Journey to another world in the subway

Chapter 9 Cheap
It didn't take long for the few people to arrive at Heping Avenue Station.

There are no guardrails at Heping Avenue Station, but it is still unusual to see it—before entering a subway station directly, there is no preview of the faint fire marking the border line, and there are no roadblocks along the way.

When they reached the exit of the tunnel, there was a lot of noise, and Su Mengfan saw a blazing light.

They went up the cast-iron stairs from the left, and walked past the platform.

The commander's boots made a rattling sound on the iron stairs. After walking a few steps, the tunnel turned to the left. When he turned around, it suddenly became clear that they were already at the subway station.

A beam of white light shone on their faces, and the scene beyond the light could not be seen from the dark tunnel, and here, beside a small table, sat a strange and outdated old gray uniform , man wearing a peaked cap.

"Welcome." He greeted them, and removed the flashlight, "Are you here for business or passing by?" While the commander explained the purpose of his trip, Su Mengfan stared at the Heping Avenue subway station in front of him. .

On the platform, all the forked roads were hidden in the darkness, but a soft yellow light came from inside the arch. Everything looked so familiar and warm that it made people feel a ache in their hearts.

Although Su Mengfan had never seen anything similar in the previous subway station, this kind of light reminded him of the distant past, and a strange picture suddenly appeared in front of him:

A small house, filled with yellow lights, and a woman half reclining on an ottoman, she is reading a book, but her face is hidden from view by colorful wallpaper and dark blue square windows.

This image suddenly flashed in my mind, but it disappeared after only a moment.This made Su Mengfan confused and excited.

What did he just see?
Is the faint light from the subway station a fragment of his childhood memory?
These memories are hidden in the subconscious, entering an invisible screen, and the young woman is leaning on the spacious and comfortable ottoman, reading peacefully.

Could it be his mother?
It didn't take long when the commander showed his credentials.It looked like a man dressed as a senior officer walked directly towards the commander.

The commander explained some precautions to Su Mengfan and others, and followed the officer into the room.

This is different from the exhibition center community like the All-Russian Exhibition Hall Station, but belongs to the Ring Line Community, also known as the Lufthansa Union.Most of the forces of the Hansa Alliance revolve around the No. 5 ring road, which has strong mobility.

The Lufthansa Union was prosperous, so they had more emergency lighting than any subway station Su Mengfan could remember.

No, these are not like the lamps of the past in the subway, they are dimly lit, but there are lamps burning hot every 20 feet, and they are connected in series by a metal wire that runs through the entire subway station.

But for Su Mengfan, who is used to fuzzy red lights, illuminating the interior of tents with flickering fires or the faint light from a small pocket flashlight, the lights of this subway station are just too weird.

The logo of the Lufthansa Union is a large circle with a small circle, white with brown, and there are four circles in total.

Shortly after the dissolution of central control, the Station Federation of the Circular Railway emerged.These stations straddled all other railway lines and were important hubs on trade routes.They quickly became the place for all traders to get incredibly rich in a very short amount of time.

Soon, realizing that their wealth would be the envy of others, they made the only possible decision: they formed the Federation.

Its official name was seldom used, as they were soon called "Hanzas" after the medieval alliance of trading cities - the Hanseatic League.

The strength of the Lufthansa Union is not just the size of the area.The Hanseatic League was militarized to protect its wealth; all its garrisons were heavily guarded, it had motor transport and flamethrowers, and its militia was equipped with high-end military-grade weaponry.

The Hanseatic police station also appears to be strict when it comes to entering and leaving the police station, with non-Hanseatic police officers requiring passports or other forms of identification and having their weapons confiscated before leaving the police station.

However, the weapons of Su Mengfan and others were not forcibly confiscated accidentally, but in order not to cause others to spy.Su Mengfan followed Cage and handed over the weapon.

Su Mengfan walked into the station and found that the hardware equipment and technology here far surpassed that of the All-Russian Exhibition Hall station.A large amount of pre-war technology remains visible through the baffles, including plastic dividers, metal detectors, working computers, medical scanning equipment and biohazard equipment.

After the outbreak of the nuclear war, many factions appeared in the subway. In addition to the fanatical Fascists of the Fourth Reich mentioned in the previous commander’s story, the Hansa Alliance also has their own ideology:
They are modeled after America from 1900-1960, a society where there were little to no rules for the free market and everyone had the right to make rules for themselves.While this can be pleasant to watch, it also gives off an "everyone for himself" vibe.

This is also what the other Red Line of Power is worried about.Although they are a free market economy, they are not a completely free society.As a result, there will be a lot of criticism. If it is not dealt with in time, the people's thinking will gradually become corrupted to the extreme.

But it is undeniable that the Hanseatic Union and the Polis Metropolitan seem to be the most democratic factions in the metro, and many citizens from the Fourth Reich and the Red Line express a desire to move to the Hanseatic Union or the Polis Metropolitan.

Neither the Stalinists nor the fanatics tolerated the refugees, however: both groups routinely killed arriving refugees.

Those who were lucky enough to reach the Hanseatic railway station were often turned away by the Hanseatic, which was suspicious of outsiders.

Overall, the Lufthansa is undoubtedly the most powerful faction in the Moscow Metro economically and militarily, with tight control over the metro ring.

In addition to lamenting the military strength of the Hansa Alliance, Su Mengfan found that the trading market here is also very lively, and there are many strange things on the stalls.

There was tea, strips of sausage, lots of lamp batteries, pigskin jackets and ponchos, and some tattered books, mostly pornographic.

Half-liter bottles of suspicious-looking liquids, crookedly labeled "Home Brew".There really aren't any traders here who deal in tobacco, which used to be available everywhere.

Even a short, thin man with a blue nose and teary eyes who was selling suspicious liquids couldn't understand what Su Mengfan was talking about when he heard Su Mengfan ask him if he had some "gadgets".

There are people selling firewood, knotted logs, and twigs that some stealthy hero brought down from the ground.It is said that these branches can burn for a long time and produce very little smoke.

Here, you can buy things with shiny Kalashnikov cartridges. 100 grams of tea leaves are exchanged for 15 bullets; a sausage is worth 20 bullets; a bottle of homemade wine costs [-] bullets.

They affectionately call them "little bullets": "Come on man, listen, look at this, what a cool jacket, it's cheap, only 30 little bullets, and it's yours! What?" Too expensive? Well, 25 pieces, deal?"

Seeing the neatly stacked "small bullets" on the counter, Su Mengfan had seen a passage about the Kalashnikov submachine gun on the Internet.

It probably means: "Kalashnikov is proud of his invention of the submachine gun, which is the most popular in the world. It is said that he is particularly happy with his invention and proud of its ability to defend the borders of the motherland. Safe. I don't know, if I had such an invention, I think I'd go mad. Just think how many murders are committed with the help of a machine you've invented! It's worse than the guillotine."

One bullet - one life.

Some people lost their lives just like that. 100 grams of tea is 15 lives.What about a sausage?Sorry, cheap: only 25 lives.A good quality jacket, like the one on sale today, costs 5 bullets at a discount, so, you save [-] people.The daily transactions of this market are closely related to the life of the entire population of the metro.

Human life is worthless here, so there are only a hundred people in each subway station.

"Well, have you bought anything for yourself?" Cage came over and asked.

"I'm not interested in anything here." Su Mengfan blocked the question back.

"Aha, you're right, there's only trash here. But boy, this little subway station has it all. Back then, when you got here, they'd compete with each other: weapons, DPs, girls, forged papers." Kay Qi sighed dreamily.

"But these idiots," he said, nodding at the Lufthansa flag, "turned this into a kindergarten: you can't do this, you can't do that...

Alright, it's time to move on, grab your equipment - we're going to move on. "

(End of this chapter)