A lone stalker named Kurok earns his daily bread by rolling around in radioactive mud, carrying out orders for merchants. One day, after completing such a task, he is hired by a strange group of researchers looking for the reasons for the emergence of the Zone in various secret documents left in abandoned laboratories and research institutes. Now they decided to move to the center of the Zone - the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant - to get answers to all their questions. The group hires Kurk as a guide, but already at the beginning the expedition collapses, and the stalker learns many of the secrets of the Zone...