S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Discordant Emissions

The Perimeter

“Open cell doors”

“Cell doors opening”

I woke to the sound of the guards shouting their commands to each other from across the cell block, all 64 square meters of it, after all, Equestria is a peaceful place, there’s rarely ever been a need for prisons. That is until the incident with the Equestrian Nuclear Fusion Power Plant happened, and the resulting loss of the monarchy from the fight to contain the energy from the power plant, and the area now known as The Zone as a result from the magical and nuclear radiation. Never would we have thought that we ponies would change so easily from a promise of money and supernatural junk found in The Zone.

“Prisoner 012: Midnight Shade, AKA Spectre, unicorn, dark grey coat, silver mane, cutie mark: runic circles, reason for imprisonment: trespassing into The Zone, imprisonment term: two years, date of release, today” shouted the guard at my cell door with the sternest of looks until he smiled at the mention of my release date, no doubt not for my sake, but for the reason that it meant that he didn’t have to spend half of every second day guarding my cell, and watching me while I ate, or walked around the yard for my daily exercise.

“Finally, where can I go to collect my personal items that I wasn’t allowed to have in my cell?” I asked emphasising the personal items part, after all this time they know what particular item they disallowed me that I yearned to have with me for my two years.

“They will be waiting for you to retrieve them in the general’s office.” Replied the burly white earth pony stallion, who seemed to be struggling to refrain from striking me after I gave him such disrespectful attitude as they had called it last time they disallowed my yard time.

“The general’s office? Why is it in there?” I asked; concerned that this general wanted to give me something before I left much like my guards would like to leave an imprint of their boots on my body, not that they’d be noticeable because of my dark coat.

“For reasons unknown to us, he has requested that you be brought to him so he can have a talk with you before you leave back to The Zone to kill more of our soldiers” said the guard as calmly as he could, which wasn’t even close to calm as the sound of his ceremonial armour caused by his rage induced shaking was easily audible, obviously whatever this general wanted me for, he had been thoughtful enough to include that I had to be in some sort of good condition otherwise the guard would have snapped and tried striking me with his baton by now.

“Fine let’s get this over with.” I said before I yelled back to the guard “I don’t see why you seem to ignore the fact that I told you lot that I was planning on leaving The Zone when I walked into that patrol, I didn’t shoot anyone or anything other than the mutants in The Zone” as I was being escorted out of my cell.

My escort proceeded to unlock the chains that bound my legs, and the device that bound my magic as we reached a door labelled ‘General Shine’. The general really was trying to make a friendly vibe by removing my bindings while being in the same room as me, even more surprising was the fact that the escort told me that it was to be just me and the general in there, and that he wasn’t permitted to enter with me.

“Ah, I see they listened to my orders that you were to be left untouched” Said the pony who I’d assume to be General Shine as I entered the room, “Allow me to introduce myself, I am General Spit Shine, leader of the guard posted around the boundary of The Zone” announced this green unicorn, the armour of the perimeter guard, while resembling the royal guard of old, really did look terrible on anyone who wasn’t pure white. He motioned for me to sit in the seat across the desk from where he stood.

“Yeah, okay, now, where’s my box of stuff? And what did you want to discuss so I can leave and go live in peace” I sneered at the pony, after all, it was his soldiers that had caused me such grief over my two years here, also what did I care for what he wanted of me, all I wanted was to be left alone so I can go live in Ponyville and live peacefully and work so I could afford my peace.

“Now now, I know how those guards had treated you over your sentence, but that wasn’t up to me, but because of recent events that lead to my promotion I can at least give you peace in mind that they’ll be on latrine duty for such abysmal behaviour towards a defenceless prisoner, and your personal belongings are here” Said the general with such audible sincerity that I felt that he would remain true to his word as he levitated a box onto the desk, but then, if he didn’t want to cause me more pain, what did he want from me?

“I want to offer you a job” he said when I voiced these concerns to him.

“What kind of job?”

“Information gathering in The Zone”

“I thought I made myself clear when I said that I’m not planning on returning to The Zone, and that I really did just walk into that patrol by mistake, not my fault they were jumpy and one of them accidentally shot another”

“I know, I believe you, but what you don’t realise is that you have a criminal record now, no one will hire you, the only life you have to return to that would be considered ‘legitimate’ is one of a beggar. What I’m offering you is a simple job of finding out what is causing a couple of things within The Zone, and in turn you will be rewarded with a cleared record and enough money to not have to work again.”

Was that true? Would it be that easy for employers to check for a criminal record? I was hoping that I could just forget these past two years and get on with my life, without anyone having to bring it back up. These were the thoughts that were being run over and over through my head as I pulled my belongings out of the box, two of my prized finds for artefacts in The Zone, my various stalker equipment, a saddle bag full of nuts and bolts along with spools of string to be tied to them, and finally my photo, the original reason for entering The Zone in the first place.

“Our best researchers couldn’t work out the properties of those artefacts, they knew that they had some properties and weren’t just a pair of marbles, we figured they were related and the function of one was the opposite of the other, which was our explanation of one being white and the other black, there also wasn’t any mention of them in our databases, nor had any stalkers that we asked know what they might have been. Also we’ve taken your detector to develop our own, so here’s a prototype that we’d like you to test and use while you’re in The Zone” Shine said as he placed a detector that looked similar to my old one except it had a bigger display, while he was also eyeing off my artefacts.

“So what’s the difference between your prototype and my old detector?”

“I’ll tell you if you tell me about those artefacts” he said with a smile, so that’s how he’s going to play it.

“Fine, you were right about them being inversely related and one undoes the effects of the other, but what your ponies wouldn’t be able to discover about them is that they aren’t a natural formation in The Zone, why no one in The Zone knew of them and why they aren’t in your database, I made them. It wasn’t an intentional outcome but it let me develop my magic further, my ability is to greatly empower my spells with runes and runic circles which you may know if I’m in a database. Before I had these I had to draw the circles either then and there or with only a small amount of time beforehand” I said taking my creations and casting a spell on the white one of the two “they allow me to store a book of runes and runic circles in a void in reality, I don’t need to find the page the runes or circles are on, having the book summoned is enough for me to be able to draw power from them.”

“You say they weren’t intentional; then what were you trying to do that lead to their creation?”

“That’s irrelevant to their function. Now give me a rundown of your prototype”

“Ok, can’t expect you to give us everything we want on the first try, our prototype has the ability to find not only artefacts and recognize what the artefact is, thus it will show you where they are on the display, each ring is ten meters, but it can also find and determine the nature of any surrounding anomalies, and also display them and the area that they cover.”

“If it does work, key word being if, that’s a very handy tool, why haven’t you tested it yet?”

“Nopony has been brave enough to walk into an anomalous field to test it yet, but seeing as you’re going to be walking through The Zone anyways; it would be a good time to test it”

“You know I still haven’t agreed to your job yet”

“But you know you don’t have any other option, this job is the only way you can go back to a peaceful life” I looked out the window to the side of the desk, it over looked the main gate of The Zone, I knew I really didn’t have any option, this job was my only choice.

“Fine, but this gear would be in disrepair by now, I need new equipment. Also what information exactly are you looking for?”

“Of course, you have access to everything in our armoury; take whatever you think you will need or just even if you want it. As for the information, we just want to know why the reach of blowouts in The Zone is increasing, over the past three months the radius has increased by 20 meters. Two of the perimeter guards were walking past the perimeter together during the last one of last month and the one closest died as a result, while at the most recent one killed another guard who was four meters away from where the aforementioned guard was, so we’re only guessing where it’s really ending.”

“That is highly unnatural even for The Zone, something is very wrong in The Zone, I can see why you really want to find the source and stop it. Anyways that gives me a new sense of urgency; we should get going as quickly as possible”

Upon arriving at the armoury on base, I could say that I was expecting an incredible array of weapons, but the real amount was unbelievable, they had every gun I had ever seen during my time in The Zone, and more. The room itself stretched down out of sight, and was at least 20 aisles across, filled with racks of guns, body armour, helmets and all the odd bits and pieces you need to survive in The Zone.

General Shine spoke while looking back over his shoulder as he walked towards a lounge set up in the corner of the large room “As I said, you can take anything you want; we have plenty of spares of everything as you can see”

Walking down the aisles I picked out the equipment I wanted for The Zone, I took a basic flak jacket and gas mask combo, though I preferred to leave the gas mask hanging around my neck until I needed it, with war rein attachments. The war rein was an ingenious idea inspired by The Zone, before they were created earth ponies and pegasi were severely handicapped in a gun fight against a unicorn, because while the unicorn could just levitate his guns, the earth ponies and pegasi had to use their mouths, quite a difficult task, after the war rein was created now after the gun is slot into the war rein it was aimed where ever the wearer was looking, while restricting large rifles, it was very effective and was fired by a mechanism made by a unicorn that used brain signals to fire when needed. Although this did give pegasi and earth ponies an advantage for speed, it didn’t allow them to aim properly over distances. I didn’t take anything like an exoskeleton because heavy armour ended just as many lives as it saved, besides I wasn’t staying long, I took a G36, along with plenty of ammo for it, and a desert eagle, also with plenty of ammo. I also noticed a variety of medical equipment and decided that I should take some supplies, as I was putting all my equipment on, and putting my pistol in the war rein and the G36 strapped around my body, I noticed the guards at the door look at me like I was mad when I also put the contents of my nuts and bolts bad into one of the pouches of the flak jacket. Even if they do say that the prototype can detect anomalies, I’m not willing to put my life on the line for it, but I doubt that’s why they think it’s odd, this must be why I’m the one being sent to do this, rather than anypony here, because they’re all inexperienced and would probably die before they could find the information they wanted and get back to the perimeter.

“Alright, I’m set to enter The Zone.” I said looking over my gear one last time before looking over to General Shine.

“Good, I’ll show you to the gate, but before you go in, when you come back to leave The Zone you’ll need to notify the perimeter guard beforehand or they’ll shoot you before you can pass on the information we want, and collect your reward. When you approach just shout twilight and you should get sparkle as a countersign, to make sure that it can’t be an accident they’ll ask for your name, and you just need to tell them your name. It will be enough for them to confirm your identity, or someone you send in your place in the event that you find it necessary” said General Shine as he walked over to the door of the room, motioning me to follow him.

As I stood at the gate I could see the markings as they went further and further outside the perimeter, the range of the emissions were increasing at quite a rate, but the gap between the last two lines seemed to be smaller than the first two, a good sign that it may stop expanding, but it still doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t happen again. I had to stand and wait while the guards on the perimeter secured the area around the entrance, not like there’d be anything this close, but the evidentially changing state of The Zone could also be affecting the mutants as well. The gate was a large rolling section of the magically enchanted cyclone fencing and barbed wire, with a smaller gate in the middle for small groups to pass through one by one, either side of this large rolling door to The Zone were guard houses with low sandbag walls on their roofs for the perimeter guard snipers to sit and take cover behind. At the moment there were only two snipers on either guard house as the others that would normally be with them were part of the squad on the other side of the fence. It seemed the guards had been busy plugging holes in the guardhouses over the past three months to make them more suitable cover in an emission, what once were probably quite homily looking small cottages, now were covered in bits  of sheet metal which had apparently been quite successful in preventing deaths from the emissions.

“Area secured, ready to open the gates” shouted the captain of the guards as he stood at the head of the semi circle based around the entrance.

“Good, you ready to re-enter The Zone Spectre?” asked General Shine as he stood to my side

“Ready as I’ll ever be I suppose” I replied looking towards The Zone, wondering what new creations of Tartarus will be awaiting me on my journey.

The green unicorn motioned me to move towards the gate before he started to shout with magical amplification “The operation has now commenced, Spectre will now be entering The Zone, Captain, you and your stallions will then proceed to leap frog backwards until all of you are outside of The Zone, and in position to close the gate.” Even though by the time he started his commands I was a good distance from him, I still had to cover my ears to prevent any permanent damage.

“Let’s get this show on the road” I said with one more quick look over my gear, and at the small bag with my artefacts and photo to make sure I did bring them before I walked through the gate and into The Zone, where I fancy I felt a slight surge of energy pass through me as if The Zone was welcoming me back. I stood just a few meters inside The Zone while I watched the guard around me moved back one by one back through the gate, locking it shut as the captain walked back through the opening with a quick tip of his head to me before walking back into the guard house next to the gate to take up his over watch of the area. I looked forward down the road that I knew from my previous time in The Zone; just up ahead over a couple of small hills would be the newbie camp, no doubt the beginning of a journey to find a solution to a problem causing further unnatural occurrences in The Zone than normal. With one last look at my photo and a deep breath, I started my short walk to the camp.