Riddle of the Middle

The better part of two weeks passed as Tiger went on with his roving existence. He worked closer to the perimeter, away from the Monolith and the mercenaries and all the other disruptions to his routine. He wanted time to think, time to reflect on his bizarre experiences. Unfortunately, all his thinking thus far had given nothing in return. Now the loner was walking through the Garbage on his way to the Hundred Rads after a marginally productive morning of anomaly fishing, a couple of Stone Flowers and a Sasha's Nose bouncing around in the thick pouch under his coat. He'd almost gotten a Crunch as well – worth a full two figures more than the rest of his haul combined – but the notoriously fragile artifact violently imploded as he tried to reel it in.

Only a few prismatic shards remained, pretty to look at but neither useful nor salable, and Tiger had decided to sail for a safe harbor after losing the big catch. A few minutes' walk brought him close to the old flea market, an abandoned construction site where a band of loners had set up a minimal base in the heyday of the previous year's faction struggles. One of the autumn's most violent blowouts put an end to the market, smashing the half-finished building and sowing a cluster of anomalies in its shell: there wasn't much left standing now save for one and a half of the outer walls.

Sensing a single blob of vital energy amidst the wreckage, Tiger altered course. It wasn't unknown for rookie stalkers to look for Jellyfish in the anomalies there, and the uneven heaps of rubble made for treacherous climbing. Striding closer, he heard neither the beeping of a detector nor the tink-tink of bolts on concrete. Circling to the right, the stalker approached from the south. It wasn't until he was quite close that he was able to spot the other: a man in a balaclava and a long coat like Tiger's own, clutching his right calf with blood-covered hands. A sawed-off shotgun was propped against a cracked slab nearby.

The wounded one looked up before Tiger could retreat, the visible parts of his face showing alarm and then relief. "Hey," he called hoarsely, "help a brother out, will ya?"

"Brother?" Tiger drew his Browning and flicked the safety off. "It's always been 'cocksucker' or 'retard' before – now you get yourself hurt and suddenly it's 'brother'?"

The bandit flinched. "Shit," he breathed. "Hey dude, I don't want no trouble, okay? I ain't been roughin' up no loners here, honest..."

The stalker looked unconvinced. "Then what were you doing?"

"I... Last night I thought I'd go see what those Duty fags do at their little... fort on the road, ya know? Fuckers saw me in the dark somehow, an' I almost got wasted..."

Evidently it hadn't occurred to him that most Duty stalkers carried night vision goggles. "So you limped away and hid here."

"Yeah." The bandit took a look at his leg and swore under his breath. "Got no bandages, no medkit, nothin'."

Tiger pulled out the rolled-up field dressing he kept tucked into his vest. "How's this?"

The other's expression of desperate hope reminded the loner of a heroin addict he'd once seen in a clinic in Chernihiv. "Whaddaya want for it?"

Tiger would never call himself a sadist of any degree, but years of resentment demanded that he make the criminal casualty squirm a little. "What's it worth to you?"

The bandit looked crestfallen. "I ain't got much money..."

"Neither do I," Tiger replied evenly. "Nearly everything I earn is spent keeping the likes of you off my back."

"Man, please..!" The wounded one appeared close to tears. "I don't wanna die here..."

"Fine." The bullying facade sickening even himself, Tiger discarded it and, putting away the Hi-Power, moved forward. "Let me see your leg."

"Yer gonna... help me?"

"Make it worth the time." Crouching, the neutral stalker tucked the dressing into the crook of his elbow and took out a jackknife and the flask of high-proof vodka he carried for the dual purposes of disinfecting tools and starting fires. "Can you tell me something interesting?"

"Interestin'?" The bandit shuddered as Tiger flicked out the knife's blade, clamped the handle between his teeth and unscrewed the cap of the flask. "What's interestin' to ya?"

"Nnn..." Removing the knife from his mouth, the loner splashed a little vodka over the blade. "Has anything unusual happened in the Dark Valley recently?"

"Unusual..." The patient turned his face away as Tiger began cutting through his blood-encrusted pants. "Sure, somethin' funny happened aroun' five days ago – the boys caught a stalker tryin' to get into that empty factory, the one with the smokestack."

"I know the place," Tiger remarked. "Go on."

"Ya know there's a big door under there? Locked, an' too thick to cut through?"

"I remember it." Now that he saw it clearly, the loner realized the wound wasn't nearly as bad as its victim seemed to think. Was this career crook a hypochondriac on top of the rest? "Freedom never got it open either – they were afraid resorting to explosives would make the whole place collapse."

"Yeah," the bandit agreed, encouraged by his grudging savior's response. "But this stalker had a key to the door, a little electronic thing... Actually he had two keys, an' he left one with that Barkeep fatso to cover for some debt. Didn't figure out the door needed both of 'em, I guess."

"Borov took the second key from him, I assume." Tiger balanced the knife on his knee and began to unroll the dressing. "Where did the stalker get it?"

The other man shrugged a little. "Wouldn't say... Just kept goin' on an' on about the Scorcher an' the Monolith an' the dead guys with the funny tattoos on 'em, sayin' it was all tied together somehow... Borov didn't like that, so he hit the sucker a few times an' said to put 'im in the pit 'til he made sense."

"And did he make sense?"

"Nah... He ran for it an' got clean away. Borov's still pissed about that."

"I see." Tiger cut off a short length of the dressing and poured more vodka on it. "This will sting."

The bandit braced himself. "Okay... Ooooooooh! Nnnnnnnngggh!"

"That's done." Unrolling the rest of the long strip, Tiger began to wind it around the bandit's leg. "So how is Borov these days?"

"Fat," said the bandit shakily. "Even more than Yoga was."

"Ironic." Tiger kept winding. "I suppose one of you is going to do to him what he did to Yoga."

"No way." The casualty laughed humorlessly. "He's got Vasya Boar and Poker workin' for 'im now – Vasya's a mean bastard an' Poker's fuckin' crazy... Nothin' I can do anyway, since nobody takes me seriously."

"Too bad." The loner straightened. "It's finished."

"Really?" Gingerly pushing himself up, the bandit unsteadily rose to his feet. "Yeah... Yeah, much better... I'm good now, I think – I just need a couple of minutes... Ya know, I've been here two years and nobody's ever helped me like this before."

"Just don't forget it," Tiger said pointedly.

"No worries... Hey," the convalescent called as the neutral stalker began to walk away, "what's yer name?"

"...Tiger."

"I'm Friar," said the bandit, "an' I'll remember this."


The Hundred Rads was more or less empty when Tiger walked in: Barkeep and Garik were at their posts but no customers were in sight, owing to an especially exciting match over at Arnie's Arena. "Welcome back, son," the former grunted, looking up from his mop and bucket. "What'll it be?"

"The usual," Tiger replied, setting his artifact bag on the bartop. "There's something I'd like to know about."

"Just a sec." The burly proprietor slid his bucket into a corner, stuck the mop in it and opened the bag. "Hm... Not such good pickings today, eh?"

"Maybe," said the loner. "I met Friar in the Garbage."

"The veteran bandit, huh? Did you whack him?"

"No." Tiger was well aware that Duty would pay handsomely for the head of someone like Friar, but he had no special love for the hardliner faction. "He got himself shot while spying on the road checkpoint, so I traded a bandage for a story."

"That only encourages 'em," Barkeep opined. "Well, how did he look up close?"

"Not like a veteran," the neutral stalker remarked. "He complained that he isn't taken seriously – it wasn't hard to see why."

"I hear he's got a thing for old comic books," the barman mused. "Probably came out here looking for superpowers... Anyway, what about him?"

"Friar said the bandits caught a stalker trying to get into the sealed complex under the Dark Valley, using a key he got somewhere... He also said the door actually needs two keys, and that you've got the other."

"Ah." Barkeep nodded. "That would have been Worm."

"Worm... A digger?"

"Used to be." Barkeep went to the cupboard. "Keep talking."

Tiger rested his elbows on the bar. "Apparently this 'Worm' was investigating the matter of the tattooed corpses and thought it had something to do with the Brain Scorcher... That's all I got, but I thought I should pass it on."

"It's pretty much what I heard from Worm in person, but thanks." The older man set a stack of neatly wrapped packages before his customer and put the artifacts into a large box on the floor. "I wonder what Worm is up to?"

Tiger raised an eyebrow as he took the packages. "He didn't say?"

"Not to me, he didn't." Barkeep scratched his ear. "He used to come in here all the time, then he disappeared for a spell... Last week he was back, wanting to know about stalkers trying to reach the center of the Zone. He lost a big bet on a checkers match, gave me the key as collateral and took off for the Valley... Two days ago he was back with scrapes and bruises all over him, asking about the one called Ghost. I told him I'd heard Ghost is working in Yantar, and he left the next morning."

"And he never revealed where he got the keys or anything else he's discovered," Tiger summarized.

"That's about it." Barkeep cocked his head. "You seem awfully interested in this."

"Some... odd things have happened recently," the loner replied guardedly. "Worm might know about it."

"If he does, he's being damn tightfisted with his info." Barkeep shrugged. "I've no idea when he'll come back, either."

"Then I'll go after him," Tiger said quietly. "Besides, I've gathered a few trinkets for Sakharov."

"Up to you," Barkeep grunted, reaching for the mop. "Just don't cause trouble, hey?"


A squealing, snarling pack of Rodents – the name was applied loosely to these lanky jerboa-like animals – swarmed around the foundation struts of the elevated pipeline. Tiger walked along the top of the rusted tube undeterred, holding his Mosin like a tightrope walker's pole. When it came to getting around the Wild Territory, the best way was the high way. It left one exposed to opportunistic shooters, of course, but few mutants had either the brains or the traction to hunt stalkers on the rooftops. Following the pipe's curve to the left, the loner left it behind and climbed onto the low roof of a onetime pumping shed. The sprawling maze of dead steel and concrete would be a good place to look for another Crunch if Tiger were feeling adventurous, but he wasn't. He wanted to be somewhere else right now, and this deserted factory complex simply happened to be in the way.

Tiger knew quite well that his search for Worm could easily turn out to be a total dead end, but what else did he have? Questions without answers, and maybe a tenuous lead or two. If this didn't pay off, he was back where he started. He wasn't sure what he was actually looking for, yet even now he was absolutely certain that it, whatever it turned out to be, was important. He hadn't been so fired up in a long, long time – the feelings of excitement and anticipation were strangely welcome.

His path took him across the roofs, around the mouth of a debris-choked underground garage and under the empty skeleton of an incomplete building with a no less skeletal crane tower still standing beside it. Turning left and then right put him on the road to Yantar, a winding route which emerged from the far side of a wide underpass choked with Burner anomalies. These hazards were relatively trivial, being stationary and easily visible to the patient eye, but Tiger elected to deploy his Veles detector: he could sense the presence of an artifact, and the sophisticated device outdid him in precision. Following the little green dot as it bobbed around on the hemispheric display, he quickly tracked down his prize, waited for it to pass by and in a flash kicked it out of the spatial warp within which it was hidden. It was a Crystal – a radiation-absorbing object the size of a spread hand, with hard-faced florescent rods extending from a twisted chunk of metal substrate. Just the sort of thing Sakharov would like, Tiger knew, and so into the bag it went.

The happiness of making this find lasted barely a minute, however: emerging from the underpass, the loner saw a figure staggering in circles just down the road. It was a zombified stalker, an unfortunate soul who'd no doubt wandered here from Yantar after suffering terrible brain damage in the powerful fields of psionic energy which hung over the deserted complex overlooking the dried-up lake. In Tiger's perhaps jaded opinion, the matters of the psi-fields' nature and origin were lesser mysteries than the way a seemingly infinite stream of stalkers came to that gloomy place to try their luck at penetrating the depths of the forbidden ruins. They all ended up the same: mindless shells in the dirty uniforms of almost any rank and faction, shambling aimlessly until they died of exposure somewhere.

If Tiger were to approach this one, he would be able to make out the bloodshot eyes and hear the incoherent mumbling of meaningless snatches from the man's former existence. He would also find out whether the old-model M16 in the zombie's hand still functioned, a risk he neither needed nor wanted to take. There was only one thing to do, an act both practical and decent. Dropping to one knee, the loner slipped the Mosin's sling off his shoulder, pulled the round knob of the rifle's cocking piece back and twisted it into the firing position. A single shot rang out, rolling up and down the ravine through which the road passed, and the zombie crumpled. Tiger waited a minute to see if a second was called for, then moved on.

There would be plenty more where he was going.