Valera walked along the road with the Duty patrol, at ease. No Bandit or Merc group would make the mistake of tackling with this group, not in these numbers. All eight Duty members in the group had Thunder S14s, and every one of them wore either a SEVA or a Stalker suit.
In short, Valera was enjoying this chance to walk down the road without anything to bother him. Even though the knowledge that he might die from this sat heavily on his mind, he could shrug it off easily. If he died, he hoped it would be quick. He had seen enough death to know that going out slowly, such as being carried off to god knows where by a Bloodsucker, was one of the worst ways one could go. He had watched friends of his go out that way: It wasn’t pretty.
The path was fairly well-traveled, what with being the only real road between the Army Warehouses and Rostok. Even so, not a soul was in sight. Yet again, due to the Duty squad, nobody would dare confront them. They started to trek to the right side of the road, watching and waiting for anything.
The man leading the group held up a hand, motioning for us to halt. Turning to look at them, he pointed to his left (Valera’s right) in an authorities manner.
“We’re here.” He said, turning to walk out into a field. Every followed him past the line of trees, onto a fairly flat, open area. Suddenly, they stopped, and Valera could see it.
“Holy shit…” He heard one of them mutter. His thoughts ran in a similar direction. It was massive area of distortion in the middle of the field. In the center of the field sat… Nothing. That’s all he could describe it as. It was simply a blank spot. It was as if it didn’t even exist.
It radiated the type of phenomena he commonly associated with Vortexes, but at a much grander scale. The gravity field was immense; it was already setting off some of the automated alarm systems inside of his suit, and they were twenty meters away from the edge. He quickly moved to switch them off, staring through the glass faceplate at the massive behemoth of the Zone.
The leader turned to him, nodding. “Good luck, buddy. You’re going to need it. Everyone else fan out. We don’t want a Freedom team to catch us now, do we?”
With that, the Duty soldiers moved away and looked out, watching for any signs of interference.
Valera gulped, stepping forward. He moved his TRs-301 to his back, the strap going across his chest as he reached for the bag, taking out several of the special bolts. They didn’t even look like bolts: While the normal ones simply used old factory machinery to churn out as many as possible, these were in a pill-like shape, with a very smooth outside and finish.
Holding four in his hand, he walked as far as he dared, eight feet from the edge of the rippling. He pulled his arm back, and threw them in powerful toss.
Once they hit the ripple, the bolts seemed to race inside almost faster than his eyes could track. Just as the Duty members had said, they at first faded and then disappeared near the center, about two feet from it.
“Good job.” He heard the voice of the Duty captain say over his PDA. “We’re getting a signal now, and it’s reading some pretty crazy stuff. Right now we’re getting indications that… GET THE HELL AWAY FROM THERE, STALKER!! RUN!!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he turned around and started to sprint away. He could feel the feeling he associated with anomalies in close proximities make itself know, confirming that something had gone terribly wrong. Foolishly looking behind him, he could see the ripple moving outward, coming up to meet him. He stared back in horror, and tried to speed up.
His forward momentum slowed and then stopped, and then started moving back. Valera cried out a warning into his PDA, and used the chance to transmit a warning to the Barkeep. That done, he dug his feet in, and tried to forward. He wasn’t making any progress at all, and, to his growing panic, he felt himself slipping.
Suddenly, he felt himself being pulled backwards with tremendous force. Warning lights erupted in his SEVA suit, telling him about the immense gravitational force as he was pulled into it. He could feel himself being pulled backwards, into the… Whatever the hell it was.
And, suddenly, his feet lost their grip. He felt the sensation of flying into an abyss, right before his vision went black.
-=-=-
Dark.
That was the only word going through Valera’s mind. He felt an immense… Nothing, all around him, surrounding him, enveloping him. It felt as though his eyes were closed, yet he could feel them open… Or could he? Did it even matter? Slowly, surely, his mind began to shut down. And with a last thought of his small family, the only happy thought he had left, Valera drifted off into sleep.
-=-=-
Valera’s eyes opened suddenly. His face was beaded with sweat, and the only light illuminating his face was red, from the multiple warning lights only now starting to turn off. He was hyperventilating, and forced himself to slow his breathing down. Calming himself, he gave himself a moment to ask the obvious question.
How had he survived?
The faint red lights illuminated the fact that his faceplate was buried in… Something. His equilibrium told him that he was facing down, so that might be the problem. He moved his arms around and, although they felt heavy at first, he was able to freely move them. Bringing them to face down, he pushed, trying to get up. As he did, light filled his vision, blinding him. Blinking away the sudden intrusion, he finished getting up, first to his knees, and then to his feet. The first thing he noticed was sand.
Plenty of it.
In fact, looking around, all he could see was a sea of it, along with a SEVA suit-shaped indentation in it at his feet. Checking behind him with his hands, he confirmed that his weapons and supplies were still there. How had they survived the Vortex?
Moreover, again: How had HE survived?
Valera had seen plenty of friends die from anomalies, but the most horrible ones were the Vortexes. Those simply crushed them, leaving nothing but a broken mist of blood and bits of bone. He had once run fairly close to one, and even that close miss had left him with several broken bones, and those later took much attention with a Mica artifact to fix.
He checked his weapons and emptied the sand out of them; some having had their barrels attain a thin collection of it. While he was doing this, he took the time to let his mind wander. The next thing he did was check his PDA: Nothing. No connection to satellites, and not even a map of his area. At the worst, he was in the middle of the Sahara. That would be just perfect: He had only a small canteen of water, and even the specialized systems of the SEVA suit could only convert something… Distasteful into something… Less so for only so long.
In the short run, he figured making a radio call would be a good idea. Turning it on, he quickly ratted out a short message in Ukrainian.
“If there is anyone in the area, listen. This is Valera, a STALKER, and I need immediate contact with anybody in the vicinity.”
After repeating it in Russian and English (and getting no response), he was fairly sure that nobody within range had even heard him or, indeed, had a radio in the first place.
Shutting off his radio, he quickly pulled up a compass on his HUD. Thankfully, his SEVA suit had many things, and one of them was a built-in auto-mapper, which would use an integrated compass, miniaturized radar, and the PDA to map out the local terrain, and, at close ranges, detect wildlife. While the PDA could detect only other PDAs, he often had his suits modified to a massive extent, in case he got stuck in a situation that warranted it, such as an unexplored lab with no maps anywhere in the database.
It cost quite a bit of money, but right now, he was thanking himself for the extra 80,000 Rubles that he had spent on it. It may have seemed worthless at the time, but it was paying off now. At least, he hoped so.
The current map taken by the miniaturized radar displayed the usual compass on it, and mostly, at this point, showed an expanse of desert two hundred meters wide: The maximum extend of the miniaturized radar and, therefore, the auto-mapper.
He started to walk towards what the compass identified as ‘North’. Knowing that most African settlements, if that was where he was, were on the Mediterranean coast, he had to head towards there. With no information, it was a long shot. For all he knew, he could be in the Gobi Desert, and be headed into good old Russia any hour now.
Step by step, he walked forward across the featureless landscape, the only thing noticeable being the small dunes of sand that gathered. His mind began to blank out from sheer boredom, so he decided to read his PDA messages. He had never quite managed to open a few of them, and they gave him some laughs. Apparently, a Merc named ‘Serbin’ was angry at him for ‘attacking’ a Merc squad (actually, it was self-defense, but it didn’t really matter now).
The day was very hot, but, thankfully, his SEVA suit had automated cooling systems to help regulate temperature. It was primarily for use against the ‘Burner’ anomalies, but it came into use at this time in an entirely different way.
After four hours, his boredom had almost peaked. Raising his hands and looking up at the sky in frustration, he began to vent his anger.
“Why the fuck am I here!” He screamed to nobody in particular. “Why the hell didn’t I die, and why the fuck am I in the middle OF A FUCKING DESERT! WHAT IN THE ZONE CAUSED THIS FUCKING CHAOS!? I can’t even access my fucking PDA, and that still worked after I fell INTO A GODDAMN POOL OF ACID!”
Unknown to him, somebody was watching him. Or, more accurately, something.
He was made aware of their presence when he heard a faint ‘Get it!’ in English, followed by something hitting the back of his SEVA suit. Rapidly turning around and pulling out his TRs-301, he didn’t pause for a moment when he saw four of what looked like four eagle-lion hybrids running at him. What did make him pause, though, were the spears in their hands. In the end, it didn’t matter.
He raised his rifle and flicked off the safety, not even bothering to look through the SOSUT scope before firing with a practice hand. Six rounds flew out, two for each of the three that he wanted dead. They all fell to the ground, no medical intervention able to save them. The last one didn’t even notice its comrades fall; It kept on going, charging him with the spear. Valera couldn’t imagine what they were, or, if they didn’t exist naturally, what mutation of the Zone made them this way.
As the last one held its spear out to jab him, Valera calmly sidestepped to the left and grabbed the end of the sphere, twisting it to his right and sending the other end, along with its bearer, flying upwards. The thing landed on its back, stunned, before Valera calmly walked over to it and put his foot on its chest.
“Now… Why did you attack me?” He asked in English, which he had heard right before the attack. He didn’t really expect a response, but, to his surprise, he got one.
“You’re intruding on a military excursion, and you have no right to be here!” It screeched out.
“Military exercise, heh?” Valera said, laughing. “I’ve heard that before. Now, just what the hell are you? Either you tell me, or I will crush your chest in.”
“I’m a griffon! How could you not know that? And just what are you?”
“I am a STALKER, someone who will make your life a living hell if you don’t listen.” Valera said. From a third person perspective, he knew he was probably intimidating at hell, especially in his armor. “Now another question: Where am I?”
“Equestria! The great desert, next to the Badlands!” It replied.
“Hmm, Equestria.” He said, rolling the same around in English. “Whatever the hell it is, it’s certainly nothing that I’ve heard of.” He simply shrugged, filing it away in his head for later. “Now tell me: What is the largest country around?”
“The pony kingdom of Equestria! Which we are in!” It said, adding the last part after Valera put more pressure on its chest.
Valera shook his head. A nation of ponies? This was either the most elaborate joke ever played, or he was really fucking dead, and either in heaven or, most likely, his own private hell.
Valera took his foot of its chest before giving it a kick, sending it rolling in pain and he walked away, leaving it laying there as he started again to the north.
Fifteen minutes later, his clock, updated to about local time (the sun moved at the same speed, anyway) read it was six o’ clock. Time to find shelter, of any kind, and get under cover before nightfall. Probably not necessary here, but in the Zone it was vital.
Five minutes later, the sand on the horizon had attained a brown color. Ten minutes after that, he found out why. In a clear line, past a certain point, the ground became perfectly dry and flat, not unlike the bottom of a dry lake, except it looked quite a bit like brown-red clay instead of yellow flats.
The walking was easier on that ground, and he began to make good progress. Up ahead, he spotted some rising mesas, so he felt that he would be able to find a good overhang. He also collected some dried wood from long-dead trees on the way. Literally, the stuff was so dry, it would probably catch instantly. Which was good, since, although like most good STALKERs he had a few boxes of matches, he didn’t want to waste them.
He thanked god that the SEVA suits had a cooling system integrated into the suit, or he would be much warmer than he was now. Still, sweat lay on face from the extortion, and the fact that he had not had a drink of water since he was tossed here did not make it better.
To Valera’s delight, in the side of one of the mesas he found a cave. It was around eight o’ clock, and the sun was about to hit around the horizon, so his find was perfect. He knew that he could deal with anything he found inside, so he happily went.
What he did not see, however, was the dimly glowing pair of blue eyes observing from the shadows.
Twenty feet in, he activated his bright flashlight, filling the tunnel forty feet ahead of him with light. As he continued through several twists and turns, around a hundred feet from the entrance, he found a large chamber around twenty feet wide, with no exits except the one he had just came through.
He set the dry branches down on the ground and grabbed a box of matches, taking one out and striking it against the package. It lit, and he held it to the branches, watching at they quickly lit on fire, casting off a bright glow that filled the cavern with light. Sighing in relief, he sat down on the ground and removed his helmet, taking deep breaths of the unfiltered air.
Valera took out two of the meat tins and started eating them; certain he could need the energy later. He also took a large sip of water from his canteen and, satisfied, stored everything back and laid down on his pack, content to rest the night away.
-=-=-
Meanwhile, two pairs of curious eyes watched him from the shadows. For the cavern itself was only a false lead: A concealed tunnel lay at the other end of it, virtually indistinguishable from the surrounding rock.
The eyes looked at each other, seeming to make a decision, before one moved off into the darkness, and the other looked out to observe.
After all, a new creature had to be studied before being confronted, right?