"The Zone" wasn't the correct term for the area filled with bandits, mutants and anomalies anymore, but that's what everyone calls them. There were a few untainted places in the world called "Pure Zones" that were still untouched by devastation. Overall however these places made up for only 10 percent of the Earth's surface by the year 2090 and house only the pompous rich types that got wealthy from the death and misery of others. Duty and freedom were all but disbanded leaving only mercenaries and bandits in their wake. Monolith was starting to rear its big, bad, ugly head again sending crazy fanatics out to massacre everything they saw.

Total population of earth: 251,905.

Obviously things hadn't gone well in or out of The Zone for the last few years

This is the story of a kid in The Zone. That in itself is pretty rare, but this kid didn't even have parents. So as you can imagine he was pretty thick-skinned on things like killing and death, and didn't have much in the way of morality, but he had a perfectly valid excuse: mental instability. It was a shield that protected him from, well, insanity. Despite all this he had one more unique thing about him and that was that he could survive emissions. No drugs, no cover, no tricks. (That may have been the cause of the instability). All they did to him was knock him out like a cinderblock to the head.

This kid had a knack for getting into bad situations and always seemed to get out of them by complete fluke. If bandits attacked, so would mutants. If he was badly injured it would be next to an completely untouched hospital. The one exception was dogs. He hated them with the passion of a thousand burning suns.

Other than all that he hadn't really done anything noteworthy. He simply wandered the ruined countryside investigating small villages and selling artifacts to buy food and ammo. He went toe-to-toe with bandits or mutants every now and again. He stayed away from all the factions he could. That was another one of his talents, sinking into the shadows and waiting for the perfect moment to make a move.

He was walking, just as he always did in the mornings when he was able. Wherever his instincts told him to go is where he went. Today they told him to go north, so he did. His instinct had led him to observe numerous battles between stalkers, mutants, and more anomalies than you could shake a finger at. He didn't have much combat experience but was a fast learner. Watching fights he saw many rookie mistakes that could turn tragic in an instant of bad luck. For instance failing to reload in a few seconds of downtime in a firefight, or listening to music with earbuds when traveling a new path so you couldn't hear your Geiger counter clicking or the mutant behind you. For each death he saw he benefited two ways: he could often retrieve the dead man or woman's belongings that were of value, and he learned one more way to avoid death.

As he walked he rubbed the bandage around his neck where a bloodsucker had made a meal of him a few days ago, and felt the scab beneath the bandage finally starting to harden. The bloodsucker's venom had prevented that from happening so he had been "out of commission" for several days, unable to do anything too strenuous, but it was much needed. He had gotten his Viper 5 sub-machine gun repaired, his ammo stocks refilled, and a new leather jacket. His small weapon meant he couldn't do any damage to armored stalkers without a direct headshot and a bit of luck. His leather jacket was the best armor he could afford. As he walked north he flipped a small switch on his belt and a radio began to chatter. He began searching through local channels until he caught the word "commander" at the end of a sentence. He stopped on this channel and listened intently to the men talking. From what he could gather some science group of stalkers had found some kind of spacial anomaly in the middle of some valley that happened to be to the north. He smiled to himself knowing he was about to get into something way over his head. Most would prefer staying out of things they couldn't handle, but if you did that you would advance through life at a slower rate. He was perfectly at peace with his own mortality but at the same time felt a rush to do as much a possible because it was rare for people to survive past the age of 40 in The Zone.

He came to a ridge overlooking the valley at about noon and saw a truly interesting scene. It was a squad of about 7 monolith troops arguing in a monotone voice with a very mad looking group of 11 mercs. There were scientists behind the mercs so he assumed they were hired by the scientists to be guards while they investigated the anomaly. He could hear them from where he was.

"The monolith demands you leave this place at once." That monotone voice never failed to make him shudder.

"Oh, really now? You go tell your monolith right where it can shove it!" replied the foremost merc.

"The monolith will not negotiate for this place. Leave. Now."

He felt a hand slap him on the shoulder and jumped up pulling out his Viper, ready to shoot wildly when he saw what was obviously a bandit in a long trench coat with his arms raised in what was obviously a submissive pose but his face held a cocky smile.

"Relax kid, I ain't gonna hurt ya" it was one of the sleaziest voices he had ever heard "I'm just here to tell ya that my men are gonna kill all them prettyboys down there, and that you need to stay out of our way. Hell, you do that and you can have one of them bodies and everything on it." the bandit muttered.

He looked down and saw other bandits slowly slinking into positions surrounding the other two parties. They weren't armed as well as the mercs or the monolith people, but surprise and better positioning would make up for that. He heard a scientist shout "There's something alive in there!" before a bandit shouted "Fire!"

The scientists, mercs and monolith men got cut down in no more than five seconds. The bandits wasted no time in stripping the dead of everything that they could sell. The leader of the bandits walked over to him and ruffled his hair, then asked him "You got any idea what they were talking 'bout?"

He responded with a solitary "No"

The man looked at him fondly and said "You're a good liar kid, you ever need help, you call us, ok? Where are called the Huns, all right?" he nodded and the man stalked off, his 'clan' following him.

The boy now withdrew one of the only things of value he possessed a Savrog detector and turned towards the anomaly. It was there and it was stable. If he was going to find out what was in there he had to collapse the anomaly. He cracked his knuckles and got started.