"D-didn't you say his face was—"
No, there was no mistake. The Captain lying in that bunker had a uniform half-eaten by acid.
So how the hell did he have such flawless skin all over?!
"Ah, you see, we put a Meat Chunk on his face, and that did the trick," Hermann explained.
Except that it didn't explain anything at all.
"A piece of meat, and all the burns were gone?" Alex scowled at the survivor.
Those two he found in the wreck looked nothing like this one, for sure.
But the survivor remained unconscious, making interrogation impossible.
"You ask the strangest things for a veteran Stalker," Corporal Sokolov noted, still wary of him.
Why? Was the Major the only one out of touch here?
Sure, he has been in the Zone before. He spent a few weeks searching for the lost crew, and he had seen some weirdness. Anomalies, they called them. Signs of a mutated wildlife.
But everything in this lab looked like it belonged in a sci-fi.
"This," the scientist held up a weird, glowing item. Food ingredient? "The Meat Chunk artifact that speeds up healing. Unfortunately, we also irradiated him a bit more than expected, but—"
"W-what?" Alex demanded, facing one shock after another. "Will he be all right?"
"Yes, yes, he'll be mighty fine in a few days," another researcher entered the living quarters.
The oldest of them all, and if he wasn't mistaken, he went by the name of Professor Korolev.
He checked the survivor, pulling out a crystalline item from his tattered uniform.
"The radiation from his system is already gone, thanks to this little beauty," he claimed. "But it will take some time until his body readjusts. To be blunt, he'll have to sleep it out."
The Major let out a relieved sigh.
So that was at least one survivor, even if he couldn't comprehend what had happened to him.
"To be honest," he muttered, sinking onto a folding bed, too. "I've been away from the Zone for a while, and this is all new and sudden to me. Would it be okay to ask a few questions?"
"About our research?!" Korolev's eyes lit up. "Of course. Whatever you'd like to know?"
"Calm down, professor," the Corporal said, being the least enthusiastic here. "We still don't know who this guy is. He says he's a Major, but never told us his unit. He could be a Russian spy."
Which—yes, that's exactly what he was, save for the wrong nationality.
He worked for the Ukrainian military intelligence, with a speciality in deep reconnaissance.
Meaning, he'd analyze reports or even go deep behind enemy lines and gather information on his own. About troop numbers, armaments, and assessing threats from outside forces.
And this. This wasn't it.
This was a nightmare from an alien planet he thought was his home.
And no. He already had this thought before Professor Korolev even started his explanation.
A story about anomalies creating artifacts, nothing short of magical. And very radioactive, too.
Theories about Psyonic energies that could control—or completely fry—a human's mind.
The mention of the Stalkers who fought zombies and brains floating in big tanks, and—
"Now that our Strelok and this Captain Bandera have disabled the Brain Scorcher," he gushed. Yes, almost like a teenage girl. "Who knows how many new miracles we'll discover?"
How did the Hero of Kyiv get caught up in all this?
Why? When? What was his goal?
And who was this Strelok guy?
No, there was that third one there, too.
The fake journalist who might've kicked everything off at the start.
This foreigner, who might have been an actual spy.
Konrad Halstadt.
***
'Two feet right,' the parallel brain said. 'And the strongest signature is in your arm's reach now.'
Yeah. Except that Konrad stood in front of buzzing electrical arches between molten rails.
A critter tried to cross a minute ago, but touching the metal—
Zzzzap. It was dead, fried, and gone.
"You sure?" he muttered, voice low. "How do I get it out, though?"
Given that the artifact remained invisible.
'Hmm. With my limited telekinesis?' the voice offered, though it sounded like a question. 'If that thing's no heavier than a pound and no further than two feet, I can—'
"That won't work," Konrad rejected, shaking his head.
The Wolves knew nothing about his magic.
Or that he lost it, replacing it with the memories of a big, floating brain.
If they didn't figure it out during his drunken rampage, he'd rather not blow his cover now.
Nor fry his arms in a localized electric storm.
'Guess I could also give it a little push? Like a gust of wind to expel it from the anomaly.'
"How's that less conspicuous?" he scowled, but the voice laughed inside.
'Pick up a pebble or something, idiot. We'll make it look like a lucky throw.'
Oh. That did make some sense.
Sometimes his parallel brain turned out to be a lot smarter than expected.
And other times, it was super annoying.
'I can hear that, you know,' the voice scoffed as he looked for pebbles.
"If you expect me to say sorry, that's tough luck," Konrad grunted, picking up a handful. "You're in my head, and I'm still on the fence whether I should let you stay there."
The response was silence, heavy with resentment.
Yeah. He could also feel its thoughts, whether he wanted it or not.
"For now, let's give it a shot," he said, throwing the pebble, and—
The anomalous electric charges zapped it into molten lava.
It almost shattered his eardrums in the process, too.
"Holy shit, you good?" Walther asked, looking up from his mutant steak. "That's one of the meanest Electro anomalies I have seen so far. Crossing the rails will be a pain."
Right. If they all carried those Sparker artifacts, they were even more vulnerable to this.
"I'm fine, I was far enough," Konrad yelled, waiting for the anomaly to calm.
But no artifact appeared.
'Of course, 'cuz I didn't blow it out,' the parallel brain scoffed. 'Why help if you'll get rid of me?'
Ugh. Yeah, okay.
He did raise a valid point.
"Look, I promised," Konrad muttered, keeping his voice low again. "If you help me get my magic back, and won't be so annoying—um. Even if I expelled you, I'd make sure, you know."
Could Lily give him his own vessel back in Kasserlane?
Or deal with the thing without actually killing it, or chasing Konrad into madness?
'If your little lover can't, you'd better promise to keep me alive inside you,' the voice demanded. No, he went even further. 'I want that in writing. Or, like, an unbreakable pact or something.'
Konrad sighed, picking up another pebble.
"We'll figure something out. I already promised," he said. "But if you keep sabotaging—"
At that word, his hand moved against his will, triggering the anomaly with a pebble again.
It was even louder now, and he was about to scold that thing, when—
"Holy hell, is that a Moonlight?!" the Wolves yelled, forgetting about their meals.
They all jumped up, pointing fingers at the artifact that finally revealed itself.
A big, translucent blue ball of electricity, rolling on the ground, on the other side of the railway.
'You're welcome,' the parallel brain scoffed.
And yeah, that was helpful.
But how was he to cross the anomaly and pick it up?!