The more time passes after the Chernobyl disaster, the stranger the Zone becomes. New types of mutants arise, new deadly anomalies, new artifacts. Stalker Kex, instead of the team he has tested in many forays into the Zone, is forced into a companion by a newcomer nicknamed Psycho. Biologist Ivan Sivertsev is hired as a consultant by a local shady business tycoon. And all this against the backdrop of a series of mysterious disappearances of experienced stalkers outside the Zone. Events, at first glance completely unrelated to each other, are woven into a tight thread of another game with death, a game as dangerous as hide and seek on the center line of a busy highway.