An Anomaly Too Far

Nothing if ever is routine in the Zone. It is chaos in many shapes and sizes, along with the many men who stalk the zone for its riches. However, the zone was particularly unkind to one such Mercenary.

Date: August 12, 2013
Location: Limansk
Mission: Deliver Secure Laptop to Client

It was supposed to be a nice and quick job, but let it be known the Zone is a mean and cruel bitch. Dushman, my ~~lovely~~ asshole of a boss, gave me the task. All I had to do was pick up some laptop with some secret squirrel shit on it and bring it back. That lazy asshole never gives me a halfway decent job, not to mention that the gear he tries to sell would bankrupt you just by looking at it.

The location of the task at hand put near the center for Limansk, and when I saw that my fucking heart dropped. Limansk is not a very nice place to visit. It's a goddamn warzone filled with crazed zone worshipers with more firepower than the fucking military. Needless to say, you don't go into Limansk without a very good fucking plan and a goddamn Deathwish.

The plan Dushman drew up had me take main route out of The Dead City and enter Limansk using the cover of night to conceal my movements. Thankfully on my last Op I manage to save up enough dosh for some night vision from Dushman, although he was kind of an asshole about the price. For a dangerous task I would bring bit more equipment than I would normally carry, so I pack accordingly for the task at hand set out for Limansk.

However, when I reached the city, I ran it to a small little problem which threw a wrench into Dushman's nice and simple plan. Monolith, crazy Bastards who can shrug off bullets and wounds that would normally kill most people. Needless to say, you don't want to go into a firefight with these guys unless you got a lot of firepower or a lot of friends. Neither of which I have so my best course of action was to lay low for the time being. I took cover behind some old truck and notice two other Mercs just ahead of me trying to bypass a Monolith patrol. But they fucked up and got spotted because one of them accidently shined his weapon light for a brief moment.

Before he could realize his mistake, the Monolith patrol started to engage the mercs giving me a good opportunity to slip by. Staying low and slow I slip past them leaving the greenhorn mercs to their fate. Once I put some distance between me and the patrol, I pulled up my PDA to see where I was relative to the package. I was only about 100 meters from the building it was in. Taking stock of what I had with me I performed a quick equipment check.

My Rifle is a suppressed M4a1 with an under barrel m203 launcher, pretty useful with harder to kill targets. The sight still an Eotec holo sight was a nice bright red and the magnifier still attached providing me a nice 4x time magnification. My secondary was a Suppressed Heckler and Koch USP 45 a reliable pistol used around the world and a personal favorite of mine. Lastly my M40a3 I had strapped to my patrol bag; Not very useful for clearing buildings but it more than makes up for it by being able to put down long range targets.

After I was satisfied looking over my weapons, I brought my m4 to a low ready position and made my way to the target building. Apon my approach towards the target I noticed a group of time anomaly surrounding the Objective, making my exfil a pain in the ass to say the least. After entering a gap in the anomaly field, I climb through a window rising my rifle to my shoulder, as I slowly pan the room for any threats, I fail to find any at all.

Making my way through the building going room to room searching for this damn laptop, after failing to find any signs of it I stop for a brief moment to collect my thoughts. Thats when I heard faint voices coming from upstairs, now having some actual stimuli to work with I work my way towards the stairs. Being extra sure to pie out my corners I notice a faint light coming from a room towards one end of a long hallway. The hallway itself was in rough condition if I might add, a good quarter of the right-hand side was gone and replace by a damned space anomaly. On the other side was a presumed target, a white light and radiating from the crack of the door.

Slowly creeping up to the door rifle raised having stopped just outside of it when I heard a man speak to, I assume to be a friend of his. Unfortunately for me my Ukrainian is pretty fucking bad so I couldn't follow at all. Having been feed up with this revelation I kick in the door. There was two men inside one wearing a lab coat the other wearing some form of military uniform, without hesitation I put two rounds into the military stalker and held the other at gun point.

The man in the lab coat just stood their motionless in fear for his life.

" Get on the fucking ground now!" I said towards the man, he had gotten the memo and proned out onto the floor. After pulling out some zip ties I restrained him not wanting to waste any more rounds then needed.

The room itself was not that large, a small wooden table in the center had the laptop and various papers and folders on it. On the opposite side from the dead stalker lied scientific equipment, pretty much useless to me but Dushman might like to know it's here. Might even get a bonus for it.

Turning my attention back towards the center I unstrap my backpack and slide the laptop into it. Looking back at the man I kneel down next to him and asked him just what the hell he was doing here. Much to my Suprise ~~or lack thereof~~ he didn't speak any English at all, so he was fucking useless.

After thinking on just what to fucking do with him I decided to cut him loose, I didn't need to kill the egghead so I wouldn't have to. I did make sure to secure any of the firearms in the room, just in case he wants to be a hero. He seems to be thanking me in his native language and started to point out the door towards the anomaly opposite of we are standing. I guess that one anomaly in particular seems important to him at least. With that in mind the egghead strode towards one of the windows while I made a move for the door hopping to just put this fuck up mission behind me and get paid.

That would be very short lived, as soon as I left the room my night became a living nightmare. A rocket from a fucking RPG entered into the damn room through the window. I had just barely gotten out of the doorway when it happened, it launched me just feet away from the space anomaly. After shitting bricks enough bricks to rebuild all of Pripyat, I picked myself up and decide my exfil needed to happen right fucking now.

Dusting myself off I picked up my m4 and damn near sprinted down the stairs. What I saw next made my heart skip a beat, a monolith trooper in an exosuit wielding Vepr 12 semi-automatic shotgun. If you don't know what an exosuit is well to put it simply it makes you a walking tank on the battlefield, and only the most veteran stalkers have the opportunity to utilize them. When our eyes meet, with a quickness I readied my m203 and managed launched a 40mm grenade right into his chest.

The resulting blast barely even moved the SOB, he had bits of his shotgun poking out of his armor, Aswell as blood flowing from his head and chest. I guess I managed to just piss him the fuck off, because after that he just dropped the rest of his gun on the ground and started to approach me menacingly. At that moment I knew I fucked up pretty fucking bad, but it got a lot fucking worse when just past him I saw more monolith soldiers headed this way.

I had to think fast on this one, I had at least a squad sized element trying to push my position, and a very angry Exo gunning for me. I couldn't leave the way I came in, nor could I just jump out a random window because of the anomalies. I had to shoot my way out of this one. Starting with the man in the Exo suit I had a little plan for this one.

Shooting up the stairs reaching to the floor i previously was, I readied a m14 incendiary grenade waiting for the fucker to pop his head. Now an m14 hand grenade burns up to 4000 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 seconds and can burn through a 1/2-inch homogeneous steel plate. Pretty useful in dealing with hard to kill targets just then, I heard his powered footsteps and those of his friends reaching the stairs. and at that moment I pulled the pin and watched the magic happen.

All I heard next was screams from the men below me indicated that the magic had indeed work. However, I still heard steps coming up the stairs and an increasingly higher pace now. I had a feeling on just who that might be, so I fucking booked it towards the burned-out room. After taking cover in the room I readied my rifle and reloaded my m203.

Fear.... Absolute fear took over me when he rounded that corner. Hot shards of metal protruding out of him, and a trail of blood forming on the ground in his wake. Most of his uniform was burned off and scorched while the rest of his armor was a charred black. After taking it all in I open fired at him trying to aim for any vitals at all. It didn't do too much but I did notice him slow down, but it was too late.

He was going to reach me any second now, so I had to decide my fate. Either get killed by this supped up monolith solider or take my chances with the anomaly to my right. I would rather take my chances with the zone then too knowingly die by this asshole. So, I got up and leaped out the opened wall into the space anomaly, praying to whatever deity that cared to listen to not kill my ass when I got in.

Time itself seems to slow down the closer I got to it until I reached the surface. Once i entered the bubble i fell flat on my fucking face. Dusting myself of and looking at my surroundings I knew I made a big goddamn mistake. All round me I could see nothing but a dense grey fog all around, the ground itself felt like dead grass pretty normal for the zone. "Well shit" I uttered under my breath, I hope that i can find a way out of this hell hole before I fucking bonkers or starve.

I have been in the zone long enough to know that Murphy's law in king around these parts. It would be very apparent when out the corner of my eye I spotted a dark figure just inside the fog making my way towards me.

I guess Murphy is back for round 2....