Mikhail Melnikov, a former school teacher, embarks on a journey full of deadly dangers to the Chernobyl exclusion zone. His motives are a mystery to other "fortune catchers." He struggles to get close to the center of the Zone, to his hometown, because he cannot do otherwise. Mikhail does not know how to be cruel, does not know how to survive, but it is he who will have to visit those places where even the most desperate stalkers have not wandered, take part in the unfolding war of groups and, possibly, touch the clue to the mystery of the emergence of the Zone. But how not to break down and go this way, preserving humanity in yourself?