‘Me and Zhenya signed up to join the caravan to Rizhskaya today, to help them get across, and we’ll start unwinding the cable from there,’ Artyom replied, suddenly realizing that he’d just decided to go. At that thought something broke inside him, he felt a strange lightening and also some kind of inner emptiness, like someone had taken a tumour out of his chest, which had been burdening his heart and interfering with his breathing.

‘The caravan? You’d do better to sit at home instead of wading through tunnels. I need to go there anyway, to Rizhskaya, but I’m not feeling all that great today. Another time, maybe… Are you going out now? At nine? Well, then we’ll get to say goodbye then. Get your things together in the meantime!’ And he left Artyom alone.

Artyom started to throw things into a rucksack, things which might be useful on the road: a small lamp, batteries, mushrooms, a package of tea, and liver and pork sausage, a full machine-gun clip which he once filched from someone, a map of the metro and more batteries… He needed to remember to bring his passport – it would be of no use at Rizhskaya of course, but beyond that station he’d be detained or put against a wall by the very first patrol of another sovereign station – depending on their politics. And there was the capsule given to him by Hunter. And that was all he needed.

He threw the rucksack on his back and Artyom looked back for the last time at his home, and walked out of the tent with resolve.

The group that was going with the caravan had gathered on the platform, at the entrance to the southern tunnel. On the rails, there was a cart loaded with boxes of meat, mushrooms and packages of tea. On top of them, there was some kind of clever device, put together by local experts – probably some kind of telegraph apparatus.

In the caravan, apart from Kirill, there was another pair: a volunteer, and a commander from the administration who would establish relations and come to an agreement with the administration at Rizhskaya. They had already packed and were playing dominoes while waiting for a departure signal. The machine guns that were assigned to them for the journey were piled beside them. They formed a pyramid with the barrels directed upwards and their spare clips attached to their bases with blue insulation tape.

Finally Zhenya appeared – he’d had to feed his sister and send her to the neighbours before he left since his parents were still at work.

At the very last second, Artyom suddenly remembered that he hadn’t said goodbye to his stepfather. Excusing himself and promising that he would be right back, he threw off his rucksack and ran home. There was no one in the tent and Artyom ran to the quarters where service personnel often hung around, but it now belonged to the station’s administration. Sukhoi was there, he was sitting opposite the duty officer of the station, the elected head of VDNKh, and they were talking about something animatedly. Artyom knocked on the door jamb and quietly coughed.

‘Greetings, Alexander Nikolaevich. Could I speak to Uncle Sasha for a minute?’

‘Of course, Artyom, come in. Want some tea?’ the duty officer said hospitably.

‘You off already? When are you coming back?’ Sukhoi asked while pushing his chair back from the table.

‘I don’t know exactly…’ Artyom mumbled. ‘We’ll see how it goes…’

And he understood that he might never see his stepfather again, and he really didn’t want to lie to him, the one man who truly loved Artyom, and say that he would be back tomorrow or the day after and everything would continue as it was.

Artyom suddenly felt a sting in his eyes and to his shame, he found that they were wet. He stepped forward and hugged his stepfather.

‘Now, now, Artyom, what’s the matter… You’ll be back tomorrow after all… Well?’ his surprised stepfather said reassuringly.

‘Tomorrow night if everything goes to plan,’ Alexander Nikolaevich confirmed.

‘Take care of yourself, Uncle Sasha! Good luck!’ Artyom uttered hoarsely, shaking his stepfather’s hand, and he quickly left.

Sukhoi watched him leave in surprise.

‘Why’s he come unglued? It’s not the first time he’s been to Rizhskaya…’

‘Nothing, Sasha, nothing, there will be a time when your boy will grow up. Then you’ll be nostalgic for the days when he said goodbye to you with tears in his eyes when he was just going two stations away! So what were you saying about the opinion at Alexeevskaya about the patrolling of tunnels? It would be very handy for us…’

When Artyom ran back to the group, the commander had given each person a machine gun and said:

‘So then, men? Shall we sit down for a moment before we go?’ And he sat down on the old wooden bench. The rest of them followed his example silently. ‘OK, God be with us!’ The commander stood up and jumped down onto the path, taking his place at the front of the group.

Artyom and Zhenya, as the youngest members of the group, climbed up onto the cart and prepared themselves for hard work. Kirill and the second volunteer took their places behind, completing the chain.

‘Let’s go!’ shouted the commander.

Artyom and Zhenya leaned on the levers, and Kirill pushed the cart from behind – and it squeaked, shunting forward and then started gliding ahead. The last two guys walked behind it and the group disappeared into the muzzle of the southern tunnel.

CHAPTER 4. The Voice of the Tunnels

The unreliable light of the lantern in the hands of the commander wandered like a pale yellow stain on the tunnel walls, licking the damp floor and disappearing completely when the lantern was pointed into the distance. There was deep darkness ahead, which was greedily devouring the weak beams of their pocket flashlights from just ten paces away. The wheels of the cart squeaked with a whining and melancholic sound, gliding into nowhere, and the breathing and the rhythmic footfalls of the booted people walking behind it punctuated the silence.

The southern cordons were behind them now, the flickering light of their fires had died away long ago. They were beyond the territory of VDNKh. And even though the journey from VDNKh to Rizhskaya was considered safe, given the good relations between the stations and the fact that there was a sufficient amount of movement between the two, the caravan needed to stay on alert.

Danger was not something that just came from the north or the south – the two directions of the tunnel. It could hide above them, in the airshafts or at the sides in the multiple tunnel branches behind the sealed doors of former utility rooms or secret exits. There were dangers waiting below too in mysterious manholes left behind by the metro-builders, forgotten and neglected by maintenance crews back when the metro was still just a means of transportation, where terrible things now lurked in their depths, things which could squeeze the mind of the most reckless of daredevils in a vice of irrational horror.

That was why the commander’s lantern was wandering along the walls, and the fingers of the people at the back of the caravan stroked the safety locks of their machine guns, ready to fix them into firing mode at any moment and to lunge at their triggers. That’s why they said little as they walked: chatting weakened and interfered with their capacity to hear in the breathing space of the tunnel.

Artyom was starting to get tired already; he laboured and laboured but the handle, descending and then returning to its former place, gnashed monotonously, turning the wheels again and again. He was looking ahead without success, but his head was spinning to the beat of the wheels, heavily and hysterically, just like the phrases he heard from Hunter before he left – his words about the power of darkness, the most widespread form of government in the territory of the Moscow metro-system.