Orekhovo Station: Day 4, Wednesday, 12:30 AM — MGR: 11
The two stripper clips thack on each other dully as it is placed on Vasily's hands, slipping them into a pocket sewn inside his coveralls. No smile. No thanks.
Only a timeline, "Come back in two hours" the kind that meant we're both pretending this is fair while he is already selecting tools from a rack.
Mikhail stepped back as Vasily dragged the crate toward a workbench. The sound of metal scraping concrete followed him out of the cubicle, a noise like bones grinding.
The utility corridor swallowed him.
Here, away from the market's press of bodies, the station changed. The lights dimmed to a sickly amber. The smell of food and smoke vanished, replaced by old water, heated wiring, and the sour reek of mold spreading behind panels no one wanted to replace.
He walked slowly as every step felt heavier than it should. Just like that, Ten MGR gone and only eleven left with Thirteen were due at week's end.
And he'd just bought himself into a deal with the same monster who had taken something from Katerina that she would never get back.
He rubbed his hands hard against his coat pockets, as if trying to scrub off the thought. He couldn't as the tunnels pressed in tighter. Two hours. He needed to kill two hours. Without thinking. Without imagining Yasha's hands on—
Mikhail stopped breathing for a moment.
The cold concrete wall beside him felt steady enough, so he leaned into it, letting the chill soak through his coat and into his spine. The station's heartbeat pulsed around him as if it is alive. Pipes ticking, condensate dripping, the faint rattle of a generator cycling farther down the line.
He pushed himself upright and kept walking. A man that has regrets that couldn't stay still. Stillness meant thinking and thinking meant picturing Katerina's face this morning.
The lack of her spark, the quiet mechanical movements, the smallness of her shoulders.
The thought gnawed at him again — that he was a coward, a man who should have confronted Yasha's, who must have defended his friend. But he hadn't. He'd swallowed his outrage, buried it in the dark, and the moment an opportunity appeared, he'd crawled toward it on his knees. Not to avenge her. Not to make things right.
But to strike a bargain with the devil himself and picturing Yasha's smile. His stomach twisted.
He reached the old tunnel that was collapsed by The Demolition Corp long before he was born, to chokehold the entrance to only one tunnel each way increasing security and control of movement. It had been left in ruins but mostly for the desperate, the quiet or a dumping ground.
A place to sit. A place to be anonymous but he didn't enter as the last thing he needed was company. He found himself staring down into nothing, into the abyss of steel ribs and shadow. His mind wandered unbidden to the reloader Vasily was building.
A crude lever press.
Barely safe.
Barely controllable.
A device that would reshape brass by brute force, not precision.
A device that, if he overseeded the primer, it will spark. Wasting a resource and if there's powder, would blow apart in his hands.
He flexed his fingers. Hands he needed. Hands he used for his Pressman work. Hands he needed to survive.
The shaft breathed up against his face — warm, sour, almost human. His eyes stung. He stepped back. Two hours suddenly felt like ten days.
By the time he reached the maintenance cubicle again, his pulse had settled into a cold, resigned rhythm. The lamp inside flickered irregularly, casting long shadows that shifted like they were alive.
Vasily sat hunched over the bench, tightening the last bolt on something that looked like it had been assembled inside a nightmare.
The reloader.
Primitive, ugly, stitched together from salvage and desperation.
A base plate hammered nearly flat, scarred by years of use, lay where Vasily set it.
A primitive arrangement of steel posts and a heavy iron lever. Three vertical mandrels stood like chess pieces and the lever at the end. The middle ended with a tip for punching out the past and the right was a hollow throat, waiting to reshape the brass hull for a second life and to recap new primers.
The lever arm, stitched together from hinges, creaked like an old station gate. Its handle was wrapped in electrical tape, the only warmth it could offer in the chill of the tunnels.
And at the far end, welded on with a desperation that passed for craftsmanship in the Metro, was a ring nut fixed horizontally. Its only purpose now to crimp the shell, sealing survival into the brass with one final press.
It looks workable and it was terrifying.
Vasily didn't look up as Mikhail entered.
"You're on time." He gave the bolt one final twist, metal squealing. "Good."
Mikhail approached slowly, as if the tool might lash out.
"I welded the primer base just enough," Vasily said. "If it cracks, it'll crack upward. Wear gloves. And these", he held a small dipper, a measure made from a thin rod welded onto a cut down 5.45 casing.
"I shaved it down to the neck as it will roughly hold 25 grains of blackpowder", Vasily explained, "Which means you'll need to give it atleast 3 scoops for the load."
He wiped his hands on a rag, face unreadable "That's everything."
Mikhail nodded. "Thank you, Vasily."
The maintenance man studied him one last time, something like pity flickering behind the exhaustion in his gaze.
"If you're working for the Coal Man now," Vasily said quietly. Not an accusation. Not a question. A simple fact.
"Be careful. Men like him don't do charity. They don't do loyalty. They don't even do deals. They do hunger."
Mikhail's breath stopped in his chest. Vasily pushed the reloader toward him.
"Try not to get eaten." Vasily muttered, already bending back over a fuse box. "And don't let anyone see it. One informant and you're done."
Mikhail tucked the bundle into his coat like a smuggled heart and forced himself not to walk too fast through the station. Eyes followed motion down here. Eyes remembered. Eyes judged.
He kept his head down, moving in practiced civilian rhythm — slow, tired, carrying nothing of value.
He then thought to himself, "Where the hell am I going to make the shell" as he needed someplace he could mask the hammering. Hammering that is off the workshop floors.
But without any choice and the need to sleep, he needed to bring it back to the sleeping quarters. By this time, the market is quiet but the continuous clangs of work of the workshops persisted throughout the night. Mikhail needed to have a plan, something plausible, a safe way to… wait he thought.
A delivery to the quartermaster. Plausible? Probably. Imprisonment? Maybe. Death? Definitely. As he thought, the consequences of bringing out station resources will be certain death with machinery unless someone can vouch for you.
Mikhail delicately put the makeshift reloader inside with all its moving parts tucked properly, tie up the bag and put it over his shoulder. It is to hide it and if caught, to make it look as if he is on a delivery run.
He reached the market checkpoint guard with a nervous look with the deadly consequential makeshift reloader on his side. Even though it is less than one kilogram, the thought of sudden death made Mikhail feel the heaviness of the reloader as if he was hauling Gus's sacks of a thousand bullets in one of his deliveries.
The guard asks for ID and the forty-six punched copper alloy tax chits that will soon be forty-seven. With cold sweat dripping down his head, all he could think about was the tax cards that are made from copper alloy as it is one of the components to make the primer for the cartridge.
It is one of the most valuable items a citizen will have in this station but it is also the least valuable in terms of survival as well. Losing it will have harsh consequences of being imprisoned, sent to hard labour for years or worst, be attached to the Demolition Corp as canon fodder against the Biomass.
The guard took the copper chit and Mikhail's ID with the lazy efficiency of a man who had done this ritual a million times. He lifted them towards the weak lamp overhead, the light trembling across the identification. For a long moment the guard simply studied the documents in silence, then his eyes drifted and fixed on Mikhail with a slow, weighted scrutiny.
There was nothing hostile in that stare, only the practiced, bored, measuring gaze of someone trained to evaluate people. The same boredness that evaluated threats in the tunnels when it is rare. His eyes traveled across Mikhail's features, taking in the weary slouch of his shoulders, the restless flicker of his eyes, the way his hands tightened anxiously on the strap of his bag.
He saw a pitiful man shaped by the tunnel into something muted and unassuming. Someone that the world would ever notice. Not confident enough to be suspicious, not sturdy enough to be dangerous, not proud enough to provoke questions. A man whose presence tended to shrink rather than expand.
The guard's expression didn't change. He simply extended a hand, palm up, and said, "Bag."
No accusation. No barked order. Just quiet expectation and yet Mikhail felt his chest constrict as if the walls of the station were closing in around him. His fingers clenched around the bag involuntarily, the instinctive protectiveness of someone with something to hide. The weight of the reloader inside became even heavier and the scent of Vasily's torch still faint on the metal.
Mikhail's resolve crumbled before he could even attempt to strengthen it. He handed the bag over.
The guard placed the bag on a table which the contents of its metal made an indistinguishable sound of the clinking metal filled the corridor with small, sharp echoes. He tugged the bag open, rummaging through the contents. Then his hand paused, withdrawing the awkwardly assembled tool, holding it by the lever as though unsure which end might bite.
"What exactly is this supposed to be?" the guard asked, not with suspicion but with the mild irritation of a man who finds a broken hinge in a pile of scrap he's expected to sort.
Mikhail's mouth went dry and his heart beats a thousand times faster. A ringing in his ear and the sound tangled in his throat before finally stumbling out.
"It's… I—it's just a delivery," he managed. "For the Quartermaster. Tool repair."
The guard didn't answer right away. He looked at Mikhail again, longer this time, and in that gaze, the guard pressed his lips together and something shifted. A subtle, almost dismissive look the kind that came from years of watching people and learning which ones could be dangerous and which ones would crumble under the slightest pressure.
Mikhail wasn't the kind who caused trouble. The very essence of Mikhail with his posture, trembling voice, avoidant eyes, the permanent look of a man who will never be noticed. A timid soul the Metro had worn down into nothing.
The guard finally exhaled sharply and shoved the reloader back into the bag with a careless thump. He grabbed the unclosed bag and dropped the weight of it against Mikhail's chest, harder than necessary but with no malice behind the motion.
"Tell your Quartermaster to fill out his own requisitions next time," he muttered, handing back the chit and ID in one motion. "Move along."
Relief washed through Mikhail so quickly it nearly made him lightheaded. He clutched the bag to his ribs, nodding too fast, murmuring something that might have been "thank you" but was swallowed by the tunnel's noise.
He slipped past the guard, footsteps quick but not hurried enough to draw attention, and merged into the thinning corridor. He turned the next bend and stopped in between the market and the tunnels, which he allowed himself to breathe fully again.
Once again the only thing that had protected him was the same thing that had poisoned his conscience all day. The kind of man Yasha had called a rat slipping between the cracks. The kind of man Gus can bully without any repercussions. The kind of man where Katerina does not feel as she is forced into serving.
He kept his head down as he crossed into the northern artery of the station, the beg held close to his side, his fingers locked white around the bag. The corridor here narrowed, the hum of the generators swelling overhead like a trapped beast clawing at the concrete. The air was colder, sharper, tasting faintly of oil and metal shavings.
This passage always felt like the spine of Orekhovo, a stiff, cramped, achingly vital. Everything passed through here eventually, soldiers, traders, rumors, and the invisible weight of fear that seeped in from the tunnels leading north.
Mikhail's boots scuffed against the floor as he neared the small outcropping where the Quartermaster usually sat at night, his booth little more than a repurposed ticket booth with a folding table shoved inside. Mikhail could picture him there clearly, hunched over a ledger, making fun of the other guards with his steaming cup of bitter swill.
But tonight the space was different.
Instead, a young guard stood alone under the dim yellow lamp, leaning on his rifle with the weary boredom of someone assigned to a post too quiet to be heroic, too important to abandon.
Mikhail slowed, heart sinking, breath catching in his throat. The guard straightened at the sight of him. "You need something?" the young man asked, voice rough from the cold.
Mikhail opened his mouth, but the words faltered. He couldn't ask for the Quartermaster. Not with the reloader in his bag. Not with his lie still fresh at the checkpoint. Not when every question tonight felt like a trigger half-pulled.
"I thought…" Mikhail tried, tongue heavy. "I thought he'd be here."
"He's not," the guard replied plainly. "Shift change. He's off-duty. Won't be back until morning." A pause. The guard's eyes flicked to the bag at Mikhail's side, just for a moment. "If it's inventory, bring it tomorrow."
"Inventory. Yes." Mikhail nodded too quickly, like a puppet tugged on invisible strings. "Tomorrow," he echoed.
The guard didn't press. Didn't ask. Didn't seem to care. He shifted his weight, lifting his rifle and settling into another long stretch of uneventful monotony.
Mikhail stepped back into the corridor, stomach twisting. The bag felt heavier like it had gained weight every time someone glanced at it. Every second he spent with it outside of hiding felt like an exposed flame in a tunnel full of gas.
The Quartermaster wasn't here. No safe drop-off and no excuse to linger.
Only one option left, to take it home, hide it and pray no one searched his bunk.
The Orekhovo living quarters were a maze of narrow hallways and stacked rooms barely large enough for a cot and a trunk. Privacy was a myth. Walls were thin. Locks were jokes. Anyone could slip in if they wanted something badly enough.
As Mikhail made his way deeper into the station, each footstep sounded too loud. Each patrol he passed seemed to glance at him too long. Each shadow seemed to lean closer, watching.
He pulled his coat tighter around the bag, trying to make himself smaller, quieter, less noticeable. Just another worker finishing his shift, nothing more.
He moved toward the sleeping quarters, praying the corridors are full of sleeping men, women and children, praying no one would stop him, praying his hands would stop shaking long enough to stash the reloader before dawn.
Mikhail slipped into his sleeping carriage without drawing breath, letting the sliding door whisper shut behind him. The train cars of Orekhovo were old relics welded into the wall decades ago, gutted and stuffed with bunks and lockers until they barely resembled anything that had ever run on rails. But they were home, in the way a cage was home for a trapped animal.
His boots made almost no sound as he crept past rows of sleeping bodies, bundled in blankets, breaths wheezing in the stale air. The heat from the boilers barely reached this far back. The cold was a living thing here, stretching claws under people's clothes, biting at their exposed fingers and faces. Someone coughed in their sleep. Someone else muttered and turned over.
His fingers worked clumsily at the screws. They weren't real screws anymore, just rusted stubs that barely held the frame in place. A soft scrape, a sigh of metal, and the grate loosened enough for him to pull it free. Dust rained down from inside the shaft, cold and fine, coating his hands in grey.
Mikhail glanced over his shoulder.
The corridor behind him was empty.
The sleepers remained still.
The darkness beyond the opening felt deep, swallowing the pale glow from the lamps. A hollow space. A throat cut into the station's metal.
He pulled the bag and with a soft push, he slid the reloader into the vent, shoving it just far enough that no one standing casually would see it. It thud and clink against the metal and soft fabric, faintly echoing down the shaft. He winced at the noise, heart hammering.
Another glance back.
Still alone.
Then pressed the grate back into place. It fit unevenly, like a crooked smile in the metal. If someone tugged hard enough, it would come loose but no one ever tugged the vent back here. No one cared about a grate in the furthest, coldest corner of the sleeping carriages.
Mikhail stepped away, wiping dust from his palms onto his coat. The fear didn't leave him. It clung to his ribs, to the inside of his throat. He backed toward his bunk with the same quiet crept past the bodies of sleeping men and sat down, the springs creaking.
His legs felt hollow. His hands were numb. He leaned backwards into his cot and breathed through the taste of rust and paranoia. The lamps buzzed above him, threatening to flicker out, Mikhail curled onto his side facing the grate, fear gnawing at the back of his skull, and tried to futilely sleep but everytime he closes his eyes, it will instinctively open to look at the grate if it has been taken.
Orekhovo Station: Day 4, Wednesday, 2:50 AM — MGR: 11