't much longer before we reached the side passage that we'd previously used to escape the nosalis horde before we'd been separated. Entering the small maintenance room and lying him down on the dirty sleeping bag, we struggled to think of what to do. I knelt by him and looked him over, tearing up as I did so. His face was pale and he was still bleeding profusely from all of his wounds.

"I don't know what to do," I struggled to say. Sofia quickly retrieved the first aid kit from my bag, but I dejectedly said, "There's nothing in there that can deal with this."

She opened the box up and, after a short rifle through, concluded the same a left it on the ground. "We have to do something though."

Alex coughed, clearly causing himself more pain, and replied in a strained tone, "You two have done enough for me. I think this is it." He'd definitely been thinking deeply about this beforehand.

"No it isn't," I sternly said. "We can get you back, it's not far. There are doctors and a hospital, you'll be fine."

"You know full well how long it took us to get here when we were healthy. Even if we managed it, I'm not going to make it." As he felt around his body to retrieve the small satchel given to him by the communists, he added, "Thanks for everything, but you two will have to go on without me."

Quietly and softly, Sofia asked, "What are you doing?"

He pulled out a small black capsule and said, "Cyanide. It fucking hurts, but it will be quicker."

Almost out of instinct, I firmly grabbed his hand and said, "No. I won't let you."

He fought me a little but didn't have the strength to take it very far. I felt his hand relax in mine as he said, "There's no good outcome here. I die here, or you take me home where I die of infection or blood loss in the hospital. This is easier, trust me."

Tears started to drop onto the floor beneath me and I was struggling to see through my filling eyes. A hand suddenly touched my arm, initially shocking me. It was Sofia, she was looking forlornly into my eyes and silently willing me to pull my hand away from Alex's.

Looking back to Alex, I stuttered and struggled to say, "I can't live without you. I need you in my life. You can't die."

Alex thought for a short moment, his mind still clouded with pain, before replying, "That was more true years ago than it is now. Before all of this, I was even getting jealous of how independent you were getting. Besides, Sofia's here now, right?" I didn't look away from Alex to see her response, but she presumably nodded as Alex looked back to me to say, "You'll be fine."

I sighed as I thought over what he said, slowly letting go of his hand, which he pulled away from mine.

"Thank you," he exhaustedly said. "Take my stuff and go. I'll be alright."

I tried but struggled to look him in the eyes as I snivelled and said, "I'm so sorry. I should've done more earlier."

He shushed me and hurriedly said, "Shut up Ilia, not everything's your fault. You'd blame yourself for World War Three if you could." He gave a weak smile before urging us to leave again. Sofia started to gather his equipment as I begrudgingly picked myself up and left the room.

On the way out, I said, "Thanks for being my friend through everything. I'm going to miss you."

Alex simply replied, "Likewise."

Sofia joined me outside the room and I moved through the small corridor, wrenched open the rusted over door, and exited into the main tunnel through the larger maintenance room containing the now slightly more eaten Nazi corpse. We didn't say a word. I wanted to say so many things, but I knew that we still had to be careful of the tunnels. I'd completely forgotten about my own wounds, focusing instead on my depression. Home was finally within reach, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to go back anymore.

"Why did it have to be him?" I asked, finally breaking our silence as we neared our destination.

"What do you mean?" Sofia asked with concern.

"There are so many terrible people in this place, yet the Metro takes the one person that doesn't fucking deserve it. I deserve it more than he does."

"It's not like the world as a whole decided he should die," she responded uncertainly. "He was just unlucky."

I agreed with an unsatisfied hum. I replayed the entire event in my head again and thought about what I could and should have done differently. Matvey, whoever he was, would have told me to look at a different point of view or change my perception of the events. I wasn't sure that I even understood the point that he was making. On some level, I wanted to talk to Matvey again. Fuck going back to Mayakovskaya though.

Perhaps this one wasn't my fault. Maybe it was his time. It didn't make losing him any easier, but Alex seemed to think that I shouldn't blame myself for it. Who was I to argue? My head hung low throughout the rest of the journey, but I noticed that it was from simple and comprehendible sadness rather than the normal complex guilt which, in some strange way, was almost uplifting.