At the duty base 11th of May 2060
Max was sitting in front of the fire, listening to a singing stalker while thinking about the accident, zone is a dangerous place, Vasily wasn't joking, after the traumatic event he wasn't angry anymore, he regretted that he couldn't save his friends.
A man is approaching the warehouse which Max is in, he reaches Max after some moment, sits on the left of him, and puts his hand on Max's shoulder.
"what?" Max said, with a mixed angry and sad tune, to which the dutyer responded.
"oh come on, this is the zone, we lost a lot of friends in this place, anyone who comes here should accept the risk of dying, move on, that's the best way of surviving in the zone."
"what do you want from me?" Max said while trying to hold his calm.
"well, actually since you are a rookie I can send you to someone to teach you about the zone, when I was a loner, I was with him and I say he helped me a lot, please your friends wouldn't like to see you like this."
Max wanted to talk back to the Dutyer, but his mind wouldn't allow it, in a hard situation he always uses his mind instead of his emotion, and this time, the Dutyer is right.
"where is he? Where can I see him?"
"oh well, I see, well he is in Garbage, south of here in a warehouse with railroads when you go straight down the road from our checkpoint, you just need to pass two hills of radioactive waste, or maybe three then you reach the place, that place has some mutants so you must be careful."
The Dutyer and Max stood up, Dutyer let out a sigh, got a pistol out of his belt, and continued "and this is one of your friends' pistols, Vasily found it, I thought I would be better give this to you."
Max took the pistol from the Dutyer, it exactly looked like the pistol which was given to Carl, he asked "why, why would you give this to me?"
"ah, don't be too emotional, it's a suppressed pistol, you may need to do some silent takedowns, and also you may need to remember your friends from their stuff if remembering your memories is too much for you, anyways, farewell stalker." And he went outside the warehouse.
"Hey, you got duty'ed." A Stalker said with a grin.
"Are you guys really that emotionless, I just lost two friends, and that's… how you treat a person like that?" Max asked with mixed feelings of annoyance, sadness, and anger.
"well, actually it depends, duty and zone are not filled with such people, this guy you saw was just a damn troll, I mean everyone who came to this place got trolled by him for at least one time, and sorry about your friends."
"ah ok, thank you, now I think I must go…"
"hey, you are sitting here for some hours, go to the bar, eat something then go." another stalker stated his words.
"ok, I will go, good luck!"
Griffin HQ, Kyiv
"so, the Soviet government knew about this stuff all along, and they even almost sat up an industry for mining artifacts, maybe something went wrong, as the experiences of General Tarasov goes, we found out about powerful and repeated emissions, anomalies and mutants."
Moskvin was explaining the situation to the dolls and the people in the room. Kalina, Helian and Dolls were listening to the Moskvin.
Kalina asked, "with these obstacles, how should we set up a logistics line to supply you?"
Moskvin calmly answered, "we don't know what threat is awaiting us, I would say it's dangerous considering that the airborne anomalies would change their location when an emission starts, we better use trucks with additional security to get supplies, if in a case where resources didn't reach us, well maybe we should do some stalking, people who are living in this area know how to scavenge resources, maybe in a dire situation we might do so."
"how about the factions in the zone, do they possess a threat to our security?" Helian asked.
"The factions, the bandits are indeed hostile but they are easy to deal with, mercenaries are like us, but if they got in our way then we should kill them, freedom and duty seems to be neutral, plus with the other factions in the zone."
"what about the monolith? It's the most mysterious faction, in my opinion, I saw that in the files you sent to me." Makarov asked.
"well, there was no presence of the monolith since the 2050s, perhaps general Tarasov knew something about them, for now, let's wait for the recordings to come," Moskvin said, then he took a glass of water and drank it.
Helian stared at the documents again to see if there's anything to cover, while reading the documents she found something that wasn't covered.
"What is this C-Consciousness?"
Everyone glanced at Miss Helian, Makarov then answered.
"from the info that we got earlier, it was stated that C-Consciousness was a failed experiment to combine the Consciousness of several humans together, making a super Consciousness."
"But why?"
"Most Parts of the document are Redacted, and other documents don't even mention such a Project, so we don't know yet!"
Moskvin put his glass on the table and glanced at miss Helian once again.
"This zone is a total mystery; I don't think our mission is beyond whatever these people are telling us."
To brighten the mood, Kalina stated "Hey commander, nothing is impossible I am sure that we can solve this problem."
"Ok Kalina, now tell me how can you bring supplies to us in a such place?"
Kalina thought for a moment, then answered "In the dangerous and dynamic nature of the zone we better not make a supply line at all."
Moskvin was expressionless.
Miss Helian scoffed at it. "Seriously Kalina, then how can we conduct operations?"
Then she looked at Moskvin. "What is your opinion about it?"
"Well, I think Kalina is right, look there are a lot of places inside the zone, but most of them are in shambles or radioactive or filled with anomalies, while the more optimal choices for establishing bases are already occupied by those factions within the zone."
"Then what are our options?" Miss Helian asked.
"There are some Options, first we could kick a faction out of their base, but that's both expansive and resources consuming, also we might make ourselves new enemies, the second option is…"
He paused for a second, he was skeptical about it.
"Is what?"
"Well, we become STALKERs."
After Moskvin said this statement, everyone started to think deeply for some minutes thinking about other solutions and execution of the operation, Makarov stood up and broke the silence.
"Well is it why we have permission to kill humans for this mission?"
Kalina was shocked to hear that, it is illegal for a doll to kill, and she didn't really like the idea of taking lives.
"Wait, why do you have permission to kill, isn't it illegal to do that?"
Moskvin sighed "Well, now you know what kind of place is this zone, somethings didn't change since roughly fifty years ago, and because of that we might get a little bit dirty."
"So…" Kalina glanced at Makarov "Try to not kill so much unless it is necessary, and I hope you never have to get your hands dirty."
Makarov smiled and replied, "I'll try my best to not let it happen, and don't worry miss Kalina."
Kalina's face brightened a little bit, Moskvin stood up and told everyone.
"ok, I go with this plan, if any of you disagree, then tell me."
Nobody opposed him.
"good, now we need to start."
After the meeting inside the war room, Makarov went to her dorm, in a few days the operation will commence, and she has to fill her teammates in about the Operation.
When she entered the dorm she saw a horrific scene. There were clothes on the ground, Puke on the table dripping down and an open refrigerator with some MREs on the ground.
After watching this mess, she scanned the room with her eyes and saw AK-47 lying down in the kitchen, AK-47 was drunk, she drank six bottles of Vodka before passing out.
Then she looked at the closets and saw Stechkin, Stechkin was… Hoarding some of the closets, some of which belonged to her and Mosin, and there were ton clothes lying around and saw some coins and money near Stechkin.
Then she came and looked behind the open doors of the refrigerator and saw FNC, eating the Chocolates she found in the rations effortlessly.
Makarov was infuriated, then she murmured something. "I know what to do with all of you…!"
FNC was shocked to hear that and turned her face to Makarov, Makarov made a deadly glance at her while she nervously laughed.
"hehehe! I can explain…"
"no need, I can see the explanation right here..."
"…"
SVD, Mosin, Krinkov, and SVU were walking down the road to their dorm and having a conversation.
"hey SVU, we have similar weapons so are we technically sisters?" SVD asked out of curiosity.
"well my weapon is literally yours but it has gotten bullpup'ed for Special forces, generally we have the same purpose, so I can't say no to that."
"hey SVU, except Krinkov, none of the guys in your unit have any civilian clothings, I mean look at us, heck even at your squad leader, why you don't wear one, at least when you are in the base. since there are no uniform regulations for dolls, just take it easy." Mosin asked this time.
"oh well, reason one, don't tell anyone about it, we were supposed to be adopted by the military or possibly Spetsnaz, we are literally some finalized prototypes for combat testing, and what's the point of us if we just wear some not very tactical clothing like you do and army or our destination does have uniform regulations so yeah."
Mosin and SVD were surprised, those dolls were supposed to be military dolls.
"But, why are you here instead of the army?"
Krinkov explained the situation. "well, army signed a contract with IOP to provide them with dolls capable of doing recon and undercover operations and electronic warfare, later a new requirement was added and that was close quarters battle for self-defense in urban areas, AK-200 and Abakan were meant to be jack of all trades dolls, me and fort-12 were meant for recon missions and undercover activities while SVU is a marksman, the reason why we are here is that army is mostly lack of Personnel for spetsnaz and elite forces within the army."
"but it should be a bit more secret than that, you are talking about it like its nothing." –SVD
"well did you know that G&K is pretty secretive too, and Mr. Kryuger has some ties within the military and the government in my opinion or else we probably wouldn't be here?"
"Maybe you are right, and we reached the entrance to the dorms."
They stood near the entrance, everyone was taking a breath and looking around.
"well maybe we need to go to our dorms, it was nice to see you SVU," SVD said with a smile.
"yes, it was a pleasure to meet you too, I wish we could see each other more…"
Then sounds of screaming suddenly came out of one of the dorms.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"
Everyone was staring at the dorm where the sound originated, terrified by the screams, they rushed towards the dorm to see what happened, when they reached the dorm, a shocking scene was in front of them.
Closets were open, Clothes piled on each other, the refrigerator is open with MREs on the ground, bottles of Vodka are spread from the table up to the kitchen with Puke, and in the middle of the dorm AK-47 was hung upside down, puking liters of vodka on the ground, Stechkin was bound horizontally with her ass uncovered and glowing red, crying out of pain, and at last, there was FNC which was on the ground, then they say Makarov sit on FNC with a thin branch of a tree.
"Sorry Makarov, I won't do this again, woaaaaaaaaaaa!" she started crying when Makarov hit her exposed feet with the branch again.
"Sorry, huh… LOOK AT THIS MESS, HOLY CRAP, NONE OF YOU GUYS HAVE ANY SELF-CONTROL, AK IS DRINKING AND PUKING WHERE EVER SHE WANTS, YOU ARE THROWING ANYTHING OUT OF THE REFRIGERATOR TO HAVE CHOCOLATE AND STECHKIN GOES INTO OUR PERSONAL CLOSET HOARDING IT, I SHOULD NOT BE THE PERSON YOU BEG FOR FORGIVENESS, IT'S THE ENTIRE ECHELON."
Then she looked at the entrance of the dorm to see SVD, SVU, Krinkov, and Mosin.
SVD and Mosin were terrified, Krinkov and SVU were shocked, Makarov quickly jumped up and looked at dolls who had recently come.
Makarov stood, speechless and shocked just like dolls in front of her. There was an awkward silence for some minutes to follow, then Mosin broke the silence by mumbling.
"what happened?"
Moskvin was in his office, staring at the report AK-74U gave him, he shook his head in disappointment then he glanced at four dolls in his office.
AK-47, FNC, Stechkin, and Makarov were looking on the ground as they did not have the courage to look into Moskvin's eye.
"I want you to explain why this happens," Moskvin said in a serious tone.
FNC and Stechkin cried while Makarov and AK-47 were trying to hold their tears back.
"if you were in the military, your asses would be kicked harder than my battalion in WW3, FNC, Stechkin and AK-47, your actions are not acceptable, and Makarov, as their leader you should've monitored your team so they wouldn't cause this in the beginning, and when you saw this happen, just like what happened to Stechkin before you should've just sent a report to me and not letting our newcomers write a report, and I always remember you being calm."
the three echelon members started crying and begging for forgiveness while Makarov was just staring down in shame.
"Stop crying, we didn't build dolls to drink, steal and cry, get yourself together, and…" he stared at Makarov "what your leader says, I will do it with you!"
All of them slowly stop crying and looked at Makarov, she was expressionless and shameful. She looked up, steeled herself and said "do what we deserve commander."
All three troublemakers glanced it their leader with shock, then looked back at Moskvin to see what his response is.
"well, FNC and AK-47 will be replaced by other dolls in the future operation and their upgrades will be canceled, they will be moved to a logistics unit until further notice. Stechkin will be going into several Neural re-evaluations and exams before entering her service again, as for you Makarov, you will be still in the operation and will receive the upgrade, but you will no longer be a squad leader at least until you prove your worth once again."
Three dolls started crying again while Makarov Collapsed on the ground.
Moskvin called Krinkov and her team to collect Makarov and her former subordinates and get them back to their dorm before their farewell.