Balázs Pataki - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Northern Passage

He is running up a causeway leading to a hill, with abandoned factory buildings to his right and a dense forest to his left.

A thunderbolt flashes, turning the green dim of his night vision into blinding white. He curses himself for approaching the Brain Scorcher deep in the night and during a thunderstorm.

A humming drone creeps into his skull. It sounds as if an enormous generator is nearby, almost resembling a human voice shouting a warning—though it is unclear if it’s warning him to stay away, or alerting its own source of Strelok’s approach.

After a few minutes, he reaches a brick wall. Jumping over a stretch where the wall had collapsed, he enters a compound littered with wrecked vehicles, rusty railway containers and derelict wagons, their wheels and chassis overgrown with weed. Suddenly, everything in his vision turns into grainy amber.

Five columns of eerie blue light radiate in the night sky. A flash of lightning makes five huge antennae appear. It appears as if the blue dim would emanate from their metal structures themselves.

“Die, enemy of the Monolith! Brothers, to battle!”

Through the drone and thunder, Strelok hears the bellowing shouts of Monolith fighters. He ducks and moves to return fire only to realize that his rifle is gone. His eyes open wide with dread when another apparition materializes — a pseudodog running up to him, its snout baring fangs ready to tear on his flesh. Strelok desperately tries to find a weapon in him but finds nothing to protect himself. He screams.

Another apparition appears right in front of him and blocks the ghost’s assault, making it disappear like a soap bubble.

“Glory to the Monolith!”

The Monolith fighters’ blood curdling cries are followed by burst from their assault rifles.

“Kill the intruder!”

Strelok feels the bullets hit him but there is no physical pain.

The apparition waves its hand in a sign for him to follow. The drone, the hail of bullets and the flashing thunderstorm become one vortex of dark noise, echoing in his head and suppressing any thoughts of his own—except the desperate desire to run away or succumb to his enemies, finishing his torture either way.

Strelok runs after the apparition. It waves to him once more. Climbing up the derelict wagon he sees that its far end is open, leading into a tunnel. The apparition moves forward. It appears to bear an aura that makes the ghosts that materialize from the amber hue bounce off and disintegrate.

Strelok follows it into the tunnel where the walls appear to close in on him with each step he takes. He knows that wherever the tunnel ends, a horror beyond all imagination awaits. He takes several turns in the maze that is littered with decayed machines, all of them having served the purpose of creating this hell on earth from where any sane man would try to run. Strelok knows he must get to the end of the tunnel, but also that one of the turns he takes will shatter his sanity with pure horror.

It is not his willpower anymore that keeps him running but the apparition’s aura. Strelok feels that the horror outside of it would overwhelm him.

Eyes appear in the shadows and howls blend into the humming drone. Claws of bloodsuckers reach for him, the Monolith’s bullets hit the floor and walls around. The apparition leading him accelerates. Strelok feels his side hurt and can barely breathe. He almost collapses when at last he reaches a hall where huge, cylindrical containers stand. A catwalk leads up to a control panel with a switch. The apparition stops short of it and illuminates the instruments. He will have to make the last few steps alone.

Stepping out from behind the apparition, Strelok feels like entering bitter cold after the warmth of a protective room. The cold that almost crushes him is terror, the goose skin is coming from fear. With limbs trembling and teeth clattering, he enters the darkness, feels his way to the switch and pulls it.

His vision blurs. The catwalk, the rusted containers, the sinister vaults appear to revolve around him. Losing his balance he falls.

Suddenly, the darkness vanishes and he can see clearly again. In a huge hall, atop a heap of rubble and scrap metal, a crystal monolith glitters in the light beams falling in from high above. The air smells burnt and his saliva tastes like metal. He wants to crawl closer to the crystal but something keeps him away from it. Strelok stretches his arm out to reach it, fingers trembling, while the nightmares flicker in his mind as if this would be his moment of death: the truck carrying his body, believed to be dead, hit by lightning, his unknown savior’s face, the Power Plant with the waves of mutants, the hooded shape with the face he could never see—but now he understands the call of the voice that comes from deeper than the deepest vaults. It is calling him.

“Strelok!”

But for the first time he senses no menace in the call. The darkness lies behind and he is again what he used to be before — a man called Strelok who has been marked by the hell he has been through and now, when facing the maze of his nightmares once more, has found his way back to sanity.

Still terrified that once he opens his eyes something terrible will happen, he only dares to rise his eyelids a little but enough to recognize Noah’s untidy home.

Probably no Stalker has ever emitted such a sigh of relief at its sight than Strelok does now. His heartbeat slows down and his strained muscles loosen up.

Then he realizes that it was not the feeling of safety that made him calm down. It was the lack of pain: he feels as if he was a crystal glass filled with morning light.

Strelok feels something warm pressing his forehead. He reaches for it and touches Nooria’s hand. Embarrassed, he lets go of her hands which release their grip as he sits up, rubbing his eyes.

“How long did I sleep?” Strelok asks.

“About fifteen minutes,” Noah observes.

“Good God—it felt as if I had slept for a whole day!”

“How is your pain?”

Strelok looks at Nooria and it seems to him that he must have slept with his head in her lap. His embarrassment vanishes as he feels the refreshment of a long sleep getting stronger, bringing a clarity to his mind he hadn’t felt for a time longer than he could remember.

“It is gone,” he says, baffled.

Noah nods. “This was a short one, thanks God!”

“I didn’t mean the emission—I meant this, this—this is strange. I have never felt good like this, at least not in a very long time.”

“That’s a surprise,” Noah says. “You were screaming and wriggling in your sleep as if tortured by a thousand ghosts.”

“I was.” Strelok slowly shakes his head. “What did you do to me?”

“Nothing.” Nooria giggles. “I just helped you to get out of your bad dreams.”

Strelok gives her a long, inquisitive look. “Will I have those dreams ever again?”

“Not for a while, I think,” she says. “I mean a very, very long while.”

“But how long?”

“Long for you, short for me.”

“Do I still need to take those pills?”

“It depends on you. You can take pills if you want. But now you must decide if you still need them.”

Strelok looks into the green eyes that appear to keep secrets deeper than he had ever tried to solve. When their eyes meet, he sees kindness, wisdom, warmth — but they come from bottomless darkness. He turns his eyes away and shudders.

“You are a witch,” he whispers.

Noah gives him a perplexed look but Nooria just shrugs and giggles once more. “Some people call me that.”

“There are no witches, Strelok,” Noah says. “This is not a fairy tale. This is the Zone! Only asshole mutants, everywhere! She could be a mutant too!”