The zone has changed. The catastrophic Outburst of two thousand and seven pushed its former boundaries far away. Scientists' interest in the Zone is growing, although surviving among new anomalies and unknown mutants is now not just a difficult task, but an entire art. But where an unprepared person dies, where a robot cannot pass, the stalker will be able to pave his own path. Experience and intuition, calculation and caution, luck, and often cruelty are the main components of survival in the Zone, where people can be much more dangerous than monsters. Lun, a lone stalker, is faced with a choice: his own benefit or helping another person. A meeting in a secret cache near an abandoned village can become fateful...