Chapter Thirty-One - Power

The power station was about as well guarded as something like that could be. The road was mostly cleared, but the surrounding brush? There were long coils of barbed wire, tangled in bushes and spread out across the ground. Some muddy patches just had lengths of concertina wire poking out of the ground, ready to cut up anyone trying to sneak closer.

The station itself was a small fortress, then. The wire-mesh fences were supplemented by sagging sandbags and a couple of beaten up old cars had been tipped onto their sides to block line of sight.

There were a few tents and some tarp draped over the open space between the two large buildings, and it seemed like the place was... lived in. A large barrel in the centre was smoking faintly from where a fire had been lit within, and there were mouldering couches pulled out in a circle by the middle of the camp.

Alice did a quick headcount. Nine people here. Two on the roofs, the rest scattered in and around the building.

Notably, though, none of them were gathering on the west side, and there might have been a good reason for that. It was where the large metal pillars connected by a mess of wires were, and where an active anomaly was doing its own thing.

Arcs of electricity jumped up and off of the metal pillars. They climbed up into the sky, then formed sparkling balls of rolling lightning that would stay in the air for a moment, then roll back down and back into the pillars.

"That can't be good," Crystal said. "I remember my computer exploding during a storm once. My mom had told me to shut it off but I was downloading stuff. Anyway, that was because we didn't have a surge protector. What kind of surge protector do you need for that?"

"Power frequently drops at the Camp," Koschei said.

"You really are a man of few words, Koschei," Viktor said. "What he should have said is that we're lucky to have power for an hour straight at the camp. The important places have power from a generator. The rest of the place deals with flickering lights or no light at all."

"That's interesting. Humanity's fastest adaptation in the modern age was the ready availability of light," Alice said. "We tamed our fear of the dark by making it recede. But it was always there, waiting."

Viktor chuckled. "Fan of poetry, are you?"

"No," Alice said truthfully. She never had room for that sort of thing.

They were stopped by the entrance of the power station by a large man wearing an ill-fitting bulletproof vest that was straining under his bulk. "Is that Anton?" he asked.

"That's me," Anton grumbled.

"What the fuck happened?" the big guy asked.

"Bear," Viktor said. "Anton here decided to get into punching range of it. He got a scratch for his troubles. Is there a cart free?"

"Damnit," the big guy said. "Let me call it in. Will he make it?"

"I better," Anton said.

A gate was opened and they were let into the courtyard between the two buildings of the station. There was a bit of a hubbub as someone drove a golf cart around and backed it up so that they could load Anton onto the back, still in the stretcher. It was too large for him to fit, but they managed to hook the gurney's front to the cart and Viktor grabbed hold of the back while Koschei took the wheel.

Crystal tossed Viktor's pack into the cart, and then they were off, driving at a walking pace behind the old gas-powered golf-cart.

It was probably for the best that they had the cart, because the route to the Camp started to incline upwards a lot more. Alice took each step in a single long stride. It was getting to the point where she imagined that the average person might actually struggle a little, and at one point she stepped up behind the golf-cart and held it in place as it lost some traction and threatened to slide backwards.

They did make it, however. Coming up to the top of the hill and around a slight bend into a large cobblestone-covered courtyard. There was another route to the left, going downhill towards a bus-stop and parking space. That didn't matter as much to her as the Camp did.

The Zarechny Institute Campus was a large space with three buildings connected by bridges. One of them arched over a courtyard in the centre where a dried-out fountain sat.

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To the left and right were two large, boxy buildings, longer than they were tall. They were four floors tall, with evenly spaced windows, some of which even had lights on behind them. The building in the centre-rear, beyond the courtyard, was more of an administration building. Shorter than the other two, and more open, with wider windows and a lobby that Alice could only-just make out.

A few people came rushing out of one of the buildings nearby. Notably, two of them were wearing doctor's coats. Stained ones, but still, there was no mistaking that they were some sort of medical staff.

"How is he?" one of them asked.

"Bleeding still," Viktor said. "He's stained the gurney through."

Anton grunted as he sat up a little to look at his side. There was, in fact, blood dripping through the cloth of the gurney. "Oh, fuck that's not good."

"If he has the energy to complain he has enough to live," one of the doctors said. "Help me get him into the clinic."

The other ran back, presumably to get things ready while a couple of Stalkers nearby ran over to help. Soon they had more hands and helpers than they needed and people were just getting in each other's way, but Anton got moved anyway, one person on each corner of his gurney jogging him back to the building to the right.

Koschei parked the golf cart next to a pair of them, then jumped out. "Not how I expected to make it here," he said before turning towards Alice and Crystal. "We need to talk, before I head out."

"Oh, right, I guess this was our final destination with you," Crystal said.

He nodded. "My route here was paid. I've finished my part in this."

"What a serious man," Viktor said as he grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "Live a little, Koschei. You'll die old and lonely if this is how you treat every pretty young woman you come across."

"Mind your own, Viktor," Koschei said.

Viktor raised his free hand in surrender, then nodded to Alice and Crystal before heading out towards the same building Anton had been carried into.

Alice glanced his way, then took in the campus again. There were some two hundred people here. The population of a very small town, but it was more people than she'd ever encountered so close to the Zone. "How safe is this place?"

"It's not," Koschei said. "But the danger here is people, not anomalies and abominations. Come, I'm supposed to drop you off at the bar, then my job is really done."

Crystal hummed as she skipped up and after Koschei. "I think you did a real good job, by the way. You were a good guide."

"Thank you," he said.

Crystal tilted her head, regarding the man from the side. "Should we give him a gift or something?" she asked Alice. It wasn't subtle enough that he couldn't hear it.

"A gift?" Alice asked.

"Yeah," Crystal said. "Just something small, maybe?"

"I don't need anything like that," Koschei said.

"But I wanna," Crystal said. She nodded, then eyed Koschei for a while. Finally, as they were in the shadow of the arch, she reached a hand out ahead of her and focused. There was a swirl in the ambient magic around them, a pull, then Crystal opened up and created something from nothing.

A crystalline chime sounded, and Koschei stopped walking.

Instead, he stared as tiny crystals clattered and clinked together, growing into something larger even as they watched. It turned into a small knife, as long as Crystal's hand from heel to fingertip. It even formed a sheath around itself.

Before Crystal could grab it out of the air and give it to the man, Alice plucked it, and then worked her own magic. Nothing complex, just a linking charm and a small bit of enchantment that darkened the blade and made shadows dance across its otherwise shiny length.

"Aww," Crystal said. "You helped!"

"What... what is it?" Koschei asked.

"This... is a knife!" Crystal said. "It's pretty sharp. But not like, magic sharp, it's magic hard-to-break but that's all."

"And it's tied to you," Alice said. "If you lose it, search your shadow. Crystal was right, you were a good guide. Thank you for the help thus far."

***