Snorks. Those were the things they had to look out for.
The name the scientists gave to the feral zombies who looked more like animals than humans.
And it wasn't their looks alone. They transformed over time as well.
Their bodies adapted. It became stronger.
Stranger.
And this secret underground lab must have been crawling with them.
"Insane how many things are still buried under the Zone," Dmitry muttered as they descended.
Ten flights of stairs, underneath an ordinary farm building where they didn't belong.
And the entrance was only about two hundred paces from the scientists' mobile lab.
But this thing—
It was ancient.
Well, at least three times as old as Konrad's current vessel.
And on the broken door, hanging from its rusted hinges, the words Lab X-16 greeted them.
"What on Earth is this place?" he asked, squeezing through the narrow gap. "And why is it here?"
"You're asking the wrong person," the Captain muttered, turning on his flashlight. "But this place is creeping me out. Can't tell if it predates the nuclear disaster or they built it after."
Of course, it didn't exist in any documents they could find, nor was it on the map.
But at the very least, their PDA was still working and showed nobody else nearby.
"It's very retro," Konrad noted, poking his chipped machete against a broken chair.
Had to be mid-to-late '80s, as much as he knew about Soviet architecture.
"And these perforated steel steps are still going down," Dmitry sighed.
He couldn't bring his Gepard down here.
Not that it wouldn't fit—it was a tiny bullpup for being a huge handheld cannon. But a shot's volume would've killed their eardrums in the closed, tight spaces of the lab.
He borrowed Sokolov's shotgun instead, clipping the flashlight to the barrel's side.
Turns out, he managed to sell all the remaining expensive SIG rifles in bulk while he was asleep.
And the scientists were still running their tests on Konrad's artifacts, so he felt a bit naked, too.
"Well, I guess we have to follow the trail of blood Strelok had left behind," he said.
And a chill ran down his spine.
Who was this guy, anyway?
He saw no signs of magic, not that he could pick up on the residual mana as he was now.
But from the signs he had left behind, he was a fucking one-man army.
Konrad counted at least two dozen corpses—actual dead ones—only fifty paces in.
And yes. That corridor kept on going, with more stairs leading down.
Every door along the way was either welded shut or led to tiny storage rooms with nothing in them. There was only one way—forward, through even more corpses and wrecked furniture.
But hey, at least they couldn't get lost in this creepy place, right?
"What was that?" Dmitry froze, crouching with his shotgun raised.
"What was what?" Konrad asked in a whisper, too. "I didn't hear anything."
And there was no way the Captain's hearing was better than his, after shooting his favorite gun so many times. There was no sign of the earlier whispers, either.
Strelok had disabled them for good.
"It sounded like a crack and some raspy breathing," Dmitry said, his voice low.
But they saw nothing in the dark corridor ahead.
"Could have been the wind," Konrad noted. "Or, you know. This whole place is one big concrete box. It's very good at conducting sound, but it might have been miles away or—"
It wasn't.
The moment he moved, a storage room door flew open, and something jumped out.
It resembled a human, but moved like a frog.
And whatever it was, it gave him no time to take a better look.
BLAM.
The shotgun stole its momentum, and for a split second, the creature was hanging in the air.
Then it landed and tried to attack again.
"Oh, hell no," Konrad yelled, striking it down with his blade. Again. And again. Until it remained completely still. "You're not supposed to survive a shotgun blast to the face, damn it."
"So this is a Snork?" Dmitry panted, too, more from the scare than from tiring himself out.
Whatever it was, Konrad killed it.
But yeah, kicking it over, it was still a human. But the ragged gear—especially the gas mask stuck on its head—made it look like a wild animal more than anything.
And a tough one at that.
"Look at that leg," Dmitry scowled, pointing his shotgun at its calf. "No human should've had muscles like that. Not even a professional cyclist, man."
"No wonder it could leap that high," Konrad grunted, too, wiping his blade clean.
So that's what they were facing?
And how many more?
"Let's get going," the Captain mumbled, getting up. "Strelok said something about a big underground silo in the center. That's where the emission was coming from."
So great that they could talk while he was unconscious.
Why the hell did he let him go?!
"Okay, I'll take point," he groaned, holding yet another flashlight in his free hand.
The corridor was long, and it had quite a few twists and turns along the way.
More stairs. Dead bodies were littering the floor.
And despite all that, they ran into more and more of these ambushes along the way.
Zombified Stalkers and Snorks jumped them at every corner.
"How did that fucker clear this place out if these are still here?!" Konrad moaned, wiping sweat off his forehead. "And how long until we reach that silo? We've been going for an hour now."
But a few more steps, and he got his answer.
One, he didn't like.
"Here you go," Dmitry mumbled, having to pull him back from the edge.
A very deep, very dark, terrifying edge.
It came without a warning—or any railings.
A huge hole in the ground, extending above and below the corridor. And only a sketchy stairway ran in a spiral along the edges. Rusted perforated steel steps. Again.
Not something he wanted to step on.
But that was still the better part.
He could now tell where the psy emissions originated from.
Suspended in the silo was a huge antenna, at least a hundred feet tall. And at its bottom—
"Is that—a brain?!" the Captain scowled, kneeling at the edge.
"There's no way that's a brain," Konrad shook his head. "Even if it looks like a brain. It's like eighty feet deep and twenty paces from us. You wouldn't even see it from this distance."
Or, at the very least, it wouldn't appear this huge.
"So by disabling the broadcast," Dmitry mumbled. "Did he, like, kill that huge brain?"
It would have made sense, but Konrad could only hope it didn't.
"How are we supposed to bring that back?!"
And the better question: how would the scientists reverse-engineer it to make a psy shield?
"That's it, I quit," the Captain announced, taking a few steps back from the edge. "I thought your magic and this whole 'came from another world' thing was weird. But this takes the cake."
Yeah. He felt the same, but he couldn't give up if they had come this far already.
"Let's take a look around," Konrad pleaded. "There must be something in here that makes sense."
Like an actual relay station, or a radio. Printed instructions?
Not that he was an engineer or a scientist.
But he was desperate to find anything logical in this place.