The Immortality Game

Marcus nodded.

The man stared at him for a long moment before letting out a long sigh. “All right. Follow me. I can at least show you which way to go.” He didn’t wait for a response, but turned and began walking along the track. Marcus shuffled after him.

He couldn’t tell how long it was before the man spoke again, ten minutes, fifteen perhaps. “You smell that?” he asked.

“Yes,” Marcus said.

“Best prepare yourself. There are a lot of dead people in the station ahead.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry, they’re long dead.”

“Why?”

The man shrugged. “The tribe there, they…‌gave up. That’s all. Just thought you should be ready so you don’t panic.”

“I might panic anyway,” Marcus murmured.

“Maybe, but at least you know. Where you need to go, you’ll have to walk through them all. Here, see?”

The man stopped and in the lamplight Marcus could see lumpy forms laid out in rows across the ancient track bed.

“Maybe don’t look at them closely,” the man said. “Just step over them and keep moving.”

The man started forward again, and Marcus took a deep breath of the musty air and followed, trying to avoid tripping on the blanket covered forms using only his peripheral vision.

“Up here,” the man said, holding his lamp high so the light illuminated a set of wooden stairs rising to a pillar-lined platform. Many more bodies were scattered around each of the pillars. The man pointed and said, “Follow the hall that way and you’ll come to the exit. It’s a long climb up.” He turned and began walking down the train tunnel again.

Marcus watched the man’s broad back fading away in the darkness. “Thanks,” he said. There was no indication the man heard him.

Zoya was glad the sun set late in the summer. Seeing the sunlight streaming in through the broken metro entrance seemed like one of the most beautiful sights in her life. When she stepped out onto the sidewalk an odd feeling swept through her. She had walked this way to work for years, passing the old metro station without much thought, so it felt funny to rejoin her familiar path from a completely different route. She didn’t hesitate in choosing her direction, but turned immediately toward the morgue, knowing that the river was just beyond and if she took a left there she would come to The Pyramid. It also occurred to her that Tavik might assume she went into the morgue. If he stopped there, she might manage to lose him.

She found herself humming an old tune by The Beatles and forced herself to stop. It felt irreverent to hum on such a day. Music was a more or less constant part of her normal life, but today was anything but normal. She realized her mind must have dredged it up because she always listened to music while walking to work.

She looked back but didn’t see any sign of pursuit. Hopefully Tavik would have more trouble than she had climbing the interminable escalator steps. She turned to look for the morgue. It was once part of the nearby Hospital #23, but it had been forced to move when one of the wings collapsed, long before Zoya had gotten the job. Now it occupied the part of a building that used to be a dress shop. Her boss Pyotr preferred to call it the ‘clinic’. The larger room was used to prepare bodies for viewing by their grieving loved ones before cremation, though on some occasions a pathologist would come in to perform an autopsy if something suspicious was involved. There was also a small office, a toilet, and of course the viewing room with its thick carpet and rows of plastic chairs.

It struck her that her life as she had known it was completely over. It wasn’t just the loss of her family, though that was the worst, naturally. There was no going back to her job. There was no returning to any normal life after today. Even if she could somehow evade Tavik, the city authorities were bought and paid for by Tavik’s bosses. She latched onto the thought that she might be able to somehow make it to the countryside, to her friend Irina’s family dacha, and hide there until…‌until what?

She looked back again, wanting to slip by the clinic without Tavik spotting her. Still no sign of pursuit. She turned forward again and her heart nearly stopped—a silver sky cycle stood in the clinic parking lot. Pyotr had no business being at work on a Sunday, but that was clearly his cycle, standing in the spot where he always parked it. Would Tavik leave Pyotr alone if he came to the clinic and found Zoya wasn’t there? She didn’t think it likely. An exasperation that bordered on anger welled up in her chest. She’d had a chance to possibly escape Tavik for good, but she couldn’t pass by and leave Pyotr to his fate. She hurried forward, thinking that perhaps she could get him out of there quickly and he might even be able to help her escape on his sky cycle.