A strange tourist arrived in the Zone - a rich old man with a retinue and bodyguards, whom the sharp-tongued stalkers immediately nicknamed the Sheikh. His team is also strange - the eternal loser Ryaboy, and the cruel Kyle, and expelled from the Seeker group for Noris is a curious amateur performance, and generally speaking, the gloomy Deserter who came from nowhere is the owner of the worst reputation among stalkers. They have to go to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. But the further, the more strange things happen to the expedition. A mysterious ring of anomalies, suspiciously similar to a perimeter defense, is only the first of what awaits those who were foolish enough to accept the Sheikh’s offer...