19:45 — August 18, 2047 — Messerprater / Front
The active combat line stretched across four parallel tunnel tubes.All of them converged into a large switch junction, where four tracks narrowed into two — the site of the main defensive position.
This position had been continuously manned since the Great War.Sandbags, concrete bunkers, barbed wire, and tank traps welded together from old rails formed a bastion of rusted steel and gray concrete.
Here, the heavy weapons were concentrated:flamethrowers, searchlights, and machine guns, interlocked in four primary nests.These fire-spitting apertures of death would tear apart any attacking wave; every tunnel was covered by overlapping fields of fire.
Yet the fighting was still taking place further ahead —in the darkness of four unlit galleries, where only the echo of gunfire revealed who was still fighting… and who had already fallen.
"Second line, huh?" Gabriel grinned, handing his friend a brimming canteen.The loud slosh and gurgle echoed off the damp walls as David accepted it gratefully.
"Did you ever think we'd end up here?" Gabriel asked.David merely made a questioning sound, still clinging to the bottle's neck.
"I mean — when we were drafted… that we'd end up at the Blood Channel. How long's it been now? A month? Two? Or three already?"
David raised two fingers of his filthy left hand.
"Really? Only two months?" Gabriel snorted. "Feels more like a year."
From the tunnel ahead, a military caravan crawled back —the forward line had received ammunition, and the unit was now collecting its wounded and dead.The small draisine was driven by four half-grown youths, their arms working the levers in steady, tortured motions. Sweat poured down their faces and necks. To make the labor bearable, they had shed their heavy gear and now stood in nothing but linen field trousers and soaked undershirts.
The screech of muscle-powered steel mingled with the stench of blood, metal, and decay —the bodies recovered from no-man's-land.The wounded groaned and convulsed.On the second trailer lay the roughly sorted equipment of the dead. It would be cleaned later; for now, it was only one thing: ready for reuse.
As everywhere in the Union, loudspeakers accompanied the scene.From them poured song — those hoarse, overdriven choirs that had filled every cavity of the metro for decades.Between them, music played, always threaded with political slogans.
At regular intervals, the program was interrupted by an announcement from the Political Commissariat.
"Soldiers of the Eastern Power!Slaves of the gene-fascist corporate estate!Do not believe your oppressors!
In our Union, even the enemy is treated as a brother!We are all comrades — children of humanity!You have nothing to lose but your chains…and a world to win!Join us!"
The loudspeaker crackled at the end, as if even the device itself had felt a surge of fanatical conviction.
"For fuck's sake, they play that every fifteen minutes," David growled."And so far, no one's defected. No wonder. Anyone who leaves their post here gets torn into fist-sized chunks by the crossfire in no-man's-land."
"True," Gabriel conceded."But since we're supposed to be the future of humanity, it's our duty to make them the offer."
"Maybe." David took a long gulp."But they're fighting for the future of humanity too. Or rather — for the rule of the Übermensch…"
"Oh, bullshit," Gabriel snapped."These racial and gene fanatics are fighting for a world of rulers and ruled.Master races and subhumans. Counts and serfs.An old feudal system wrapped in new, shiny steel."
He snorted contemptuously.
"We're offering them an egalitarian future.A future for everyone — without genetic race madness."
"You sound like Frau Müller," David said, chuckling."Remember her? Our old political science teacher. Back then…"
He laughed — a real, warm laugh, the first in days.
Gabriel grinned broadly.
"Well, it interests me. After all, we're the only hope for humanity.And we — soldiers, the armed arm of the proletariat — we are the sword and shield of mankind."
David rolled his eyes, reached for his ration bag, and rummaged through it.
"As if we were the last state on Earth. There are other stations in this bunker system — and probably more shelters out there somewhere. Maybe there are survivors we've never heard from."
Gabriel waved it off.
"Nah. There's no one left out there.The atomic suicide of our ancestors was fifteen years ago.No radio signals, no signs of life.For a while we could still hear Berlin, Paris, London, Madrid… and then nothing but static.Maybe they all just croaked, starved, or got eaten by their own bioweapons."
David bit into his rock-hard ration bar.The thought tightened his chest.The silence of the world. The great dying. No one left — except them.
Gabriel kept talking, his voice growing harsher, rusted. He needed this; he wanted to rip the bitterness out of his chest.
"And the states that still exist? They're all shit.The Free Trade Syndicates?" He spat into the dust.
"Ultra-capitalists. Sitting right between the Seven Shepherds Confederation and the United Stations, slapping tariffs on everything — ten, twenty, thirty percent on food, just because they can. They make the starving pay for every bite."
He raised a finger, as if quoting an old lesson.
"And then all the rest of the filth: debt slavery, child labor, poor laws… the full program.They keep the poor alive just long enough to squeeze them some more.So everyone understands:You are replaceable.You are worthless.And if you're not greedy enough, the next one will eat you."
He spat again.
David thought for a moment. He believed his friend had finally vented his anger.
He was wrong.
Gabriel leaned closer to the fire, the shadows dancing wildly across his face, as if drawn to his rage.
"The Southern League," he said, "is a religiously fanatical feudal state.They call their top dog the Inquisitor — the 'Keeper of Truth.'"He laughed dryly. "Truth! They hang people for praying wrong."
He lit another cigarette, the smoke curling like a gray curse.
"The United Stations aren't any better than the Syndicates.They just pretend the people have a choice.A choice between which oligarch? Which clique?"
He spat once more onto the cracked concrete.
"And the Seven Shepherds Confederation — an agrarian state without any technological progress.They live as if the world never ended.And the Confederation of Independent Stations?"A mocking snort."A federal mess that can't agree on anything. The only reason they haven't fallen apart is their bourgeoisie's fear of our revolution."
His gaze darkened, the fire reflecting in his eyes like burning fury.
"And the damned Commune…"He paused, as if reordering his anger."All those anarcho-communists who split from us — they betrayed the Consul.Betrayed the Party.Betrayed the Revolution."
David swallowed. He knew how close the Commune was to heresy in the Union's worldview.
Gabriel continued, his voice vibrating.
"We don't even need to talk about the Eastern State."His hand clenched into a fist."These reactionary social Darwinists and eugenicists can all rot.They should drown in their own 'pure' blood. That would be justice."
He exhaled heavily — as if vomiting out a lifetime of hatred, fear, and indoctrination.
Silence spread, broken only by the crackling sea of flames.To this meditative sound, the familiar songs drifted from the loudspeakers.
David stared into the glowing tongues of fire.
"Do you think…" he asked quietly,"that we'll ever live up there again?"
Gabriel's face hardened instantly.
"Not us," he said."I heard the Mechanists and the Ministry of Education and Research ran several studies."
He paused.
"There's no future up there.The fallout is so strong in some areas your insides liquefy.Their estimates vary wildly. Maybe in fifty years. Maybe a hundred. Maybe two hundred. Or longer."
David's shoulders sagged.
"Shit… then humanity's dead."
Gabriel flinched violently.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Two hundred years. Ten generations.In this fucking bunker."He gestured at the tunnel walls, the corroded pipes, the sagging concrete slabs."The stations are already falling apart. Cracks everywhere. Lightbulbs are running out. Medicine even more so. And electronics? The Mechanists patch it together until it collapses. Even the tea our Union loves only exists because this place used to be civilian infrastructure."
He snorted.
"Someday the ceiling will come down on us. Or a water vein eats through the steel and we drown like rats. We have no hope. Every collapse, every explosion, every act of sabotage pushes us closer to the edge. We live in a zero-sum game, Gabriel."
Gabriel grabbed his field cap off his head and hissed:
"Are you insane?!If the political officer hears you, you'll end up in a penal regiment for provocation and subversion!"
"But it's true!"
"You're right — if you leave the Union out of it."Gabriel leaned in, feverish conviction in his voice.
"We don't live off the supplies of the dead.We produce our own goods. Develop our technology.Forge our tools. Make our medicines.The Mechanists rebuild electronics from scrap.Engineers reinforce tunnels, raise new stations.We're building our own world underground — out of steel, concrete, and willpower."
He gestured into the half-lit darkness.
"Limited living space? Once the metro is united under our banner and we stop wasting endless labor and material on war, we'll breathe again. We'll find solutions. Build new lines, new stations, new sectors. Secure the old ones, patch the cracks. Preserve humanity's knowledge, art, and culture."
A dangerous gleam shone in his eyes.
"Not forever. But long enough.A hundred years isn't extinction, David — it's transition.Only the Consul, the guiding star of techno-socialism, the beacon of humanity — only he can lead us out of the dark. Don't you think?"
David nodded hesitantly, then agreed. He bit into the rectangular block. The mealy texture hit his tongue — mushroom flour, soil, and the faint bitterness of mealworms.
But there was something else.
He chewed slowly.
"More sawdust," he muttered.
"What?" Gabriel frowned.
"They added more sawdust."
Gabriel grimaced.
"Surprised? Those bastards wrecked everything in the new territories. Gotta save somewhere."
Silence settled between them — that rare, fragile camaraderie soldiers valued more than any ration, victory, or medal.
Talking about trivialities — that was what kept them alive.
It dulled loneliness, fear, exhaustion.A few words, a joke, a shared shrug — and the world felt farther away, the screams softer, the war less real.
This brief calm was a blessing.A drop of balm for a soul long since raw and cracked.
David imagined someone bringing a kettle of fresh hemp or mushroom tea.A dream farther away than the surface — but warm enough to hold onto.
Sleep tugged at him.His eyelids grew heavy.
Slowly, he slid off the hard sandbag and let his head rest on Gabriel's shoulder — a warm, solid support against the tunnel's cold.
Just five minutes, he thought.Just a short break from reality.
Just five minutes in which one was still allowed to be human.