I've seen a Stalker, been surrounded by them, watched them die, killed them... they're all just like us. What if people actually saw them and knew they were so similar? That they don't fit the childhood stories we were told in school. Everything would be normal. All perspectives would change; mine would change. It should be different. I'm just as human as they are. I'm slaughtering humans despite the excuse the Possessors have made, saying that "stalkers aren't human anymore." Hell, well neither are we. We may be human, but we are nowhere to being humane. It's stupid how those two words look so close, but behave entirely different. I sigh. Why am I thinking like this? I lay back and stare at the ceiling of my room. I need a drink. "Luke. You're up for today." He tells me with that cool and arctic voice, passing through 

It's been twelve years since that incident; the slaughter: the last time I interacted with the Stalker race on a bases of equality. I can close my eyes and picture myself there. The stories and vivid words to describe that night are enough for me to know what happened, to feel their pain.

A group of belligerent humans snuck into the Stalker quarter, flamethrowers armed and ready. They started far and advanced inward, scorching earth, home, mother, and child. There was barely time for the Stalkers to react. They ran in all directions to only find fire. They made it all the way to the Black Mansion, the end of the quarter, when, suddenly, scalding hot metal encroached their bodies along with whatever Stalkers hadn't escaped and were burning in the flames. They melted alive in the metal, and all that remains in the land are metal statues that depict that night forever, and the metal continues to advance to this day, consuming whatever it touches, unstoppable.

I was surprised to hear that some Stalkers were captured that night. One of them being the Darius Black. The Possessors locked him away in Martinet's Quarter. One of the most insufferable Quarters to exist. The weather was constantly snowy, cold, and unforgiving; the criminals aren't cared for, most die from frostbite, and, if they don't die from that, then the guards themselves will kill them. Two nights after Darius was captured, a little girl who claimed to be his daughter was taken there as well.

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It was a hard and breezy night. Snow as hard as stone drifted left and beat against the under-dressed bodies of the prisoners. Outside, they held dull steel blades connected to old wood poles. They weren't the correct tools to harvest ice, but, with enough "coercion",  it gets the job done. They chopped at the ice blocks, tall to their knees, methodically, all at once at the sound of a guard's whistle. 

The prisoners had come to know the name Darius Black. Through a code he developed, they began to communicate through the facility, spreading his word and creating the devout army. But, Darius held off on his escape.

The little girl was shivering before they had even gotten near the facility. The young male guard picked her up and helped her into the car, and she quietly thanked him. The drive was quiet. The guard started to grow fond of the little girl like she was his own on the ride there. He forgot that she might be Darius'. He stepped out the car and squatted, holding out his hand and waiting for the child to accept it. Once she did, he didn't let go as he led her through the facility. She looked around with a sort of dead-ness in her eyes. She didn't seem scared or worried, holding the guard's hand with the slightest grasp. The guard informed her that Darius should be in the yard and that they'll just quickly ask if she is related to him. She looked up to the guard for a moment then continued looking ahead. 

They waited and watched the prisoners at work. chop. chop. chop. chop. Someone must have nudged another and so on until it connected to Darius, so that as if on cue they began to sing a hymn once the little girl took her first step into the sinking snow. As they sang, chop. chop. chop. chop. 

hyah!

Darius broke his chains with his ice chopper, that he must have sharpened somehow, then threw it towards the young male guard. 

Head rolling in red snow, the young male's eyes stared into the little girl's. 

As if there was an eruption of strength leaving Darius' body and entering the others, the prisoners went into a rampage, half admiring half up-roaring. 

Darius' movement was limber, with a swiftness that allowed not a single bullet to pierce his body. He picked up the same ice chopper he used and deflected the bullets with the steel, even splitting some bullets straight down the middle. The slaughter took a long time, but Darius made it seem otherwise. 

Human backup came through helicopter. The prisoners called for Darius, telling him they had to leave immediately. Before he did, before he left his daughter behind, he squatted to her level and looked into her eyes with his silver eye.  

Then, in the swift flurry of the blizzard, they were gone.

All that was left was the little girl, whom the humans sent home.

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But now he's gone. The stalkerhunt is as ferocious as ever. Humans finally have a purpose: the utter destruction of the Stalker race.

and they needed the best killers for the job.