The stalker made several test shots at the bubbling mass, but with no success. Then he told the fighter armed with the flame-thrower to remove the backpack with the fuel from his shoulders and, when told to, toss it as far as possible from the train. Having ordered two others to direct their flashlights on the spot where the backpack would fall, he prepared to fire and gave the go-ahead. Spinning in place, the fighter hurled the backpack and almost flew right after it himself, barely managing to hold on to the edge of the roof. The backpack flew into the air and began to fall about fifteen metres from the train.

‘Get down!’ Melnik waited until it touched the pulsing, oily surface, and squeezed the trigger.

Artyom watched the backpack’s flight while stretched out on the roof. As soon as the shot rang out, he hid his face in the fold of his elbow and grasped the cold armour with all his might. The explosion was powerful: Artyom nearly flew off the roof as the train rocked. A dirty, orange glow of blazing fuel splashing along the platform reached his blinking eyes. Nothing happened for a minute. The squelching and chomping of the quagmire did not weaken, and Artyom was already preparing for it to recover from the annoying unpleasantness and begin to envelop his mind again. But instead, the noise began gradually to move further away.

‘It’s leaving! It’s leaving!’ Ulman bellowed right beside his ear. Artyom lifted his head. In the light of the flashlights he could clearly see that the mass, which recently had occupied nearly the whole huge hall, was shrinking and retreating, returning to the escalator.

‘Hurry!’ Melnik jumped to his feet. ‘As soon as it slides down, everyone behind me, right to that tunnel!’

Artyom was surprised how Melnik could be so certain, but he wasn’t about to ask, having put the stalker’s previous indecisiveness down to whatever had been controlling his mind. Now the stalker was transformed. He was again the sober, decisive commander who did not put up with any arguments. Not only was there no time to think about it, but he didn’t even want to. The only thing that now occupied Artyom was how to get out of this damned station as soon as possible before the strange being that dwelled in the Kremlin’s basements recovered its wits and returned in order to consume them. The station no longer seemed marvellous and beautiful to him. Now everything here was hostile and repulsive. Even the workers and peasants looked down in outrage from its wall panels. They still smiled, but it was strained and sickly sweet.

Having jumped pell-mell to the platform, they tore to the opposite end of the station. Anton had come to completely and ran as fast as the others, so that now nothing was delaying the party. After twenty minutes of mad racing through the black tunnel, Artyom began to gasp, and even the others had begun to tire. The stalker allowed them to slow to a quick march.

‘Where are we going?’ Artyom asked, overtaking Melnik.

‘I think right now we are beneath Tverskaya… We should exit soon toward Mayakovskaya. We’ll sort it out there.’

‘But how did you know which tunnel to enter?’ Artyom was curious.

‘It was shown on the map we found at Genshtab. But I only recalled that at the last moment.’

As they arrived at the station, everything flew from their heads. Artyom pondered. Had his delight with the Kremlin station, with the pictures and the sculptures, and its space and magnitude come to nothing? Or was it some trickery, evoked by the terrible entity lurking in the Kremlin? Then he remembered the disgust and fear that the station had inspired in him when the drug had dissipated. And he began to doubt that these were his real feelings. Maybe the ‘doodlebug’ forced them to feel an irresistible desire to run from there at breakneck speed when they caused it pain? Artyom was no longer sure of his true feelings. Did a monstrous creation of his mind release him or did it continue to dictate thoughts to him and inspire his emotional experiences? At what moment did Artyom fall under its hypnotic influence? And was he sometimes free to make his own choices? And could his choice ever be free? Artyom again recalled the meeting with the two strange residents of Polyanka.

He glanced back: Anton was walking two paces behind him. He no longer badgered anyone about what happened to his son. Someone had already told him. His face had hardened and gone dead, his gaze was turned inward. Did Anton understand that they were only a step away from rescuing the boy? That his death had become a ridiculous accident? But it had brought the others through. Accident or victim?

‘You know, we all most likely were saved only thanks to Oleg. It is because of him that you… regained consciousness,’ he said to Anton, not specifying how this had come about.

‘Yes,’ Anton agreed indifferently.

‘He told us that you served in the rocket forces. Strategic.’

‘Tactical,’ Anton replied.

‘The “Tochka” and the “Iskander”.’

‘And multiple fire systems? “Smerch”, “Uragan”?’ having held back a little, the stalker, who had been listening to their conversation, asked.

‘I can operate those, too. I was a career soldier, and they taught it to us. And everyone was interested in it. Everyone wanted to try it. Until I saw what it led to.’

There was not the smallest sign of interest in his voice, and there was no uneasiness regarding the fact that his secret was known to strangers. His answers were short, mechanical. Melnik, nodding, again moved away from them, going on ahead.

‘We need your help very much,’ Artyom said, carefully testing the waters. ‘Understand, we have terrible things happening at VDNKh,’ he began. And he immediately stopped short: after what he had seen in the last twenty-four hours, what happened at VDNKh, however awful, didn’t seem like anything exceptional, capable of overwhelming the metro and finally destroying man as a biological species. Artyom considered this thought, and reminded himself that it could be coming from the strange entity. ‘We have some creatures getting through from the surface,’ he continued, having collected his thoughts. But Anton stopped him with a gesture.

‘Just say what has to be done, and I will do it,’ he uttered colourlessly. ‘I have the time now… How can I return home without my son?’

Artyom nodded nervously and walked away from the man leaving him along with his thoughts. Now he felt unclean, seeking help from a man who had just lost a child… He had been deprived of him through his, Artyom’s, fault…

He caught up with the stalker again. Melnik was clearly in a good mood. Having left the party stretched out behind him, he was humming something to himself and, seeing Artyom, smiled at him. Listening to the melody Melnik was trying to reproduce, Artyom recognized that very song about the sacred war they had been singing on the roof of the train.

‘You know, at first I decided this is the song for our war with the dark ones,’ he said, ‘and then I understood that it is about fascists. Who composed it? The communists from the Red Line?’

‘This song is already about a hundred years old, if not a hundred and fifty.’ Melnik shook his head.

‘They composed it first for one war, then adapted it for another. It’s good that it is suitable for any war. As long as man is alive, he will always deem himself to be the light of the world, and consider his enemies as the darkness. And they will be thinking like that on both sides of the front,’ Artyom added to himself. ‘Whatever it means.’ His mind again flashed to the dark ones. ‘Maybe it means that people, let’s say the VDNKh inhabitants, are the evil and darkness for them?’ Artyom thought better of it and forbade himself to think of the dark ones as ordinary enemies. If one open the door for them only half way, nothing would hold them back…

‘So you were saying about this song that it is eternal,’ Melnik unexpectedly spoke. ‘That dawned on me, too. In our country all eras are much the same. Take people… You won’t change them in any way. They’re as stubborn as mules. So, it would seem the end of the world is already at hand and you cannot go outside without an anti-radiation suit, and every kind of trash that earlier you only saw at the cinema has multiplied… No! You don’t impress them! They’re the same. Sometimes it seems to me that nothing has ever changed. Well, I visited the Kremlin today,’ he smiled wryly, ‘and I was thinking: there’s not even anything new there. I’m not even certain when they hit us with this crap: thirty years ago or three hundred.’