A scorched courtyard full of corpses received its final one for the battle when a pseudodog riddled with bullets keeled over. Its limp, lifeless body was hit by one, last confirmation bullet, but the original intent by the shooter was now forgotten. The sound of a helicopter's rotors and engines was growing louder, and following it, Boris had ordered the men with him to reach cover instantly. Screaming one last order, for Dimka and Sevka to seek shelter under the grocery store, into his helmet radio, Boris could only pray for the two ex-UNISG troopers. The helicopter got closer, and a question on Degtyarev's lips froze when a hailstorm of bullets began hammering down on the yard like an angry god had just decided to strike the ground with a million lightning bolts. The three stalkers standing outside managed to reach the safety of the big blocky building just in time as the bullets kept getting closer.

"Who the hell are these guys now?", Degtyarev managed to somehow shout over the fire.

"We don't know, but they're in league with UNISG. Or were. They're led by some Serbin guy.", Boris yelled back in return.

"Serbin? Oh blyat, should have killed him when I had the chance.", Degtyarev muttered when the minigun fire from the chopper stalled for a second.

"You know him?", Dima asked, and the colonel nodded before answering.

"Back during Fairway, I had a chance to kill him. Killed his pal, Jackal, and he managed to escape."

"Damn. So that was what Vulture was on about. Who is Serbin?", Boris questioned in turn, but he was cut off by a remark from Sanyok.

"Troops rappeling down from the heli! Prepare for an attack!"

Boris spun around to look outside, where a squad of men in midnight-black armour was gathering under the helicopter. Fighting the gust coming off the rotors, they gathered in loose but organized formation, beginning to advance. The helicopter creeped onwards, and the rotary machine gun mounted in its side started spewing lead once more. Boris took cover alongside the others as the swarm of the bullets struck the edifice with immense strength. The helicopter closed in on the building, passing over it as the strong winds kept its momentum going too fast for it to remain stationary.

"It's our chance, strike them now that they're not supported!", Degtyarev ordered, and the men mounted the very same positions they had used earlier to fight UNISG.

The ten men advanced by the road, working very much like UNISG before them. These attackers had a machine gunner with them, which Redemption found out about the hard way when they fired the opening salvo. The mysterious force dispersed, receiving some hits but firing back in return, hitting Sanyok. The Redemption sergeant was struck in the shoulder by the machine gun-wielding trooper. Dima moved quickly to help Sanyok, who Boris saw to be in shock but not gravely wounded. Using the contents of Sanyok's orange medkit and a bandage to stop the bleeding, Dima hoped to at least stabilize his friend. Boris muttered a short prayer for Sanyok's recovery but grimly noted that it was one less gun in the fight.

Degtyarev and Dimuha had not been idle, though. The Abakan of the SSU agent sent two-round bursts at fearsome rate down the road, while Dimuha used his accurate machine gun to try pin down the enemy gunner. It was still an uphill struggle, for the enemy had far more guns and were no rookies by the looks. Boris tried to use his armour to their advantage, rising momentarily to fire a long burst, but he was immediately focused down. Boris felt a bullet strike his MASKA head on, again feeling blood trickle down his face. Another struck his front plate, the dull pain of a blunted bullet making his RPD swerve slightly, missing every round it had pushed out.

"This isn't working, they've got us pinned down.", Boris said while ducking down to wipe the blood coming off the bruise on his forehead.

"Da, I've managed to wound one of them and I'm down to my last two magazines. We need to retreat.", Degtyarev replied.

"But to where? Into the tunnels?", Dimuha asked.

"Tunnels?", the other SSU agent, Yvanova, asked.

"There's a network of tunnels below this place. Strelok used it to escape earlier. And Meeker dragged one of your men there to cover. We can reach the laundromat from there, apparently.", Dima replied.

"Let's go, then. No use sticking around here at this rate.", Dimuha said anxiously, as the wall shook from hits.

"Da. I'll hold them off for a bit. Go.", Degtyarev ordered, and the others crawled further into the building.

Boris could hear the distinct barks of the AN-94 even over all the noise. Further inside the decades old, decrepit building, they found a sewer grate-looking plate, and using his exoskeleton-boosted strength, Boris lifted it off the ground. Dima helped Sanyok lower down, Dimuha followed suit and Yvanova dropped down after him. Boris waited for two more minutes, seeing his comrade-at-arms disappear into the darkness with only their steps reassuring him that they had not faded into an abyss. When his clock notified him of the two minutes passing, the secret service colonel stormed into the room. Boris pointed him down the ladder, and soon even the exhausted Degtyarev had vanished. Boris attached a grenade to a rope he had been tying into the grate, and entered the manhole. He left the grenade now in a position, where even attempting to move the cover would cause the grenade to explode.

To his surprise, when Boris made it into the dusty, cramped corridor, Colonel Degtyarev was waiting for him.

"I wanted to use this brief moment of calm to, well, apologize. I really was in a tight spot, with the general breathing down my neck when it came to light that I had employed stalkers as help. Higher-ups think we cannot compromise with stalkers, while simultaneously they provide no help from the Speznaz or regulars.", Degtyarev said quietly.

"Often decisions you want to make and ones you need to make are as far apart as possible. So I accept that apology, but I must admit, I don't give a damn about your relations to Redemption. You worked for years with Strelok, you must have seen how the Institute treated him. I don't know him well, but Strelok barely shows any emotion from anything, yet when he recounted that situation of his in the Big Land, he seemed like a man whose opinions had been suppressed and belittled at every turn.", Boris commented.

"This isn't as much about him as it is about national security. He knows things about the Zone no one else does, even if he shared most of it with us. There is just too much at risk if we let him stay here. Monolith, Sin, UNISG and now Omega is on his heels, and it is only a matter of time before somebody gets him. And if it's international actors... It will be the foreign political crisis of our age.", Degtyarev replied.

"Wait, are those black-clad stalkers called Omega?", Boris asked.

"Ye-... Eh, never mind. You don't need to know more of them, really. All you need to know is that they're highly influential and are hellbent on killing Strelok. That's about all I'm allowed to share too, otherwise I need to eliminate you as well. And I've grown on your antics, so don't make me do it.", the colonel explained.

"I'm pushing it as is, so I won't. But back to Strelok, can you not see how he is handling the situation alone? He does not need state protection due to his legendary status, really. I have seen with my own eyes what his reputation does, in Limansk both Freedom and Duty arrived to fight by his example, and even kept a ceasefire intact for days due to it. Wherever he goes, he has allies, which is more then you can say about life outside the Zone. You know our office politicians and bureaucratic backstabbings, the jealous bastards would try to get rid of him any chance they got.", Boris countered, and for a brief moment, even in the darkness of the tunnel, Boris saw the colonel weigh his words.

"Boris, it's Dima. We got to the laundromat, but those goth larpers have shifted their attention towards here thanks to that blasted heli. Get a move on before you're encircled.", the helmet radio crackled to life inside Boris' helmet.

"Blyat, will this ever end.", Boris muttered and relayed the news to Degtyarev.

"We need to resolve what to do with Strelok later, but you raise good points. First, though, we need to deal with Omega. Let's move.", Degtyarev replied, and they moved through the cramped hallway faster now.

Soon the pair made it to the ladder leading up to a grate. Moving it, Boris found himself in broad daylight. They had arrived to the slightly wooded area between the apartment block and laundromat, where old construction equipment was left to rot and crumble away after the first disaster. On their right, coming from the gap between the H-shaped large apartment block and the tall commieblock on the opposite side of the road to it, was the Omega squad, still at full strength. Boris turned to look at the laundromat, where Dima, Dimuha and Yvanova had moved some of the metal plates from the windows to create firing ports. Rogue's machine gun was blasting from the first floor, while Dimuha's did the same from the upper one. Strelok used his custom SIG sniper to pin down the Omega squad's machine gunner. All in all this skirmish seemed far more balanced between the two sides than the earlier one. The Omega squad had more firepower, with many of its troopers armed with high-powered assault rifles and magazine-fed shotguns, but Strelok's entourage had the advantage in positioning and heavy weapons.

"Chyort, how do we get to the laundromat? It's open ground between us and those woods, far too much for my comfort.", Boris asked in a hushed tone.

"We have no choice but to make a break for it. Your armour should hold just fine.", Degtyarev said bluntly, and with a hesitant nod, Boris threw open the covering and jumped out into the open road.

Degtyarev followed suit, and they rushed on, towards the woodlands. To Boris' surprise, Degtyarev had been right and the Omega squad was too preoccupied to actually notice them. Once they made it into the shelter of the leaves, Degtyarev gave him a thumbs up, and Boris couldn't help but grin. This was a life or death situation and yet it felt like they had managed to evade an angry school teacher after some particularly annoying prank. Weighing their options, the two men decided to make another break for the laundromat. They ducked and weaved between various old concrete blocks and drums, pieces of lumber and ancient machines long dead and rusting. Almost at spitting distance from the laundromat, however, disaster struck. The deafening sound of a loud flying helicopter hit them first, and it was followed by the whirring of a M134 minigun. Boris felt Degtyarev push him behind a concrete block, and then all he could register was the ear-splitting sound of a lead rainstorm.

"That's it, then. No matter how hard we fight, nobody can get a line of sight on that chopper with the death ray running.", Boris complained.

"As much as I hate to agree with that bleak assessment, I know it to be true.", Degtyarev responded, hunkering down seconds later as another spray of death dug itself into the concrete around them.

That was when Boris could see movement at the corner of his eye. Strelok had risen up to the roof of the laundromat, and using the momentary focus of the chopper's gunner to his advance, had began laying down fire at the flying machine. It was mostly ineffective, but it did momentarily turn their attention from Boris and Degtyarev. Using it sprint towards the laundry building, they managed to scrape by with seconds to spare as Strelok retreated back inside as well. The furious gunner, fooled by his stealthy adversary, took out his frustration on the building at large. The entire structure shook as hundreds of rounds poured into it, and the defenders had to retreat back into the most safe room in the middle of the building. There, surrounded by laundry machines that blocked the few bullets that got through, Boris took his bearing on this sorry group.

Sanyok was wounded, and now so was Dimuha. Yar and Cashier, the two locals of this place, were patching them up. Meanwhile Meeker and Stitch took care of the wounded SSU agent from earlier fight with UNISG. Dima had hunkered down next to Rogue. Strelok made his way into the room now, stepping next to Degtyarev, and the two legends of the Zone shared a look that Boris could not entirely decipher but which he got the gist of. A look that said "we have some things to get through, but first we'll deal with this shit." It was too noisy for anyone to hear the others, but right now nobody really had anything to say either. They were under siege, and incredibly outgunned. Boris could see Yvanova at the other side of the room, gripping his gun like it was a saving light in the dark. For a brief second, Boris was sure that this would be the end of Redemption, and all he had worked for. Then, the minigun fire stopped. A sound of Omega squad placing explosives on the main door echoed inside the building. Then, a massive explosion.

Boris opened his eyes, but the door was still intact. Everyone listened as something fell hard from the ground, slamming down like thunder. Dima rushed to the window, Boris in tow, and they saw the Omega chopper, crashed down and burning like a star. The black armoured squad was looking at the crash site in disbelief, when gunfire from the large apartment block began cutting down the survivors. Over all the cacophony of the crash, Boris heard a helicopter. The Valkyrie, hanging atop said building, firing its machine gun at the Omega squad. Combined sniper and heavy machine gun fire tore the small group to shreds, and whatever threat they had posed to Strelok, Redemption and the SSU was now gone.

"The Ecologist Air Force saves the day once more!", Sokolov's voice rang in the comms.

Boris couldn't help but grin. Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. For a moment he had lost hope. But never again, he swore. For nothing was ever as bleak as it seemed. Yet looking back and realizing the tension suddenly rising between Strelok and Degtyarev, he was suddenly far less sure of victory.