"You think they got cold feet, or something?" Dmitry asked with a smirk on their way back.
So, so many stairs. Good thing they didn't loot that much.
"Might've seen how much they'd have to climb," Konrad grunted. "Bet I would die without these electrifying artifacts, too. The Moonlight here is doing the heavy lifting."
That said, the Wolves got a bunch of those as well.
"What if they came down while we were fighting, saw the Poltergeists, and—"
'They would've told me,' the parallel brain noted. 'But your friends never entered the building.'
Yeah. It was odd.
And having that many stairs to climb while thinking about it—
Konrad was starting to worry.
Only to see Walther's face as they reached the surface, and—
His pistol, pointed straight at them.
"It's us," he yelled—but the man didn't relax.
'Something's not right,' was all the warning he got before—
Pow. Pow-pow-pow-pow-click.
Half the shots hit him square on the chest, but thank the spirits he took the stairs first.
If not for his Mama's Beads, someone would have died, but—
"Walther?! The fuck're you doing, stop," Konrad shouted at the top of his lungs.
Luckily, that pistol wasn't as powerful as the FiveseveN, but it still hurt a lot.
And their friend even kept squeezing the trigger long after the pistol clicked empty.
Was he zombified?
With a final leap, Konrad went for a tackle, and—
One glance at the farmhouse was enough to figure it out.
"Fuck," he grunted, pinning Walther down, counting all the bodies. Things had gotten even bloodier since they had left. Wolves. Some strangers, too. All dead or dying.
'Controller,' the brain warned, steering his gaze, and—
Another big-headed mutant strangled Yuri almost to death.
"Dmitry," Konrad gritted out as Walther started to struggle, but—
"I'm out," the Captain muttered, clutching the empty Gepard.
Damn it. They even knew there would be more of these fuckers out here.
'I got this one,' the voice claimed, but before Konrad could ask—
That same weird feeling again, of his soul leaving his body.
Why? How? The Controller wasn't even looking at him.
None of that usual 'reaching out to grab your mind' kinda thing but—
He was already inside him. He strangled the leader of the Wolves. Relived the past minutes and the carnage before finally letting go. Feeling tired and overwhelmed, and collapsing, before—
Blink, and Konrad was himself again.
A horrifying experience, and the fact that he knew what happened made it all the worse.
'Sorry, but that was still the fastest way to deal with it,' the parallel brain claimed.
No regret in his voice whatsoever.
"D-Did you," Konrad protested, but that was as far as he had gotten, throwing up.
He only had time to lean away and not vomit into Walther's face.
"The hell was that?!" Dmitry demanded, too, jumping back.
Now he was holding his Krinkov, but had no idea what to aim at.
The Wolf below him didn't stop to struggle, and Yuri—
He fell to his knees, hands on his throat, looking at the scene in complete disbelief.
"T-This fucker," Konrad spat, stopping to cough some more bile up. "He turned me into a Controller to take out the real one. Holy shit. Please never do this again."
Or if he had to—do it before all their comrades were dead already.
Shit. The reality of the situation had only started to sink in.
And while he had already emptied his stomach, he couldn't stop heaving.
They were away for what, an hour?
And all the Wolves were gone.
Well, except Yuri and Walther, but the latter was still struggling against him.
"Why won't he stop?" Konrad rasped. "Another Controller?!"
'None that I can feel,' the parallel brain claimed. 'But he might be too far gone.'
And as if to confirm, Walther began to scream incomprehensible words.
Was that Russian? Or German?
The only thing Konrad caught was 'kill me' since he repeated it a few times, but—
"He's in pain," Dmitry said, stating the obvious as he knelt by their side. "And has no idea who or where he is. It's almost like he had turned into one of those zombies."
B-But they killed the Controller, right? Right?!
'I put him in a deep sleep, but it doesn't matter,' the voice boomed. 'Seems like most of his memories and personality are gone. All he remembers are his friends—and murdering them.'
He fucking felt bad for those mutants earlier?!
Screw them. Fuck them all.
"Can't you restore it?!" Konrad tried, still pinning the poor guy, but—
'How would I restore something I never knew about? Walther's gone.'
"No, no, come on, do something," he pleaded, but the next thing he knew—
BLAM.
Walther's head exploded, his blood covering him from head to toe.
Yuri stood over them with trembling hands and a smoking shotgun, then—
He fell to his knees, too.
By the time Dmitry tackled him, there was no fight left in him to begin with.
'Same thing,' the parallel brain claimed. 'He retained a little more of his memories and personality, but—he'd never be the same after this, either.'
"I freed him," the broken leader of the Wolves rasped. "You got to free me, too."
"No, fucking stop it already," Konrad pleaded, still holding the headless corpse. Even his sanity started to unravel by now. "There has to be something we can do."
'Killing him would be what you'd call the most humane option,' the voice offered.
But he shook his head with everything he got.
'Then—all I can do is erase even more of his memories. This massacre would be gone, but so would most of his personality, too. And, well, no telling what would happen after.'
"Do it," Konrad demanded, finally letting go of the bloodied corpse and backing away.
The Captain blinked, his eyes mirroring the same horror.
But Yuri didn't struggle against him. He was a broken shell of a man, until—
'There you go,' the brain said. 'All he remembers now is that he's a Stalker named Yuri, the leader of a small rookie group in the Zone. His childhood memories will be hazy at best.'
But he definitely stopped shaking, going limp under Dmitry's hands.
'I'd suggest you take him somewhere else, though. If he woke up to this sight—'
"We should take him back to the Bar," Konrad muttered, trying to wipe off all the blood.
But the Captain shook his head.
"I'll carry him back to the railway; he'll be safe there," he offered. "And you clean yourself up. But that's it. We have to find your Strelok guy and help him end whatever this is."
Right. That was their goal from the start.
And now that he knew what those researchers did to that guy's sister—
Even though there was nothing he could throw up anymore, he still tried and tried.
"Cleaning. Right," Konrad muttered, looking over all the blood before noticing Yuri. "You should clean him up, too. And let's fucking hope some friendly Stalkers will pick him up."
But the Captain was right. That was all they could do for now.
And say their final goodbye to the Wolves.