Orekhovo Station: Day 1, Sunday, 8:00 AM,MGR: 5
The pounding in his skull came first—slow, deliberate, like a hammer driven with every heartbeat. It drowned out the usual rumble, the usual dread. No, this was the aftertaste of pure rot: cheap vodka brewed in buckets, cut with the same disinfectant they used to mask the stench of the pits.
Mikhail groaned, clutching his temples as the stale air pressed in around him. The cot beneath him creaked. A frame of rusted iron and splintered wood that had served too many bodies before him. Sweat, mildew, and old blood lived in its fabric now. He would have turned over to sink back into oblivion, but the curtain was yanked open with a metallic shriek.
"Up! Up! Up! Your shift starts in a few minutes!" Alexei's voice hit like a concussion grenade. "You better move before Gus cuts your pay again."
The shout echoed in Mikhail's skull, bouncing from wall to wall. He groaned again and tried to sit, but his muscles refused. The air was thick: human breath, oil fumes, and the sharp scent of disinfectant that only ever made the filth smell worse.
Alexei grabbed him under the arm, hauling him. "Davai! Davai!" His cot mate exudes the smell of oil and gunpowder.
Mikhail shoved Alexei's arm away, pulling himself upright. He immediately locked his gaze on Alexei, steadily. "Fine! Get my coat, Alexei. And if Petrov asks, I've been up for an hour clearing the press."
Mikhail blinked against the dim light. The makeshift room was carved out of an old train carriage, long ago stripped of seats and dignity. A row of cots lined the walls, the metal warped and pitted. Men slept in shifts. Twelve hours of labor, twelve hours of pretending to rest, all under the same cracked aluminium roof. Warmth leaked from the car like blood from a wound. The three thin blankets were barely enough to hold back the underground chill that crept up from the floor.
He staggered to his feet, pulling on his heavy coat. The familiar ritual. Boots, gloves, tool belt. A rhythm beaten into him by repetition but a little more frantic today. Outside the curtain, the narrow corridor stretched forward into darkness.
The walk was always the same, but today he ran. Down the cramped hallway, past the rusting bulkheads and the dangling wires that hummed faintly with stolen current. The stench was a living thing. Sweat, sewage, rust, and smoke layered together until it became a taste that never left his tongue.
And always, always, there was the dread.
A sentry placed at the entrance of the market choke-point checking IDs and demanding tax chits. Mikhail took out his tax chit knowing this will slow down his travel. He handed them to the guard and a card with 46 punches made out of 52 crudely circled numbers.
Past the broken doorway that led into the station's heart, sat her. Gus's woman. Anastasia. The watchful eye of the Market.
She perched behind a booth lit by a single yellow bulb, the light throwing sharp angles across her face. She managed to look unnaturally clean, a polished piece of shell casing in a heap of rust. The sight of her felt like a betrayal of the dirt, a reminder of the gulf between her world and his.
"Late again, Misha," she said, her voice light, almost a chuckle, using the diminutive to make the threat worse. "Gus won't be pleased."
He didn't answer. He never did. His eyes locked rigidly onto a crack in the floor, refusing to meet her gaze. He shuffled past the yellow light, forcing himself into a stiff, evasive walk, his head tucked low into his collar.
The shame tightened his chest, but the ledger in his head tightened it more: 8 MGR for twelve hours. 8 MGR.
He ran past the broken doorway, the silent guard behind barely glancing up readying for the next person. The Market—the core of the station—the air grew thick with oil, sweat, and cooked rats.
The Market breathed like something dying but unwilling to quit. Stalls clung to the walls in crooked rows. butcher, tinker, scavenger, brewer. Each one fenced in by scrap metal and fatigue. The smell of fungus, blood, and burning coal. A trade necessity. Merged into one oppressive stench. Above it all, the ceiling dripped in slow rhythm, counting the seconds of decay. Merchants shouted, haggled, threatened; a welder's torch glowed behind the stall. A guard kneeling patting the head of a crying child asking what is wrong.
The noises of a hundred workers had ended their 12 hour shift, shifting around the market looking for their dinner before going back to bed while another hundred are walking or are already at their workplace.
Past the stalls, the light dimmed and the air grew colder. The passage toward the living quarters B, where the pipes groaned like dying lungs. Cots were stacked wall to wall, curtains of burlap marking illusions of privacy. Breath hung heavy, human and stale. Every sound carried. the wheeze of sleep, the soft curse of the hungry.
At the far end, beyond the last cot and rusted drum stove, waited the escalator to the surface. It was secured two decades ago and it has been stacked over the years. Guards posted watched in silence, lamps flickering over their rifles as the black mouth of the escalator yawned open in front of them.
Dim lights hung from wires overhead, their glow barely pushing back the dark. Every shadow looked like a hand reaching out. Every glance from the guards, a threat.
Mikhail's mind wandered to numbers again, the private ledger that haunted him. His personal arithmetic of survival.
He ran the numbers again, the way he always did:
Two meals a day (a filling, oily stew or skewer and a tin cup of bitter mushroom tea). 6 MGR gone. The diet, high in low-grade protein, tasted like the short life it promised.
Taxes to the station, 13 MGR a week. 52 MGR a month. They collect every week and stamp your card, leaving you 1 MGR at the end of the week.
It never added up. It never would. The merchants who thrived here dealt in hundreds of MGR each month, their protection paid in blood and bullets.
Mikhail. He's a worker, a gear in a dying machine.
When he reached the weapons and repair room, the pounding in his skull returned, joined by the shriek of metal tools and the clatter of shell casings. The air was a thick haze of smoke and oil. He inhaled, and the taste of fear coated his tongue like yesterday's brew.
Last night he spent 15 MGR on a homebrew. Four months. Four months of grueling work, and savings for sweet Katerina's homebrew—three minutes of oblivion—had nearly wiped out the savings. He was a gear in a dying machine, and the numbers proved it would grind him down soon.
He raised his hand and knocked. Twice light, once heavy. Gus's rhythm. Anything else meant trouble.
A minute of silence followed. Always a minute. Always deliberate. It was Gus's way of reminding him who held the power. Then, the bolt slid back, metal scraping metal, and the viewing slit opened. A pair of cold grey eyes looked out, expressionless.
The slit slammed shut. The locks turned. The door creaked open just enough for Mikhail to slip through.
Inside, the Armory was smaller than most closets, but it had the weight of a temple. Every inch reeked of oil and gunpowder, the scent of violence turned into livelihood.
Benches lined the walls, each one cluttered with the press, brass shells, bullet molds, and jars of homemade powder. Lamps flickered overhead, their light dim and jaundiced. A cracked blueprint hung near the far wall, edges blackened by fire. The schematic for a weapon older than any of them.
Gus stood by the workbench, his broad frame blocking the lamp. His face looked carved from concrete. Flat, rough, and unyielding.
"You're five minutes late," he said without turning.
Mikhail kept his voice low. "Won't happen again."
Gus pointed to the back. "Cold Corner. Get moving."
The Cold Corner, also known as the first bench. The place where the warmth never reached, where the draft knifed through the cracks in the wall and froze the fingers stiff. It was punishment, though no one said the word.
Mikhail looked down the line. Igor was already at his station, shoulders hunched, hands moving with that practiced twitch-and-pull. The line was a single, breathing entity: the rhythmic clack-clack of the presses, the low hiss of the powder. It was beautiful in the terrible, inescapable way of a machine built only to consume. It breathed without him. Worked without him. Lived without him. He had been late, a ghost for five minutes, and nothing at all had changed. His absence was meaningless.
Gus's voice, flat and heavy as the concrete-carved face, cut through the metal chorus. "Get to your station now, Mikhail!"
He jolted, the sound of his own breathing suddenly loud in the oily air. "Yes, sir," he breathed, the word dissolving instantly in the smoke.
The room reeked of solvent, sweat, and burnt powder. The air's thick with dust and vapor that each breath scratched at the throat. The lighting came from a string of half-dead bulbs strung across the ceiling like diseased fruit, each flickering with the weak, yellow pulse of the dying grid. Beneath them, the benches stretched in two long rows: the reloaders' line.
It was an assembly floor without walls, without rest. The iron press, Gus calls it. The makeshift single-stage press, blackened by years of oil, smoke and black powder sat bolted to each table in perfect sequence. The only thing in the station that looked truly eternal, the dies, steel and sharp, still cut as clean as the day they'd been made, decades after the bombs.
Each table bore a single die, one stage of an endless ritual. Seven operators running the whole production line.
Table One: Resizing and Decapping. A casing is picked from a bucket. Fine muscles tensed as it was shoved into the casing holder. The lever was stiff, its pivot point resisting but pulled hard, and the rusty lever obeyed. The die resized the case, and a spike punched out the spent primer with a sick, metallic tink.
Table Two: Priming. A surgeon's steady hand placed the casing, took a fragile primer from a tray, pushed the lever up, and seeded the new cap.
Table Three Powder charge. A calibrated ladle scooped from a bin, the left hand held the casing steady as the powder was poured, then placed onto a cartridge holder.
Table Four : Bullet seating. The operator pick up a casing and place it into the holder, place a crude junk slug on top and pull the lever driving the slug into the casing.
Table Five : Crimp. Then the final clench of the round crimping it tightly to the slug.
Together, they turned scrap brass and scavenged powder into Dirty Rounds, specifically the 5.45x39mm. Widely used by everyone in the Metro hence the immense wealth of Gus.
Mikhail arrived five minutes later.
But the sound of the press continued. The six men team carried on without Mikhail so the chain did not run dry and hold up production.
Igor, the support on table one, cracked his voice across the room like a whip. "About damn time, Mikhail!"
Mikhail positioned himself and slipped into the chair at Table One, coat still damp from condensation. The reloading press loomed before him, its steel lever slick with the sweat of a hundred hands. Beside it sat the tray of spent casings. all fouled, flared, dented. Their once-brass surfaces were now blackened with carbon, like diseased lungs.
Petrov, the foreman chimed in, "Whole line almost stops 'cause of you"
Gus smiled, then pointed only at Mikhail. Mikhail kept his gaze fixed on the work surface, avoiding Gus's eyes. "You'll make up your absence, Powder-Rat. Three thousand rounds before lunch."
Mikhail's stomach dropped. He did not lift his head, his gaze fixed on the casing tray.
The production line went silent, that was the punishment. Even at their best, two thousand five hundred rounds can be achieved but another five hundred rounds is only possible if there are no jams or errors.
The click continuously but louder and angrier.
He swallowed, setting the casing with desperate speed.
The tool was ancient, but not dead. The lever gave resistance like old muscle. He pulled it down with force resizing the casing back into its original shape is like fitting a widow back into her wedding ring.
He raised the handle, the empty case sliding free. He takes the casing and drops it onto the next station's bucket.
Across the room, the chorus of metal grew: a syncopated rhythm of lever pulls, brass clicks, and the rattle of spent primers. The sound had its own pulse. mechanical, harsh, and strangely human. Somewhere above, air circulated weakly through a rusted duct, humming like a dying lung.
Mikhail worked by habit, by rhythm, by survival. Pull down. Click. Primer out. Next.
The work was designed to break the mind into repetition. Even though it could be dangerous here. Each step was a little act of faith that the casing would hold, that the old powder wouldn't cook off, that the die wouldn't crack and shatter from stress. The presses had outlasted men twice his age; they would outlast him, too.
After half an hour, the new quota began to bite. Sweat rolled down his neck, turning the grime into mud. His palms throbbed where the lever's handle rubbed against bone. The fumes of spent primers hung heavy in the air, the bitter tang of lead and old mercury compounds seeping into the lungs of everyone present. The Metro's workers would all die younger than they should. Some from radiation, some from starvation, most from the air they breathed here.
But the line didn't stop.
Each time Mikhail pulled the lever, the rest of the benches moved in sync. A reshaped casing moved to a primed shell passed to the next man, who slammed it into his own die to resize it and another to pour the powder. Another passed it down to seat the bullet, another to crimp. When the line was healthy, it moved like one machine. A dozen hands creating ammunition faster than any scavenger could collect brass.
The system created was after 90 minutes, a swap will be made to continue production to give rest to the first bencher.
The system dictated a swap after 90 minutes to ensure no single operator failed and slowed the line. Pyotr, the second floater, stood nearby, ready. Mikhail called out, his throat already raw:
"Pyotr, swa—"
"No," Gus's voice cut across the workshop, a flat, final sound that stopped the rhythm for a single, horrifying beat. "He's late. He'll continue his station alone."
Mikhail's stomach dropped. The punishment was being decoupled from the machine. Every pull of the lever was now solely his burden. The presses on Tables Two and Three would be running on its reserves, their operators staring at the increasing spaces where his casing should be. The casing felt heavier now, falling like tiny, metallic tears into the shadows beneath the bench.
The clock on the wall marked time in uneven ticks, each second echoing through the stale air like a slow, deliberate executioner.
By the third hour, sweat stings his eyes and his shoulders burn.. The pain in his lower back starts to be noticeable and the speed of his work slows.
Gus made his rounds behind the line, his boots crunching on the scattered primers underfoot. He didn't speak this time. His presence was enough. The slow pacing of a predator among prey too tired to flee.
The line smelled of sweat, oil, and scorched metal. The men beside Mikhail coughed and spat into rags blackened by residue. No one talked. Talking wasted breath, and breath was worth as much as a cartridge.
He decapped another shell. crack. The sound is sharp and wet. Next one. Another. Then another.
The fourth hour, the brass in his tray began to blur together, hands became jerky and slow. A brief pause between casings to recover some strength. The following tables became idle waiting for him to finish his cycle. Table Two and Three now are running on inertia, their operators staring at the empty space where his casing should be.
By the sixth hour, every pull was a battle. It took him ten seconds to deprime and resize a case, ten seconds of agonizing strain that starved the rest of the line. The small muscle at the corner of his left eye tore itself with a frantic twitch. Time didn't stretch; it simply ceased to move, replaced by the blinding, aching pulse in his neck.
Then, the klaxon. A shriek of salvation and terror.
The small muscle at the corner of his left eye twitched from strain. Time folded in on itself, a long stretch of motion punctuated only by the occasional shout from Gus or the dull clang of a dropped casing.
He didn't drop so much as he dissolved. His knees buckled, his torso folding forward, not toward the floor, but toward the machine. The immense weight of exhaustion pulled him down, and the last thing he heard, before the roar of the blood in his ears drowned out the world, was the collective, furious silence of the idle presses. His arms remained slackly outstretched, fingers curved and locked into the phantom shape of the handle he'd been gripping for six hours.
Igor, who had spent nearly five hours staring at the back of Mikhail's head, reacted first. He watched the clock waiting to grab his arm.
"Get off the press, you idiot" he hissed, his voice low with concern and exhaustion.
Pyotr just beside him took the other side, both unpeeling him from the station.
Gus reappeared from his corner, lighting a cigarette off a sputtering bulb. He walked the line, inspecting trays, his eyes cold and heavy. When he reached Mikhail's bench, he let the ash fall onto the floor between their boots.
They dragged him away from the machine and laid him onto a pile of used burlap sacks in the corner.
Gus, whose cigarette had burned down, exhaled a plume of smoke, letting the ash fall directly onto Mikhail's coat.
Sasha, pressed a metallic canteen to Mikhail's lips. The water tasted of iron and solvent, but the cold shock helped.
"Drink," Sasha ordered, his voice flat, devoid of sympathy. "Held up the line two hours, fool. Two hours dead. We were close."
Mikhail tried to speak, to cough up a justification, but only a dry, rattling gasp escaped.
Petrov approached, his shadow falling over the collapsed man. He didn't bend down; he spoke to Sasha, but his voice was loud enough to be the final word in the room. He didn't bother looking at Mikhail's face as he delivered the verdict: "Two thousand one hundred and seventy-nine rounds. Clean him up. Get him to the infirmary. He's done for the day."
Orekhovo Station: Day 1, Sunday, 2:00 PM,MGR: 5