Александр Конторович - Predator - Escape from Tarkov

“So what do you want me to do?”

“Go and see him. Offer to sell him something. His prices are of no particular interest to us, but we’d love to know how he’s set up and how he does business.”

It’s a funny sort of job he’s offering – they send me off to deal with someone who’s obviously a criminal, someone who even in the past was not particularly law-abiding, and who now could go off at just about any moment. Not to mention that I have difficulty imagining how even to talk to someone like that. It may not even be that easy to get anywhere near him. If he’s some kind of gangster, then his security is likely to be even more serious than Mr. Ogryzko’s. It’s far from certain that I’ll get out of there alive.

I explain my doubts to Sledgehammer. He says nothing for a while, turning something over in his head.

“Here’s what I can tell you. In the past, there weren’t many people who could get to see him, you’re right about that much. He’s really not a public figure, it’s true. But in the current situation, he can’t afford his old airs and graces. There’s not much of his old client-base left.”

“What do you mean? Surely there’s fewer shops now, too?”

“He was a drug dealer, if you haven’t worked it out yet. Now he’s had to change his product line altogether. He does, of course, have some resources, but even they have their limits.”

I scratch my head thoughtfully. Clearly, they wouldn’t make this sort of offer to just anyone. Can I take it as a sign of trust, or does the shopkeeper just want to use a short-sighted fool for his own purposes? Either could be the case. Let’s take a closer look at this. What are the upsides for me? God knows. Sledgehammer hasn’t said anything about that yet. As for downsides, well, the fact that they could kill me is a pretty clear and comprehensible negative.

Alright then, what if I refuse? In that case they’ll give the task to one of the bandits – the bandits who I’ve just introduced to them. No doubt they’ll be able to find some brainless tough guy who’ll agree to do it. Sledgehammer won’t even have to beat around the bush with him. He can just tell the bandits what’s really going on, and that’ll be enough for them. Then all my efforts will go up in smoke. Again I’ll be running from basement to basement, jumping at every sound.

“Fuck that! Let’s say I agree. What do I get out of it?”

“What do you actually want?”

There were lots of things I wanted, not least of them to find out why we were in the situation we were in.

“That’s a question I can answer for you. Not fully. If you know the score, you’ll realize there’s things that even we don’t know,” says the guard shrugging his shoulders.

According to Sledgehammer, the events in Tarkov didn’t happen suddenly. It was me, sitting in a locked office and up to my ears in all sorts of network problems, who managed to ignore what was going on. Others who were smarter had long had an idea of what was coming. They made their conclusions and acted accordingly.

The conflict between the transnational corporations and the state authorities had not begun yesterday. But until now everything had been kept within the bounds of reason. Problems had normally been resolved through the courts or similar channels. It had never got, thank heaven, to all-out warfare. But then in the last year, someone had got the bit between their teeth. Those same transnationals began, covertly at first but then more and more openly, to defy the powers that be. From time to time this even led to shootouts. Somehow it turned out that it wasn’t just the corporations’ security services involved, but also similar and sometimes only semi-official organizations employed by the state. Pavel wasn’t keen to elaborate on the subject, and I decided not to pester him with further questions as long as he told me about everything else.

He did. It all started when yet another shootout between the security service of a transnational and the local OMON ended up with casualties among the civilian population. Who had actually opened fire on the crowd it was now too late to establish, but there were victims. The security services and private armies on both sides – the Bears and USEC – ended up in a bitter stand-off. The city government clutched their heads in their hands and announced a general evacuation. To begin with, everything went more or less smoothly. Transport arrived on time and people were dispatched in an orderly fashion. Then someone opened fire at one of the departure points, and the crowd scattered in all directions. Somebody shouted that they should all go to the port, as there would be ships arriving. Others decided to make their own way out of the city. That’s when accidents started to happen, as everyone wanted to put their foot down and nobody wanted to give way. In most cases, it was the well-off people in powerful new cars who never even imagined that they might have to let someone else go in front of them.

As is often the case, it didn’t take long for opportunists to seize the chance to enrich themselves at the expense of others' misfortune, and the unlucky drivers whose cars were involved in collisions were robbed on the spot. Then cars started coming under attack even before they’d crashed. All efforts by the police to prevent this came to nothing. Some offenders were arrested, others were shot, but it made no difference to the big picture. Most of the forces of law and order were occupied with the evacuation, and there weren’t enough boots on the street to stop the sudden wave of violence that was sparked. The whole situation got completely out of hand.

At the end of the third day of the evacuation, complete chaos began to grip the city. Moreover, much of what happened had no logical explanation whatsoever – the absolutely incomprehensible gunning down of completely innocent people, an utterly unprovoked attack by unknown assailants on a police station, and other similar phenomena.

As a result, on the fourth day Tarkov was in the midst of a completely inexplicable situation. There was no action forthcoming from the powers that be, most municipal services had stopped working, and anarchic armed groups were roaming the streets, opening fire unimpeded. Ministry of the Interior troops soon turned up, but instead of heading straight into the city and restoring order with an iron fist, they began to put up roadblocks on every route out of the danger zone, even forest footpaths. A rumour went round that some kind of radioactive poison had been released in the air. The next rumour concerned a possible accident at a chemical factory. Which of these rumours was true, nobody knew, but from that moment the evacuation was brought to a sudden halt. The appearance of the blue helmets of a UN peacekeeping force added further fuel to the flames. By that time nobody had a clue what was going on. The government issued a statement concerning the situation that left everyone even further in the dark and crushed all further attempts at organization.

“So, my fine friend, here we are sitting in a great big pressure cooker, and somebody blew the lid off. Why? Nobody knows. Getting out of here won’t be possible for a while. You’re not advised to try anything on your own. There are rumours that some people are still being evacuated, but nobody ever knows exactly when, how, or where to. But you’ve still got to live, haven’t you? That’s where people like our boss come in. He’s a man with a sharp mind, and if he’s a little greedy, well, he is after all a trader, not a philanthropist. And those very same UN peacekeepers are also selling stuff, not to mention the rest of them. Everybody’s got to get by. And everybody needs some middlemen to oil the wheels. That’s how we go on surviving. How long this will go on for and how it will end, nobody has the slightest clue. Everybody’s lying, and the government more than anyone. Nobody trusts anybody. If you want to live – not to have a comfortable life, but just to go on breathing – then you need to make some effort. Otherwise you might as well give up the ghost. If you work on your own, you’ll end up dead, and it’ll be a nasty death, too. So, you need to pick a team.” And with that he finishes.