Hello. My name is Kira. I'm a journalist. When I've taken on a case, I won't leave without a juicy smoking news story. Gossip, scandal, corruption, sexual harassment Oh yeah, those are mine! But now I don't care about such small issues. This one feels like the scoop of the year, and I've never had a poor hunch before. Right now my town lives on as it always has. Sex, drugs, murder, suffocating office routine, homeless people and some old ladies feeding stray cats Nothing looks out of the ordinary. Normal civilized life. The city buzzes like a beehive. But it is dead silent on the southern edge. There the military cordons begin, towers and walls with barbed wire. Several hundred square kilometers are cordoned off. However, it wasnt always like this. All was built in a matter of days, around six months ago. Even I don't know whats going on there. When the explosion happened on the southern outskirts, the whole town was evacuated. The military cordoned off everything they could. It was a sensational story! The mayor at the time stated that the radiation from Mercury had refracted into the ozone layer of the atmosphere and caused a gas explosion on the marsh. A rare and dangerous natural phenomenon. And the cordon was built ostensibly because there is still a danger of toxic gas emissions from the resulting natural fault. But half a year has passed. The hype has subsided, and new occasions for gossip have appeared. Life went on as usual. The barbed wire separating the suburbs and mountains from ordinary people became a familiar part of the landscape. They truly are amazing creatures, these people they get used to everything. Although many since then are still searching for missing relatives, most have not cared for a long time. The city lives on as if nothing had happened. The police avoid that area. The media keeps silent. No one has seen brave men who would've broke through the cordon. Silence. Swamp gas. Hah, don't be ridiculous! There is something the authorities are not telling us. The rumors are the most ominous. Some talk about a meteorite falling, others about a virus leaking out of a secret laboratory. Once, in a bar, I was talking to this big guy from those suburbs. He was drinking in big gulps yet he couldn't get drunk. He was shaking like a mouse. The guy managed to evacuate in time, but I guess he was a bit cuckoo. The poor chap kept telling that people suddenly started attacking each other with their bare teeth. At the same time, the military was shooting everyone, without distinguishing between attackers and victims. Of course, this could not be true. But what was it that frightened this mountain of a man?
I come from a military family. I have a lot of acquaintances in the army. But even from my closest friends I couldn't get the information I needed. There are all kinds of rumors, of course. Yet still I can't make a great scoop out of rumors. The only thing I know for sure is that there is a military camp in the zone. Something is being guarded there, or something is being investigated. What exactly is it? I am going to the danger zone on my own today. Devil only knows how many acquaintances and connections I had to raise, how many strings I had to pull to be accepted as one of their own, to be issued a pass and allowed into the guarded area. Scary. But this investigation promises to be the loudest of my career. And I've never backed down before. I don't intend to now. To be continued...