“The poor student”, thought Eddy, “he didn’t make it... And even if he would – there is scarcely a place for two in the niche.”

The howl ceased suddenly, a smacking sound was heard, and then there was silence. Eddy and the dark-haired guy looked out from their shelter at the same moment, and the dark-haired guy let off Eddy’s arm which he had been pressing against the wall. “My God, were it not for him, I would remain without an arm!” realised Eddy, and he looked at the dark-haired guy in a quite different way; but the dark-haired guy was looking in the different direction, where “the merry man” had disappeared.

There Eyeglasses was standing – alive. He threw a blackened plastic square to the floor and strode towards them. Of course! Eyeglasses had lighted his life-card. Now he was safe for ten minutes. During this time he was either to get to the finish or to withdraw, because the eighth circle without a life-card meant certain death.

“Will you go further or withdraw?” asked Eddy when Eyeglasses had approached them.

“I’ll withdraw. I’ll go with you till “the neutral”, recover my breath and withdraw. That’s enough for me. Last time I went only as far as the sixth.”

“Ah, so he isn’t a novice,” thought Eddy. “Then again, this could have been realised earlier...”

... All three of them dashed into the safety island, leaping over the blinking border, and fell on the floor. For a minute or two they were lying silently, resting. Then Eyeglasses glanced on his life-timer. He had about six minutes left. He lay down again and after some lingering said: “To think that earlier, the Subway has been a usual means of transportation. Some thirty-forty years ago...”

“Lie even more,” responded Eddy lazily.

“I’m not lying”, Eyeglasses was offended. “I’ve read in the books.”

“In the books... And what about guillotine doors? ‘Devil’s asses’? I would like to get to the guy who invented ‘the merry man’...”

“There was nothing like these back then.”

“And what was there?” the dark-haired guy raised himself a little, interested.

“Just a subway. Rails, carriages, and the doors had rubber gaskets instead of knives. And the escalators were usual, without any traps.”

“So why the hell did they devise all of this?” asked Eddy unbelievingly.

“Those damned self-organizing systems... and the symbiont programmers”, muttered Eyeglasses. “However, I must go, sorry.”

He went to a rusty ladder descending from above and started climbing it, surprisingly dexterously. Soon he disappeared from sight.

“Let’s lie for another minute and go on,” said Eddy. “We have the last circle left.”

“No need. Lie here. Have a rest...”

Eddy turned back abruptly. At the border of the island there were standing two guys. One, a huge beefy chap, about six feet and a half, plus an old army “Berthold”. The other one was small, without eyebrows, without hair, and only his eyes seemed masculine. To the left, near the ladder, there were standing three scrubs, various iron objects in their hands.

“We're not the angels that you dreamed about...” whistled the castrate; the beefy guy muttered something gloomily – probably appreciating the joke.

Eddy had heard about “the angels”. “Guys”, he began, whining, “you’ve got the wrong guys, we have nothing but our trousers, and these we’ll put off just now, you just wink, and we’ll...”

“Begone, Satan,” informed the bald one in a mentor tone. “Tempt not our hearts with thy lies. Got it?”

Eddy got it. That they wanted life-cards he got from the start. In the black markets such a card would cost as much as seven grand, so that even two were worth risking. By the way, his cards were from the black market, too. He never asked where they had come from.

“Fellas,” drawled Eddy in a servile voice, “fellas, don’t take a sin upon your souls, we’ll never make one step without them at the eighth...”

He’ll make it. He must. A charge at the beefy one – they don’t expect such a thing from him – and he’ll dive into “the gut”. They’ll not chase him – even symbionts cannot catch a death-rider in the Subway, especially at the seventh-eighth... They don’t want to get themselves killed, do they?.. Only that the dark-haired guy... So what, the dark-haired guy...

Somehow, inconsistently with his own thoughts, Eddy charged straight from his knees at the castrate’s feet – the guy appeared to be surprisingly heavy – and threw him on the beefy one, roaring. The latter had excellent reflexes, he dodged, and the castrate flew out of “the neutral”, shrieking, and disappeared in “the ass”. Well done, beefy one, a sound mind in a sound body! And now – into “the gut”! Having jumped in quite a different direction, Eddy seized the arm holding an iron bar, which intended to crash the dark-haired guy’s skull, and thrust his whole weight upon the man’s elbow.

At first he thought he had broken his own arm – the sound of a shot was quite low. Eddy watched from the floor how the beefy one was raising his pistol again. The wounded shoulder ached badly, but it was scarcely likely it interested anyone. Apparently, it did. The shirt on the “angel’s” breast swelled with a bloody bubble, pieces of meat flew everywhere, and the beefy one fell to the floor with a quite surprised expression on his face. The rest of the team vanished immediately in the grey mist of the hatch.

The dark-haired guy, not hiding any longer, pulled out of his pocket a small cylinder and poked it into his right smoking sleeve – now his grenade launcher was loaded once again. Then the dark-haired guy picked up a pistol and thrust it to Eddy.

“Here. It may be useful.”

“Are you ok?”

“Almost. Got my leg stabbed with a knife.”

“And I have a shoulder hurt. But this is nothing. What’s your name?”

“Max.”

“And I’m Eddy. Can you walk?”

“I’ll try. If not – go alone.”

“Go to hell,” said Eddy kindly, unexpectedly for himself. He helped Max bandage his leg and they got up from the floor. The eighth circle was ahead.

Eddy vaguely remembered what came next. They dragged themselves along the platform, staggering, the platform was crumbling under their feet, the walls around were burning, it was hard to breathe; both of them intuitively dodged fly-breakers and ball-lightnings every now and then, avoided traps without even noticing them and went on and on...

Sometimes it seemed to Eddy that he was on the surface again, in the city, and there was fire around him again, everything was burning, and the Nobody’s Houses were writhing in the fire, and the fire-fighter’s trucks were extinguishing the flames with their acid blend, and it was hard to say what was worse – that blend or the flaming hell all around; and there, further on, behind the wall of fire there were the police cordons waiting for the hiding symbionts to run out towards them, and they wouldn’t investigate – they always shot first, and investigated later... Then there was a moment of clarity. They were in “the gut”, and “the merry men” were coming towards them from both sides. The niche was far away, and besides, there was no place for two in that niche. But Eddy already couldn’t leave Max. And then he did what wouldn’t have occurred to him only an hour earlier. He snatched out his reserve, hidden life-card that he had carried miraculously through the control automate – and stuck it into Max’s hand (Max had lighted his own one by then). Both cards blazed up simultaneously, and “the merry men” disappeared as if vanished into thin air. But here, at the eighth circle, the life-cards functioned for only a single minute, instead of the ten minutes at the other circles or half an hour at the usual Subway regime.

The minute was not enough. “The merry man” was rushing at them again, and the platform was still far away. And then both of them turned around and raised their right hands. It was forbidden, but they didn’t give a damn about all the bans! The shot flashes went one after another, and it didn’t even occur to them that the charges in their grenade launchers should have ended long before. Only when the howl had ceased did they lower their hands. “The merry man” turned into a heap of molten metal.