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From the Zone with love	By : deepsearuin Category: +S through Z > S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadows of Chernobyl Views: 943 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own S.T.A.L.K.E.R., nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 11
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- 13
If anyone had told him a month ago that he'd be planning an ambush for his own faction, Skull would have killed them for the offense. And yet here he was, near the aptly named bloodsucker village, waiting for his targets to arrive.
To be fair, he wasn't planning to only ambush his former faction. If his plan worked, both Duty and Freedom would fall into his trap. He sort of regretted the inevitable deaths of some of his comrades, in the same nebulous way one can regret not seeing much that one distant relative you don’t completely dislike.
But this way he would finally provoke the full fledged faction war that Voronin was too much of a coward to initiate. Nevermind the barrier, or keeping the bar area safe, and most definitely fuck guarding the scientists at Yantar. Skull was of the opinion they should have recalled all their fighters and razed the Freedom base to the ground the moment they learnt of its location.
His PDA beeped softly and he directed his men to take the assigned positions. The party would start soon. It had been a stroke of good luck to find the corpses of a Dutier and a Freedomer here, both of them with the mission to spy if the mercenaries camped to the north were going to be bribed to fight for the other faction. Joke was on them all, the mercs were definitely for hire if any of them had had the guts to act, like Skull did. Duty might usually frown at mercenaries, but Skull needed to replenish the diminished ranks of his group. Cleaning the village of its bloodsuckers had been a bloody business.
The sound of footsteps on the dry grass grew nearer. The victims were close. Good. The first to arrive to the village was a small Duty squad, four guys plus... oh, wasn't that grand? Looks like the head honcho himself had come to investigate Skull's trap. They did a quick sweep of the place and soon found the dead bodies.
"Sir, I don't like this, it might be a trap," one of the Dutiers said.
"You'd have to be a moron to not notice it," General Voronin looked around warily.
Skull could swear the General spotted one of his mercs, but the Freedomers appeared then and it all went to Hell in a hand basket.
Shouts claiming it was an ambush rose from both contingents, and then Skull's mercs joined them, dressed in Duty and Freedom suits. Chaos ensued. Skull took a moment to admire his work before joining the fight. He would be today's hero, and Voronin would finally acknowledge the merit of Skull's plan to eradicate those Freedom rats.
Everything was going according to his plan until the Monolithians fell upon them like an avalanche. It took them all a bit to notice a new group had joined the shooting, but when they did a fragile truce was instantly born. If there was one thing both factions agreed on, it was their hatred of Monolith. Yet all Skull could see was how his plan was ruined. People who moments ago were trying to kill each other were now focused on the newcomers. Even the mercs had forsaken his orders to create havoc and were now killing Monolithians. This was unacceptable.
Skull started throwing grenades around, not caring who he killed. The cries of outrage and pain were drowned by the gunshots and explosions, and those who hadn't noticed his madness were too busy trying to survive to notice anything else but the ever advancing Monolithians.
#
Coming here had been a mistake, that much was clear. The whole thing reeked of an ambush since the beginning, but Voronin felt obliged to investigate from the moment they received a message asking for reinforcements from the man he sent to investigate the merc situation.
However, he never imagined Freedom would break their stand-still pact in such a way. But here he was, hiding behind a wall while those Monolith lunatics fired against them all. That most probably meant the Barrier had been overrun. Well, Voronin always hoped Freedom and Monolith would decimate each other and save Duty the hassle of dealing with both factions.
He leant out of cover and shot against an approaching Monolithian. The guy took three bullets to the chest to kill, seemingly unaware of his injuries until he just dropped dead. It was unnatural, another proof of the Zone's twisted design.
Someone fired against him, but he saw nobody around actively targeting him. Voronin realised with dismay it was a sniper. The day kept getting worse and worse. The sniper fired again, twice in rapid succession and Voronin desisted to lean out of cover, at least for now.
He heard someone running around, closer and closer, so he took a couple of steps back and readied his Val. Any Monolithian coming around the corner would meet a swift bullet to the face. A man vaulted over the half wall next to this pillar, miraculously evading a shot from the sniper, seemingly unaware of Voronin's presence. He wore one of those detestable green suits, but they all had bigger problems right now than a faction war.
Voronin killed the Monolithian that approached their position, no doubt following the Freedomer. Unnatural resistance or not, headshots were always effective. Then, when the Monolithian lay dead on the ground, he noticed the man hiding behind the broken wall was none other than Lukash himself. Damn, was it too late it to toss him back over? Lukash didn't seem pleased to see Voronin either, less so by the Val pointing at him. He probably feared retaliation for the ambush, and rightly so.
However, if there's an instant, albeit temporal, remedy for mutual hate, it was without doubt being under fire by a common enemy. A bullet impacted against this side of wall, dangerously close to them. The sniper had moved to a new location, or maybe it was another guy, who knew. A quick sweep of the surroundings offered only one possibility: getting inside the house and start sniping back.
He started running towards the entrance, only to be violently shoved to the side as Lukash sprinted ahead. The treacherous rat truly hadn't a shred of morals or honour. He ran like his life was on it, catching up with Freedom's leader, and pushed him forward. Lukash fell face first to the ground and Voronin kept running. Petty vengeance could be sweet sometimes.
He stopped at the entrance of the ruined house, barely inside it. Right in front of him there was a shimmering bubble of air, warping everything around it.
Unaware of the anomaly, Lukash ran towards the safety, evading the sniper’s efforts to kill him. He crashed against Voronin's back and sent them both toppling forward. And into the space anomaly.
#
His vision wavered for a second before going back to normal. Fuck, that was disorienting. Why was everything so dark all of sudden?
He extricated himself from the tangle on the ground and got up. If he didn't kick Voronin in the back it was because he realized something was so very wrong. Just a moment ago they were barely inside a house on the bloodsucker village, not very far from their base. And now he was in some sort of dark tunnel someplace he'd never seen before.
"Fool! Do you realise what you've done?" Voronin regarded him with contempt and Lukash nearly punched him in the face.
"You have the gall to blame me for this?" He hissed with furious disbelief. Really? The bastard first ambushed him and now he was to blame?
Voronin snorted derisively. "If not willingly at least through sheer idiocy, but yes."
Anger seized him and Lukash raised his GP-37. Never one to make things easy, Voronin raised his Val and soon they were aiming at each other's faces, looking for an excuse to shoot.
A high pitched howl dragged along the far end of the corridor. They both turned their heads to the sound, slowly, as if unwilling to see what made such noise. Almost slow enough to get hit by the dented barrel hurtling across the air. Almost.
They both ducked to the sides, pressing against the cold concrete walls, and the barrel crashed loudly against the spot they occupied not long ago. The metallic clang was loud like a bomb in the otherwise dead silent corridor.
The air around them got a faint bluish tinge and felt strangely charged. The hair of his arms stood on end, like under the effect of static electricity. But no matter how much Lukash inspected the far reaches of the corridor, he saw nothing. It was too dark and the torchlight didn’t reach that far.
A floating ball of light appeared in the distance, and Lukash had to duck to avoid taking a wooden crate to the face. The crate thankfully sailed over his head and then smashed into the ground, breaking like an overripe fruit.
While he was busy dodging the flying crate, Voronin shot at the creature with his Val. From this distance it was difficult to tell if he shot landed or failed, but either way the poltergeist flew away. They waited for a bit, in case the poltergeist came back and hurled more trash at them. Lukash strained his hearing, but the only noise was the squeaking of emergency light right above them. It was safe to say they were alone. For now.
"I'm outta here," Lukash said aloud. It came as a surprise when Voronin agreed and followed him. Look at that, he was capable of being reasonable after all.
He checked his PDA, but apart from showing the hour -four pm- it wasn't doing much. The messaging system wasn't working, and the GPS function was similarly going crazy, marking his position erratically all over the Zone. Judging by Voronin's displeased grunt, his was also not working as it should. Perhaps the anomaly broke some electronic component, or something was blocking the signal. Either way their only hope was to go blindly ahead, and pray the exit was on one of the corridor's ends.
After turning around a corner there was yet another long and dark corridor, exactly like the one behind them. With also a dented barrel and pieces of smashed wood littering the floor. All of that in the exact same spot under the emergency light.
"How the fuck is this possible?" He angrily asked Voronin. It was doubtful the Dutier could provide an answer, but Lukash needed to vent out his frustration.
"It shouldn't be possible," Voronin was obviously displeased as well, glaring at him like he was on the verge of blaming Lukash for this as well.
Hoping to be wrong, Lukash sprinted along the corridor, leaving Voronin behind when he turned around the corner. And a second after that he was again staring at the same corridor, and the Dutier was now in front of him.
"Better try going the other way," Voronin started walking towards the other end of the corridor. "With a little luck the poltergeist can show us a way out of this corridor."
"With a little luck the next flying object will be aimed at your head," Lukash grumbled in a hushed whisper, but the sound carried clearly in the reigning silence.
However, Voronin did not rise to the bait; he just snorted disdainfully and kept going.
The corridor ended in a barely lit staircase, the emergency light was broken and the only source of light was the sickly glow of the fruit punch anomaly on a corner. A set of stairs went to the upper floor, and another one descended into the pitch black confines of the lower level. The question now was: up or down?
The Dutier decided to go upstairs. It made sense. The exit of underground facilities usually was on the top level. The upper floor consisted of a single room, and a massive metal door blocked the only exit. Although, as it was soon discovered, it was impossible to open. No matter how much they tried to move the wheel, it was firmly stuck in place.
"There's a number pad there," Lukash spotted a small console at the side of the door. He went closer to it and sighed. "Nevermind, it's broken."
"Even if it worked, without the code we could only try blindly and, supposing it was a four digit code, there are about..."
"About 9000 possible options, I know." Voronin was looking strangely at him and it was making him uncomfortable. "What?"
The Dutier just shook his head lightly. "We have no other choice but to go downstairs."
#
The lower floor was, like the looping corridor, lit by the flickering orange glow of the emergency lights. The damp smell of decay clung to the air, heavy and smothering. Voronin always thought of it as the smell of death.
There was a main room, and two doorways. One led to what looked like an empty storage closet. The other gave way to another corridor, but someone or something had pushed a pair of tables in front of it, creating a makeshift barricade.
The Freedomer tried to move one of the tables and promptly left it be. "These metal tables are heavy. Whoever put them here really wanted to block the way."
"Didn't do them any good," Voronin pointed out.
A dark brown track was painted on the floor, like a trail of dry blood, going down into the corridor. Poltergeists couldn't do that. Smash things against you, yes; dragging your bloody ass down the corridor, no.
"Who knows how old this is, the mutant could be already dead or dying," Lukash apparently felt the need to fill the silence.
"Dying to eat us, most probably," he corrected Lukash's foolish hopes.
"Who knew you were such an optimist," the Freedomer deadpanned.
Between both of them the table was dragged back a bit, leaving just enough space for them to cross the otherwise barred threshold. The corridor here was pitch black, the only emergency light in sight was broken in pieces, and the torchlights were necessary.
The track of dried blood continued up to the first room to the right, where it went into the room. The metal door was ajar. Lukash kicked it open and the door clashed loudly against the wall. Voronin cursed him and all his ancestry. Nice way to give away their position to any mutants lurking around.
The room reeked of rotted meat, one needn't be a genius to know what they would find inside. A quick sweep with the torchlight revealed a pile of bones and decomposing remains. It was difficult to tell if all the remains were just from one body or two, but ultimately it did not matter. A dull noise, coming from further down the corridor, startled them both.
The dark passage was empty, and yet something resembling a deranged laugh was coming from the room at the end. Once they got closer the laughter stopped, instead it became a shrill cry, like a banshee. Once they got into the room a broken chair started levitating over their heads.
"Fucking poltergeists," Lukash muttered, eyeing the chair warily.
On the other hand, Voronin was too busy surveying the room to stop and gawk at the floating chair. The poltergeist was somewhere close and he wouldn't let the it escape again. The cry was coming from behind a door with a faded bathroom sign painted on it.
Before he could decide to open the door, it swung open and a blast of energy sent Voronin flying back.
#
He didn't see exactly see what happened, only that one second Voronin was investigating around, and the nest second he was thrown against the other wall. The previously floating chair crashed on the floor as well.
A stunted humanoid mutant wearing a black trench coat came from behind the previously closed door. They had grossly miscalculated the situation. Lukash shot at it, but the Burer blocked the bullets effortlessly. The Burer lowered his gnarled hands, and a wave of energy hit him, knocking the wind out of him.
While he was trying to regain his breath, the Burer moved again and sent his GP-37 flying away. He tried to retreat, or get his pistol out, but he felt sluggish and winded. Another hit of energy like that could break his bones, or get him a ruptured artery, he'd seen it happen before.
Voronin appeared behind the Burer and stuck his knife in the mutant's neck, twice. The mutant yelled and tried to dislodge him, but he stabbed it again, twisting the knife in. A flow of dark blood ran down the Burer's front, drenching the ratty trench coat. Slowly, the Burer dropped down to the floor. Meanwhile Lukash finally got his pistol out and shot at the mutant's head.
"In case you couldn't tell despite all that blood, it was already dead," Voronin informed him in the most patronizing voice he ever had the displeasure to hear.
Lukash gritted his teeth and tucked his pistol away. "Just making sure this one doesn't get up ever again."
So what if he wanted to release his frustration shooting at a dead mutant? It was better than acknowledging the Dutier probably saved him from a gruesome injury.
"Should have stayed at the base. First the fucking ambush and now this damn bunker and its fucking mutants..." Lukash muttered to himself while he picked back his GP-37 from the floor.
However, Voronin heard him perfectly, even if he was half the room away. The sound carried clearly in the heavy silence of the dark bunker.
"You complain about the ambush, you dirty bastard?" The Dutier nearly spat at him. "It must be real hard work tracking our movement and mobilise your men to fall onto us, eh?"
Lukash saw red and seriously contemplated murder. "What the hell are you talking about? You were the ones waiting for us! It was one of your men who opened fire first, we only retaliated!"
"How can have the gall to say that? We arrive there in answer to a frankly suspicious message from a man that was dead and after a moment you conveniently arrive with a heavily armed squad."
"Oh, poor little Dutiers, lemme cry you a river," Lukash lost the last thread of his patience. He was sick of Voronin's attitude and bullshit. "How about you stop lying for a second? I received a message from one of my boys, saying he needs reinforcements now, and when we arrive he's dead and you have taken positions over the village and start shooting at us."
"Why you little –"
Their argument was suddenly broken by a thumping sound coming from behind them.
#
The metallic noise repeated, like someone tapping on the pipes or knocking on a door. It was no Morse code, at least not as far as Voronin could tell. So it stood to reason it was the damn poltergeist again, mocking him.
Without speaking a word to Lukash, he braved the dark corridor once more. There was a persistent feeling of being observed, and yet they were the only ones around.
The sound grew more intense the closer he got to a door he had ignored during their chase of the poltergeist-that-wasn't. The door rattled alarmingly once more and swung open before them.
Lukash raised his rifle and, despite his contempt for the Freedomer, for once he approved of his actions. No filthy mutant would catch them unaware now.
However, there was nothing behind the opened door, except for darkness and yet more corridor. Treading carefully, they advanced. The torchlight’s’ beam pierced feebly through the darkness until they arrived to another room illuminated by a yellowish emergency light. Although that wasn't what drew their attention.
A wispy purple bubble pulsed in the middle of the room, right beneath where the ceiling had collapsed. This... Voronin had never before seen something like this.
"D'you think the, uh, anomaly made this?" Lukash asked, looking at the hole from which they could see the upper floor.
Forgetting their mutual distaste in the face of this new anomaly, Voronin pointed to a skeleton lying in the pile of rubble inside the mysterious bubble. "I don't know, but I wouldn't get too close."
"Only one way to know," Lukash said with forced cheer before throwing a bolt at it.
The bolt made a perfect arc, fell right into the anomaly and floated there, suspended mid-air.
"Doesn't seem to do anything dangerous," the Freedomer concluded with a shrug.
And that was, in Voronin's humble opinion, why so many Freedomers usually found themselves with the water up to their neck. It was a mix of lack of foresight and not thinking things through. The anomaly didn't do anything flashy, like when whirligigs exploded, but it could be dealing other kinds of damage that were harder to see.
"A bolt is not a person," Voronin reminded him. "But at least we know it won't rip us to shreds."
All the good will he could have towards the anomaly quickly disappeared when the purple limits of it expanded until it occupied almost all the room. And now they were inside the anomaly.
The bolt Lukash threw before suddenly dropped to the ground. They weren't levitating either. Aside from a dull buzzing from their dosimeters, indicating a small uptick of the radiation, nothing was happening.
"We could climb to the upper floor," he eventually suggested.
It seemed to be the only path they hadn't explored yet, and the rubble created a convenient slope to climb. But the closer he got to the hole in the ceiling, the more and more tired he felt. The radiation kept stable, though.
The pile of rubble was more unstable than he imagined. His tiredness only seemed to grow and, after a quick look to check, he was sure he wasn't the only one affected. The Freedomer moved slowly and carelessly, which caused him to misstep and nearly fall down. Climbing to the upper floor was quite the struggle, a seemingly never-ending struggle.
Because of their clumsy attempts to climb one of the pieces of rubble was wrenched free and slid down the pile, destabilizing the rest of it. They both fell down, Voronin landing quite ungracefully on his ass while Lukash rolled down like tumbleweed. It wasn't that much of a climb, Voronin reflected from his position on the ground, but right now it seemed an insurmountable obstacle. Didn't help either that he felt like he hadn't slept for days.
"If you hoist me up I think I can get to the upper floor."
Voronin's first reaction was to say no. But he was out of ideas, except that he was sure being too much time inside this anomaly would kill them by exhaustion. So he grudgingly agreed to hoist Lukash up.
The Freedomer's weight felt like he was supporting a giant boulder instead of a man, and he grunted at Lukash to hurry the fuck up. A hail of dust and small pieces of rubble fell on his head, making him sneeze and his eyes itch. But then the weight was literally lifted off him, thank goodness. With the other man's help Voronin finally managed to get up the debris pile and climb into the upper floor.
From what he could see, this floor was exactly like the others, except with more burnt fuzz growing on the walls of this dilapidated office. The rapid flickering of the emergency light irritated him enough to miss the darkness of the corridor from before.
At least the edge of this weird purple bubble was near, he was exhausted like he'd ran a marathon after another. The anomaly didn't feel as innocuous as Lukash proclaimed it to be. Just as they dragged themselves out of confines of the anomaly both torchlights suddenly died, and the frantic flickering of the emergency lamp went down to a more normal rhythm. Weird. The tiredness did not abate, Voronin noticed.
Perhaps that's why he made a beeline for the mouldy couch on a corner of the office. He just needed a moment to catch his breath, that was all.
Lukash looked hesitant for half a second before he plopped down on the other end of the couch. "Sometimes you have good ideas."
"Unlike you, you mean," Voronin clarified. "The anomaly seems harmless my ass."
"Didn't kill us, right? Only the torches." The Freedomer patted his pockets in search of something. "Fuck, I'm out of batteries."
He took out the PDA, presumably to use its battery for the torchlight, and stared at its screen with his mouth open like a gaping fish.
"Which date is it?" It was an odd question, but it was the Freedomer's strangled voice what made him uneasy. "Which is the damn date!"
"It’s the thirtieth of May," Voronin failed to see the relevance of the date, but the Freedomer seemed to think it mattered.
Lukash let out a hollow chuckle and now Voronin was starting to worry the Freedomer had gone off the deep end.
"Nope, it's the second of June." He let the information sink in before continuing in a panicked whisper, "What the hell happened in that room?"
That wasn't possible. At all. At most they spent fifteen minutes there, probably much less. A gloomy silence fell between them as Voronin took his time to face the truth. Either the PDA was broken or it was all the anomaly's fault. Voronin would bet his hand on the later. If time was slower inside the purple bubble that would explain the odd details, like the exhaustion, and the lights strange behaviour. Sakharov's team would be delighted by this discovery but all it inspired in him was dread.
However, the last thing he wanted now was to think in the Zone's ability to toy with the flow of time. Voronin closed his eyes and sighed. That felt nice, he was so tired.
#
It was cold. He noticed it without opening his eyes yet.
Olga must have fallen asleep and forgot to put more logs in the hearth. He could in fact feel her pressed against his side, burrowing into his warmth. He loved their quiet afternoons at home, when they would inevitably fall asleep before a roaring fire and wake up with enough time to have a round of lazy sex before going to dine with her sister and brother-in-law.
Any moment now Olga would wake up. Then she would then straddle him and --
And then he remembered Olga had divorced him and left years ago, sadly telling him that his commitment to the military surpassed his commitment to her. He was now married to the Zone, and to Duty.
It all came back in a rush, the dark bunker and its time warping anomaly. He must have fallen asleep in that disgusting excuse of a couch. And the person draped over him... Voronin finally opened his eyes and saw that yes, the person curled against him and with an arm thrown over his waist was none other than Lukash. He shoved the Freedomer off of him. Lukash landed on the dusty floor and woke up startled.
"Wha- what happen'd," he slurred, still half asleep and disoriented.
Voronin regarded his confusion with a small swell of vindictive amusement, yet he quickly schooled his face in a disapproving scowl. "We fell asleep."
"And that's bad?"
In normal circumstances it wouldn't be, no. But he was wary of the effects the time warping anomaly might have in them. Besides, Voronin was irritated by their current situation, and for finding the Freedomer sleeping all over him. "I suppose that for an undisciplined oaf like you it isn't."
"Aw, you tell me the prettiest things," the Freedomer grunted moodily as he got up from floor.
After a meagre snack of stale bread, conducted in tense silence and full of angry glares at each other, they were finally ready to face the dark corridors of this floor.
It turned out to be pretty damn similar to what they had seen so far: more empty rooms, more dust, and more scattered emergency lights that barely illuminated anything. Voronin was down to his last battery for the torchlight, and Lukash was out of luck because PDA batteries were vastly different from the ones used on torches.
He wasn't very happy about how the Freedomer hovered near him, but he supposed leaving him behind to find the way for himself would hardly be decent. After all they had more possibilities to get out if they cooperated, no matter how grudgingly they did so. Plus, he didn't want to risk getting shot in the back.
The dreary atmosphere of the place did nothing to alleviate his slowly growing irritation. He'd woken in a bad mood, still tired and with a headache that only went to worse the longer he stayed awake.
He was slightly distracted when they found a room resembling a half-dismantled lab. There was a lot of big equipment he catalogued as junk, mainly because he couldn't begin to imagine its purpose, and a lone computer gathering dust in a desk against the wall.
Lukash mood brightened considerably when he saw the computer. "Oh yeah, let the expert work on that!"
"Expert?"
The Freedomer grinned widely while cleaning the cobwebs hanging over the screen. "Hacking was my main hobby before, in the Big Land. Can't say I'm a pro, but once I managed to modify my energy bill. And no one noticed! Well, later I learned they did, but actually..."
Voronin closed his eyes stopped paying attention. His head felt like he got sand scratching his brain. There was a buzzing in his ears, or maybe it was an echo of Lukash's inane prattle. How in the Lord's name could he be so cheerful? Wasn't his head killing him too?
"Huh," the Freedomer finally shut up, thank God. "All the files are encrypted. Or maybe just very messed up, the system is heavily corrupted."
"Forget it," Voronin told him. It was unlikely they would find the key out of this place in a broken computer.
"Nah, I can try to –"
"I said forget it," he said much curter than before. Didn't Lukash see this was a waste of time? They should be looking for a way out, not playing with broken junk.
"I don't follow your orders," the Freedomer snapped. "And I think this could be interesting."
In other circumstances Voronin might have agreed with him, but the constant sensation of sand in his brain, and the strange greyed colours at the edge of his vision's field, had him at the brink of screaming in frustration. And Lukash answer made him explode.
"Then stay. And find the way out on your own." Voronin made up his mind, he was going his way and Lukash was welcome to spend as much time with the computer as he liked. If he could even see it in the dark. Then an insidious thought irrupted in his mind through the headache, "And if you try to ambush me ever again I'll gut you like a fish."
"You can go fuck yourself!" Lukash yelled in anger.
The Freedomer kept yelling nonsense at him, but Voronin was already on the doorway and ignored him. Leaving Lukash behind was invigorating, now if his headache vanished he'd truly be a happy man.
- 11
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From the Zone with love