The Zone has changed. The catastrophic Burst of 2007 has pushed its former boundaries far back. Scientists’ interest in the Zone grows, but surviving amid new anomalies and unknown mutants is now not just a difficult task—it is an art in itself. Where an unprepared person will die, where a robot won’t make it, a stalker can lay down their path. Experience and intuition, calculation and caution, luck—and often even ruthlessness—are the key ingredients of survival in the Zone, where people can be far more dangerous than monsters. Lun, a lone stalker, faces a choice: his own benefit or helping another person. A meeting in a secret cache near an abandoned settlement can become fateful…