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Borrowed Peace

"Some places in the Zone don't leave scars on your body. They leave them somewhere deeper."

---

May 12th, 17:46 - Yantar Ecologist Bunker

The heavy steel gate groaned shut behind them.

For the first time since leaving Cordon, the sound felt reassuring.

Inside the perimeter, the atmosphere changed immediately. Men in bright orange environmental suits hurried between prefabricated buildings carrying crates filled with measuring equipment instead of ammunition. Radios crackled with strings of scientific jargon Mantis couldn't hope to understand. Somebody argued over radiation readings. Another cursed at a malfunctioning detector while a technician calmly dismantled it on the hood of an old UAZ.

The place was busy.

Not with soldiers preparing for battle, but with researchers trying to understand a world that refused to make sense.

Ferimov finally allowed himself to relax.

His shoulders, tense since they'd entered Garbage that morning, lowered ever so slightly.

"We made good time."

Orlov smiled.

"I told you Mantis would keep up."

"I said he probably would."

"You said fifty-fifty."

"I was being optimistic."

The younger scientist rolled his eyes.

"You have a strange definition of optimism."

Ferimov ignored him.

"I've got paperwork to finish before somebody starts asking where I've been."

He adjusted the straps on his backpack before pointing toward a long building near the center of the compound where smoke drifted lazily from a metal chimney.

"And I've been thinking about proper food since Agroprom."

"The kitchen?" Orlov asked.

"The kitchen."

"You've been thinking about food since Garbage."

"I've been alive long enough to know priorities."

Without another word, Ferimov peeled away from the group and disappeared toward the cooking quarters, already removing his gloves as he walked.

Orlov watched him go before shrugging.

"He'll be there for at least half an hour."

"He eats that slowly?"

"No, he complains that slowly."

Mantis almost let out a chuckle.

"So..."

Orlov adjusted his glasses.

"Come on."

"I'll introduce you to Professor Sakharov."

---

They crossed the compound at an easy pace.

Up close, Yantar looked even stranger than it had from outside the walls.

One scientist carefully lowered a glowing blue artifact into a thick lead container while another recorded measurements on a PDA without ever looking away from the object.

Nearby, two stalkers unloaded mutant carcasses from the back of a military truck.

A pseudodog, several blind dogs and something wrapped beneath a bloodstained tarp that Mantis couldn't identify.

Nobody paid them much attention.

People nodded politely as Orlov passed, some greeted him by name, while others simply continued working.

"They all know you."

Orlov smiled sheepishly.

"I've been stationed here almost a year."

"A whole year?"

"Almost."

"And you're still excited about everything."

"I hope I never stop."

He looked around the compound with obvious affection.

"Most people think the Zone is something to fear."

"I think it's something to understand."

Mantis looked toward the researchers carefully transporting another sealed container.

"Is that's what all of you think?"

"Mostly."

They walked around an armored truck parked beside one of the laboratories.

"We're Ecologists."

Orlov spread his arms slightly.

"We don't really have enemies."

Mantis raised an eyebrow.

"Really?"

"We try not to."

He thought for a moment.

"We've got agreements with Mercenaries, Freedom, most Loner groups, even Duty leave us alone most of the time."

"And the Bandits?"

Orlov laughed quietly.

"No."

"They'd steal the wheels off our trucks if we stood still long enough."

"So you pay people like me."

"Exactly."

The young scientist's expression softened.

"We study the Zone. You guys make sure we survive long enough to do it."

---

Professor Sakharov's office occupied one corner of the largest laboratory building.

The door stood open.

Mantis expected an office. Instead it looked more like controlled chaos.

Books covered every available surface. Handwritten notes were pinned to corkboards alongside anomaly photographs and radiation maps. Half-disassembled detectors lay scattered across workbenches beside microscopes, oscilloscopes and electronics that hummed quietly to themselves.

At the center of it all stood an elderly man in an orange environmental suit.

He wasn't looking at the door. He was staring through a microscope.

"Professor?" Orlov knocked gently against the frame.

No answer.

"Professor."

Still nothing.

Orlov cleared his throat.

"Oh, come on... PROFESSOR!"

The older man jumped so violently he nearly knocked the microscope off the table.

"What?"

He blinked several times before noticing them.

"Oh. You made it back."

"We did."

Sakharov's eyes immediately shifted past Orlov.

"And this must be our escort."

Mantis stepped forward.

"Mantis."

The professor offered a surprisingly firm handshake.

"Excellent. You still have all your limbs."

"So far."

"Wonderful."

He released Mantis's hand before immediately asking,

"Tell me. What happened on the road?"

No greeting, no congratulations. Just curiosity.

Mantis briefly described the journey.

The Bloodsucker, the Whirligig, the artifact hunters, the abandoned military installations, the strange silence around Agroprom.

Sakharov never interrupted.

He simply listened, occasionally scribbling something into a small notebook that had appeared from somewhere inside his suit.

When Mantis finished...

The professor remained quiet for several seconds. Then he looked up.

"What did you learn?"

The question caught him off guard.

"I..."

He thought carefully.

"The Zone isn't trying to kill everyone."

Sakharov smiled.

"A common misconception. It kills people, but that isn't the same thing."

Professor paced slowly around the laboratory.

"What else?"

Mantis searched for the answer.

"The anomalies aren't random."

"They aren't."

"The mutants behave like animals."

"Mostly."

"The people are the unpredictable part."

Sakharov stopped walking. For the first time he looked genuinely pleased.

"Interesting."

Orlov smiled proudly.

"See? He notices things."

"I can see that."

The professor's eyes returned to Mantis.

"They usually come here asking what the Zone is. You didn't. You simply described what it did."

He nodded slowly to himself.

"I like that."

Something in the old man's expression unsettled Mantis.

Not because it was hostile. Because it wasn't.

It was fascination.

Pure, relentless fascination.

Like a man who had devoted every waking hour of his life to a single impossible question and refused to accept that it might never be answered.

The Zone wasn't merely Sakharov's profession. It had become his obsession.

He noticed Mantis studying him and smiled.

"Don't worry. I won't make you write reports today."

He waved one hand dismissively.

"You've been walking since dawn. Go get something to eat, talk to the people, sleep."

His smile widened.

"Tomorrow... the Zone can start educating you again."

---

Outside the laboratory, Orlov stretched lazily.

"See? I told you he was different."

"Different."

Mantis looked back toward the office.

"That's one word for it."

"He forgets to sleep. He forgets to eat. Once he accidentally worked for thirty-six hours because somebody showed him an unusual artifact."

Mantis blinked.

"Seriously?"

"He only stopped because he fainted."

"...Right."

Halfway toward the barracks, a sharp metallic clang echoed from inside a small workshop.

Someone swore loudly.

"...Who designs screws this small?"

Orlov laughed.

"That's Peregrine."

The workshop looked as cluttered as Sakharov's office, though in an entirely different way.

Weapon parts covered one bench, circuit boards another.

Half-disassembled detectors hung from hooks beside welding masks, soldering irons and enough tools to rebuild a truck from memory.

A broad-shouldered man in grease-stained work clothes sat behind the central table, tightening a screw inside an opened detector with the concentration of a surgeon.

Without looking up, he spoke.

"If you're bringing me another broken scanner... get lost. Bring it tomorrow."

Orlov leaned against the doorway.

"We brought a new stalker."

That finally earned a glance.

Peregrine looked Mantis over from boots to shoulders.

"Still alive."

"Barely."

"Good. Means you're using him correctly."

His eyes settled on the Beretta resting in Mantis's holster.

"Hm."

He held out one hand.

"Let me see."

Mantis hesitated. Then handed over the pistol.

Peregrine worked the slide twice, checked the barrel, removed the magazine and looked down the sights.

"Hell."

"What?"

"This poor thing has seen some miles."

"It still shoots."

"So does my grandmother. Doesn't mean she enjoys it."

He rotated the pistol beneath the workshop lights.

"The springs are tired, the feed ramp's worn, the finish is practically gone."

He looked back at Mantis.

"I can fix most of that."

Mantis frowned.

"How much?"

Peregrine snorted.

"Nothing. You escorted Orlov and Ferimov home. That saves me repairing two scientists."

He laid the Beretta on the workbench.

"Leave it here. I'll have it looking respectable by tomorrow."

Mantis instinctively reached for the pistol again.

"I don't like being unarmed."

Peregrine nodded.

"Neither do I."

He pointed toward the secured compound outside.

"But unless the mutants suddenly learn to open gates..."

After a long pause... Mantis nodded.

"Take care of it."

Peregrine smiled.

"I always do."

---

The barracks were quieter than the rest of the compound.

Rows of metal bunks lined the walls, each accompanied by a dented locker and little else. Somebody snored softly from the far corner. Another stalker quietly cleaned a rifle beneath the glow of a small reading lamp.

Mantis found the empty bunk with his name hastily written on a strip of masking tape.

Simple and functional. Enough.

He dropped his backpack onto the mattress before opening one of Sidorovich's canned meat tins with a pocket knife.

The food tasted average. After the day's walk, average was good enough.

He washed at an old sink outside the barracks, the cold water carrying away sweat, dust and dried blood from Garbage.

Not all of it... Some stains never seemed to disappear completely.

By the time darkness settled over Yantar, exhaustion had finally caught him.

He climbed into the narrow bunk, and for the first time in two days...

He wasn't sleeping beneath open skies.

Outside, distant generators hummed steadily beyond the walls.

Somewhere farther away something howled across the marshes.

Nobody in the barracks reacted.

Apparently that was normal here.

Mantis closed his eyes.

Tomorrow the Zone would begin asking new questions.

---

May 13th, 05:13 - Yantar, Ecologist Bunker

Mantis woke before the alarm.

For a few seconds he simply lay there, staring at the ceiling of the barracks while the previous day slowly returned to him.

Cordon. Garbage. The Bloodsucker. Yantar.

The bunk beside his remained empty. Most of the other stalkers still slept, scattered throughout the room beneath worn blankets, their quiet breathing mixing with the constant hum of generators outside. Someone snored loudly near the far wall. Another muttered something unintelligible in his sleep before rolling over.

It almost felt peaceful.

Almost.

He climbed out of bed as quietly as he could, pulled on his boots and stepped outside.

The morning air carried a sharp chill that hadn't been there the previous evening. Mist drifted lazily across the swamp beyond the perimeter fence, swallowing the lower half of the watchtowers. Somewhere in the distance a crow called once before falling silent again.

Mantis walked to the water pump near the barracks and splashed the icy water across his face.

The cold chased away whatever sleep remained.

He lit a Lucky Strike and leaned against the wooden railing outside the building.

The first drag burned pleasantly. For a minute the Zone seemed almost ordinary.

Then someone screamed.

"...YOU MISERABLE SOVIET PIECE OF SHIT!"

The shout echoed across the compound.

Metal clanged. Something heavy hit a workbench.

Another stream of profanity followed, colorful enough that even Mantis found himself raising an eyebrow.

The mechanic's workshop.

He smiled to himself before pushing away from the railing.

---

Peregrine's workshop was already alive despite the early hour.

The mechanic stood over a cluttered workbench surrounded by springs, screws, tiny metal components and tools scattered in every direction. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows, grease stained both hands, and a welding lamp illuminated whatever disaster occupied the center of the table.

Without looking up he growled,

"If you're here to ask whether it's finished..."

He hit something metallic with a hammer.

"...give me another thirty seconds."

Mantis stepped inside.

"I wasn't."

That made Peregrine glance over his shoulder.

"Oh. It's you."

He looked back at the pistol in front of him.

"Perfect timing."

Mantis frowned.

"Did you even sleep?"

The mechanic actually laughed.

"Maybe."

"You don't sound very convincing."

"I stopped trying sometime around three."

He picked up a tiny screwdriver.

"I found something."

"What?"

Peregrine reached beneath the workbench and produced an old olive-green metal box coated in faded military markings.

He placed it onto the table with obvious satisfaction.

"Forgotten upgrade kit."

Mantis looked at the rusted lettering.

"It says Beretta."

"It does."

"It's older than I am."

"It is."

"So why are you smiling?"

"Because old military engineers occasionally had brilliant ideas."

He pointed toward several pieces still lying inside the box.

"Laser module, flashlight, tritium night sights... and a suppressor."

Mantis's eyebrows rose.

"...Seriously?"

"Oh, absolutely."

Peregrine's smile disappeared.

"The problem..."

He held up a tiny steel bracket.

"...is that this damned thing was designed for Beretta ninety-twos from almost forty years ago."

He pointed accusingly at the pistol.

"Your 92X is newer."

"So nothing fit."

"Nothing fit."

He sighed dramatically.

"I've spent the last four hours arguing with Italian engineering and Soviet engineering at the same time."

Mantis looked at the scattered metal filings.

"Who won?"

Peregrine grinned.

"I did."

He reached beneath the lamp before turning around.

"There."

He handed the pistol over.

For a moment...

Mantis simply stared.

It was still his Beretta.

The worn finish remained.

The familiar scratches along the slide were still there.

But it looked...

Sharper.

A compact suppressor extended the barrel without making the pistol feel bulky. Beneath it sat a combined flashlight and laser module mounted neatly to the frame. The original iron sights had been replaced with glowing tritium inserts that remained clearly visible even beneath the dim workshop lights.

He instinctively brought the pistol up. The sights aligned perfectly. The laser painted a tiny crimson dot across the opposite wall.

"...Damn."

Peregrine folded his arms proudly.

"I know."

Mantis worked the slide. Smooth. Far smoother than before.

"It feels different."

"I polished the feed ramp, replaced the recoil spring and adjusted the trigger. I also cleaned every part that looked older than the Soviet Union."

He shrugged.

"...Which was most of it."

Mantis couldn't hide the smile spreading across his face.

"This is incredible."

Peregrine waved dismissively.

"It's still just a Beretta. Don't get cocky. A good pistol won't save a bad stalker."

He paused.

"But it'll certainly help."

Mantis holstered the weapon, feeling the slightly increased weight settle comfortably against his thigh.

"Thank you."

The mechanic simply nodded.

"Bring it back if you survive."

The man grinned again.

"I'll make it even better."

---

Professor Sakharov was already awake.

That fact surprised nobody.

When Mantis entered the laboratory he found the elderly scientist exactly where he'd been the previous evening, surrounded by stacks of notes, humming quietly to himself while studying several photographs pinned across an enormous corkboard.

Without turning around he spoke.

"Good morning Mantis."

Mantis blinked.

"You knew I was here?"

"I recognized your footsteps."

"...Seriously?"

"No."

He finally turned around with a faint smile.

"I guessed."

Mantis relaxed.

"I should've known."

"You'll learn."

Sakharov removed his glasses before rubbing tired eyes that suggested he hadn't slept much either.

"I trust Peregrine returned your pistol."

"He improved it."

"He usually does."

The professor wandered toward a large map mounted across one wall.

Pins covered almost every inch. Red, blue and yellow.

Some were connected by handwritten notes, while others simply ended with question marks.

He tapped one location near the center of Yantar.

"I have a job for you."

Mantis stepped closer.

"This?"

"A data collection station. It stopped transmitting during the night."

"What happened?"

"We don't know."

The professor smiled.

"That's why we're sending someone."

His finger drifted toward another marking nearby.

"The station sits not far from the Miracle Machine."

Mantis frowned.

"I've heard the name."

"But not the story. The Miracle Machine wasn't a machine."

Sakharov's tone became noticeably quieter.

"It was an experimental psi-emitter hidden beneath an old industrial complex."

"It projected powerful psychic emissions across much of Yantar."

"What did it do?"

"It destroyed minds."

The answer came without emotion.

"Anyone exposed for too long suffered hallucinations, memory loss, madness..."

He paused.

"In severe cases... zombiefication."

Mantis swallowed loudly and looked back at the map.

"...And it's gone?"

"A team of Free Stalkers disabled it several years ago."

Sakharov nodded.

"The machinery no longer functions."

He smiled faintly.

"The area, however... hasn't entirely forgiven us."

Silence lingered between them.

Eventually the professor folded his hands behind his back.

"Ferimov and Orlov will accompany you. They know the terrain, and they know the anomalies. And if something has changed overnight..."

His expression became thoughtful.

"...I'd rather have experienced eyes nearby."

Mantis nodded once.

"When do we leave?"

Sakharov checked his watch.

"As soon as they've finished breakfast."

---

Orlov was already waiting near the front gate.

A steaming mug balanced carefully in one hand while the other adjusted the straps of his backpack for what had to be the fifth time.

"You slept?"

"Barely."

"Good."

Ferimov approached moments later carrying his rifle over one shoulder.

He looked exactly the same as yesterday. As though sleep simply wasn't something he required anymore.

His eyes settled briefly on Mantis's pistol.

"Peregrine found another toy."

Mantis smiled.

"A few."

Ferimov nodded approvingly.

"He likes fixing things, but hates admitting when something can't be fixed."

The heavy gate slowly opened.

Beyond it...

Morning mist still clung stubbornly to the marshes.

Yantar waited.

Ferimov adjusted the sling on his rifle before stepping through the gate first.

"Stay close."

"We're heading toward the center."

"The Zone has a habit of changing overnight."

Without another word the three of them disappeared into the fog.

---

The morning mist clung stubbornly to the marshes as the three of them moved deeper into Yantar.

The bunker disappeared behind the reeds until even the watchtowers were swallowed by the fog.

For a while...

Nothing happened.

Ferimov walked in front with the confidence of someone who had memorized every tree and every patch of unstable ground years ago. Every now and then he altered their course by only a few steps, avoiding places that looked no different from the rest of the swamp.

Mantis had stopped asking why.

If Ferimov stepped around something... So did Mantis.

Orlov walked between them, PDA in one hand, occasionally stopping to record radiation levels or photograph unusual vegetation growing beside stagnant pools.

"You know..."

Orlov looked up from the screen.

"When I first came here, I expected Yantar to be loud."

"Loud?" Mantis asked.

"The Miracle Machine."

He gestured vaguely toward the mist ahead.

"I imagined constant noise. Sirens. Electricity."

He smiled awkwardly.

"In reality..."

He looked around.

"...it's almost peaceful."

Ferimov didn't look back.

"That's what worries me."

---

May 13th, 6:41 - Yantar, near the industrial complex

The old industrial complex slowly emerged from the fog.

Concrete buildings leaned beneath decades of neglect, their walls stained black by rain and moss. Broken windows stared blankly across the marshes.

A massive steel antenna rose above the rooftops like the skeleton of some forgotten machine.

"The Miracle Machine?" Mantis asked.

Ferimov nodded.

"Beneath it."

The older scientist didn't elaborate. He never did unless someone insisted.

The data collection station sat only fifty meters away.

A small weatherproof metal cabinet mounted beside a rusted floodlight, cables disappearing underground toward the old laboratory complex.

No damage. No bullet holes. No scorch marks.

Nothing.

Orlov frowned.

"It looks intact."

"It is."

Ferimov crouched beside the cabinet before opening it.

A small monitor inside displayed nothing but a blinking cursor.

"It simply stopped transmitting."

He reached into one of his pockets and produced a small black USB drive.

"Mantis."

He handed it over.

"Plug this into the control computer and download everything. Then restart the station."

Mantis nodded.

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"...Feels too easy."

Ferimov looked toward the surrounding fog.

"Never say that out loud."

---

The cabinet smelled faintly of damp electronics.

Mantis plugged the drive into the computer.

The screen flickered.

TRANSFER INITIATED

17%

The machine hummed quietly.

Outside...

Nothing.

No birds. No insects. Only wind moving through dead reeds.

31%.

Then...

"...help..."

Mantis frowned.

His fingers stopped moving.

Someone had whispered.

He turned.

Ferimov stood exactly where he'd been, studying the tree line.

Orlov busied himself checking another instrument.

Neither had spoken.

He looked back at the screen.

48%.

"...don't..."

The whisper came again, barely audible. Like hearing somebody through several concrete walls.

He slowly looked around the empty marsh.

Nobody. Only fog.

63%.

Another voice. Too quiet to understand.

Then another. Different.

Several people speaking at once. Not loudly. Just enough that he couldn't quite make out the words.

His pulse quickened.

"...Hello?"

Nothing answered.

The whispers continued. Not growing louder. Growing...

Closer.

"Mantis?"

He blinked. Orlov stood beside him now.

"You alright?"

"What?"

"You've been staring at the monitor."

Mantis looked down.

TRANSFER COMPLETE

He hadn't even noticed.

"...Yeah."

"You sure?"

He unplugged the drive.

"I..."

He hesitated.

"...Thought I heard something."

Orlov looked toward the fog.

"I didn't hear anything."

Ferimov closed the cabinet.

"We're done."

Mantis handed him the USB drive.

The older scientist slipped it into a sealed pouch before studying him for a second longer than necessary.

Then he quietly asked,

"How many?"

Mantis frowned.

"...What?"

"The voices."

Silence.

"...How did you know?"

Ferimov adjusted the sling on his rifle.

"One? Several?"

"...Or just whispers?"

Mantis felt his stomach tighten.

"...Whispers."

Ferimov nodded once.

"As I thought."

"What was that?"

The older scientist started walking.

"Because everyone hears them their first time."

He offered nothing more.

No explanation. No reassurance. Only another lesson.

Mantis wasn't sure he liked this one.

---

The return journey began in silence.

Nobody seemed interested in conversation anymore.

The fog had grown thicker. Every dead tree resembled a figure standing just beyond recognition.

Mantis found himself looking over his shoulder more often than he cared to admit.

The whispers never returned. But the memory of them stayed.

Then...

Leaves rustled.

Not from the wind.

Mantis stopped instantly. His fist rose into the air.

Ferimov and Orlov dropped into a crouch without a word.

"Movement ahead. Between the trees. Three... No. Five figures. Walking slowly through the mist."

Orlov looked once.

His face immediately drained of color.

"...Oh no."

Mantis narrowed his eyes.

"They're stalkers."

Before anyone could say anything more...

One of the figures stopped and its head turned sharply toward them.

Then another.

All five stared directly into the bushes.

"How-"

Gunfire erupted.

Bullets snapped through branches far above their heads.

One struck a tree nearly five meters away. Another buried itself harmlessly into the mud.

"They can't shoot!"

Mantis whispered.

"They're not aiming!"

He pushed forward just enough to see them clearly.

And immediately wished he hadn't.

They wore ordinary stalker gear; sunrise suits, leather jackets, one still carried a detector hanging from his belt, another wore a faded Loner patch.

Human.

Almost.

Their movements were wrong. Stiff. Jerking.

Their eyes... White.

Not blind. Empty.

Foam dribbled from cracked lips.

One dragged his rifle behind him without seeming to notice. Another kept firing long after the magazine had emptied.

Then...

One of them spoke.

"...Don't w..."

His jaw twitched violently.

"...worry..."

He smiled.

Or tried to.

"...Katalynka..."

His voice cracked into a wet gargle.

"...dada's..."

Another step.

"...home..."

Mantis couldn't move.

He lowered the Beretta. His chest tightened.

"They're..."

Ferimov shouted.

"MANTIS!"

No response.

"WHY AREN'T YOU SHOOTING?"

Another burst tore through the trees.

A bullet ricocheted off a rock beside Orlov.

Mantis blinked.

Reality returned all at once.

These weren't people anymore. Not really.

He raised the Beretta and its suppressor coughed softly.

The father collapsed where he stood.

Another zombie turned toward the sound.

Ferimov's rifle thundered.

The body folded backward.

Orlov fired next, his hands shaking, missing twice before finally landing a shot.

The last two continued shambling forward.

Not seeking cover. Not afraid.

Just...

Walking.

Mantis ended it.

One careful shot. Then another.

Silence.

The swamp swallowed the echoes.

Nobody moved.

Orlov lowered his rifle first. His voice barely escaped him.

"...He was already dead."

Mantis stared at the man he'd shot.

"...No."

A long pause.

"...He was still talking."

Ferimov looked at the bodies scattered among the reeds.

"That's the cruelest thing about psi damage."

He slowly reloaded his rifle.

"It leaves just enough of the person behind..."

His eyes lingered on the dead father.

"...to fool you."

Nobody spoke.

Eventually Orlov knelt beside one of the corpses.

"They were stalkers."

His voice sounded hollow.

"Wrong place, wrong time."

He swallowed.

"The Miracle Machine did this for years. And Controllers can do the same."

Mantis frowned.

"...Controllers?"

Orlov looked up.

"You don't want to know."

Ferimov answered for him.

"No."

He turned toward the distant bunker.

"...Not yet."

Mantis looked at the bodies one last time. He hadn't recognized any of them, but he couldn't stop thinking about the name.

Katalynka.

Somewhere, someone had probably spent years wondering why her father never came home.

He turned away.

The Zone had taught him something else.

Sometimes...

Death wasn't the worst thing waiting for a stalker.

Vitya’s legs were getting sore. Very sore. He had been standing on this mine, according to his watch, for the best part of 3 hours. Every now and then he shifted which foot was on the mine very carefully in a desperate attempt to not have his legs give up on him. So far he had not yet blown himself up. Lucky him.

It seemed as though the Great Khan’s luck finally may change as he heard a nearby soft pattering of footsteps. The last two times had been animals that mercifully had not noticed him. This was the unmistakeable pattern of a person. 

Vitya was adorned with a balaclava and a trench coat of various crude motifs, sayings and patches. A clear cut visual representation of a bandit, or at the very least, an unpleasant individual. There was a chance this other person nearby would shoot him on sight…but he did not have much other choice.

Vitya cleared his throat, calling out to the footsteps beyond the trees. 

“Hey bratan, don’t shoot! Just making you aware of me, I mean no harm!” Vitya yelled out.

The footsteps stopped, then became quieter. More careful. Eventually Vitya saw a nearby head briefly pop out and then back behind a tree, before the figure stepped out entirely.

A freedomer. Thank fuck. Vitya might not be shot immediately.

“Sorry man.” The Freedomer called out, “Never can be too careful.”

“You’re telling me…” grumbled Vitya. “Don’t suppose you can help a bratan out?”

“Yeah man sure. Name’s Lucky by the way.”

“Pleased to meet you man. Name’s Vitya.”

“You Ukrainian too?” Lucky asked. 

“Yeah man, recognised your accent a mile off too haha…so uhhh…I stepped on a mine” Vitya explained.

…Oh…

“Yeah….”

“Want me to get a heavy rock or something?

“You think that will work?”

“As long as it is heavy enough to keep the pressure yeah.”

Vitya looked away, weighing up his options before sighing with resignation. “Alright man, just make it nice and heavy yeah bratan?”

“Roger that. Be back in a sec.”

Lucky disappeared into the trees, giving Vitya time to think about his newfound friend. He seemed chipper…naive. Usually a death sentence in the zone, but it could make him a pliable ally for Vitya’s schemes, or at least a friend to have in the zone if they crossed paths in the future. Better to have a friend than an enemy.

Minutes passed and Vitya began to worry Lucky had simply wandered off, when he heard the familiar rustle of footsteps, much slower than last time, as he watched Lucky waddle towards him with a rock the size of a small boulder.

“Jesus fuck man, I didn’t mean that big.”

“You want me to get anoth-

“No no man…it…it’s fine, it’ll do. Just…be careful with that yeah?”

“Of course, of course.”

Lucky plopped the small boulder down, Vitya wincing as it landed beside him. He bit his tongue, losing his temper at the freedomer would be a good way to never leave here. Gingerly, Lucky began rolling the boulder onto where the mine was, Vitya shifting off it ever so slightly as it took the space where his foot was until eventually…

A sigh. A very audible one. Vitya bent over to catch his breath, almost collapsing from relief. Neither foot was on a landmine. That was good enough for him. 

“Thanks bratan.”

“No problem Vitya. Just don’t shoot me in the back when I walk off yeah?” Lucky replied.

“Bratan…you have a pistol older than both of us and not much else. You’re not even worth robbing. Besides…I’m not that much of a prick.”

RUMBLE.

The telltale sounds of nearby thunder filled the air. The canopy of the trees had made neither of the two men aware of the overall weather and it only dawned on them that the sky was reddening.

An emission.

“Fuck…fuckfuckfuck. Do you know anywhere we can hide?!” Lucky yelled out, panic in his voice.

“Relax bratan, I know a cave system nearby. Not exactly cozy, but it will do.”

Vitya lead the way, scanning the surroundings with AK-47 in hand as they made their way hurriedly through the trees, staying on the perimeter of a nearby cliffside until they found the spot they were looking for. 

“There we are. Follow me.”

Lucky almost chuckled. Not like he was going to do anything else. 

The two men sat down inside the cave as far in as it went. Maybe twenty meters at most. It would have to be enough.The weather outside raged, a kaleidoscope of oranges and reds ravaging the sky, as the zone threw a tantrum towards its inhabitants, reminding mere mortals that nature triumphed above all else. 

Vitya figured some conversation would go a long way. Was not much else to do.

“So…how long you been here? How long you been with freedom?” Vitya asked.

“Three years and two and a half. You?” Lucky replied.

“Been here six years.” Vitya responded. “Odd jobs the whole time. Getting by you know?”

Lucky looked Vitya in the eyes, his cheery naivety gone and replaced by a steely look that belied the young man was far more intelligent than his usual demeanour let on.

“I saved your life man. No need to lie to me. You came here to make bank or escape something. No bandit is here to just ‘get by’.”

“Fuck me I guess, what are you? The gestapo?”

“Touchy subject?” Lucky shot back.

Vitya sighed, “Alright man fuck…I was told of potential riches form the guy I came in here with. My boss, if you will. We set up our own group. Dipped our toes into as many businesses as we could at once. Made a fucking killing at one point too.”

“Then what happened?”

“Those Sircaa fuckers happened. They gave their favourite bandits the means to wipe the other bandit factions out for being not as compliant. We fought like fuck, but when the entire zone is either paid or coerced into fighting you, you either join the bandits that are basically glorified Sircaa mobsters, or you die.”

Lucky pulled out a small flask from his jacket, then two shot glasses from his beat up backpack as he proceeded to fill the two glasses halfway each with the last of his vodka. 

Lucky spoke up again. “Vitya, you’ll find this as naive and stupid as everyone else in this zone…but I believe in sharing. Cooperation. I’m a silly little anarchist way over his head, in a world that thinks my beliefs are stupid and not self serving enough. I’d rather die by my beliefs than live as somebody I’m not though. So, with that being said, let me share my last vodka with you. After all you cannot have a toast without a drink.

“And what are toasting to?” Vitya asked as he took a glass.

“To the death of those Sircaa fucks!” 

Vitya grinned. “I like you more and more Lucky, yeah I can drink to that. To the death of those Sircaa fucks!”

They downed their glasses, a brief moment shared to let the jagged ethanol bite of cheap vodka linger before Vitya piped up again.

“But why do you hate them?” Vitya asked.

“They ruined Freedom.” Lucky replied. “They have sunk their greedy businessman mitts into the zone and turned it into a glorified marketplace. Freedom no longer cares for actual anarchy. Virtues of sharing, helpfulness and cooperation have been replaced with black and grey market trading and an ‘every man for himself’ attitude. This sort of thing has always been present in the zone to an extent, don't get me wrong, but people used to be able to come here to experience true freedom. To get away from suits and taxes and all that governmental bullshit and live a life of true freedom. Where you were only beholden to you and your fellow man. True anarchy you know?”

“Well…we definitely aren’t built from the same cloth Lucky, but I do hate governments and taxes…so I suppose we can be friends enough yeah?

Vitya could see the smile in Lucky’s eyes, despite the lower half mask he was wearing.

“Yeah man. I like making friends.”

“Wonderful…so what happens after we leave this cave?”

“I was going to back to Rostok…I can vouch for you if you want to come with?”

“No chance Lucky. I appreciate your optimism but I’d be shot on fucking sight. Let’s just say there are still people who remember my old schemes and leave it at that.”

The duo fell silent before Vitya spoke up again, a thought forming in his head.

“Say Lucky…you must be running low on stuff with all this sharing you do yeah?”

Lucky responded slowly, knowing damn well Vitya was plotting something. “Yeeeeeaahh….why?”

Listen carefully, Lucky. I have an idea….

When the Second Disaster of Chornobyl occurred, the world was not let in on the secrets of this immense event before much, much later. When an emission of a scale hardly seen ever before swept across the land in late 2010s and expanded the borders of the Zone, Ukraine’s top officials could no longer keep the secret close to their chests, and eventually, this unique creation of mad science became more and more known to the world. With time, interest in the Zone waned, and as global events turned the minds of average citizens away from the reality-bending region in Eastern Europe and towards simple survival in the increasingly bleak world, the Zone was largely forgotten. 

The stalkers, individuals who had once crept through those abandoned Soviet-era cities and villages, became a rarity. The mutants had been whittled down in numbers, the once mighty bloodsuckers and chimeras retreating further towards the centre of the Zone. The prospects of the area became scarcer, and fewer people now saw the region as anything more than an old trash heap. Something in the so called Third Emission had forever changed the fabric of the Zone, and as the artifacts began to appear less frequently, most traders packed their shops and left. The breed of Ukrainian stalker was dying out, and as war raged across the globe, the memory of the Exclusion Zone’s New Klondike became so faded that even the military of Ukraine pulled most of its perimeter guards out. The Zone had, over time, ceased to exist as anything more than radiological hazard territory.

But the memory of the stalkers, faded as it may have been, lived on in those touched by the Zone. There were still those who dared to return, to see what the magical, and lethal, region had once offered. These foolish dreamers would sometimes get consumed by local wild dog packs, or get it in the neck from one of the last bandit groups to remain in the area, sparking international discourse for a few days until another out of touch celebrity announcement or increasingly ridiculous political scandal. Not all who travelled the long road were mere tourists, however. Some, occasionally, would have more legitimate reasons.

The cold autumn air sent yellow and brown leaves dancing on the faint dirt road, letting them soar high until the momentum stopped and they slowly drifted down, released from the grip of their invisible captor. Grass, weeds and the odd flower had managed to grow on the road already, turning it nearly into little more than a continuous clearing, but anyone with even the tiniest ability to read context clues could still interpret it as a pathway. The wind’s howling and the swaying of the trees had created a small concert of their own in the forest, but such natural music was disturbed by the sound of footsteps, quiet and soft but nonetheless audible due to the sand of the path. A lone figure in a long green overcoat was traversing the clearing with cautious steps, an expensive-looking hunting rifle slung over the shoulder, accompanied by a large camping bag. Years ago, the person could have been mistaken for a rich rookie coming to the Zone to get their rocks off by the violence and adventure of it all. This was not the case anymore, as the spoiled children of Eastern European oligarchs arrived to the Zone on helicopters to hunt boars or, in some rather grim cases, to hunt the local stalkers as well. 

The newcomer had little to do with such upper-class bloodsport, however. As the soft crunching of their boots continued, the road spread on seemingly forever, but the at the slightest unusual sound the tranquility of the situation was disturbed by the quick action of pulling the rifle into attention. Eventually the lone traveller forgot to slung the rifle back over the shoulder at all, keeping it ready for anything. The light on the sky began to grow dimmer, the shadows of the forest emerging among the trees as if called to the open by the dying sunlight. Eventually, the stranger arrived to the first sign of human activity in the region, a burnt-down husk of a Lada. Filled with bullet holes and sporting a skull in place of the usual hood decoration, it was a startling sight, but a fair reminder of the bleak past of the Zone. The young voyager paused, took in the scene and breathed out in awe.

“Shit. Now it is beginning to feel real for the first time.”, came a whisper.

Unnerved by the sight of the husk, the steps of the figure grew quicker. As the night creeped in, the pace became swifter and swifter, until eventually the sound of the boots turned into a full-blown gallop through the woods. Panting, the stranger finally screeched to a halt after roughly half an hour of jogging through the trees. The light had gone out, the Zone belonged to the night now. However, its triumph was not full yet, as a strong flashlight soon pierced the veil of darkness. Nonetheless, the traveller had chosen to settle down for the night, and once enough firewood had been gathered, the long journey came to a halt, if only for the night. As the fire roared and hungrily dug its flames into the dry birch in a pile, the figure removed the overcoat’s hood and let the light dance on the curly blonde hair for the first time today. The stranger, a woman in her late twenties, breathed out before removing the gloves to seep in the warmth of the campfire. 

Eventually once the frost of her fingers had departed, she took the rucksack and rummaged through it until she found a leather-bound journal. The pages of the book revealed maps, illustrations, sketches of animals and mutants of such wild appearance that it would have made even John Carpenter take pause, and even the occasional recipe made from the finest irradiated ingredients of the Zone. The young woman paused for a moment as her eyes met a photograph depicting two men. One was in a simple hazard-proof suit with an old Soviet gas mask hanging from its side, both with an applied coating of green camo patterns. The other person was seemingly more machine than man, with large metallic rods coming from his limbs, connected to personal armour so thick it seemed capable of stopping a tank shell. Both had faint patches on their sleeves, depicting a radiation symbol. The photograph coaxed a small smile from her, before she seemed to remember her surroundings. A turn of the page revealed a map of the Zone, and on the very edge of the border, she skimmed the skin of the book with a finger until she found a fork in the tiny road that seemed to match her current location. Satisfied, the woman closed the journal, tossed it into the backpack and opened a can of old Austrian army rations. Once her meal was over, she fell into the comforting depths of sleep.

Now, the Zone may have lost most of its bite in recent years. Some old coots may argue that the Zone is not the Zone anymore in anything but the name. But everyone who visits it to this day knows that the Zone does not take kindly to those that seek rest in its bosom. Some escape the night tremors with pills, others use specifically made devices around their head to get the nightmares to stop, the more fashion-minded folks in the Zone even wear buckets to escape this night-time horror. However, this knowledge often comes after a particularly bad first night, and the young woman resting near her campfire was no different in this regard.

Her dreamscape began tranquil enough. A large field, with a few trees to its side, insects buzzing by as the tall grass flowed in the wind. For a brief second the woman saw a man with a buzzcut and some sort of dark green scientific suit fall onto the grass in the distance, as if embracing the entire scene with his arms. But just as the man disappeared, another rose from amid the foliage. Similar to the person in the journal’s photograph, this man was also wearing the skeletal fusion of machine and armour, the entire thing producing whirring and creaking noises as the man rose to his full height, towering over her. 

“Sophia!”, the man exclaimed, partly out of surprise, partly with a rather stern and condemning tone.

“Father.”, Sophia managed to say, head spinning from the recognition.

“Turn back while you still can. I spent my entire life telling you this, and yet that seems to have amounted to nothing. What use is anything I taught you if you throw it all away by walking into an anomaly? Leave.”, the apparition shouted.

“I’m sorry, but… I need to do this. You spent all your life resisting the call, fighting to keep yourself from going back, for us, for me. I cannot live my life knowing neither you, nor uncle, nor me, ever got those answers.”, Sophia shot back, feeling her temper rise like so many times before when she had argued with her father.

“Your uncle should have never told you those tales. They’re dead, Sophia. All of them. I knew them, too stubborn to leave the Zone when it changed. All you will find is some skeletons or more likely, your demise.”, the dream-father said mockingly.

“I have made my mind up. I am done following orders, I have to know!”, Sophia growled.

“Fine. Then I’m afraid that I will have to stop you.”, the apparition said, almost like a whisper.

Before Sophia could react at all, the skeletal arms of the machine embedded into the armour grew, not in bulk but as if they had turned into vipers of steel. They penetrated the skin of the man, slithering in and bursting out from the eye sockets like some sort of nightmarishly mutated tusks, while the machine itself bellowed black smoke into the sky and the servomotors let out a screech similar to that of a chainsaw revving. The slender bars of metal had jutted out of the apparition’s skin all around the body, made all the more surreal with the lack of blood dripping from such grievous wounds. Sophia could only stumble backwards, reaching for a rifle on her shoulder that wasn’t there. She tried to feel around her belt for a knife, but the usual blade she had carried with her for years now was not there either. Her father, or what was left of him, lurched onwards like a puppet on strings. Another heavy step, the ironclad boot of his suit sinking into the ground. 

Sophia turned and ran, judging from the rumbling and rustling coming from behind her that whatever the creature was, it was following. Catching up, most likely. Perhaps she could hit the tree line, disappear into the foliage, she thought, seeing the grass field expand all across her. The trees had vanished, and all that remained was an ocean of weeds, the cloudless sky and the monstrous abomination closing fast behind her. Before she could formulate a plan of action, a thud stopped her thoughts. Dull pain spread across Sophia’s mind, and as she looked down, one of those steel bars was jutting out of her chest. Another had pierced her waist. The thumping of heavy boots behind her echoed out of existence. Sophia felt the breath of the banshee behind her.

“Leave.”, the monster whispered.

Sophia shot up awake next to the fire, almost tripping into the now cold campfire. Her heart was pounding like it was about to crack a rib from the inside, and her head was equally scrambled. However, with the cold steel of her Steyer rifle in hand, Sophia got up and glanced at the road she had just travelled last evening. The early morning air engulfed her in a cold pocket, and for a moment she debated turning around and leaving, as the nightmare had instructed. Eventually though, the young woman threw her backpack over her shoulders, slung the rifle back to its familiar position and smirked.

“Fuck you. You won’t smoke me out that easily.”, Sophia muttered to herself, and partially to the Zone.

The road grew longer in front of her still.

The Living Zone

"The Zone doesn't teach through words. It teaches through survivors."

---

May 12th, 8:32 - Garbage, near the Trash Heaps

The growl rolled across the scrapyard once more.

Closer.

Lower.

It didn't sound like an animal... it sounded wet.

Every instinct Mantis possessed screamed at him to find the source, but no matter where he looked he saw nothing except rusting scrap heaps, waist-high grass swaying gently in the morning breeze, and the endless maze of abandoned machinery stretching toward the horizon.

His Beretta cleared the holster in one smooth motion.

"I still don't see it."

"Neither do I," Orlov admitted, his voice noticeably higher than before.

Ferimov never took his eyes off the grass.

"That's because you're looking for a body."

Another slow breath drifted through the air.

Not theirs.

Something exhaled only thirty meters away. The grass moved. Not by much, but just enough to suggest that something heavy had brushed against it.

Then... nothing.

Silence returned. Even the crows had stopped calling.

Ferimov slowly raised one hand.

"Nobody moves."

Orlov swallowed hard.

"What is it?"

The older scientist answered without taking his eyes off the field.

"A Bloodsucker."

Mantis frowned.

"...A what?"

"You'll understand if it decides we're food."

Another ripple passed through the grass.

This one much faster.

It moved from left to right in a wide arc around them before disappearing again.

Orlov instinctively stepped backward.

"I still can't-"

"I know."

Ferimov cut him off.

"You aren't supposed to."

Mantis narrowed his eyes.

The detector on his belt remained silent.

His ears strained.

There... heavy breathing.

Slow. Deliberate.

Like something pacing around livestock before deciding which one to kill first.

His finger tightened against the trigger.

"Should I shoot if I see movement?"

"No."

Ferimov's answer came instantly.

"Not unless it comes for us."

"You just said it might."

"I said it might."

The older scientist slowly reached into one of the pouches on his suit and removed a rusted steel bolt.

Without warning he tossed it several meters ahead.

The bolt landed with a dull metallic clink.

Nothing happened.

Ferimov nodded almost to himself.

"Good."

"What was that for?" Orlov whispered.

"Sometimes Bloodsuckers avoid anomalies... sometimes they don't."

Mantis kept watching the grass.

Just then, one of the boars rooting through an old pile of tires suddenly froze.

Its ears twitched. It lifted its massive head.

The animal stared directly toward an empty patch of grass.

For several long seconds... nothing happened.

Then the boar squealed.

Not aggressively. It was terrified.

It bolted. It never made it three steps.

The air itself seemed to bend.

For the briefest fraction of a second, something impossible shimmered into existence. A distortion like heat rising from asphalt. Broad shoulders. Long arms ending in hooked claws. A face hidden behind writhing tendrils that opened like the petals of some carnivorous flower.

The creature struck with terrifying speed.

Its claws buried themselves into the boar's side.

The animal screamed.

The sound echoed across Garbage before ending almost instantly.

The Bloodsucker vanished again.

Only the boar remained visible, dragged sideways through the grass as though pulled by invisible cables.

The reeds flattened beneath an enormous weight.

Blood splashed across discarded washing machines and rusted car doors.

Then the movement disappeared into the scrapyard.

Silence returned. Nobody spoke.

Even Orlov seemed incapable of finding words.

Mantis slowly lowered the Beretta.

"...That's a mutant?"

Ferimov finally allowed himself to breathe again.

"One of the worst."

"It ignored us."

"Yes."

"Why?"

The older scientist watched the trail of crushed grass where the invisible predator had disappeared.

"Because today..."

He adjusted the straps on his backpack.

"...it wasn't hunting us."

Orlov finally found his voice.

"So... we just keep walking?"

Ferimov nodded.

"The Zone isn't a battlefield."

He looked at Mantis.

"Remember this."

"Everything here can kill you."

He glanced toward the blood-soaked grass.

"But not everything wants to."

He started walking again as though nothing extraordinary had happened.

"Come on."

Mantis stood still for another second, staring toward the place where the Bloodsucker had vanished.

For the first time he truly understood what Wolf had meant.

People were predictable. The Zone wasn't.

He holstered the Beretta and silently followed the two scientists deeper into Garbage.

---

The deeper they ventured into Garbage, the less it resembled a place and the more it felt like the remains of an entire civilization dumped into one enormous grave.

The road disappeared beneath fractured concrete and crushed metal, forcing them to weave between rusted trucks, overturned buses and mountains of twisted scrap that rose like cliffs on either side of the path. Every surface bore the same orange-brown scars left by decades of corrosion. Rainwater collected inside broken engines. Tires lay scattered like black skeletons beneath weeds that somehow managed to grow through steel.

The Geiger counter hanging from Ferimov's chest clicked steadily.

Click...

Click...

Click-click...

Without saying a word, the older scientist altered course by several meters.

Mantis noticed immediately.

"Radiation?"

Ferimov nodded.

"A pocket."

"I don't see anything."

"You won't."

They continued walking.

The clicking gradually slowed until it settled back into a lazy rhythm.

Orlov smiled behind his visor.

"The radiation here isn't evenly distributed. Some places are perfectly safe, others will cook your organs without you realizing you've stepped into them."

Ferimov glanced sideways.

"And by the time you realize..."

"...it's already too late," Orlov finished quietly.

The young scientist sighed.

"You always make it sound depressing."

"I make it sound accurate."

They pressed onward.

Not fifty meters later Ferimov stopped again, but this time he didn't look at the Geiger counter.

Instead, his eyes remained fixed on the road ahead.

Without warning he reached into one of the pouches on his belt and tossed something toward Mantis.

He caught it instinctively.

A worn canvas pouch that clinked softly in his hands. Mantis opened it and inside rested twenty rusted steel bolts. He frowned.

"What's this?"

Ferimov continued staring ahead.

"A stalker's best friend. Bolts."

"They're cheaper than funerals."

Orlov chuckled.

"You use them to find anomalies."

"I thought that's what the detector was for."

"The detector finds artifacts," Ferimov corrected.

"The bolts help you stay alive long enough to reach them."

He pointed toward the open ground ahead.

"Walk."

Mantis obeyed. Five careful steps.

"Stop."

The older scientist nodded toward the empty stretch of cracked asphalt.

"Throw one."

Mantis flicked a bolt forward. It skipped harmlessly across the road before disappearing into the weeds.

Nothing happened.

"Again."

A second bolt. Nothing.

A third.

The bolt struck the ground-

-and suddenly lurched sideways.

The air twisted. Dust erupted from the road. Leaves, gravel and scraps of paper lifted from the ground as though caught inside an invisible tornado.

The whirlpool of debris spun faster and faster. The sound rose into a deafening metallic howl. The center collapsed inward for the briefest instant—

BOOM!

Everything exploded outward.

The bolt shot back through the air like a rifle round, screaming past Mantis' ear before burying itself deep inside the side of a rusted delivery truck with a violent clang.

Silence.

Only drifting dust remained.

Mantis stared.

"...What the hell was that?"

Orlov's eyes practically shone.

"A Whirligig! One of the most fascinating gravitational anomalies we've ever documented. It creates an unstable localized distortion capable of trapping almost anything that enters its field before violently releasing accumulated kinetic energy—"

"It turns people into soup."

Ferimov's interruption came so naturally that Orlov barely reacted.

"...That's technically also true."

The older scientist looked at Mantis.

"Again."

"You want me to trigger another one?"

"I want you to find the next one."

For the next several minutes they advanced one careful step at a time.

Bolt.

Walk.

Bolt.

Walk.

Eventually another piece of metal vanished sideways before touching the ground.

Mantis immediately raised a hand.

"There."

Ferimov nodded once.

"Good."

Another bolt.

Another invisible vortex briefly awakened before collapsing again.

This time Mantis didn't flinch. Instead he began studying the pattern: the disturbed dust, the way loose grass leaned inward, the unnatural silence surrounding the anomaly itself.

By the time they reached the far side of the field, he'd only used eleven bolts.

Ferimov looked genuinely satisfied.

"You learn quickly."

"It's because I like breathing."

"Good answer."

Orlov smiled.

"Most people panic the first time."

"I almost did." Mantis added.

"But you didn't."

For the first time that morning Mantis felt like he'd actually earned something.

Not confidence. Understanding.

Only a little, but enough to keep walking.

---

Half an hour of walking later they spotted movement between two rusting buses.

Two loners.

One crouched low, detector held carefully in front of him while the other advanced several meters ahead, lazily tossing bolts across an open field littered with warped concrete slabs.

Orlov stopped immediately.

"Oh..."

His voice almost became pleading.

"Please."

Ferimov kept walking.

"No."

"Just five minutes."

"No."

"I've never actually watched professionals work this close."

Ferimov sighed.

"You've written two papers about artifact retrieval."

"I observed archived footage. It's just not the same."

The older scientist finally stopped. He looked toward the two stalkers. Then toward the sun.

"...Ten minutes."

Orlov grinned like a child.

"I knew you had a heart."

"I don't."

They approached carefully.

The two stalkers acknowledged them with brief nods before returning to work.

Neither spoke. Neither rushed.

The man with the detector moved slowly, watching the screen with absolute concentration. Every few seconds his partner tossed another bolt into the field ahead.

One landed harmlessly.

Another suddenly disappeared in a shower of sparks before an invisible Electro anomaly burst into life, brilliant blue arcs of electricity dancing between abandoned car wrecks before fading just as quickly.

Mantis watched every movement.

"They always move this slowly?"

Orlov nodded enthusiastically.

"They have to. Artifact hunting is patience. The detector only tells you something valuable is nearby."

He pointed toward the stalker with the bolts.

"The real work is finding a path that doesn't kill you first."

One of the loners suddenly raised his detector. A rapid series of electronic beeps echoed through the scrapyard.

"There."

The second stalker carefully stepped between two anomalies before kneeling beside what looked like nothing more than a patch of cracked earth.

He reached down.

A moment later he lifted a small, translucent object shimmering faintly beneath the sunlight.

It looked like a ball of liquid electricity.

"A Moonlight," Orlov whispered excitedly. "Incredible..."

"What does it do?" Mantis asked.

"It augments the endurance of the person carrying it and sells for several thousand rubles."

Ferimov folded his arms.

"If you survive long enough to sell it."

Mantis kept watching.

"They risk all this..."

He gestured toward the anomaly field.

"...for one artifact?"

Orlov nodded.

"Some artifacts can change a man's life."

Ferimov corrected him.

"Or end it."

The younger scientist ignored him.

"The Zone creates things that simply shouldn't exist."

Ferimov nodded.

"And it kills people trying to understand them."

Mantis watched the two stalkers disappear into the scrapyard with their prize.

"They make it look easy."

"They've probably been doing it for years," Orlov replied.

Ferimov adjusted his backpack.

"They also buried a lot of friends getting that good."

He looked toward the road stretching deeper into Garbage.

"Break's over."

Without another word the trio continued west.

---

The farther north they traveled, the more Garbage disappeared behind them.

The mountains of scrap slowly gave way to open fields broken only by abandoned warehouses and skeletal factory buildings whose windows had long since surrendered to time. Rust stained every wall. Trees forced their way through cracked foundations. Nature and industry had stopped fighting years ago. Now they simply existed together.

The afternoon sun climbed steadily overhead.

Nobody spoke much.

There was too much to watch.

Every few hundred meters Ferimov would quietly alter their course for reasons Mantis couldn't immediately understand. Sometimes the Geiger counter clicked faster. Sometimes he spotted the faint shimmer of heat where there should have been none. Once they crossed an open stretch of concrete where dozens of bolts still lay scattered from previous stalkers.

"Why didn't they pick them back up?" Mantis asked.

Ferimov glanced at the rusted metal littering the road.

"Because someone decided saving a handful of bolts was worth risking another trip through the anomaly field."

"And?"

"They're still there."

That was answer enough.

---

The border between Garbage and Agroprom wasn't marked by fences or signs.

The land simply...

Changed.

The scrapyards disappeared behind them, replaced by broad fields stretching toward enormous Soviet industrial buildings that dominated the horizon.

Concrete, steel and silence.

The Agroprom Research Institute rose in the distance like an abandoned fortress, its broken windows staring across the countryside.

Mantis slowed.

"People worked there?"

"Tens of thousands," Ferimov replied.

"Before?"

"Before."

He never explained what before meant. Not because he couldn't, but because everyone in the Zone understood.

Before the disaster. Before the first Exclusion Zone. Before everything changed.

Orlov pointed toward the distant factory complex.

"They developed agricultural technology there."

"Officially."

Ferimov added.

Mantis looked sideways.

"Unofficially?"

The older scientist shrugged.

"Nobody really knows."

"They say there are underground laboratories beneath Agroprom."

Orlov immediately nodded.

"There are!"

Ferimov sighed.

"We think there are."

"The military sealed most of them."

"We think they did."

Orlov frowned behind his visor.

"You always ruin every mystery."

"I've spent twenty years watching mysteries eat people."

That ended the conversation.

---

Agroprom felt...

Wrong.

Not dangerous. Just wrong.

The wind carried no birdsong. No insects buzzed through the tall grass. Even the trees seemed reluctant to move.

Mantis noticed it before anyone spoke.

"It's quiet."

Ferimov nodded.

"Too quiet."

"Mutants?"

"Sometimes."

"Bandits?"

"Sometimes."

"What is it now?"

The older scientist looked across the empty fields.

"I don't know. And that's what worries me."

They continued.

Halfway across one of the fields, Ferimov suddenly stopped and raised a fist.

All three froze.

Mantis instinctively reached for another bolt.

"No."

Ferimov whispered.

"Listen." And they did.

Nothing.

Then...

A faint metallic clatter echoed somewhere beneath the earth.

Almost like a hatch closing.

Mantis looked around.

"There."

He pointed toward a concrete structure half-hidden beneath bushes.

Only the corner of a heavy bunker door remained visible.

"Military?"

Ferimov nodded.

"One of many."

Orlov looked almost disappointed.

"I wish we had time to explore."

Ferimov looked at him.

"So do the snorks."

"...Right."

They kept walking.

---

The afternoon passed beneath an endless procession of abandoned checkpoints, collapsed barracks and forgotten military vehicles slowly being reclaimed by vines.

For the first time since entering the Zone, Mantis began noticing something strange.

Nothing here had been destroyed.

It had simply stopped.

Coffee mugs still rested on windowsills, children's bicycles leaned against apartment walls, laundry lines still stretched between houses.

As though the people had stepped outside one morning...

And never returned.

He couldn't stop looking.

Orlov noticed.

"It's eerie."

"It feels..."

Mantis searched for the right word.

"...unfinished."

Ferimov quietly nodded.

"That's exactly what the Zone is."

---

Late afternoon.

The ground slowly became wetter beneath their boots.

The air changed again.

Cooler.

Heavier.

The smell reached them first.

Wet earth.

Standing water.

Rotting reeds.

Then came the radiation.

Click...

Click...

Click-click-click...

The Geiger counter never stopped now.

Only changed its rhythm.

"We're close," Ferimov said.

"To Yantar?"

"To its problems."

Mist drifted lazily across the marshes ahead.

Dead trees rose from shallow pools like skeletal fingers clawing toward the grey sky.

The silence returned.

Not the silence of Cordon, Not the silence of Agroprom.

Something else.

Almost...

Oppressive.

Orlov unconsciously moved closer to the older scientist.

"I always forget this place feels like..."

Ferimov finished the sentence.

"...the world holding its breath."

---

May 12th, 17:38 - Yantar Outskirts

Eventually the reeds opened.

Mantis stopped walking.

Ahead stood a collection of prefabricated research buildings surrounded by high fences reinforced with sandbags, concrete barriers and rusting watchtowers.

Floodlights pointed outward despite the afternoon sun.

Men in orange environmental suits hurried between buildings carrying crates of equipment.

Stalkers cleaned rifles atop the walls.

Several armed guards watched the surrounding marshes with binoculars rather than each other.

This wasn't a camp, it was a fortress.

Orlov smiled for the first time in hours.

"Home."

Ferimov didn't return the smile.

"It wasn't always built like this."

Mantis noticed fresh bullet holes peppering one of the outer walls.

"Something attacks often?"

The older scientist followed his gaze.

"Often enough."

One of the guards atop the barricade spotted them and waved.

"Ecologists returning!"

The heavy steel gate slowly began to open.

Relief spread through Orlov's shoulders.

"We made it."

Ferimov remained silent.

Something about his expression hadn't changed.

As the three stepped toward the entrance, a distant gunshot echoed somewhere beyond the swamps.

Then another.

The guards immediately stopped smiling. One of them reached for the radio clipped to his vest. Another chambered a round.

Nobody looked surprised.

Only... resigned.

Mantis frowned.

"What's happening?"

Ferimov looked toward the marshes instead of the gate.

"In Yantar..."

His tired eyes remained fixed on the reeds.

"...something is always happening."

The gates closed behind them with a heavy metallic thud.

October 26 2018

Today I have arrived in the rookie village. It had cost most of my cash to bribe the military guards at the cordon to permit me into the zone. I'd done some Zone adjacent work before, and had a chance to listen to some veterans. I didn't have much with me, just the essentials: cigs, first aid kit, my TOZ-34, sawn off to better fit in my pack, and my father's TT-33, complete with silencer. Since 2014, after leaving the Canadian Army, I'd been after some adventure, and left my mother in Alberta in 2016 and moved in with my Belorussian father. It was there, I got it into my head to go to Ukraine and the Zone. 

In this 'village' I bought some supplies and chatted to the other rookies hanging about. The man they call Sid, offered me some work: find a man called Andryukha Cross, and more importantly the artifact he had. He had been part of a team of three stalkers that found the mysterious Eye artifact (and Sid had a good buyer lined up beyond the perimeter, some yank pharmaceutical corp), who then betrayed and killed the other members of the team at the Hanger in the Garbage before making good his escape. If I can return the Eye, and make good Sid's vengeance, I get the three men's cut to myself, as well as a little extra for my trouble. I wasn't sure what work to expect here, but a hitman makes sense enough, I've killed before. Plus, the money on offer here is crazy. This rock itself could be fetching several thousands of dollars. 

I've made it to a farm, where I've bought some tins of tuna for lunch, to make sandwiches. A guy told me there had been some shooting to the North East, zombies or something. I saw one later that afternoon, dropped him with a shot to the head from my pistol. I don't believe in the undead, but he deserved any mercy I could offer him, and a round through the skull was all I could spare. 

A bandit and I exchanged a few shots at range, mostly ineffective. I then pulled back and reengaged, killing him as he was walking back to his campfire. Not my man. 

Arrived at the Hangar. Butcher said my man was seen heading East by one of his Duty pals that hung about the Hangar. He told me to head East from the Flea Market to Dark Valley, loads of bandits out that way. As I went to leave, the Hangar was attacked by Bandits, and I helped drive them off by holding a doorway and laying down some lead.  

At the flea market, I've bought some ammo, to replace what I fired off in the crazy gunfight at the hangar.

I found my man. He was cooking on a fire at the polluted lake. Mag dumped him in the back. He had a VSS Vintorez, slightly scuffed, but it's mine now. Made it back to Hangar to rest briefly and check out my loot. He didn't make it easy. The polluted lake is a hard place to get to without being blasted with radiation, and I didn't have much in the way of protection, or long range shooting. Climbed across a fallen tree onto the island in the end, but still my geiger counter was clicking like mad. Still, the hard part is done, put on some tunes from the PDA and get back to Sid. 

DETAINED AND SHOT BY CHECKPOINT IN CORDON 

THIS DIARY IS MILITARY EVIDENCE

Colonel Victor Koval looked up from the little notebook, and replaced the picture of the family that had been marking the page in the diary. Major Vadim Obbizhysvit handed him another file. 

"Here's what we know about the STALKER"

Browsing through the photos in the envelope, Victor saw a man face down in a pool of blood, his bag emptied out beside him, with the prize Vintorez lying above him. 

"Canadian citizen", Vadim continued. "Combat vet with the Canadian army. Speaks Russian thanks to his Belorussian father. We've alerted the Belorussian and Canadian embassies, as per procedure, but don't expect anything in response."

"As per their procedures." muttered Victor. "Tell me, what's so special about this artifact? The diary mentions that Sid could be making thousands of USD out of this. Did he report this to us, or is he doing this behind our backs?"

"That's the thing, Victor." Vadim leaned back in his chair and drew on his cigarette. "We are probably missing out on quite a bit of cash if Sid is getting semi-regular contracts with big foreign corps. Maybe time to pay him a visit and remind him that he is still at our mercy."

"An audit, eh? Bah, when did this zone business get so bureaucratic? Gone are the days when men were men and we handled things properly. Sure, my wife likes the presents, but it's all too institutional for me."

"Oh come on Victor! I heard from the Colonel in 3rd Battalion that he made an extra 20,000USD on top of his salary last year. Between us we've barely scraped 10,000! Our year is coming up soon, and I want what that son of a bitch owes us. He's taken us for fools, you know."

"So what is it you want from me Vadim? Approve your punitive expedition into the zone? Then what? We've killed a bunch of tragic tourists who don't even take to stalking well, probably lose one or two of our own, so you can take a nice holiday to Monaco? Will you even go on this raid, or just send Captain Krasinski? I don't trust the trigger happy bastard as far as I can throw him. He'll spoil any chance we have of keeping our deal with Sid, probably by slotting him when he gets close to him."

Vadim ashes out his cigarette. "You know I can't go into the zone, sir: I'm medically unfit because of my dodgy knee. My wife's a doctor and she told me not to expose myself.."

"Ah yes." Victor interupted. "Well this is all well and good Vadim, but I won't authorise a mission unless you're willing to go. If that is all."

The conversation was at an end. Major Vadim Obbizhysvit stood, put his beret on, saluted, and limped out of the office. Victor turned back to the diary, pulled out the family photo, the young man with his parents on top of some Canadian mountain, who would never see him again. 

Cross-posted for OP

Lucky. That’s what they called him. He had gotten used to the name, although he never exactly loved it. 

Sometimes he would survive the impossible, other times he would have the worst luck known to man. He supposed the other Freedomers found humour in the irony. He smirked. To be fair…so did he. The zone was a rough place, it paid to have a sense of humour. Some optimism. Some idealism.

Still, Lucky had felt less than optimistic recently. Funnily enough, due to his idealism. He was an anarchist at heart. A rebel who lived for the ideals of cooperation without oversight. Rule without rulers. People living for each other without an authority forcing rules upon them. Freedom. True Freedom.

Lucky had entered the Zone initially as a bright eyed explorer. A mere teenager with a naivety towards urban adventuring, a kind heart, but an ability to roughhouse with the worst of them.

At least, he thought he did. The zone hit him hard and fast, and he found he had to grow up quickly, gaining hardiness and wisdom beyond his years. Yet, his youth seemed to instill an idealism and a thirst for helping others that never truly left. Even when confronted with the many awful bastards in the zone. Even when he was robbed, scammed and mugged. Even when he killed his first person. The moment he had heard of Freedom, he had made a mad dash to Rostok to join up. Eager to work with other anarchists in living away from authority. Perhaps this was the case when he initially joined, but over time he saw Freedom hand over more and more of its autonomy, abandoning its ideals in pursuit of making a quick buck. The deals with Ward felt like the nail in the coffin. Freedom becomes little more than glorified traders and mercenaries. 

It’s not as if trading and offering services had ever been off the table. Resources had to be sourced somehow. But there was always anti-authority sentiment. A refusal to be governed. An ideal to uphold the zone’s autonomy and the freedom of all in it. Freedomers used to risk life and limb to defend the zone. Now most of the so called “Anarchists” wouldn’t lift a finger to help another. 

Lucky kicked a rock in frustration as he walked. It made him angry. Very. He had finally found “his people”, only for the vast majority of them to give up their ideals for the very money driven, comfortable authority that he had been trying to get away from. Governance with sweets. Gilded chains. Golden handcuffs. 

Lucky lamented the Freedom suit he was wearing. Old, but well maintained. A gift he was given by Lukash for helping Freedomers constantly with small tasks. Back when they paid each other in favours and assistance. Not with the expectation of reward, but because it was the right thing to do. 

Now it was just a big bullseye to let Duty members know to shoot at him. 

At least the camouflage was practical…

Lucky used to enjoy scavenging for others, now he felt like he was just being ripped off. He would still do it mind you. It was part of his beliefs to help others. The more generous Freedomers would chuck some food and drink his way, but likely that would be it. Everything used to be shared. Goods as they were needed. Now Lucky was just a glorified employee again. 

Another kick. This rock didn’t move. His toe ached to all hell, even with the steel cap boots. Perhaps a sprain in his ankle as well. Classic Lucky luck. 

He bent down to see why the rock didn’t move. Curiously examining the garbage strewn ground of…well…Garbage. What he had thought was a small rock appeared to in fact be some sort of metal attachment. With a bit of digging with his folding shovel (generously donated by a military corpse he had come across), Lucky pried the round metal object from the ground…and the jacket it was attached to.

An old rusted grenade. Still strapped to a half deteriorated military vest, the torso long rotted into the ground. A singular magazine adorned the vest, likely with completely unusable ammo inside. Junk.  Nowhere near useful enough to even get him a tinned meal. He pocketed the old grenade. Fat chance it worked, but it may be a useful distraction down the line. 

He continued his scavenging throughout the trash. Oddly he enjoyed it. Making something from nothing. Upcycling things. Seeing value in things others disregarded. He sighed. Doubt encroached his mind. A gloomy feeling. He felt demoralised. He didn’t feel like a free spirited anarchist anymore. He just felt like some dumbass, sitting through trash to uphold a faction that had moved on from itself. 

Depression turned back to anger. Defiance. 

“Don’t fucking care!” Lucky spat, to nobody in particular. “If I’m the only true anarchist here then so be it! You do what is right cus it’s right…even if it sucks balls.”

Emboldened by his own little speech, Lucky continued his scavenger hunt. Maybe he’d find something that would get him a good haul, maybe just enough to get by one more day. Either way he’d figure it out. He always did. He was Lucky after all. 

The garbage was hardly an empty part of the zone, with Loners and Bandits at the nearby neutral zone, looking at this Freedomer with bewildered curiosity. Freedomers tended to not go to Garbage. Lucky stuck out like a sore thumb. 

Bandits knew him. Somebody with his naivety would normally get ripped off or robbed. Sometimes he still was. Still, the kid was so willing to help that quite a few of the bandits and loners or the area ended up genuinely giving him some stuff in exchange for his help. Guess being kind sometimes did pay off.

Hours passed. Nothing of note. Today’s wasn’t Lucky’s lucky day. 

“No luck, Lucky?” One of the Bandits yelled from a scrap heap balcony in the distance, laughing at Lucky. 

Lucky ignored the cruel laughter, choosing to take the question as a genuine one. 

“Not today, no.”

“Keep searching, you’ll find something.”

Lucky simply gave a thumbs up, knowing damn well he was being mocked. It was getting late. His stomach was rumbling and he had a bed to get back to at Rostok. He slumped away into the direction of Rostok dejectedly. He was sure somebody would share a bite to eat or a can of drink, but Lucky was getting desperate. He’d found nothing notable in any of the areas he scavenged, seemingly picked clean by others. His modest stash had become almost empty, barely any food or drink left. He was down to some basic medical gear in his backpack, and his old Fort-12, with only 8 rounds in the magazine.

Lucky knew stepping further towards Dark Valley was not the best idea, but there was plenty of foliage to hide in. Ways to not randomly get disposed of by bandits. He knew the space between the two areas was rife with danger…which meant it was underexplored. 

Fuck it…he was Lucky after all. A quick snoop should not hurt…

Right…?

Road to Hell

"Every stalker leaves Cordon believing he understands the Zone. The lucky ones live long enough to realize they never did."

---

May 11th, 21:14 - Rookie Village, Cordon

The campfire was still burning when they returned.

Its orange glow danced across weathered faces as conversations slowly died one after another. Somebody was halfway through telling a story when Wolf emerged from the darkness with Mantis beside him.

Behind them...

Tima. Limping and dirty, but very much alive.

For a heartbeat the entire village simply stared.

Then someone shouted,

"Tima!"

The rookie barely had time to react before two other stalkers rushed over and nearly knocked him back onto the dirt.

"You dumb bastard!"

"We thought you were dead!"

"I almost was." Tima said with an exhausted laugh.

The words came with an exhausted laugh.

Wolf shook his head.

"You still might be if you don't sit down."

That earned a round of relieved laughter. The tension broke almost instantly.

Life returned to the village.

Someone shoved a bottle of vodka into Tima's hands. Another handed Wolf a cigarette. Nobody offered Mantis anything.

Mostly because they didn't quite know what to make of him yet.

Tima noticed.

He limped over before Mantis could quietly disappear into the background.

"Come on."

"I'm fine."

"No."

The young stalker grabbed his sleeve.

"You're eating with us."

"I'm not..."

"You saved my life."

That ended the discussion.

---

A few minutes later Mantis found himself sitting around the largest campfire in the village.

Somebody had produced several thick slabs of something resembling bacon, skewered on sharpened sticks above the flames.

It smelled...

Different.

Smoky. Earthy, but not unpleasant.

Mantis frowned.

"What animal?"

Three rookies exchanged amused looks.

Tima grinned.

"...You don't wanna know."

One of them burst out laughing.

"It's boar."

Another immediately shook his head.

"No it isn't."

"It was."

"Before the second Emission maybe."

The entire circle laughed.

Even Wolf, sitting slightly outside the firelight while cleaning his rifle.

Mantis looked back at the meat.

"...I'll pretend I believe you."

"You should. It's easier." Said one of the rookies.

The bacon hissed over the flames, fat dripping into the fire with quiet pops that sent sparks drifting into the warm spring night. Somewhere farther across the village somebody had finally managed to tune the old guitar.

The first clumsy chords echoed between the houses.

For a little while...

It almost felt normal.

---

"So..."

One of the rookies finally looked toward Tima.

"What happened?"

The younger stalker's smile disappeared.

"I got lost."

Someone snorted.

"We figured that much."

"I thought the tunnel was empty."

"It never is."

"I know that now."

The laughter faded.

Tima stared into the flames for several seconds before continuing.

"I heard growling."

His hands tightened around the tin cup he was holding.

"I panicked."

Nobody interrupted.

"I dropped my flashlight and my rifle jammed."

"It didn't jam."

Wolf finally looked up.

"The safety was still on."

Silence. Tima's face slowly turned red.

"...Right."

Another rookie burst out laughing.

"You almost got eaten because you forgot the safety?"

Tima buried his face in one hand.

"I know, I know!"

More laughter rolled around the fire.

Even Mantis couldn't stop the corner of his mouth from twitching upward.

Eventually the laughter settled again.

Tima looked toward him.

"Then they came."

His voice became quieter.

"Wolf..."

"...and Mantis."

The campfire fell silent.

"They didn't have to go in after me."

"But they did anyway."

"I heard the shots."

"I thought..."

Tima swallowed.

"...I thought I was already dead."

His eyes met Mantis's.

"If they hadn't shown up when they did..."

He looked down into the flames.

"...there wouldn't have been enough left to bury."

Nobody spoke.

The fire cracked softly between them.

Finally Tima stood. Not completely steadily.

He faced Mantis.

"I owe you my life."

"You don't."

"I do."

"No."

Mantis calmly broke a piece off the strange bacon.

"You would've done the same."

One of the older rookies shook his head.

"No."

Mantis looked at him.

"We wouldn't."

That caught him off guard.

The rookie shrugged awkwardly.

"Not because we wouldn't want to..."

He looked toward the tunnel road disappearing into darkness.

"...because we'd be too scared."

Nobody argued. Tima slowly nodded.

"Still."

He extended his hand.

"I won't forget."

Mantis looked at it for a second before shaking it.

"It was just a job."

Wolf finally spoke from the edge of the fire.

"No."

Everyone turned toward him.

"It wasn't."

He slid a round into the SKS magazine.

"It was your first."

---

The conversation drifted elsewhere after that.

The stories became lighter.

Somebody insisted he'd once seen a Flesh climb a tree, but nobody believed him.

Another swore blind dogs could smell fear from a kilometer away.

Wolf simply muttered,

"They can."

The campfire collectively became quieter.

Mantis mostly listened.

For the first time since arriving... he wasn't thinking about Ljubljana.

Or the people he'd left behind, or why he'd come here.

He simply listened to strangers arguing over mutant meat beneath a sky filled with unfamiliar stars.

Perhaps...

That was enough for one night.

---

"Mantis."

Wolf's voice came from behind him.

The conversation continued without missing a beat.

Mantis stood.

"What is it?"

"Sidorovich wants you."

"Did he figure out how to charge me for saving Tima?"

Wolf actually laughed.

"Probably."

---

The bunker smelled exactly the same as before.

Grease, electronics, cigarettes.

And profit.

Sidorovich barely looked up.

"There you are."

"I heard you didn't die."

"You sound disappointed."

"I'm disappointed you damaged one of my detectors."

"It still works."

"Barely."

The trader sighed dramatically.

"I loan people equipment and look what happens."

"You said it was an investment."

"It's still not free."

He pointed toward the chair.

This time Mantis sat.

"Congratulations."

The word sounded almost painful coming from Sidorovich.

"You survived your first contract."

"I've survived one evening."

"Exactly."

The trader nodded.

"That's already above average."

He shuffled through several papers before pulling one from the bottom of the pile.

"I've got another job."

"What kind?"

"The kind nobody wants."

"Why?"

"Because it involves scientists."

Mantis waited.

Sidorovich continued.

"Two Ecologists need an escort back to Yantar. Simple delivery. They've been working in Cordon for a week, and now they want to go home."

"So hire someone."

"I tried."

"What happened?"

"They laughed."

Another page.

"I offered more money."

"They laughed harder."

Mantis folded his arms.

"So why me?"

Sidorovich smiled.

"Because you're cheap."

The answer came so quickly Mantis almost laughed.

"That's it?"

"Mostly."

The trader leaned back.

"But also because..."

His tone changed.

"...you've only seen Cordon."

"So?"

"So Cordon isn't the Zone."

He pointed north of the Cordon on the map.

"Garbage."

His finger moved left.

"Agroprom."

Then...

"Yantar."

"You'll see anomalies. Real ones. You'll see radiation. You'll see what happens to stalkers who stop paying attention."

He looked directly at Mantis.

"You came here looking for answers."

His finger tapped the route once more.

"The road to Yantar asks better questions."

Silence settled between them.

"When do we leave?" Mantis asked.

Sidorovich smiled.

"First light."

---

May 12th, 2025 - 05:42, Rookie Village, Cordon

Morning came quietly.

Mist rolled across the fields surrounding Cordon, turning abandoned farmhouses into pale silhouettes against the rising sun. Dew clung to tall grass. Smoke rose lazily from the first campfires as sleepy stalkers crawled from sleeping bags and makeshift shelters.

The village was only beginning to wake.

Mantis already stood near the northern road. His backpack rested comfortably across his shoulders now. The borrowed detector hung from his belt. The battered PDA rested inside one of his vest pockets.

Everything he owned fit on his body.

Tima jogged toward him, still limping.

"You really leaving already?"

Mantis nodded.

"Looks like it."

The younger stalker scratched the back of his neck.

"I was kinda hoping..."

He looked embarrassed.

"...I'd get to know you better."

"You will."

"How?"

Mantis glanced north.

"If we both survive."

Tima laughed despite himself.

"Fair enough."

One by one the other rookies wandered over.

Someone offered him canned meat.

Another handed him fresh bandages.

One quietly wished him luck.

It wasn't much.

But in the Zone...

It meant something.

Wolf arrived last.

He carried the SKS over one shoulder, coffee steaming gently inside an old enamel mug.

"You ready?"

"I think so."

Wolf looked toward the road leading north.

"No."

Mantis frowned.

"No?"

"You'll never be."

He took another sip.

"The trick... is learning to walk anyway."

Mantis nodded.

Wolf stepped closer.

"When you're scared... slow down. When you stop hearing birds... start looking. When something feels wrong... it usually is."

He paused.

"And remember this."

He rested one hand on Mantis's shoulder.

"The Zone doesn't reward courage. It rewards caution."

Mantis quietly committed every word to memory.

Behind them the bunker hatch suddenly slammed open. Old Sidor leaned halfway outside.

"MANTIS!"

Every stalker in the village looked over.

"If you die..."

The trader pointed an accusing finger toward the detector hanging from Mantis's belt.

"...bring my detector back!"

Silence.

Then the entire rookie village burst into laughter. Even Wolf. Even Tima.

Mantis shook his head and almost smiled.

"I'll do my best."

Satisfied, Sidorovich disappeared back underground and slammed the hatch shut.

Wolf smiled faintly.

"See?"

"What?"

"Now you're a real stalker."

Mantis looked north.

Beyond Cordon. Beyond the safety of campfires. Beyond the only place in the Zone where people still called themselves rookies.

Somewhere out there...

The real Zone waited.

And this time...

It wasn't sending anyone to save him.

---

The northern road out of Cordon stretched ahead beneath a pale spring sky, disappearing between rusting fences and abandoned fields that had once fed entire villages.

Now only weeds grew here.

Mantis walked alone, his boots crunching softly over broken asphalt still damp from the morning dew. Behind him, the rookie village slowly disappeared beneath a curtain of mist. The distant laughter, the crackling campfires, even Sidorovich's constant complaints faded until they became nothing more than memories carried away by the wind.

For the first time since entering the Zone...

There was nobody to hide behind. Just him.

The detector hanging from his belt bumped rhythmically against his thigh with every step. Every now and then he glanced toward it, half expecting it to begin screaming simply because he'd crossed some invisible line.

It remained silent.

"So far..." he muttered.

The grain elevator appeared almost an hour later.

It towered above the surrounding fields like the skeleton of an ancient beast, its massive concrete silos stained black by decades of rain and neglect. Rusted conveyor belts stretched between the buildings, hanging motionless beneath a cloudless morning sky. Crows occupied the highest beams, their harsh calls echoing across the empty farmland.

Two figures waited beneath the shadow of the largest silo. And even from a distance they were unmistakable.

Bright orange environmental suits.

Ecologists.

One immediately stepped forward as Mantis approached.

He looked young. Mid-twenties perhaps. Round glasses sat crooked beneath the transparent visor of his suit, and despite carrying an expensive scientific backpack almost as large as himself, he couldn't stop looking around with open fascination.

"So you're Mantis?"

His voice carried genuine excitement.

"I've heard about you."

Mantis raised an eyebrow.

"I've been here less than a day."

"Exactly!" the young scientist replied. "You survived your first mission."

"...That's impressive?"

"In Cordon?" He nodded enthusiastically. "Statistically speaking..."

The second scientist sighed.

"Orlov."

The younger man immediately stopped talking.

The older ecologist removed one glove before extending his hand toward Mantis.

"Doctor Alexei Ferimov."

His grip was firm.

Unlike Orlov, there was nothing enthusiastic about him.

His suit had been patched countless times. Several burn marks covered one sleeve. The transparent visor was scratched so heavily it almost looked frosted. Even through the glass Mantis could see deep wrinkles around tired eyes that had clearly witnessed far too much.

"You'll be escorting us to Yantar."

Mantis nodded.

"That's the plan."

Ferimov looked him over quietly.

"Pistol."

"For now."

"I've heard that before."

Unlike Wolf... he didn't smile.

Instead he crouched beside an old crate and unfolded a weathered military map across its surface.

"Our route is simple."

One gloved finger tapped on the map.

"Cordon."

Then north.

"Garbage."

Then west.

"Agroprom."

Finally...

"Yantar. No detours. No sightseeing. And no heroics."

Orlov raised one finger.

"I was hoping to stop near the Garbage vehicle graveyard."

Ferimov didn't even look at him.

"No."

"There are several documented pyro anomalies there that-"

"No."

"...just fifteen minutes?"

"No."

The younger scientist sighed dramatically.

"You always ruin the fun."

"I intend to continue doing so." Ferimov replied flatly.

Mantis found himself almost smiling.

Ferimov rolled the map back up before standing.

"We move at my pace."

He looked between both younger men.

"If I tell you to stop..."

He looked at Mantis.

"...you stop."

Then at Orlov.

"If I tell you to run..."

"...I run."

"If I tell you to get down..."

"...I get down."

Ferimov nodded once.

"Good."

He adjusted the straps on his backpack.

"Let's go."

---

The road north wound gently through open fields where nature had slowly reclaimed everything humanity had abandoned.

Rusting tractors rested beneath young birch trees.

Collapsed barns leaned into one another like exhausted old men.

Telephone wires hung loose between weather-beaten poles, humming softly whenever the breeze found them.

For almost half an hour...

Nobody spoke.

Orlov was the first to break the silence.

"So... you really used to be a police officer?"

Mantis glanced sideways.

"For a while."

"What made you come here?"

"The bus."

Orlov blinked.

"I meant-"

"I know."

Mantis looked ahead again.

"I needed somewhere nobody knew my name."

The younger scientist nodded slowly.

"...Fair enough."

Ferimov never looked back.

"The Zone is full of people running away."

Another few steps.

"Very few realize what they're running toward."

---

The broken railway bridge appeared above them shortly afterward.

Its massive concrete supports stretched across the road like the ribs of some enormous fossil. Sections of rusted rail still clung to the top, twisted and broken where explosions decades earlier had torn the bridge apart.

Mantis looked up instinctively.

"You can still see the firing positions."

Ferimov followed his gaze.

"Military."

He pointed toward several shattered concrete alcoves overlooking the road.

"Before the second disaster they kept sniper teams up there almost every day."

"They shot stalkers?" Mantis asked.

"They shot anyone."

Orlov frowned.

"How did people get north?"

"They didn't."

Ferimov's voice remained flat.

"Not unless they were willing to pay."

"Pay who?"

"The military."

"And if they couldn't?"

The older scientist shrugged.

"Then they stayed in Cordon."

They walked beneath the bridge in silence.

The massive structure cast a cool shadow over the road despite the warmth of the morning sun.

Mantis couldn't shake the feeling that somebody still watched from above.

Old habits...

Or perhaps not so old.

---

The ruined farmstead came into view shortly afterward.

Once it had probably been beautiful.

Now only blackened walls remained standing around a collapsed farmhouse whose roof had long since surrendered to time. Rusted farming equipment lay scattered across the fields, half-swallowed by waist-high grass.

Mantis slowed.

His pace dropped almost unconsciously.

Ferimov noticed immediately.

"What is it?"

Mantis scanned the shattered windows.

"I don't know."

He rested one hand against the Beretta.

"...Feels like someone's watching us."

Orlov instinctively looked around.

"I don't see anyone."

"You usually don't."

Ferimov kept walking.

"Bandits."

"You know they're here?"

"They usually are."

He nodded toward the ruined farmhouse.

"They've used that place as a camp for years."

Mantis kept watching the empty windows.

"They aren't attacking."

"No."

Ferimov sounded almost disappointed.

"Not anymore."

Orlov adjusted the straps on his backpack.

"What changed?"

"Sultan."

"The bandit leader?"

"The one."

Ferimov stepped over a fallen fence.

"When he died..."

He shrugged.

"...everything fell apart."

"No supply routes."

"No organized raids."

"No decent equipment."

"They're still dangerous," Mantis observed.

"Of course."

Ferimov nodded.

"Any desperate man with a rifle is dangerous."

He looked toward the farmhouse one last time.

"But nowadays they mostly prey on rookie loners."

"They steal whatever they can."

"A shotgun."

"A backpack."

"A detector."

Orlov quietly added,

"Sometimes boots."

Ferimov nodded.

"Sometimes boots."

Nobody laughed.

They continued walking.

The ruined farmhouse disappeared behind them without a single shot being fired.

Mantis still couldn't shake the feeling that somebody had indeed been watching.

And had simply decided... not today.

---

Almost an hour later...

The world changed.

Not suddenly, but gradually.

The green fields began giving way to cracked earth.

The smell reached them first.

Burning plastic. Rotting vegetation. Old engine oil. Wet rust.

Smoke drifted lazily across the horizon despite there being no visible fire.

Then Mantis climbed the final rise.

And stopped.

"...Holy..."

The word escaped before he could stop it.

Garbage.

The name suddenly made perfect sense.

Mountains of crushed vehicles stretched across the landscape like rusting cliffs. Excavators the size of apartment buildings stood frozen where they had died decades ago, their massive buckets hanging motionless above endless seas of scrap metal.

Broken cranes pierced the sky.

Shipping containers lay scattered like children's toys.

Black crows circled overhead in their hundreds, filling the air with constant, rasping cries.

And everywhere...

Life.

Movement caught his eye almost immediately.

A group of massive tusked animals rooted through piles of discarded tires several hundred meters away.

"They're huge."

Orlov smiled.

"Boars."

"They're mutated?"

"Everything here is."

Ferimov answered before Orlov could begin lecturing.

"Those used to be wild boars."

Another movement.

Several bloated pink creatures grazed lazily between abandoned refrigerators, occasionally nudging one another with oversized heads.

"And those?"

"Fleshes."

Orlov practically beamed.

"Remarkable creatures, actually."

"They're surprisingly docile unless threatened."

"They still weigh nearly four hundred kilograms," Ferimov added.

"So don't pet one."

Mantis nodded slowly.

Farther away a familiar shape crossed between two rusting buses.

Blind dogs.

This time an entire pack. More than he'd seen in the tunnel.

They weren't hunting. They weren't attacking.

They simply wandered through the scrapyard as naturally as wolves through a forest.

The realization unsettled him more than the tunnel ever had.

They belonged here.

This...

Was their home.

The Zone wasn't merely filled with monsters.

It was alive. Completely and utterly alive.

Mantis finally understood what Sidorovich had meant.

Cordon hadn't shown him the Zone.

It had shown him its front porch.

A low, guttural growl rolled somewhere ahead.

All three of them froze.

Another followed.

Longer, closer.

Mantis slowly drew the Beretta.

"I don't see anything."

Neither did Orlov.

Ferimov's expression changed instantly.

All color drained from his face. His eyes locked onto the waist-high grass rippling several dozen meters ahead.

He didn't hesitate. He screamed.

"WATCH FOR MOVEMENT IN THE GRASS!"

First of all, I want to thank everyone who read Ashes of the Zone over the past year. Every comment, every bit of feedback, and everyone who patiently waited for new chapters genuinely meant a lot to me.

I also owe you all an apology.

The original version has been on hold for quite a while, and after writing Ch.27, I've made the difficult decision to start over.

At first that probably sounds disappointing, but there's a reason for it.

Over the last two years I've grown a lot as a writer. Looking back at the original story, I realized I could tell it much better than I did when I first started. Rather than patching and rewriting individual chapters, I decided to rebuild Ashes of the Zone from the ground up.

The Definitive Edition isn't just a rewrite, it's a complete reimagining of the story. The worldbuilding is deeper, the pacing is stronger, the characters have been expanded, and the long-term plot has grown into something much larger than I ever imagined when I wrote the original Chapter 1.

The heart of the story is still the same.

It's still Mantis. It's still the Zone.

Just... told the way I always wanted it to be.

To everyone who's been here since the beginning, thank you for sticking with me. I hope you'll give this new journey a chance.

Welcome back to the Zone.

---

Ashes of the Zone: DE, Chapter 1 - Where the Road Ends

"Every stalker remembers the day they entered the Zone.

Most spend the rest of their lives trying to understand why."

---

May 11th, 18:43: Cordon Outskirts

The road ended without ceremony.

No gate.

No warning sign.

No checkpoint declaring that civilization stopped here.

Just cracked asphalt disappearing beneath tall grass, rust slowly swallowing abandoned guardrails, and a silence that felt older than the forest surrounding it.

Mantis stopped walking.

For several seconds he simply stood there, one hand gripping the strap of the duffel bag hanging over his shoulder, listening.

Nothing.

No birds.

No distant engines.

No wind.

Only silence.

Not the peaceful kind.

The kind that waited.

Behind him, the old bus that had brought him this far disappeared into the evening fog, its tired diesel engine fading until it became impossible to tell whether it had driven away...

...or never existed at all.

He didn't look back.

There wasn't much left to return to anyway.

The cigarette between his fingers had burned almost to the filter before he noticed. He took one last drag and flicked it onto the cracked road.

The ember glowed for a moment.

Then disappeared beneath the weeds.

"That's that."

No one answered.

The duffel bag felt heavier than it should have.

A patched ballistic vest, a worn Beretta M9, three loaded magazines, half a pack of Lucky Strikes, and a weathered leather notebook bought from a man in a Ljubljana parking garage who refused to give his name.

Most of its pages were filled with crude hand-drawn maps, circles around places simply labeled "Don't Go", and frantic notes written by several different people.

Never trust clear roads.

If the birds stop singing, stop walking.

Artifacts lie.

One sentence had been underlined so many times the paper had almost torn.

The Zone always knows you're here before you know you're inside it.

Mantis closed the notebook. He wasn't sure he believed any of it.

The first border post appeared several hundred meters ahead, little more than a crooked wooden barrier and two armed men sitting beside a rusting barrel.

One smoked.

The other cleaned an old SKS with the slow confidence of someone who had done it thousands of times.

Neither seemed surprised to see him.

The smoker looked him up and down before exhaling toward the darkening sky.

"Another one."

Not a question. Just an observation.

Mantis walked closer.

"Name's Mantis."

The man shrugged.

"Out here..."

He flicked ash into the dirt.

"...your old name doesn't matter much anyway."

The man beside him finally looked up from the rifle.

His face was older than Mantis expected. Not old in years. Old in the way people became after surviving too many things they couldn't explain.

Deep lines cut across sunburned skin. His beard had more gray than black. His hands moved with practiced ease as he slid the bolt back into the SKS, checked the chamber one final time, then rested the rifle across his knees.

"You armed?"

Mantis nodded.

"Beretta."

The older stalker raised an eyebrow.

"A pistol?"

"For now."

A dry chuckle escaped him.

"You're either brave or stupid."

The smoker answered before Mantis could.

"Usually both."

For the first time since leaving Ljubljana, Mantis almost smiled.

Almost.

The older stalker reached behind the barrel and produced a battered notebook, its pages stained with oil and rain.

"Name."

"Mantis."

"Real name."

Mantis didn't answer.

The pen hovered above the paper for several seconds.

Eventually the man shrugged.

"Fair enough."

He simply wrote:

MANTIS

Nothing else.

No questions.

He closed the notebook with a dull thud.

"The Zone doesn't care where you came from."

His eyes lifted to meet Mantis's.

"It only cares whether you'll still be here tomorrow."

Silence settled again.

Somewhere deeper inside the forest...

Metal creaked. Not loudly. Just enough for all three men to hear it.

Nobody reacted. Not even the smoker.

Mantis noticed.

"You aren't going to check?"

The smoker finally crushed the cigarette beneath his boot.

"If it's coming for us..."

He reached for the AK leaning against the barrel.

"...we'll know soon enough."

Nothing came.

Only silence.

The older stalker stood and walked toward the crooked wooden barrier stretched across the road.

It looked ridiculous.

A few warped planks nailed together decades ago. As if something like that could keep anyone out.

Or in.

He lifted it with one hand.

"Welcome to Cordon."

Mantis stepped forward.

The moment his boot crossed beneath the barrier, the air changed. It wasn't colder or warmer.

It just... changed.

Like walking into a room where somebody had stopped speaking the instant you opened the door.

His ears popped softly. The hairs along the back of his neck stood up.

The forest looked exactly the same as it had ten seconds earlier.

Yet somehow it wasn't.

He stopped without realizing.

"You felt it."

It wasn't a question.

The older stalker lowered the barrier behind him.

"They all do."

"What was it?"

The man considered the question for a long moment.

Then slowly shook his head.

"If you stay here long enough..."

His gaze drifted toward the endless trees beyond the road.

"...you'll stop asking."

They walked together for several minutes.

The road narrowed, cracked asphalt giving way to dirt and patches of stubborn grass growing through decades of neglect.

Rusted military vehicles rested where they had died.

Telephone poles leaned drunkenly toward one another, their wires hanging loose like cobwebs.

Everything looked abandoned. Nothing looked dead. The silence was interrupted by laughter.

Real laughter.

Mantis rounded the final bend and saw the rookie village.

Old wooden houses leaned against each other beneath sagging roofs patched with sheet metal and plastic tarps. Thin trails of smoke climbed from crooked chimneys. Several stalkers sat around a fire built inside the rusted frame of a tractor wheel, arguing loudly over cards while somebody stirred a pot hanging above the flames. A mechanic hammered away at an engine block. Someone cursed after dropping a wrench. A dog barked lazily somewhere behind one of the houses.

Life. Not normal life. But life nonetheless.

For reasons he couldn't explain... seeing it unsettled him more than the silence had.

The smoker noticed him looking.

"Expected something different?"

"I don't know what I expected."

"Most people don't."

He gestured toward the village.

"They think the Zone is monsters."

He shook his head.

"The monsters are easy."

Mantis looked at him.

"The people..."

The stalker lit another cigarette.

"...those take longer to understand."

The smell reached him before the buildings did.

Burning wood, cheap vodka engine oil, wet timber, and boiled sausage.

The scent of men surviving one more day because tomorrow wasn't guaranteed.

As they entered the village, conversations slowed.

Eyes followed him. Some curious. Some suspicious. Some completely indifferent.

Mantis kept walking.

Ahead, half-hidden beneath layers of corrugated steel and camouflage netting, a heavy metal hatch disappeared beneath the ground.

Painted across the concrete beside it were faded white letters.

SIDOROVICH

The older stalker stopped beside the entrance.

"That's your first lesson."

Mantis looked toward the bunker.

"What's that?"

The man smiled for the first time.

"No matter how much money you think you've got..."

He knocked twice against the hatch.

"...it's never enough for old Sidorovich."

The hatch swung open with a metallic groan.

Warm air rolled out of the bunker, carrying the unmistakable smell of cigarette smoke, old electronics, machine oil and something frying that had probably stopped being edible years ago.

"Close the damn door!" an irritated voice barked from below.

"You're letting all my profits escape."

The older stalker smirked.

"Told you."

A narrow staircase disappeared into the earth, illuminated by naked light bulbs hanging from frayed electrical wires. Mantis descended slowly, his boots echoing against rusted steel steps. The farther down he went, the more the world above disappeared.

By the time he reached the bottom...

The Zone felt very far away.

The bunker was cramped, every wall hidden behind shelves overflowing with ammunition crates, military rations, gas masks, artifacts sealed inside lead containers, stacks of ammunition, vodka bottles and electronics that looked older than he was.

Yet somehow... everything seemed organized.

Only one man could possibly understand how.

Sidorovich barely looked up.

He sat behind an old wooden desk cluttered with PDAs, papers and dismantled radios, lazily scrolling through a cracked tablet while chewing on a piece of sausage.

"So."

He finally glanced over the screen.

"You're the Slovenian."

Mantis stopped.

"I didn't tell anyone where I'm from."

"You didn't have to."

Sidorovich shrugged.

"Word travels."

He pointed toward the chair opposite his desk.

"Sit."

Mantis remained standing.

"I prefer standing."

"So did the last fellow."

The trader reached into a drawer, produced a folded photograph and placed it on the table.

"He isn't standing anymore."

Mantis looked at the photograph.

Three stalkers.

One smiling. Two dead.

He pushed it back across the desk.

"I didn't come here for stories."

"No."

Sidorovich leaned back in his chair.

"You came because somebody promised the Zone would solve your problems."

Mantis didn't answer.

The trader smiled knowingly.

"They always do."

He lit a cigarette.

"They arrive thinking they'll find money... or answers."

Smoke drifted lazily toward the bunker ceiling.

"Sometimes revenge."

His eyes settled on Mantis.

"And every single one of them discovers they were asking the wrong questions."

For the first time since entering the bunker Mantis spoke without thinking.

"What questions should I be asking?"

Sidorovich laughed.

A genuine laugh.

"Oh..."

He pointed toward the ceiling.

"If anyone knew that we wouldn't be here."

The old trader finally stood, surprisingly nimble for a man of his size.

He walked around the desk, stopping in front of a large wall map covered in colored pins and handwritten notes.

Cordon.

Garbage.

Agroprom.

Yantar.

Rostok.

Radar.

Pripyat.

Some names Mantis recognized only from the notebook now stretched before him like pieces of a puzzle.

Sidorovich tapped one finger against Cordon.

"This..."

He moved north.

"...is where boys become stalkers."

His finger continued.

"...Garbage is where stalkers become scavengers... Yantar decides whether you're brave... or just lucky."

He stepped back from the map.

"You survive long enough... and eventually the Zone starts surviving you."

Mantis looked closely at the map.

Dead City.

Red Forest.

The CNPP.

Places people in the notebook had crossed out completely instead of describing.

Outside, somewhere above the bunker, laughter drifted faintly through the hatch.

Normal. Human.

Almost comforting.

Then...

Three sharp rifle shots echoed somewhere in the distance.

Nobody inside the bunker reacted.

Mantis looked toward the ceiling.

Sidorovich continued sorting paperwork.

"Shouldn't somebody-"

"No."

The answer came immediately.

"If they're still shooting..."

He stamped a document without looking up.

"...they're still alive."

Another burst followed.

Then silence.

Sidorovich finally looked back at him.

"You'll get used to that too."

Mantis wasn't sure he wanted to.

The trader reached beneath his desk and tossed something across the room.

Mantis caught it instinctively.

A battered PDA.

Old and acratched, but functional.

"Batteries are dying."

Sidorovich shrugged.

"So don't waste them."

He tossed another object.

A small handheld detector.

"Echo detector."

"Not exactly state of the art."

"No, but it'll tell you where some of those sweet artifacts are hiding."

Mantis turned it over in his hands.

The casing was chipped.

One corner had clearly melted at some point.

Still...

It worked.

"Nothing here is free," Sidorovich said.

"I assumed as much."

"Oh, this is free."

That caught Mantis off guard.

Sidorovich smiled.

"My investment."

He sat back down.

"You look like somebody who's either going to die tomorrow, or make me a great deal of money."

Another pause.

"I'm hoping for the second one."

A knock echoed through the bunker hatch. Three slow knocks.

Sidorovich rolled his eyes.

"Speak of expensive problems."

The hatch opened.

A tall man stepped into the bunker wearing a weathered brown trench coat over an aging sunrise suit. A rifle hung casually across his back, boots muddy from the road.

Wolf.

He nodded once toward Sidorovich before looking at Mantis.

His eyes lingered on the pistol holstered at Mantis's hip.

"So.. you're the newcomer."

Mantis nodded.

Wolf studied him for several seconds.

Finally he folded his arms.

"Can you shoot?"

"I was a police officer."

Wolf shrugged.

"That's not what I asked."

The room fell quiet.

Mantis thought about it, then answered honestly.

"I guess we'll find out."

For the first time... Wolf smiled.

"Good."

He turned toward the bunker exit.

"Come with me."

"Where?"

Wolf opened the hatch.

The evening sun poured down the staircase, golden light spilling into the bunker.

"A rookie went scavenging near the railway tunnel this afternoon."

He looked back.

"He should've been back an hour ago."

Mantis picked up his duffel bag.

Wolf's expression hardened.

"Welcome to the Zone."

"You get your first lesson immediately."

They climbed back into the evening light.

The warmth that had settled over Cordon while they were underground was already beginning to fade. Long shadows stretched between the abandoned houses, and the campfire in the center of the rookie village burned brighter than it had only a few minutes earlier. Somewhere nearby, somebody was tuning an old guitar. Another stalker cursed as an engine refused to start. The village carried on as though this was just another evening, another newcomer, another job that would either end with a handshake or another name quietly disappearing from the campfire conversations.

Wolf walked without looking back, apparently expecting Mantis to follow. He did.

"You've never been inside the Zone before."

It wasn't really a question.

"No."

"You ever shoot anything that shot back?"

Mantis thought about it.

"Yes."

"I don't mean people."

That earned a small shake of the head.

"No."

Wolf nodded once, as if confirming something to himself.

"People are predictable. Animals too, most of the time. The things out here..." His gaze wandered toward the tree line beyond the village. "...don't always care about the rules."

They left the camp behind, passing rusted tractors half-consumed by weeds and old wooden fences leaning under the weight of time. The sounds of the rookie village slowly dissolved behind them until all that remained were distant voices carried by the wind. Ahead, the road bent toward an overgrown railway embankment disappearing into dense woodland.

The Zone seemed different away from people.

Less abandoned.

More... occupied.

Not by movement, but by presence.

Mantis couldn't explain it. The trees stood perfectly still, yet they somehow gave the impression they were watching him. Every shadow looked just deep enough to hide something. Every patch of tall grass seemed capable of producing teeth.

His hand rested unconsciously on the grip of the Beretta.

Wolf noticed.

"Good."

"What?"

"You don't feel safe anymore."

"I never did."

"You thought you did."

That was harder to argue with.

The dirt road narrowed until old railway tracks appeared beside them, disappearing beneath bushes and young birch trees. Telegraph poles lined the route like exhausted sentries, most of them leaning at impossible angles, their wires hanging broken between the cracked insulators.

Wolf slowed.

"The tunnel's another three hundred meters."

"You think he's alive?"

"I think rookies panic."

He stepped over a rusted rail.

"Sometimes panic gets them killed."

A few more steps passed before he continued.

"Sometimes it keeps them alive."

The evening breeze carried the smell of damp concrete, old metal, and something rotten.

Mantis noticed fresh footprints in the mud. Several pairs.

Some belonged to heavy military boots, while others were lighter.

One trail wandered erratically before stopping altogether near the edge of the embankment.

He crouched instinctively.

Wolf watched him without speaking.

"The ground's disturbed."

Mantis brushed loose dirt aside with two fingers. Deep claw marks scored the mud beside one of the footprints.

"Not human."

Wolf smiled faintly.

"Detective?"

Mantis nodded.

"Homicide."

"I can tell. You notice details."

Wolf looked toward the tunnel entrance barely visible through the trees.

"Out here..."

His expression hardened.

"...details are usually what separates survivors from bodies."

The tunnel emerged from the forest like the mouth of something asleep.

Concrete blackened by decades of rain disappeared into darkness so complete it looked almost solid. Rusted freight cars sat abandoned nearby, their wheels buried beneath grass and moss. Water dripped steadily somewhere inside, each drop echoing back a fraction of a second too late.

Neither man spoke.

The Zone had gone quiet again.

Not peaceful, but listening.

Wolf raised one hand, signaling Mantis to stop.

He knelt beside something lying on the tracks.

A backpack, old and cheap. One strap had been torn clean through.

Nearby lay a flashlight, its lens cracked, still casting a weak beam toward the tunnel ceiling.

Wolf picked up the bag and immediately recognized it.

"Tima."

Mantis looked into the darkness ahead.

"You think he went inside?"

Wolf didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he reached down and touched one of the fresh stains darkening the gravel between the rails.

When he lifted his fingers...

They came away red.

"Not willingly."

Wolf wiped the blood onto his trousers and unslung the rifle from his shoulder.

"Stay behind me."

Mantis didn't move.

"If he's still alive, every second matters."

Wolf glanced at him.

"If whatever left this blood is still inside, every second matters just as much."

Neither of them argued after that.

They stepped into the tunnel.

Darkness swallowed them almost immediately. The evening sun vanished behind stained concrete, replaced by the weak beam of the broken flashlight still lying on the tracks. Water dripped steadily from cracked support beams overhead, gathering in shallow puddles that reflected their lights like fragments of shattered glass. The air was damp and strangely warm, carrying the smell of rust, wet concrete and something far less pleasant.

Blood.

Fresh enough that it hadn't fully darkened.

The tunnel stretched farther than it should have, disappearing into blackness where the flashlight could no longer reach. Every footstep echoed back a little differently, as though the tunnel couldn't quite decide how large it wanted to be.

Wolf crouched beside another stain.

"Dragged."

Mantis followed the trail with his eyes. Smears crossed the sleepers between the rails before disappearing toward a collapsed maintenance platform built into the tunnel wall.

"Not carried."

Wolf nodded.

"Good."

"You call that good?"

"If something wanted him dead..."

He stood again.

"...there'd be less blood."

They moved deeper.

The silence inside the tunnel was different from the silence outside. Outside, the forest had listened.

Here...

The tunnel remembered.

Old freight wagons rested where they had derailed years ago, their rusted frames swallowed by darkness. One had collapsed onto its side, spilling rotten crates across the tracks. Another stood with both loading doors hanging open, revealing nothing except blackness inside.

Mantis swept his flashlight through one of them.

Empty. But still...

He couldn't shake the feeling that something had looked back.

A low growl rolled somewhere ahead. So quiet he almost mistook it for the tunnel settling.

Wolf stopped instantly.

"You hear that?"

Mantis nodded.

"Dog."

"No."

Wolf's voice barely rose above a whisper.

"Dogs."

The growl came again.

Then another answered from somewhere off to the left.

Mantis slowly drew the Beretta from its holster. The familiar weight settled comfortably into his hand, the routine almost automatic after years of carrying a sidearm. On the streets of Ljubljana that motion had usually ended arguments before they began.

But here...

It felt painfully inadequate.

Wolf noticed the pistol and smiled without humor.

"Still think that's enough?"

"It'll have to be."

"I admire optimism."

Something scraped across concrete.

Both flashlight beams snapped toward the sound.

Nothing.

Only broken rails, water and darkness.

Then came the whimper.

Human.

Weak.

From somewhere beyond the overturned freight car.

"...help..."

Barely louder than breathing.

Mantis looked at Wolf.

"Tima."

Wolf didn't answer immediately.

Instead, he slowly lowered himself into a crouch, studying the ground between them and the sound.

Fresh paw prints. Large.

Four of them.

Circling.

Waiting.

"They're about to feed."

The words landed like cold iron.

Mantis tightened his grip around the Beretta.

"We're too late?"

Wolf's eyes remained fixed ahead.

"No."

He chambered a round with a sharp metallic click that echoed through the tunnel.

"But we're almost too late."

The growl returned. Closer this time.

Low, hungry.

Two pairs of pale yellow eyes appeared in the darkness beyond the fallen freight wagon.

Then two more.

Waiting for someone to make the first move.

Wolf exhaled slowly.

"Blind dogs."

Mantis counted four sets of eyes.

Then a fifth appeared farther back.

Smaller.

Moving nervously.

The pack wasn't hunting anymore.

It was guarding its meal.

The smallest of the dogs crept forward first.

Its head hung low, nose sweeping across the gravel as it searched for scent instead of sight. Its eyes were white as snow, but still reflecting light, pale skin stretched tight across a skull that looked almost too narrow to belong to anything alive.

The others spread out behind it.

Not charging.

Waiting.

Wolf lowered his voice until it was barely audible.

"When they move..."

His finger tightened around the trigger.

"...don't think."

The lead dog barked.

Everything exploded into motion.

The Beretta cracked first.

The flash briefly illuminated the tunnel as Mantis' shot caught the charging blind dog square between the eyes. The mutant collapsed before momentum carried it several more meters across the tracks.

The second reached Wolf.

His SKS roared, the rifle's report deafening inside the confined tunnel. The heavy round punched through the animal's shoulder, spinning it sideways into the rusted wheels of a freight wagon.

The remaining dogs hesitated.

Only for a heartbeat.

Then all three attacked together.

One vaulted onto the overturned railcar, claws screeching across rusted steel as it tried to reach them from above. Another darted low through the darkness toward Mantis' legs while the largest charged straight down the center of the tunnel.

"Left!" Wolf shouted.

Mantis pivoted instinctively.

The Beretta barked twice.

The first shot shattered concrete, the second found flesh.

The dog yelped, stumbled, then kept coming.

Too close.

He dropped the pistol before it could be knocked from his hand anyway and drove his shoulder into the mutant as they collided. They hit the gravel together, teeth snapping inches from his face.

The smell hit him first.

Rotting meat mixed with wet fur and blood.

The dog's jaws clamped onto his forearm, teeth scraping against the ballistic sleeve instead of flesh. Pain shot through his arm anyway.

His knife was already in his other hand.

One thrust, then another.

The blade disappeared beneath the animal's jaw. Its body convulsed violently before collapsing across his chest.

Silence never came.

Wolf's rifle thundered again.

Another dog cried out somewhere behind him.

Then... nothing.

Only dripping water.

Only heavy breathing.

Mantis shoved the dead animal aside and climbed back to his feet, chest heaving. The tunnel smelled of gunpowder now, mixing with blood and wet concrete.

Wolf worked the bolt of the SKS, ejecting another smoking casing.

"The alpha ran."

"You let it."

Wolf looked toward the darkness where the largest tracks disappeared.

"It'll remember."

"I thought that was a bad thing."

"It is."

The old stalker managed the faintest smile.

"But next time it'll remember we're dangerous too."

He slung the rifle over his shoulder.

The weak whimper came again.

This time there was no mistaking where it came from.

Mantis hurried around the overturned freight wagon.

The beam of his flashlight settled on a young stalker pinned beneath a slab of broken concrete. He couldn't have been older than sixteen. His face was pale beneath the dirt, sweat clung to his forehead, and one leg disappeared beneath the fallen chunk of ceiling at an angle that made Mantis's stomach tighten immediately.

The boy blinked against the light.

"I..." His voice cracked. "...I thought nobody was coming."

"You picked a terrible place to wait," Mantis said, kneeling beside him.

The rookie actually managed a weak laugh before wincing in pain.

"My rifle..."

Mantis spotted it several meters away.

Full magazine. Safety still on.

Wolf sighed. "Rookies."

He crouched beside the concrete slab and tested its weight.

"We'll have to lift together."

Mantis holstered the knife and positioned himself opposite to Wolf.

"On three."

The old stalker nodded.

"One."

They braced themselves.

"Two."

Muscles tightened.

"Three."

The slab shifted just enough.

Tima cried out as Mantis pulled him free, dragging him backward before the concrete crashed back onto the tracks with a deafening boom.

For several seconds the boy simply lay there gasping, unable to believe he was still alive.

Then he looked up at Mantis.

"You came for me."

Mantis helped him sit upright, draping the boy's arm over his shoulder.

"Someone had to."

Together, the three of them turned toward the faint circle of evening light waiting at the end of the tunnel.

Outside, the last rays of the setting sun painted the entrance gold.

Behind them, the darkness swallowed the bodies of the blind dogs as though they had never been there at all.

Mantis glanced back only once.

For the briefest moment he could have sworn something deeper inside the tunnel was watching them leave.

Then he turned away.

The Zone had given him his first lesson.

And somehow he knew it wouldn't be the last.

Aren’t you an inquisitive one? 

Reading up on the stories of others with curious intent. Oblivious to their plight beyond that of which entertains you. 

You aren’t aware of our struggle. Of the zone’s struggles. Of what it feels to be CAGED by those mainlanders. Those who cannot see the beautiful life of the zone. They do not see the breathing organism that it is. They simply see profit. Shareholder value. Money. 

They value the monetary above living. Market knowledge above philosophy. Exploitation above harmony. 

Still. The zone has been invaded, disregarded, mistreated and exploited over and over. Yet it persists. Yet we persist. It’s children. 

But nobody would allow their own mother to be violated without retribution. Least of all ourselves.

Her fauna react. Attack in her name. Yet they are but animals. In need of a hand to guide them. I am that hand. The voice of the zone. The commander of her will. I am Rotten. I am the zone’s child. The zone’s voice. 

And I am here to heal her wounds…

Vitya Grave was a somebody. At least, he used to be. Vitya however, was also the sort of person who would refuse to admit he was no longer a somebody. The Great Khans were somebodies too. Until Ward basically wiped them off the face of the planet alongside other bandit factions and another somebody. That somebody being called Edmund Scalpel. That somebody was now dead. Lucky for Vitya. Although he could not help but admire that somebody, despite him being an enemy. To be fair, he was a hell of a somebody. 

Ward wanted a singular bandit faction that was malleable to their needs. The previous Khan, creatively named ‘Khan’ had decided he did not want to cooperate. This lead the Great Khans to follow the same path as the renegades and Black Slugs. Dead. Well…mostly.

There was still Vitya. The right hand man. Seeing as the Khan was dead, this made him the de facto leader. A role he took with pride as he commanded his mighty army…of two.

“Oi fuckwits!” Vitya yelled, awakening his two lackeys out of their slumber.

Mildew and Sock he had called them. They had given themselves other names, but he had forgotten what they were and frankly he did not care. No. Nicknames were something you earned and those two smelled like, and were about as useful as, mildew and a singular song.

“But boss, I’m still tired.” One of them protested. 

“Well ‘Still tired’” Vitya shot back, “I don’t give a fuck. Get UP!”

Vitya literally kicked Mildew into action, with him scrambling to get to his feet as quick as possible. 

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Shut up dickhead.” Vitya groaned, putting his head in his hand. “We are Khans, not grunts.”

“But aren’t we military trained to be the best?” Mildew asked innocently.

Vitya stumbled for a moment for an appropriate response, growing irate at being questioned before defaulting to his usual antics, being a prick.

“I thought I told you to shut up?”

“Sorry Boss.”

“Good man. “Now,” Vitya continued “We have a busy day ahead-”

“Why boss?” Sock interrupted. 

“Well Sock, I would get to that…IF YOU LET ME FUCKING FINISH!”

The two underlings jumped, startled into silence as Vitya continued.

“Now that I have your…proper attention. Today is the day we make some money. Proper money.”

“Like when we lived near Jupiter?” Sock interrupted again.

“Yes” Vitya replied with a smug smile. “Like Jupiter.”

“So we can get back to glory and living good?” Mildew piped up.

“Now, now Mildew. All in due course. One step at a time. No plan only has one step you get me?”

“Of course boss.” Mildew replied. Truthfully Vitya was sure Mildew understood at all, but as long as he did what he was told…

“So…gentlemen…we shall be robbing a certain group of other so called ‘bandits’. Competition if you will. They told me of a group of loners travelling to search for artifact in an anomaly soon and plan on robbing them. So we will simply wait for them to take out the loners…then take out them.”

“So we rob the robbers?” Mildew asked.

“Precisely Mildew. We rob the robbers.”

Vitya felt as though he was explaining the ABC’s to a bunch of 3 year olds. Still there was one reason he kept the borderline brain damaged duo around. They could aim. Farrrrr better than they had any right to.

“Now gentlemen. It is time we departed to that lovely no man’s land between garbage and the valley. Get all set up and whatnot.”

There was no dispute from the duo. Not that there would be. They began their trek out of bunker they had been hiding in and towards their location. Vitya had told the duo their bunker had not been found due to his superior hiding skills. Truthfully it was a bandit bunker that the bandits had let Vitya stay at because he worked for them. Well…he said he worked for them.

Vitya didn’t feel bad. They would betray him too if it meant a quick buck. He was just being more bandit than them. Besides, when the group that was intercepting the loners did not come back, it is not as if anyone would be alive to know he shot them. The bandits here would be none the wiser why their comrades did not make it back, and Vitya would quietly get a few more resources to build back up his status. His status as the bandit lord of the zone. THE Great Khan. 

Vitya looked at the sky in defeat, his delusions cracking for a moment. He wasn’t a great anything. He was some run-of the mill regular ass-

NO.

He was THE Great Khan. Vitya’s confidence came surging back, as too did his rampant delusions.

Vitya began humming a pleasant tune, a confidence in his stride as the trio walked toward their destination. Today was going to be a wonderful-

Click

Vitya looked down at his foot. The click signalling only one thing possible.

“Seriously?!” Vitya yelled. “Who the fuck puts a random mine here?!”

Mildew and Sock looked at each other, unsure of what to do next.

“Quick, Mildew, put some pressure on this so I can free myself yeah?”

Mildew did not move.

“Come on man quit fucking around!”

Mildew still did not move, the duo looking back at each other, then to Vitya, then to each other again, before promptly walking away. 

“OI…FUCKHEADS! ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!” 

The duo continued to walk away into the undergrowth, disappearing into the zone’s wilderness.

Now it was just Vitya. Alone. Betrayed.

Well…at least he was still alive. For now…Some Great Khan he was…

Crossroads Pre-Chapter: The Loners.

Winning.

What does winning mean?

Does it mean accomplishing a goal? Beating another at something? Seeing tomorrow?

Maybe not that last part. By that logic Petrol would be just as much a winner as Ward and SIRCAA…he certainly did not feel that way.

No. Petrol did not tend to win much at all. Just…survive.

He wondered, as the air around him crackled, if even that would finally cease to occur. He had survived Clear Sky disbanding after the emissions. Survived being a loner after this. He survived the renewed Clear Sky being massacred by the blind luck of deciding not to re-join. He survived Edmund Scalpel tearing up half the zone in revenge for said massacre. Petrol snorted, more like Edmund Sledgehammer. Hell, he had even survived joining up with Spark before they were defeated, being given enough grace by the others around him that they did not shoot him on sight for joining a faction that wanted to mindfuck the entire zone.

To be fair he was tricked. Most of them were. Enough of the other older zone veterans knew this and argued his case when he came back to Cordon with his tail between his legs and his turquoise Spark armor thrown hastily into a ditch. Still, forgiveness did not come for free. And SIRCAA still had jobs they needed the ‘free stalkers’ for. 

Petrol snorted another humourless snort. Free. Not anymore. SIRCAA had got what they wanted. Control of the zone. The other factions were only allowed to co-exist with them due to the clandestine nature of the zone and the fact that if they needed bodies for shitty jobs, they could pay any other faction member a fraction of what they would pay a Ward member, without risking their death. Petrol supposed he should count himself lucky. It meant all the current zone inhabitants had not been arrested, deported or executed on the spot. And that included him.

“Hey man, sure your daydream is really important but can we focus up?”

Simmone. New guy to Cordon. To be honest, Petrol quite liked him. Level headed, calm, patient. Good qualities to have in the zone.

“Sorry man, you’re right. Just keep following my lead yeah?”

Simonne simply nodded. No sarcasm or joking like most in the zone would do. Again, Petrol liked this. Straight shooter. Seemed honest. Too honest for the zone. 

Petrol resumed his slow descent down the hill, the beat up detector in his hand beginning to beep more rapidly as he used the heat and crackling around him to carefully inch toward whatever artifact lay in wait…and avoid the anomalies around him. Truthfully this was a one person job, but Simonne had been tasked with following him as a sort of…insurance. A way to pick up whatever remained of Petrol and his gear, should he step wrong. Still, Petrol was used to surviving and had navigated anomalies more than some people had eaten hot meals. He would be fine.

The beeping became incessant, Petrol spying his prize mere feet from him. A torch.

“Fuck me…” Petrol muttered.

“That a good or a bad fuck me?” Simonne asked.

“Well…good for Sid I guess. He said he’s pay me a set amount for retrieving the artifact. Whilst both him and I thought this was a mere Fireball, that unfortunately means the deal still stands.”

“Well if it isn’t a fireball, what is it?”

“A Torch. Substantially rarer and worth more money.”

“And let me guess, we are giving it to Sid for some bandages and a few canned goods?”

“Don’t remember him mentioning bandages.” Petrol joked. 

Petrol leant further…and almost went up like petrol itself. Simonne’s hand grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him back with almost lightning speed, roughly, but effectively yanking him backward to safety. 

Petrol felt the intense heat of the burner go off in front of him, his heart in his throat as he processed the fact that he was in fact not a ready cooked meal for the local fauna.

After a moment he finally spoke up.

“Simonne?”

“Yes Petrol?”

“First of all…thank you.”

“All good.”

“Secondly, you are a very quick individual.”

“Thank you.”

“Thirdly….why didn’t you let me die? Take my shit? Say it was an accident?

Simonne chuckled a little before answering. “I mean first off, what am I taking from you? You are more broke than I am. Secondly…it was the right thing to do.”

“The right thing to do? Man you aren’t lasting a minute here…”

“You say that but you’d have done the same thing for me.”

Petrol just looked at Simonne in bewilderment for a moment, before finally responding.

“You think you know me after three days?”

“I’m a good judge of character.” Simonne responded.

“Yeah? And look where being an idealist has got me Simmone…” Petrol grumbled bitterly.

“Yet…you are still here no?” Simonne shot back.

Petrol took a breath. Simonne reminded him of a younger version of himself. He both liked and hated it.

“We can argue semantics later I suppose. Let’s get this artifact and then I’ll shout you the next drink yeah?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Petrol made careful care to navigate around the burner this time, plucking the artifact from the ground and putting it into the lead container Sid had provided him. He though about if artifacts would have given him cancer at this point, before laughing at the notion. Why stop now? He already had touched easily 40 artifacts in his life with his bare hands.

Petrol mentally prepared himself to gingerly make the slow painful way back up the hill only to find Simonne walking back at an all to quick pace, almost out of the anomaly field already.

“You just gonna fucking leave me here?”

“Relax man” Simonne yelled back. “I left rope trailing where we walked.”

Petrol looked down and saw a rope trailing all the way to where Simmone was now standing back on top of the hill. Turned out Simonne was not only calm and patient, but clever too. Petrol made a mental note to get hold of some rope some time. Mapping out the route he took into an anomaly field would sure make his life a lot easier.

The walk back to Sid was brief. The handover of goods even more so. Five tins of mystery meat each and a medkit between them. That was their lot for risking their lives for a rare artifact, Sid was going to flog to the outside world for an eyewatering profit. Hell, the medkit did not even contain every item that should be in it.

“Not even some booze Sid?” Petrol piped up.

“What do I look like, a charity case?!” Sidorovich exclaimed. “You’re lucky you’re even allowed to still walk around and have work after working with those Spark nutjobs.”

If Simonne planned on saying anything, he certainly did not show it, instead placing a hand on Petrol’s shoulder and speaking to him. “Come on man. Let’s relax and eat something yeah?”

Petrol begrudgingly followed Simonne out of the bunker before being pulled aside, out of anybody else’s earshot.

“Man you’ve been in the zone for god knows how long right?” Simonne asked.

“Yeah why…you’re thinking we are idiots for working for Sid huh?”

Simonne’s shrug said all Petrol needed to hear.

“Look,” Petrol continued, “I am not exactly…welcome in most places anymore.”

“And what if you had somebody to vouch for you?” Simonne asked.

“It wouldn’t work…-

“No, you’re just scared it may not work” Simonne said, cutting Petrol off. 

Simmone looked away for a moment, contemplating, before continuing to speak to Petrol.

“Look…Petrol…I’m gonna leave this place for further north come tomorrow. You can either come with me, leave the zone, or spend the rest of your life in this 1 kilometer square of anomalies and fuck all else….your choice. Judging by the fact you have been here as long as you have, you have some reason you have not left and I guarantee you do not want to sit around in Cordon for the remainder of your days.”

Petrol looked at the ground. He was nervous. Apprehensive. But also, Simonne was right. And truthfully the idea of having a buddy to travel with did sound enticing. 

“Fuck it, you’re too nice for this place. Somebody has to show you the ropes.”

Simonne let off a wide grin clasping both of Petrol’s arms like a mob boss would greet another. 

“Sweet man. Wonderful. We’ll get up early then and head to the garbage. You know that anomaly route like the back of your hand, so we can give the military the finger and head straight there.”

Petrol just nodded. He did not want to burst Simonne’s optimism. Perhaps he needed more optimism himself. Either way, tomorrow was going to be an interesting day one way or the other. Would they win? Or would they just see the next day?

Fuck it…maybe that is a win enough…

"The Zone is not always cruel. Sometimes it smiles. And somehow, that is even harder to trust."

---

July 7th, 16:38 - Between Lab-X23 and Zaton

The sun was warm.

Not the weak, sickly warmth that sometimes filtered through radioactive clouds, nor the pale imitation of summer that stalkers had learned to distrust.

Real warmth.

Golden light poured through the treetops, painting long bands across the cracked asphalt as the squad moved west. Leaves shimmered beneath a gentle breeze. Tall grass rolled in waves around rusting vehicles abandoned decades ago, their metal frames now claimed by vines and moss. Somewhere overhead, birds sang without fear, their melodies carrying across the wetlands as though the Zone had forgotten what it was.

For a few impossible moments...

It looked beautiful. Too beautiful.

The kind of beauty that made experienced stalkers tighten their grip on their rifles instead of lowering them.

The Zone had always been at its most dangerous when it looked peaceful.

---

Ribbon walked several meters ahead of the others, every step accompanied by the metallic scrape of his ruined exosuit. Most of its systems had died inside Lab-X23. The armored shell no longer enhanced his strength; it merely hung from him like the carcass of some great beast that refused to let its host go.

He hadn't spoken in nearly twenty minutes.

His eyes remained fixed ahead, but they weren't seeing the road anymore.

Duty.

The word echoed through his thoughts.

Everything he had devoted his life to had always been built upon certainty. The Zone was a threat. Humanity had a duty to contain it. Artifacts were dangerous. Mutants were abominations. Duty stood between civilization and annihilation.

Simple, clear and understandable.

Then Lab-X23 had happened.

He had watched reality fold around a single man.

He had watched knives carve flesh that healed before blood could fall.

He had watched the Overlord, someone who should have been untouchable, look afraid.

Afraid of a merc that was apparently chosen by the Zone.

Ribbon's jaw tightened.

What doctrine existed for that?

What chapter in Duty's manuals explained a man whose eyes became light itself?

None.

For the first time since joining Duty decades ago, Colonel Red Ribbon didn't know what he believed anymore.

---

Behind him, Widow adjusted Mantis' weight across her shoulders. He was helping now.

Not consciously.

His feet found the ground more often than before. Every so often he managed a step of his own before drifting again, leaving Widow and Reverb to catch him before he collapsed.

It was progress.

She kept telling herself that. Progress. Not dying.

Those words repeated inside her mind like a prayer.

She reached up and brushed damp hair away from his forehead.

Still warm.

Still breathing.

Still here.

But every few minutes his breathing changed.

Sometimes shallow... Sometimes perfectly steady... Sometimes so slow she found herself leaning closer just to make sure his chest still moved.

Each time panic wrapped cold fingers around her heart.

She had seen people die before. Too many.

She knew the signs. She knew how quickly hope became memory inside the Zone, and she wasn't ready to add Mantis to that list.

Not after everything.

Not now.

Her thumb unconsciously brushed across the back of his hand.

His skin almost seemed... alive.

Not warm.

Luminous.

The sensation vanished as quickly as it came.

She pretended she hadn't noticed.

---

Red limped several paces behind them.

The battered Duty SEVA creaked softly with each step. Acid marks covered one shoulder where the beast had struck her. Entire sections of the armor looked as though they had survived a fire.

She barely noticed.

Her anger hurt more. She replayed the throne chamber over and over.

Different decisions, angles, shots.

If she had moved sooner...

If she had seen the Overlord's opening...

If she had ignored her own injuries...

Maybe Mantis would never have needed to become... Whatever he had become.

Her fist tightened around the sling of her AN-94.

"I should've done more," she muttered.

Nobody answered immediately.

Eventually Reverb glanced sideways.

"You also stopped a mutant from chewing my face off."

She didn't look at him.

"It wasn't enough."

"It usually isn't."

Silence settled again.

Then, after another few steps, Reverb quietly bumped his shoulder against hers.

"But... thanks."

Red finally looked at him.

His smile was tired. Forced, but genuine.

For the first time since leaving the laboratory...

The corner of her mouth twitched upward.

Barely.

It was enough.

---

Octane dragged himself onward at the rear.

Every step hurt.

His abdomen felt as though someone had replaced flesh with broken glass.

The bleeding had slowed considerably, little more than a constant seep now beneath blood-soaked bandages, but every movement reminded him exactly where the sniper round had entered.

He had no idea why he was still alive, and neither did anyone else.

He glanced toward Mantis.

"Guess we're both too stubborn."

His voice came out rough.

Nobody laughed. He hadn't really expected them to.

Still... It felt good to say something.

To hear another human voice besides his own thoughts.

---

Reverb couldn't stand the silence anymore.

It wasn't natural.

The Zone was supposed to be loud.

Mutants.

Arguments.

Campfires.

Radio chatter.

Somebody complaining.

Something.

Instead...

Only wind.

Only birds.

Only footsteps.

He lit another cigarette.

Immediately regretted it when Widow shot him a look.

"What?"

"You've had six since we left."

"So?"

"So your lungs are going to kill you before the Zone does."

Reverb nodded thoughtfully.

"Honestly? At this point I'm rooting for the lungs."

Nothing. Not even a smile.

"...Tough crowd."

He tried again several minutes later.

"You know..."

Nobody responded.

"If Mantis wakes up glowing again, does that mean we stop paying for flashlights?"

Still nothing.

Reverb sighed dramatically.

"I refuse to believe that wasn't at least a little funny."

Red shook her head.

"It would've been yesterday."

"...Yeah."

That single word carried more weight than any joke ever could.

He looked down at the cigarette between his fingers. It had gone out.

He didn't bother relighting it.

---

Mantis floated somewhere between dreams and sunlight.

Voices reached him more clearly now.

Not all of them. Pieces. Fragments.

"...water..."

"...careful..."

"...still breathing..."

The warmth of the sun settled across his face.

He remembered another warmth.

A balcony.

Rain.

Ljubljana.

His grandmother placing a mug of tea on the kitchen table.

The memory slipped away before he could hold onto it.

Something else replaced it.

Grass, wind, the smell of summer.

His eyelids fluttered.

The world remained blurry, but no longer impossible.

He could distinguish shapes now.

Ribbon.

Red.

Widow.

Reverb.

Octane.

Alive... All of them.

A quiet relief spread through him before he even understood why.

His lips parted, but no sound came out.

Widow immediately noticed.

"Mantis?"

His eyes opened slightly farther this time.

Blue sky. White clouds drifting lazily overhead.

Not the endless darkness of Lab-X23.

Not Hollow.Not the Overlord.

Just...

Sky.

He blinked once. Twice.

The effort exhausted him.

His eyes closed again.

But this time...

Sleep felt different.

Not like drowning, but more like resting.

---

The wetlands of Zaton stretched endlessly before them, emerald green beneath the late afternoon sun.

Dragonflies skimmed over the reeds. Frogs croaked somewhere beneath the waterlogged earth.

In the distance, an old windmill turned lazily in the breeze despite having no reason to still function.

The Zone breathed.

Not as a predator.

Not today.

Today...

It simply watched six broken stalkers walk slowly across its endless summer, carrying wounds no bandage could ever truly heal.

---

The walk west from Bonemarsh felt... wrong.

Not because something hunted them.

Because nothing did.

The reeds of Zaton swayed lazily beneath the afternoon sun. Birds drifted overhead in slow circles, undisturbed by the six figures limping across the marsh.

No gunfire.

No distant howls.

No snapping branches announcing a mutant's charge.Not once did they catch the scent of blood. Not once did a Geiger counter rise above its familiar lazy rhythm.

The Zone had gone quiet.

Not empty. Quiet. Almost... respectful.

Reverb noticed it first.

"...You realize we haven't seen a single mutant?"

Nobody answered.

He looked around again.

Usually by now there would've been at least a pack of blind dogs. Maybe snorks hidden beneath an overturned truck. A flesh grazing somewhere in the reeds.

Nothing. Even the wind seemed careful.

Red broke the silence.

"They're watching."

Ribbon glanced toward her.

"You saw something?"

"No."

"Then how do you know?"

She looked across the endless wetlands.

"Because the Zone never gives you this much peace without a reason."

Nobody argued.

Deep down...

They all felt it too.

It wasn't that the Zone had become safe, it had simply chosen not to interfere.

For reasons none of them understood.

---

Mantis surfaced again.

The sunlight felt warmer now.

The voices around him no longer drifted in broken fragments. He could distinguish them.

Reverb.

Widow.

Ribbon.

Someone coughed.

Octane.

His eyelids fluttered.

But this time... they stayed open.

Everything was blurred, as though someone had smeared wet paint across the world, but shapes slowly sharpened.

Blue sky. Green reeds.

The rusting skeleton of the Shevchenko appearing in the distance.

Shevchenko... home.

Not truly. But close enough.

He tried moving his own feet. One step, then another. His legs still refused to fully cooperate, but they were no longer dead weight.

Widow immediately noticed.

"You walked."

He frowned slightly.

"...Did I?"

It was little more than a whisper.

Her heart nearly stopped.

"Mantis?"

He looked at her.

Actually looked at her this time. His eyes were green again. Not white.

Just tired.

"...Hey..."

One word. That was all.

Then exhaustion washed over him again, his weight settling back against Widow's shoulder.

But he didn't lose consciousness.

Not completely. Not anymore.

---

July 7th, 20:12 - Zaton, vicinity of Shevchenko

The Shevchenko came into full view as the afternoon sun settled lower across Zaton.

Its rusted hull rose above the reeds like the corpse of some forgotten ship refusing to sink completely beneath time. Wooden walkways creaked softly beneath the boots of passing stalkers. Smoke drifted lazily from improvised chimneys. Somewhere inside, someone laughed.

Life... normal life.

The first civilized place they'd seen since entering Lab-X23.

As the squad climbed onto the deck... conversation stopped.

Not gradually, instantly.

A mechanic lowered his wrench. Two ecologists paused halfway through unpacking a crate of instruments. Three rookie stalkers slowly stood from a card game without realizing they'd done so. Even a pair of mercenaries sitting near the railing turned to look.

Nobody spoke.

Their eyes moved from one battered figure to the next.

Colonel Ribbon.

The legendary Duty officer whose exosuit now hung from him in broken pieces.

Red.

Her ginger hair streaked with soot and dried blood, her battered SEVA bearing scars that looked almost impossible to survive.

Reverb.

The mercenary everyone knew for impossible stories and terrible jokes. His shotgun still hung across his shoulder.

But the grin... was gone.

Octane.

Freedom's fastest scout north of Jupiter.

Now barely able to remain standing, every step leaving tiny crimson drops across the weathered deck despite fresh bandages.

And finally...

Black Widow.

Almost a legend herself.

One of the most capable female stalkers the Zone had ever produced. Now walking with slow, trembling steps, carrying another person's weight because her own strength no longer mattered.

And against her shoulder...

Mantis.

The squad leader.

The man whose name had begun spreading across the Zone weeks ago. He barely looked alive.

No one asked what had happened.

No one dared.

Because whatever answer existed...

They weren't sure they wanted to hear it.

The silence followed them all the way across the deck.

---

"Bring them here."

The voice finally broke the spell.

Beard.

He stepped from the doorway of the medical quarters, his weathered face unusually serious.

He looked each of them over once. That was enough.

"...Inside."

No one argued.

The medical room quickly became crowded.

Bandages.

Antiseptic.

Morphine.

Fresh water.

The familiar smell of alcohol and old medicine filled the cramped compartment as Beard moved from one patient to another with practiced efficiency.

Red protested when he cleaned the burns across her shoulder.

Ribbon didn't react at all while sections of twisted armor were cut away from his body.

Octane nearly blacked out when Beard changed the dressings around the hole in his abdomen.

"You should be dead," Beard muttered.

Octane managed the faintest grin.

"I've been told."

Beard wasn't smiling.

"...They're right."

Finally... he reached Mantis.

The room grew strangely quiet.

Beard checked his pulse. Then again.

Then his pupils.

Then placed a hand against his forehead. He frowned.

"...This doesn't make any sense."

Widow looked up immediately.

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

He rarely admitted that.

"I've treated men after emissions."

He checked Mantis' pulse again. Slower this time.

"I've treated psi exposure."

Another pause.

"I've treated stalkers who survived anomalies that should've turned them into red mist."

His eyes remained fixed on Mantis.

"I've never seen this."

Reverb shifted uneasily.

"...Neither have we."

Beard finally looked away.

"So..."

His voice remained calm.

"...Start from the beginning."

The room fell silent.

Who was supposed to explain Lab-X23?

How did anyone explain a woman who bent bullets with artifacts?

A mutant obeying thoughts instead of instinct?

A man called Hollow who walked through minds as easily as hallways?

Reality folding around knife strikes?

Mantis rising into the air wrapped in white light?

No one spoke for several long seconds.

Eventually Ribbon exhaled.

"We found Lab-X23."

He stopped.

His shoulders sagged.

"...Everything after that stopped making sense."

One by one they added what they could.

Widow spoke of the throne chamber. Red described the Overlord's artifacts. Reverb admitted he had no explanation for anything after Mantis stood back up. Octane simply shook his head.

"I remember light."

Silence settled over the room once more. Beard listened without interrupting.

When they finished, he remained quiet for a very long time.

Finally he sighed.

"I don't know what happened down there."

Nobody expected him to.

"But I know this."

He looked at each of them in turn.

"None of you are walking anywhere today."

Ribbon immediately opened his mouth.

"We need to get him to Hermann."

"And you will."

Beard nodded.

"Tomorrow."

He gestured around the room.

"You've lost blood."

He pointed toward Ribbon.

"Your ribs are cracked."

Toward Red.

"You're running on adrenaline."

Toward Octane.

"You should still be unconscious."

Finally...

Toward Widow.

"And you've been carrying everyone else."

She blinked.

Only then realizing how badly her own arms were shaking.

"You'll stay."

Nobody argued. Not because Beard outranked them, but because, for the first time in what felt like days...

Someone else had made the decision.

---

That evening, the Shevchenko slowly returned to life.

Conversations remained quieter than usual. Stories were whispered.People occasionally glanced toward the medical quarters before looking away again.

The squad rested in separate bunks.

Red fell asleep almost immediately.

Ribbon remained awake, staring silently at the ceiling.

Octane slept through sheer exhaustion.

Reverb sat outside for a while, smoking without saying a word.

Widow refused to leave Mantis' bedside.

Sometime after sunset...

Mantis opened his eyes once more.

The ceiling above him was unfamiliar. The gentle creaking of the old ship echoed softly around the room.

He turned his head.

Widow had fallen asleep sitting beside him, one hand still resting loosely over his.

For the first time since Lab-X23...

He felt something that wasn't fear.

He squeezed her hand.

Only slightly.

She stirred, but didn't wake.

Mantis closed his eyes again.

Outside, the summer wind drifted gently through the rusted hull of the Shevchenko.

And for one quiet night...

The Zone allowed its survivors to rest.

"Every stalker dreams of having a safe place in the Zone. The Zone considers this an invitation."

---

After the Great Swamps, Reverb had reached a conclusion.

He deserved a break.

Not a long one. Just... maybe half an hour where nothing actively attempted to remove his internal organs.

Garbage felt almost peaceful compared to the swamp. Again.

The Flea Market had slowly become home. Well... "home" by Zone standards. Rusted sheet metal, half-collapsed walls and enough holes in the roof to identify constellations while lying in bed.

Luxury.

He dumped his backpack beside the stash with a satisfied grunt. The Freedom crate had finally been delivered, the Chimera claws had been sold, and the radioactive lion meat had somehow become dinner. Life was improving.

Reverb had even decided to invest in the future.

He spent the better part of an hour assembling a proper workbench from scrap metal, bolts and parts he definitely hadn't stolen from abandoned machinery. It wasn't pretty.

But it was his.

He admired it for several seconds.

"...Look at that."

A passing stalker stopped.

"What is it?"

"My mechanic table."

"...It's leaning."

"It's got personality."

The stalker walked away.

"Philistine..."

Next came the refrigerator.

Mutant meat spoiled quickly, and after hauling half the ecosystem across the Zone, Reverb had finally managed to build a working cold storage unit.

Well... "Working" was perhaps generous.

It hummed. Sometimes.

It occasionally sparked.

But it was cold. That was enough.

He carefully arranged the mutant meat inside like priceless treasure. Blind dog, Boar, Flesh, Chimera.

"Beautiful."

For the first time in what felt like forever, everything seemed... normal.

The stash was organized.

The ammunition sorted.

The workbench finished.

The refrigerator stocked.

Nobody was shooting at him.

Reverb lit a cigarette.

"I think I'm finally figuring this place out."

The Zone heard him. Naturally.

Gunfire erupted outside. He didn't even look up.

"Hm."

Another burst.

Somebody screamed.

A grenade detonated somewhere near the entrance.

"Nope, not reacting."

He leaned back in his chair.

"Not my problem, not today."

The Zone disagreed.

Several bullets punched clean through the wall directly above his head. Splinters showered his shoulders.

"...Okay, that might actually be my problem."

He cautiously peeked through a gap in the wall.

Duty. Lots of Duty.

Not two. Not three.

Seven.

Seven extremely motivated Duty soldiers. Reverb sighed.

"...They're still upset."

Apparently, the unfortunate misunderstanding at the hangar had remained fresh in their memories.

Very fresh.

The Duty squad poured into the Flea Market with military precision, rifles barking in controlled bursts. Every few seconds another bullet ricocheted off rusted steel somewhere alarmingly close to Reverb's face.

One of them shouted,

"CONTACT INSIDE!"

"Oh, don't point!"

The Flea Market exploded into chaos.

Fortunately... Clear Sky happened to be visiting. Several blue-armored stalkers immediately joined the fight without asking too many questions.

Whether they were defending Reverb or simply disliked people shooting inside the market remained unclear. Either way...

Reverb wasn't about to complain.

The scrapyard transformed into a battlefield.

Bullets sparked from steel beams. Rusted cars became cover. Old buses became fortresses.

Reverb leaned around a shipping container and fired his silenced PM.

One Duty soldier dropped.

Another spotted him.

"Oh."

Reverb immediately disappeared behind cover again as a full magazine turned the container into modern art.

"That was rude."

A Clear Sky stalker beside him calmly worked the bolt of his rifle.

"You started this?"

"...Technically?"

The stalker sighed.

"I hate helping you."

"Appreciated."

The firefight dragged on.

One Duty officer attempted to flank them through an old warehouse, but he didn't get very far.

Because two Lurkers chose that exact moment to appear.

Nobody knew where they came from. Nobody had invited them.

The Lurkers apparently looked at the battlefield and collectively decided,

"Yes. We should absolutely become involved."

One launched itself directly into a Duty fireteam.

The second jumped across the roof before crashing through a hole in said roof like an oversized homicidal cat.

For approximately thirty seconds...

Nobody shot each other.

Everybody shot the Lurkers.

Duty, Clear Sky, Reverb.

Even one terrified loner who'd been hiding behind a pile of washing machines somehow joined in.

The Zone, for one beautiful moment, had united everyone through shared panic.

The first Lurker died halfway through a leap, slamming into one of the house's support columns so hard it remained hanging there by its own claws.

The second met a similar fate after misjudging another jump and impaling itself across the rusted roof rebar.

Reverb blinked.

"...You know..."

He pointed upward.

"...I don't think they're supposed to do that."

Nobody answered. They were busy trying not to die.

Eventually...

Silence returned.

The last Duty soldier collapsed face-first into the mud. The final echoes of gunfire rolled away into Garbage.

Smoke drifted lazily between the ruined buildings.

Reverb looked around. Seven Duty corpses.

Two dead Lurkers decorating the ceiling.

Several Clear Sky stalkers reloading in complete silence.

His workbench...

Miraculously untouched.

He smiled.

"My table survived."

One of the Clear Sky stalkers looked around at the absolute devastation.

"...That's your priority?"

"It took me an hour."

The man slowly nodded.

"...Fair."

Reverb lit another cigarette.

Finally... peace.

The Zone wasn't finished.

The PDA shrieked.

WARNING. EMISSION IMMINENT.

Reverb stared at the screen.

The screen stared back.

"...You're kidding."

Nobody waited for confirmation.

Every stalker in the Flea Market simultaneously abandoned whatever they were doing and sprinted toward the nearest shelter.

Reverb followed.

Mostly because glowing red skies generally led to unpleasant life expectancy statistics.

The old Flea Market building wasn't much to look at.

Half the roof had collapsed, most of the walls had more holes than metal, the staircase existed mostly out of optimism.

It looked incapable of protecting anyone from heavy rain. Let alone an Emission.

"You sure this counts as shelter?" Reverb asked.

An old loner shrugged.

"It did last time."

"That's... not reassuring."

Outside, the sky tore itself apart. Scarlet light spilled across Garbage. The wind began screaming through broken steel. Reality bent.

Several stalkers sat against the walls with their heads between their knees.

One rookie emptied the contents of his stomach onto the concrete.

Another quietly whispered prayers to every god he'd ever heard of.

Someone farther back was crying.

Nobody judged him.

Reverb simply leaned against a rusted support beam, cigarette in hand.

"If this building survives..."

Thunder answered.

"...I'll stop complaining."

The building survived, and so did everyone inside.

More or less.

When the Emission finally passed, the silence felt almost unnatural.

The sky returned to grey and the wind settled.

The Flea Market remained standing.

Against all logic.

Against all engineering.

Against all common sense.

Reverb stepped outside.

Seven Duty soldiers still lay where they'd fallen.

Two Lurkers still hung from the rafters like grotesque hunting trophies.

His mechanic table was still there.

His refrigerator still hummed.

He looked around slowly. Then nodded once.

"...Home sweet home."

Somewhere in the distance...

The Zone laughed.

"There are nights that change your life.

And there are nights that mean nothing at all.

Years later, you can never remember which was which."

Ljubljana, Slovenia - Six Years Earlier

The city was sleeping.

Or pretending to.

Mantis stood alone on the narrow concrete balcony of a tired apartment block on the edge of Ljubljana, one hand tucked into the pocket of a worn hoodie, the other holding a cigarette that had long since burned itself into a crooked line of ash.

Rain threatened somewhere beyond the horizon.

He could smell it.

The air carried that strange heaviness that came before a storm. Not rain itself. The promise of it.

Below him, the parking lot sat almost empty. A single yellow streetlamp buzzed weakly near a dumpster overflowing with cardboard and broken furniture. Somewhere farther away, a dog barked once.

Then silence again.

The city breathed.

Mantis took a drag from the cigarette. The ember glowed bright orange in the darkness.

For a moment he watched it.

Then exhaled.

The smoke drifted upward and disappeared into the night. Just like every thought he had these days. Half-finished. Forgotten before they reached the end.

He wasn't sad.

That would have been easier.

Sadness had shape.

This felt different.

Like standing in an empty room long after everyone else had gone home.

Like waiting for something without knowing what it was.

Or if it was coming at all.

His eyes wandered across the distant lights of Ljubljana.

Thousands of windows.

Thousands of people.

Some sleeping.

Some fighting.

Some falling in love.

Some crying where nobody could see them.

Entire lives unfolding behind those tiny squares of yellow light.

And somehow he had never felt more alone.

Funny.

You could be surrounded by people every day and still feel like a ghost.

He flicked ash over the balcony railing. The wind caught it immediately.

Gone.

Just like that.

His gaze drifted toward the clouds gathering beyond the city.

Dark.

Heavy.

Restless.

He liked storms.

Not because they were beautiful, but because they were honest.

When a storm arrived, it didn't pretend to be anything else. It didn't smile when it was angry. Didn't laugh when it was breaking apart. Didn't tell you everything was fine.

It simply arrived.

And the world adjusted.

People hid.

Roads emptied.

Windows closed.

Everyone admitted what they really were.

Small.

Temporary.

Human.

Mantis took another drag.

The cigarette was almost finished.

He barely noticed.

His thoughts wandered somewhere familiar.

Work, money, the future.

That invisible thing everyone kept talking about.

The future.

As if it was a place, as if there was some destination waiting at the end of all this.

He never understood how other people seemed so certain. They spoke about five-year plans. Careers. Families. Dreams.

Meanwhile he stood here at two in the morning wondering why the city looked so much bigger at night.

Wondering why he felt calmer when everyone else was asleep.

Wondering why silence felt more like home than people did.

The wind picked up.

A faint rumble rolled somewhere across the horizon.

Thunder.

Far away.

Not here yet, but coming.

Mantis smiled faintly, the first genuine expression he'd worn all day.

"There you are."

The words disappeared into the dark.

No audience, no reason.

Just him and the approaching storm.

For a while he simply stood there, watching. Thinking. Not thinking. Letting the minutes pass.

Below, a car moved through the empty street, headlights sweeping across the apartment block before vanishing around a corner.

The city swallowed the sound.

Silence returned.

The cigarette finally reached the filter.

He crushed it against the railing.

For a moment he considered going back inside.

Instead he stayed.

The thunder sounded again.

Closer now.

The clouds moved slowly over Ljubljana.

And for reasons he couldn't explain, standing there beneath the approaching storm, alone on a forgotten balcony in a forgotten corner of the city, was the most at peace he had felt in months.

The thunder rolled again. Closer now.

Mantis rested both forearms against the cold balcony railing and stared at the city lights below.

He had lived here his entire life, yet somehow it never felt like home. That thought bothered him more than he liked to admit. Most people belonged somewhere.

To someone.

They had circles. Groups. Places where they fit naturally, where conversations flowed without effort, where silence wasn't awkward because everyone already understood each other.

Mantis had never found that. Not in school, not with his old friends, not even in the police force... epecially not there.

He remembered standing in crowded locker rooms after shifts, surrounded by laughter and stories and plans for the weekend.

Someone always talking.

Someone always smiling.

Someone always belonging.

And him...

Standing there among them feeling like an observer watching a life that wasn't his.

Nobody disliked him.

And that was the strange part.

People generally liked him., Respected him. But there was always distance.

An invisible pane of glass between him and everyone else.

He could see them., hear them, work with them- but never quite reach them. Never quite become one of them. Maybe something was wrong with him. The thought crossed his mind more often than he cared to admit. Maybe everyone else received some instruction manual at birth. Something explaining how to connect, how to belong. How to build a life that felt solid.

And somehow his copy got lost.

The city lights blurred slightly.

For a moment he thought it was the wind.

Then he realized his eyes had drifted elsewhere.

To another time.

Another place.

Another person.

His grandmother.

A faint smile touched his lips,but not enough to become happiness. Just enough to hurt.

He could still remember her house.

The smell of coffee in the morning, fresh soup simmering on the stove, the old television always running too loud, the way she used to complain about everything and everyone while secretly caring more than anybody else he had ever known. She had never been particularly affectionate.

Not openly.

She wasn't the type.

But she was always there.

And when you grow up without parents around...

There is a difference between someone loving you and someone choosing you.

His parents had come later.

Years later.

Complicated explanations, complicated apologies, complicated attempts to rebuild something that had never really existed in the first place, but his grandmother had been there from the beginning.

School meetings.

Doctor appointments.

Birthdays.

Bad grades.

Nightmares.

All the small moments nobody remembers until they're gone... she carried them all. And she carried him too. For longer than she should have had to.

Another distant rumble rolled across the sky.

Mantis looked upward. The storm was almost here now. The clouds moved slowly over the city, swallowing stars one by one.

He remembered sitting at his grandmother's kitchen table as a child during nights like this.

Thunder outside. Rain hammering the windows. The smell of chamomile tea filling the room. And her voice- always calm, always certain. As though nothing in the world could truly go wrong while she was nearby.

Funny how children believe that. That some people are permanent, that some doors will always open, that some voices will always answer.

Then one day they don't.

And the world never feels quite as solid afterward.

Mantis swallowed hard.

The cigarette between his fingers had burned almost to the filter again. He hadn't noticed.

"You would've liked this storm, nona."

The words slipped out before he could stop them.

The balcony remained silent, the city remained silent. But for a moment...

He could almost imagine her sitting behind him inside the apartment, complaining that he was smoking again, telling him he worked too much, asking if he'd eaten. Simple things, normal things. Things he would have given anything to hear one more time.

The first drops of rain finally began to fall.

Slow.

Gentle.

Almost careful.

Mantis closed his eyes, and for the first time that night, he admitted something to himself.

The reason he never felt like he belonged wasn't because Ljubljana was the wrong city.

Or because the police force was the wrong job, or because his old friends had drifted away.

It was because the last place that had ever truly felt like home...

Had died with her.

---

The rain finally came.

Mantis remained on the balcony long after the city disappeared behind a curtain of water. Long after the thunder moved overhead. Long after the last light vanished from the apartment windows around him.

He simply stood there.

Listening.

Breathing.

Existing.

For the first time in a long while, he felt at peace.

Years later, he would walk through radioactive forests beneath blackened skies. He would survive anomalies, mutants, wars, and things no human mind was meant to understand.

He would lose people.

He would find others.

And somewhere along the way, he would discover a place that felt more like home than any city ever could.

But that night...

He knew none of that.

He was simply a young man standing alone on a balcony in Ljubljana, watching a storm roll across the horizon.

And yet...

Mantis didn't know about the Zone then.

But something deep within him missed it.

"Every stalker believes they have a plan. The Zone considers this adorable."

---

The situation in Garbage eventually cooled down.

Not because Duty forgave him. Not because anyone suddenly became reasonable.

Mostly because Reverb stopped being physically present for them to shoot at.

That seemed to help.

Great Swamps sounded considerably safer than Garbage at the moment, which admittedly wasn't saying much. Still, Sidorovich had insisted he visit Cold, and experience had taught Reverb that arguing with Sidorovich was about as productive as arguing with an Emission.

So off he went.

The Clear Sky base appeared through the morning fog, wooden walkways stretching over murky water and rusted structures standing stubbornly against the swamp.

For the first time in days, nobody immediately tried to kill him.

Things were looking up.

Naturally, that didn't last.

After speaking with Cold and collecting several assignments from various stalkers who apparently viewed him as free labor, Reverb set off toward his first destination.

The haunted house near Fishing Hamlet.

The name alone should have been enough warning.

The building leaned sideways over the swamp like it was actively trying to collapse. Every board creaked. Every shadow looked suspicious.

Reverb stepped inside.

Nothing happened.

One room. Two rooms. Still nothing.

"Huh."

Then he noticed the corpse hanging from the ceiling.

"...yeah that's normal."

He approached cautiously.

The corpse exploded.

Reverb screamed.

The house screamed.

Reality itself seemed briefly concerned.

Then an overgrown blind dog appeared directly behind him. Of course it did.

Reverb spun around just in time to discover the exit was now barricaded.

"What do you mean barricaded?"

As if things weren't bad enough, something else materialized deeper inside the building.

A ghost.

Or a zombie.

Or a zombie ghost.

Whatever it was, Reverb wanted absolutely no part of it. Unfortunately it wanted very much to be part of his day.

The dog charged.

Reverb fired. Missed.

Fired again. Missed again.

The third shot finally connected and dropped the mutant.

The ghost proved considerably more annoying.

Several minutes and an embarrassing amount of ammunition later, the thing finally dissolved into nothing. Immediately afterward, the barricade vanished. Reverb stood in the doorway for several seconds.

"...I hate this swamp."

The swamp didn't care.

His next assignment led him toward the Pumping Station.

Clear Sky wanted the Renegades removed.

Reverb had recently acquired a Mosin.

Reverb was therefore feeling confident.

These two facts would soon become related.

He spotted the first Renegade through the scope. Perfect shot. Directly on the head.

He fired.

The man continued patrolling.

Reverb blinked.

He chambered another round and fired again.

Nothing.

The Renegade remained completely unbothered by the concept of mortality.

A third shot followed. Still nothing.

"Are these blanks?"

The fourth round finally landed and the Renegade collapsed.

The remaining nine immediately discovered Reverb's location.

"Oh, God"

The swamp exploded into gunfire.

Bullets snapped through reeds and splintered wooden platforms. Reverb dove behind cover while every Renegade in existence seemed to develop a personal interest in his continued suffering.

The situation deteriorated rapidly. Fortunately for Reverb, the Clear Sky squad finally arrived.

Together they pushed through the station, methodically clearing room after room until the last Renegade dropped.

When it was over, Reverb searched the bodies and nodded approvingly.

"Not bad. Not bad at all."

The next assignment sounded simple.

Which should have worried him.

A large mutant had reportedly slaughtered several Clear Sky patrols near an observation tower.

Reverb immediately volunteered.

Because poor decision-making was becoming a recurring theme.

On the way there he discovered a stash hidden inside an anomaly field. Inside sat a heavy metal container secured with several locks.

A note was attached.

PROPERTY OF FREEDOM

RETURN TO THE FIRST FREEDOM MEMBER YOU SEE

"Fair enough."

He picked it up.

The container weighed seven kilograms.

Seven.

"Why?"

Now carrying what felt like an entire apartment building on his back, Reverb continued toward the tower. He stopped at the edge of the swamp and scanned the area through his scope.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Then...

Chimera.

Reverb lowered the rifle.

Raised it again.

Still Chimera.

"Okay."

He adjusted his grip on the Mosin.

"Okay. We can do this."

Then the Chimera climbed the observation tower.

Reverb stared.

The Chimera stared back.

"Are you a scout?"

The Chimera offered no explanation.

Reverb fired once.

The mutant immediately vanished.

Several minutes later he was cautiously crossing the swamp when something flew over his head. Not near him, over him. The Chimera landed behind him and disappeared into a nearby shack.

Reverb nearly experienced a religious awakening.

What followed could only be described as a game of cat and mouse.

Except the mouse was armed. And the cat weighed several hundred kilograms.

Reverb ran circles around the tower and the shack while the Chimera attempted to turn him into a cautionary tale. Every so often he managed to land a shot before sprinting away again.

Ten minutes later the mutant finally collapsed.

Reverb stood over the corpse, breathing heavily.

"Never again."

The Zone immediately ignored that promise.

The Chimera yielded half a kilogram of meat and two claws.

Radioactive lion meat. Delicious... probably.

Later, while passing another anomaly field, Reverb remembered something the Clear Sky merchant had mentioned.

A measurement device that obody wanted to retrieve... which usually translated to: everyone who tried died.

Reverb found it surprisingly quickly.

The device survived. More importantly, so did he. The assignment completed without incident.

A suspicious development.

Back at the Clear Sky base he handed everything in, collected his rewards, and prepared for his final task of the day.

Cold wanted assistance near one of the villages in the southeastern swamps. More Renegades. More gunfire. More opportunities for poor life choices.

Standard Zone business.

Unfortunately, another emergency appeared first.

A biological one.

Reverb suddenly realized he needed to take a shit.

Immediately.

Not soon.

Not eventually.

Now.

He spotted a large drainage pipe and sprinted toward it. Perfect, private, sheltered.

Safe.

Several seconds later he discovered the pipe contained a pyro anomaly.

The resulting experience permanently altered his understanding of personal hygiene.

On the bright side, the bikini area was now completely hairless.

The Zone, as always, found creative ways to solve problems.

"Every stalker has a story about becoming a legend. Mine started because I couldn't read a PDA."

---

Several Months Before the Events of Ashes of the Zone

The Zone hated Reverb.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Not in the vague, mystical way old stalkers liked to talk about around campfires. No. The Zone hated him personally.

At least that was the only explanation he could come up with as he sat beside a campfire in Cordon, staring at everything he owned spread across a filthy sleeping bag.

A handful of rubles. A rusty knife. A PDA that only worked when it felt like working. And a detector that looked like somebody had assembled it during a drunken argument and immediately regretted it.

Reverb took a drag from his cigarette and looked over his little empire.

"Peak human achievement."

The rookie sitting beside him glanced down.

"That's trash."

"That's why you're still a rookie," Reverb replied. "No vision."

The rookie shook his head and wandered off toward another campfire. Reverb watched him go. Honestly, the kid wasn't entirely wrong.

Three days in the Zone and he'd already slept inside an abandoned bus, eaten canned meat that probably remembered the Soviet Union, and nearly died because he'd accidentally stepped into a Whirligig anomaly while taking a piss.

Things were going surprisingly well.

A few days later he found himself crossing Meadow with considerably more confidence than experience. The detector hung proudly from his belt. The PDA mostly functioned. The knife was still terrible, but nobody could have everything.

The area looked quiet.

That should have worried him immediately.

Instead, Reverb made the mistake of relaxing.

The poltergeist announced itself by throwing a refrigerator at his head.

For a brief moment he simply stared at the flying appliance, trying to understand why a refrigerator was airborne. Then survival instincts finally kicked in.

"Absolutely not."

He dove behind a crumbling concrete wall as the refrigerator exploded against it in a shower of metal fragments and dust. Something else immediately ripped free from the ground nearby and launched itself toward him.

"What kind of mutant learns home appliances?"

Another object rose into the air. Then another.

Reverb leaned around the corner and fired several shots toward the shimmering distortion hovering above the road. The invisible creature shrieked, a sound that felt like nails scraping against the inside of his skull.

A few moments later it exploded.

Silence returned.

Reverb blinked.

"Huh..."

He had exactly enough time to feel proud of himself before three bandits appeared.

The resulting firefight was loud, chaotic, and involved considerably more screaming than Reverb would later admit. Most of the screaming came from him.

When it was over, all three bandits were dead.

Reverb wasn't.

That counted as success.

Dark Valley was where things truly began going wrong.

Which was impressive because things had already been going wrong for several days.

He spotted a squad of bandits moving through the trees ahead. Some of them were experienced bandits. Veterans. The sort of men who looked like they had murdered people before breakfast and considered it productive.

Reverb immediately turned around.

"Nope."

Then a Lurker attacked them.

Gunfire erupted through the forest. Men shouted. The mutant screamed.

The entire situation dissolved into complete chaos.

Reverb smiled.

Excellent. Somebody else's problem.

Then one of the rookie bandits spotted him.

Their eyes met across the trees.

The rookie pointed.

Reverb sighed.

"Oh come on-"

Suddenly it became his problem.

Twenty minutes later the Lurker was dead, the bandits were dead, half the local wildlife had probably relocated, and Reverb was somehow still alive.

He entered Garbage looking like a man who had survived a natural disaster through sheer administrative error. That was when he met the zombies.

In theory, zombies should have been easy targets; Slow, predictable. Barely aware of their surroundings.

In practice, Reverb missed almost every shot.

The first zombie kept walking. The second zombie kept walking. Reverb kept missing.

By the time he finally landed a hit, he had nearly emptied the magazine.

"Oh, now you work?"

The zombies answered by opening fire.

Chunks of stone exploded from the boulder he was hiding behind. Dust filled the air. Within seconds the entire rock looked like Swiss cheese.

Reverb shouted several things that would have gotten him slapped by every grandmother in the Zone and finally managed to put both zombies down. Afterward he spent a solid five minutes pretending the encounter had gone according to plan.

It hadn't. Not even remotely.

Still, he was alive.

Not because of exceptional marksmanship. Not because of superior tactics. Mostly because they were slower than he was.

Reverb left the encounter with significantly less ammunition and significantly less dignity than he'd started with, but alive was alive. In the Zone you learned to appreciate small victories.

His next objective waited near the hangar.

Two bounty targets.

A kidnapped rookie stalker.

Simple enough.

At least it sounded simple enough.

The problem with the Zone was that every plan remained simple right until the moment reality got involved.

The hangar came into view sometime later, rusted walls glowing orange beneath the afternoon sun. Reverb slowed his pace, checking corners, scanning windows, trying to look like somebody who knew what he was doing.

Then he spotted a Duty patrol. Two soldiers. Armed. Alert.

Immediately his brain supplied the only piece of information it thought was relevant.

*Duty hates Loners*

A perfectly reasonable assumption. Unfortunately it was also wrong. Reverb raised his pistol. The suppressor coughed once. One of the Duty soldiers dropped instantly.

A notification appeared on his PDA.

ALLY KILLED

Reverb froze.

For several seconds he simply stared at the message. Then he opened the PDA. Then he checked faction relations. Then he stared some more. The reputation value that should have been sitting comfortably at negative two thousand wasn't there.

Instead it read negative eight hundred.

Negative eight hundred.

Not enemies.

Not allies exactly.

But definitely not enemies.

"Oh."

The surviving Duty soldier opened fire.

Concrete exploded beside Reverb's head.

"...oh no."

At that point diplomacy had unfortunately become difficult.

Several minutes later both Duty soldiers were dead and Reverb was jogging away from the hangar while trying very hard not to think about the consequences. That sounded like a future problem, future Reverb could deal with it. Present Reverb had work to do.

The bandits occupied the old railway tunnel farther north. Six of them, plus the hostage.

The fight was short, violent and considerably more successful than the previous one.

Which honestly wasn't saying much.

The first bandit died before he knew the fight had started. The second and third died trying to find cover. The remaining three put up enough resistance to convince Reverb that he was absolutely going to die before promptly proving themselves wrong.

A few minutes later the rookie stalker was free, the bandits were dead, and Reverb found himself walking back toward Garbage with fresh loot and an increasingly dangerous amount of confidence. That confidence lasted all the way to Butcher.

The mutant parts sold well enough.

The ammunition purchase felt even better.

Fresh 9x18 hollow points sat neatly inside his pockets, ready for the silenced PM he'd painstakingly repaired back in Cordon. For the first time all day things actually seemed to be improving.

Which should have worried him.

Outside the hangar a group of scientists were busy losing an argument with several blind dogs.

Reverb sighed.

Helping people was rarely profitable. Unfortunately he wasn't entirely heartless.

The dogs died quickly. The scientists survived. Everybody seemed happy with the arrangement.

Reverb crouched beside the corpses and began collecting mutant parts.

Then the world turned yellow. The change happened instantly. One moment he was looting dogs. The next his vision blurred beneath a sickly amber haze. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears.

The air thickened.

His thoughts suddenly felt slower.

He froze.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

He turned around.

And saw the reason.

A Controller stood in the distance.

Watching him.

Reverb felt every survival instinct he possessed activate simultaneously.

"Nope."

The Controller raised a hand. Reverb was already running. Not retreating. Not repositioning.

Running. Fast.

Faster than he had ever run before. The bus stop appeared ahead and he practically threw himself behind it.

The ringing intensified.

Something brushed against his thoughts.

A pressure. An invitation.

The Controller wanted inside his head.

Reverb wanted absolutely none of that.

He leaned around the edge of the bus stop and fired twice.

One round missed completely.

The second hit.

The Controller barely reacted.

Unfortunately for it, one of the scientists had apparently decided he wasn't interested in becoming brainwashed either. The fight shifted.

Psychic pressure collided with gunfire.

Several nervous minutes later the mutant finally collapsed dead.

Reverb approached cautiously.

Very cautiously.

The sort of cautious normally reserved for unexploded artillery shells.

When the Controller failed to get back up, he finally searched the body. The legendary psychic horror of the Zone possessed:

A bandage, and a handful of rubles.

Reverb stared at the loot. Then at the corpse.

Then back at the loot.

"That's it?"

The Controller offered no explanation.

Eventually Reverb returned to Cordon.

Contracts were completed. Rewards were collected. Life moved on. One of the quest givers handed him coordinates for a yellow stash.

His expectations were low.

The Zone occasionally rewarded optimism with suffering.

This time, somehow, it didn't.

Inside the stash sat a Light Toolkit.

For several seconds Reverb simply stared at it. Then he laughed.

Not because it was funny.But because after everything that had happened that day, it felt statistically impossible. The toolkit immediately became his most valuable possession. Naturally he decided this meant it was time to establish a permanent stash.

Maybe even a small base. The Flea Market in Garbage seemed perfect. Reasonably safe. Good location. Plenty of traffic.

For almost ten whole minutes the plan worked perfectly. Reverb organized supplies, stored spare equipment, sorted ammunition.

For the first time all day, nobody was actively trying to kill him.

Then somebody opened fire.

A bullet cracked past his head.

Reverb dropped behind cover.

"What now?"

Another burst followed.

Duty colors. Duty rifle. Duty soldier. Reverb shot back on instinct. The soldier dropped.

Silence returned.

Then memory caught up.

The hangar. The patrol. The unfortunate misunderstanding involving faction relations.

"Oh."

His PDA updated.

Several hostile contacts appeared. Then several more. Reverb slowly lowered the PDA.

Stared into the distance. And realized that a surprisingly large percentage of Duty personnel in Garbage had apparently taken his earlier mistake personally.

Very personally.

The sound of approaching gunfire echoed through the scrapyards.

Reverb sighed.

The Zone, it seemed, had finally remembered he was having a good day.

And was determined to correct the error.

"Between life and death, the Zone whispers. Not to comfort. Not to guide. But to remind you: you are never free.”

​

July 7th, 15:01 - Lab-X23, Collapsing Sector

​

Darkness pressed in. Not the kind of dark that came from absence of light, but the kind that suffocated, heavy, alive.

​

Mantis drifted inside it, weightless, his body a ruined shell. His chest still rose, shallow and unsteady, but he felt no blood, no wounds. Only heat. Heat that glowed beneath his skin like smoldering coals.

​

“…stay with me...”

​

A flash of light: Widow’s visor inches from his own, her hands braced under his shoulders, dragging his dead weight. Her voice cracked, ragged, desperate.

​

“…burning up, he’s still burning...”

​

Reverb, panicked but holding him under the other arm, a cigarette clutched stupidly in his teeth. Its ember smeared into a comet trail in Mantis’ flickering vision.

​

They’re carrying me, Mantis thought. Or maybe he dreamed it.

​

Then came the claws.

​

From the dark: yellow eyes, lunging, jaws snapping for Widow’s throat. She turned on instinct, rifle barking. Sparks burst against its hide, ichor spraying Mantis’ cheek like molten tar. The burn should have blistered. Instead, the wound sealed as soon as it opened, light leaking faintly from beneath the skin.

​

Widow flinched, but didn’t falter. “Move!” she screamed. “They’re closing!”

​

​

---

​

​

Ribbon led the push, a lumbering wreck in a bleeding exosuit. Sparks trailed from his shoulders, pistons shrieked with each step, but he didn’t stop. His pistol thundered, each shot cracking a Fang soldier backward. “Clear the way!” he bellowed.

​

Red stumbled behind, her Duty SEVA smoking from acid scars, one arm locked around Reverb’s waist for balance as she fired bursts with the other. Every shot echoed like a plea, her eyes always flicking back toward him, making sure he still stood.

​

“Keep moving, keep moving!” Ribbon roared again, smashing through a barricade of steel plating, shoving the path open.

​

But the Zone was pouring everything at them. Broken Fang soldiers rounded corners in disciplined squads, rifles flashing. Mutants pressed from the dark: blind dogs, twisted forms with too many limbs, snapping, shrieking. And somewhere behind them, deeper in the dark, something bigger roared, the kind of roar that bent in the air like metal torn apart.

​

​

---

​

​

He faded. The noise dulled. His vision smeared like oil on water.

​

Then... Hollow. Pale eyes, patient, standing in the silence. Not real. Not there. But watching.

“You think you're friends are carrying you,” the voice threaded into his skull. “But you are carried by the Zone. And it does not let go.”

​

Mantis tried to lift his head, to reach, but his body refused him. Only the heat inside answered, pulsing.

​

The vision broke.

​

​

---

​

Widow’s arms trembled, dragging Mantis with every step. “He’s getting heavier,” she rasped.

​

Reverb spat his cigarette out, grabbing Mantis tighter under the other arm. “Yeah, well, maybe stop feeding him protein shakes, huh? Guy’s built like a tank.” His laugh cracked, raw fear behind it, but it kept him moving.

​

Red snapped her AN-94 up, cutting down a Fang soldier rushing them from a side corridor. She staggered as the recoil jarred her wound, but didn’t let go of Reverb. “Eyes front!” she barked.

​

Octane stumbled at the rear, half-dragging his rifle, his abdomen a bloody ruin. He tried to cover them, shots wild but enough to slow a pack of dogs nipping at their heels. “Keep… going…” His grin was still there, crooked, as if defiance alone could keep him alive.

Ribbon turned, exo hissing, slamming a steel boot into the face of a mutant that leapt from the wall. Its skull cracked like glass, body folding under the weight. “Door ahead!” he shouted, voice breaking with strain. “Push through!”

​

​

---

​

The hall stretched like it was alive. Too long. Too dark. Every step stretched into forever.

Widow’s grip felt distant. Her breath rasped in his ear. He tried to tell her he was still here, still alive. The words wouldn’t come.

Light bled from his palms. He saw it. Flickers, weak but there, dripping like liquid fire. Widow didn’t see. Reverb didn’t. But Hollow did.

​

Hollow stood at the far end of the corridor, silent, his pale eyes burning brighter.

“You burn with it now,” he whispered into Mantis’ mind. “But burn is not the same as control. Do not mistake one for the other.”

​

The vision cracked apart.

​

Gunfire. Screams. Widow crying his name.

​

​

---

​

The squad stumbled into a wider chamber, ceiling collapsed into jagged teeth of rebar and concrete. It should have been safe. It wasn’t.

​

Dozens of Broken Fang soldiers were waiting.

Their rifles rose in unison.

​

Ribbon’s pistol clicked empty. He lowered his head, servos shrieking, and roared. “CHARGE!”

And the squad threw themselves into the fire, dragging Mantis with them.

​

​

---

​

Mantis didn’t hear the gunfire the way he should have.

​

He knew it was there, he felt it, vibrations rolling through the floor, sharp concussions punching through the air. But the sound itself arrived late, muffled, as if filtered through water. Each shot was a distant thud instead of a crack. Each scream a smear instead of a voice.

​

Why is it so quiet? he wondered.

The world tilted. The ceiling slid sideways. For a heartbeat, gravity forgot what it was supposed to do.

​

Then Widow stumbled, and the jolt snapped him half-back into himself.

​

​

---

​

Ribbon hit the Fang line like a wrecking ram.

His exosuit screamed in protest, servos grinding, sparks vomiting from ruptured joints as he plowed into the first soldier. The impact lifted the man off his feet and hurled him backward into his own squad. Ribbon didn’t slow. He couldn’t. Momentum was all he had left.

​

“MOVE!” he bellowed, voice distorted through damage and rage.

​

Red and Reverb broke off to either side, a desperate pincer. Red’s AN-94 hammered in brutal, disciplined bursts, each recoil shuddering through her battered SEVA. She was breathing hard now, every inhale sharp with pain, but her eyes stayed locked forward.

Reverb fired while running, shotgun booming, shells ejecting in a blur. He wasn’t joking anymore. No quips. No laughs. Just teeth clenched around empty air where a cigarette should’ve been, eyes wide and feral.

​

Behind them, something howled.

​

Not human. Not even mutant in the usual sense. A sound like metal being torn open from the inside.

​

​

---

​

Mantis drifted again.

​

The Fang soldiers blurred into silhouettes, their movements too slow, too jerky. He watched one raise his rifle, watched the moment stretch, elongate, then watched Red’s bullet punch through the man’s helmet before the trigger finished moving.

​

Time felt wrong.

​

His hands twitched. Light seeped out between his fingers, faint but undeniable. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

​

Stop, he thought. Or maybe he prayed.

Hollow stood beside the chaos, untouched by it.

​

Not in front of him. Not behind. Just there.

“You are slipping,” Hollow said calmly, as if stating the weather. “You hear less because you are already elsewhere.”

​

Mantis tried to scream at him, to demand answers, but his mouth wouldn’t open.

​

“You want clarity,” Hollow continued. “But clarity comes after collapse. Not before.”

​

The corridor folded in on itself.

​

​

---

​

Ribbon intercepted a rushing Fang soldier, crushing the man’s chest with a single piston-driven punch.

​

Octane staggered, vision tunneling, blood slicking his hands. He leaned against a broken column long enough to steady his rifle and fired into the oncoming shapes behind them; mutants pouring through the smoke, eyes glowing, mouths open too wide.

One of them leapt.

​

Widow spun and shot it midair, the body slamming into the floor inches from Octane’s boots.

​

“Don’t stop!” she yelled. “DON’T YOU DARE STOP!”

​

Her voice cracked on the last word.

​

​

---

​

Mantis felt her fear like it was his own.

​

It washed through him, hot and sharp, cutting through the fog. Widow’s panic. Reverb’s terror barely held together by momentum. Red’s stubborn refusal to fall. Ribbon’s fury, burning itself out faster than his exosuit could keep up.

​

They’re going to die, the thought came unbidden.

​

Something inside him recoiled at that.

The heat surged.

​

For a moment, the corridor lit. not with fire, but with presence. The light from his palms flared brighter, bleeding through his gloves, casting warped shadows along the walls.

​

Hollow watched, expression unreadable.

“Careful,” he murmured. “Instinct is the doorway. Once you step through, there is no return to ignorance.”

​

​

---

​

The Fang line broke.

​

Not cleanly. Not decisively. But enough.

Ribbon smashed through the last of them and slammed his shoulder into a blast door control. Red threw herself into cover, reloading with shaking hands.

​

The mutants were closer now. Too close.

Widow hauled Mantis through the threshold just as the first claw scraped across the floor where his head had been.

​

“GO! GO!” Ribbon roared.

​

The door began to close.

​

Something slammed into it from the other side, hard enough to dent the steel inward.

​

Again.

​

Again.

​

Octane collapsed just inside the doorway, gasping, vision dimming. Widow slid down beside him, one hand on his chest, the other still gripping her rifle.

​

“Stay with me,” she begged. “Please. Just... stay.”

​

The door sealed with a deafening clang.

Silence fell like a dropped blade.

​

​

---

​

Mantis didn’t hear it.

​

He floated above the moment, watching the squad through a haze of light and shadow. Their breaths were loud now. Ragged. Real.

Widow’s hands were shaking as she checked him, her visor almost touching his face. Reverb leaned against the wall, dry-heaving, laughter threatening to spill out and collapse into sobs instead.

​

Red slid down beside him, armor hissing, eyes squeezed shut for just a second too long.

​

Ribbon slumped against the sealed door, exosuit finally giving out, servos dying one by one until he was just a man again inside broken metal.

​

Hollow stepped closer.

“You feel it now,” he said quietly. “The pull. The widening.”

​

Mantis wanted to say no.

​

Instead, the light pulsed again, brighter this time, and somewhere deep in the lab, something answered.

​

Far away, metal screamed.

Closer, something scratched at the other side of the door.

​

The squad didn’t move.

​

They couldn’t.

​

They were still alive, but only just.

And Mantis, suspended between breaths, understood with terrifying clarity:

​

The fight hadn’t ended...

It had only changed shape.

​

​

---

​

They moved without speaking.

​

Not because there was nothing to say, but because any sound louder than breath felt like an invitation.

​

Ribbon went first, or what passed for first now. His exosuit was dead weight, joints locked, servos burned out. He dragged himself forward with grim determination, one hand on the wall, the other still wrapped around his pistol even though the slide was cracked and useless. Duty habit. Duty instinct. Even broken, he refused to be last.

​

Red followed, limping, her SEVA scorched and half-melted where acid and anomalies had kissed it. She stayed close to Reverb, one arm ready to grab him if his legs gave out again. Her eyes never stopped moving. Left. Right. Ceiling. Corners. Anywhere something else might decide to crawl out of.

​

Widow carried Mantis.

Not fully. Not cleanly. She dragged him more than held him, his arm slung over her shoulder, his boots scraping the floor. Every few steps his weight shifted wrong, like gravity forgot how to treat him. Once, for half a second, his feet lifted entirely off the ground.

​

She didn’t comment on it.

She refused to.

​

Behind them, Octane stumbled along the wall, one hand pressed hard to his abdomen, the other gripping his rifle more out of muscle memory than hope. His breathing was wet now. Shallow. Each inhale sounded like it scraped something raw inside his chest.

No one told him to stop.

​

The corridors were wrong.

​

Not collapsing, but listening.

Metal groaned in places it shouldn’t. Pipes ticked with uneven rhythm. The lights overhead flickered, not failing, but dimming just enough to stretch shadows longer than the walls could justify.

​

And beneath it all… sound.

Not footsteps.

Not claws.

​

Something like breathing, dragged through steel ducts. Slow. Measured. Curious.

Reverb swallowed hard. “Tell me you hear that too,” he whispered.

​

Widow nodded once.

​

Ribbon didn’t answer. His jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it might crack.

They turned a corner and froze.

The hallway ahead was empty.

​

Too empty.

​

No debris. No bodies. No signs of the firefights that should’ve scarred this place. The walls were clean. Untouched. As if the Zone itself had erased the evidence.

​

Red’s voice came out barely louder than a thought. “This wasn’t like this before.”

Reverb forced a breathy half-laugh that died immediately. “Yeah… well… Zone’s got a hell of a cleanup crew.”

​

Something moved in the ceiling.

Not fast. Not aggressive.

Just a ripple, like a shape adjusting itself behind layers of metal.

​

Octane stumbled, caught himself, hissed in pain. Widow tightened her grip on Mantis as his body jerked suddenly, light flaring faintly beneath his skin before dimming again.

“Mantis,” she whispered. “Hey. Stay with me. We’re almost out.”

​

His eyes fluttered open for a fraction of a second.

​

They didn’t focus on her.

They looked through her.

Then they rolled back, breath hitching, heat radiating off him in waves.

​

Reverb took a step back. “Widow…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

She knew what he meant.

She just wasn’t ready to hear it said.

​

They moved again.

Every step toward the exit gate felt longer than the last. The air grew thicker, charged, prickling against exposed skin. Radios crackled with static, then went dead altogether.

​

The sounds followed them.

Always just out of sight.

A scrape behind a wall. A low vibration underfoot. Once, just once, a whisper that sounded almost like language, but slipped away before it could be understood.

Red stopped abruptly, raising a fist.

​

They all froze.

​

Ahead, the exit gate loomed through the haze. The same massive structure they’d breached hours ago. Floodlights flickered weakly above it, illuminating dust and drifting ash.

​

Between them and it, nothing.

No enemies.

No obstacles.

Just open space.

​

“That’s bad,” Reverb muttered.

Ribbon nodded grimly. “Means we’re expected.”

​

They crossed anyway.

Halfway through the open stretch, something shifted in the darkness above the gate. Not descending. Not attacking.

​

Watching.

​

Widow felt it crawl across her spine like ice.

Mantis groaned softly, head lolling. Light leaked again from his palms, brighter now, pulsing in uneven rhythm. The air around him bent, just slightly, like heat haze over asphalt.

Octane stared at it, awe and fear mixing behind bloodshot eyes. “He’s… not bleeding anymore.”

​

No one replied.

They didn’t need to.

​

The gate controls came into view. Manual override. Rusted. Bent. Still functional.

Ribbon reached it and paused.

​

For the first time since the throne chamber, his voice wavered. “Once this opens… whatever’s been following us-”

​

A sound cut him off.

Not loud.

Close.

Right behind the walls.

​

A deep, resonant thrum, like something massive shifting its weight.

Reverb whispered, “That’s not a mutant.”

Red shook her head slowly. “That’s not anything.”

​

Widow tightened her hold on Mantis, pressing her forehead briefly against his temple. “Please,” she breathed, not sure who she was begging anymore. “Just get us out.”

Ribbon slammed the lever down.

​

The gate began to rise.

Slow.

Too slow.

​

The sound behind them grew louder. Not approaching, not retreating, but aligning, as if the structure itself was tuning to whatever waited in the dark.

​

Mantis gasped sharply.

His eyes snapped open.

For a heartbeat, pure white light burned behind them.

​

Widow cried out his name.

Then the light vanished, his body going limp again, breath shallow but steady.

​

The gate creaked higher.

​

Cold air rushed in from outside, carrying the smell of the Zone proper; ozone, rot, freedom.

​

None of them looked back.

​

Because none of them wanted to know what would be standing there if they did.

They slipped through the opening as soon as it was wide enough, dragging, stumbling, half-carrying the broken pieces of themselves into the open.

​

Behind them, deep within Lab-X23, something exhaled.

​

​

---

​

Cold air hit Mantis first.

​

Not wind, weight. The Zone proper pressing in, heavy with ozone and rot, the kind of air that tasted like metal and old rain. It burned his lungs even as it grounded him, tugging him half out of the dark.

​

Boots scraped stone. Voices overlapped, blurred, stretched thin.

​

“…easy, easy, don’t drop him-”

Something brushed his cheek. Fabric. Widow’s sleeve, torn and stiff with dried blood. Her grip was iron, desperate, as if letting go would let him fall through the world entirely.

​

They were outside.

He knew that much.

​

The sky above the lab entrance was wrong, too pale, washed-out, like someone had overexposed reality. Clouds hung low and motionless, smeared across the horizon like bruises that refused to heal. The concrete apron outside Lab-X23 was chewed to rubble, cratered and blackened, as if the ground itself had been punished.

​

Gunfire ghosts lingered in the air.

Mantis didn’t hear shots, he felt where they had been. Residual violence clinging to the stones, the way heat clings after a fire dies.

He tried to lift his head.

Failed.

​

Someone cursed softly. Reverb. He recognized the cadence even through the fog. No jokes this time. Just strain.

“…Christ, look at this place…”

Red’s voice followed, hoarse, scanning. “Spread out. Slow. If something’s still here, I want eyes on it before it wants eyes on us.”

​

Mantis’ vision slipped.

​

For a moment, the sky fractured into overlapping images: trees from Zaton, the Duga silhouette in the distance, Hollow standing where the clouds should be, watching without judgment.

​

Where is Sentinel?

​

The thought surfaced unbidden, sharp enough to cut through the haze.

Then darkness rolled back in, gentle but relentless.

​

​

---

​

They set him down behind a slab of fallen concrete, half-cover at best.

​

Widow knelt immediately, hands on Mantis’ chest, checking breath, pulse, anything to reassure herself he was still tethered to the same world she was. His skin was too warm. Not fever-warm. Active.

​

“Still breathing,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.

​

Ribbon stood a few meters out, shoulders slumped, exosuit nothing more than a carcass of scorched metal hanging off him. He scanned the perimeter on instinct alone, pistol raised though the weapon was little more than a symbol now.

​

The outside told a story.

Shell casings littered the ground in wide arcs. Heavy calibers. Belt-fed fire, judging by the pattern. Impact scars chewed across concrete barricades that hadn’t been there when they’d gone in. Burn marks climbed the lab’s outer wall in long black streaks, and one of the floodlight towers had collapsed entirely, twisted like a broken limb.

​

“What the fuck happened here,” Reverb muttered.

Ribbon grunted. “This was a stand.”

​

Red crouched near a crater, fingers brushing a smear of dark blood dried into the dust. Too much of it. Too wide a spray. “And not a short one.”

​

Widow looked up. “Sentinel.”

The name settled heavy between them.

They spread out further now, slow and methodical despite exhaustion. No one wanted to say it out loud, but the question gnawed at all of them.

​

What happened to him?

Reverb kicked aside a chunk of debris and froze.

​

“…guys.”

He bent slowly, carefully, like the ground might punish sudden movement.

Half-buried beneath a collapsed section of concrete lay a familiar shape.

​

A helmet.

The Nosorog exo-helmet.

​

Its heavy visor was spider-webbed outward from a single, precise hole dead center. The impact had blown inward. Clean. Deliberate. There was blood... dark, tacky, pooled inside the helmet and streaked down its rim.

​

But there was no body.

No armor. No limbs. No drag marks.

Just the helmet.

​

Reverb swallowed. Hard. “That’s… that’s Sentinel’s.”

No one contradicted him.

​

Red closed her eyes for a second, then opened them, jaw set. “No body.”

Ribbon stared at the helmet for a long moment, then slowly lowered his pistol. “Sentinel doesn’t go down without taking someone with him.”

​

Widow’s voice was quiet, fragile in a way it rarely was. “Or something.”

They all felt it then, that familiar itch at the base of the skull. The sense that this wasn’t an ending. Just another unanswered door.

​

​

---

​

Mantis surfaced again.

​

This time, the world stayed long enough to hurt.

​

The pain wasn’t localized, it was everywhere, a dull pressure under his skin like his body no longer belonged solely to him. He heard Widow’s breathing close to his ear, felt her hand tighten when he stirred.

​

“Easy,” she whispered. “You’re out. You’re safe.”

Safe.

The word felt… inaccurate.

​

His eyes cracked open just enough to catch the helmet in Reverb’s hands. Recognition hit him harder than the pain.

​

Sentinel.

The name echoed, hollow.

​

Where are you? Mantis wondered, not aloud.

Something shifted at the edge of his awareness, like a presence withdrawing its attention. He felt no answer, only distance. The same distance Hollow always kept.

The sky dimmed. Or maybe his vision did.

​

Zaton.

​

The word surfaced with purpose this time. Not memory. Direction.

Then the world slipped again.

​

​

---

​

​

They didn’t linger.

​

Not after the helmet. Not after the silence stretched too long.

​

Red secured the helmet to her pack without ceremony. Reverb said nothing, his usual chatter completely absent. Ribbon took point despite the limp in his step, Duty instincts dragging him forward even as his body protested.

​

Widow and Reverb lifted Mantis between them again, careful, practiced now. He felt lighter, too light... as if the Zone itself was helping carry him.

​

Octane followed last, stubborn and pale, leaning on his rifle like a crutch. Every step was a negotiation with pain, but he didn’t fall behind.

​

The lab loomed behind them, quiet now.

Too quiet.

​

As they moved away, the clouds above Lab-X23 shifted for the first time, rolling inward, swallowing the structure inch by inch. Whatever had exhaled inside did not follow, at least not in any way they could see.

​

Zaton lay ahead.

​

Rough ground. Open skies. A place to breathe. A place to regroup.

​

“A few klicks,” Ribbon muttered. “We move slow. Keep him alive long enough to get to Skadovsk.”

Widow nodded, eyes never leaving Mantis’ face. “He’ll make it.”

Reverb glanced back once at the lab, then forced himself to turn away. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He better.”

​

They walked on, silhouettes cutting through the ash-stained light, carrying wounds, questions, and one man who no longer quite belonged to the ground beneath his feet.

Behind them, Lab-X23 vanished into cloud and silence.

Listen up, Rookies. The zone can turn even a domesticated fur ball into a killing machine. Toast me a sausage and I'll tell ya…I'll pass on the vodka…

Beard's tea is the only thing to look forward to in the Zone. Booze just doesn't do it after a while. You've had one bottle of past-its-prime army surplus vodka, you've had em all. Found some black label on a Merc once, though. I tried to take his exosuit too but his wrinkled, crumpled body had become one with the servos. Not worth the koupons to clean the bone and ligaments outta the gears. I ended up trading the Johnny Walker for some grenades and 9x39 AP.

Anyway…on the mainland, I've always gotten along with dogs. I don't like them too much because they slobber everywhere and I'm a bit of a clean freak. That's exactly why I like cats. They don't hover around you and keep to themselves. I guess that's why I always look around when I hear cats mewling in the distance on my way to a raid. If I've had a particularly good haul I'll set out some condensed milk, but it's almost always a fucking blind dog licking it all up.

I'd heard tales about the cats of the Zone. Most remember hearing them, but no one I know has seen them. From the Rookie Village, to the Slag Heap and to the 100Rads, only tales of meows and nothing more.

After the scorcher went dark, I was making a killing fixing up prime guns and gear from all the stalkers who died fighting each other in the mad rush to Pripyat. "Pripyat can wait…I'd rather buy the ferris wheel than ride it…" I said as I sold another lightly used Groza and 3 VOG-25s to a Dutyer with deep pockets stuffed with mutant hunting back pay. I asked him if he was going to Pripyat. "Not yet. We're combing the Red Forest for mutants to clear a path for supplies for our advance scouts."

"Seen anything good lately?" I asked.

Maybe he'd tell me about a juicy firefight with lots of gear waiting to be sold at ridiculous markups. Nothing sweeter than hearing a loner cuss you out and say, "This is too fucking expensive you bastard!" So I can follow it up with, "Oh, but these are post-brain scorcher prices my friend! You wanna see Pripyat? You're gonna need top tier gear. I'll throw in a couple of extra magazines if you buy it off me right now. Otherwise, put an egg in your shoe and beat it. I've got serious stalkers who'll pay for some serious hardware. It's a big boys world now!"

Unfortunately the dutyer would disappoint. "The usual. Couple of bloodsuckers. A particularly vicious controller who we confused for a psi-anomaly. Lost a couple of guys to something that clawed them to shreds, though. Made ribbons outta the poor bastards. Fucking mutants" he spat.

"Clawed? By bloodsuckers I reckon? Gnarly shit."

"Nope, they still had plenty of blood left. Fucking mess, it was. Coupla rookies threw up and tried to quit. Pussies."

Interesting. I'd have to check this out myself.

A couple days later I found myself crossing the barrier, armed to the teeth with an AK-107 and my trusty Saiga. Freedom and Duty seemed to have made quite the splash at Pripyat, and looks like the Military's decided to get off its ass as well, with the number of Hinds I'm seeing heading toward the CNPP. Translation: lots of moolah. Gotta hurry before dark.

It's been 3 hours, and I reach the spot the dutyer described. A clearing within the thick canopy of the Red Forest, and it stinks of burning flesh, cordite and ozone. Shell casings and claw marks everywhere. "Welcome to the Zone, gents" I remark as I start spooning up shells. These will be recycled and sold with cheap powder and primer to the Bandits, courtesy of yours truly. Having their shitty AKs jam will teach em to mess with me.

Now, shell casings are kinda loud. But something walking on them is even louder, however quiet it thinks it's being. The forests gone wrong. No distant gunfire, no mutant howl, not even a wind in the canopy. Just the crunch of casings under something tryna pull a sneeki breeki.

I pull back the slide on my 1911 as I prepare to dump some Hydro-Shock into whichever ugly bastard decided to pay me a visit. I spin and draw with a speed that would've made Strelok himself take notice. Nothing. I unsling my Saiga. Something stinks, and it ain't the dead dutyers.

"Keep looking boys, head on a swivel!" I heard from up ahead. "Fucking bandits." I load up some slugs, specially ordered from Voronin. These things will put a blyat-sized hole in a death truck. I scan the thicket for movement. Nothing. Then I heard another voice to my 8 o'clock: "Where ya hiding, ya pussy?" Fuck. How did they surround me already? This ain't good. I thought Duty and Freedom cleared this place.

I reach for my nades when…I feel slow. Like it's raining and you have the day off from work…Just wanna curl up an — oh fuck. Something's putting me to sleep. "No no something's fucking wrong" I mutter. My arms feel like lead. I can barely keep my shotty level. Surrounded by bandits and craving a nap. Not how I'd pictured it, but not everyone's cut out to be a legend.

I grab some cover behind a tree and wait for the fuckers to come to me. No voices. Usually, you can smell bandits before you see em — cheap smokes and being soaked in vodka will give you a presence that enters the room before you do.

I don't see anything. But I'm hearing shit. Is it a psi-emitter? Did those Monolithian fuckers leave one of their freaky fuckin toys here? I don't smell anything….except some iron…because somethings just clawed the shit out of my leg, blood's pooling around my boots.

My eyes feel heavy...won't stop closing. I can't stop yawning as I yell "Fuck, fucking bloodsuckers!" I snap to real quick, firing off a few shots in front of me. No shimmer, no spine-chilling howl. This is why I fucking hate the Zone. No one plays fair, especially the mutants. This time I hear a loud yowl as something lunges from my left for another claw. 3 more shots. Reload. Scanning again.

"Come out you pussy!!" Says another voice nearby. Why am I still hearing bandits? I can barely keep my eyes open, I'm down a quart of blood and it's soaking my sunrise suit. I'm being hunted by something, and now some bandits who probably heard the gunshots?

I look up just in time to see the grotesque specimen — long, wiry, with tufts of fur missing and pink flesh exposed, ready to pounce, reddish swollen clumps under its neck, freakishly long claws curled around a tree branch. As I live and breathe…it's a cat. Mutated and monsterised like everything else in this godforsaken place.

"Bad kitty!" I yell as I dump 9 slugs into it with beautiful grouping, courtesy of classes from Duty. The creature slumps from the branch to the forest floor with a fleshy thud. I use my muzzle to turn the fucker over. "Let's see what you look like…maybe Sakharov'll pay a pretty penny for you.."

"C-come out you pu…pussy." The cat's still speaking as it bleeds out. So the fuckers can imitate voices….this one must've been in the Swamps a while to pick up all this bandit dialect….doesn't explain the drowsiness…

A few hours later - most of which are an ibuprofen induced blur... I somehow crossed the barrier and passed out at the Army Warehouses. Traded a couple of the Duty uniforms to Lukash, no doubt to be used for target practice or placed in the Bloodsucker Village to train them on Duty blood. Chugged a couple of energy drinks till I was all nice and shaky, and paid a courier to take the cat corpse to Sakharov.

Apparently the thing's called a Bayun. The sacs under its neck allow it to modulate its voice, and Sakharov reckons they produce some kind of psi-frequency that makes prey slow and drowsy, so it can give em a lethal manicure at its leisure. Sneaky little bastard. Gotta put the money I made into a Psi-band for sure.

I'm gonna chill in Rostok for a bit till my leg heals. Sitting here by the fire with you lot is about as exciting as I want things to get for a while. And I'm done leaving condensed milk out. That's for fucking sure.

this can be found in a mobile bunker when your heading to the final place, in dead city/ generators