"Cat Two to Cat One," the radio headset crackled to life. "I'm in position."
"Ugh, this is so dumb," Konrad grunted, trying to steal a peek over the roadblock.
His knuckles had already turned white from gripping his new machete so hard.
"No. You're supposed to say, 'Cat One to Cat Two, this is dumb,' kid," Dmitry complained.
But Konrad refused.
"I'm not doing that when it's only the two of us on this channel."
"For now, kid. Only for now," the Captain argued. "Anyway. I'm ready when you are. And I see a potential hostile at eleven o'clock. He's on the ground halfway through the courtyard."
Konrad let out a long sigh.
"If only you'd let me use my actual sword at least—"
But knew the real reason even before Dmitry replied.
"You're the one oh-so-secretive," he noted. "And pulling out a blade from your guitar case in the middle of the bar would have been a little odd. Now, get your shit together and get going."
"Hmpf. You'd better keep me alive, dude," Konrad grunted, climbing over that roadblock at last.
And the first glance at the Wild Territories wasn't even that wild.
As the Captain said, there was a long courtyard with an overpass at the end between two buildings. Someone built a barricade underneath, sealing off the area.
But apart from that, and from nature taking over it all, he didn't see anything odd yet.
Well, except that guy lying on the concrete and moaning on his back.
"Stalker, help," he called out when he noticed Konrad approaching.
Was it a trap? No, it would have been too obvious.
At that point, he'd even appear on his PDA as an orange dot, so he shouldn't have been a bandit.
"Do you have a bandage? Or even a belt, man. A fucking tripwire almost cut my leg off."
"Um, sure," he yelled back, but his eyes kept scanning his surroundings. "It's in my—oh."
Right. He left his guitar case and the AK in the bar. After putting on a bulletproof vest and buying that machete, he didn't want any extra weight to slow him down.
But he should have had a medkit on him somewhere.
"Hurry up, it's bleeding, like, bad," the Stalker pleaded, so Konrad did.
He was about twenty paces away when his PDA picked up another signal.
And a third and fourth one, without any new dots appearing.
That was a bad sign, but he didn't hear anything weird.
He didn't hear the shot, either, but he could feel it.
The Mama's Beads were already earning their keep by turning a direct hit into a glancing shot.
It still spun him around, and the Stone Blood had to heal that wound, but he survived.
And he jumped into cover immediately.
"Fuck," he yelled, trying to figure out where it came from. "Stalker, you all right?"
But no answer came.
Risking a glance, it seemed the guy on the ground was dead, too. A fresh pool of blood was growing around him fast, with two new holes on his chest.
The bastards must have used him as bait, then killed him too.
Well, he had no time to think about it or look around too much.
Bullets cracked in the air and around him on the concrete as someone peppered him from afar.
"Dmitry," he grunted. "They must be on that overpass. At least four. But they're in cover."
"What cover—?"
That was all he heard before a thunder washed over the courtyard.
When he glanced up again, there was a new hole on the elevated walkway ahead, with blood dripping through it. A second crack, and another number disappeared from his PDA.
Two grey dots appeared instead, and the Captain's words.
"Run."
He didn't have to say it twice.
Konrad left his cover, sprinting towards the overpass, leaving the now-dead Stalker behind.
He was lucky.
There was a ladder by the barricade, and he climbed into the elevated corridor from that.
His PDA showed two more people nearby, and it was not wrong.
"Who the fuck even brings an antimaterial rifle to the Zone?" a mercenary moaned, trying to crawl behind some thicker cover. "We need reinforcements at the entrance from the—"
But Konrad didn't wait for him to finish.
His machete cut through his throat, then sliced the second guy's chest as well.
After that nasty trick and lure, he didn't even hesitate to kill them.
"And who the fuck shoots people like this at random?!" Konrad seethed, then, remembering his new radio headset, reported back. "The overpass is clear. Four dead plus a friendly."
"Roger. Repositioning."
And that left him with some time to kill while inspecting their gear.
For sure, they were no amateurs like the Stalkers he had met before.
They wore bulletproof vests. One even had thermal goggles. And their weaponry?
It was something else.
Every rifle had a scope and a suppressor.
And while they still carried a PDA for whatever reason, they all had their own radio sets.
Like him and Dmitry, after they had spent all their money and then some at the bar.
"Man, I fucking love this gun," the Captain claimed as he climbed up behind him.
The reason they went with these stupid callsigns in the first place.
Gepard M6 Lynx.
Because whoever named this huge bullpup rifle thought that one big cat was not enough.
"You'd fucking better, too," Konrad grunted. "Because I had to cash in a mana crystal for that."
Like with his blade, he couldn't feel their charges anymore. He figured he couldn't get his mana back with them, either. But at least this made it easier to exchange them for money.
"Oh man, these guys weren't messing around, either," Dmitry said, poking at their gear.
He picked up a long rifle, still appearing tiny next to his big gun.
Well, if anything, his expression told him that size wasn't everything.
"SIG SG 550," the Captain announced, almost rubbing his face against one. "At least they had good taste. And they're chambered in .300 Blackout?! Damn. Talk about fancy."
"There you go, gun nerding again," Konrad complained, scratching at his shoulder.
The wound he got earlier had already healed, but he couldn't say he survived without a scratch.
"Did they hit you? Or did you hear them shoot you?" Dmitry asked when he noticed it. "This is a big, heavy subsonic round, so it's the perfect choice for stealth."
"So that's why I didn't hear them at all?" he grunted. "But I sure did hear you."
"Haha, this thing is brutal," the Captain fangirled about the Gepard. Or Lynx? Konrad couldn't tell. "But kinda wish I could take these SIGs with me, too. We've to come back for 'em later."
"Definitely not now," he said, noticing the number going up on his PDA again.
"Reinforcements?"
Whoops.
"One of them called them in," Konrad admitted. "I forgot to tell. But it's only four more."
"Well, I want 'em all dead, so—mind going out to greet them?" Dmitry asked, reloading his rifle.
Konrad couldn't help but wonder how many more of them would show up.
But rolling back his shoulders with a sigh, he nodded.
"You're lucky this new artifact is holding up so far," he said. "And I'll admit, now they're pissing me off, too." He wiped his machete clean on one of the corpses, only to bloody it again anyway.
Now he was ready, and he was eager.
"Okay," he said. "Let's do this. I'm going in."