Khan
I seem to be on a roll atm, I have pumped out three chapters for three stories in a week, anyway I know this one has been a long time coming but it's finally here and I have the plot written in concrete for the next few chapters. So I hope you enjoy this story, I really do appreciate feedback on things so if you could review and tell me what you liked what you didn't even if you're not a fan of the Metro Universe. I don't own Metro Universe but I do own Spartak and Svetlana.
Svetlana and I ran through the streets of Novokuznetskaya towards Simon's workshop in hope that he could help us escape the station. When we arrived at Simon's I banged on the door as hard as I could. It took him a few seconds to answer the door but I felt like I was being hunted down so I kept jumping at every sound I could hear in the street. Svetlana was still teary and did not speak to me for the entire trip to Simon's. When he answered the door Svetlana and I shot inside. He asked us what had happened and where our mother was. I told him that we needed to get out of Novokuznetskaya and that my mother had been killed. Telling him this caused me to well up and he fell back in his chair, he then asked who had done it. I told him Igor had done it, I could see the rage build up on his face, I assured him that nothing he could do would change my mother's death so he should help us escape. He told me that the tunnel to Oknotny Ryad had collapsed so I would need to get onto the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line and take the tunnels to Turgenevskaya, where there would be people who will help us escape. I nodded to him as he passed me a cloak which I gave to Svetlana, and we left his workshop together.
To get onto the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line we would need to get into Tretkayovskaya. However since my mother's death I assumed that Igor would have stepped up the security in that area to prevent mine and Svetlana's escape. I knew we needed to gain access to the ventilation shafts that ran the length and breadth of the station, including into Tretkayovskaya. Luckily from my time in the station I knew there were some pretty easy access points into the ventilation from Novokuznetskaya. One of which was above Igor's house, it seems funny that my main avenue of escape as in my captors back yard. Svetlana and I made our way through the desolate streets trying not to make our presence known to the population who would undoubtedly sell us out to Igor if they had the chance. We kept a low profile as we shifted the few hundred metres to Igor's house. Once there I noticed there were a few men standing outside his house, they had empty bottles of Shroom Vodka so they were very drunk. I crept behind them and Svetlana followed me closely they had revolvers in their hands and one of them was banging on the door of Zhanna Myshkin, she was not answering because she had fled to stay with family in VDNKh. Yet the men still protested their love to her in their own way, I did not complain they made it easy for Svetlana and I to get into the ventilation shafts.
As we crawled in the shafts I could hear the sounds of the men outside Zhanna's house for what seemed like miles, it look around half an hour of crawling to reach Tretkayovskaya. The shafts were full of the toxic glowing mushrooms and the regular oversized radioactive rats that we had become used to in the metro. As the sounds of the men drowned out into the bleakness of the metro I could begin to hear the sounds of Tretkayovskaya it sounded a lot busier probably because it actually had people.
When the vents started to unveil to us the true extent of what was happening in Tretkayovskaya I was appalled, the station was a lot larger than Novokuznetskaya but Igor's goons had cordoned off the area for themselves they held the largest roosts and the rich poor divide seemed even more prevalent here than in Novokuznetskaya. I saw some of Svetlana and I's old friends they looked in dreadful condition as if dysentery and flu were running on an almost epidemic level. Worse however I could see Red soldiers giving them supplies in exchange for some of the fighting age men, no doubt to be used on the mass suicide against the Fascists.
We made it down and out of the vents in the female toilets that had been transformed into more makeshift housing, these people were literally living in the shit but luckily for us they were too sick to raise an alarm. As we walked through the heaped bodies of the sick I whispered under my breath, along with Svetlana, "Tsarstvo vashi dushi," (God rest your souls).
When we made it out into the main area of platform one where I saw signs telling us how to get to the orange Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line, it indicated going from platform one down to two through a small stairwell. There was a small catch Igor's guards were blocking off the stairwell down to the platform as it was flooded.
I looked at Svetlana who no longer looked depressed she just had a look of hatred in her eyes, as we made our way over to the guards Svetlana picked up pace and overtook me but as she got closer to the guards I saw her purpose and stopped. She had a small silvery razor blade in her hand as she walked up to the guard he didn't raise he weapon and she slammed the blade into his abdomen when the second realised what had happened it was too late as she then did the same to them. Their bodies laid on the floor groaning looked like another person in the building so no one took any notice leaving us to go down the staircase into the abyss.
We made it down the first flight of stairs but when we looked down the second it disappeared into the black murk of the waters below, I looked over to Svetlana, "It shouldn't run on for very long these tunnels are higher up than the ones around Novokuznetskaya," I told her softly as I leapt into the water. As I swam down I didn't know if she had followed me but I just kept swimming till I could reach the surface, it took about three minutes for me to finally surface at the other side. I waited for Svetlana who didn't seem to surface, I waited for what seemed like hours for her to come up but there was no sign of her. I could faintly see some gold shimmering in the water, it took me a few seconds to realise that it was infact Svetlana's hair. I dived down to get her, I grabbed onto her hand in the murk and pulled her to the surface she had caught herself on the brickwork on the surface of the tunnel and lost consciousness. I dragged her up onto the dry tracks and immediately began doing CPR on her to try and get her to breathe, it took a few minutes for it to work but eventually she did cough up a lot of water.
As she sat coughing I noticed that she had a cut on her leg and we would need to get it treated. She however disagreed, "I'm fine, I can take care of myself!" She shouted at me. She had never snapped at me before I did not know what I had done wrong nor did I know how to rectify it. I looked around in the dark not knowing where the hell I was, but in the distance I could make out a dim light, 'a service hatch' I thought to myself. I got up and moved towards it. As I got closer I could see it was a small grey tin with a makeshift light attached to it probably set up by Hanza or the Order but I still knew it would contain supplies. I ran up to it, I could hear Svetlana's footsteps behind me so I knew she couldn't be that annoyed at me, as I pried the lid off the tin I only found an old army flashlight a couple of batteries inside it. The flashlight worked but spare batteries are also useful.
I turned it on illuminating the tunnel with fresh light, there was some writing on the wall, Китай Город, в пятистах метрах (Kitay Gorod, five hunfred metres), I now knew we were on the right track. I kept the light moving around the tunnel keeping any creatures at bay I made sure that for the most part both Svetlana and I were partially lit up so the creatures knew we were together, as they rarely attack groups of people.
As we approached Kitay Gorod (China Town), I noticed the light on the flashlight was going a bit dim, "Hold up, I need to swap the batteries," I told Svetlana, she did not reply. But as I sat fiddling trying to get the batteries out of the flashlight, the creatures were drawing in; I could feel their breath and smell it too. The stench of rotten flesh was unbearable but I still couldn't get in new batteries. Suddenly I heard Svetlana scream and a knock on my left side, I banged the batteries into place on the wall and turned on the flashlight. A creature had Svetlana pinned not three feet away from me, I raised my Makarov but the creature swiped me just as I pulled the trigger causing the bullet to wiz off into a pipe. Just as I took aim at the creature again a hand pushed down on my hands causing me to lower my gun and a man in a brown fur coat stepped past me towards the creature with a silver cross in his hands chanting in a foreign tongue. Whatever and whoever it was it worked as the creature scattered and so did any sign of what was in the tunnel around us.
"Thank you," Svetlana told the man as he helped her to her feet.
"It was nothing child, but may I ask why you are here? It is far from any Kvartirnaya stantsiya (home station)," The man asked her as I stood shaking next to them.
"We had to get to Turgensevskaya," Svetlana replied, seemly unaltered from the experience.
The man looked intrigued by her response, "Why would you want to go there?" He continued to question in a hypnotically reassuring voice.
"A friend of ours Simon, told us it was safe there," she replied confidently.
The man looked puzzled, "Turgensevskaya is far from safe my dear child," He began, "Do you know what it's nickname is?" He queried. Svetlana shook his head. "I thought as much, it's known as Cursed Station because of how many times it comes under attack. What exactly did Simon was it? Tell you?"
I could see Svetlana open her mouth but I butted in, "That there was someone at Turgensevskaya who could help us get to a safe place."
"Interesting," The man told them, "I think this is your lucky day, I am Khan Aitmatov, Simon is an old acquaintance of mine, clearly he is in dire need if he wanted you to come here."
We walked through the tunnels explaining our story to Khan, Svetlana stayed in his shadow and I stayed by his right side. Although it was fluent in russkiy, he didn't have a Russian complexion at least not a western Russian look, he looked Asian maybe Mongol.
Eventually they reached the torch lit hell hole that was Turgensevskaya, the Cursed Station. The lower reaches of the station seemed fine cordoned off by thick bunker walls and immovable objects but the actual platform was the place of purgatory, where souls could be sent to the depths of hell or the gates of heaven. The brave men who stood guard seemed weary of our arrival until Khan released his rucksack to them unveiling confectionary and trinkets from far away stations, these must have been like what European crowds were like when traders returned along the silk road. We didn't go down into the depths of the station where hell seemed to be the common theme instead Khan told us, "We need to surface, we need Christye Prudy."
I hope you enjoyed the chapter, I am now trying to update more regularly but we'll see how well that one goes. Please review and tell me how I can improve the story as I enjoy reading the feedback but Until the next chapter….. PEACE!