Everyone expected something to happen in 2012. They laughed, joked, and told anecdotes on the subject. But it blew up not when it was predicted, and not where it was expected. The world turned upside down in 2015. The Season of Catastrophes began. At first everything seemed simple and clear: in 2015, Earth entered the Season of Catastrophes, and in order to survive, humanity had to understand how and why certain global events occur. That is why quest groups are sent into anomalous zones, their task being first and foremost to search for rifts in the space-time continuum and the associated “pakals” — artifacts which, according to the leadership of the Center for the Study of Catastrophes, may hold the key to many mysteries of the changing world. In these zones “our people” are opposed by the enemy “grays,” about whom even less is known than about the zones themselves, though they are worth destroying just in case, as well as a mass of all sorts of unidentified evil creatures and very harsh natural conditions. But that is only at first. In reality, everything turns out to be much more complicated and ambiguous. Physicist Osipov, biologist Orson, and the fighters of the group, Kamokhin and Breygel, became convinced of this in the frozen city, an anomaly that became for their quest group the first in a long سلسلة of special raids, the first move in a strange Game of which they unwillingly became participants, with no right to leave…