Pravda stood with his submachine gun aimed at Brick, although Luka could feel the ghoulish silhouette's eyes being set on him. "You woke up a little sooner than we had planned," Pravda calmly noted. "Good on you."

"Wait…" Luka blinked. "You're not upset?"

"Well the whole 'from the ashes into the fire' thing doesn't really seem new to you," the ghoul answered somewhat cryptically. "One has to anticipate these things… In truth, I am actually pleased." He motioned for Luka to step out of the room, and he complied, but as soon as Brick tried to do the same, the ghoul raised his MP5 once more.

"Hey! What gives!" Brick huffed indignantly.

"As for Blondie here…" Pravda calmly continued.

"Call me 'Blondie' again and I'll-" Brick's protests were drowned out by a hailstorm of bullets, as Pravda emptied his submachine gun. Luka jumped back as soon as the firing of the gun lit up the area around them, illuminating Brick while his upper body was reduced to little more than a limbless, fleshy mulch draping the tattered remains of a ribcage.

"…less pleased." Pravda concluded, and shuffled over to the body. He gave it a light kick. "One thing, Luka… Your plan with the motorcycle was great, but your choice of companions still need some work."

Having barely had time to reel from the initial shock of what just transpired, Luka still found himself asking: "You… overheard all of that?"

"Evidently." Pravda returned out of the room, brushing the backs of his hands against his riot vest to wipe them free of blood stains. Seeing Luka's blank expression, he pointed up to a metallic box attached to the side of the roof. "Through one of those." Another silence, and Pravda made a discontent grumble. "It's a surveillance camera. They're all equipped with audio recorders around here… You never saw one of those before?"

Luka slowly shook his head, staring back into the supply room rather than following Pravda's pointing finger. "Did you really have to kill him?"

"Hmm?" Pravda gave Luka a long look. "Who, Blondie? Yeah, obviously."

"Why?" Luka insisted. "You could have just let him go."

"And then he would have gone looking for another gang of cannibals to join, or gotten eaten by one while he searched… unless he opted to go solo. Even worse, he might have stayed close to prey on our patrols, out of some misguided sense that we have slighted him and have to pay."

"And who says that's how it would have to be," Luka protested. "Couldn't he just as well have accepted that he was in the wrong, and learned from his mistakes?" He trailed off at the end, realizing that the straws he was grasping for had long since been picked away, if they ever existed at all.

"I daresay," Pravda dryly noted as he saw the conviction fade from Luka's eyes. "You seem to have struck the stone line of reality with the shovel of a stupid question."

"At least I know to stop digging," Luka muttered, and looked back to the supply room. "I guess this means I'm still not allowed to my belongings?"

"Well if you feel like wading through a pool of blood to get them, then go right ahead."

Luka scowled. "Good point… and it looks like my pistol broke, anyway."

"Then leave your things behind. I'll send someone to clean the place out, and have a look at your gear as well." Pravda paused to pick a piece of Brick from his forehead. "And if they can clean out all the splatter, I am sure they can also make a few repairs."

"How very kind..." Luka sighed, and felt his shoulders sink down. "But then you have other plans for me, right now?"

Pravda's head bobbed in a slight nod. "You will be extended an… offer, of sorts. But I am outside my district, so I'll have to bring you to the local Section Chief and have him talk to you…" The ghoul shrugged, and Luka thought he both looked and sounded a little more annoyed than before. "I'm sorry about that. I would have taken you to my direct superior up north if only you weren't leaking all over my bike. The local Chief out here was peculiar enough as a human, and it's only gotten worse since his brain got nuked with radiation… But, I suppose we'll have to make the best of it."

"Well…" Luka carefully began. "Why don't you just take me north right now? I mean, here I am…"

"Politics, and all that. You fall under the local jurisdictions, and as a smoothskin I can't take you away before I get a green light to do so." Pravda made a low, wheezing sound. "Basically, it's all about who's got first dibs on you."

Luka frowned. "So I'm a commodity?" Seeing Pravda make no move to answer, he continued as another question caught up with him: "Where the hell am I, anyway?"

"You are in the Oblast. In your language that translates loosely as 'the Province.' It's a region of non-feral ghouls."

"Non-feral? Wait… feral?" Luka felt a foreboding thought creeping up in the back of his mind. "So there are more ghouls out here… like you?"

Pravda flashed a very thin, slanted grin. "Damn straight. We got sick of being hunted down by a bunch of ignorant humies, so we banded together. Even the Tsardoms stay clear of us now."

Luka instantly had the thought to ask about the Tsardoms, which he guessed were the local human tribes, but there was something venomous about how Pravda spoke the word, so he chose to leave it and settle with his second question: "Right. So this is why we only encounter… err… 'feral' ghouls out in the wastes? All non-ferals live in this… 'province?'"

Even though he thought he had asked a less sensitive question, Luka still noted that Pravda settled back into his natural scowl. "Well, that, and the fact that you smoothskins instantly panic and shoot at anything that looks even remotely mutated. Especially you Borderlanders have made a habit of it, with that precious 'Reclamation Army' of yours."

Luka blinked. "You know of us?"

"From the few borderland ghouls that made it out here, we know a few things yes… Mainly that you're an 'army' only in name. You go through all the work of pretending differently, but frankly, you seem to be little more than a ragtag band of partisans. In any case, it's not like you've managed to 'reclaim' much of anything…"

Luka's gaze fell to the floor. The words had struck closer to home than he would willingly admit. Pravda nodded to himself as if taking note, and continued: "You may want to take that stupid jacket off, just in case. But for what it's worth, I don't hold anything against you. Even if you've killed some of ours, you strike me as a person who has only tried to survive."

"Right… Well we can leave that." As he spoke, Luka made a point to adjust the jacket a little better over his shoulders. Finally, he gave Pravda a stubborn look. "Now tell me something else… You said you couldn't take me to the place you wanted, but then where have you taken me? Specifically, I mean."

"You are in Kiev, the second largest city of the Oblast." Pravda cocked his head. "Well actually… you're just in the outskirts of Kiev. In Seventeen."

"…Seventeen?" Luka gave the ghoul an incredulous look.

"This building. It's where the Section Chief resides." Pravda gestured his arm out towards the dark hallway. "If you're curious, this place is a whole story in itself, but we should really get going. I guess I can tell you while we walk, since I suppose you won't be able to move all that fast, whatwith the shape you're in…"

"I still don't get why I have to meet with this 'chief' of yours," Luka objected.

"Well," Pravda began, "I guess you don't remember everything I said back at the shack, but… You've proven useful." Seeing Luka cross his arms unhappily, the ghoul grunted. "The Chief can explain the rest. Now come along, and you'll find out…"

As the two men wandered down a maze of corridors and hallways, Luka realized that the building he had tried to sneak out of was massive. At every turn he expected to see an exit, or at least a window, but the maze just continued.

"So, Seventeen…" Pravda continued. "It's a big, pre-war research facility. One out of many. This one was called the Lunar Centre XVII, but we shortened it down somewhat… as you can tell."

"Were all the other facilities this big?" Luka asked, before another thought struck him. "Wait… 'lunar'… you mean the moon?"

Pravda nodded stiffly. "Yes."

"Why seventeen centres dedicated to the same thing?"

"Twenty, actually." Pravda opened another door and let Luka through. "It was kind of a big deal back then. Big source of work for the national intelligence agencies, which tried to infiltrate and sabotage places like these."

"…so the people back then had twenty centres focusing on the same work, in case some of them were compromised?" Luka felt a little sick, imagining all the resources wasted on such a project.

"Not quite. Most of these were fake, with a minimal support staff only thinking they were assisting with the research project. There were an additional couple of places where actual work was being made, but these centres were smokescreens meant to distract foreign spies."

Luka imagined just how massive this building alone must be, and felt even more disgusted. "What the hell did they work on anyway, that was so important?"

"They were working out a way to draw solar energy from the moon," Pravda answered almost dispassionately. "No clouds or weather conditions up there, so it would have been simple enough to plan for a guaranteed, maximized output. They'd have sent the power back to Earth, probably in the form of microwaves, and while it might not have solved the fuel crisis, it would certainly have solved the energy crisis."

Luka nodded thoughtfully. "That actually sounds pretty good… why did people try to sabotage the effort?"

Pravda let out a dry, derisive laugh. "Ohh, you don't get it, do you? Seriously Luka, wisen up. Obviously, each superpower had its own research programme looking into this. Being first with solving the problem would mean being first to place solar panels on the moon." He paused and looked to Luka expectantly, but being greeted with a blank expression he sighed and continued: "The country with the solar panels would control the energy output, and in turn, they'd control how it was dispensed on Earth. Get it now?"

"They didn't cooperate, so nobody could afford not to be first…" Luka shook his head in disbelief at the perceived folly. "Did all the other countries have as many centres dedicated to this?"

"Proxy ones?" Pravda chortled dryly again. "No… you can thank the Soviet bureaucracy for that." He opened yet another door, and finally showed Luka a staircase leading down to a lower floor. As they began to walk it, he continued to speak: "Though these places were not completely useless. The centres hired a few, individual scientists that were allowed to pursue their own, separate experiments. All off the official records… in fact, that's how the Section Chief got to be here. I'll tell you right now that he was one of those people… because believe me, that will make everything else you're about to experience, make a lot more sense…"

The two men reached the end of the stairs, and Luka squinted a bit as the lower floor was much better lit, with a length of white-glowing cylinders lined along the roof. He thought for a moment about what Pravda had said, then gave him a nervous look: "I'm not in any danger, am I?"

"The Chief doesn't experiment on humans, so no. Like I've told you, he's just… strange."

Luka slowly nodded and looked around the new room they had entered. It was mostly empty, but the walls were covered with so many posters that they looked like improvised wallpaper. Some of them showed strange diagrams, series of numbers, and symbols that Luka didn't recognize, but a few of the posters were just pictures.

Luka stopped up next to one image in particular; it depicted a blonde man in a white cotton shirt and blue overalls. On his head he had a blue flat cap, and in his hands he held a slender pole, with a large, red flag hanging from the top. So far, this was nothing out of the ordinary, and Luka even recognized the same male archetype from several of the billboards he had passed by earlier in the wastes.

What made this image different was what the man with the flag was doing. He was marching out on a thin, white line of road, stretching throughout space. In fact, the Earth couldn't be seen in the picture, but instead, the road was leading off to a large, celestial body in the distance. Luka frowned, noting that it was coloured red.

"…is that supposed to be the moon?" He beckoned Pravda over, and pointed to the poster.

"Hmm? Oh. No… of course not." The ghoul gave Luka a surprised look. "That's Mars." Another pause. "Oh, that's right, I didn't mention that… Well it eventually became apparent that China and the United States were spearheading the whole lunar frontier, so the Soviets were forced to think one step further. Some scientists were convinced that the nuclear war was certain to happen, so they began to advocate resettlement instead."

Luka stared at the poster in disbelief. "They'd rather run to another planet than fix things here?"

"Hey," Pravda said sarcastically. "They didn't call it the red planet for nothing…" He looked up to the poster and traced his left index finger over the red sphere. "I actually hear one of these centres got pretty close to sending a rocket. To start terraforming and such. The settlers had even been chosen… we have one of them living with us here, I think you met her..."

Luka winced a bit as he recalled the female ghoul that had startled him back at the shack.

"But as with many other things," Pravda continued, "I guess there just wasn't enough time." He shrugged. "Oh well… come on, we've lingered long enough."

They stepped through another door, into a slightly less-lit room. Or rather, the dim light from the ceiling lamps didn't illuminate the room as much as the large amount of screens along the walls. Luka looked them all over in wonder; some screens were broken, or only showed garbled static, but several others showed actual, moving images.

He recognized an image of the supply room where two ghouls were currently preoccupied swabbing the floor, but other screens showed images of places that couldn't possibly be nearby. A few screens showed stars, space, the Earth from above, and even a strange metallic craft floating in the blackness. Yet other screens showed landscapes unlike Rus, and some even showed the interiors of other buildings.

Luka's eyes lingered on a screen depicting a robot of an unfamiliar model, standing next to an elevator with the number 38 on the doors. But finally, he broke away from the cascade of images and looked wide-eyed to Pravda. "What… what is this place?" he finally stuttered.

Pravda grumbled, clearly not sharing in Luka's sense of awe. "It's where I thought we would find that son of a bitch…" he muttered. "But no. Let's keep looking."

The ghoul shuffled onwards through the room, leaving Luka no choice but to follow. They passed a number of doors, and Pravda knocked on a few of them with no answer, until they finally reached the final door at the end of the room. This time, Pravda didn't knock; he simply pushed it open and stepped through.

Luka followed, finding that this new room also had all sorts of oddities and pieces of technology lined along the walls. The air felt a little warmer in here, and Luka noted a faint humming sound reaching up from belowground. As he tried to place the sound, his eyes wandered to a second figure in the room, sitting hunched over a in an office chair and writing away on a notepad.

Luka wasn't surprised to see that the figure was another ghoul, dressed in a brown, pre-war suit. The ghoul scribbled across the notepad at a hypnotizing pace, droning to himself as he did. Luka wasn't too bothered by it, until he saw a green glow flowing up from underneath the skin of the figure's right hand. He quickly looked to Pravda for some sort of confirmation, but he was too busy shuffling closer to the second figure to notice.

"Well! Finally!" Pravda exclaimed. "Why the hell are you hiding in here?"

The ghoul in the chair finally stopped his monotone humming, although his hand darted one last time over the notepad before he also put it down. "Ahh, my dear friend…" The ghoul slowly stood and turned around. Luka noted that his voice wasn't quite as croaky as Pravda's, although still deep and gravelly. "I thought you'd expect me to be here."

"So you're calling dibs then…" Pravda grumbled. "Don't you have some questions you want to ask him first?"

The ghoul in the brown suit calmly shook his head. "Not those sorts of questions, although I have questions a-plenty."

Luka blinked and looked quickly back and forth between the ghouls. "Err… So just what is going on right now?"

It was the ghoul with the green glow that turned to face Luka first. "My apologies, Corporal Jasienski." He made a swift, almost theatrical bow. "Mister Pravda here was hoping that I would pass up this golden opportunity, giving his superior another boring lapdog. But I think that would be a waste of your potential."

This time it was Pravda who looked back and forth between Luka and the other ghoul. "Wait… what?"

"Pravda's superior is the Section Chief of Raion," the second ghoul swiftly continued. "It was called Chernobyl before the war, if you perhaps know it from some old map, but we changed its name when it became the Capitol of the Oblast."

"Right…" Luka said slowly. "And what does that have to do with… well, anything?"

The ghoul held his hands up in a reassuring gesture. "Not to worry! I am just setting the stage for you… See, the directive from Raion is that any humans we rescue during our border patrols should be recruited into the service of the Oblast. Once we return them to the Tsardoms up north, they report back to us as informants."

"Yeah well that's great," Luka muttered. "But I don't know a thing about the Tsardoms. I'm not from around here…"

"That's it exactly!" The ghoul snapped his fingers, though they made more of a sickening, squishy sound than anything else. "You are not one of them. They are as different to you as they are to us… Sure, perhaps that might ensure a higher degree of loyalty in you, but as I said… I think you are wasted on this type of work." The ghoul glanced to Pravda, who was glowering back at him. "Corporal Jasienski… I want to follow you. Even if it's from a distance… I want to observe!"

"Oh not this shit again!" Pravda complained.

The second ghoul merely hushed him, and turned back to Luka. "Corporal Jasienski. It is true that I am the Section Chief of Kiev. But I also fill a far more important job." He made a dramatic pause. "You may call me… The Narrator."

Pravda and the Narrator had spent a good hour arguing back and forth, during which time Luka had learned a number of things. For one, he was starting to guess that the new names and functions these ghouls seemed to be giving themselves was a way for them to stay at least relatively sane as the centuries passed them by.

He had also learned that the Narrator had dabbled in counter-espionage before the war, and now used his equipment to document and write the tales of the wastelands. It was more than a hobby, since the section he was meant to administer seemed to run smoothly on its own. This was what gave him purpose.

However, Luka was slowly growing weary, and unable to fully keep up with the back-and-forth.

"…and what about the way you just killed that blonde fellow!" the Narrator argued. "No build-up! No nothing! This lack of dramatic flare is exactly why I don't like to work with you and your chief!"

"Then give us Luka and I'll be happy to leave you alone!" Pravda hissed back.

Luka let out a loud, disgruntled sigh. "Maybe you could let me choose for myself?" Both ghouls stopped and glanced to Luka as if they had forgotten that he was still in the room, but finding he at least had their attention, he continued: "I'll give it some thought, but maybe you can help me out with another little problem first… No matter who I side with, I still don't understand the language or writing out here. How will you remedy that?"

"Simple!" the Narrator answered. "One of my old colleagues used to experiment with memory transfers. I still have his old device, so I'll just hook you up to it." Seeing Luka about to protest, the ghoul quickly added: "It's quite safe, we've used it in the past. …but if I let you use it, will you humour me with a little test, right after?"

"Seems fair enough," Luka agreed. "Nothing too complicated?"

"Not at all." The Narrator gestured to a metallic chair in the corner of the room, and Luka took a seat. He watched Pravda pace back and forth in the background and mutter to himself while the Narrator attached several conductor rods to Luka's forehead. After that was done, he stepped over to a computer terminal and started to frantically type on the keyboard.

"So… are you sure this is saf-" Luka was cut short when the conductors sparked and flared up. It felt like a wave of electricity coursed through his body, and he felt his muscles tense up. But soon, a stream of awareness entered his mind. He recognized the many letters he had seen before; they floated before his eyes. He knew they were called Cyrillic, and he knew what each symbol meant. Then came the language itself, and a complacent smirk spread over Luka's lips.

'Russian…' he thought to himself. 'Rus-ian… Hah! It actually was a word!'

The Narrator pressed another button on the terminal, shutting down the conductor rods and ending the process. "How are you feeling?" he asked, as he helped Luka out of the chair.

"I… I think it worked," Luka answered. "That's amazing!" He felt a little dizzy from standing up so fast, and wobbled uneasily on the spot.

Pravda shook his head at the display. "Best we try it out… Do you have anything he can read around here…" The ghoul began to look around the room. "No books, it seems, but…" He shuffled over to a magazine on the Narrator's desk, but blinked as he got a closer look at it. He held the magazine up, making no attempt to hide his annoyed glare. "Really? This is all you got? I thought you were a self-professed storyteller…"

The Narrator chortled and made a hand gesture that Luka didn't quite see; he was too focused on the magazine and the cover. He recognized the man depicted on it; the same male archetype as on the Mars-poster in the other room, and on the billboards in the wastes.

"You know the Soviets completely stole this concept, right?" Pravda grumbled. "I mean look at it! It's practically the Vault Boy, only in different clothes…"

Luka didn't understand what Pravda referenced, so he began to study the rest of the cover, pleased to find that he could actually understand the Cyrillic letters now. The header on the cover read: New Soviet Man, and underneath it continued, in much smaller print. Luka wasn't able to read it until Pravda plodded over and handed him the magazine: Energy for the Soviet states: Special Edition in celebration of the 28th Five-Year plan!

"Sift through a few pages," Pravda said. "See if you understand them."

Luka opened the magazine and went straight to one of the middle pages, where he found a short comic strip. "Now we break uranium for the motherland…" He raised his eyebrow inquisitively as he read the headline out loud, but then shrugged and continued to read.

The comic was about a Russian bear called "Dohva", and the comic strip followed Dohva's work of enriching uranium, only to accidentally contract radiation poisoning. The little mishap was followed with instructions on how to apply rad-away in time to save Dohva, and Luka scoffed at the image of the large bear lying on the ground with crossed-out eyes, and green waves rising up from its dark coat of fur. He guessed they were meant to represent radiation, but he thought they looked more like stink lines.

"This is pretty stupid…" Luka finally said. "They're downplaying the risk for mutations, and also conveniently overlooking the fact that slapping on a rad-away injection doesn't always do the trick." He shook his head, and felt an amused smile force the corners of his mouth upwards. "Poor Dohva…"

"Meh. You should have seen the bear they sent out in space." Pravda grunted. "That wasn't in a comic strip by the way, it actually happened. This character is named after her."

"Well at any rate," the Narrator interjected, "you seem to understand what you're reading. And you translate it just fine."

Pravda nodded along, as did Luka. "So, was this the test you wanted to do?"

The Narrator shook his head. "Nono… I need to see if you are fit to work with me. I have been looking long and hard for a protagonist to my next story, but if you are going to be the one…" He paused and allowed himself a wry smirk. "…you have to show me an acceptable character sheet." Pravda groaned, and Luka only blinked stupidly at him, so he continued. "See, I need to know that can survive long enough to make our endeavour worthwhile."

Luka squirmed hesitantly. "…is this some kind of test?"

"Not really," Pravda remarked. "We do this to everyone. Even the informants."

The Narrator nodded in agreement and pointed over to another machine standing along the wall. Luka read the sign above it: Vit-o-matic Vigor Tester.

"Well then!" the Narrator exclaimed and picked up his pencil and notepad. "Come with me!" He led Luka over to the machine, and pointed to two hand-marks on the top of it. "Place your hands here."

Luka did as instructed, catching himself with feeling a mild excitement as he anticipated what was coming next. The Narrator pressed a red button on the machine, and Luka felt a charge of electricity course through the palms of his hands. A screen lit up on the Vigor Tester, and he heard a crackling sound from a voicebox underneath it.

"Strength!" the Vigor Tester blared out from its loudspeaker, and the word also showed up in green letters on the screen. Luka felt the surge of electricity increase in his palms, making his fingers twitch painfully. "Five!" the Vigor Tester finally proclaimed, and the electrical surge faded. "Not quite strong as Industrious Worker, but at least you don't punch like an old lady!"

"Is this thing going to give a commentary on my results?" Luka asked warily.

The Narrator shrugged. "Actually, it's never done that before…"

"Perception!" the Vigor Tester continued, and Luka felt a lighter, more tingling surge of electricity course through his fingers. "Seven! Congratulations, Comrade! Have you considered a career as food taster for our Glorious Chairman?"

"Look at that, suddenly I've got career options…" Luka remarked, dryly.

"Endurance!" A massive jolt of electricity shot through Luka's hands, forcing him to withdraw them.

"Hey!"

"Six! Descent, but you would still die on your march to the Gulags, Comrade… Stay in the good grace of the people!"

"Well…" the Narrator mumbled as he scribbled the results down. "Fair numbers so far, I suppose…"

"Charisma!" There was a long pause. "…Four! You look like my aunt Olga, but don't worry Comrade… that's why we have vodka!"

Pravda laughed a little louder than would have been proper. "Four? Really, that high?" He gave Luka a searching look. "Fine, I guess that means you have the charisma of a particularly charming ghoul. Congratulations, how does it feel?"

"Shut up…"

"Intelligence!"

"Hah. Another four now and this is a real upset…"

"I said shut up!"

"Seven!" the Vigor Tester proclaimed, and Pravda made an overly careless shrug. "New Soviet Man would be proud!"

"Interesting combination so far," the Narrator remarked, oblivious to the banter between Pravda and Luka. "And besides, a high intelligence score is always uplifting…"

"Agility!" the Vigor Tester continued. "Eight! You are quite nimble, Comrade… Such a shame you're too ugly to apply those skills in bed!"

Luka felt his face turn red as he heard Pravda laugh again. "I'm starting to like this machine!"

"Luck!"

There was a long pause.

"…error. Patterns are too wild to compute, Comrade." The word Luck appeared on the screen, but the number that followed it only appeared as a blurred symbol.

"Is that… a one?" The Narrator squinted and peered closer at the screen. "And is there a zero after or not?"

"I think it looks like an eight," Luka commented.

Pravda snorted. "More like a three…"

The Narrator tapped the pencil against his chin. "Well, this certainly complicates matters…"

"Not really," Pravda muttered. "Not if you consider what he's been through lately. It has to be a low number."

"Really?" The Narrator looked up, visibly intrigued. He placed the pencil back to his notepad. "Do elaborate."

"Well… let's see if we can recap just his last week or so…" Pravda turned to Luka. "You ran into a bunch of rad-crazed cannibals and got shot in the leg… you didn't so much get 'rescued' from them as you got captured by a band of ghouls with rifles instead. And now you're stuck down here with this guy…" He gestured to the Narrator. "…rather than up in Raion where we could have planned a half-descent future for you."

The Narrator shrugged a little, and interrupted Luka just as he was about to speak: "Yes yes… I'm aware. To be honest, we will have to spiff all of that up at some point; your story's too linear right now…" He frowned. "It's not how I would have written it."

Luka arched a brow. "Well I'm sorry if my life story isn't up to par with your standards…"

"Don't worry, it's just that part." The Narrator waved his hand dismissively. "But you are holding out on us, Luka. Pravda gave a nice summary, but I thought he meant to say more. After all, I suspect it's not really in the events of the last few days that the real story can found." He gave Luka a meaningful look. "Isn't that right?"

Luka shifted uncomfortably, and winced as he pressed down too much weight on his bad leg. "I… don't know what you're talking about…"

"Ahh, but the antagonist!" the Narrator exclaimed as if it was the most natural thing in the world. "The person who chased you all the way out here!"

Luka felt a knot form in his stomach as he remembered. His face turned dark, and he looked away. "I came out here alone," he said, very unconvincingly.

"Come now, we're not stupid. The fact that you pretend I'm wrong just tells me the truth is all the more juicy."

"Like I said, I don't-"

"Actually, I had a word with that 'Brick' fellow while you were passed out," the Narrator interrupted. "He and his group found you wounded." The ghoul leaned forward and smirked triumphantly. "And I don't think you shot yourself… So, it must have been someone else."

"Right…" Luka somehow managed to snarl through his gritted teeth. "Well, that's none of your business."

The Narrator shook his head. "Oh but it is! If you don't tell me, I can't write your story!"

"Then I'll just go with Pravda," Luka said very matter-of-factly. "I suppose I'll look into that 'half-descent future' he was talking about."

"Really!" The Narrator blinked. "You're going to work for Calvert? That black sheep of a man?"

Luka saw Pravda's expression turn grim, and the ghoul spoke, rancorously: "Mister Calvert was blamed unfairly. You know this just as well as I do, so what's with the name-calling?" He tilted his head forward to give the Narrator a pointed look. "Sore loser?"

The pieces of another frown began to form on the Narrator's face, but dissipated and gave way for an ominously calm expression. "Not at all," he finally said. "This isn't over."

"Is too. He decided." Pravda reached out and grabbed Luka's arm, and dragged him along. "Come on, we've got some preparations to do, but I'm not staying a moment longer in this shithole than I have to."

Luka allowed himself to be dragged along. He glanced over his shoulder however, finding the Narrator to stand calmly in place. As they exited the room, he could hear the Narrator call out after them: "Sooner or later I will know! Mark my words, Corporal Jasienski… I always find out!"

Luka stuck his fork back into the can of pre-war beans. He casually pondered over what kind of preservatives must be involved in keeping the food edible for so long, but he knew better than to be picky. Besides, having some food in his belly felt extremely good, especially as he was still forced to sit around and wait for his gear to be repaired.

"So…" Luka leaned slightly over the table and helped himself to another can. "How come the humans I've seen out here understands English, but most ghouls don't? I mean, given your longevity… I'm surprised so few seem to have picked it up."

"Different conditions," Pravda answered. "I guess when the nations out in the Borderlands fell, people there had the same thought as the surviving Soviets. English was a universal language back then, and it just made sense for everyone to revert to it, since interaction with other survivors would be essential for survival, regardless of where they were from."

"Well yes," Luka said through another mouthful. "But that doesn't answer my question."

Pravda sighed. "As I said, the same thing happened here. But as you'll recall, ghouls are hunted and killed out here regardless of whether they are feral or not. With no opportunity for us to carry a dialogue with you smoothskins, we never really had the need to adapt in that way."

Luka nodded in understanding, but before he had a chance to say anything else, Pravda raised his hand and continued: "Now, don't try to act fancy out in the Tsardoms. Russian is still spoken there as well, but only by a select few."

"Right, and I'll draw enough attention as an outsider, I presume?"

"Yes… Russian is the 'sacred language' of their little Chaplaincy. They pretend like there is some magical force to the words they speak, so it would be suspicious if you revealed that you understood them." Pravda shook his head. "The proper reaction is awe, try to remember that."

Luka nodded again, then tilted his head in thought. "Was Russian always considered sacred like that? I mean… even before the war?"

Pravda let out a short, aggressive laugh. "Definitely not. The Soviets weren't very fond of religion. Piety was considered a distinctly American trait, and the few churches that existed around here were forced to praise the government."

Luka felt his curiosity rise up once more. "It sounds like the countries back then tried to polarize themselves towards one another."

"Yes…" Pravda grumbled. "Care to guess why the bombs finally fell?"

"Right, well, this sounds like the opposite of how the post-war settlements have worked out. Piety aside, did the societies back then break away from one another in other ways too?"

Pravda shrugged. "The religion wasn't a very central part of it to be honest, so yes. It was partisan hackery mostly. Communists squabbling with Capitalists; add an unreasonable amount of nationalism and xenophobia on both sides as well and there you go."

"So the world was just divided into two, big camps?"

"Of course not," Pravda said, a little more annoyed than usual. "There were four superpowers in total. As for the political leanings, the Soviets were actually far more open than the Chinese. Heck, they even allowed American companies within their borders… Poseidon Energy, for one."

Luka briefly remembered the office back in Zhytomyr. "Is that why you were here at the start of the war? Were you representing the local Poseidon branch?" He felt his own face form into a glare. "Because I have a few things to say about the utility robots you people made use of…"

Pravda made a wheezing sound that Luka couldn't quite place as a sigh or a laugh. "No. I was here with Mister Calvert."

"Ahh, so he's American as well?" Luka relaxed and took another mouthful of food, noting that Pravda was nodding in response.

"He was an ambassador back then. I was his secretary."

Luka blinked. "So your two countries had ties like that? What about the… what did you call them… the political leanings?"

"As I said, the Soviets were more open. They were just acting tough. But also, Mister Calvert wasn't exactly shaped by the regular, American blueprint. Sure, he came from a well-known Conservative family, but he was considered more of a liberal, so the Soviets had an easier time accepting him…"

"I see… And you were a 'liberal' as well I take it?"

Pravda glared harshly. "I said he was considered a liberal. But neither of us actually were. Any ideology is just an excuse that people use so they don't have to think for themselves, and both Mister Calvert and I understood that."

"So you two alone in the whole world had it figured out," Luka remarked, partly out of curiosity, partly out of amusement.

"It's nice to think that life allows for a predetermined set of guidelines, Luka, but that's just not the case. It only makes your thinking linear… you stagnate, and you'll be unable to adapt to new challenges."

"Yeah…" Luka muttered. "I guess the lack of adaptability lead to everything else in the end…"

"Pretty much," Pravda agreed. "But, speaking of adapting, by the sounds of things back in Seventeen, it sounded like you've pretty much agreed to work for us?"

"So long as this 'Mister Calvert' doesn't go pry into things that doesn't concern him." Luka shrugged. "Either way, I think I'll have to find a new life for myself out here, and if we can find some mutual benefit in one another, then great… Because I won't be heading back west."

"I guessed as much," Pravda said. "Well then, once Mister Calvert has made things clear to you, what sort of life do you think you'll want for yourself?" He gave Luka a long look. "Think you'll enlist in the army of some Tsardom?"

"No," Luka shook his head briskly. "I've had enough of that lifestyle…"

"I see. Then you'll be more inclined towards a low-profile life? Think you'll settle down?"

"If it's true what they say about civilization out here, then maybe I'll see if I can get a more quiet job, yes."

"Family, then? Plan on finding a lovey-dovey lady friend and do the whole 'happy ever after?'"

Luka scoffed. "That charisma score aside, you forget another problem. We still fight to survive, every day, and the truth of the matter is… there's no romance in the wastelands."

"Now that is a platitude if ever I heard one," Pravda said, dryly. "Next you'll be telling me that 'the world is a dangerous place.'"

"Well it's true," Luka said defensively.

"I would imagine you'd think so. You say it with a bitterness that I didn't expect from you." At that, Luka gave him an annoyed look, but Pravda waved his hand and continued: "Oh don't worry, I'm not going to tell you otherwise. What do you think of me, really?"

"Right." Luka frowned and pushed his can away over the table. "I'm finished with this. We should get going."

Pravda looked curious for a moment, but then shrugged. "Fine."

The two men rose from the table, and Pravda lead the way out of the room. They exited the small apartment complex, and as they stepped out into the streets of Kiev, Pravda cautioned: "Again, I don't think there should be any ferals around, but be careful…"

"…only Raion was ever fully combed clean of them," Luka filled in. I know, you've repeated that three times since we left Seventeen.

They continued down the street in silence, the dusk of the setting sun casting long and dancing shadows over the ruins that made Luka slightly uncomfortable. Instinct told him to return back to shelter inside a building, but he forced himself to keep up with Pravda's pace towards the nearby crossing.

Pravda's motorcycle stood parked there, and the same ghoulish woman that had been present at the cannibal shack stood guard.

"Commander." She gave Pravda a salute, which went unanswered. But more importantly, Luka noted that he could understand her this time. He smiled broadly, until he realized he must have been sending off some rather awkward signals, considering how the woman glared back at him.

"Hey Klara," Pravda said. "Did Luka's gear arrive yet?"

The woman nodded and pointed to the guns and bag in the back of the side car. "One loaded Beretta, repaired loading mechanism. One hunting rifle. One bag filled with assorted necessities, and of course… two stimpacks and some Rad-X, as compensation."

Luka raised an eyebrow. "…compensation? For what?"

Klara glanced uncomfortably to Pravda, who answered: "We found a Rad-away amongst your belongings. They are strictly banned in the Oblast, so we had to get rid of it."

"Who said you could go through my belongings in the first place?" Luka asked, flustered.

"Your backpack was soaked in blood," Klara answered. "We had to put your items into a new one."

"My fault, sorry about that," Pravda said in an insincere tone of voice.

Luka sighed and rubbed his temples. "Right, well, at least you got me some Rad-X instead… almost as good. But why is that allowed, and not Rad-away?"

"Because of what you humans do with it!" Klara exclaimed, suddenly angry. Luka looked at her in confusion.

"Rad-away is used by the Tsar's men to coat their bullets and swords," Pravda filled in. "For when they go out ghoul-hunting. Our bodies don't react well to it, so even minor wounds can become fatal… I've seen it lead to some pretty gruesome deaths."

Luka slowly nodded. "You realize I never would have used it like that, right?"

"You could have bartered it away for supplies, not knowing better. Or you could have had it stolen from you. Rad-away is one thing we don't want to provide the Tsardoms with."

"Fair enough," Luka finally said. "And the Rad-X aside, two stimpacks alone is more than a fair trade. You have no idea what those are worth, where I come from."

"I suppose I don't," Pravda said. "But, anyway, you've got your things. Are you ready to leave?"

Luka nodded again, and Pravda trudged over to the motorcycle. Just as Luka was about to follow, he noticed a small source of light, standing on top of a garbage bin next to Klara's guard post. He recognized the make-up of the glass jar instantly, and the lone rad-pixie inside. A suspicion began to form in his mind.

"Hey! That's not yours!" Klara gave Luka an incredulous glare as he snatched up the jar and checked the lid.

"Air holes," Luka simply noted, tracing his finger over the openings in the lid.

"Well of course," Klara answered, looking at Luka as if he was stupid. "Rad-pixies are no good when they're dead."

Luka felt relieved. The jar he'd found in Zhytomyr had been abandoned, and without air holes, so he thought it safe to assume that the ghouls hadn't been involved in the burning of the library there. "Yeah. They make a pretty bad light-source then, don't they?"

Klara blinked. "Light source? Why would we need them as a light source when we've got electricity?" She held her hands out for the jar, and, very confused, Luka let her take it. She screwed the lid off, and caught the rad-pixie in her hand.

"Then why do you keep them around?" Luka asked. "As decoration?"

"No. As food." Klara allowed herself a grin as she noticed Luka's horrified look. "They're quite delicious, really."

"You… you're joking, right?" Luka eyed the ghoul's closed hand, nervously. "…right?"

Klara laughed roughly, and took the hand to her mouth. She bit down on the rad-pixie's fluffy body, and it let out a frightened, heart-wrenching shriek which was cut short as soon as she began to chew.

Luka felt sick, and stumbled back on pure reflex. Somewhere in his mind he heard Pravda honk the motorcycle horn and call out to him, but the image of the rad-pixie being ground up between Klara's teeth had put him in a trance-like state, and the creature's shriek still rang through his ears. If the dead rad-pixies in Zhytomyr had lead to his bad streak of luck with Rudek and the cannibals, he didn't even want to think what this would mean.

"You look a little pale," Klara said. "You alright?"

Luka slowly nodded, though he refused to meet the woman's eyes. Shortly after, he could hear Pravda press his hand to the motorcycle horn again, and he froze up, finally realizing just how loud the sound really was. It echoed over the empty city for several seconds after Pravda had stopped, and moments later, Luka could hear distant, highly agitated snarls.

"You may want to sit down in the side car," Klara pointed out. "Especially if you're going to faint. The ferals don't attack us, but they'll be taking you for picnic."

Luka tried to say something back, but found that he couldn't. He still felt sick, but he began to make his way over to the motorcycle. As he sat down in the side car, he could hear the ferals in the distance again. They had already come much closer, and cut around the street corner just as Pravda started the motorcycle engine and began to drive away.

The ferals set their gaze on Luka, and ran straight past Klara just as she had predicted, but the motorcycle quickly gained speed and increased the gap to the pursuers. As they hit the main road leading out of Kiev, Pravda turned to Luka and gave him a sinister grin.

"…oops?"

The journey continued without interruption, and even as the last rays of the sun disappeared over the horizon, the motorcycle's headlight was still bright enough to illuminate the highway before them.

Pravda had let Luka calm down, and then continued to make some idle conversation. They spoke back and forth for the first hour, but during the second hour things had settled into a comfortable silence.

Luka didn't mind it, as it gave him time to think. Most of all he was trying to get a better grasp of Pravda. The ghoul kept putting on either a sarcastic, or disinterested front, which made it very difficult for Luka to gauge his level of sincerity.

"When you sounded that damned horn," Luka finally said, breaking the silence, "were you at all worried that there might be ferals nearby?" He gave Pravda an accusing look. "Were you just blowing hot air with all that talk about being careful?"

Pravda looked back briefly from the corner of his eyes and remained silent for a long moment, as if actually pondering the question. "I guess that did send some mixed messages," he finally said, carefully. "But you were dithering about. Think of it as operant conditioning if you must."

Luka waved his hands in annoyance. "How was that operate conditioning?!"

"If you like not being chased by ferals, then you don't waste my time," Pravda said casually. "What were you up to anyway, chatting up a ghoul lady?"

Luka huffed. "I was curious to check something out…"

"Well curiosity is only natural," Pravda retorted, and continued without missing a beat: "But really, Luka? Is there something I should know?"

"No…" Luka sighed indignantly. "It was the pixie jar. I found one like it in the library in Zhytomyr, and had a hunch…"

"Let me guess, the library was wrecked."

Luka's gaze shot back to Pravda. "How the hell did you know that?"

"Well it's not just in Zhytomyr… There's been a great purge all over Rus'."

"A… 'purge?'" Luka blinked.

"Yes. Took well over a decade to carry out, at that. It was very thorough."

Luka tried to process the information to no avail. "But… why?" He took a deep breath, then added: "And who?"

"The High Tsar, who else? If you ask me, I suspect it's part of the power struggle with the lesser tsardoms."

"What, he wants to keep any useful pre-war knowledge out of their hands?" Luka felt repulsed at the regressive thinking.

"Now that's anyone's guess…" Pravda muttered. "But we've watched the smoothskins and their power struggles over the past century. The current tsars were originally just powerful landowners you know… Then this one fellow owning land around Moscow thinks it's a good idea to pick up a book, and so he ends up reading something about these 'tsars' of old. Very convenient, since back in the day, the tsars supposedly ranked somewhere in between the earth and the heavens; not quite divine, but they were definitely seen as something more than just ordinary humans."

"That does sound rather convenient," Luka admitted. "Then what happened?"

"Well what do you think? The first tsar laid claim to all of Rus', basing his right to rule on a very selective collection of knowledge from the old world. He divided the lands and appointed vassals from the local landowners; it's called a feudal system, not that I think he knew. But then another problem arose…"

Pravda made a short pause, but as Luka remained silent, he continued: "Nothing in the old books said there could only be one tsar, so, soon the local vassals began to claim divine right as well, and poof – you've got one tsar in Moscow, one in Minsk, one in Kursk, and so on…"

"Yeah, that's a pretty big flaw," Luka said. "But how did that end in a bunch of recreational book-burnings?"

"Well the tsar in Moscow had to dig a little deeper in his history books. He found some snippets of scripture that he liked, and built the Chaplaincy around it. You'd be surprised how quick people are to embrace salvation-theology when living conditions are bad enough; the Chaplaincy spread its 'dogma' like a wildfire, and the other tsars didn't have much choice but to begrudgingly accept things as they were… When the Chaplaincy proclaimed a 'High Tsar' in Moscow, and made him 'Patriarch of the Faith', then the others could only smile and nod, unless they fancied being overthrown."

"Let me guess," Luka muttered. "Then the High Tsar started removing all sources of pre-war knowledge, so nobody else could get the same idea to exploit it…"

Pravda shrugged. "That's my theory at least… But it makes a hell of a lot more sense than any of the other speculations I've heard. It's also consistent with the current war up in Karelia… The Chaplaincy is there to stomp out some book that's being worshipped by the local tribes."

Luka nodded thoughtfully. "It seems a good theory, but I would like it confirmed…"

"Then look into it once we send you on your way. Find the truth of the matter, and report your findings back to us."

Luka was surprised to hear that he'd have such liberties, and was about to ask about it when a yellow light caught his eyes over the ridge in the distance. The motorcycle went over it, and revealed a massive city on the other side, bathed in a strong glow from the streetlights along its many roads. Large pieces of concrete and metal had been scavenged to build a massive wall that encompassed the entire city, and two guard towers stood erect by the rapidly approaching main gate.

No words escaped Luka's lips, and he thought no words could even begin to describe the magnificent sight before him anyway; even in the blackness of the night, or perhaps moreso because of it, the city stood as a true beacon of civilization in the surrounding wasteland. He could only stare in awe as he began to realize what was going on; they had finally reached Raion.