‘The hood…’ Artyom managed to say, hoping the person would understand.

The black veil that had been over his eyes then disappeared and Artyom saw Hunter in front of him. He hadn’t changed at all since the time Artyom had talked with him, a while back now, a whole eternity ago, at VDNKh. How had he got here? Artyom wearily moved his head and looked around. He was on the platform of the exact same station where they had read his sentence. There were dead bodies everywhere; only a few candles in one chandelier continued to smoke. The other chandelier was blown out. Hunter was holding the same pistol in his right hand that had so amazed Artyom the last time, having seemed so huge with its long silencer screwed onto its barrel and its impressive laser sight. A ‘Stechkin.’ The hunter was looking at Artyom anxiously and attentively.

‘Is everything OK with you? Can you walk?’

‘Yes. Probably.’ Artyom summoned his courage but he was interested in something else at that moment. ‘You’re alive? Did everything work out for you?’

‘As you can see,’ Hunter smiled wearily. ‘Thanks for your help.’

‘But I didn’t complete the task.’ Artyom shook his head and it was burningly painful, and he was filled with shame.

‘You did everything you could.’ Hunter patted him soothingly on the shoulder.

‘And what’s happening at home? At VDNKh?’

‘Everything’s fine, Artyom. Everything has already passed. I was able to collapse the entrance and now the dark ones won’t be able to get into the metro anymore. We’re saved. Let’s go.’

‘And what happened here?’ Artyom looked around, noticing with horror that the whole hall was filled with corpses, and that other than his voice and Hunter’s, not another sound could be heard.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Hunter looked into his eyes firmly. ‘You shouldn’t worry about it.’ He bent over and lifted his sack from the floor. A smoking army hand machine gun was lying in it. His cartridge belt was almost spent.

The hunter moved forward and Artyom tried to keep step. Looking from side to side, he saw something that he hadn’t noticed before. Several dark figures were hanging from the little bridge where Artyom had had his sentence read.

Hunter said nothing and was taking long steps, as though he had forgotten that Artyom could barely move. As much as Artyom tried, the distance between then was increasing all the time, and Artyom was afraid that Hunter would just go off, leaving him in this horrible station, which was covered in slippery and still warm blood, and where the only inhabitants were corpses. Do I really deserve this? Artyom thought. Is my life so much more important than the lives of all these people? No, he was glad to have been rescued. But all these people – randomly scattered, like bags and rags, on the granite of the platform, side by side, on the rails, left forever in the poses that Hunter’s bullets had found them in – they all died so that he could live? Hunter had made this exchange with such ease, just as though he had sacrificed some minor chess figures to safeguard one of the most important pieces… He was just a player, and the metro was a chessboard, and all the figures were his, because he was playing the game with himself. But here was the question: Was Artyom such an important piece to the game that all these people had to perish for his preservation? Henceforth the blood that was flowing along the cold granite would probably pulse in his veins too. It was like he had drunk it, extracted it from others for his existence. Now he would never be warm again…

Artyom, with effort, ran forward a bit in order to catch up with Hunter and to ask if he would ever become warm again or would he, even at the hottest firesides, stay this cold and melancholic, like an icy winter’s night on a far-flung semi-station.

But Hunter was far in the distance. Maybe it was because Artyom didn’t manage to catch him up that Hunter descended onto the tracks and rushed into the tunnel with the agility of an animal. His movements seemed, to Artyom, like the movements of… a dog? No, a rat… Oh God.

‘Are you a rat?’ The terrible idea tore from Artyom’s mouth, and he was frightened by what he’d said.

‘No,’ came the answer. ‘You’re the rat. You’re the rat! Cowardly rat! Cowardly rat!’ Someone repeated it just above his ear, and spat fruitily.

Artyom shook his head but immediately regretted it. Now, thanks to his sharp movements, the aching blunt pain in his body had exploded. He lost control of his limbs and started to stumble forward, and then he rested his burning forehead on something cool and metallic. The surface was ribbed and it pressed on his skin unpleasantly but it cooled his inflamed flesh, and Artyom froze in that position for a time, not having the strength to make any further decisions. He caught his breath and then carefully tried to open his left eye a little bit.

He sat on the floor, his forehead against a lattice of some sort. It went up to the ceiling and filled the space on both sides of the low and narrow arch. He was facing the hall, and there were paths behind him. All the nearest arches opposite him, as far as he could see, were turned into cages too; there were a few people sitting in each of them. This station was exactly the opposite of the station where he had been sentenced to death. That one was utterly graceful, light, airy, spacious, with transparent columns, wide and high arches, despite the gloomy lighting and the inscriptions and drawings covering the walls. It was like a banquet hall compared with this one. Here everything was oppressive and scary. There was a low, rounded ceiling, like in the tunnels. It was barely twice a man’s height. And there were massive, rough columns, each of which was much wider than the arches that cut across between them. The ceiling of the arches were so close to the ground that he could have reached up and touched it were it not for the fact that his hands were tied with wire behind his back. Apart from Artyom there were another two people in the cell. One was lying on the ground with his face buried in a heap of rags, and he was groaning dully. The other had black eyes and brown hair and hadn’t shaved for some time, and he was squatting, leaning against the marble wall, watching Artyom with lively curiosity. There were two strong men in camouflage and berets patrolling the length of the cages, one of whom had a big dog on a leash, and he would scold it from time to time. They, it seemed, had woken Artyom.

It had been a dream. It had been a dream. He had dreamt it all.

They were going to hang him.

‘What time is it?’ he muttered, only slightly moving his inflamed tongue, and looking sideways at the black-eyed man.

‘Happast nine,’ the man answered willingly, pronouncing his words with the same accent that Artyom had heard at Kitai Gorod: instead of ‘o’ they said ‘a’ and instead of ‘y’ they said ‘ay’. And then he added, ‘In the evening.’

Half past nine. Two and a half hours until twelve – and five hours before… before the procedure. Seven and a half hours. And while he was thinking, counting, time was already flying past.

Once Artyom had tried to imagine: what would, what should a person feel and think in the face of death, the night before his execution? Fear? Hatred for his executioners? Regret?

But he was empty inside. His heart was thumping hard in his breast, his temples were throbbing, blood slowly accumulated in his mouth until he swallowed. The blood had the taste of rusty iron. Or was it that wet iron had the taste of fresh blood?

They would hang him. They would kill him.

He would cease to exist.

He couldn’t imagine it, couldn’t take it on board.

Everyone knows that death is unavoidable. Death was a part of daily life in the metro. But it always seemed that nothing unfortunate would happen to you, that the bullets would fly past you, the disease would skip over you. Death of old age was a slow affair so you needn’t think about it. You can’t live in constant awareness of your mortality. You had to forget about it, and though these thoughts came to you anyway, you had to drive them away, to smother them, otherwise they could take root in your consciousness and they would make your life a misery. You can’t think about the fact that you’ll die. Otherwise you might go mad. There’s only one thing that can save a man from madness and that’s uncertainty. The life of someone who has been sentenced to death is different from the life of a normal person in only one way: the one knows exactly when he will die, and the regular person is in the dark about it, and consequently it seems he can live forever, even though it’s entirely possible that he could be killed in a catastrophic event the following day. Death isn’t frightening by itself. What’s frightening is expecting it.