"Oyunsu Expedition" by Sergey Tarmashev, summary Automatic translate

This mystical thriller, published in 2018, continues the plot of the novel "Hotel Oyunsu," revealing the sinister secrets of the Siberian taiga through the lens of a grand, sci-fi premise. This book is a harmonious blend of horror, crime fiction, and space opera, where ancient alien technology lurks behind the familiar mysticism. The plot revolves around the psychological trauma of the survivors and their desperate attempt to regain their composure.

The novel is the second part of a duology. It is directly connected to the events of the first book, describing the aftermath of a tragedy that befell a group of gilded youth in an isolated Siberian valley.

Marina Miroshnichenko, the daughter of an influential Russian oligarch, works at the UN headquarters in Geneva. Almost six years have passed since the bloody massacre at the elite eco-hotel Oyunsu, where all her friends were killed. She suffers from a severe form of phobia — a panic fear of the dark, in which she constantly sees the mutilated corpses of her fellow students. Her father fabricated the official story about a gang of psychopathic maniacs being destroyed to protect his daughter’s sanity and conceal the terrible truth about what happened.

Soon, Marina secretly meets with Maxim Smirnov, the second survivor of that tragedy. Maxim spent several years in a specialized psychiatric hospital, but retains clear memories of the mystical creature. He tells the girl an authentic Nanai legend he learned from an old taiga shaman. An ancient monster dwells in the valley, awakening only during snowy winters to slowly torture people. A silver dagger-pin, once lost by government experts during an investigation, helps her escape its spell.

Maxim claims the artifact can completely cure their poisoned brains if held in their hands for exactly one day. However, Marina refuses to believe in this mysticism, considering Smirnov a dangerous madman. She informs her father of Maxim’s obsession, after which the boy is locked up in the clinic again. Nevertheless, the former snowboarder’s words resonate with Marina, as her own nightmares grow more intense with each passing month.

Several years later, Maxim makes a daring escape from the hospital and heads for the Far East. Upon learning of this, Marina decides to get ahead of her competitor and organize her own expedition. She hires professional fighters from a private military company, led by an experienced commander with the call sign Sarmat. To provide cover, she enlists the help of Swiss professor Goldberg and her assistant Ibrahim, who are supposedly studying anomalous magnetic fields. The team also includes medium Annette and maid Saida.

The expedition arrives in Oyunsu by helicopter in early November, hoping to complete all work before the heavy snowfalls. But Marina’s father quickly learns of her movements. He dispatches a group of FSB officers to the valley, led by his loyal assistant Zlata and an entire company of soldiers. The security forces blockade Oyunsu, claiming it is a closed zone of the Ministry of Defense. Marina uses her influence and money to persuade Zlata to help her search for the artifact.

Soldiers begin quickly excavating old garbage pits left by previous investigative teams. According to security forces, the experts may have accidentally discarded the packaged hairpin along with household waste. Meanwhile, Sarmat’s mercenaries set up posts at the entrance to the valley, seeking to intercept the fugitive Smirnov. Professor Goldberg deploys his sensors on the slopes of the marble mountain, but her instruments show completely normal readings, registering no anomalies.

Soon, mercenaries apprehend Maxim, who had sneaked into the camp. Smirnov attempted to find a weapon on the ancient altar himself, but the stone proved empty. Suddenly, the weather deteriorates sharply, and a powerful snowstorm hits the valley, completely paralyzing radio communications. The army company captain decides to lead the soldiers back to their unit before the roads are completely blocked. A small group of researchers, FSB officers, and mercenaries are left alone to face the elements in the engulfed camp.

A true nightmare begins. A completely naked medium, Anneta, appears from the darkness of Oyunsu, smeared with blood and consumed by madness. She raves about the awakening of sinister forces, then attacks the investigator and flees into the snowstorm. The mercenaries find the mutilated body of their comrade, Yakut, in the forest, crucified headfirst on wooden poles with his intestines exposed. Maxim claims this is the signature of a monster feeding on human agony. Sarmat decides to take refuge in a helicopter, but the cockpit is completely destroyed.

The helicopter’s navigation panels and instruments are shredded by massive claws, and the pilots themselves have vanished without a trace. It becomes clear that leaving the valley by air is impossible. Hurricane-force winds blow away the camp’s tents, destroying food and medical supplies. The lack of electric light deepens the darkness around them, and Marina begins to experience terrifying hallucinations. The surrounding darkness is filled with the figures of her fallen friends, reaching out with bloodied hands and beckoning her to join them.

Trying to escape a deadly hurricane, the squad climbs to the top of a marble hill. There, Marina discovers a hidden technological niche, which turns out to be the entrance to an automated elevator. The group urgently descends to the lower level of an abandoned Soviet military facility. It’s an old Cold War-era missile silo, buried deep in the bedrock. On the middle level of the bunker, the mercenaries discover a luxurious underground hotel, a perfect duplicate of the setting from Marina’s old hallucinations.

Crystal chandeliers hang on the walls of the rooms, the floors are covered with expensive carpets, and instead of windows, electronic screens broadcasting snowy taiga views are installed. It becomes clear that six years ago, criminals held guests captive here, drugging them with powerful psychotropic substances. While mercenaries attempt to breach the locked Command Post, the monster begins methodically exterminating the expedition members. Professor Goldberg and her assistant, Ibrahim, become the victims; their mutilated bodies are found in the apartment.

The dead transform into walking corpses, helping the monster hunt down the survivors. Marina, thanks to her enhanced clairvoyance, finds a secret switch hidden behind a false wall and opens the armored doors of the central control room. Inside the Command Post, the mercenaries discover Ibrahim’s body crucified on the ceiling. The bunker’s lights suddenly go out, plunging the facility into darkness. The mercenaries and FSB agents perish one after another in an unequal battle with the invulnerable ghosts.

In the Command Center, Marina realizes the terrifying mathematics of what’s happening. The numbers scratched onto the steel panels make it clear that the monster has been keeping a precise tally of its victims for centuries. It needs exactly 777,777 deaths to fully activate its ship’s systems. The girl realizes that if she sacrifices the rest of her companions, she could be the last survivor. She treacherously stuns Sarmat with a pistol blow to the back of the head, activates the backup generator, and starts the elevator ascending.

On the surface, Marina encounters Maxim, who has managed to free himself from captivity and seize the silver hairpin. The thin blade easily destroys the attacking undead, causing them to vanish without a trace. Wanting to sacrifice Smirnov for her own salvation, Marina shoots him in the shoulder blade with Zlata’s trophy weapon and takes the artifact. She offers the monster to take the wounded boy and leave her alone, hoping for the ritual to be completed.

However, the silver burns her palm, as the ancient weapon of the Shining Ones only helps those with pure souls. The selfish Marina begins to reject the artifact, the metal literally melting into her skin. The monster throws the wounded Maxim into a deep abyss and brutally deals with the girl, relying on her mortal terror. The monster declares that the panic and suffering of the doomed people is the only energy capable of igniting the booster engines of his ship.

In the final scene, a mysterious taiga ranger appears above the crimson pyramid, which was hidden under the guise of a marble hill. He turns out to be a high-tech bioenergetic guardian of an ancient race, protecting the quarantine zone. The ranger finds Maxim at the bottom of the cliff and completely heals his broken bones and wounds. The crimson alien construct, saturated with the energy of the dead researchers’ agony, activates its power units and flies forever into the depths of space. A white, glowing clot of the guardian’s energy dissolves into the heavens.

The epilogue reveals the true backstory of the events. Thirteen thousand years ago, the great race of the Shining Ones waged war against the forces of Darkness. The ship of the enemy commander, the Exarch, crashed on Earth in the Siberian taiga. The alien was trapped in a bunker, and the planet itself was placed under strict quarantine by the Shining Ones due to the degradation and betrayal of the local population. For millennia, the Exarch had been gathering the mental energy of humanity’s mortal fear to restore his ship’s lambda starter and perform a hyperspace jump.