Makarov got the info about the operation after Moskvin uploaded the files to her Digi mind, information wasn't something she expected, instead, she felt confused and more questions about the upcoming operation came to her mind.
She was told not to disclose the information to anyone until the command says so, so she will have to wait.
Now they have the upgrade program which will take one week straight, Makarov was hyped to see the new combat environment, even though the environment she is going to fight is no different from the ones she fought on but she is hyped to see the mutants, anomalies, and stalkers.
Plus, in this mission dolls were given the priority to shoot humans if they possessed a threat, something that she was uncomfortable with.
Makarov was standing next to her dorm, watching dolls bringing new furnishers for their new teammates.
Krinkov was standing four meters away from the dorm's entrance watching dolls bringing some stuff for them to be comfortable, even though she didn't ask about anything because she was comfortable with sleeping on the hard surface, but it seems these dolls are kind.
"huh, I wonder what Makarov is thinking about!" Krinkov curiously went to Makarov and poked her several times.
"hu… huh? What are you doing here AK-74u?"
"I was curious to see what is going on in your head?"
"Nothing, I was thinking about…" Krinkov glanced at Makarov, something was troubling Makarov, her tune, her face.
"what happened Makarov, tell me, maybe I could help you?"
"umm uhhhh, to be honest, have you ever thought about shooting a human?"
"huh, that's illegal, dolls do not have the permission to kill human beings, why is this bothering you, did something happen to you before?"
"well no, it's about our incoming mission."
"mission?! What could it be?"
"well, please promise me not to tell everyone, this is confidential, I know I shouldn't tell you, but something deep in myself is struggling, I needed to tell someone."
"ok, I am here, now can you tell me what happened?"
"well, we will have a mission after my unit gets upgraded!"
"wait, are you getting upgraded?"
"yeah, this upgrade is for this mission, we are going to the Chernobyl exclusion zone."
"What is so sad about it, it was a wasteland even before world war three, and it lost its value when the reactor was exploded, I can imagine some mafia's and drug dealers would choose this place for doing their stuff, but I couldn't see why you are getting nervous."
"that's the problem, the zone is not exactly what you think!"
"what? Then what is it?"
"the zone is a supernatural place according to my intel, animals living in the zone are heavily mutated and more aggressive, there are some places or spots which broke the laws of physics and like an unknown phenomenon that even humans are struggling to understand, and people living in the zone are known as stalkers."
"wow, I am barely processing what you are saying, there are places that broke the laws of physics, that sounds pretty science-fictional, do you know if your intel is correct or your source is credible enough?"
"well, from what I know this information came from Ukrainian republic security services, although they said many pieces of intel gone missing since world war three, this is basically what they got here."
"why they couldn't do it themselves, why they have to hire some PMC to their work?"
"well, it's because the Ukrainian government suspended operations within the zone because it always failed according to the intel, now that I am thinking about it, it seems I have plenty of things to worry about besides killing humans!"
"well, we shall be ready for anything that zone would throw at us, and now you don't need to worry, go to your dorm and meet up with your friends, they are waiting."
Makarov smiled and went to the dorm, Krinkov stood where she was and started thinking about Makarov's sentences, maybe they have some rough times there, who knows!
Inside Rostok plant
"Did you got that assault artillery ready?"
"yes sir, it's ready."
Rostok plant, this place was and still is the symbol of safety in the zone, tens of stalkers came here to sell their stuff after their long hunt from the dangerous zone, and it was still under the control of the duty faction, who fortified the plant to the point where it was called a fortress.
Under general Leon Dmitryovich Chernyshevsky, duty was becoming powerful once again, using the remnants of the soviet relic technology they expanded towards the other half of the Rostok plant.
"general, a bloodsucker lair has been detected in the abandoned warehouse near the train station, our men are requesting to bombard the warehouse."
General who was a hard-cracked survivor of the zone knew that bombarding the warehouse would not kill the entire bloodsucker population, but rather it disperses them into multiple areas where they could build lairs and make the situation much worse.
"tell them to keep watching the warehouse, use thermal scopes if you have to, the bombardment today would only ensure that they would disperse and they will eventually come in greater numbers and hurt us badly."
"yes general." The dutyer transmitted the radio to the duty squads encircling the warehouse, after the transmission was over, the general asked.
"How is the situation today in Rostok, I didn't have the time to see 100rads."
"Nothing sir, it was, as usual, stalkers coming and stalkers going, although there were rumors of a new cultist group is spreading in the zone."
"ah, when these people will understand that the zone has nothing to worship, goddamn freedomers, they share the information to the outer world, others will profit from it."
"But sir this was true before World war three where most places on earth were habitable, I wished I was born in those days, nowadays everywhere is the same except they don't have anomalies."
General glanced at the soldier, both had neutral expressions, but the general saw something deep into his eye, a scar.
"where are you from soldier?"
"I am from Minsk, Zavodski District."
"ah, I heard that place had a nice zoo."
"well, it was nice, too bad I was in fallout shelters and couldn't visit the zoo anymore, Minsk was a ghost town with robots and EILD zombies rolling around since my birthday."
"sorry private, the world today is very cruel to us, now let's focus on the mission, now you just sit here and when 1st and 2nd squad sent a message, tell me."
"Roger that, general."
Chernyshevsky felt like his young days, a fresh new boy who went to the zone before world war three as a mere soldier to guard the border of the zone to prevent zoners from coming in and out, and then he became a zoner, to be precise a stalker, unlike children of this age who grew in bunkers, he grew in green fields and ran under the sunlight, he pitied the poor Dutyer for a second and then picked a bag went to 100rads bar.
This bar was founded a little bit after the duty established their main base on Rostok, being the safest place in the zone, protected by duty, many stalkers went to get contracts from the barkeep or sell and buy a thing from him, General went inside as everyone stood aside to keep him going, he reached the bar and loudly greeted barkeep.
"How it is barkeep, long time no see."
"oh, general, I didn't think that you would come to see, will you have a beer?"
"beer? You meant that children's drink?"
Many Stalkers spout their beers out when they heard this and glanced at the general with shock while he was mockingly smiling.
"no barkeep, I just came here to see around for a while, no time to be drunk, at least for now, what is happening in the zone, I heard that there was some cultist group recently entered the zone."
"oh, yes some stalkers that came from Army warehouses and swamps told us that some stalkers are dressing in white armor saying something about a father or something, and a group of Mercs also encountered a cyborg girl with a large sickle and bloody white clothing in bloodsucker village, and this is not all of the stories"
"a cyborg girl and bloodsuckers, oh c'mon man…"
"and Mercs say that the girl single-handedly killed the entire mutant population in the village, that includes a controller."
"A controller? I thought they were extinct about ten years ago, and do you have any evidence on this matter especially the girl?"
"well, the Mercs say they got a picture, honestly…"
"c'mon, I know you wouldn't sleep without getting that picture."
"ah well…" Barkeep puts his hand into his pocket and brings two pictures out of his pocket.
"well, since you are the duty commander and you are protecting us, these are copies of two pictures Mercs took, I had to copy them to make sure that at least something remains in my hand"
And he murmured, "this picture was too expensive, goddamn Mercs…"
He viewed the images, the image was as accurate as the barkeep described, a white-dressed cyborg girl with a long bloody sickle, with many corpses in the background…
This girl singlehandedly killed dozens of bloodsuckers and zombies, with that…
Controller!
He was simply baffled by what he saw, at first he thought it was a mere group of stupid stalkers who wanted to worship the zone but for some reason the more he stared at it, he thought something really big is trying to shake the zone once again, he started to calm himself a little bit down, those people were something more than stalkers.
"We need to investigate about it, thanks for the info, now it's my turn, let me tell you something."
"oh what is it?"
"well we and ecologists are working to find a new phenomenon, it's called the server anomaly."
"interesting, then…"
He put the bag on the table. "these are wave detectors, because there is a possibility that there might be more than one server in the zone, ecologists got produced some of those to scan multiple areas, and everyone here can only do a part of it, so I give some of these to you, if a stalker managed to found a signal of one of those server anomalies and pinpointed its location, tell him to go to ecologist base, they will reward them."
"oh well, what's with this server anomaly stuff?"
"ecologists told us that there is a hidden network connection, or possibly an anomalous one which covers the entire zone, they hired a group of professional hackers and programmer but they couldn't breach its defenses, as such we are now going to find it by using this wave detectors, ecologists say that those servers might contain a lot of information about the zone and they are the reason why our PDAs are still working."
Barkeep seemed to be convinced. "right, I wondered why the information is up-to-date in these PDAs, I will offer stalkers to find the anomaly."
"Thanks, now I have to go, good luck."
"thanks for coming into this humble bar."
He stepped out of the bar, the last time he went to the bar, he was a colonel and that was the last time that he got drunk, remembering the good time he had in Rostok, he went back to his command center, in the way to the duty HQ, he greeted many Dutyers, they saluted, he saluted back.
He reached the HQ in some seconds and went to the same dutyer at his bunker.
"any important news?"
"no, there isn't any sense you were gone."
"Hey Private, contact the squad and tell them to block the entrances if they got close, and watch the entire warehouse with thermal scopes, we are going to starve them to death."
"Roger that General."
In the swamps, the abandoned clear sky base was inhabited once again, this time by a new faction in the zone, more than a hundred half-dead humans with microchips in heavy white armor were stationed there, simply to monitor the areas around the Chernobyl power plant, but the positioning was a little bit worse since they got encircled by loners from Agroprom facility and the Cordon area. Attacking those points would be a piece of cake but they don't want to get attention.
The white Nyto was looking at her device, watching scientists doing various things inside their laboratories, she didn't care about that much, the only thing she cared for was to get the master's job done.
Suddenly a new transmission came from her master, she quickly picked the device up and answered the call.
"How is the project going, I got a message about those scientists doing some stuff out there."
"Dear father, we are monitoring them for now, nothing happened it seems they want something and they can only acquire it from the zone, as such from what we know they started recruiting some people to do the job for them."
"that's fine for now, but be careful, and this is the last time you expose yourself, you must keep your identity hidden, or else I can't guarantee that you remain white, do you understand?"
"yes father, I will do my best."
And then the connection has been terminated, by the time she was thinking about what she encountered in the zone, it was unnecessary to pursue that guard, and she didn't know why she chose this, then she thought of that dwarf,
He was not even an ELID mutant, but the power he wielded was enough to a high-rank Nyto, and those annoying tentacle creatures, perhaps more precaution is needed when operating in the zone. She was in her thoughts then a black Nyto came to her room.
"what's up."
"We scanned the entire area, this area is called swamps by these STALKERs, it has many radioactive places, mostly near water, and there is no sign of collapse fluid."
"that's strange, all the mutants I saw in the zone had no sign of a normal EILD, looks like those scientists are the ones pumping out these creatures at us to fight."
"and that's not all, we also found something really strange."
"what is it?"
"We found some spots or places that aren't normal like there are some gravitational spots where if you get close you will get soaked and then explode."
"ah, the professor told me those are anomalies, spots which break the rules of physics, he said psionic emissions will form them."
"But how?"
"I don't know, now get to your work and secure the area, barrier the areas which have the possibility of someone trespassing into our base and make the base larger, these old wooden huts sound pathetic."