[5] Two years after Metro 2033, Artyom has left the Spartan Order and now lives at his home station, VDNKh, with his wife Anya.

Homer, a major character in Metro 2034, arrives at the station, wanting to learn more about Artyom's conflict with the Dark Ones so that he can write a book about it.

Lyokha, a dung broker from Rizhskaya, helps them cross the border of Hansa, a capitalist faction controlling the Koltsevaya Line.

Artyom, Lyokha, and Homer arrive at Tverskaya, renamed “Darwin” by the neo-Nazi Fourth Reich, and are arrested shortly afterward.

A Reich officer threatens to kill Homer if Artyom refuses to bomb the passageway leading from neutral Teatralnaya to Okhotny Ryad, which is controlled by the communist Red Line.

Artyom is taken to Schiller (formerly Pushkinskaya), where he is forced to do manual labor with other Reich captives, including Homer and Lyokha.

Accompanied by Lyokha and a surface explorer named Savelii, Artyom discovers the Balashikha outpost and kills the men inside.

A group of men arrive at the outpost, claiming to be from Murom, where the air is breathable and crops can grow on the surface.

Miller reveals that the jammer is a joint Spartan-Hansa operation, allegedly intended to prevent enemy forces from discovering that Moscow still has people living in it.

As he is delivering the ammo, however, Artyom recognizes one of the “Hansa” men as a Red Line officer from Okhotny Ryad.

Increasingly suspicious of the role of “Bessolov”, Artyom goes to Tsvetnoy Bulvar to kill him but passes out in Sasha's room.

Homer supposedly heads to the Reich to print pamphlets telling the truth about the Metro while Lyokha travels to Tsvetnoy Bulvar to capture Bessolov.

The novel was described as telling the same story as Metro: Last Light – thus once again casting Artyom as the protagonist[7] – but in greater detail and length than the game itself.

[8] In March 2015, Glukhovsky posted an image on Instagram of working cover art for Metro 2035 and told his followers that the full print version of the novel was going to arrive in June 2015.