During an environmental rally, the leader of activists opposing the restart of train traffic through the nuclear disaster exclusion zone is killed. The main benefits from the railway are received by the Cesar holding, so the first suspicion falls on it. But the management of Cesar considers the incident a provocation of competitors and instructs employee Kirill Shelekhov to find the person who ordered the murder faster than the police or the Investigative Committee can do it. The investigation results in a long journey through the Urals and leads Shelekhov to a place that he has avoided all his life - the exclusion zone. Along the way he will meet people who will change his view of Cesar, his country and himself. And the murder will be solved, although not in the way Shelekhov expected. The novel takes place in 2019 in an alternate reality where there was no Chernobyl disaster and the associated increase in safety standards. As a result, in 1992, another nuclear accident occurred in the Urals - an explosion of a nuclear power plant...