Sergio glanced around at all the people who had turned their attention to the situation unfolding, gripping at Marco’s shoulder so as not to fall backwards as she was still pushing against him. She abruptly turned around, grabbing onto his arm, nearly running in the opposite direction with him in tow.
“We don’t take threats from assholes like him, so you can tell him to step off. This is our ground!” The scrawny man yelled.
Sokolov replied in kind, but he was quickly out of earshot as the crowd of spectators swallowed them up as they flew back down the catwalk and out of sight. Sergio only concentrated on the feel of Marco’s hand gripping his arm because whichever side she put more pressure on was the way that they were about to turn. Going around the next corner they were now in a sort of back alley where there were small shanties built of wooden pallets and corrugated plastic.
Marco put her back to the very corner of this hall, taking a deep breath to let out a sigh of relief. Sergio had been released a few paces from her and could only look in the direction they had come from, wondering what was going on now.
“You’re just going to leave him out there alone?” Sergio asked of Marco, suddenly fearing for Sokolov’s safety amongst the pack of criminals.
“He’s not a child, Andrei can handle himself.” She replied with an arrogant look.
Sergio didn’t speak again, he just kept watching around the corner to see if he could spot anything. Venturing too far elicited a whisper from Marco, commanding him to return to the shadows.
“So, why are we hiding here?” Sergio whispered back, confused and annoyed at the lack of communication.
“Because I can’t afford to get into it with these guys today, we need to get to Polis as quickly as possible.” Marco crossed her arms. “And as you heard, they don’t know that I’m the one in charge – and I’d rather it stay that way.”
“Does this kind of thing happen every time you leave home?” Sergio asked, wondering not only about the hostility of this area of the Subway in general, but also what sort of information Marco would give him about her personal experience. He now imagined her to be an elite spy, pulling the strings from behind a curtain but rarely stepping foot on stage.
“Sometimes.” She mused, staring at the floor, and then seemed to decide that he deserved a better answer. “For Madrid, it is always hostile even when it looks quiet. These idiots are always up to something, thievery usually, or scheming to do something worse. We just try to stay one step ahead of them, and bully them into submission when we have to.”
“What about the guards? Can’t the station master do anything to stop them?” Sergio asked incredulously.
“There aren’t any guards. This place is like—” Marco’s words were silenced by the sound of semi-automatic gunfire. Two shots rang out and there was a solid minute of absolute silence in the area.
Both Sergio and Marco bolted to the corner of the passage, eyes wide and searching for answers, but all that could be seen was a panic – people fleeing in terror in all directions, screaming and yelling to each other. Two men came out from the brothel, blocking the entrance to the stairway that led inside; Sergio gathered from their stance that they were acting as security guards for the women inside.
Grasping on to Sergio’s arm again, Marco pulled him forward, pushing her way back through the crowd but now in the opposite direction. They had just run away from a potential fight and yet were now running towards the sound of gunfire. It seemed extremely strange to Sergio for the moment he had to think about it before his initial fear for Sokolov’s well-being surfaced again. He hoped that Sokolov had been the one to shoot first, at least to protect himself, but also deeply hoped that no one had been hurt. He hoped it had just been some warning shots to scare off the bandits he had been arguing with.
Sergio finally matched speed with Marco so that she wasn’t tugging on him anymore. She yelled fiercely at people to move, and then began shoving them aside with her free hand so that they could get through. He almost expected her to pull out her own pistol for effect- to fire her own warning shots- but people began to step aside when they realized that the two were going the opposite way.
There had since been silence as far as weaponry was concerned, which only made the pair forge forward even faster to see what had happened. Entering back into the market area was nearly impossible. People ran about, scattering like rats in a bright light, their panicked cries blocking out all other sounds. A fire had caught from some place in the back corner of the shops and people had abandoned the area ten feet around it, no one was even trying to put it out. It almost maddened Sergio, thinking it also a small bit ironic that a station flooded with water could even catch on fire in the first place.
Marco swung her head back and forth, searching every corner as rapidly as she could for her comrade, but there was no sign of any of the men involved in the prior quarrel. They paused for a moment in the middle of the space, seemingly in the eye of the storm of residents and bandits alike rushing around them. Sergio glanced down, noticing a smear of fresh blood on the metal grate beneath their feet, he pulled at Marco’s sleeve to get her attention and she followed his gaze, looking back up at him in pained horror.
“Marco!” An unfamiliar masculine voice called from the other side of the market.
“Semyon!” Marco yelled back, looking around for the source of the man she had mentioned meeting with earlier.
“Come this way, now! You have to leave!” The man who had called out stood across the canal waving both hands above his head. He was wearing a strange and heavy looking black uniform with a yellow rubbery tunic and a black knit hat.
Marco and Sergio began pushing through people again, trying to skirt past the crowd, but the ever increasing shuffle of bodies prevented them from using the walkway. Marco looked across the way, and then jerked her head to the side, motioning for Sergio to follow her as she jumped over the barricade and onto one of the wooden boats in the middle of the canal. She hopped onto an adjacent boat and then another, crossing the gap between them and Semyon by alternative means.
“Where is Andrei?” Marco called as she climbed onto the far walkway, glancing behind her momentarily to make sure Sergio was still there.
“I haven’t seen him, were you all here together?” Semyon glanced at Sergio curiously. “It doesn’t matter now, you have to go. This way, they are loading the boats to Kitai Gorod now!”
Before either of them could ask any more questions or protest, Semyon had turned to lead them onwards to the next section of the station.
“I can’t just leave him here, he could be hurt! Didn’t you see what happened? There was blood!” Marco yelled forward, trying to stop every few steps to talk to Semyon but he never ceased his quickened pace.
“He can take care of himself. You are more important.” Semyon turned his head back to her with a solemn smile.
Marco glanced over at Sergio with an apologetic look and silently shook her head. Having conveyed that she was not expecting their journey through this area to have turned out this badly, Sergio could only stare back at her. He was worried, too, on the inside, but wanted to show his own resolve and tact in the face of this disaster, at least to keep from worrying her more.
Rounding the next corner of the wooden walkway, they came into the next area which was entirely flooded and built up with boat docks and a few more shanties placed sporadically. The people gathered here were a bit more organized, quietly moving packages and organizing themselves and their few belongings onto different boats.