post-exodus starter

Life in the Metro has been a quiet pandemonium. Aside from the steadily rising mutant attacks on the fringe stations, life had been the same as normal, the same as the last twenty years... Until something changed. Suddenly, the radio waves exploded. People who had dedicated a chunk of their lives to begging for the signs of life outside Moscow on every radio wave, spies scraping unsecured radio waves for intel, hobbyists, even just people trying to contact another station, suddenly found themselves hearing scattered voices on the radio. Other accents, other *languages*. People outside of Moscow.

Some were even able to engage these foreign voices, hurriedly trading stories- but it was too good to be true. It didn't last long. One day, all those voices were silent once again. Everyone had questions, but no one had answers, only hushed stories of armed men in unmarked uniforms barging into stations and destroying radios, but even those stories went quiet after a few weeks, and rumors of a rogue band of rangers that turned traitor and fled the Metro, led by Colonel Miller himself. Now, no matter how much one tunes their radio, begging for contact, the waves stay silent... But no one forgets. There were voices on the radios, and people are more dedicated than ever to finding them again.


But a year passes after the incident. Enthusiasm has waned, but not stopped. It's almost like the years right after the bombs fell, some say, when there was so much hope that there were other survivors out there, before that hope died. It's rekindled now, and even if people might not be dedicating every minute of every day to finding them now, many keep the waves open, check in when they can. Some have even tried to leave the Metro, seeking their answers outside... no one ever hears from them of course.

Another year passes, and still no answers, but still the dedication doesn't wane. Hansa stations have taken a strange policy of banning these radio searches, of even talking about the voices on the radios from two years ago. Something about trying to keep people from spreading false hope, keeping things calm. Bullshit, says some. Suspicious, says others. But no one acts.

Until one day, at the border of the Bolshoi Theatre station, a man dressed as a Ranger appears. Wounded, winded, and bearing a message. He keeps his hands, empty of weapons and all but a slip of paper, up in a gesture of peace and surrender, knowing full well the relationship their two factions had only three years ago. He even takes to his knees, if that's what the guards demand of him, to keep the peace, to keep the situation from escalating, even as he stays completely silent. And when the guards calm enough, he gives them the slip of paper- a paper that claims he is one of the rogue Rangers, that he has been to the outside world, that he has the answers. That he wishes to speak to one Pavel Morozov- or, if he is dead or gone, to any of their leadership willing to speak with him.

How could they refuse?