"You looking for someone, sir...?" the young stalker asked, cowed by Strelok's intimidating appearance. He gruffly replied:

"Go tell Seriy the Marked One's here. And don't you call me 'sir' again."

"Yes, s... sorry, yes, Marked One." The rookie closed the gates behind him. Chasme smirked behind his mask. Soon, the sound of approaching footsteps reached them, and the gate opened again without a noise.

"...Wow." Seriy was left speechless upon seeing the stalkers. He smiled widely and shook the hands of all three of them. "Seems like it was yesterday when you came around out of the blue, no more of a stalker than some of the rookies here... and now you show up just like that! Did you find Strelok after all?"

"Something like that" he answered, not too evasively. "Will you ever get yourself a decent nickname, for God's sake?"

"Oh, you know... I just haven't made up my mind yet. Please, come in!" He stepped aside to let them through. The areas around the hangar apparently had not yet been worked on; everything there was as they remembered it.

"We should call you Enigma then."

"It's taken already. Some big-ass stalker who went to Limansk."

"You should as well take it then," Guide replied. "If he went to the dead city, rest assured he is not long to this world."

Seriy led them inside the hangar proper. "I haven't met your companions..."

"The one with the optimistic mindset is Guide." The old man laughed. "And the other one you already know; he's Chasme."

"Oh, I didn't recognize him with that mask... so the soldier finally settled for the stalker's life and made a team with no others than the first one to enter the Zone, and the guy who shut down the Brain Scorcher. You're in for a hell of a ride..."

"I just had a taste of that." Chasme told Seriy what had happened at the Duty outpost as he guided them through the train yard. There were about twenty stalkers on the hangar, divided in groups of three or four.

"Hmph. That won't be the last you'll see with such partners. And yeah, the Dark Valley's hell. Loup and Stardust got the crap beaten out of them there. We're still patching them up."

They climbed up the stairs; supplies were neatly stacked and organized on each level. When they reached the uppermost level, they found themselves in an improvised dormitory with bunk beds and even a few footlockers. "Make yourselves comfortable," Seriy said. "And tell me, what brings you back here? Unfinished business?"

"Chasme told me you needed help."

Seriy opened his footlocker and offered them food or beverages; Chasme and Guide settled for bread and sausage, while Strelok took another bottle of vodka. The former soldier noted this and only then did he realize that his comrade had drank a liter of the strong alcoholic drink merely minutes ago, and was not drunk in the least.

"Hell, Marked One, we need help all the time here. Between bandits, mutants, the military... also, there have been a few sightings of mercenaries in Agroprom." The stalker shook his head. Strelok replied:

"You should give up this place for good and let the buggers fight for it."

"And go for the dough," Chasme added.

"Heh. Maybe." He sighed. "But this is home now. Take ol' Bes... He's still by the junkyard, he never left the place. A stalker like him could make a fortune hunting for artifacts deeper in the Zone."

"Bes had his reasons to stay there."

"His criminal record? You say Duty would have something against him? It's not like he couldn't have made it to Freedom territory if he wanted to. He stays here because here's home." Seriy allowed himself a tired smile. "It's the same with me."

Guide swallowed his morsel. "I can hardly conceive thinking of the Zone as my home."

"But you've been here more than anyone."

"Not because I wanted to."

"Why haven't you left then yet?" Chasme asked.

Guide pointed vaguely at Strelok. "What passes for my family is here."

The Marked One put his bottle on the floor. "I don't know where you guys have been getting your vodka but it's watered down or something."

"You can't expect to wear a king's ransom worth in artifacts and experience no side effects at all," Guide retorted. Chasme laughed:

"A hell of a side effect!"

"Now there's some artifacts I'm never wearing," Seriy said with a big grin.

"Yeah, let's see if you say that when bullets start flying." Strelok stretched. "What kind of work you wanna do with this place?"

A sudden hush fell upon them.

Then the floor started to quiver. Red light flooded in through the windows.

"Shit!" Seriy cursed. He grabbed his radio: "BLOWOUT! EVERYONE TO THE TRAIN YARD! NOW! PREPARE TO FIGHT OFF MUTANTS!" He tossed the radio in his knapsack and grabbed a Saiga shotgun from his footlocker. Strelok, Guide and Chasme were already darting to the stairwell.

"Why the mutants?" Chasme asked between strides.

"They'll want to weather it here too!" Guide answered.

"Let's hope the damn bandits don't join the party..." The Marked One cocked his Benelli.

Thunder rumbled lowly outside as the four stalkers joined the rest in the floor of the hangar. Guide flinched upon hearing a roaring boom that seared the very ears themselves. He was pale.

"DOGS!" a stalker yelled, turning to the gate on the side of the Dark Valley. A barrage of machine gun fire and shotgun blasts quickly disposed of them. Everyone reloaded nervously, expecting the next wave to come very soon. The ground quivered like a leaf in the wind.

Men appeared on the other side. "Stalkers from Agroprom!" Strelok zeroed his shotgun on one of them.

Seriy fired a warning shot: "THROW YOUR WEAPONS!" he ordered, nearly snapping his vocal cords in doing it. The approaching men did as they were told:

"We are unarmed!" one of them yelled back. "Let us in! Please!"

"Come within ten meters!" he replied. "Everyone walk five steps back, no more, no less," Seriy ordered, only as loud as needed for his comrades to hear him. Bright flashes of light blinded them intermittently. Strelok fired another warning shot:

"YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM!"

Seriy sighed in relief. "Thanks, I had forgotten about that!"

"I can't understand how you lasted so long here if you forget things like that!"

The newcomers stood exactly ten steps away from Seriy's men and Strelok's group. Most were rookies in every sense of the word, judging for the poor quality of their gear. Guide grew even more wary. "Stay sharp!" he said. "There's no way to know what they have up their sleeves!"

Seriy had to literally punch Strelok in the shoulder to attract his attention. "Keep an eye on them and on that door! We'll watch over this one!"

"You got it!"

Another ear-shattering blast shook them. "Here it comes!" Guide warned. The Geiger counters started ticking ominously.

Chasme caught the glimpse of a shadow on the gate, behind the newcomers: "WATCH OUT!" he yelled as the shadow pounced on top of one of them.

"SNORK!" Guide screamed. The other men dispersed in all directions. Chasme charged forward and smashed the mutant with the butt of his shotgun in the back, tearing it off the man. The snork rolled on the ground and jumped away, expertly using the objects on the cargo bay as cover; Chasme fired again and again at it, but none of his shots found its target.

"FUCK! I missed!"

"STICK TOGETHER!" one of the newcomers said. Almost all other men heeded his command and again grouped themselves in a tight and frightened bunch, save one who ran for his weapon, which was lying on the floor close to the entrance: "DON'T DO IT!" the man said, but it was too late. The rookie stopped short of grabbing his AK, hiccuped, and vomited explosively. He twisted in the ground, screaming in torment for half a minute, then agonizingly turned their way and tried to crawl back towards them. He gurgled horrendously, dribbling bile and vomit through his mouth, twitched, and died.

"Holy mother of God...!" Chasme uttered, his eyes wide with horror. Strelok did not hear him but reading Chasme's body language was enough:

"I hope that's been a clear enough example of what happens if you are careless during a blowout!" he yelled. "And wake up before that snork offs you!"

The threat of the vicious mutant shook him off his daze. He climbed to the walkway next to the tracks, putting the group of rookies between him and the cargo bay. With a sign of his hand he indicated them to stay down so that he could have a clear field of fire. He searched for the man the snork had jumped; he had cruel slashes on the sides of his neck and was pale like a ghost, but nothing else.

The blowout started to subside. The thundering again became a low rumble. Chasme's ears were left with a ringing, but he could unmistakably make the grumbling of the snork coming from behind the wagon. It seemed to him it the noise was slowly but steadily moving towards the gate leading to Agroprom...

Something appeared from behind the wagon. Chasme fired at the snork as it pounced towards the irradiated corpse of the rookie; the mutant fell heavily with a gaping hole on the side of its chest.

"Good shot, kid," Guide said. "Everyone stay where you are."

Some twenty-odd seconds later, the skies went totally dark, announcing the end of the blowout. Rain started falling.

"It seems we're safe now. Scourge and Whip, keep an eye on this gate for the moment."

"You got it," one of them said. Which was Scourge and which was Whip was difficult to tell; they both used the same vests, masks, and weapons. Seriy noted Guide's curious expression:

"They're twins." He turned to the newcomers: "Who's your leader?"

A small, wiry blond man in his forties stepped forward. "Name's Blackjack. Thanks for letting us in."

Strelok lowered his shotgun, but kept his finger on the trigger guard; something was amiss. Blackjack walked up to Chasme and shook his hand. "Thanks for saving my friend Screws, here."

"No problem. Sorry about your other friend." The stalkers started dispersing themselves over the hangar. The man sighed.

"We can only bury him now. And learn from his mistake."

Strelok studied the men. Most matched the stereotype of the rookie stalker, dressed in hooded sweatshirts, jeans or cheap military clothing; many had the pallor typical of those who weathered a blowout for the first time. Except one who was particularly edgy.

"Seriy, search this asshole." He aimed his shotgun at the man, who raised a hand in protest and started to say something, only to be cut short by the sound of Strelok cocking his shotgun. Blackjack shook his head slowly and sighed again.

His hunch proved right. The man had a PDA on his pocket, with a microphone strapped to his chest and plugged into it. "You sorry fucker," the Marked One muttered. The rest of Seriy's stalkers circled around the group of newcomers, weapons ready. He aimed at Blackjack: "You have exactly ten seconds to tell me who are you working for before I blast your brains off."

Screws, the man attacked by the snork, answered. "We picked this guy up on our way back from Agroprom. He said bandits had robbed him."

Guide stared searchingly at the rest of Blackjack's men, one by one; none evaded his piercing glare. "He's telling the truth."

"Or they've rehearsed this a lot of times." He pulled the snitch by the collar of his jacket. "Who the fuck you work for? And don't you bullshit me."

"Okay, okay, I'll talk!" The man coughed explosively. When he could breathe again, he said in a rush: "I was hunting for artifacts in Agroprom and a squad of mercs ambushed me. They let me go on condition of doing some 'recon duty' for them. The leader said he'd even pay me for it if I brought him something juicy." Chasme snorted.

"And you actually BELIEVED them?"

"If he's telling the truth, he can't be blamed," Guide said.

"Is someone receiving anything from this thing now?" Strelok asked with a dangerous edge on his voice. The man flinched and nodded almost imperceptibly. "Son of a sorry bitch... Seriy, stay on this asshole." He picked up a Makarov pistol from among the weapons discarded by Blackjack's group, unloaded it and expelled all the rounds from the clip, save one; he loaded the magazine into the gun and tossed it to the snitch: "Get the hell outta here before I change my mind." The man ran out of the hangar as if pursued by a mutant. "Just fantastic..."

"What should we expect?" Seriy asked.

"Lots of firepower," Guide answered. "Mercenaries pack state-of-the-art gear. They'll be tough opponents."

Blackjack closed in slowly. "Let me help. I brought you the problem in the first place." Strelok shook his head.

"That's very heroic of you, but I wouldn't like to bury you all. You rookies would just get in the way and die for nothing."

"I can handle myself." He turned towards the rest of his group. "You should head back to the cordon area. It will be much safer there. Screws and Ogre," he said, to a towering man and to the one who had been attacked by the snork, "please take them to the cordon. I'll meet you there." Ogre nodded and barked a few orders; soon, the rookies were leaving the hangar.

"Why these bastards have to come here?" Seriy said tiredly, crouching next to Strelok and Guide.

"We don't need to know that," the Marked One replied. "What we'll need are guns for your men. We won't beat off an attack from these suckers with the toys you have here."

"Hmph. Easier said than done." Strelok smiled to himself.

"Gimme two of your men. Chasme, Guide, come on," he said. "We're off to the stash."