14 DAY TRIAL // In spite of my initial assumption, trying to go around the Plateau, and either approach it from Jupiter or look for information regarding a path to it there, proved to be fruitless, so I had no choice but to return to Zaton. Usually, the center of any community, the man that knows everything must be the bartender, so I figured the he'd be the best man to try to negotiate the situation with. Besides, his mission involved finding artifacts, and those things always generate a nice, little profit.
So, I decided to accept his mission, head over to the abandoned Ranger Station and investigate the strange glow. The place proved to be a death trap, in more ways than I initially anticipated. While the radiations and the anomalies were expected, the way the rest of the quest would develop was a bit hard to plan ahead for, and my policy of "never buy what you can scavenge on your own" proved to be a huge headache.
Navigating the derelict barge was a bit of a hassle, with a few radiation hotspots and a vortex anomaly that needed a bit of special exploration to get by, but, in the end, I found the source of the eerie glow. The ship's helm, more precisely its wheel, was completely transformed by the Zone and in its bent and twisted form it gained special powers. And one of them was that it was able to attract trouble. For me.
Exiting the ship, just outside the bulkhead, I came across a Free Stalker that begged me to give him the artifact. One of his "buddies" was badly injured, and in the absence of proper doctors in the Zone, only the artifact's healing abilities could save his life. As for my answer, there was no way that I was going to give up the artifact. First, I was nobody's hero. Secondly, he wanted me to give him the artifact for free, an artifact that I risked my life on that barge to get. Thirdly, I needed that artifact since I truly believed that it would help me get to the crashed helicopter, which was my true purpose at the moment. And finally, well, I just really didn't like the guy, all whiny and sobbing.
While he accepted the fact that I had no reason to give him the artifact and let me walk away, my Spider-Sense tingled, warning me of danger. Actually, it was more like an instant and very short framerate drop, an experience that taught me that some NPC were just spawned around me via a game script. Chances of friends popping out of the ground are zero in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, so I pulled a quick 180, shot the Stalker that wanted the artifact in the head and, then, one more time after he fell, for good measure, and hid in the ship.
Soon, the boat came under fire from the outside, and I was in a serious pinch. I didn't have enough ammo to carry a long-range fight, shooting at anything that moved through the thick reeds, and I didn't really have enough anti-rad medication to make a stand in the radioactive ship. I threw a grenade just outside the door, and in the confusion and smoke it created, I made a run for it, away from the enemies. To my luck, they only cut off my retreat toward the Stalker base, and didn't completely surround the boat. From here on, it was a simple matter of "hide and sneak." hoping that they'd never get the "find" part of "seek."