Fleeing through the marked pathway, the group's collective footsteps echoed as they ran, only when they came to the end of the pathway, finding themselves at a fork with large debris cluttering in front of them, did they stop running.
Lungs on fire, they exhaled sharply while Cyrus frantically looked at the map, trying to find the next path, going over it numerous times, he found that the path they're on should've continued straight out near a formerly large fountain.
His distress caught Boris' attention and Cyrus showed him the map, there's no fork on the map, only a straight path.
"They made this map last week, the path should've continued straight," Cyrus winces as he stared at the map, baffled as to why it's incorrect.
The other camp leaders promised him!
Trying to deduce another way around, Cyrus wearily looked around as he followed his compass, while he did, the others watched for any signs of danger.
His icy blue eyes moving slowly, Theodore kept looking for what he saw earlier, trying to imagine what it might've been, too crafty to set a trap, but couldn't possibly have the strength to set up a blockade, not like this.
Almost like it's intentionally trying to break them apart, get them to go separate ways, pick them off that way.
While Theodore internally theorized their threat, he heard a whoosh noise going past him, felt something lightly graze the side of his shoulder. Turning his head, Theodore sees something lodged into the debris across from him that wasn't there before.
Upon closer inspection, he found it's an arrow, and as he grabbed it from the debris, the arrow tip's broken by the force of colliding into the debris, but it's made of bone, too. Jaw bone, precisely, there's a bit of ridge where the teeth used to be.
The size of the arrow, it's much smaller than he expected, only when Cyrus and the others caught sight of him holding it, did Boris have an idea what they're dealing with, and he ordered them to stick together, their backs against each other, stay away from any holes.
"What's going on?" Theodore wearily asks Boris as he wielded his MP5 tightly in his grip.
Looking around, Boris tells Theodore that there's only one creature capable of setting traps and it's the rats from the stories they told during the first time they met.
"Up here?" Theodore's baffled as he reminded them, they never said anything about rats coming up from the underground tunnels.
Vodka admitted that he's known some coming out when there isn't any food in an attempt at stealing from the bigger creatures' nests and working with their hive mind to grab as many eggs, newborns, whatever they can carry back to their holes.
Even the topside creatures detested them, the more intelligent ones, they sit by the holes with a fresh scent, waiting for the little bastards to come out, before snatching them up and simply tearing them apart.
"Who knows how many came up," Vodka shrugs as he's unsure how many came out of the holes in search for food, since they tend to vary depending on the timing.
Artyom pointed his gun towards an abandoned vehicle, his eyes narrowed on it as he focused his attention on it.
Catching on, the other men looked towards the vehicle, and Theodore's eyes widened as he sees in the reflection of the broken window near the driver's side.
It's a rat.
Big.
Rat.
Tall, about tall as Boris, hunchback, afflicted with mange that made its bruised pink arms bare and the snout completely marred by scars from previous conflicts, the pink tail silently swaying in the cold breeze.
Even more, it's wearing a leather cloak covering its head and wielding a makeshift bow readying another arrow from the basket quiver on its hunchback.
Reminded him of the dungeon crawler novels in their section with the fantasy designs, except this one's not fictional, it's right there in the reflection, and more, it's a mutated rat afflicted by years of radiation.
Theodore's eyes widened as he sees the rat prepared to aim when Artyom spun around and opened fire, shooting it dead with quick fire.
The body fell over and rolled to the bottom where the men went towards it, their weapons pointed at the body.
Checking it with a good kick to the head, Boris declared it dead, and worryingly Theodore about the others, since the hive mind would've instantly picked up on the former's death, it'd be a bloodbath.
Uneasy, the members of the group looked towards Cyrus as he walked up to the body, pulling back the leather cowl, he gauged that this is a male rat, amazingly in its fifties in human years, but there's rodent bite marks all over the exposed chest and arms.
"It's an outcast," Cyrus deduced that this rat didn't belong to a colony. Forced out of its original, it probably came topside because it couldn't hunt below, not without running into territory issues with its former colony and other rats.
Blinking, Theodore's miffed and he wanted to know why rats would exile their own.
Shrugging, Cyrus replied that it's possible that there's a shortage and as its old, the colony exiled it to save rations for the younger rats.
"What about the hive mind?" Theodore asks him another question and he responded that once a rat's exiled from its colony, the hive mind it followed breaks, never to link again, and this one's just following instincts.
It won't colonize with other rats because of the broken link and they'll sooner brutalize each other before that ever happens.
Nodding, Theodore watched him walk away from the body as Artyom reloaded his weapon and Cyrus told them to continue, they have to get there before dark.
Returning where the map said to follow, the team worked to dismantle the blockade enough for them to climb over with ease before continuing further along the path until they see a large fountain ahead.
Bronzed, water no longer coming up from the spouts, the fountain left abandoned, and the water collecting in the bottom now a shallow green and the coins once tossed in for luck, a black reminder.
Following the map, they marched through the public square, finding nothing but ruined vehicles and broken sections of the street, it amazed Theodore that one point there were people who came to the former public square.
While they're marching through the guided map, Boris and Vodka got into a verbal fight about a story one heard.
"I don't believe it," Boris shrugs as he didn't believe the story, but Vodka vehemently did.
Vodka professed that it's true and Boris asks him, "Have you seen one?"
Shaking his head, Vodka said he didn't, but the point stands.
Boris pointed at him as he responded with, "If I can't see it with my own two eyes, then it's not real."
Their arguing got Theodore curious and he innocently asked them what they're arguing about.
"Vodka thinks the Shadow Man came to our camp last night," Boris flatly tells Theodore as he's walking.
Snorting, Vodka said it wasn't him that said it, someone else in the camp said it, and he heard it from them.
"Excuse me, Shadow Man?" Theodore raised his brow at them as he's never heard anything about it before.
It shocked the men that he didn't know about the infamous Shadow Man, it's one of the early ghost stories children tell each other, prolific too!
Vodka helped Theodore with context, the Shadow Man's a living shadow that's said to only appear before certain people. Very well the Devil's own shadow after he'd died in the nuclear wars, unaware that the body's gone with what the Shadow Man does to people he visits.
He heard a version where the Shadow Man seemingly meant an omen when he appeared to a specific person.
Could be anything, really, something simple as a heart attack or a tragedy that'll befallen everyone in the camp.
There's no clue what sort of omen the Shadow Man brings, but once he brings it, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.
Only when the prophecy's fulfilled does the Shadow Man disappear, drifting away until he appeared to someone else in another part of the Ruins.
Always identified by the well-pressed suit that looked foreign and always standing adjacent to the victim.
"Said he was walking around near the flats last night," Vodka shuddered as he told Theodore that someone caught sight of the infamous Shadow Man lurking near their homes, looking for his next victim.
Boris didn't believe this, saying that whoever said it's trying to get a rise out of him, shadows can't hurt people, and Shadow Man doesn't exist.
"You sure this person didn't suffer sleep paralysis and hallucinate?" Boris asked Vodka if the person who told him didn't just imagine seeing the infamous Shadow Man hanging around the flats.
Coupled with the stress of living on edge of extinction, rough sleeping, and the only comfort in scary stories, of course they're going to see something like the Shadow Man.
"What about the anomalies, are they just in people's heads, too?" Vodka counters that if Boris didn't believe in the Shadow Man and the shadow people, he musn't believe in anomalies, either.
Snorting, Boris replied that he's seen the anomalies himself, he knows they exist, and knows what dangers they bring whenever they appear somewhere in the ruins.
"You don't think it's possible they exist as an anomaly?" Vodka asks Boris what he thinks of the idea of them as a type of reoccurring anomaly, not as pervasive as the haunted building or disjointed staircase.
Shrugging his wide shoulders, Boris replied that they don't even know the extent of anomalies or how they form.
Hearing them squabble, Theodore chipped in as he mentioned he heard knocking coming from the parliament building windows when he and Lila attempted to investigated shortly before they saw the graffiti and hearing how it's haunted.
"Better be thankful the doors didn't open, then," Boris commented that Theodore should consider himself lucky that he and Lila weren't successful opening the doors.
Seeing the hypocrisy, Vodka pointed it out to him that he believed the parliament building's dangerous, but didn't believe shadows couldn't be dangerous.
There's more arguing back and forth until Cyrus eventually told them to quiet, they're coming up to the subway entrance that'll take them towards the service access leading out to where they'll find the path towards the power plant.
Following him, the men went down the crumbling steps down into the subway and made their way deep into the tunnel.
The only sound coming from their gear and footsteps as they walked along the tracks.
Briefly, Cyrus stopped them to check their filters, when they went over and switched out ones near depletion, they continued their journey to the fabled power plant.
As he walked, Theodore realized it'll take them longer getting back to the camp and he reached out to Lila to check on her.
She didn't respond initially and he prodded for a response again, this time he got a response from Lila, but something's wrong.
"Give a lady a heart attack why don't you!" Lila chided him as she sounded frightened, but not because Theodore popped up in her head.
Worried, Theodore asked what's wrong, and she told him that someone nearly turned her Swiss.
"Got a guy on the stretcher, got hurt pretty bad out in the open by a pack of dogs. He's doing fine and suddenly, as I'm about to administer a shot like I'm Nurse Ratchet, he flips his lid and tries to shoot me!" Lila frantically tells him that a wounded individual nearly shot her as he started raving mad.
He kept shouting long after the security guards came to apprehend him and the gun, but his adrenaline got the better of them as he fought them off, firing more shots Lila's way and she ducked down as one of the security guards pulled her to safety.
"Why did he want to shoot you?" Theodore asks her as he's shocked that the incident happened at least three hours after he and the others left on their quest to the power plant.
Lila replied that she doesn't know, but it took the security guards and Dimitri with a syringe to finally apprehend the man.
He woke up not too long ago cuffed to some pipes in the camp's holding pen until Josef's able to decide what to do with him, but he's talking, and not making any lick of sense.
"He kept yelling stuff like, 'he's here! I saw him!' And it's been one helluva morning, I'll tell you," Lila exhaled sharply as she tells Theodore that the man's incoherently shouting about a man, but the details remained sparse, and Josef thinks he might've gotten irradiated saliva in his blood by the bites.
Hearing this, Theodore asks if Lila's hurt and she replied that she isn't, he didn't get a good shot, just hit the wall right beside her before the alarmed security guards started pouring into the room.
"Scared the whole camp, I'll tell you, never saw the library organize as quickly like they did," Lila remarked that the gunshots instantly made the people in the camp go into overdrive hiding away until Josef gave the clear for them to come back out of hiding.
Theodore decided to keep chatting with Lila as he walked with the men through the darkened subway tunnel, someone familiar helps keep his nerves in check, because he didn't like going out in a darkened subway tunnel alone.
He talks with Lila and as the men approached the widened tunnel with two sets of tracks on opposite sides, Lila started saying that the captured man's raving again, it's loud enough that she's hearing it near the pits, he's saying that something about a shadow.
"A shadow?" Theodore narrowed his eyes as he hears Lila tell him this and she confirmed that the man's raving about the supposed shadow.
He swears he saw it, but Lila doesn't know any more than that, all she knows that the security guards are now trying to keep him quiet so he doesn't frighten the people in the camp again.
Frowning, Theodore told her to stay safe and keep watch, she affirms with, "Aye-aye, captain!"