"Holster your weapons at once!" That was our greeting as Bourbon and I went around the station's massive gate. "Who're you? Come into the light! Slowly, slowly... Well I'll be damned – Bourbon! Hey, guys, we'd better search these two." Like I'd thought, Bourbon did have a reputation.

Bourbon stepped forward, taking the lead. I followed, and he gave a mock bow as we stopped in front of the guards.

"So, you old drunk, what are you carrying this time around?” The apparently lead guard glanced at me. “And who's the boy?"

"Look here, boss, I'm sure we can work this out..."

The center guard bore a mischievous grin once Bourbon released the words into the air. "Sure, let's go and chat a little. And you,” he motioned to the others, “keep an eye on this one." As Bourbon and the guard passed through the fence out of sight, relieved myself of my pack and reached inside.

"Don't move, mudak." I looked up to the sentry and met his gaze as I retrieved the generator from my pack, connected it to my headlamp and checked the charge.

"Stand still, I'm talking to you!" I disconnected the generator, satisfied with the three-quarter charge and stood face to face with the man. Despite his age and demeanor, he was nervous of me, most likely due to the fact that I towered over him.

The lead came back, alone. "Okay, these two may pass. Welcome to the Market." I turned to the fence to proceed with Bourbon, only to hear the faint word 'zhopa' muttered from behind.

"Unless you enjoy the company, let's leg it." Taking no time, Bourbon and I entered the market proper. After moving along an array of empty boxcars, Bourbon stopped and pulled me to his side. "Listen kid, we're in deep shit. No way I can pay back those rail-car guys. We'll be lucky if they let us shovel shit for the rest of our days."

I began to wonder how much Bourbon owed exactly, and to how many different people. "What do you suggest?"

"Well... we can't go to Hanza. Look, here's some cartridges, go get a couple of filters, will ya? I have an idea..."

I'd never seen a market like this--you could buy almost anything. But, Bourbon owed money to the Hanza sentries, and was anxious to leave.

I had five minutes to prepare for Bourbon's plan before meeting him at a nearby bar. Thus, I had scarce time to search all the stalls and kiosks of the market. Each one had varying goods of different values, from weapons to pans and simple clothes to the rare can of disinfectant.

After I had purchased a few cylinders worth of .44, an hour in filters, and a new piece of flint for my lighter, I began to head to the bar Bourbon told me of. On my way out of the vendor's nook, something caught my eye from a nearby stall. It seemed to be a small yellow pastry of some sort wrapped in a plastic covering. The vendor noticed my observations and stood from his counting bullets.

"Something I can help you with my boy? A little treat perhaps?"

"How much for this?" I pointed out the assumed confection.

"It'll be five bullets kid."

I took a moment to think about what I was doing. There were more useful things I could get for five bullets, such as lighter fuel or some clean water... and here I was about to spend five bullets on something that won't last very long, or had already spoiled.

"I appreciate your business, kid!"

'I hope this was worth it...'

-----~~~/)(~~~-----<

The small herd sat around the human as he told the resumed history of his world, from a time before the devastation of the land above and the retreat into the subterranean safety of the Russian Metro System. When there was no need to don masks which filtered the poisonous air, or hide from the monstrosities that plagued the surface.

The princess among them was transfixed by the man, listening with the utmost interest, as was instinct due to her bookish nature and natural curiosity. But unlike the studious pony, the sole unicorn decided to avert her attention elsewhere, more specifically to the many scrap wools and leathers around the makeshift den. She astutely examined each fiber and scrap. The fashionista wouldn't normally touch leather due to ethics regarding its origin, but she decided to keep her mind elsewhere to dilute the grim reality of the current situation; dividing the food by seven resulted in meager portions that barely counted as leftovers, and didn't provide a distraction for long. Khan had explained how he would have to ration his supplies, as he wasn't expecting any sort of visitor, let alone half a dozen, and she didn't have the heart to complain after that.

Time and time again she found herself wondering of her younger sister. Little did she know, she was not the only one thinking of their place in Equestria. Each of the mares had, at one time or another, thought of home, family, friends, or in Fluttershy's case, animal friends.

Even though they had only been in the dark of the Metro for a short time, each of them felt as if they hadn't seen Equestria, let alone Ponyville, for sheer months. At least they were not forsaken entirely, as they found a new friend in the human known as 'Khan', whom seemed to have extensive, almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Metro. There were many questions he deflected or took his time in answering, such as who had caused the apocalypse on the surface, or why the nazis and communists – whom he began referring to respectively as 'Reich' and 'Red Line' – were so hostile. A good deal of what they heard could be resumed to 'I don't have a precise enough answer to give'.

The man placed the now clean eating utensils within his rucksack and began to stand, attracting the attention of the equines. *We should get going, we have stayed here long enough.* After seeing the concern in their faces, Khan hinted at the shadows along the wall with his chin. *We're not the only ones in this room.*

This earned an incredulous look from both the alicorn and the butter pegasus, both of them looking around the room in question for any sign of the unwanted guest. *What exactly do you mean, Khan?* Twilight asked. *We don't see anything.*

He turned around and beckoned them closer, his hand slowly fanning the air towards him. *Come closer, and I will show you.*

“Girls, Khan wants to show us something.” Her voice was now laced with uncertainty, as her mind tried to process what it was that their eyes could not perceive. The only conclusion she could take was that whatever was with them was hiding in plain sight, camouflaged from the unwary eye.

“What is it, Egghead? Did he find out how to get us home?” The spectrum mottled mare, obviously enough, kept true to her headstrong attitude, deigning to jump to conclusions as she sailed next to the man.

“We can certainly hope sugarcube, but Ah have a feeling that's not the case,” Applejack stated, patting Rainbow Dash on her back as she fell in line, looking at the human whilst the rest of the herd grouped beside him as well.

Khan pointed to the wall across the room. *Tell me, friends, what do you see over there? In the shadows?*

Fluttershy and Twilight inspected the wall, the former shaking her head distractedly as she studied it. Even the minute divots of the wall fell under their dilligent once-over.

*I can only see wall,* Fluttershy said hesitantly. Twilight nodded,starting to doubt Khan's assessment.

The human nodded wisely a single time. *That is where you are wrong.* His headlamp flickered to life, casting its illuminating beam against the wall and lighting the room in its darkened depths.

At first, they saw nothing out of the ordinary, just a wall lined with piping, cracked paint, dust and mold, the usual motif so far. However, as Twilight went to ask what they were looking for, the shadow presented itself out of the corner of her eye. The dark shape of a man, not unlike Khan, was standing in place from where they entered the room the night prior. It watched without moving, observed while doing nothing but breathe... waiting for something to happen. Its body didn't seem real, like a shadow, but instead of a flat projection, it was a perfectly three-dimensional apparition, defined enough to mess with their depth of view.

The nervous silence that had settled in the room was broken when Khan began to speak again. *You see it now, yes?* he asked, keeping his eyes closed as his headlamp centered the ethereal shape. *This... is a silhouette. A man who once walked the very tunnels we have has perished, and what remains of him is this ghostly visage, lost and set to wander in our mortal realm. His death must have hardly been a peaceful one.* He shut off the power to his headlamp, turning around and opening the doorway to the tunnels proper. *Come, we shouldn't linger. The living bear no rights to the paths the dead tread.*

After Twilight relayed his words to the group, each of the girls had a reaction, ranging from Rarity's muted 'oh, dear', Pinkie's eyes losing their happy glint, Rainbow Dash going from ruffled in fear to slumped in sympathy, and Applejack placing her hat above her heart, grimacing and scrunching her eyes shut. It seemed the story had hit her harder than all the rest.

Fluttershy, for her part, sat in front of the shadow, looking at where his eyes would have been. Her face was neutral, but a tear escaped her eye. 'Even in death... these people have no peace. What kind of being can tolerate this prospect of existence?'

-----~~~/)(~~~-----<

I arrived at the bar moments later, stopping in front of Bourbon with my teeth sunk into the treat I’d bought.

“Artyom, anomaly-killer and candy-eater!” He gave a hearty laugh, to the point of wiping his eye of a tear, surely mocking me for making such a decision. “You sure are a riot, kid. I wish I started traveling with you sooner.”

I simply shrugged, rather enjoying the cake despite its horrendous aftertaste. Reaching into my bag, I handed him a few spare filters, seeing as I had plenty for the moment.

He took them and gave a gesture of thanks, placing them in his bag with a smirk before contorting his face into a more serious expression. “So, I made an arrangement with a guy here. Greedy asshole, but he’s willing to let us out. It’s gonna take some quick feet on our part, so be ready to bolt when you see the chance. I assume you are done with your little shopping spree?”

I nodded, quickly polishing off the rest of the morsel, complete with a faint shudder as it traveled down my throat. I shouldered the Kalash and prepared for whatever we were to do.

“Great, let's go then. The sooner we escape this trap, the better.”

We walked calmly to the airlock, finding a nest of guards sitting around a fire with a pot upon a spit. They all seemed rather cheery, considering their post. In Exhibition, a post at the airlocks would chill a man to his core, knowing that any day could be his last. My heart ached as I thought of home, my mind wandering and thinking of Plimel and my father.

“Bourbon?” A guard asked as we stepped past a turnstile, approaching the airlock with purpose.

“As if you don't know...” Bourbon retorted, clearly annoyed that he would have to go through this again.

“Cough up and get out.” I began to wonder if it was just Market that employed such a corrupt and underhanded guard. I understand the necessities were needed, but in such a populous station they were in no short number. The guard here seemed to want to milk Bourbon of every bullet he owned.

“I've already paid Mike.” Even more proof of what I had assumed.

“You didn't pay me. But if you don't want to go through...” The guard had a mischievous grin as he held out his hand, his palm opened and waiting hungrily for payment.

“Shit — a pleasure doing business with you...” Bourbon filled his open hand with two or three shiny bullets, reluctantly shaking the commander’s other one.

The guard quickly pocketed the rounds and turned to the others. “Get ready, everyone, the gate's opening!”

The others gave him an uncertain look, one of them even questioning him. “Are you sure, commander?”

He looked at him and nodded before moving to the gate. “Take your positions and cover me.”

The commander began to unlock the gate, turning the wheel at the base and quickly pulling it open, allowing the light from the stairway outside to flow in. The cold swept in as well, chilling me as it first hit. Thankfully, my clothes were more than warm enough for the outside world, though I knew little of what to expect.

“It looks clear... Go!” The commander shouted, ushering us out the gate quickly.

“Thanks!” Bourbon told him, hastily stepping outside and pulling me along. “We need to move our asses, boy!”

A moment after his words reached me, I could hear shouting from inside the station. “Hold it right there!” “Bourbon! Hold it!” “Get them!”

“Move it, kid!”

As the commander closed the gate behind us, locking it noisily, we rushed to the stairs, ending up in front of a row of decayed wooden doors. “Put your mask on, Artyom. Time to use those filters you bought.” We donned our masks, testing them to see if they were in working order before opening the passage.

All but a moment later, we arrived to the surface, leaving the subterranean refuge and entering a shell of a metro station entrance. The building was littered with pure white snow that crunched under my boots as I took my first steps out of the tunnels. My nerves began to get to me, and my stomach flipped, taking the cake for a sickening ride. I was treading unfamiliar ground now, with no way back.

“Be re-e-ally careful now...” Bourbon uttered, placing a hand on my shoulder as he stepped in front of me. I followed his gaze as he looked to a dilapidated portion of the roof, a hole revealing a large ball of light shining through it. From what I had heard, and read, the large illumination in the sky was called “sun”. It had a stark beauty to it, though I must admit it frightened me with its power.

Stepping around some more turnstiles, we came to a lifeless corpse. He had deep wounds on his chest, similar to those a nosalis would cause. “And here we meet a happy citizen!” Bourbon spoke with dripping sarcasm, a small sigh leaving his mouth in a cloud of steam shortly afterwards. “Stalkers. Those crazy devils come to the surface almost every day, looking for scrap metal, ammo, anything they can dig up and carry...” He crouched over the dead man, relieving his pockets of any valuables.

I took to the bag, grabbing a few shotgun shells from it with a frown. For some reason, I felt as though there was some hidden, and familiar meaning to the word ‘Stalkers’. I couldn't place it, but they seemed nostalgic to me in whatever manner...

“Sometimes you find the dead ones frozen stiff... like snowmen in rags – heh.” Bourbon had some hint of sadness in his voice, probably aimed toward the poor man whom had met his fate here. “Search the room carefully, you might find another cache around here. They often make hideouts for themselves on the surface, just in case. So just take a look around, and we'll have no problem with spare filters or ammunition whatsoever.”

I looked to a doorway to my left, taking his advice and cautiously searching for anything of value. Peering inside of the doorway, I noticed a stairway directly to the right inside of it, as well as a tripwire at the foot of the stairs. Following the wire with my eyes, I found a rather crude but deadly trap made of a wooden log and sharpened rebar suspended above the door frame.

Carefully, I stepped through the door and over the trip wire, ascending the stairs and coming to the second level of the station entrance. Something ran in front of me, no doubt frightened by my presence, before jumping out of a row of windows further ahead. It couldn’t have been a nosalis; those damnable creatures were too sluggish and stupidly bold to match this limber new animal. After I managed to suppress my frantic heartbeat, I examined the area, finding that directly at the top of the stairs and to my right was a small toolbox filled with an assortment of ammunition and filters.

I gladly gathered these amenities and slung the Kalash back, seeing that I now had a surplus of .44 for my revolver. Guard training had showed us how the heavier bullet was more effective against unarmored mutant flesh than human armor, and the skirmishes I had been in so far proved such a notion perfectly right.

A second later, I heard a howl come from the outside. Peering out the window the mutant had scampered through, I had my first glimpse of Russia’s late capital city of Moscow. Ruined and hollow buildings stuck out like stakes all over, forming jagged lines on the horizon. Each one was a shell of its former glory, no doubt. A faint sadness struck me as I realized that the surface would never be as it was in the books, that all of the pictures I owned of my home were no longer examples of what it was like. I heard a second howl and saw the same agile monster dart across the ground, sniffing around before diving into a stairwell. A moment passed and two more followed in its wake.

“Despite everything, life sings on... even if it is a whisper of what it once was,” I spoke to myself, poignantly contemplating the words as I descended the stairs back to my friend.

When I arrived, Bourbon was still scavenging the stalker's corpse. “What have we got here? Ah, a filter... That will surely come in handy,” he spoke aloud as he searched the rest of the belongings. “Some ammo, great.” He stood up and closed the man's eyes with his fingers. “Thanks, friend.”

I moved to the next room, one across the floor, and discovered another corpse behind the reception counter. He was devoid of anything aside from a few cartridges for his Bastard, which I took without much thought. Stepping outside and moving to the room adjacent to the last, I found yet another body crumpled on the floor. This man looked as if he had died from either hunger, thirst or cold, as there were no wounds on his body. He was lying next to a few filters, which I placed into my pack. I still held onto some reluctance to take things from the dead, but seeing as they were in the same situation before, doing just the same, I shrugged it off more easily.

After my little scavenging hunt was done, I followed Bourbon to the doors of the building. “Ready?” he asked, positioned behind the frame. I gave a small but perceptible nod as I looked over the hall one last time. “Let's go then.” He said, easily kicking down the door and carefully stepping outside. “We've got reach an air shaft close by, it’s one of the easiest ways into Dry station. Then, we go our separate ways. And don’t you worry, the deal still stands: you’ll get the AK I promised you.” I could feel the smirk behind his mask from afar.

The street outside was lined with debris, some of them being what I believed were cars of old. Aside from that, the ground was carved in jagged lines, revealing the city's sewage system.

As we stepped into the open, my heart skipped a beat. A deep, loud roar, unlike any I had heard in my life, echoed throughout the area, making my body freeze in fear. Bourbon cursed and began to move back to the cover that the building provided, hiding away behind a pillar. “Hide, kid!” I mustered my courage and followed in his footsteps, hiding next to him. “Stay hidden. If we meet the beast in the open, crawl into the nearest crevice.”

I peered from the cover and paid witness to a gigantic monstrosity circling overhead, with wings of massive span and talons like razors. Its face looked like a bat’s, but so much larger and more menacing. It reminded me of a picture I had on my wall, which displayed a rooftop with statues upon it, dubbed ‘Gargoyles’.

“Some people call these demons, I call them bitches.” Bourbon uttered, his hand gripping the Kalash tightly as he grimaced at the beast. “They don’t leave you alone until you’ve given them a few good slaps, and even then they come back.” I figured both were fitting names.

The demon went just as quickly as it came, flying off further down the road and perching with its back to us on a distant rooftop. Assuming it was safe, we stepped out from the shade of the pillar and stood out into the sunlight. “So, that's the dead city,” Bourbon grunted, bowing down and waving his arm in a strange, mocking curtsy. “Welcome home, Artyom.”

Author's Note

Hey, Rains here. I had A LOT of family issues and the like pop up while I was writing and I had to postpone my work on this!

But now I'm back! And I plan to update regularly! Twice a month at the least.

Anyway, thanks for reading, And thank you for the amazing editing Mr. Kellar, I'd be lost without you!