The helicopter was tilted slightly. Adrian slowly stood up, raised his mask, took a breath, then absentmindedly pulled an anti-rad pill from his pocket and swallowed it. He was inside a long, rectangular fuselage with round windows, through which beams of light slanted in, and crossed on the stained floor, covered with piles of dry leaves. Ahead, in the frozen half-darkness, the cockpit door was visible. To the right of it gaped a huge hole, as if burned through by acid, a black maw leading off into darkness.

  He stepped forward. Ozone spouted in fountains from all sides. The helicopter was silent, everything was dead. But walking was easy. Moving unhurriedly, slipping between vertical streams of energy, he reached the very edge of the hole. Glanced back. In the corner, from where the smell of “Stingray” was strong, lay a stone, faintly glowing pink. An artifact, and seemingly a rare one. But this time, Adrian wasn’t willing to take the risk.

  He pulled on a glove on his right hand, tucked his left behind his back, and touched the cockpit door handle. It was cold and dusty. Nothing more. He jerked it, and it opened with a screech that boomed deafeningly in the stone silence. The Geiger counter kept ringing, radiation was pressing in, he could not feel it, but could imagine it burning his face and eyes—if the suit would fail to protect him. Behind the door, which grudgingly slid aside, was a semicircular cockpit with three pilot seats, torn safety harnesses hanging from them. And three skeletons on the floor. Their bones gnawed clean.

  Through the shattered windshield, some kind of bush stretched its branches inside and laid them on the dust-covered control panel. Adrian turned away, carefully shut the door, and stepped to the right, into a steep tunnel sloping downward.

  Here it was even quieter, though it seemed it couldn’t possibly get quieter. He looked around. The ragged sheets of iron where the helicopter had struck the tunnel entrance had not been destroyed by human hands… Something had burned or gnawed the hole at the blocked passage. Almost without thinking, he reached for the pistol at his belt, drew it, and cocked the slide. Descended a few more steps. The bare rock, mixed with clay beneath his boots, ended, and with a clang, Adrian stepped onto iron stairs. Beneath an arch, he passed into the tunnel, its floor lined with metal sheets.

  Light glowed faintly in the far end, but the central part of the tunnel was immersed in the darkness. Adrian could barely see metal beams supporting the ceiling with dead lamps, and rails running along the right and left walls, disappearing into the tunnel’s maw. He stepped forward slowly, spreading his fingers. His ears were ringing, and now it was not the sound of the Geiger counter. But he could not sense anything with his fingertips. Either there were no anomalies, or they were beyond detection by any means Adrian knew.

  He took another step and realized he had made a mistake. His foot touched something vile and cold, like invisible jelly. Bad news if it was the ‘jelly’… but for all he knew, that one was supposed to glow in the dark… He yanked his foot back sharply and felt movement on his right. Something stirred in the emptiness. Some long, unseen tendrils were winding around him, preparing a trap.

  He squeezed his eyes shut for an instant. Took another step. Something whispered past his temple, and the tunnel filled with rustling. The ringing in his ears was no longer just ringing, but someone’s voice. Spots floated before his eyes. He saw something crawling along the rails, heard the scratching of claws, felt sticky, blood-freezing fear coursing over his back again and again.

  Adrian’s composure collapsed. He ran.

  On the fifth or sixth step, a “carousel” nearly dragged him in. Blood spattered down his elbow as he wrenched himself aside. He thought—or maybe really heard—the creak of footsteps behind him. Something invisible was chasing him, something of immense danger…

  And then he understood what he was dealing with. And why his predecessor had failed to reach the artifact. He cried out—short, desperate—snapped up his pistol, his other hand clutching the hilt of his knife… And listened. From here on, he could rely only on hearing, because he was facing one of the most dangerous mutants in the Zone.

  A ripper.

  Therizers from the older group spoke of him, having never seen this monster themselves but having heard dreadful tales. Mercenaries who often visited the shelter and whiled away their time between missions in a small smoking room where you could listen to their stories, some true, some made up. But Adrian couldn't have imagined, not even in his wildest dreams, encountering a ripper, a real ripper, not even in the Zone itself, but in a small basement on its edge.

  He spun around, staring into the darkness. The invisible creature was growling hollowly, Adrian could hear its heavy steps thudding against the metal floor, and these sounds provided him with direction. With a sharp movement, Adrian tore his respirator off: the mask blocked his hearing. Then he raised his hand with the pistol and fired.

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  The sound shattered the silence, bursting his eardrums. The flash tore the gloom, and the footsteps at once thudded twice louder, getting closer to him. Adrian was firing, ducking from fear, backing away, punching one bullet after another into the void. Suddenly, the roar bellowed right in front of him. Adrian saw a dark, tall silhouette emerging from the thin air, screamed, recoiled, fell on his back, and rolled to the side. When he looked back, the figure disappeared again, its footsteps fell silent. Lying on the floor, Adrian frantically moved his hands with the pistol from side to side, trying to guess the direction. A faint growl reached him from the right, and he fired again.

  He did not hit the monster. Instead, the bullet activated a “Stingray”.

  A lightning flashed, the air cracked, the ripper bellowed so loud that the tunnel walls shuddered, and for a fraction of a second, Adrian could see it revealing itself in full. With the tall, hunched body, long arms, fingers with giant, crooked claws, and a big head with tentacles sprawling around the mouth, the creature shook convulsively, hit by the electric shock. Then it recoiled away from the anomaly, the lightnings ceased, and the tunnel sank again into darkness.

  Adrian leapt up and burst into a run towards the faint light.

  The footsteps thundered, the monster was running right behind him. The ripper was very, very fast. Adrian ran, weaving like a hare chased by hounds. He stretched his left arm forward, trying to scan the air, and felt something, but his mind was too blackened with fear to read the position and the type of the anomaly… And then he saw the mutilated corpse lying near an overturned mine cart at the tunnel’s end.

  He glimpsed the remains dressed in a suit, the human head with its wildly staring eyes, and instinctively darted aside. The next moment, he slipped on something liquid and fell on the floor, losing his breath from the impact. Lifted his gaze. Before him lay a small, round stone, shining brightly with white. He turned away, rolled onto his back—and in that instant, the ripper, unable to react quickly enough, crashed headlong into a barely visible “trampoline”.

  The sight was horrific. For a moment, right above him, Adrian saw the pale, dead eyes, bared teeth, twitching tentacles, and claws reaching toward him. Then the anomaly seized the monster and flung it so hard bones cracked, blood and chunks of flesh spraying everywhere. Before Adrian’s eyes, the ripper was hurled from the anomaly, collapsing to the floor in spasms.

  While it writhed and howled through the tunnel, Adrian jumped up. He ran toward the mutant, pushing through fear. From two steps away, he emptied the last of his magazine into its head, one bullet after another, his fingers gripping the pistol handle painfully. For a second, silence fell, the ripper twitching weakly on the floor.

  Suddenly, it jerked upright and leapt at Adrian.

  The massive body fell onto him, pressing him against the floor. Screaming, Adrian tossed the empty pistol away and reached for the knife hanging on his belt. He felt the slimy touch of tentacles wrapping around his neck, trying to strangle him, venomous saliva spraying on his face.

  Adrian struck, driving the knife straight into the monster’s open mouth, to the very hilt.

  The blood rained onto him, threatening to drown him. The tentacles went limp. The ripper still twitched in convulsions, but it was dying, and Adrian was choking under it, screaming in fear that the creature would crush him in its death throes. Then it went still. The game was over. The victor slowly crawled out from beneath the defeated corpse.

  He slowly stood up, staggering, his whole body trembling. For a long time, his mind went blank, and he just waited till his heartbeat slowed down, panting heavily, his face wet with blood and sweat, his throat dry.

  Then he turned and slowly approached the white stone lying on the floor. There was a tweezer somewhere in the depths of his suit, but at that moment, he forgot about it completely. Adrian bent down and, without thinking, grabbed the artifact, clenching it tightly in his gloved hand.

  His vision blurred.

  Suddenly, it felt as if he had thrust his hand into a blast furnace. He screamed inhumanely, but he did not let go of the stone. Something happened. The pressure lifted, blood receded from his ears, oxygen overflowed his brain. He gasped. Squeezed the stone tighter.

  His head spun. He was falling somewhere, screaming, but only a weak, hoarse moan came from his dry throat. He saw blurred faces… fire and ice… and a gray, sticky swamp…

  Then there was darkness. And then he awoke, lying on the filthy floor.

  Adrian raised himself. His heart was barely beating. Beside him lay the torn corpse of a scientist in a protective suit. On its belt, he spotted a flask, reached for it, unscrewed the cap, and drank greedily. He drank long, savoring the stale liquid, then tossed it aside. Suddenly, he realized that the radiation was gone. The counter was silent. Something told him that all anomalies were gone, too.

  His strength abandoned him. Adrian felt dizzy; if he would try to stand on his feet, he would probably throw up. He picked the pistol up, stuffed it into the holster, and began slowly crawling toward the opposite end of the tunnel, tearing his elbows and knees, barely able to lift himself from the floor.

  He crawled for a long time. It seemed like years, decades passed, yet still he dragged himself forward, trying to reach the saving air. Shadows flitted around him. He ignored them. Only the stone in his hand mattered. One question pounded in his head: how did I survive?

  Then came sticky mud, mixed with blood. His throat parched, he burned with thirst. Adrian did not remember how he reached the metal staircase or how he climbed the steps upward. He came to for the second time when he fell from the helicopter’s iron floor and collapsed on the wet grass.