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The subject of this article appears in the Metro Last Light video game. The subject of this article appears in the Chronicles Pack DLC for Metro Last Light. The subject of this article appears in the Universe of Metro 2033 book series. The subject of this article appears in the Metro 2035 novel. The subject of this article appears in the Metro Exodus video game.

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 Anna has other uses. Please see Anna (Disambiguation) for other meanings. 

Anna Sviatoslavovna Mel'nikova (Russian: Анна Святославовна Мельникова) is a sniper for the RangersMiller's daughter, and Artyom's wife. She makes her first appearance as a major character in Metro: Last Light and returns as a playable character in the Chronicles Pack DLC, in the "Anna" level. Anna entered the book trilogy canon in Metro 2035, and she returned in Metro Exodus' as Artyom's wife and a key companion aboard the Aurora.

Metro: Last Light[]

Anna is first encountered by Artyom in D6 one year after the events of Metro 2033. During a briefing with Miller where Khan reveals that he has spotted a Dark One near the ruins of their city, she and Artyom are assigned to venture there and kill the Dark One, much to Khan's dismay. She initially teases Artyom constantly, nicknaming him "Rabbit". Their mission is unsuccessful as both Artyom and the Dark One are captured by Reich Stalkers and taken back to Reich territory, while Anna escapes back to D6 after failing to rescue him.

Anna and Artyom are reunited at the Sparta Base on the surface, where she aids him in taking down the bog shrimp mutant while the rest of the Rangers kill off the remaining shrimp before they can attack Artyom. Once inside the church, Anna apologizes to him for her rude behavior and for not saving him in the gardens. She tells him that they are heading for Oktyabrskaya and to prepare himself for the trip. However, the church is attacked by Red Stalkers led by Lesnitsky, who kill most of the Rangers and take Anna captive.

Artyom saves Anna from the burning ruins of Oktyabrskaya where Lesnitsky had her held captive. Both having lost their gas masks, are forced to run out of the ruins, where they are saved by Hanza police and Khan. They are then taken into quarantine until it is decided whether they have the virus, so they can be checked for the disease set on Oktyabrskaya. Believing they are going to die, Anna confides in Artyom, doubting their chances of surviving the coming war and saying she feels alone, like she was when she was young and her father was out on a mission. They make love, but Artyom leaves soon afterwards with Khan.

Anna is last seen on the platform in Polis, seeing off Artyom and the rest of the Rangers on their way to defend D6. Anna and Artyom look at each other as the train leaves the station, but say nothing more - depending on what happens next, it may be the last time they see each other. In the original ending they meet again so they can be together and look for a better place. 

Chronicles Pack[]

Anna is a playable character in the Chronicles Pack for Metro: Last Light of the Ashes level, from her perspective. It is shown from her perspective that the player covers an NPC-controlled Artyom with her Preved rifle from watchmen. After Artyom catches up with the Baby Dark One, he is knocked unconscious from its psychic influence while Anna watches. Worried about Artyom, Anna proceeds to rescue him but is halted by patrolling Reich stalkers who are possibly searching the Botanical Gardens for any surviving dark ones and/or find the location of D6. Though Anna pushes through the Reich stalkers, she comes too late, seeing Artyom unconscious on the Reich stalker's armored truck. She tries to rescue him but the truck goes out of range, preventing her from rescuing him.

Metro 2035[]

She makes an appearance as a secondary character in Metro 2035. By the time the events of this book take place, Anna and Artyom have married in spite of Miller's disapproval. As Artyom's wife, Anna abandoned her position in the Ranger Order - as well as leaving behind her life in Polis - in favour of moving with her husband to his home station of VDNKh. There she received the uneventful job of farming mushrooms, in addition to other everyday duties.

At the beginning of the novel the couple are experiencing a difficult time and engage in plenty of arguments (when they actually decide to speak with each other), as Anna is bitter towards her partner because of his obsession with finding a radio signal from beyond Moscow. Each time Artyom seemingly hopelessly ventures out onto the irradiated surface, Anna's chances of having a healthy child with him that they could raise together is reduced. In 2035, Anna wants nothing more than to leave her past behind and lead a normal family life with Artyom.

Also in Glukhovsky's last part of the literary trilogy, we find out that Anna's relationship with her somewhat abusive father was not a simple or particularly loving one. Moreover, Miller seems overprotective and too controlling of his adult daughter. Although Artyom and Anna's relationship is practically falling apart at the start of this tale, by the end they seem to have restored their love for each other and leave Moscow together in order to travel far east into what remains of the Russian Federation - searching for a new home.

Metro Exodus[]

In Metro Exodus, Anna makes another appearance as a key character and has an important impact on the game's story, especially its second half.

She is first seen in the prologue of the game, after Artyom returns from one of his surface trips, wounded and irradiated. She expresses worry and tries to discourage him from further attempts to catch radio signals from survivors outside Moscow on the surface, saying that if there had been other survivors, people from the Moscow Metro would have already known about them. It is also implied here, that Anna is now Artyom's wife.

Despite her disagreeing with Artyom's trips to the surface, she later joins him on one herself, presumably to look after her husband and to make sure he comes back safe this time. After another unsuccessful attempt to receive any radio transmission, Anna suggests to return home. On their way back, the couple, much to their surprise, witnesses a working train with freight wagons, something very unexpected on the surface of the post-apocalyptic city of Moscow. Immediately after that, the duo is stopped by an off-road car, which they first assume belongs to Rangers. However, the crew of the car behaves rather hostile and locks Artyom and Anna in the back of the car. It is revealed that the car belongs to Hanza and that they had previously captured two other people, who claim to have come from outside Moscow, which leaves Anna astonished and she apologizes to Artyom for not believing him there could be life in other places before. The car stops and Hanza soldiers try to execute the prisoners, claiming they are spies from an enemy nation. Artyom unsuccessfully tries to stop them and as a result, he is shot as well, wounding him seriously, and thrown into a pit. Anna remains captured in the car and is taken away.

Artyom, with the help of Yermak, later rescues Anna from Hanza base in a railway depot. During their escape, they get into a fight with Hanza officer, and as a result, destroy a console, which controls a set of radio jammers, intercepting radio transmissions from Moscow to the rest of the world and vice versa. As a result, is is revealed that radio transmissions can in fact be detected coming from most parts of the world, and that Artyom could not pick them up before due to radio jammers being active.

After that, Anna, Yermak and Artyom hijack a Hanza steam locomotive, which later becomes known as the Aurora, and use it to escape the base. During their escape, they are ambushed by a group of Rangers, led by Miller. He is furious about Artyom and Anna damaging the jammer, claiming there is still a world war raging in the outside world, and the jammers were their only line of defence, making Moscow seem completely dead and unimportant. Learning that her father knew about this "plot" all along seriously upsets Anna, as he could have told Artyom about that to prevent him getting constantly irradiated on the surface while searching for the signal.

The group is intercepted by a Hanza armored train and have no other option but to stop it by sneaking onboard and blowing up the locomotive's boiler. Miller claims that this makes them seem like traitors and that the only option now is to leave Moscow, using the hijacked train. He suggests heading towards Yamantau, where government officials could still be alive in a secret atomic shelter.

The group eventually arrives to a hoist-bridge over the river Volga, which they have to lower in order to continue. The Aurora is also damaged by hitting a barricade which the local cultists built on the tracks. Artyom is supposed to scout the nearby area, with Anna providing fire support for him. After that, Anna rescues Katya and Nastya, a woman and her daughter who had been imprisoned by the cultists.

Later on, during one of her scouting missions, Anna, attracted by an american flag on a pole (later implied to be a warning to stay away from the place) falls into an abandoned military ammo dump through the hole in the ground, and is knocked unconscious due to the air being filled with a poisonous gas. Artyom, with a minor help of Damir and Sam, manage to rescue her. Anna claims to be fine and lies to Miller about the reason of her disappearance, claiming her radio was not working due to its battery coming to contact with water. This event seems minor as first, but has a serious impact later on.

After repairing the train and crossing the bridge, Aurora crew establishes contact with the secret military bunker in Yamantau and heads towards it. When they arrive, Miller, Anna and Artyom are supposed to meet the officials. It is revealed, however, that the food supply in the bunker had run out a long time ago, forcing the survivors turn to cannibalism in order to survive. The transmission is revealed to be a trap, luring other survivors to the bunker to provide steady food supply for the cannibals. The trio is captured and the inhabitants of the bunker prepare to consume them. The rest of the team, however, comes just in time to rescue Miller and Artyom. The team then splits up to find Anna, which Artyom eventually manages to do. After untying her, Artyom is attacked by the Doctor, leader of the cannibals. Anna kills him with a knife, however, and together joins the rest of the crew and escape the bunker.

During the Caspian level, Anna plays a less important role, occasionally providing fire support to Artyom with her sniper rifle, but mostly staying with the rest of the group or operating on her own. However, in the very end, Anna saves Giul and Artyom by killing the Baron from afar, after he apprehends Artyom and nearly kills Giul by pushing her from the top of his main base, which is presumably converted from an old oil rig.

Later, aboard the Aurora, Miller tells the crew that they found a clean place with a hydroelectric power station in the Taiga, and are heading towards it. Stepan and Katya are also getting married, and the whole crew celebrates with them. The celebration is interrupted when Anna suddenly starts coughing uncontrollably, coughing up blood and fainting for a moment. When she comes round, she reveals that she had been told by one of the doctors in Yamantau, that her lungs are damaged and falling apart, presumably as a result of exposure to the gas in the ammo dump at Volga. Miller does not want to believe her at first, claiming it might have been the result of arid Caspian air, but lets Katya examine Anna anyway. The crew then decides that they will see if the fresh air in the taiga helps to improve Anna's condition, and if not, they will try to find a cure for her sickness. Katya then says there was an anti-air defense unit in her village during the war, who received an experimental drug, which proved to be very powerful at treating similar conditions, and that she will try to look up the cure's name in her mother's notes.

Anna remains aboard the Aurora during the Taiga level. She tries to radio contact Artyom at the beginning, but is not heard of for the most of the time after that. When Artyom and Alyosha return back to the Aurora, Miller tells them that her condition had worsened and that they need to go to Novosibirsk to find the cure.

Katya finds out that the experimental drug she referred earlier is called Renergan-F, and that it was produced at the Akademgorodok Institute in Novosibirsk. However, Idiot has some bad news - after examining the satellite images obtained at Caspian more closely, he discovers that Novosibirsk is so heavily irradiated that the radiation levels are completely out of scale, presumably as a result of a cobalt bomb detonation. Miller decides that only he and Artyom will look for the cure in Novosibirsk's Institute, while the rest of the crew is sent to find a snow plough for the Aurora in an abandoned train museum, as the winter is close and the surroundings of Novosibirsk are covered in a thick layer of snow.

Miller and Artyom are successful in finding the drug for Anna, along with a new set of satellite images which point them to a safe, radiation-free place at Lake Baikal, but as a result of their expedition to the irradiated city, both experience a severe case of radiation poisoning. Miller sacrifices himself by giving his dose of anti-rad to Artyom, so that he can return back to the Aurora with the cure. Artyom barely manages to drive out of the city and is rescued by the Aurora crew, alive, but lethally irradiated.

Depending on the player's actions, Artyom either survives by receiving a complete blood transfusion from the members of the crew (the good ending), or succumbs to radiation poisoning, if there are not enough survivors to donate the necessary amount of blood (the bad ending). Either way, the experimental drug cures Anna and she arrives to the final Aurora's destination at Lake Baikal, together with what is left of the Aurora crew. In the good ending, she is seen standing beside Artyom, who had just been promoted to the commander of the Ranger Order to replace Miller, and the couple is expecting a bright future at Lake Baikal, where they will raise their kids, far from dangerous irradiated cities full of mutants and hostile humans. In the bad ending, Artyom is buried next to Miller at Lake Baikal, and Anna is seen standing sad and upset in front of the graves, having lost both her father and her husband.

Relatives[]

Trivia[]

  • Anna's blood type is 0 Rhd Negative, which is tattooed on her right arm.
  • Her name is pronounced as "Anya" in the Russian dub, which is the diminutive of "Anna" in her native language. Both are equally-correct names for Russian women, however. Anya is also the name in the German version (Anna and Anya are different names). They first changed her name in Metro Exodus.
  • Anna does not participate in the battle of D6, despite being the Order's top sniper. The reason might be that both Miller and Artyom knew that it was virtually a suicide mission and did not want Anna to die. It might also have been because she was wounded at the church, and her wound had not healed yet. Or it may simply have been that Anna was more skilled at sniping than the semi-close quarters combat on the platform.
  • After Artyom and Anna kill the bog shrimp outside the church, Anna will disappear from the roof of the church and spawn back inside to meet Artyom when he walks in.
  • Anna never uses the signature Ranger helmet, preferring to use a beanie and a full-face gasmask similar to Artyom's.
  • During the montage prior to the Battle of D6, when Artyom watches her before going to the front lines, Anna wears a unique green outfit that is not seen anywhere else in the game.
    • It's possible that, because she wears an NBC suit for most of the game, that the green outfit is her standard Ranger uniform when not going onto the surface.
  • She is one of the few known NPCs to use sniper rifle as standard weapon. Another noticable example is Red Line Sniper.
  • In the Russian dub of the Cest' la Vie ending, Anna is heard crying as she tells her son of Artyom's story. This shows that she had genuine feelings for Artyom.
  • As a character in the Chronicles Pack, this makes Anna the only playable female character in the Metro video game series.
  • During the introduction of the "Anna" level in the Chronicles Pack of Metro: Last Light, Anna says she was looking for Hunter and was nearly killed when Artyom called down the missiles to destroy the Dark Ones.
  • Also in the "Anna" level, Anna carries about twice as much 12.7x108mm rounds than Artyom or any other playable character can pick up. This is probably to compensate for the great amount of sniping in the level and the scarce ammo supplies.
  • In Metro: Last Light, the same character model is used for Anna and Artyom's mother.
  • The main menu screen for Metro 2033 Redux appears to show both Anna and her child with Artyom at his desk, which could make the Redemption ending canon.
    • A fairly altered version of the Redemption ending is canon in the books, as confirmed by Metro 2035 - where Artyom and Anna are married, while Miller is alive but crippled.

Gallery[]

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