Sergei rolls his shoulders, leaning back into the other room. “I’ve got some special training mission with Masha and Larissa. Trust me, I’d rather stay here, listening to radio dramas with you, but what can you do…”
I swallow hard, feeling that tremor rise up out of my bones once more. What can you do, indeed, with only a skeleton crew of guards for the night? With Rostov and Kruzenko gone, and half our team with them? With a brass key humming in my pocket, ready to unlock just the answers I need?
As soon as the door clangs shut that evening, I drag my duffel bag into the restroom and layer on half my wardrobe. Trousers under my skirt, three sweaters piled one over the other. As many socks as I can wear and still lace up my boots. The inner lining of my coat is heavy with military rations and pumpernickel bread.
Silence thickens the hallway, stagnant and heavy. I know Valentin, Ivan, and the guards are listening to the Dinamo hockey game on the radio. Now or never, Yulia. I take a deep breath of the moldy air and hope I won’t breathe it for much longer at all.
I head back to the walls that don’t quite add up, the mismatched rooms I’d founded during my night walk. A hallway near the kitchen and the two rooms off of it meet at odd angles. I can hear humming through the walls, a drone like electricity. The memories hum, too, but they’re lurking on the other side. On whatever’s in that hollow space.
I head to the basement in search of an entrance. Usually, our guards keep us out of here, but the skeleton crew doesn’t have the manpower. It isn’t until I reach the kitchen that I spot the trail—Rostov’s static carving a swath through history. What was he trying to erase?
I follow the path of scratched-out memories. The kitchen is dark, animated only with the purring industrial refrigerator. There’s a long range fit for cooking fifty meals at a time; a chain of baskets hangs stuffed with vegetables. One whole corner of the kitchen is an oven, floor to ceiling, wide enough for five to stand inside comfortably.
If our meals are prepared here, then the cooks must come in and out from somewhere else. But I’ve never seen them come and go. Where are they coming from?
The kicked-up trail of ash gives it away before the memories do. Footprints, hastily swept over, leading in and out of the oven. I duck my head and touch my gloved hand to the stone hearth, its chill permeating the wool. There’s a gap just inside the archway, so you wouldn’t notice it unless you’re looking from inside the oven. Only half a meter wide. I squeeze through and find a set of stairs that curves up and down.
Upward will likely only lead me back up through the mansion, through that initial mismatched wall I’d found. No use escaping off the roof. I’m not Valentin, with the brute strength to throw myself over the wall, or however he got up and over. Down it is.
The sweat building on my back chills as I descend the seemingly endless spiral stairs. For a good twenty feet or more, I’m submerged in complete darkness, but then electric sconces start to appear at regular intervals. They hum, industrial, immutable. Every few minutes, I hear a rumble deep below me, like the earth turning over in its sleep.
And without warning, the stairs stop before a metal door. No lock, no lettering. The lack of a lock raises the hair on the back of my neck; there must be some other form of security nearby. I steady myself with a deep breath, one laced with hard water and concrete dust, peel off my glove, and press my palm to the door.
A soldier strolls past the doorway on the other side, AK-47 in hand. I choke back a gasp. Before I can press deeper, the room quakes again. I press my ear to the door as wind rips through the room on the other side. A train—the brakes shriek against the rails as it pulls to a stop.
“Station Number 19,” a woman’s voice announces, muffled as if beneath water. “Ascending.”
What Metro line is this? All of the Metro stops are named, not numbered. The closest Metro station to the mansion should be Sparrow Hills, but that’s above ground, hanging over the Moskva River. The next stop would be University Station for Moscow State, but that’s too far southwest—I traveled straight down.
I press against the door again. The guard was walking away from the door, and his back should be to me now. Sure enough, he’s at the far end of the platform, and now he’s pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, his attention absorbed. The train humming on the tracks is only two cars long, and it’s covered in golden filigree, red stars, and swooping lines that radiate from boughs of wheat. This station is like the inverse of the plain cars and elaborate stations on the normal Metro lines.
This must be the Party-only secret line that Valentin mentioned.
The train’s doors slide shut, and with a roar, it rockets away. The soldier’s back is toward me, but I don’t have long. As the air vibrates from the departing train, I throw open the door, charge across the platform, and fling myself into the darkness of the train rails. The noise recedes just as my boots hit the gravel.