Describing the place as unassuming would have been correct—
Had it not been for the sea of blood and smoking wrecks.
"And I thought you couldn't bring cars into the Zone," Konrad grunted, taking in the carnage.
"Does this scene tell you that you should?" the leader of the Wolves scoffed. "What the hell is this place, anyway? A military staging area? Or like a Cold War-era storage space?"
"Those trucks are pretty new," Dmitry pointed out, but yeah.
They couldn't get too much information out of this, except—
Stuff the parallel brain heard from the Psy Dog.
Not something Konrad could have referenced, but—
"You sure you want to search this place?" he asked instead.
"I mean, if they killed so many people here, there has to be something important nearby."
Ugh. Walther's logic was something else.
"We don't know if they were human yet," Yuri argued. "It could have been a single pig or a mutant to scare us, Stalkers, off. That said, it is a lot of blood."
You have to be kidding. Were they that eager to go?!
And yeah, the most disturbing part was that despite all that blood, they found no corpses at all.
Somehow, it was even worse than if the dead had been littering the ground.
"I have a bad feeling about this," Konrad said, and not for the first time.
And the truth was—he was the only one with a real reason to go down there.
Yes. Down.
"Found it," one of the Wolves yelled, calling over his comrades. "This is the only place without much blood, so it stood out for me right away. The staircase is behind that door."
Yep. Definitely X-16 vibes, and Konrad didn't want an encore on that.
But the parallel brain—
'Chances are, we'd find something down there to help you get your magic back.'
Too tempting. Even if every single cell in his body hated the idea.
"Ugh. I had already felt sorry for Stella Nord, but now? A random voice telling me to do weird shit is rough," he mumbled, approaching the trap door. "So, how are we going to do this?"
"We have no idea how big this place is, or what we'll find down there," Yuri pointed out.
But Konrad had a solid idea.
'It's huge,' the voice confirmed, too. 'Much larger than that silo was in X-16. And I can feel at least one of those Controller mutants loitering down there. Will they be all right?'
Nope. He could already tell.
But how would he explain it?
"Okay. I'm going off on a hunch, but that monster we met in the woods earlier," he ended up saying. "It might have escaped from here. And I'm sure it had a few pals, too, so—"
"Yeah, our best bet is if I take point," Dmitry nodded.
For real?! Why was he so eager?
They didn't even have time to exchange any info, but—
"Go in and out, a quick scouting run," the Captain suggested. "The rest of you would hide up here and cover the entrance. Chill a bit. And if it's safe, we can loot the place together."
Yuri grunted.
"If anyone else had suggested this, I'd say suspicious," he said with a smirk. "But when it comes from the Hero of Kyiv? And Konrad, too, has been doing so much for us."
Wait. He didn't volunteer for anything.
Dmitry still had his Psy Dampener, but the parallel brain—
'I'm prepared this time,' he claimed. 'Whatever we meet down there, I have confidence that I could repel it now. And if we run into friendly mutants, I could provide safe passage.'
Why was everyone but him so eager?
Ah, because the others never felt the same thing he did?
The Controller ripping his soul straight out of his body, and—
"All right, then," Yuri said, checking the breach of his weapon. "Let's say you get ten minutes to scout, and if you don't return by then, we go down in force to bust you out."
Oh, sure.
Because if a Controller took over them, why not throw the rest of the Wolves at it, too?
For spending so much time in the Zone, they sure had no idea what horrors they could find.
"Ten minutes," Dmitry nodded, checking his PDA. "Should be enough in the first round."
'It won't be,' the parallel brain objected. 'We'd need at least an hour.'
But yeah. Konrad was the only one hearing him.
And he didn't want to go in the first place, so—
Strange that this time nobody asked him.
"Let's go," the Captain grunted, with the Gepard in hand.
"Wait," Konrad froze at the entrance. "You're not taking that thing downstairs, right?"
Goodbye, precious hearing. Goodbye, sweet whispers from his wife.
"I mean, if we do run into one of those monsters, I'd rather have something that can actually kill it in one shot," he said. And yeah, yeah, fair, but— "It's a bullpup, so it's perfect for CQB."
"I'm not worried about its handling," Konrad groaned, but he might as well have given up.
"Time is ticking," Walther noted. "I don't want those guys behind to overtake us."
Then why stop in a sketchy place like this?! Ugh.
"Taking point," Dmitry nodded and disappeared down the staircase.
"I have a bad feeling about this," Konrad sighed, in case he hadn't said it already.
But what could he do? He followed his friend below.
"Ten minutes, and we'll come for you," Yuri yelled after them, then their radios crackled to life, too. "Check, check. Can you still hear me? Until the broadcast cuts off, tell us what you see."
Well, that was easy.
"So far, only blood and darkness," Konrad replied. "And there's a maniac with a hand cannon running dead ahead. These stairs are even narrower than X-16 was."
And the parallel brain said this place was bigger?
'It has a few extra entrances, you know,' he claimed. 'And some cargo lifts as well. But I can already tell you that the Controller got away through this one earlier.'
"Yeah, no shit, you reckon?!" Konrad grumbled, unsheathing his pistol.
The deeper they went, the warmer the air became. But it didn't help when the smell of blood had gotten that much stronger. Not to mention the noises—
Low, metallic groans echoed like heavy hinges crying out for oil, prickling his skin.
"No movement so far," Dmitry reported, but the radio picked up a lot of static. "Copy if you can still hear me? All this rebar and concrete doesn't help."
"I—still—you," Yuri's voice was drowning out, too, half his words cutting off. "—ahead."
And that was the last word they had heard from him, or from anyone on the surface.
"Repeat that last part?" the Captain asked, but no response came. "Guess we're alone again."
If only they were.
But according to the parallel brain—
'Ah, this feels like coming home into a busy house.'
Konrad didn't like that comment. Not one bit.
"How busy are we talking about?" he muttered, turning on his flashlight. "A family of three?"
The voice laughed in his head.
'Three? More like thirty. Makes me wonder how many would still remember me.'
Ugh. Yeah. He wondered, too.
But, well, wasn't that great?