Metro 2033

‘Wow, look at them.’

Pavel extended the field binoculars to him and waved his hand in the appropriate direction. Artyom pressed the binoculars to his eyes and looked over the city until Pavel pointed him in the right direction. The Botanical Gardens and VDNKh coalesced into one, dark impassable thicket, among which rose the peeling white cupolas and roofs of the Exhibition’s pavilions. Only two gaps were left in this dense forest, a narrow path between the main pavilions (‘Glavnaya Alleya’ Pavel whispered timidly) and this. A huge patch had formed right in the middle of the Gardens, as if even the trees had drawn back in disgust from an unseen evil. It was a strange and repulsive sight: a large city like a gigantic life-giving organ, pulsing and quivering, that stretched out for several square kilometres. The sky gradually was being painted with morning colours, and this terrible tumour was becoming ever more visible: a living membrane entangled with veins, tiny black figures crawling out of cesspool exits, ru

‘I have it! There’s a signal!’ Ulman began to yell cheerfully on seeing them. ‘We have comms! The colonel is turning the air blue, he’s asking where we were earlier.’ He was pressing the headphones to his head, listened some more and added, ‘He says everything is even better than we had thought. They found four installations, all in excellent condition. They had been preserved… In oil, beneath a tarpaulin… He says Anton is a hero. He’s familiar with it all. They’ll be ready soon. We have to report the coordinates. He sends you greetings, Artyom!’

Pavel unfolded the large map of the area that had been divided into quarters and, looking through the binoculars, began to dictate the coordinates. Ulman repeated them into the microphone of his radio.

‘We’ll seal up the station itself too in any case.’ The fighter consulted the map and called out several more digits. ‘That’s all, they’ve got the coordinates, now they’ll do the aiming.’ Ulman removed the earphones and rubbed his forehead. ‘It’ll still take some time, your missile man there is the only one who knows how. But that’s nothing, we’ll wait.’

Artyom took the binoculars and again went out onto the balcony. Something had dragged him to this disgusting anthill, some oppressive feeling, an intangible and inexpressible anguish, like something heavy pressing on his chest, not allowing him to breathe deeply. The black tu

‘That’s all! It’s taken off! The colonel says wait for the greeting! Now we’re going to fry these black bitches of yours!’ Ulman yelled.

And at that moment the city beneath their feet vanished, the sky disappeared into a dark abyss, the happy cries behind his back abated – and there remained only one empty black tu

‘You are the chosen one!’ The world had been turned upside-down. In those unfathomable eyes he suddenly saw in a fraction of a second the answer to everything that had, for him, been left incomprehensible and inexplicable. The answer to all his doubts, hesitations and searches. And the answer turned out not to be what Artyom had been expecting.

Having disappeared into the gaze of the dark one, he suddenly saw the universe with its eyes. New life was being reborn and hundreds and thousands of individual minds were being joined together into a single whole… The resilient black skin allowed the dark one to endure both the scorching sun and the January frosts, the soft telepathic tentacles enabled it to caress any creation and to painfully sting an enemy, and it was totally immune to pain… The dark ones were the true inheritors of the ruined universe, a phoenix that had risen from ashes of mankind. And they possessed a mind – inquisitive, living, but completely unlike the human mind.

But, somehow, it co

He understood that there was nothing dividing people and the dark ones. He understood they were not competing for survival but were two organisms intended by nature to work together. And together – with man’s technical knowledge and with the ability of the dark ones to overcame perils – they could take mankind to a new level, and the world, having ground to a halt, could continue to rotate about its axis. Because the dark ones were also part of mankind, a new branch of it, born here, in the ruins of a megalopolis swept away by war. The dark ones were the consequence of the final war, they were the children of this world, better adapted for the new terms of the game. And they sensed man not only with their customary organs, but also with tentacles of consciousness. Artyom recalled the mysterious noise in the pipes, he recalled the savages who could cast a spell with only a glance, and the revolting mass in the heart of the Kremlin that could assault one’s reason… Man had not been able to cope with their influence on the mind, but it was as if the dark ones were created for it. Only they needed a partner, an ally… A friend. Someone who could help establish communications with their deaf and blind elder brothers – with people. And so began the long, patient search for an intermediary, a search crowned with luck and delight, because such an interpreter, the chosen one, had been found. But, before contact had been established with him, he disappeared. The tentacles of the Commoner looked for him everywhere, sometimes grabbing him in order to begin discourse, but he, afraid, tore away and ran. But he had to be supported and rescued, stopped, warned of the danger, urged on and again taken home where communication with him would be especially strong and clear. Finally, contact could become established and then the chosen one could another timid step towards understanding his mission. His fate. He had been intended for this because he had opened the door to the metro, to the people and to the dark ones.