Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) by Dmitry Glukhovsky Read Free Book Online

rose from his Metro plan and smiled tired. He wanted to dial the number for the adjutant when the telephone ringed. Both were startled and looked at each other. They hadn’t heard that sound for a week. If the officer on duty wanted something he knocked on the door and there was no one else in the station that was able to call the foreman directly.
    “Istomin here.” He answered carefully.
    “Vladimir Ivanowitsch! The Tulskay a is on the phone.” He heard the hastily voice of the adjutant. “But the connection is very bad … Probably our men … But the connection …”
    “Connect me already!” Istomin screamed into the receiver and hammered his fist on the table with such force that the telephone ringed in pain.
    The adjutant turned silent immediately. Istomin could hear a ringing sound, then static and then he heard a distant, almost unrecognizable voice.
     
     
     
    Yelena had turned her face towards the wall, to hide her tears. What could she still do to hold him back? Why did he always reach for the first possibility to leave the station?
    His miserably excuses. “Orders from above.” And. “Desertion.” She had heard them a hundred times. What wouldn’t she have given, wouldn’t have tried to get rid of his nonsense in these 15 years? But once again it drew him to the tunnels, as if he thought to find something other than darkness, emptiness and doom in it. What was he searching for?
    Homer knew exactly what she was thinking, as if she had spoken it out loud. He felt miserably, but it was too late to retreat. He opened his mouth to say something excusing, something warm but he remained silent, with every single one of his words he would just have added oil to the flame.
    Over Yelena’s head Moscow cried. A carefully framed color-picture of the Tv erskay a U liza , shining through the
translucent midsummer rain, cut out of a shiny almanac was hanging on the wall. A long time ago, when he was able to move through the Metro freely all of his fortune was made up by his clothes and this one picture. Others carried crumpled, torn out pages from man oriented magazines in their pockets.
    But for Homer that wasn’t a replacement. But this picture reminded him of something unspeakable beautiful … something that has been lost forever.
    Helplessly he whispered: “Forgive me.” Stepped out into the hallway, closed the door carefully behind him and sat himself in front of his apartment. The door of the neighboring apartment was open and two sickly pale children played on the doorstep – a boy and a girl. When they saw Homer they stopped. The patched up teddy bear that the children had argued about just one second ago fell to the ground.
    “Uncle Kolya, uncle Kolya! Tell us a story! You promised to tell us one when you returned!”
    Homer couldn’t hold back a smile. He forgot the argument with Yelena immediately. “About what?”
    “Headless mutants!” Screamed the boy excited.
    “No! I don’t want mutants!” Said the girl shocked.
    “They are so terrible, they scare me!”
    Homer sighed: “What story do you want, Tanyuscha?”
    But the boy answered before her: “Than about the fascists! Or the partisans!”
    “I want the story about the E merald city !” said Tanya and smiled.
    “But I told it yesterday. Maybe about the war of Hanza against the Reds?”
    “About the E merald city , about the E merald city !”
    Both yelled.
    “Ok.” Agreed Homer. “Somewhere, behind the end of the Sokolnitscheskay a line, behind the seven abandoned stations, the three destroyed bridges and a thousand times a thousand doorways, there lies a mysterious, secret city. It is magical so humans can’t enter. Wizards live there and only they can leave through their portals and enter the city through them again. On top of it, on the surface there is a castle with towers where once the wizards lived. The name of the castle was …”
    “Virsity!” Yelled the small boy and looked at his sister