Metro 2033

Life was so meticulously arranged here, and VDNKh had established such a reputation for it that there were many wishing to live there. But it was very rare for outsiders to be taken into the settlement.

There was a few more hours until his night shift at the tea-factory and Artyom, not knowing what to do with himself, trudged over to see his friend Zhenya, the same one with whom he undertook the headspi

At the begi

Old age and feebleness were getting ever closer, and there was less and less time remaining, and he needed to hurry, but all the same it would be hard to pull off. Task followed task and he couldn’t find anyone to take over his work, no one to trust with his co

Artyom knew that his stepfather, despite showing fatherly love towards him, didn’t think of him as his successor in professional matters and mostly thought of Artyom as a nitwit, and completely undeserving of such responsibility. He didn’t take Artyom on long expeditions, ignoring the fact that Artyom had grown up and could no longer be persuaded that he was still too young and that zombies would drag him off or rats would eat him. He didn’t understand expressing a lack of confidence in Artyom had pushed the boy into desperate escapades for which Sukhoi had to punish him afterwards. He had probably wanted not to subject Artyom to the senseless mortal danger of wandering the metro but allow the boy to live the way Sukhoi wanted to live himself: in peace and safety, working and raising children, not wasting his youth u

He was drawn to adventure, wanted to be carried along like tumbleweed in the tu

And the hunter wasn’t mistaken in his choice.

Luckily, Zhenya was at home and now Artyom could pass the evening discussing the latest gossip and having conversations about the future over strong tea.

‘Great!’ his friend exclaimed in response to Artyom’s greeting. ‘You’re also on night duty at the factory today? They put me there too. I’m so sick of it that I wanted to ask the boss to switch me. But if they put you with me then that’s fine, I can handle it. You were on patrol today, right? Well, tell me! I heard that you had a state of emergency there. What happened?’

Artyom cast a sidelong look at Zhenya’s younger sister with great emphasis as she had become so interested in the conversation that she had stopped stuffing mushroom waste into the ragdoll that her mother had sewn for her, and was watching them with bated breath and round eyes from the corner of the tent.

‘Listen, little one!’ Zhenya said strictly, having understood what Artyom meant. ‘You, now, go on, get out of here with your little thing and go and play at the neighbours’. I think Katya invited you over. We have to be nice to the neighbours. So, go on, and take your dollies with you.’

The little girl squeaked indignantly and started to gather her things with a gloomy look on her face, meanwhile making suggestions to her doll, who was blankly looking up at the ceiling with her semi-erased eyes. ‘You think you’re so important! I know everything anyway! You’re going to talk about your mushrooms!’ she said contemptuously as she left.

‘You, Lenka, are still too small to discuss mushrooms. The milk on your lips hasn’t even dried yet!’ Artyom put her in her place.

‘What’s milk?’ the girl asked, puzzled, touching her lips.

But neither of them bothered to explain and the question hung in the air.

When she left, Zhenya fastened the flaps of the tent and asked, ‘Well, what happened? Go on, spill it! I’ve heard quite a lot about it already. One guy says that a huge rat crawled out of the tu

‘Don’t believe anyone!’ Artyom advised. ‘They’re all lying. It was a dog. A little puppy. Andrei the marine picked it up. He said that it was a German Shepherd.’ Artyom smiled.

‘Yeah but I heard from Andrei that it was a rat!’ Zhenya said, perplexed. ‘Did he lie on purpose or what?’

‘You don’t know? That’s his favourite catchphrase – the one about the rats the size of pigs. He’s a comedian, you see,’ Artyom responded. ‘So what’s new with you? What have you heard from the boys?’

Zhenya’s friends were traders, delivering teas and pork to the market at Prospect Mir. They brought back multivitamins, cloth, all sorts of junk, sometimes they even got hold of oil; sometimes they’d bring dirt-stained books, often with pages missing, which had mysteriously ended up at Prospect Mir, having travelled through half the metro system, passing from one trunk to the next, from one pocket to the next, from one merchant to another, before finally finding their rightful owners.