Two days after Boris' rampage in Minsk, life had returned to somewhat normal state. On the morning of the arsons and essential dismantling of Harkusha's crime empire, the city had fallen into temporary hysteria over some sort of coordinated enemy attack. Given the tensions brewing in Eastern Europe, there had been rumours of foreign saboteurs and other outlandish claims, but as the police force issued a statement regarding this as either an unlike vigilante attack or gang warfare, the situation calmed down a little. On the busy streets of Minsk, people left to work and flooded all available space in the narrow roads of the city. With everyone moving towards their workplaces, most cafes remained empty or mostly crowded by pensioners.

One such cafe on the edge of town had a slow day, only visitors being an elderly couple and a man nearing thirty years of age. The cashier loaded fresh goods into the shelves, while the old couple bickered over some family matter. On the table outside, the young man was sitting quietly, sipping his cup of coffee and writing something. He had a very disheveled appearance, a black beard growing on his face looked like an unkept garden with parts of it sprouting to every direction. His clothes appeared to be straight from a shop, however, and had one looked closely, they might have seen a price tag still hanging from one.

Meanwhile the cashier, a young woman just starting in the business of cafe ownership, was focusing all her attention on some bills. She turned to fetch something from the kitchen, and the old couple continued their argument without paying any attention to the world around them. None of them noticed the man taking a very large stack of roubles from inside his jacket and stuffing them into a envelope alongside a small letter. The man checked the scene around him and upon confirming that none of the others had noticed anything, smiled faintly, sealing the envelope and pocketing his pen and paper journal, both which had the appearance of items that had seen years of very hard service.

He had paid for his coffee earlier, so the man simply rose from his seat and walked across the road, leaving the envelope into a letterbox by the large apartment block there. From the short moment he took to find the right box, it looked evident that the right letterbox's location had been very familiar to him. Looking at the big building, the man stopped momentarily, a long and pained sigh leaving his lips. Without further actions, the man turned on his heels and left, disappearing into the long streets of the busy city.

Hour later, an eldery man most likely in his sixties stepped into the street and checked the mailbox. Going through various magazines, advertisements and bills, he came across the letter that had just been delivered. There was little indication of who had written it, but the handwriting on it seemed to cause the man to lighten up. Almost dropping all the other articles the old man had just retrieved, he went back inside and raced up to his apartment, where a woman of roughly same age was stirring something in a pot.

"Svetlana! It's...it's from Boris! Look!", the man shouted, panting from the exercise.

"Boris? Give it, I need to see too!", Svetlana yelled in turn and took the letter, reaching for her glasses.

"It really is him... After all these years. Let's see what's inside.", she continued, tearing the brown envelope open.

Both of them suffered from a case of eye-bulging, roughly of same magnitude as Sidorovich inspecting a bucket of chicken, upon seeing the stack of money. Svetlana handed the rubles to her husband, who began counting them slowly, while she looked at the letter.

"It is from Boris. Our son is alive, and apologizes for not paying us a visit... Grigori, he is alive!", Svetlana exlaimed, her eyes tearing out.

"Indeed. I had... Had already lost hope, yet thank the heavens, he lives. What does it say, though? This amount of money doesn't just come from nowhere!", Grigori replied.

"Ah, true. Uh, he says that he has been in a place called the Zone, in... Chernobyl? Blin, sounds like trouble... Ahem, Boris explains that he ran there after what happened to Lena and those gangsters he killed, and that it is a place beyond our imagination in both danger and wonder. Grigori, I have a feeling he might be in big trouble.", Svetlana read out loud, looking at his husband with concerned eyes

"We can't know for certain unless we get to the end. Read further or hand the letter to me, I'm dying to know what it says and at my age that may very well happen.", Grigori pressed on.

"Alright, alright, hold your horses mister. Boris says that while things were quite rough for him from the start, he has now forged a community he can be proud of and in which he feels like he belongs to. However, due to some unforeseen circumstances, he had to return here and deal with his past, and while he succeeded, Boris can't be certain that we and Lena's parents are safe. As such, he has provided us with the money to leave Belarus and find a place where his life won't cause harm to us. Grigori, what is he on about?", Svetlana asked.

"Those warehouse burnings and the attack on that one thug's mansion perhaps? Could be some other thing too, but those are the big dramatic thing that happened lately.", Grigori said after a moment of pondering, scratching his beard.

"Da, could be. It sounds like Boris is being serious. Oh, how I wish he could have visited us and explained this better, I do not understand any of this...", Svetlana sighed.

"Neither do I, but at least it warms me to know he is alive and seemingly content. Besides, I doubt Pyotr and Nadia mind leaving Belarus with us, not like there has been much for us since retirement with how things look. The country went to shitter ever since that svolo-", Grigori started, but a telling look from Svetlana shut him up.

"Save me from another rant, dear. There is something more... Boris suggests that we move to Austria, apparently he has very reliable friends there who can look after us and make sure we're settled in. They will tell us the whole story of what happened to our son too.", Svetlana continued.

"Austria? But we don't know any German? The money more than covers it, and we can sell the house for a bit more, but this is such a massive turn of events that I really don't know what to think.", Grigori replied, utterly dumbfounded.

"We can go there on a holiday first, see these friends of Boris and figure it out then.", Svetlana proposed, prompting a hesitant nod from her husband.

"Besides, we'll manage. And a change of scenery is greatly appreciated at this age, as I have told you many times. I'll contact Nadia and arrange for them to visit us soon, you can start preparing for other stuff.", Svetlana ordered.

"Great, you do the easy part and I need to figure out how all these impossible logistics work. Blyat, Boris shows up after all these years and decides to cause even more trouble than ever. This is worse than the time he poured sand into the principal's gas tank...", Grigori muttered to himself, but nonetheless started grumpily arranging things.

Far from the place of his childhood now, Boris was sitting on a park bench, musing on what to do next. He had finished his last task here, making sure his parents and Lena's were at least informed of the situation and hopefully relocated out of the reach of Omega. Harkusha's confusion on the mention of Serbin days earlier had seemed genuine, but Boris could ill-afford to trust such a corrupt criminal on one of the most important matters of his life. He hoped with all his heart that his parents would heed the warning and seek out shelter with Anton and Mark. Boris had contacted them yesterday and organized everything with them. Now all that remained was to get out of the city and back into the Zone.

Boris was glad of this. The city was not for him any longer, it felt alien, too noisy, too polluted, too lively. With his Zone-modified senses, every loud noise almost made him draw his Korth from under his jacket, every person bumping into him in the street almost caused him to knock them down. His senses were strained here for all the wrong reasons, and it did not help that the combat of the night earlier had made him even more anxious. Perhaps no one would get on his trail, and Boris considered it likely given how diligently he had erased all marks of him being there, but there was always a chance. Always a chance of him leaving behind a suspicious 9 millimetre rifle round or some part of his exoskeleton having been chipped off in the fights. The sooner he left, the better.

Boris truly regretted not meeting his parents, but also didn't. He wanted to, but something inside him told him that it would only open old wounds, sever his connection into the Zone. Whenever a thought crossed his mind that perhaps it was time to retire in the Big Land, to stay here and not return, the scar on his hand pulsated almost unnoticeably. Almost like the Zone called him back through it. Boris felt disturbed by this notion, but he had to admit that the thought of returning soothed his aching mind. He took a last glance at the surroundings, feeling the world in its normal state, not influenced by the malign Zone, and rose up to leave. The Zone is like a drug, Boris thought to himself. You know it's bad for you, for everyone, yet you answer its call, he mused.

"I am lost to it, and worst of all, choose to be so.", he muttered to himself and began walking towards his next destination.

At the edge of the city, a small block of garages was used by various people to house goods, vehicles and so forth. Some were criminals, others adulterers looking to hide things from their spouses, others simply people too paranoid to use more conventional storage facilities. Couple were just regular folks who liked the low price tag on the rents of the garages. Yet never had they housed such an incredibly expensive thing inside the ramshackle old buildings, and yet nobody except Boris knew it was there. In the early morning of his rampage, Boris had brought his exoskeleton and combat gear here, hidden inside a large bag. The guy running the place had looked at his undersuit with curiosity, to which Boris explained that he was working for a scuba diving company testing new materials. The man told him to cut the bullshit, laughed and took Boris' rent for the night.

Boris waved his hand at the man as he passed the front gate and continue to the unit number 24. He opened the garage door very slightly, pushed his hand inside and fumbled with something for a moment. Then, convinced that whatever he was messing with was finished, the stalker rolled the steel door all the way up. In the spot right next to the door was a F1 grenade, pinned into a spot by a wire that would have torn its safety if the door was forced open. Couldn't be too cautious here at the edge of the city, Boris thought to himself as he pocketed the explosive. Taking his sack of equipment and checking to see if everything was still there, the Redemption leader grunted in approval and left the dusty old storage.

Only once he had made it a considerable distance from the place did he grab his phone. After so long using a PDA, the fancy smartphone felt weak and easily breakable. Still, PDAs mainly worked inside the Zone's network, cut off from the Big Land for a reason. Some had been upgraded to reach beyond the borders of Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, but Boris had no need for such. Typing a number into his phone, it rang for a second and then a raspy voice could be heard.

"So, laddie, are you ready to go back then?", the old man said, and Boris recognized his voice as the same he had heard while escorting Anton and Mark out of the Zone.

"Sure thing, Pilot Sr. Sr. Let's get the hell out of here.", Boris confirmed in an amused and relieved tone.

"Don't call me that, my grandson's nickname is already ridiculous enough... Not even close to yours, though.", the man replied, and Boris heard the roar of the engine get closer as the call ended.

"Perhaps it is... But I doubt I will go by Unforgiven for long anymore...", Boris pondered to himself as the old car swerved into view.

It was time to go home.