Artyom remained silent, and broke into a run. From behind, out of the darkness, a desperate cry reached him:

‘Give the cassock back…!’

Artyom ran on ahead, stumbling, unable to see anything in front of him. Several times he fell down, scraping his palms on the concrete floor and skinning his knees, but there was no stopping. He had too clear an image of the black pedestal-mounted machine gun, and now he didn’t much believe that the brethren would prefer a meek word to violence, if they could catch up to him.

He was a step nearer to his goal, being not far away at all from Polis. It was on the same line, and only two stations away. The main thing was to go forward, not deviating one step from his route, and then…

Artyom entered Serphukhovskaya. He didn’t pause for a second, only checked his direction, and then dived back into the black hole of the tunnel leading ahead.

But, at this point, something unexpected happened to him.

The feeling of terror of the tunnel, which he had already forgotten, came crashing back down upon him, pressing him to the ground, making it difficult for him to walk, or think, or even breathe. It had seemed to him that, by now, he had formed some habits, and that, after all his wanderings, the horror would leave him and would not dare to bother him again. He had felt neither fear nor alarm when moving from Kitai Gorod to Pushkinskaya, nor when riding from Tverskaya to Paveletskaya, nor even as he trudged, completely alone, from Paveletskaya to Dobryninskaya. But now it had returned.

With each step forward, the feeling assailed him more and more. He wanted to turn around immediately and plunge headlong back to the station, where there was at least a little bit of light, and some people, and where his back would not be constantly tickled by the sensation of an intent and malevolent gaze.

He had been interacting with people so much, that he had stopped feeling what had rushed over him when he first left Alekseevskaya. But now, once again, he was engulfed by the understanding that the metro was not merely a transportation facility, built at a certain point in time, that it was not merely an atomic bomb shelter, or home to some tens of thousands of people… Rather, somebody had breathed into it their own, mysterious, incomparable life, and it possessed a certain extraordinary kind of reason, which a human being could not fathom, and a consciousness that was alien to him.

This sensation was so precise and clear, that it seemed to Artyom as if the terror of the tunnel, which people wrongly took to be their ultimate place of refuge, were simply the hostility of this huge being towards the petty creatures who were burrowing into its body. And now, it did not want Artyom to go forward. Against his drive to reach the end of his path, to reach his goal, it was pitting its ancient, powerful will. And its resistance was growing, with every metre Artyom advanced.

Now he was walking through impenetrable darkness, unable to see his own hands, even if he lifted them right up to his face. It was as if he had fallen out of space and out of the currents of time, and it seemed to him as if his body had ceased to exist. It was as if he were not stepping his way through the tunnel, but soaring as a substance of pure reason in an unknown dimension.

Artyom could not see the walls receding behind him, so it appeared as if he were standing still, not moving forward a single step, and that the goal of his journey were just as unattainable as it had been five or ten minutes earlier. Yes, his feet were picking their way through the cross-ties, which could have told him that he was changing his spatial position. On the other hand, the signal which advised his brain of each new cross-tie, onto which his foot stepped, was absolutely uniform. Recorded once and for all, now it was repeating to infinity. That also made him doubt the reality of his motion. Was he nearing his goal by moving? Suddenly he remembered his vision, which provided an answer to the question tormenting him.

And then, whether from terror of the unknown, evil, hostile thing that was bearing down on him from behind, or in order to prove to himself that he really was still moving, Artyom rushed ahead with triple the force. And he barely managed to stop, guessing by some sixth sense that an obstacle lay ahead, and miraculously he avoided crashing into it.

Carefully probing with his hands along the cold, rusted metal, and then fragments of glass sticking out from rubber gaskets, and steel pancakes which were wheels, he recognized that the mysterious obstacle was a train. This train had been abandoned, apparently. In any case, there was only silence around it. Remembering Mikhail Porfiryevich’s horrible story, Artyom made no attempt to climb into it, but rather skirted the chain of subway cars, keeping close to the tunnel wall. Getting past the train at last, he breathed a sigh of relief and hurried onward, again breaking into a run.

In the darkness this was really difficult, but his legs caught on, and he ran, until there appeared ahead, and slightly to one side, the reddish glow of a bonfire.

It brought indescribable relief to know that he was in the real world, and that there were real people nearby. It didn’t matter how they would relate to him. They could be murderers or thieves, sectarians or revolutionaries – it didn’t matter. The main thing was that they were creatures of flesh and blood, like him. He did not doubt for one second that he would be able to find refuge with these people and to hide from that invisible, huge being which wanted to suffocate him. Or, was he seeking refuge from his own deranged mind?

Such a strange picture came into view that he could not say for certain if he had returned to the real world, or was still roaming the nooks and crannies of his own subconscious.

At Polyanka station, only a single small bonfire was burning, but the absence of any other source of light here made it seem brighter than all the electric lights of Paveletskaya. Two people were sitting by the bonfire, one with his back turned toward Artyom and one facing him, but neither of them noticed or heard him. It was as if they were separated from him by an invisible wall that cut them off from the outside world.

The entire station, insofar as it could be seen by the light of the bonfire, was piled high with an unimaginable variety of junk. The shapes of broken bicycles, automobile tyres, and pieces of furniture and equipment could be made out. There was a mountain of rubbish, out of which the people seated by the fire from time to time pulled a stack of newspapers or books, and threw them into the flames. There was a plaster bust of somebody or other standing right in front of the fire, on the underflooring, and next to it a cat was curled up most comfortably. Not another soul was present.

One of the people seated by the fire was telling the other something, unhurriedly. Drawing close, Artyom began to pick up what was being said.

‘There are rumors going around about the University… Absolutely false, by the way. These are just echoes of the ancient myth of an Underground City in the Ramenki District. Which was part of Metro-2. But, of course, you can’t refute anything with one hundred percent certainty. Here, in general, you can’t say anything with one hundred percent certainty. It’s an empire of myths and legend. Metro-2 would have been, of course, the chief myth, the golden one, if more people had known about it. Take, for example, even just the belief in the Unseen Watchers!’

Artyom had approached very close, when the person with his back towards him said:

‘There’s somebody there.’

‘Of course there is,’ nodded the other.

‘You may join us,’ said the first, addressing Artyom, but without turning his head towards him. ‘In any event, you can’t go any farther.’