Free Dmitry Glukhovsky - Metro 2034 English fan translation (v1.0) (docx) by Dmitry Glukhovsky Page A

turned up at the Sevastopolskaya two months ago, none of the guards could explain how a man with such extraordinary stature was able to pass every single of the northern guard posts unnoticed. It was their luck that the commander didn’t want an explanation how Hunter got through without them noticing.
    But when he didn’t get to the Sevastopolskaya over the Nachimovski prospect , how did he get there? All other ways to the big metro had already been severed. The abandoned Kachovskaya line, in its tunnels they hadn’t seen a single living being in the last years. Impossible. The Tschertanovskaya ? Ridiculous. Not even a skilled and relentless fighter as Hunter would be able to fight himself
through this cursed station. Also it was impossible to get there without showing up at the Sevastopolskaya first.
    So the north, south and east were out of the question.
    Now Homer had only one hypothesis left: The mysterious guest came from the surface. Of course all known entrances and exits of the station had been carefully barricaded and were guarded at all times, but … He could have opened one of the vents. The inhabitants of the Sevastopolskaya didn’t suspect that there was still somebody that had the intelligence to trick their warning system located in the burned concrete ruins. An endless chess board made out of several stories high apartment complexes that had been torn down by the shrapnel of the war heads was already deserted and empty. The last players had already given up playing decades ago and left the distorted and scary figures crawling around on the surface. They now played their own game with their own rules. Looking at it from of the view of humanity, a rematch wasn’t possible.
    Short expeditions searching for everything useful that hadn’t decayed over the last twenty years, hastily; shameful raids through their own houses were the only things they were still capable off. In rubbers suits that protected the stalkers from radiation they climbed up to search the skeletons of the
former buildings for the hundredth time,but nobody dared to fight the current inhabitants determent enough to wipe them out.
    You might shot a machine-pistol salve at them, retreat into a nearby dirty apartment and run straight back to the rescuing entrance of the metro when the danger had passed.
    The old maps of the capitol city had lost every reference to reality. Where back then cars had been stuck in traffic for miles, now there were canyons covered in impenetrable black brushwood. Where once housing areas were, there were now swamps or just empty burned land.
    Only the boldest stalkers dared to venture further than a mile from their entrances to the metro, most were satisfied with less.
    The stations past the Nachimovski prospect – the Nagornaya , Nagatinskaya and Tulskaya – had no open entrances and the humans on those two stations didn’t even think about going to the surface.
    So from where in this wasteland hunter was supposed to have emerged from, was an absolute mystery for Homer.
    But there was a last possibility where the brigadier could have come from. This possibility made the old atheist unable to breathe and he follow the dark silhouette of Hunter
that moved through the darkness as if it didn’t even touch the ground.
    He came from underground. ( Referring to the “gate” )
    “I have a bad feeling about this.” Said Achmed hesitantly and so quiet that Homer almost wasn’t able hear him.
    “It isn’t the right time to be here. Believe me; I have traveled with many caravans. There is something brewing at the Nagornaya …”
    The small groups of bandits that always retreated back as far as possible from the ring line right away after each raid.
    They took their breaks in dark stations but never dared to attack the caravans of the Sevastopolskay a .
    The instant they heard the constant thunder of the studded boots, which announced the arrival of the heavy infantry of the Sevastopolskaya , they got out of