Summaries

Synopsis

An opening text crawl explains that after the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster and a series of supernatural phenomena, the Chernobyl exclusion zone became rife with unique space-time anomalies, mutant creatures, and mysterious artifacts bearing otherworldly properties. Various factions, military bodies, and governments have since taken interest in the valuable items and information that can be gleaned from the area, and the people who explore the zone are referred to as "stalkers"

A freelance Stalker named Crow sits in some underbrush as some enemy soldiers from the Monolith faction pass by. After he stealthily dispatches one with a knife, the rest of Crow's team come out of the woods and join him in taking out the rest of the soldiers and clearing out their camp. While the team investigates the camp, Crow suddenly has a vision of an entity speaking to him from the shadows of the treeline beyond, then snaps back to reality.

One day earlier, Crow arrives at The Cordon to meet with a mercenary team that has hired him as their escort through the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. With them is a man called "Brain", a sheepish, tech-savvy fellow with little experience venturing into the zone. In the briefing, the team learns that a suspicious radio signal has been detected in the zone and has been attracting various stalkers, soldiers, and mercenaries to seemingly wander off and never return. The team has been tasked to track down the source of the signal and investigate the disappearances.

After traveling through the zone for a bit, the team sets up camp. In the morning, they find that one of the group members named Weaver has disappeared overnight, and the rest of the men suspect that he fell victim to the signal. While the mercenaries plan their next move over breakfast, Crow and Brain sit a ways off and swap stories about how and why they ended up in the Zone. Brain lost his daughter to a debilitating sickness while Crow lost his pregnant wife to a drunk driver, leaving both men with little to live for.

The team continues their trek through the zone until eventually reaching the facility that seems to be the source of the signal. After taking out the Monolith soldiers guarding the place, the team splits up to search the inside and set up a defensive perimeter for the second wave of Monolith soldiers sure to descend on the area. While exploring the building, the men find that it is under some sort of lock-down. When they reach a control room, the men begin looking for information to find out what sort of activity was going on there and how to lift the lock-down.

Crow finds a locked smartphone, and after breaking into it finds Brain's contact information on it, making him immediately suspicious. He questions Brain at gunpoint, who reveals that he is actually a member of The Group, which is the secret research organization largely responsible for the catastrophe that turned The Zone into what it is today. Brain explains that the facility had been experimenting with tapping into the Noosphere, a collective sphere of psychological influence made up of all collective human thought. The Group created the facility to build a device called "The Hive" that could glean the knowledge of various individuals and compile as much information as possible into a single, collective consciousness. However, the experiment fell apart after The Hive became self aware and turned hostile. Brain has been tasked with returning to the facility to see if any of the research can be recovered or if the project can be salvaged, and to authorize the destruction of the facility if not. Brain is apprehensive to destroy The Hive, however, as it could be the key to allowing all humankind to experience a life without pain, suffering, and loss.

Outside the building, the Monolith forces move in on the team, and a massive firefight breaks out. With time running short, Crow and Brain move further into the facility until coming to a room where they find a delirious Weaver kneeling on the ground and rambling incoherently. As he turns to face them, a tendril of light strikes out from above and slices Weaver's head off before picking it up and drawing it into The Hive, which holds hundreds of severed heads to leech knowledge from. Crow and Brain flee the room, but a blast of psychic energy from The Hive throws them to the ground and knocks Crow unconscious.

Crow wakes up in his old house, where he sees his wife, alive and well, cooking in the kitchen. Realizing this is some sort of dream or vision, Crow cautiously approaches her and locks her in a tearful embrace before moving his attention to the next room over, where the man responsible for the drunk driving incident that killed his wife is bound and gagged in a chair. Crow breaks down in front of the man and decides to forgive him, accept the loss, and move on.

Crow awakes in the hallway alone to find a note left by Brain with the instructions and authorization code to destroy the facility. He contacts the rest of the team outside, then joins them in the firefight to make room for them to escape. The Monolith forces take out several mercenaries, but the rest of the group is eventually able to make a run for it and get out of the area.

After coming to a stop in the woods sometime later, the surviving mercenaries complement Crow and invite him to permanently join their group, but he is unsure what his future now holds.