Human destinies are unpredictable. What would have happened if philology student Andrei Yegorov had not possessed a steady hand and a sharp eye, and if the university had had a military department that granted deferment from conscription?.. But there was no such department, while he did have a first-category marksmanship rank — and this led to the transformation of a linguist into a sniper for army counterintelligence, setting foot on the path of a professional warrior. His military career, true, did not work out, but with such a specialty you won’t be lost even in peacetime, and Andrei was “lucky” enough to end up in a zone of technological catastrophe that turned a major city into a wild field inhabited by warring armed groups. In the largest of them, he quickly becomes a person close to the leader, who one day summons Andrei and informs him that the group faces a difficult task, and only he, former contract sergeant Yegorov, can carry it out...