"Be honest, Dmitry. Did you believe any of the crap this old man was spouting?" Konrad muttered on their way back to the upturned car. "Or, like, have you known about it already?"
The Captain was quick to shake his head.
"All news to me, too," he said. "And I'd say it's some bullshit as well, if not for the fact—"
He pointed at himself, over his chest and sides.
Sure enough, he couldn't stand straight a few minutes ago.
But a magical artifact that shouldn't have even existed healed him like it was nothing.
Konrad was jealous of a literal chunk of Meat.
"Besides," Dmitry asked. "Weren't you the one stopping a ballistic missile earlier?!"
And yeah, he had no comeback to that.
If Kasserlane was real, and he married an angel and a greater demon, why not this place?
"I don't know, man," he was still shaking his head, though. "All this time, I thought Earth had no magic, unless—hmm, they could be partying hard at the centre of this thing."
"Huh? They what?"
Dmitry raised an eyebrow, but Konrad waved him off.
"Never mind. Anything on your PDA?"
They ended up taking them, but nothing else. All his money was gone anyway.
"Only your green dot," the Captain noted, keeping one eye on that proximity tracker thing. "I can no longer see Sidorovich, either. So I guess the range is even less than a hundred meters."
And he said it was to avoid friendly fire or ambushes?
This was a world of firearms. That distance felt nowhere near enough.
At least the car was still where they had left it, without any new dots appearing nearby.
"You carried me all the way from here?" Dmitry scowled. "And wait. This wreck looks both better and much worse than I expected. How did we not die after flying like that?!"
Konrad couldn't help but laugh.
"I kept asking the same thing whenever you drove. But the air cushion that saved us also helped me carry you to the old fox's bunker. Would have been easier if you used your seatbelt, though."
"Sorry, sorry. I focused on not getting hit by one of those drones," the Captain complained.
Speaking of which, Konrad still couldn't figure out where the rest of them went.
"Crap, my phone's in pieces," Dmitry moaned as he searched the car further.
"Whatever, no reception here anyway," Konrad offered his one. "Wonder if these PDA-s can make a call, though. Since they use satellites and stuff—"
"Nah, they can't," his friend claimed. "I already tested it. Which means we both went missing."
Right. Konrad didn't care about who knew they were here.
But for Dmitry, this should have been a quick drop-off before he headed back to his station.
"D-do you want to leave?" he asked, recovering his guitar case and the rest of his stuff. "It might be dangerous to go through the National Guard if they're this hostile. But I could portal you—"
"No," the Captain shot him down. "No, actually, want to see this to the end now."
"See what where?" Konrad furrowed his brows. "Too much weirdness here. You'd better specify."
"Exactly," Dmitry yelled. "I thought the Zone was nothing more than, you know—dead space. But disappearances, anomalies, and these miracle-artifacts?! How did I never hear of these?!"
Yeah, he freaked out, too.
"Sidorovich did say it was a state secret, I guess," Konrad pointed out. "And it's not like any of this is your fault. I would have ended up coming here anyway."
But it might have taken him months, no, even years, until he found Strelok's trace.
Without Dmitry's connections and know-how, he wouldn't even know where to start looking.
"Either way," Captain Bandera said, pulling his underfolding AK from the wreck. "I want to know what's going on here. Call it curiosity, or my rage against the brass that never tell—"
Konrad laughed.
"Well, I won't complain. I'd rather you watch my back, but I didn't want to get you in trouble."
Dmitry laughed, too, checking if his gun functioned, but—well, it was an AK after all.
It was fucking indestructible.
"It's my own decision. But, um," the Captain's voice trailed off as he looked back on the road they came—no, flew down earlier. "How are we going to avoid anomalies without a detector?"
Yeah, he had thought about this, too.
"Hmm," he pondered. "This could all be magic that I know. Whatever takes mana has a signature that you can hide, but not erase. I should be able to feel them without any fluff."
If he focused hard and knew what to expect, and—
Without driving at a hundred miles per hour.
Ah, man, but forget detectors.
The light magic nullifying artifact Vargas had would have come in handy now.
"Actually, there's an easy way to test this," Konrad noted, pointing at the gentle incline. "We hit an anomaly on this road, right? The old fox said they might migrate, but it should still be close."
"All right," Dimitry agreed. "I'm in your care, then, sorcerer."
And so they half-way climbed that hill again, Konrad keeping his mind open and alert, but—
Even as he expected something, they walked straight into the anomaly.
Well, almost.
"Stop," Konrad yelled at the last moment.
Nope, he didn't feel shit. He had only spotted a strange mirage by chance.
As if the heat rose from the concrete, and distorted the light.
But he found it odd when it was rather cold with the sky cloudy, too.
"Okay, this'll be more troublesome than I thought," he confessed. "Can you see or feel anything?"
It was a mistake to ask.
Dmitry shook his head and should have left it at that.
But he also tried to wave his hand around, and if Konrad didn't catch it—
"Dude, don't you remember what it did to your car?!" he scolded the soldier, yanking him back a few feet for safety. "I could try dispelling it, but it might be better if we both saw it in action."
And with that, he picked up a fistful of pebbles.
"Ah, um, sorry," the captain muttered. "And go ahead. I'm ready."
Ready for what? He raised his rifle, aiming at nothing.
He wasn't about to trigger a portal, though.
Whatever.
"Here goes nothing," he announced, throwing his ammunition in a nice, wide spread.
And the moment the first one reached the suspicious area, the silence broke.
A ten-foot tornado formed out of thin air, picking up the pebbles, swirling and swirling, then—
BOOM.
He should've expected it. It had the power to throw a car into the air, so it had to be strong.
But to think those pebbles would break the sound barrier in an instant?!
They might have even reached a low Earth orbit later.
At the same time, the inner workings of the anomaly revealed themselves, too.
It wasn't a simple light-scatter, but someone suppressed its mana-signature as well.
Someone, something, or nature itself.
Reading the runes wasn't that easy, but Konrad did recognize part of the syntax.
And before the tornado could turn invisible again, he dispelled it whole.
"Well, this is magic all right," he concluded, inspecting the now harmless area.
Nothing remained.
No runes, no spell carrier, or artifacts.
No clue of who, how, or why would have set up this trap.
But if the Zone was crawling with these, he wasn't that eager to explore it.