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

everybody thought that his guest was dead.
    He wasn’t involved in any crimes nor was he being sought-after. They had never found hunters body – that was for sure – otherwise he would have surely tried to contact them. The colonel agreed.
    But he appeared, to express it better: His vague – and in those cases normal – shadow appeared in a good dozen half true myths and stories. It seemed he liked his role and kept his companions believing that he was dead.
    Denis Michailovitsch remembered his old debt and came to the only conclusion: He relaxed and played the game.
    When others where with them he never used Hunters real name. He only told Istomin the truth but didn’t go into detail. But not many cared, because the brigadier had earned his daily ration of soup many times over. He guarded the posts in the southern tunnel day and night; at the station he appeared maybe once a week – on bath day. And even if he just appeared in this hell to hide from his pursuers, Istomin didn’t mind. He knew to appreciate the service of legionnaires with dark pasts – the only thing that he
demanded from them was to fight and in this case that wasn’t a problem at all.
    The guards that had complained about the condescending nature of the new brigadier became silent after the first battle. When they saw how methodical, sunken in some kind of cold frenzy,he destroyed everything that there was to destroy, everyone came to their own conclusion.
    Nobody wanted to become his friend, but everyone followed his orders without any complains, so that he never had to raise his dull and broken voice. There was something in his voice, something like a hypnotizing sound of a snake and even the head of the station nodded his head obedient whenever he talked to him – even when he hadn’t finished talking, just in case.
     
     
     
    For the first time in ages the air in Istomin’s office felt a lot lighter – as if a silent thunderstorm had passed, created by the strong tension. There was no more reason to argue, because there was no better fighter than Hunter. But when even he died in the tunnels there would be no other option for the Sew astopolskay a .
    “Should I order the preparations for the operation?”
    Asked Denis Michailovitsch.
    “You got three days. That should be enough”
    Istomin closed his lighter and his eyes. “We can no longer wait for them. How many people do we need?”
    “The strike team is ready. I will take care about the second one, which should be another 20 men. When we don’t hear anything from them after the day after tomorrow.”He pointed his head at the exit. “Then you have to make everybody ready to leave. We will try to break through”
    Istomin raised his eyebrows but didn’t answer; he just kept smoking his self-made cigarette. Denis Michailovitsch picked up some of the papers and started circling names using a system that only he understood.
    To break through? The colonel looked past Istomin’s grey neck and through the tobacco smoke at the map of the Metro that was hanging on the wall. Yellow, dirty and covered with small signs this plan was a chronicle of the last century. Arrows for recon missions, circles for sieges, stars for guard posts and exclamations marks for forbidden zones.
    Ten years had been documented in this plan, ten years, with not a single day without blood spilling.
    Under the Sev astopo lskay a , right behind the station called Juschna y a the markings stopped. As far as Istomin could remember nobody had ever returned from there. The line ran down a lot of white areas, like one of the old maps that the first Spanish conquerors had when they arrived on the shores of supposed India. Like a branched root. But a conquest of the entire line was too big for the people of the Sev astopolskay a – no exhaustion of the irradiated people would have been enough.
    And now the white fog of uncertainty covered their godforsaken line that went on to Hanza, to humanity. When the colonel