This run has to be the last for Roman Nesterov and the stalkers of the Cartesian Coordinates. Consumed by guilt and burdened by questions with no answers, he goes to where it all began for him—the Moscow Zone that took his brother and destroyed his life. Meanwhile, among the rotten marshes and damp copses of the Old Zone, the military stalker Shakespeare picks up a trail of a conspiracy linking the “Obelisk” group—fanatics living in an abandoned nuclear power plant—and adherents of the “Obsidian” organization. A coordinated “Obsidian” attack in most Zone worlds leaves CAI headless and unable to stand against the looming threat.
The enemies are one step away from carrying out their plan—to create a Zone on a planetary scale—and all that stands in their way is a desperate stalker tormented by the ghosts of the past, and a hired man turned by CAI scientists into something that is hardly human anymore…