Chapter Twenty-Two - Dangerous Spaces

"This part's dangerous," Koschei said. They were standing behind a few bushes on the edge of the large construction yard, all three of them--at his insistence--were crouching so that they wouldn't be as obvious to any onlookers.

"Isn't every part dangerous?" Crystal asked.

"This one is particularly so," he replied. "Open space, lots of room for people to hide while seeing you in the open. Far enough from Pripyat that patrols will rarely go this deep. This is where the Zone begins for a lot of people. There are lots of anomalies in there too. Some are roamers."

"Roamers?" Alice asked. She had an idea of what that meant, from the name alone, but she didn't mind looking ignorant if it meant coming out of it more knowledgeable.

"Anomalies that move. Either between storms, which happens pretty often, or that move while you're looking at them. Look, there's one over there." He pointed across the yard where there was a small dust tornado. It was only maybe twice as tall as Alice herself, and looked thin. The kind of thing that would happen in any awkwardly walled-in space with lots of dust on the ground. She remembered seeing that kind of mini-twister in her schoolyard as a child.

This one didn't seem all that special, except that it never faded and continued to move about in a random way. If it did anything more anomalous than that, she couldn't tell from here.

"So, we move in and have to be careful," Crystal said. "I think we can manage that."

Koschei grunted. "The goal is to get to the skeletons over there." He pointed to a series of unfinished buildings with only iron-girder frames standing where walls would have been, were they finished. Some had scaffolding on the sides still. "Once we're in there, there's a basement that few know about, it links all of the unfinished buildings. We can come out at the furthest one."

That would mean crossing some two hundred metres out of anyone's view, but first they had to get across the first hundred metres of open space.

"If we stick to shadows, I think we'll be much harder to see," Alice said.

"Harder to see anomalies too. We'll move over," Koschei said.

Alice shrugged. That was on him. She could feel a few souls around the area. The girl following them was still following, more or less, but there were others, some hidden up in the second floor of some of the more completed buildings. They didn't feel malicious, but that could change in a hurry.

"Let's move," Koschei said. He held his rifle close, the safety clicked off. Crystal and Alice jumped as he darted ahead, then they ran after the man. He was surprisingly spry when he started to move.

Koschei ran forwards, then slowed to a strange crouching jog that kept his centre of gravity low and his back hunched. He was turning his head to the left and right, clearly scanning ahead.

They came across a long row of those blue mobile toilets that Alice hated the thought of, then darted past those and into an area with a few mobile homes with construction company logos stuck to their sides.

They paused as they came to one of the porta potties whose door slammed open. Then it slammed shut, then open again. It didn't make a sound, though from the way dust and a few loose leaves moved on the ground, it was creating some wind as it opened and closed.

"Oh, that stinks," Crystal said with a grimace. Alice covered her mouth and nose before she could get a whiff of anything.

"It's harmless. Keep moving," Koschei said.

They slipped past the last of the construction company mobile buildings. Next was an open section, nothing but hard-packed dirt, a few mounds of gravel, and some large sewage pipes stacked up together into pyramids.

There was a mostly-finished building out ahead, and Koschei pointed to a large, open garage door at its side. "There," he said.

Alice and Crystal nodded, then took off running after him.

She sensed the shot before it arrived. Malicious intent from far above. Glancing up, Alice caught a glint of light from a scope. It, and the gunner holding the rifle, were positioned near the top of a smokestack tower, one with a ladder fixed to its side.

"Crystal, shield!" Alice said.

Crustal didn't hesitate for even a fraction of a second. The air above them wavered like a heat haze before there was a hard crack then the loud echo of a distant gunshot. A bullet was fixed into a plate of inch-thick crystal so transparent that it was hard to even tell that it was there, and it would have been harder were it not for the squashed remains of the bullet stuck in it.

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"Shit," Koschei said. He raised his own rifle, aiming it upwards even as he ran.

"Don't," Crystal said. "The shield's two-ways."

Koschei lowered his rifle. "Faster," he said.

Alice didn't sense anyone in the building ahead. Nor did she sense any malicious intent from the shooter, just plain frustration and some curiosity. Did he think he missed?

In moments they were in the shadowed interior of the building, and Koschei was breathing hard. "Don't go deeper," he warned, a hand extended to the side to stop them. "There's always... there's always an anomaly or two in here."

Alice looked around, but it was just a dusty unfinished building. A few crates sat around, some toolboxes abandoned on the ground. Nothing that really caught her eye.

When she looked to the other side, she realized that there were three crates where there had been two. Frowning, Alice glanced around. The toolboxes that she'd noticed were gone.

"Things are moving around," she said.

"Ah, good," Koschei said. "It's only when no one's looking. That's not a dangerous anomaly, most of the time. Actually, it might be very good."

"How's that?" Crystal asked.

"You can't see a bullet, so it might move before hitting someone and just not be there," he said. "Maybe. You can't trust an anomaly to save you. What was that you did out there?"

Crystal blinked at the non-sequitur question. "You mean the shield?"

"Yes," he said.

"It was a shield, made of crystal! I disappeared it, so it should be fine," she said.

Koschei looked at her for a while. "Alright. Keep your abilities to yourself."

"Really? You don't want to know?" Crystal asked. Alice was curious as well.

"Such things are strongest when fewer people know about them. I won't ask, and so you'll never think of me as a liability," he said simply. Alice was impressed by how pragmatic that was. She was equally as disturbed by the implications. Did some Stalkers kill to keep their secrets secret? That... wouldn't surprise her too much, actually.

"Where to now?" she asked instead.

Koschei moved through the building slowly, fishing out his nut-on-a-wire as he went to cast it forwards. "I'm a good shot," he said. "But that chimney is thirty metres up, and its base is at least a hundred and fifty metres away from here. That's a tough shot."

"I'll take him out," Alice said.

Koschei looked at her. Really looked at her. "Fine," he said. "There's a staircase at the back, to the third floor."

"Got it." She didn't need line of sight. But she wouldn't say no to it either. They found a stairwell, just like Koschei said, but it was blocked by a small wall of crates. He sighed, had them turn around, exit the room, then walk back in. They were gone this time.

They made their way up to the third floor of the building where a few holes in the walls that were meant to house windows let them see out. Alice crawled closer to one of those, then slowly brought her head up while keeping to the shadows.

She found their marksman, still stationed atop the chimney. He was sitting on his ass, gun leaning on the rails of the platform near the very top. He was, as far as she could tell, just another Stalker. Someone in clothes that covered everything, with a heavy mask on and a tarp coloured the same dull red as the bricks covering his lower half. If she didn't know to look for him, and couldn't feel him, then she would bet that he would be impossible to notice.

She snapped her fingers and the entire upper tenth of the chimney exploded outwards in a cloud of deep shadows, then they contracted back into themselves, wrapping so tightly like that they acted like the world's biggest rubber band snapping into place.

The tower exploded, though the only sound was brick thumping the roof below.

"Hmm," Koschei said.

"Oh look, roof-access!" Crystal said as she pointed to a scaffold on the side of the building. "Think we can get a better view of the top?"

The man sighed.

***