Metro 2033 - Into the shadows | A Metro short story collection

Part 2 - Contact

The mutant's lean body was throbbing slowly and his hands were shaking. His eyes twitched wildly in all directions until they finally met Elias gaze. In one fell swoop, all the exhaustion of the last few days fell away, the cold left him and his wounds no longer hurt. He looked into the eyes of a lost being that had nothing in the world. The being's gaze pierced him and seemed to stab straight into his thoughts.Yes, the being could read his mind. He could feel it. He felt it connecting with him and getting closer.The creature lifted its head and cooed softly. The black skin strained on his thin bones, which looked like they could snap under the pressure of the skin alone. "Listen to me".Where did that voice come from? Elias knew. He only heard the voice in his head."What are you?" Elias asked loudly. "I am the new person, the better you." He heard it in his head. "Let me show you something".The real world blurred before his eyes and a new one formed before his inner eye. In front of him a schoolyard took shape that looked vaguely familiar. At the end of the school yard was a dilapidated school building that had been painted yellow. The paint was peeling off the wall of the house, making a small line of rags on the floor."Are you afraid Elli?" asked a voice from behind. The voice also seemed familiar to him. A second voice answered the other "Um, no. Although. Yes, a bit." The second voice was from a child, with a little shaky pronunciation.Elias turned and discovered where the voices had come from. In front of him was his six-year-old self and... his mother, who was bending down to her son with a gentle smile. He himself wore a green knit sweater that was a bit too big for him and a brand new school backpack that showed individual dinosaurs on a red background. He looked up at his mother, who was wearing a pink sundress with flowers on it. "Listen Elias," his mother said to her beloved son in a sensitive voice. "You have to go to school so that you can learn something and later have a great job. If you are very brave now and go in and be good all day Look, we'll have vanilla ice cream waffles this afternoon, okay?"Elias remembered the taste of waffles. He longed for his mother and the old world. Waffles with vanilla ice cream used to be his favorite food. There was no longer a dish of this class today. He heard his former self softly agree and saw the boy's expression brighten. The memories of that day were slowly coming back. He knew something bad had happened that day, but couldn't remember what.What he did remember, however, was why he had been so afraid of going to school.It was his enrollment day. In kindergarten he was never really popular and only had three friends. When he started elementary school he was afraid it would be the same there.Elias was snapped out of his thoughts when the other Elias turned around after a goodbye kiss and ran to the entrance of the school building.He followed the younger to the door. Above the door frame hung a banner with colorful writing on it and individual small drawings of school children with school bags in their hands.'Welcome 1st graders!' it almost cheered you on.But Elias was focused on something else. A calendar hung on a red wall in the foyer of the elementary school. The date on it was July 6, 2013.A shock ran through Elias. It was THE day. The day it all went down. Now all his memories of that horrible event had returned.Suddenly, the environment around him changed. The foyer blurred until it was swapped out for a room full of excited kids.He discovered himself sitting on a red plastic chair. He was talking to the person sitting next to him, whose name was Max. He could only understand a few snippets of conversation. The two talked about their old kindergarten and joked about the girls from their new class.The teacher, who had written the first three letters of the alphabet several times on the blackboard, interrupted this activity to send the children to recess before the gong sounded.The students got up cheering and rushed to the yard to play and recover from the lessons.Elias followed the other and Max outside and watched the two take a soccer ball out of a chamber and kick it to each other.He saw how happy everyone was. All of this would soon be over.As if on command, alarm sirens went off all over Cologne and all the teachers stormed into the courtyard. They instructed the children to immediately form pairs and listen to the teachers. His class teacher explained to her class what just happened. Then they all walked down from the school yard towards the subway station, which was very close to the elementary school. Surprisingly, there was more or less calm. Only a few students began to cry quietly. They all hurried down the stairs to the underground. Arriving at the platform, everyone gathered around the headmaster. "Students, we may have to live here for a long time," he said. A ridiculous man. Elias hadn't liked him before and had understood even then that he wasn't a good headmaster. His name had been Albert Kroemer. Albert was even sweating with fear running down his greasy bald head. He opened his mouth to continue stuttering, but was drowned out by a loud bang. The ceiling trembled and the temperature rose. Even more students started to cry and Mr. Krömer finally lost his composure. Chaos broke out at the station. People are striding, asking the police to open the hermetic gates, but to no avail. All of a sudden, the whole subway around him disappeared and the real world returned.In front of him, now erect to his full height, was the black man. Yes, the name fitted well. Everything on his body was black, even his eyes. The black was surprisingly tall, at least six feet, but didn't look strong. Actually, Elias should have retreated or tried to knock the mutant down with his Kalashnikov, but he didn't even think about it. The creature had shown him his past, his mother, his friend and the end of the world. But it stopped where the bad started. Anton remembered that later people pounded on the door from outside. They wanted to be saved, but it was already too late. At some point, a voice very familiar to Elias called over from the other side. "LEAVE ME TO MY SON! LET ME IN! ELIAS!" she had called. It had been his mother. On his first foray to the surface as a collector, her burned corpse was the first thing that caught his eye. The black was sensitive. He had saved Elias from the worst. "I didn't want to show you," he heard in his head. "Thank you" Elias said in a shaky voice. He missed his mother. Crying, he sank onto the cold, icy concrete arch of the apartment building. The black dropped his head and looked at him. Through his eyes he looked into a long-lost and irradiated world that everyone at the cathedral longed for. Elias averted his gaze. Then he asked, "Why are you here?" "I had to hide," his head told him in reply. "To whom?" he demanded. "Before you. Before you and your people." Anton turned his head back to the mutant; or the mutant? "Are you a man or a woman?" asked Elias. The answer surprised him. "We have no gender. We don't reproduce like you do. So we have the opportunity to continue our way under almost any condition. "And where do you come from? Are there more of your kind?" he wanted to know. In answer to the question, the world around Elias blurred and reshaped itself.