"Hey, kid. Hero or not, you're still gonna pay for that, right?" Sidorovich asked, watching from his barred little office as Konrad treated Dmitry's wounds. He used a first-aid kit from his shop.
Not that he had much to do.
"Yeah, yeah, I'll pay for your services," he grunted, buttoning the Captain's jacket back up.
Only a few scratches, making it all the stranger that Dmitry passed out. Not that they have overdosed on sleep. It could have been the shock that let his exhaustion take over.
"So, what can you tell me about this place?" Konrad asked, putting the kit away.
Since he paid for it, he might as well keep it for later.
"You want the short or the long version?" the trafficker grunted.
And Konrad had a bad feeling about it.
"Whichever won't bankrupt me," he said, "and helps me find Strelok."
"Can't help you with that, but can explain how things came to be."
Things. Right. He must have been a man of words.
Sidorovich sat down and took a deep breath before beginning.
"Since you already know about the original disaster, I won't bore you with the details. Did you hear about the concrete sarcophagus, too?"
Konrad nodded, though the way he worded it struck him as odd.
"That thing was about to fall apart. They announced a tender to replace it. And a French company built a huge rolling called the New Safe Confinement."
"A—rolling dome?!"
The trafficker sighed.
"How do I explain this?" he scratched his balding head. "You know, lots of radiation around the sarcophagus, right? So they built this one next to it. On rails. Then rolled it over the old one."
Konrad blinked.
"The whole thing?!" Wasn't that, like, a gigantic concrete sarcophagus?
He was about to look it up on the internet, but of course, his phone had no reception.
Why didn't he do his research before coming here?!
That was so unlike him.
"Yeah, the whole thing," Sidorovich claimed. "A hundred meters tall steel dome on wheels. I guess. I never actually saw it in person. And, well, nobody else did, once it was in place."
"What do you mean?" Konrad scowled.
He struggled to believe, or even imagine, a moving structure on that scale. But if it existed, people must have built it. They must have seen it, too, and those who visited it after—
"As soon as that thing clicked in place, or whatever," the old man paused, and opened his arms.
"What?!" he urged, but the trafficker only laughed.
"That's it. Nothing."
He wasn't expecting Konrad to pay for this nonsense, right?
But when he was about to call him out for it, Sidorovich finally continued.
"First, they said, they had to take accurate measurements so people couldn't visit. Then, security around the zone became tighter. They even started blurring satellite images of the site."
"I don't get it," he said, shaking his head. "Why, if it's safer now? When was this anyway?"
"2016," Dmitry mumbled, making him jump.
"For fucks sake, about time you woke up," he grumbled, with a huge boulder off his chest. "You all right? Hurt anywhere? Scared the shit out of me, Captain."
"Oh, so he was alive after all," Sidorovich grinned, rubbing his palms together.
Was this his version of getting excited?
"I'm fine," Dmitry said. "No idea how I got here, though."
And while he said that, he lost his balance standing up, wincing from the sudden movement.
"Easy now," Konrad scolded. "You did fall on your head, after all." But as soon as he told him what happened—skipping all the magic stuff—he urged the old man to continue.
"Right. So, it should have been safer, yes. But they never reopened it to the public."
"I heard the safety standards were too damn high," Dmitry said. "Like, it took them three years to get accurate readings. But thought they reopened the site for tourists after that."
"Well, they didn't," Sidorovich noted, opening his arms. "And then, oddities started to happen."
Only then? For Konrad, this was already strange as hell.
"You see, an entire shift of the maintenance crew disappeared without a trace," the old man claimed. "They should have returned to the town, ten miles east, but never did."
"Hmm? That's news for me," the Captain stated. "What happened to them?"
"No one knows," the trafficker said. "They're still missing to this day. And as you'd imagine, the workers from the other shifts weren't so keen to pick up their slack after that."
"How many people are we talking about?" Konrad asked, scowling.
"In the ballpark of hundreds," Sidorovich claimed. "And when the military tried to find them, that's when they realised. They couldn't even find the CNPP anymore."
"What?" he scoffed. "A huge ass complex won't disappear like that."
"No, no, you're right, I misspoke," the old man chuckled. "I meant they couldn't reach it. They could still see it in the distance, but no matter what, they never seemed to get any closer."
Okay, that wasn't any better. And he was nowhere near done yet.
"This was the first registered spatial anomaly, and many more followed. According to a contact from the National Guard, because, of course, this was all classified."
"Spatial anomaly?" Konrad tasted the words. "Like the one that threw our car into the air?"
Sidorovich shrugged again.
"I can't tell you for sure because I didn't see it. Nor do I want to. But now you know the Zone is a lot more dangerous than it used to be. Already before the first huge Blowout."
"The what now?!"
It wasn't the first time he said that word—or thought it when he probed the old trader's mind.
"Okay, this is my theory based on all the witness accounts," Sidorovich said. "But what might be happening is that the New Safe Confinement is sealing all the radiation away well. Too well."
He formed a ball with his hands before squeezing them together.
Then—
"Boom," he yelled. "The pressure grows too big inside, and all the emission comes out at once. Animals go wild, radiation levels through the roof, and—"
"They create those anomalies," Konrad guessed, earning himself a nod.
Not that radiation would work like that.
"And that's not all," Sidorovich grinned. "Anomalies are super dangerous, most of them are invisible, but they're as much a blessing as they are a curse."
So far, it seemed to him they were a curse, period.
"They're like clams," the trader explained, mimicking one. "When something walks into them, well, rest in pieces. But their parts get imbued with the anomaly's power, and become a pearl."
Konrad raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, don't think about it too hard, that was a metaphor, kid, a metaphor," Sidorovich grumbled. But after some rummaging in a bulky steel safe, he held up something weird. "Here."
It did look like a piece of flesh, at least in its color, but—
"This one, for example, has healing properties," he claimed. "And I sold one yesterday that could stop bullets. Or divert them. Whatever. It's still pretty useful. And will fetch a fortune."
"What the hell?" Konrad stared in disbelief.
Not because he suspected a lie.
Even he could feel the magic essence emanating from that disfigured thing.
"This, boy," Sidorovich said. "This is what the Stalkers are here for. And your friend, Strelok—he gathered more of these than anyone else. Because he collects them from the heart of the Zone."