People often chase dreams, try to find happiness, try to attain their desires and try to find their purpose in life. I, for one, found extreme joy in chasing my dreams on the road. I fell in love with moving forward and never stopping. When I was twelve, my grandfather taught me how to repair his old, heavily modified Dnepr MT-16 in his workshop.

When he became too old to drive it himself, he gifted his old motorcycle to me. Dnepr had become my best friend and companion on the road. Together we drove across my homeland of Ukraine, through the Baltic states and across Russia all the way to the volcanic peaks of Kamchatka. I had recorded every step of my journey using a camera and gained a moderate following online that funded my future adventures.

My second love was crafting. Specifically, the crafting of outfits and armor. Over the years I took over the entirety of my grandfather's old workshop, filling the small stone building with a variety of tools and materials acquired all throughout the Baltic region. The collapse of the Soviet Union had left plenty of closed factories filled with tools and supplies that could be acquired for very little money.

I grew up in a generation that witnessed the rise of the internet and the fantastic amount of knowledge the web had granted me was incredible. I spent long nights watching videos and reading books about forging through the ages. Eventually, I even built a small forge in my grandfather's old workshop. I had showcased the armor I made online, at Renaissance fairs and comic cons, winning a few awards. I didn't craft for money, I did it for the process itself. Also, hitting things with large hammers was fun.

My final love was exploration of abandoned places. I was part of the Baltic Urbex community. The internet had connected me with people all across Eastern Europe, and through them, I had gained access to all sorts of interesting, abandoned factories and cities left to decay by the fall of the USSR. Urbex was my greatest passion and also the most dangerous of my adventures.

Sure, I came close to getting into terrible traffic accidents on my motorcycle on the tight mountain roads of Georgia. I nearly set my grandfather's workshop on fire with my home-made forge. But it was Urbex that really got me in trouble because I sought the most interesting and most dangerous places to explore. From dreary Soviet cold war bunkers, to nuclear silos, to deep caverns and mines, to abandoned cities in Siberia. I've documented my adventures on camera and shared them via the internet for anyone to see.

But nothing, nothing could compare to the thrill of exploring Chernobyl.

Oh sure, there were official tours where tourists could catch giant fish in the Pripyat river, walk through the long-gone orange forest and take pictures next to the station... but such a thing wasn't for me. I wanted to, craved to get inside the heart of it all, into the fourth reactor itself. My greatest dream was to get inside the basement of the Chernobyl power plant, to stand next to the radioactive slug called the Elephant's Foot and to make a wish upon it.

In pursuit of this dream, I made friends with various unofficial stalkers through the Urbex forums, people who were just as interested as I was in exploring Chernobyl. Over the past year I had crafted myself lead-lined armor supported by a hydraulic weight-redistribution exoskeleton for the purposes of getting into the depths of the reactor.

In the dreary morning of early October, I received a call from my best friend, Pavel Babich, a fellow stalker.

"Hey Yulia," he whispered conspiratorially from the receiver. "I think… I found a way into the basement."

"Really?" I asked, knowing exactly which basement he was talking about.

"You betcha," he said. "This is an opportunity of a lifetime. One of the bulkheads has been exposed by the metal scrappers and a containment wall cracked. Meet me at Orane tonight. We'll camp in the forest and head to the station first thing in the morning."

"Sounds good," I told him. I had a quick lunch, grabbed my Chernobyl-exploration gear and got on my old, reliable Dnepr. The disassembled exo-suit fit nicely into the sidecar.

The road to Orane was relaxing and peaceful. Lush green forest and autumn farm fields hugged the concrete road from both sides. A bit of rain sprinkled at me from above, but I didn't mind. I had assembled my biking gear myself and made sure that it was extra warm and waterproof. As evening drew near, the sky cleared and the smell of gathered hay sitting in the fields on the outskirts of towns filled the air. The relaxing, pastoral landscape surrounding me looked like it came straight out of the romantic paintings of Taras Shevchenko.

I got off my bike to record the rural scenery for my subscribers.

"This is it," I told my audience via my phone camera. "If I'm lucky, I'll get into the heart of Chernobyl tomorrow!"

Pavel was standing next to his old rusted, orange Zaporozhets ZAZ-968M, waiting for me at the turn into Orane. He gave me a big bear hug, smelling of oil and smokes. We drove our vehicles into the deep forest, set up camp and spent the night under the stars.

“Why do we do this, Pavel?” I asked as I stared at the milky way overhead.

“Do what?” He asked.

“Risk our lives, sacrifice our future for some pictures of moldy, irradiated rooms?” I yawned.

“Because it’s fun,” he answered dryly.

“I think it has to do with the nature of gratification. Perhaps the two of us are simply adrenaline junkies?”

“Personally, I feel at peace exploring abandoned places,” he commented.

“We are conscious of the danger, accepting the risk of potential thyroid cancer,” I mulled. “Racing, skiing, glacier climbing, base jumping, spelunking, cave diving and etc, are all very dangerous sports which people willingly partake in. I wonder if base jumping has a higher fatality rate than urban exploration? What is it that motivates us to take unnecessary risks?”

“Don’t get all sociologist on me.” Pavel laughed. “I think we do it because it gives our lives a sense of purpose in an otherwise uncaring universe that could vaporize us at any moment with an asteroid. It’s as simple as that.”

I stared up at the edge of our galaxy above us, the stars twinkling at me and slowly drifted to sleep. I dreamt that the stars had come down from the sky and danced akin to colorful fireflies around our makeshift tent. Each pearlescent spark, a memory, a kaleidoscope shard of another world, a miniscule echo of something calling out to me with the voice of my late grandfather from some impossibly distant beyond.

My phone alarm woke us up at 4am and we set out for Chernobyl on my bike. Pavel knew the way through the forest to avoid the block posts. Thick, white, autumn fog crawled through the forest, hiding our presence.

In a few hours we were standing in front of Chernobyl. I bid a temporary adieu to my bike, covering it with an old Soviet camouflage tarp. We briskly walked closer to the old nuclear power plant. The Ukrainian government was working with a French joint venture NOVARKA to build a new cover for it called the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement. The massive undertaking was funded by 45 countries and organizations, but it wasn't finished yet.

The old sarcophagus beneath the new one had started to decay and a few sections had become exposed. Ruthless metal scrappers had gotten inside the plant, taking apart bulkheads, doors and electronics, cleaning the place out. Like hungry worms they drilled holes through the concrete walls to get to the good stuff. I felt pity for the people that had bought the stuff from the vile scrappers. They likely didn’t know that the metal they had purchased was extremely radioactive.

Desperate people did desperate things. The scrappers were digging deeper and deeper where they shouldn’t, like the dwarves of Moria from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Except in this case, the metal thieves didn’t unleash Balrog, they simply released invisible danger upon the world, poison locked within contaminated metals.

"Here, that's the cracked wall," Pavel said, pointing his flashlight at a dark crevice in the foundation of the 4th reactor basement containment wall.

"That's kinda... tight," I commented on the dark fissure.

"Yeah, I won't be able to fit," he sighed. "But you might be able to squeeze in. Just... promise me that you won't do anything stupid inside. Come back in two hours. I'll be waiting. Don't walk into areas that are too irradiated."

"Yep," I nodded. "I know the drill. Nothing stupid. Just going to take a few pictures and videos for my blog. See you soon."

It took me a while to squeeze into the small, tight crack in the concrete wall. Luckily for me I was a rather skinny girl and kept my figure slim with a daily workout routine. Pavel passed me my thick, lead-lined suit piece by piece. I knew that I would have to leave it behind on my way back as it would be far too irradiated to take home with me.

I armored up, quickly assembling the hydraulic exoskeleton lined with lead plates, draping the Bilayer Barium Sulfate–Bismuth Oxide Composite cloth over myself. I had procured the radiation-blocking cloth from an American manufacturer and it wasn't cheap as it was made for dentistry radiologists. The 5 mm thick lead plates were extremely heavy on their own too, but the home-made hydraulic exoskeleton let me walk while bearing them and the heavy cloth without issues. It was time to delve into the heart.

I walked forward across the ruined hallways, listening to the ticks of my wrist-bound Geiger counter. I was finally in a place where no stalker had gone before. A place where no Urban explorer had delved. The deeper I went the more intense the louder the detector's buzzing became. I ignored it, relying on my armor to protect my body. I had tested the armor several times with a Geiger counter in less radioactive locations and it blocked 95% of radiation.

"It's worth it," I whispered as I went down a very corroded stairwell.

The walls became covered with nasty-looking black mold. For a second I disabled my flashlight to take an artsy picture with a ceiling-pointed camera flash and gasped as I did. The black mold glowed green in the darkness. I couldn't believe it. This was incredible... new life had emerged in this contaminated place! It was life that had adapted to the monstrous conditions inside the ruins of the reactor.

I knew that various Radiotrophic fungi were discovered in 1991 inside of Chernobyl by scientists, but I had never seen one so close to the heart of the reactor.

"Incredible... I've never seen Radiotrophic fungi up close! Microbiologist Arturo Casadevall believed that these fungi were growing because of the radiation rather than in spite of it," I narrated to my phone. There was no signal here, but I would upload the video when I got home.

"Radiosynthesis, the process of using radiation and melanin for energy, is unique to Chernobyl fungi," I explained to my viewers, pointing the phone to the ever-so-slightly glowing wall.

I wanted to scrape some of the fungus off the wall but decided against it. As cool as this mold was, it was far too contaminated to take home and the mold would not survive very long outside of its irradiated environment.

I finished my descent, heading to Room 217/2.

My Geiger counter spiked. I prayed that my lead-lined suit would protect me. I passed through the broken door into the room.

The beam of light from my helmet settled on a strange, lava-like formation coming from the wall.

"This is it... the end of my year-long journey… the Elephant's Foot… a mass of horrifically irradiated black corium with many layers, externally resembling tree bark and glass, called Chernobylite." I narrated. “The lava-like, glassy material is unique to our planet, found only in Chernobyl. It formed in the nuclear meltdown of the reactor's core.”

I took a step forward.

“Discovered in December 1986, it is just one small part of a much larger mass that now lies beneath the Chernobyl number four reactor. The structure of Chernobylite is incredibly unique… composed of silicon dioxide, with traces of uranium, titanium, zirconium, magnesium and graphite. The last person to enter this room in 1996 was Deputy Director of the New Confinement Project, Artur Korneyev.”

I stared at the terrifying artifact through the suit's lead glass lenses. My phone’s display became covered in white sparks. The radiation emanating from the Elephant's Foot was so high that it was affecting the camera!

I took another step forward, sucking air in through my respirator. Just thirty seconds and I’ll go. This is fine. I assured myself. Artur Korneyev took a photo of his unique formation, decades ago. He didn’t die, didn’t even get thyroid cancer.

"Hello, great and powerful artifact," I spoke reverently, aiming my flashlight at the foot. "Please grant... happiness for everyone, for free, so that nobody can leave unsatisfied!"

This was a famous quote from Brother Strugatsky's book Roadside Picnic and would undoubtedly make Stalker fans and my viewers from across the world very happy.

I bravely took another step forward.

"I... Am here standing in front of you… because I wish to make a difference in the world," I added. "No... I will make a difference! I swear upon death itself, upon the very heart of Chernobyl!"

I was done. It was time to head home. My greatest adventure was over.

I tried to turn away from the Elephant's Foot.

In that instance, something went catastrophically wrong. The hydraulics of my right foot locked up. I tried to move and found myself unable to do so. My suit failed to respond. I screamed as I slowly fell forward. My armor-covered arm touched the incredibly radioactive, crystalline surface of the Foot. My hand sunk inside of it, the glass-like crystalline cover shattering with an eerie twinkle.

Total darkness had engulfed me. Did my flashlight and camera die? I didn't feel pain, sweat or the weight of the suit. In fact, I felt nothing at all. I didn't know what had happened. Did I faint because of excessive radiation exposure? I cursed my foolishness.

I screwed up, made a fatal mistake. I reached too far towards the sun and burned away my wings like Icarus. Was I about to join the ranks of many other Urban explorers that died to satisfy a dangerous hobby?

I blinked… or tried to blink and saw that I was holding the cracked edge of the Foot with my hand. A very naked... hand. I let go of the radioactive rock, leapt back and found myself... gliding backwards across empty air.

I looked around, bewildered. I lacked all of my weight, felt as if I was floating through space. Except I wasn't in space. I was inside of some kind of a warped cavern. No. This was the foot, and room 217/2 viewed from the inside of the Foot, looking as if it was painted with a million glittering… tiny radioactive white sparks!

I looked down at myself. I was semi-transparent as if made from shimmering threads emanating from the center of my chest. With dread I realized that I was no longer a person, but an imprint of a girl... a memory, a ghost of Yulia Ishenko. The Foot had somehow pulled my... soul inside it, ripping me out of my physical body!

I attempted to reach out and grab at the inverted edge of the Foot once again in panic. My hands closed over nothing. I was being drawn away from the edge by an unseen current. I struggled against the monstrous pull, watching in dread as my human shape began to decay away, only a dandelion, star-like structure remaining behind.

I tried to scream and realized that I had no mouth.

The pull of the current turned me around. The rest of the Elephant's Foot looked like a gargantuan inverted tree from within. Glowing lines woven from colors I could not name formed veins of the impossible, twisted, fractal-like superstructure. I had completely lost my human shape and became smaller, more compact as I sunk into its depths.

The shimmering veins made from freakish light drew me in, folded my ghostly body and my consciousness winked out.

I discovered that I was standing in a very dreary, dead forest. The trees in it were pale, white and hollow, devoid of leaves. Beneath the roots of the trees I saw twisted, gray and ossified bodies of strange beasts.

The longer I stared at the trees, the more I realized that the entire pale forest around me was made from bones. A million, no... billions of bones of alien, dead creatures were intertwined together in a phantasmagoric expanse of death. The awful necropolis went as far as my eyes could see, disappearing into murky darkness. I had seen photos of the catacombs beneath Paris from my Urbex forum friends and in front of me was the ultimate ossuary magnified to mind-boggling proportions.

Empty, quiet stillness was omnipresent here. Not a single thing moved. The land of bones formed dreadful, grotesque structures that glowed from within ever so slightly with a dim, silver-blue light. My own body cast a bright, blue shimmer onto the petrified corpses beneath my semi-transparent feet.

This place was somewhat akin to the Ninth Circle of Hell from Dante's Inferno because it felt hellishly cold. I did not believe in hell, but I liked perusing the 1861 illuminated manuscript illustrated by Gustave Doré at university. Experiencing purgatory in person was not fun. The dark hollows beneath me seemed to slowly leech all warmth out of me. I felt a growing sense of unease and dread in my chest as I observed the vast, unmoving desolation.

I tried to move. It didn't work. My spectral form lacked muscles that I would ordinarily use as a human. I willed the threads composing my soul to move, to grab onto the bones beneath me and push forward. Motivated by the unnerving, increasing sensation of frost, I learned how to push myself forward bit by bit.

I started to move through the still, frigid underworld, looking for a way out, desperately searching for warmth. Gravity didn't seem to function properly in this limbo purgatory. I glided forward instead of walking, floating through the still air as if I was a dweller of the deep ocean abyss.

The lifeless landscape went on forever. This place was cold, incredibly so. I didn't know whether the dead could get frostbite and the chilling sensation in my soul seemed to grow worse with every passing moment. I saw that the tips of the threads composing my ghostly form slowly began to dim. I was getting weaker, moving slower, losing control of my phantom limbs.

Suddenly, I saw something shimmering deep within an enormous dark skull eyehole. Unlike the rest of the dreary landscape, the anomaly radiated colors, casting orange and yellow refractions away from it. I cautiously floated towards the mysterious object.

Upon closer inspection, it looked like an orange-yellow star with many moving threads. The threads suddenly moved, forming a semi-distinctive figure that resembled a small… crying girl of indeterminate age.

I floated towards the sad ghost. The girl woven from moving threads inexplicably shifted between a visual of a newborn child and a much older female that was crying.

I felt a certain connection with her. She, like me, was alone, trapped in this labyrinthine necropolis. I reached out towards her with my own shimmering hand. The girl noticed me. She looked up at me. There was pain, fear and suffering in her eyes woven from ember threads.

I somehow knew, understood that she was dying, the light of her life dimming with every passing second. She's been here far longer than I. I saw that most of her body had already fused to the larger skull, ossified, became part of the landscape made of ghostly bones.

She reached out to me as I reached out to her. Our hands connected with a brilliant flash and then she was… gone, as if she never existed, most of her form dissolving into orange trails of sparks and vanishing smoke.

I had found her far too late to help her.

A brilliant something flashed from above, highlighting the entire dead forest. Its light was potent, it looked akin to a powerful pyrotechnic flare used by the army to light up the battlefield.

I looked up at the inexplicable light and screamed silently as an enormous, shining comet shaped like a gargantuan, gold beetle flew towards me and closed its pincers over me, fiery claws swiftly forming a fiery, yellow cage around my body. I flailed but could not free myself as the monstrous beetle dragged me upwards through the darkness.

A powerful current shot through my chest.

“VITALEVI-VITA-VIVELLIATIA!” A booming female voice sang in cascading tones.

Pain. There was indescribable pain cutting across my entire body. An enormous, wrinkly, brown hand covered in gold spiral tattoos rested on my chest, sparkling, emerald fire blooming from it. I screamed. I didn’t sound like myself. I sounded like a small, crying child.

My scream resonated across some kind of white, enormous, blurry space. The hand retreated.

All of my senses felt smothered, broken. I couldn't see much except for blurry, indistinct shapes and my hearing barely worked.

The blurry shapes were conversing with each other in a strange, Latin-like language. It was too muffled to understand. It didn’t sound like English or any of the Slavic languages I knew.

I tried to speak and produced only a crying noise. Giant hands appeared once again, drawing me closer to an enormous female chest.

I felt hunger and latched onto a breast, drinking greedily.

If this was a hallucination, a dream and I currently lay dying on the floor of the Chernobyl plant next to the Foot, I would be extremely disappointed.

I attempted to do mathematics in my head. Two times seventy four is…. One forty eight. Excellent! This isn’t a dream. Math was impossible for me to do in dreams.

I was still satisfying my hunger when I saw sparks in my eyes. I blinked. The sparks formed into letters.

Welcome to Andross, transient soul.

Solve Equation for Full System activation: 83-91-40x2-101+222+0x1=

“Uhhh… thirty three,” I mentally arrived at the answer. “Also, what?!”

[Sufficient cognition confirmed. Full System activated.]

“Thanks?” I mentally replied. Nothing followed.

“Hello? System? What the hell are you? What are you doing in my head? Can I have more information, please?” I mentally demanded, feeling utterly befuddled at the ridiculous sentences floating in front of my eyes. I felt that I had gone insane and…

The previous text vanished and a whole new chart blotted out my vision.

Name:

Juni Tokimorimïtul

Age:

0 days since birth

Species & Subtype:

Chimera spawn

Level:

0

Experience:

0/50

Health:

0.1/0.1

Stamina:

0.1/0.1

Mana:

0.1/0.1

Mana regen:

0.1m/hr

Strength:

0

Agility:

0

Dexterity:

0

Vitality:

0

Charisma:

0

Magic:

0

Luck:

0

Intelligence:

0

Wisdom:

0

What?