When life isn't under constant threat, you can at least try to enjoy it a little to find simple pleasures just for the sake of it. After all, I'm not a machine, and living with constant risk is exhausting. Sometimes I wonder: how the hell am I still alive? It's as if something is holding me together, stopping me from falling apart. What is it? A secret? No, it's the sense of responsibility for those around me. I can't explain it any other way.
Shifting slightly, I leaned back into a half-reclining position.
"Are you going somewhere?" Dariya asked in a sleepy voice. She was lying under the blanket beside me.
Our acquaintance had been… unusual, to say the least. Everyone knew I was a stalker, so she came to me with a request to get certain supplies for her line of work. And judging by the list, it wasn't hard to guess what that work entailed. Dariya explained that she had set up something like a brothel and needed contraceptives and condoms so the girls wouldn't get pregnant. At first, I refused, but then Pyotr Nikolaevich personally asked me to help them out. He wasn't exactly comfortable asking me for this either, but the tension in the station had been growing. People needed a way to relieve stress there were enough dangers in the Metro as it was.
For my help, I started receiving… let's call them "favors." And eventually, I began coming here more often. There were no feelings involved just human closeness. At least for a little while, the station, the dangers, the stress all of it faded into the background.
"No, just lost in thought," I replied.
"Enjoy me while you can. Soon, you'll be paying like everyone else," she said. Her words were purely transactional, a reminder that she was here for profit, nothing more. The moment I stopped going to the surface and bringing them what they needed, she demanded something else in return. But I couldn't be mad at her for that. That was the arrangement from the start.
"You're so cruel. I've brought you plenty, including that robe of yours," I muttered with a smirk, giving her a playful slap on the ass.
"And I think I've rewarded you quite well for that," she said, running a hand down my body, her fingers brushing against the sensitive spot between my legs.
"Not enough," I replied, teasing.
"I'd argue otherwise," she said, moving lower.
Grabbing her hair, I closed my eyes again. Fire flared up inside me, consuming my entire body. Pulling her closer, I pressed against her and thrust into her.
Several rounds later, I was spent. Since sleep was out of the question, I got dressed and left. Dariya was still lying on the bed, watching me.
Stepping out of the room, I walked through the brothel. From the other rooms, the sounds of passion could be heard. Most of them worked for resources clients paid for their services in supplies. They were simply surviving the only way they could. Life wasn't easy for anyone down here. Sometimes I felt pity for them, but more often, I just understood. In the end, everyone in the Metro had their own way of getting by.
For about a month now, I've been staying at the station, training rookies and learning a trade. You could say I've moved to a peaceful profession. Everything feels different now I often wake up in the middle of the night, reaching for my rifle, searching for a threat. But then I realize it was just a dream and lie back down. The first two weeks were the hardest. It's a bit easier now. The panic attacks are becoming less frequent.
If you went by the clock, it was morning. But in reality, people slept whenever they wanted. Most still lived by the old sense of time. Down here, underground, it was hard to keep track of it.
Stepping into my workshop, I walked over to the generator and yanked the cord a few times until it sputtered to life. My gaze fell on the unfinished rifle. I had traded for the blueprints with an engineer apparently, he used to work at a weapons factory before retiring and, by sheer coincidence, found himself in the Metro when the bombs fell. For a couple of packs of food, I got the schematics for the "Bastard." That's what he called his creation. Not out of hate, but because it was meant to be built from whatever scrap we could find, and giving it a proper name would be an insult to real gunsmithing.
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Together with Maksim Fyodorovich, we had almost finished it. All that was left was to craft a return spring for the firing mechanism. To get the necessary materials, I'd need my own way to the surface. And I had some ideas about where to make that happen.
During one of my scouting missions, I had explored the nearby area and even found an entry point. But I hadn't gone down there was no time. It looked like part of the station had collapsed during the bombings, opening up a path to the surface. No one had been up there, that much was certain. That station had been Turgenevskaya, where radiation levels were high, meaning mutated rats were bound to be lurking. Going in unarmed would be a death sentence.
A wave of thoughts hit me how quickly everything changes. At first, it feels like life will always move along the same track, that nothing major will shift. But then the signs of coming disaster start piling up. Small problems snowball into catastrophe. It's a miracle we've survived this long.
Nearly three years had passed since the nuclear war. By rough estimates, the Metro's population had shrunk by nearly five thousand mostly due to hunger and disease. Conflicts over resources kept flaring up, and more and more, we were turning into beasts.
The first year, we survived off the massive stockpiles of supplies that had been set aside for emergencies. But once those began to dwindle, the second year brought real hardship. That year was brutal more dangers, less food, and still too many mouths to feed.
By some miracle and the hard work of agronomists we managed to establish some form of food production. Small farms grew plants that didn't require sunlight, and they became our lifeline.
Out of curiosity, I had once visited one of these farms. Even in dim lighting, mushrooms thrived in the underground environment and were perfectly edible. Fortunately, there were other kinds of farms, too. I remember someone finding fluorescent lamps, which allowed us to grow additional crops. Not much, but it was a start. I'd have to find a way to get my hands on those lamps if the opportunity arose.
I could only hope things would get better, not worse.
"Already at work?" Maksim's voice pulled me from my thoughts.
"Had a restless dream," I replied.
"Yeah, it happens. So, are we finishing this today?"
"Let's give it a shot," I said, my tone carrying a hint of readiness. This weapon would change a lot it would make us stronger against any threat.
The process of making the spring was fairly simple, even with makeshift methods. It involved crafting a long piece of wire to specific dimensions, then winding it around a cylindrical object of the required diameter. For added rigidity, the spring needed to be tempered.
We heated the metal and poured it into a rectangular mold. Once the long metal bar had solidified, we pulled it out. I stepped up to the rolling machine and slowly turned the crank, feeding the bar between two metal rollers to stretch and thin it down. Pass after pass, the metal took on the necessary dimensions. When the wire was finally ready, we wound it around a pipe to shape it into a coil. Then, into the furnace it went heated, pulled out, then heated again, until it glowed red-hot and reached the right temperature.
"Shall we test it?" Maksim asked, holding the finished piece.
"Let's," I muttered, bringing the tempered spring over. We pulled it off the pipe, though it took some hammering to get it loose. After compressing it a few times, we confirmed it had the right tension and would strike the firing pin properly. With the final assembly done, we stepped back to admire our work.
"Are we keeping the name?" Maksim asked.
"Yeah, I think so. It's not really our weapon, after all," I replied.
"Then I'd say it's finished," he said.