Krot. A Stalker's Story

Some people go into the Zone for money. Some have nowhere else to go. And some go — because they hope.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Zemtsov — engineer-physicist, a man of neat handwriting who planned his life years ahead — was never supposed to end up in the Zone. But when illness took his daughter's health and medicine ran out of answers, he did what desperate people do: believed in something he shouldn't have. In a miracle. In an artifact that could heal.

He found the Zone — and the Zone found him.

Over the years, he became someone else. Masha kept getting sicker; the artifact was never found. She died on a day when he was out on another run — she couldn't wait for him any longer.

Other stalkers gave him the callsign Krot — Mole — for digging through the whole Zone in search of happiness. He dug through all of it, and found nothing.

This is a story about a man losing everything he had. And going on — because there's no reason left to stop, and nowhere left to go back to.