The raindrops slammed down on the tin helmet, as if directly on Artyom's head.

Rain boots waded through the mud, rust pooled into streams and flowed down.

The sky was covered with rain clouds and was so stuffy that it was breathless.

The surrounding buildings were empty, like skeletons gnawed away by time, and there was no one in the whole city.

The city has been dead for twenty years.

Two rows of bare, wet, soaked trees form a boulevard, and at the end of the road is the huge arch of the National Achievement Exhibition Hall. _o_m

Once upon a time, in these temple-like temples of ancient Greece was pregnant with the hope of a great future.

The great future seems just around the corner, tomorrow.

Without thinking, tomorrow has become the end of the world, and the exhibition hall of national economic achievements has become a place of death.

Two years ago, there was a mess of living creatures here, but now they're all dead.

There are always promises that the surface radiation will soon drop, and then it will be able to return one after another, and you can say that the mutants on the ground are not alive and well, aren't they also living creatures, although they are mutated......

The result backfired: the polar ice crust melted, the Earth became like a steamer, and surface radiation surged.

The mutants were terrified, and all those who didn't have time to run away were dead.

Humans have cowered underground, stealing their lives in subway stations, and are afraid to venture anywhere.

Humans don't need much, and their survival instincts outweigh all mice.

The radiation dosimeter ticks and calculates the dose for Artyom.

"Never take it again, damn it!"

Artyom scolded in his heart, "What if you know the dose? There's a fart! I can't go back until it's done, even if it blows up. ”

Let them say go, Anna! Call me crazy, schizophrenic.

They weren't on the TV tower at the time. They didn't dare to leave the station even a step, where did they know where to go?

"Crazy"...... I blew them all up...... Didn't I say that!

At the very moment when Ullman was turning the antenna on the tower and adjusting the frequency, there was a voice, and I really heard it!

Damn it!

Not a fucking auditory hallucination!

Why don't you believe me!

Overpasses stood above him, and the asphalt was undulating like waves.

The car was shaken off in various postures, some with four wheels on the ground, some with four wheels facing the sky, and froze at the scene in such a posture.

Artyom looked around and walked up the rough tongue that spat out from the viaduct.

It's not far, a kilometer, or a little five kilometers.

On the other tongue stands a tall building called the "Tricolor", which had previously been painted in festive white, blue, and red, but time had changed them all to gray.

"Why not? I just don't believe it, and there's no why. ”

"Yes, no one has heard the call."

"But where did they listen to them?"

"Underground."

"Nobody went up to the ground to listen...... Isn't it? ”

"Think for yourself: Is this possible?"

"Isn't there a single survivor in the whole world except us?"

"Huh?"

"!"

"Pure!"

He didn't want to see the Ostankino TV Tower, but no matter how much he turned his back on it, it stood on the edge, like a scratch on the glass of a gas mask.

The black, wet, broken TV tower at the observation deck is like someone whose hands are clenched into the ground and like some behemoth trying to jump out of the ground, only to get stuck in the reddish-brown clay of Moscow and be crushed to the ground.

"When I'm on the tower," Artyom stiffly turned his head in the direction of the TV tower.

"As the Rangers tried to receive Melnyk's call by radio, in the midst of a rustle – I would swear by any name – I heard someone talking! It's true! ”

Floating above the bare forest is a huge double statue of a worker and a collective farm worker.

The poses are entangled, as if they are skating and dango, but they don't look at each other, as if they have no interest in each other.

So what are they looking at?

From their height, can they see anything beyond the horizon?

On the left side is the Ferris wheel of the VDNH, which is so large that it looks like a cog on a huge device that turns the earth.

Together with the entire installation, the Ferris wheel has been dead for twenty years and is now rusty.

The wound is finished.

The Ferris wheel reads "857", which is the age of Moscow when it was built.

Artyom thought that there was no point in correcting this number - if no one counted it, time would automatically stand still.

The ugly and melancholy skyscraper, the one that had been painted white, blue, and red, is now half a world, towering in front of you.

Not counting the broken TV tower, this building is the tallest building in the Moscow region, and that's why Artyom is here.

He looked up at the top of the building, and his knees ached.

"Can you do it today?" Artyom did not expect an answer, he understood that the ears of the heavens were choked with cotton made of clouds, and he could not be heard.

The view from the entrance hall of the building is no different from that of any other high-rise building.

The walkie-talkie was dead, the iron door was de-energized, a dead dog lay in the gatekeeper's glass pavilion, and the tin mailbox rattled in the wind, and there were no letters or small advertisements in it—all the pieces of paper had long since been collected by the stalkers and used to warm their hands.

The three high-quality elevators of Country D parked on the first floor are all wide open, and the stainless steel interiors are dazzlingly bright, as if any one of them can immediately reach the top floor, a misdirection that Artyom hates.

Next to it was the fire escape door, Artyom knew the situation behind the door by heart, he had already calculated, forty-six floors, to climb step by step.

Mount Golgotha, always by climbing.

"Always...... By climbing ......"

The backpack became a ton in weight, crushing Artyom to the concrete floor, causing him to stagger on his feet.

But he stepped forward vigorously, like clockwork, and muttered breathlessly, "Even if there is no ...... Anti-missile ...... So what? At all costs...... There should always be a ...... Someone survived...... Somewhere else...... It is impossible to say, only we ...... Only Moscow...... Only the subway...... You see...... The ground is still ...... It wasn't split...... Sky...... It's also sunny...... No way...... It's all over...... There is also a beautiful country...... Snail Nation ...... Oriental ...... Not to mention the Elephant Country...... Who is it hindering......"

Naturally, in Artyom's twenty-six years of life, he had never been to any snail country or the eastern country.

He was born too late and barely caught up with the old world; And the territory of the New World is much more barren - Metro Exhibition Center station, Metro Lubyanka station, Metro Arbat station...... Subway Circle Line.

But every time he saw a musty photo of Paris or New York in a rare travel magazine, he felt to himself that these cities were still alive somewhere on the planet.

Perhaps, they are waiting for him.

"How is that possible...... Only Moscow survived? It's not logical, Anna! Do you understand? It doesn't make sense! Surely because we can't catch their calls...... Not caught at the moment. We just have to keep waiting, we can't lose hope, we can't ......"

From time to time, the empty building made a noise, as if someone were there: the wind flew in from the balcony, rattling the door panels, and then whistling through the elevator shaft, squirming in the kitchen and bedroom, disguised as the returning owner.

But Artyom has long since stopped falling for it, and Mo said that he would not even look back when he walked in to be a guest.

He knew exactly what was behind the restless knocking on the door: a ransacked house.

All that remains are photographs scattered across the floor, showing unmemorial dead and bulky furniture that is not needed either in the subway or in the underworld.

The windows of the other buildings were blown away by the blast wave, but the double-glazed glass of this building was spared.

But after more than 20 years, the window panes have long been covered with dust, like it.

Cataract of the eye.

Earlier, they could meet their former owners in a certain house: sometimes they would stare at a toy in a daze, whimpering and crying through their gas masks, completely unaware of the presence of anyone behind them.

Now, I can't even touch a single person for a long time.

There was a man with an extra bullet hole in his back, lying next to the stupid toy; As soon as the others saw him, they understood: there were no more inhabitants up there, nothing left.

Concrete, bricks, mud, cracked asphalt, yellow bones, all kinds of debris, plus surface radiation.

This is true in Moscow, this is true all over the world, no one has survived anywhere, except for the Moscow Metro - this is a recognized fact.

Artyom was the only one who didn't admit it.

What if there is a suitable place for human beings on the infinite earth?

A place where Artyom, Anna, and the whole platform can live?

A place where you don't have a cast-iron ceiling overhead and you can see the sky when you look up?

A place where you can rebuild your home, start a new life, and bring the scorched earth back to life?

"Everybody can live...... Living under the sky ......"

Forty-six floors.

Artyom could have stopped on the fortieth or even thirtieth floor, and no one asked him to climb to the top.

But he was paranoid that if he had the opportunity to receive a signal, it would only be on the rooftop.

"Of course the roof...... There is no TV tower...... So high...... But...... But ......"

The visor of the gas mask was covered with moisture, the heart was about to jump out of the chest, and the ribs were tingling as if someone had tried to insert a sharpened iron rod.

Through the filter of the gas mask, breathing was very difficult, and the thin oxygen was simply not enough to sustain life, and when Artyom climbed to the forty-fifth floor, just like he had on the TV tower, he could no longer hold on, and ripped off the rubber hood.

He gulped in the sweet, bitter air, a freshness that could not be imagined in the subway.

"The height of the roof should be 300 meters, which is high enough. @So, maybe can receive. ”

Finally got to the top floor.

He unloaded his backpack, lifted the lid of the porthole on the top floor with his stiff back, and climbed to the roof platform, where he collapsed to the ground.

He lay on his back, staring at the clouds in the sky, so low that he could reach them with his hand.

He tried his best to calm his heartbeat and breathing, and stood up.

The scenery here is like ......

It's like when a person's soul is about to fly to heaven, it is suddenly stuck on the glass skylight, hovering there, wandering in the skylight, never going up again, but unwilling to fall again.

How can you take everything on the ground seriously when you see it from above?

Next to it stood two such edifices, once colored and now gray.

But Artyom had never climbed this one, and he felt it was more convenient.

A gap appeared between the clouds, and sunlight shone through them.

At that moment, something seemed to flicker in the nearby building, not sure whether it came from the top of the building, or from some dusty window on the upper floor, as if someone was holding a small mirror to catch the light.

But when Artyom took a closer look, the sun took refuge in cover, and the flash disappeared, never to be seen again.

Artyom's gaze always slid uninhibitedly towards the luxuriant mutated forest, where the botanical gardens once housed.

In the middle of the forest was a bare, black wasteland, a place of death, as if God had poured out the fire of brimstone, but Artyom knew that it was not God's doing.

Botanical garden.

Artyom's memories of the botanical garden were something else, the only memory he had of the lost pre-war world.

How strange: the original composition of your whole life is nothing more than tiles, curved panels, ceilings, streams flowing beside the railroad tracks, granite and marble, sultry heat and electric light.

But suddenly, a different medium appeared in life: a cool May morning, a baby-like tender new green on the slender tree trunks, a park path smeared with colored chalk, ice cream.

There is a long queue in front of the stall, and the taste of ice cream in the cup is not so much sweet as heavenly.

And the mother's voice, time is like a telephone line, weakening and distorting it.

And your mother's warm hand, you hold it tightly and with all your strength, for fear of being separated from her.

It's just, can such a young child really remember this?

Not necessarily.

Thinking of his mother, Artem suddenly remembered that his stepfather, Sukhoi, had told him a piece of news.

Artyom fumbled around for a moment, pulling out a yellowed photograph with the film on it curled.

I saw a gentle and kind woman holding a child in her right hand and a little boy with black hair in her left hand.

Sukhoi, his stepfather, told himself at the time that the boy was his older brother, Alcohen.

He also said that this photo was given to him by Sukhoi. Error-free updates @

He also made a point of telling him that he had been looking for me.

But why didn't I have any impression of him before?

I always felt that I had never had this brother, and my impression of him only came to me when I was a child, and there was a boy who was always with me.

Leave everything you eat and what you wear.

I also sing nursery rhymes to myself.

But will I still be able to see him?

Will he believe me?

All these heterogeneous things seem so anachronistic and unrealistic that it's impossible to tell whether they really happened or if they were just a dream.

But how can you dream of them if you've never seen them or felt them?