Orekhovo Station: Day 1, Sunday, 10:00 PMMGR: 5
Mikhail hurried through the main platform, the adrenaline still humming a cold, frantic chord in his chest and a bitter taste lingering in his mouth. He clutched the satchel of fungus close, the weight of the harvest offering the only comfort. The near-death encounter with a Lurker and then a jumpy young guard had done more to clear his hangover than any pill Yelena could offer. The tunnels weren't empty; they were watched, and sometimes stupidity was a faster killer than any mutant.
He dropped the satchel onto Katerina's counter. The Market was quieter now, the late shift starting to gather their meager dinners.
"Here," Mikhail gasped, shoving the heavy bundle forward. "Enough fungus for a few days. The patches were thick, but the rats fought hard, and the guards were... jumpy."
Katerina glanced at the bulging satchel of fungi, then up at his face, noting the lingering terror in his eyes and the thousand-yard stare. The man was still vibrating.
"You look like you saw a mutant, Mikhail," she said, her voice dropping to a low, serious tone that barely cut through the market noise. "Or worse."
"I… uh…" Mikhail stuttered, his tongue thick and useless, unable to piece together a coherent sentence about German passwords and near-fatal jests.
Without another word, she immediately pushed a generous portion of freshly grilled mushrooms and a dented tin cup of steaming, mushroom tea across the counter. The scent of hot food was a blessed assault against the lingering smell of the tunnels.
"Eat," she commanded, folding her arms. "The tunnels won't kill you if you starve yourself first. You earned this."
Mikhail was still too full of cold adrenaline to stomach the heavy, earthy food. His jaw was clenched tight. Slowly, deliberately, he forced himself to pick up a slice. The warmth of the food, the simple act of chewing had a bitter taste but it began to anchor him back to the world of the living.
It was his entire pay for four hours of grueling and almost deadly work—a full, hot meal he wouldn't have to spend a single MGR on. A necessary sacrifice to save his precious few bullets.
As he ate, Katerina rummaged under her counter.
Katerina watched him for a moment, her eyes narrowed, processing the silent ordeal that had drained the color from his face. She reached under the counter and counted out two gleaming, Military-Grade Rounds and slid them across the scarred wood.
Mikhail's exhaustion lifted, replaced by a sudden tension. He reached out, not to take the bullets, but to put his grimy palm flat over the MGRs, covering the wealth with his hand. He held them down for a long, quiet second, then gently slid the rounds back toward Katerina with a slow shake of his head.
He spoke, his voice low and firm. "That is not the deal, Katerina. I can't. I want my pay to be earned." He met her gaze, making cold, steady eye contact, emphasizing the vulnerability of the hint.
She let the rounds sit between them. In the weak light, their metallic gleam was the most beautiful and terrifying sight in the station. Katerina studied his face. The hollowed eyes, the stubborn set of his jaw. She understood: for men like Mikhail, not every debt was counted in ammunition.
Katerina snorted, the sound dry and humorless. She swept the four MGRs back toward herself, accepting his refusal with a veteran's resignation.
"Then you are a stupid man, Mikhail," she said flatly, pulling no punches. "Just like every other man down here who thinks he can trade bullets for honor. Honor won't stop the hunger."
"I know," he conceded, taking a slow, forced bite of the mushroom. He chewed deliberately, switching topics to distance himself from his own reckless morality. "Which is why they are easily convinced to buy your homebrew." He nodded toward a covered barrel hidden under a canvas sheet near her feet. "It takes a stupid man to drink that sludge, but it helps them forget they're stupid."
Mikhail allowed a small, knowing smirk to touch his lips. "Exactly. Speaking of forgetting your troubles... you talked about the coal hikes?"
"The Coal Man," she repeated, her voice turning sharp with annoyance. "That flea-ridden old bastard from Hansa. He just hiked his price, three extra rounds per sack. He knows every stove and boiler on this end of the line runs on his garbage." She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the counter, the steam from the tea rising between them. "I'm afraid I'll have to choose: either increase prices on the ration plates, which will cut my customer base in half, or lower the quality of the food. Either way, someone starves."
Mikhail finished his mushroom, wiping the grease on the cuff of his coat. The problem was familiar: a squeeze, tightening the noose around the necks of the poor, the weak, and the honest.
"Hansa? Where did that bastard come from? How is he operating down this far, without getting killed?"
She leaned in, her voice low and sharp. "The coal isn't coming north on our line. The straight route is dead and he's running the west line."
Katerina points at one of the rusted metallic diagrams of the metro signboard. "He runs the haul from the Hansa ring at Dobryninskaya, then pushes it south to Serpukhovskaya, through Tulskaya, and down toward the southern abandoned sections. That gets him past the Trotskyists without a fight."
"But that's an insane detour," Mikhail protested. "Why not just stick to the main ring?"
"Because Tekhnopark is a hole in the surface" Katerina explained patiently, pushing the facts home. "He's coming from the west, from the Militarist territory according to the coal man"
"Sevastopolskaya HPP controls Sevastopolskaya and that whole loop," she said. "They say it's run like a small Sparta. Every man, woman, and child is trained to fight. They hold those stations because they're powered. Some kind of old undergrounds electric hydro-station, deep below the tracks. Which means the hermetic doors must stay open."
She shuddered, a quick, involuntary movement. "And because those doors are never sealed, the hordes of surface mutants attack Sevastopolskaya regularly. It's a constant warzone."
She pushed a finger toward the dangerous segment on his imagined map. "Nobody goes in to confirm it. They're too fierce, too hidden, or maybe the whole story is just a way to deter attacks from the rest of the metro. But the fact remains: that route, Varshavskaya to Kashirskaya, is saturated with radiation. It's a toxic, mutant-infested mess before it even touches us here at Orekhovo."
"So the Coal Man pays for the privilege of crawling through a Spartan sewer," Mikhail finished, the implication hitting him like a physical blow.
"He pays, and we pay him," Katerina said, her voice turning final. "We're paying for the coal, and we're paying for the toll, and the price is only going up."
Mikhail pushed his empty tin cup aside and looked down unable to assist in her struggle.
The silence that settled was heavier than the damp air of their small, cramped barracks room. It was the familiar, choking silence of the Metro. The sound of no good options. He was a simple pressman, his hands knowing only the precise, heavy rhythm of the reloading table. Casing in, powder poured, slug seated, crimp applied. He did not know how to make two kilograms of hard-won coal last three days instead of two. He did not know how to negotiate with the heavily armed men of the Empire, nor did he know a forgotten, cleaner route between Kashirskaya and their station.
"It's the stove, mostly," Katerina finally whispered, running a hand through her thin, dirty hair. "The heat just… vanishes. It pulls air from under the door like a vacuum. If we could just stop the waste…"
Mikhail felt a bitter flush rise in his neck. "I don't know, Katya. I re-prime shells. I run the ramrod. I put the powder charge in the damn casings." He slammed his palm softly on the table, the frustration immense. "That thing is sheet metal and a pipe. Maybe someone knows how the thing is supposed to work, but it isn't me. My foreman uses oil heaters in his shop. He doesn't know anything about coal efficiency."
"And the filters?" Katerina pressed, her voice edged with desperation. "The charcoal filters for the surface runs. Do you know anyone who can treat the charcoal to last longer? Maybe a chemical soak?"
He shook his head, the movement tight and furious. "That's chemist's work, Katya. You think they tell the grunts who load bullets how to handle the toxins? I just buy the charcoal already bagged from the trader. They say it's soaked in acid, something secret to help catch the heavy isotopes. If I tried mixing that, I'd probably just ruin a month's supply and melt the container. We're not engineers, Katya. But I will reach out to the others tomorrow."
The cost of survival wasn't just metal and bullets; it was specialized knowledge they did not possess and could not afford to buy. The cold certainty of their ignorance was a far heavier burden than any gun he carried.
Mikhail woken up by the klaxon on the wall wailed twice, thin and metallic, before cutting off. He jolted up as had overslept again but today is his rest day. However the effect was immediate, the sounds from the workshop erupted into chaos.
Tools clattered to the floor. Welders tore off gloves mid-step. Scrappers shoved each other aside in a scramble for the corridor. Hunger, not discipline, drove the stampede. The press of bodies was so violent Mikhail half-expected someone to fall and be trampled. It had happened before. Orekhovo didn't pause for the fallen.
Mikhail stayed seated at his reloading bench, hands limp in his lap.
The five MGRs in his pocket felt like dead weight — a reminder of how little he mattered here.
Orekhovo was where people ended up, not where they chose to be. A station of the forgotten: laborers, scavengers, widows of men crushed under rails or eaten in the dark tunnels. No scholars. No engineers. Just people who patched what they could and ignored what they could not.
Katerina had already vanished into the her station. Lunchtime made her a slave to the ladle. Feeding others was her job. Feeding herself was optional.
Mikhail tried to steady his hands. Brass casings never trembled under his touch. But the thought of that damned stove.
"The heat just vanishes," she'd said. "If we don't fix it, I won't make it to week's end."
He could adjust powder loads in his sleep. But airflow? Heat efficiency? Draft regulation? Those belonged to a world that had died long before he was born.
He looked around. The workshop was empty aside from the cooling click of overworked machinery. Nobody here could help. They repaired broken things, not improved them. They replaced parts when they failed — if they had parts at all. Efficiency was a luxury.
He stood, slowly. If he stayed here, he'd sink into useless panic.
There had to be someone with a trick. Not a solution. Orekhovo didn't breed solutions except tricks.
He walked toward the ancillary passages where the poor ate lunch in quiet misery. The air smelled of burnt oil and stale sweat. People here didn't shout; they didn't have the energy.
He spotted Vasily crouched by a junction box, chewing a piece of salted pork fat with greasy fingers. A loader sat beside him, guarding his own portion like a rat guarding crumbs.
Mikhail approached carefully. "Vasily."
The maintenance man looked up through half-closed eyes.
"Pressman. You're not in line for slop. Either you're late or you're broke."
"Both," Mikhail admitted. "Forced rest."
Vasily snorted. "Means you're useless today."
Mikhail swallowed it. "Katerina's stove is bleeding heat. We're burning coal twice as fast. Do you know anything about draft loss? Vent tricks?"
Vasily chewed slower, watching him the way a hungry man watches someone carrying bread.
"Ventilation?" he said at last. "Sure. I know it."
Mikhail's heart lifted for a moment.
Then Vasily shrugged.
"But knowing it doesn't help you. Her stove's scrap metal. That piping was a bad weld before either of us was born. Unless you can forge new sheet steel, that draft's been broken for years."
Mikhail stared. "There's… no trick?"
Vasily wiped his fingers on his pants. "Tried all of them. Clay, slag, damp ash — the whole station tried those last winter. Two stoves cracked. One backfired and sent smoke down the corridor for a week. Nearly killed an old man in his sleep. Not worth the risk."
Mikhail felt the hope drain from his chest. "Then what do I do?"
"Same as everyone else," Vasily said, standing. "Freeze slower or starve faster. Those are the choices."
He gave Mikhail a pitying look — the kind given to a man who hasn't yet realized he's doomed.
"Tell that woman to save for a new stove. Or move to a richer station if you want a miracle. Now go. I don't share food with bad luck."
The market platform was a churning mess of bodies. People shoved past each other, desperate for a midday meal before the pots ran dry. Every face was gaunt. Every voice carried frustration.
Katerina was drowning in it.
Her braids stuck to her forehead with sweat. Her hands shook as she ladled thin broth into dented cups. Customers shoved MGRs at her faster than she could take them.
"Move, vendor!" someone barked.
"Less in this bowl than yesterday! Thief!" another shouted.
She didn't look up as Mikhail approached.
"You find something? Anything?" she gasped. "A plate? A valve? Even a scrap of pipe?"
"No." The word felt like a stone lodged in his throat.
"I talked to Vasily. He says there's nothing to fix. The stove's too old. The draft is impossible to repair."
Katerina went completely still for one second.
Just enough for the soup to start burning on the edges of the pot.
"That's it?" she whispered. "He just said no?"
"He said we could try clay and slag, but—"
Someone slammed an MGR onto the counter.
She snapped back into motion, ladling again.
"Mikhail," she said without looking at him, "Go."
He had nothing.
A customer yelled in her face. She ignored Mikhail completely now — not out of cruelty, but because survival didn't pause for feelings.
"Go," she said finally. "Leave the platform before you lose what little you have left."
He stepped back. The crowd swallowed him.
The lights flickered overhead — a tired, dying pulse.
Mikhail touched his pocket.
Four MGRs.
He couldn't help her.
He couldn't help himself.
He couldn't help anyone.
Down here, failure wasn't dramatic.
It was quiet.
Slow.
Certain.
And it had already begun.
The market smelled like boiling grease, stale sweat, and the damp mineral odor that came from old concrete sweating under lamp heat. Mikhail pushed through the flow of bodies, weaving between carts loaded with jars of mushroom mash, racks of rat meat, strips of drying lizard, and piles of machine parts scavenged from places no sane man would dig through anymore.
Every stall had its own glow—yellow bulbs, flickering orange lamps, the occasional bluish light salvaged from unknown origins. All of them cast long shadows that swayed with the movement of the crowd, making the market feel alive with something just under the skin.
Noise pushed in from all directions. Arguments. Traders hawking their goods. Babies crying. A guitar missing two strings being strummed near the wall for whatever coins pity might provide. Voices layered until words meant nothing, just a constant pressure in Mikhail's skull.
He kept his gloved hand pressed over the four MGRs in his pocket. It wasn't much—enough for a meal or one bargain chip with an honest man. And coal merchants weren't honest men.
He passed a man coughing black phlegm into a rag. A woman warming her hands over a candle stub. A young couple wrapped in the same coat, cheeks pressed together, shivering despite the closeness. Even here, in the busiest part of the station, the cold crawled along the floor like a living thing.
The coal pile loomed ahead.
Sacks were stacked shoulder-high in a dark corner of the market where heat from the central grills barely reached. The lamps hung low, throwing warped shadows across the heaps of dust and broken chunks. Two guards leaned against shovels fitted with sharpened heads, pipe guns slung carelessly across their backs. They watched everyone the way a starving dog watched a cooking fire—too tired to move unless they had to, too desperate not to.
The merchant sat behind a sheet-metal table, polishing a metal scale with a piece of cloth that had once been white. His face was lined, gaunt, eyes sharp with the kind of hunger that had nothing to do with food. Coal dust coated his sleeves, his beard, even his eyebrows. When he spotted Mikhail, a thin smile curved across his face.
"Well, look what the draft blew in," he drawled. "A Pressman."
Mikhail stiffened. He looked at the concrete floor, didn't know the merchant's name. The man didn't offer it, didn't need to. In a place like Orekhovo, the people who controlled the essentials didn't need introductions, either.
"You look cold," the merchant went on. "Or hungry. Or stupid. Which is it today?"
"Cold," Mikhail said. "For someone else."
"Someone else," the merchant repeated, amused. "They always say that. Who is it this time?"
"Katerina," Mikhail said before he could think better of it.
Recognition flickered across the merchant's face. But not sympathy. Never sympathy.
"Ah," he said softly. "The soup girl. Pretty" as he looked at one of his guards
One of the guards snorted. The other spat into the coal dust at his feet.
Mikhail ignored them. "She needs coal. Anything—scraps, dust, damp lumps. Her stove's running too hot. The metal's bending. She doesn't have enough to last the week."
"And what have you brought to trade?" the merchant asked, though he already sounded bored.
Mikhail swallowed. He pulled out the four MGRs.
The merchant didn't touch them. He didn't need to. He could see the value—or lack of it—without lifting a finger.
"That gets you maybe two handfuls," he said. "Enough to heat a pot. A small one. Maybe."
"I need more than that."
"Everybody does."
Mikhail clenched his jaw. "Please. She's working herself raw. She's barely sleeping. The stove… if it breaks—"
"She'll build another," the merchant said, shrugging. "Or freeze. People do both. Business keeps moving either way."
A man with a bag slung over his shoulder stepped up beside Mikhail, set down eight MGRs, and received a weighing of coal without a word. The merchant motioned to his guards, who scooped and bagged the portion with mechanical indifference.
"No waiting," the merchant said to Mikhail. "Pay or move aside."
"I don't have more," Mikhail admitted, heat rising behind his eyes, but not the kind that warmed anything. "But I can work. I can do something in exchange. Errands, carrying, cleaning—whatever you need."
The merchant leaned forward, fingers steepled on the table, his eyes gleaming faintly in the dim lamp light. The air between them smelled faintly of soot and stale tobacco, a hint of something sharp underneath.
"I don't hire workers," he said, voice low and deliberate. "I hire results."
Mikhail's stomach twisted. He tried to steady himself, tried to sound confident. "I can get results. If you tell me what you need."
The merchant's smile widened, thin and sharp, like a blade catching light. "If you knew what I needed, you would have brought it already."
A cold weight settled in Mikhail's chest. He swallowed hard, words failing him. "There must be something—"
"There is always something," the merchant said, leaning back slightly, brushing coal dust from his sleeve as though casually dismissing the matter. His tone softened, though not with kindness. It was the quiet calculation of a man savoring the prospect of profit. "I am not without… flexibility."
Mikhail straightened, searching for an opening, for hope. "What do you mean?"
The merchant's eyes flicked over him, sharp and assessing. "You are not worth helping," he said finally. "Not yet. But you are loyal. Loyal to someone who is not yourself. That is rare. Rare things have value."
The words sank like stones into Mikhail's gut. He wanted to protest, to argue, but nothing came. The promise and the threat were wrapped in the same careful syllables—precise, measured, lethal.
"You don't need to understand," the merchant continued, standing slowly, the shadow of his bulk falling across Mikhail like a wall. "What you need is to return tomorrow. Be here."
Mikhail's lips moved before his mind caught up. "And… tell Katerina…" The pause was deliberate. The words hung, sour in the stagnant air. "Tell her.. she's in my mind."
Orekhovo Station: Day 2, Monday, 2:00 PMMGR: 5