Konrad's first encounter with a Teleportation Anomaly was—
Sudden.
He almost missed it, too.
But one moment he trailed behind Strelok in the dark, and the next he was gone.
'Nope,' the voice corrected. 'You're the one who teleported fifty paces back. Turn right, and you can still see him. How the hell did he notice it before you?'
Notice what?
All Konrad felt was a tiny bump like when an elevator reached its destination.
No pain, no definite sensations. Neither big, fancy portals, nor waiting in a void between start and finish. He was there, and then he wasn't, and he almost didn't notice.
"Wow. Yeah, this is definitely not like that thing we saw," he muttered.
Not only could he not see anything, but—
"You good?" Strelok asked, returning to meet him. "You got lucky, kid. The first time I ran into these, it sent me flying. I fell thirty feet and broke my leg."
Ugh. Yeah. He might have been lucky, then.
"Some of them are even nastier," the Stalker explained. "They send you inside a circle of Anomalies, and no matter which way you go, you always end up back in the center."
Wait a second. How did he know, if—
"Got trapped in one of those," Strelok said, more talkative than ever. "Took me three days to dig myself out. Long out of food, and—"
"How?" Konrad interrupted. "Or rather—when?"
They met at the Brain Scorcher two days ago, so—
"It's been years, kid," the Stalker grumbled, letting out a long sigh. "Before the Monolith would show its face, or they'd set up the Scorcher."
Huh?
"Were you also part of that rescue mission after the Second Incident?" Konrad asked.
But Strelok shook his head.
"No, but I must've been one of the first Stalkers to arrive after they called it off," he said. "I've been here for years, but—this was as far as I could ever go until now."
Interesting. And also ominous.
"Are these Anomalies that bad?"
"If you come unprepared?" Strelok nodded, rummaging in his backpack. "I had no chance of going through it until I met the scientists at Yantar. They told me about the Detector."
"The one you gave to Dmitry?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
A scoff. A laugh. The old man pulled out something big.
A secure container?
"That was my Anomaly Detector," he said. "What I'm talking about is this. The Detector Artifact."
He opened the container, and—
Even Konrad could feel the heat emanating from it.
Whatever that thing was, it was crazy radioactive.
But hold it forward, and—
A semi-translucent white ball appeared floating. And it was right at the spot where Konrad had disappeared earlier. Move the Artifact a little, and it revealed two more, and—
"You had this thing all along and didn't use it?!" he demanded.
"I got it about a month ago. But as you can see, it's so radioactive, my Bubble alone can't neutralise it. I try to use it as little as possible, but—we couldn't go through this field without it."
So he did have a plan.
The parallel brain seemed quite interested, too.
'Is this what they put in the Anomaly Detectors? I heard my researchers moan about supply.'
"Yes and no," Strelok grunted, closing off the secure container. "They use lower-grade variants. Compass, Radar—this thing's so rare, the scientist only theorised it'd exist."
But speaking of—
"Didn't you have them purify it?" Konrad asked.
This radioactivity reminded him of how his Mama's Beads behaved.
The Stalker scoffed.
"I did. But this is how this thing is. And any lesser variant would fail to detect the teleportation bubbles. I should know—I've tried them all."
'Interesting,' the parallel brain muttered. 'Mind if I take a look?'
"How'd you do that without eyes?" Konrad scoffed, rolling his eyes.
Because he actually had some.
'Ugh. How 'bout you hold it in your hands and shut up for a few minutes?' he snapped back. 'If I could analyze it, I could replicate its effects, too. Without the excessive radiation.'
Strelok blinked, but handed the secure container over.
"Be my guest," he grunted. "But if it were that simple—I spent years hunting it down."
And he was definitely right about the radioactivity.
Konrad had to put away all his Artifacts and even use a backup Crystal with his Bubble. All that so he wouldn't irradiate himself right away. But it still wasn't enough.
"So they put these things into the detectors?" he muttered, turning it around.
He couldn't compare it to anything.
A slab of stone? But it was morphing and moving, and it was very, very hot, too.
"Yeah. Most Artifacts have a use in research or in the military," Strelok claimed. "Why do you think this place is crawling with Stalkers and scientists? There's the Gauss Rifle, for example—"
"That EM impulse gun?" Konrad asked, shifting that stone from one hand to the other.
He heard the term in an article about navy upgrades, back in his first life.
But those were Destroyer-sized weapon systems, and weren't exactly reliable, either.
Turns out, shooting a laser was still simpler than charging a railgun.
"Yeah. They couldn't figure out the batteries, and capacitors and stuff. But using a Battery Artifact instead—bam, they got a handheld Gauss Rifle prototype."
'Oh? So he did come across my researchers,' the parallel brain noted. 'It was their project, too.'
"What? I saw nothing like that in that lab," Konrad scowled, his palms getting way too hot.
'Not in that lab, of course. But the personnel would sometimes rotate between them.'
Ugh. How many labs did those lunatics have?!
'I know of about ten,' the voice noted. 'But I'm sure there's more.'
By the spirits—
"Okay, how long do I have to hold this thing?!" Konrad groaned, the tips of his fingers already burning, Antirad Artifacts or not. "Where did you even get this?"
Now, not even passing it from one hand to the other was enough.
His fingers danced on it; he tried to blow on it and everything, but damn—
No wonder Strelok didn't use it when he didn't have to.
"From a half-collapsed hidden chamber in the Agroprom Underground," he said with a shrug. Then another sigh. "Or rather, I should say Ghost found it for me, before—"
Uh, oh. So far, Konrad managed to avoid that topic, but—
'It's done, you can put it back now,' the voice interrupted the awkward silence.
And right about time, too.
A few more seconds, and Konrad would have thrown it away, no matter what.
"So, what did you find out about it?" Strelok asked, raising an eyebrow.
'Find out?' the parallel brain scoffed. 'I figured out how it works, copied the mechanisms, and bypassed the side effects. I'm ready to use Detector within fifty paces of Konrad.'
The Stalker laughed.
"Fifty paces? Yeah, sure. Even this Artifact could only reveal the closest—"
But before he finished, the brain released a massive wave of Psyonic Energy.
Fifty paces? It was more like seventy, where all those bubbles had appeared around them.
Hundreds. No. Thousands, completely at random, forming an almost impenetrable labyrinth.
Shit. No wonder Strelok or that rescue mission never got through this.
But now, they might have gotten a chance.