Toxic Love

The Geiger counter’s rhythmic clicking sounds had become white noise to Dr. Elena Volkov three weeks into her assignment. She adjusted the dosimeter clipped to her hazmat suit and checked the reading.

It was elevated, on the high end of normal, but OK.

She looked around, noticing how the morning fog clung to the abandoned buildings of Pripyat like a shroud.

Then Elena crouched down, her camera poised for another round.

She was mid-shot on photographing a cluster of mutated fungi, brilliant green caps that pulsed faintly in the dim light, when she saw a pair of footprints.

A pair of human footprints. Abnormally large, with six toes each.

Six toes.

The prints were pressed into the soft clay earth next to a contaminated puddle where no human should be walking, let alone walking barefoot without protection.

They were fresh, rain from last night’s storm still pooled in its deepest impression. Distinctly high arch, Elena noted. Whoever left them had been here as recently as this morning.

“What in the seven hells,” she whispered into her respirator.

Previous reports had mentioned anomalies such as livestock wandering the forests with extra appendages, vegetation growing in patterns that defied botanical classification, strange lights seen by the skeleton crew that maintained the containment zone perimeter. Her government wanted hard data about radiation’s long-term effects on the ecosystem.

But they hadn’t mentioned people.

The United States government had recruited her to investigate and document in partnership with the Ukrainian government, nothing more. She was a child of Ukrainian expats, brought up on both Ukrainian culture and the American '90s.

A twig snapped behind her.

Elena spun around, hand instinctively reaching for the radio at her belt. A pair of barn swallows took flight from a skeletal birch tree. She waited nervously, eyes scanning the underbrush.

Nothing was there.

She was about to dismiss it and walk away when she noticed the tree. Claw marks scored deep. Fresh, judging from the sap still seeping from the wounds.

Elena activated her radio. “Base, this is Volkov. I’m seeing signs of possible human activity in Sector Seven. Over.”

Static crackled. Then: “Negative, Volkov. No authorized personnel in that sector. You’re the only one in the field today. Over.”

“Yes, I’m aware. That’s why I’m calling this in. Over.”

A longer pause. “Possible looters. Mark the location and return to base immediately. Over.”

But looters wore boots and protective gear. Looters didn’t leave prints beside puddles measuring 10,000 times the safe radiation level, didn’t leave deep claw marks on trees.

She realised instinctively that this was something else.

Elena marked the coordinates on her GPS and began the hike back to her research station, an old administrative building that had been retrofitted with modern equipment. She told herself the tingling sensation she felt on the back of her neck was just anxiety, that the feeling of being watched was only paranoia.

But still, she was beyond relived once she cleared the perimeter.

That evening, while processing her samples under the harsh fluorescent lights of her lab, Elena pulled up the thermal satellite footage from the past week. She had limited access for tracking animal movements, and she scrolled through grainy images of deer, boar, wolves, wild dogs, the usual suspects.

That's when she saw it.

Frame 734, timestamp 3:21 AM, two nights ago.

A heat signature moving through the Red Forest, bipedal, human-sized. But the temperature reading was cooler than it should be, as if the body wasn’t generating normal metabolic heat.

She tracked it across three more frames before it vanished beneath the forest canopy.

Elena sat back in her chair. Everyone knew the stories; the babushkas who’d refused to evacuate in ’86, the liquidators who’d absorbed fatal doses. The animal rehabbers who refused to leave. But that was nearly forty years ago. No one could survive this long in the zone, not without protection, not without...

The lights flickered, then abruptly went out.

Emergency backup generators hummed to life after six seconds of absolute darkness, bathing everything in red light. Elena’s hand found her flashlight. Protocol said to shelter in place during power failures and wait for the security team to investigate.

Protocol hadn’t anticipated what she saw through the lab window.

A face, pale green and slightly glowing, watched her from the darkness beyond the glass. Human, but not.

The eyes caught the red emergency light and reflected it back in the soft glow. For a moment, neither moved. The figure smiled a tentative grin, then disappeared into the night.

Elena stood frozen, flashlight beam trembling against the window. She should call it in. Should report this immediately. Dr. Volkov had every right to be terrified and concerned for her safety.

Instead, she found herself in awe of those odd, humanoid eyes.

The power flickered back on. Her radio crackled with the security team’s all-clear. Everything was fine, they said...just a temporary malfunction. Elena looked at the footprint photo still displayed on her computer screen, then back at the window, where the glowing face had just appeared.

Had she just hallucinated everything? She considered that possibility for a moment.