13th February 2013

It took the best half of a day to make it back down that godforsaken tower, mainly because a few of the braver demons tried to get back to their roosts. I wasted almost twenty of my precious Volt Driver rounds trying to kill one of the bastards before Artyom put a knife through its eye from twenty metres away.

He's a good kid that one and I still can't believe this boy who stumbled into our organisation only a few days ago is soon to be…actually scratch that, is a Ranger now. I see a bit of myself in him, as I was twenty years ago, stumbling into a new and frightening world that seemed so big and dangerous.

And yet he has something I didn't twenty years ago, besides an ability to stay quiet and pensive when I would probably have ranted into my battered journal for hours, and that's wisdom beyond his years. I could tell as soon as I set eyes on him that there was something special about him. It wasn't by his clothes, which were battered and torn from both mutant and human attack, or his size, which was scrawny to say the least, but the man's eyes. They looked more like those of a seasoned veteran than a young man, with the look of one who has seen enough bloodshed to last a lifetime, yet has come out of it with his life, and sanity, intact.

Last time I saw someone with eyes like that was one of my old squad mates as he rushed toward the biomass infected form of our former commander, with a machete in hand.

It was only when we reached the bottom of the tower as it grew dark that Artyom spoke.

"We should bury them." He said simply as we walked across the ash strewn rubble.

I didn't even need to look where the boy was pointing to know who he was talking about.

My rangers.

Five of them, all good men, who I would soon have the unenviable task of telling their families about.

It took another hour for us to dig their graves, after taking any bullets or supplies from them, and a quick ceremony, in which I placed a single military grade round on top of each man, all buried with their weapons like the great warriors of old.

It was only when we heard the sound of demons on the horizon that we moved, after about five minutes of silent contemplation, back toward the surface entrance we had used to get here.

From where we are now, in a small service corridor just off one of the main tunnels back to Polis, it's another day's walk to get home. There was no way we could cover the distance quick enough to outrun any of the mutant packs that still, despite my men's best efforts, roam these tunnels. Artyom is asleep at the moment and I have first watch. The boy deserves some sleep after the ordeal we had to put hi m through to save us but now, as I sit writing this down, listening to the rumble of a railcar in a distant tunnel, my thoughts turn back to D6.

It has been twenty years since I first left it, and only a day since I left it again. And yet, although both times I managed to escape unharmed, I still have unfinished business there. I owe it to all those who perished there needlessly. Men like Vasily and Delov, Talos and Dakker, even that deranged fool Vlasov who tried to kill us, all of them will have died in vain if I don't make an effort to take the Order down there in force to cleanse the monsters that overran it all those years ago.