We worked quickly to uncover the buried villager. Naginata, Kaiser, and I tried to dig as much dirt out of the hole as possible. The villager remained motionless. I realised something was very wrong when we reached the chest, which did not rise or fall. Was that toe twitch the involuntary muscle spasm of the dead? Or was there something fouler at play?

Strange holes dotted the villager’s shirt, and as we pushed the dirt away, I thought I could see something luminescent shimmering beneath. I almost expected to see violet veins burning through the villager’s skin and for a blade arm to burst forth from the dirt. Despite the six months between the events of Mori Island and now, those memories still echoed.

The light wasn’t purple at all. Instead, it was red and seemed to be buried in clusters in the villager’s skin. The way these clusters of lights looked reminded me of the glow worm caves at Mount Tamborine, down in the Gold Coast hinterland.

Clusters of tiny worms lived together in holes in the cave roof, creating their own blue light, which illuminated the whole cave system with an otherworldly glow.

Was this something similar?

“He might be infected with something,” I said.

“Careful not to touch it,” Xiphos said. “We don’t want-”

The villager’s hand burst out of the dirt and grabbed Kaiser’s front leg, just above the paw. Kaiser yelped and tried to jump back, but the villager had a firm grip on him, which shouldn’t have been possible considering he wasn’t breathing.

Without thinking, I grabbed the handle of my hatchet and swung it down, severing the hand from the arm, which allowed Kaiser to bound away.

Tiny red pinpricks of light danced in the meat and gristle of the hand stump. I flipped it over and breathed a sigh of relief when I couldn’t see any sign of those light clusters on the villager’s palm. I couldn’t risk Kaiser being infected with whatever this was.

The dirt moved beneath us. This villager wasn’t done with us yet.

The thing that emerged from the dirt still looked human as it stood, but with strange white blotches on the skin. Points of crimson light shone through those white patches as it swung its head towards me. The thing’s pupils had a red glow emanating from the centre, very much like the glow of the cultist’s eyes on Mori Island, but the brightness was far less intense.

It turned towards me and took a lumbering step in my direction with its arms outstretched. The arm stump I’d hacked off didn’t bleed like a living person’s hand would. Instead, thick black sludge seeped from the wound.

Naginata’s blade passed through the infected villager’s neck, and its body dropped to the ground, twitching. The head gaped for a few seconds, mouth opening and closing like a goldfish stuck outside its bowl. Seconds passed, and the thing’s eyes kept looking all around us. Life should have fled from it already, but something was keeping it going.

Stiletto put a bullet through its head and finished the thing off.

Enemy slain

25 Experience Points gained

The message appeared, then the second line glitched out. After the notification went back to normal, the numbers had changed.

Enemy slain

31 Experience Points gained

The anima boost Miranda had given me back on Mori Island was definitely still working. Every experience gain I’d get here in Romania would be boosted by 25%.

Watching the numbers glitch out was a little concerning, though.

I didn’t have any time to dwell on it though, as movement caught my eye further on in the town hall.

Another patch of exposed dirt started moving.

“On your six, Khopesh,” I said, using the standard military shorthand for look behind you.

I may not have served time in the military myself, but I’d written about enough soldiers to understand some of the slang.

Khopesh spun and raised his assault rifle at the other infected villager who rose to their feet.

This one was a woman, and she was afflicted with the same alabaster blotches as the first bloke. Her gaze swung in our direction and my fears were realised. Her eyes were glowing red too, so this corruption had already spread through the villagers.

Just to her left, right in front of the stage, another patch of dirt started to move. Kaiser growled by my side, but it didn’t sound like he was looking in the same direction I was. I spun around to see two more of these blotchy fuckers standing behind us.

“They’re all around us!” I shouted, lifting Gravedigger to aim at the closest one.

“These villagers are already dead,” Xiphos said. “Put them down, and do not let them touch you!”

Shots fired out behind me as the rest of the team took these strange zombie-like creatures down.

If my zombie theory was up to scratch, we needed to make sure these things didn’t get anywhere near us. A dread thought hovered there in the back of my mind about that thing grabbing Kaiser, but there was nothing I could do about it now. As powerful as I’d become back on Mori Island, I hadn’t been able to rewind time. I just hoped that these zombies couldn’t transmit their infection with a touch. Hopefully it needed a bite or worse to spread.

If there was a way to help these people recover from this infection, killing them would make it so that would never be an option.

But if we didn’t kill them, then we might suffer the same fate.

My finger stayed against the trigger guard, refusing my order to pull the trigger.

I’d thought about coming on another EDGE Force mission ever since I’d returned from the last, but I didn’t give a single thought to what that actually meant. More killing. These weren’t some cultists who submitted themselves to the will of some crazy cult leader. These people were unwilling bystanders in an unfolding tragedy.

Killing them was so much different.

I shook my head. This wasn’t the time to think - It was the time to act!

Thinking would get me killed.

My finger curled around the trigger as one of the blotchies lunged at me. I aimed the barrel of Gravedigger up, so the villager would take the shot in the face, not the chest. Then, at least I’d be able to make it quick.

The man’s bearded head exploded as Gravedigger boomed, spraying the hall with bone and brain matter. Another 31 Experience Points were added to my total.

Being rewarded for killing these people made me feel sour in the stomach.

I swung Gravedigger toward the other advancing villager and pulled the trigger again. I got another slice of experience and another twist in the guts at how wrong this all felt.

“Hatchet, look out!” came Naginata’s voice from behind me.

Another blotchy was within lunging distance, and I hadn’t even heard it creeping up on me. I stumbled back to get out of its way, but something latched onto one of my legs. One of the arms from one of the other blotchies was still moving!

White-hot pain exploded in my ankle from where the thing got me.

A window appeared in front of me.

Experience drain in progress – 1 experience point per second

Just like before, when the numbers glitched out, the word experience glitched for a second and became something else.

Anima drain in progress – % anima per second

What the hell? It didn’t even show the value. Or maybe the value couldn’t be divided in a way that the EDGE Force augment could display.

The blotchy slammed into me, knocking me over. It grabbed me, sinking its pallid fingers into the skin on my neck. More pain drilled into me at the site of its touch, and another message appeared. This time it showed an experience drain of 3 Experience Points per second.

Naginata came to my rescue, skewering the blotchy under the arm with her weapon and lifting it free of me. As it was unceremoniously flicked away, I saw something dangling from its palms and fingertips. Root-like protuberances dangled from its skin, still slick with my blood. Kaiser tore at the disembodied arm that held my ankle until it finally let go. Kaiser dropped it, but the damn thing came crawling right back at me like something out of a horror movie.

Suddenly Stiletto was there. He drove one of his twin daggers into the creepy crawly arm, pinning it to the ground.

The fear started to sink in when I saw the same root-like appendages hanging from the underside of that hand.

“Did it get you?” Stiletto asked.

I lifted a hand to my neck and felt my own warm blood there, quickly cooling in the freezing mountain air.

“Yeah, I think it did,” I admitted.

Kaiser whined.

The attack hadn’t seemed to do a lot of damage to me, it just drained my anima that I’d earned from killing other blotchies. I got back to my feet just in time to see Xiphos slice another blotchie’s head from its shoulder, then carved through its chest with her sword in a very direct and calculated manner. The blotchy fell to the ground and stopped moving.

Nothing else moved in the hall but us. I got another little bit of experience, which more than made up for what had been drained from me.

“Are you hurt, Hatchet?” Xiphos said as she flicked the thick red blood from the edge of her sword.

“Nothing I can’t walk off,” I said. “It touched me, though. These things can drain anima, so watch out. That one took the same amount of experience that I would have got for killing it.”

Xiphos’s eyes went wide. “I've never heard of anything that can take the anima out of us. Rho, are you hearing this?”

“I hear you,” Rho’s voice came back through my earpiece. “I'm sending this up the chain to EDGE Command to see if they have any intel.”

I reached up and felt the skin on my neck. There was no pain and the blood had stopped flowing. It was almost like the blotchy had some kind of biological function like a mosquito. They sucked the anima right out of their hosts but did it in a way that didn't leave any lasting damage.

At least I hoped there wouldn't be any lasting damage. These villagers had been turned into blotchies by something. Or someone. What if contact was the first step in the change?

“I'm not going to turn into one of those things, am I?” I asked.

Naginata shot a worried look at Xiphos. Stiletto and Khopesh remained impassive.

“I don’t know,” Xiphos said. “Rho, has anything changed with Hatchet’s anima signature?”

“Negative. No sign of corruption,” Rho said, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “We can’t scan for biological agents from this distance, although we do have a facility nearby that could. Hatchet, do you feel any different?”

“No, just a little embarrassed. Is there any redness or strangeness at the site of the wounds?” I asked as I craned my head to the side and wiped the blood away. “Anything shining where it shouldn’t be?”

“Just your big shiny brain,” Stiletto said with a derisive chuckle.

Xiphos stepped forward to take a look. “No. Nothing out of the ordinary that I can see.”

“These things might eat anima,” Khopesh said.

“We’re calling these things Nemorti,” Rho said in the earpiece. “EDGE Command has designated this enemy type with that code name. Analysis is unlike anything they’ve seen before, but they believe this is only their initial state. They theorise that you’ve disturbed them in some kind of change state before they’ve become whatever it is they’re supposed to be. The other village – the one Pike was sent to investigate – that’s been silent for longer.”

“If more of these things are waiting in the ground, we need to stop them before they become whatever it is they’re meant to turn into,” Xiphos said. “But first, that EDGE Force facility – where is it? Can you give us a location?”

“One second,” Rho said. “This mission could take a little longer than we initially thought, so we’re deploying additional interface functionality to your EDGE augments now.”

Upgrade commencing…

Location tracking module installing…

Calibrating scanners with EDGE Command anima frequency…

EDGE Team Captain may now designate target locations.

A tablet-like device formed in Xiphos’s hand as she held it out. It coalesced out of nothing, like it was being beamed down to the surface of the planet by the Starship Enterprise.

Xiphos motioned on the screen, which spawned a holographic map in front of her. We crowded around it to get a lay of the land.

It showed our location as a blinking blue light and marked two other areas of interest. The EDGE Force facility was on the other side of a nearby valley, with a whole swath of rugged, unforgiving land to cross. The other mark showed the location of the other village. Pike’s last known location.

“Where to first?” I asked.

“We need to run a bioscan on you as soon as we can, so we’re heading for the facility first,” Xiphos said. “We must ensure that no corruption has occurred.”

“If they can suck anima out of you, then they might also be able to inject their anima into you,” Khopesh said in a way that made me think he’d seen just that on a previous mission.

“The EDGE Force augment converts our anima increases into experience points, right?” I asked. I was pretty sure of this, as the boost Miranda gave me seemed to integrate and calculate the extra 25% without any difficulty. “If they tried to push their anima into me, I’d probably know because the augment would try to convert it into useable experience points, right?”

Khopesh and Naginata nodded at each other.

“Perhaps. One of those things grabbed your-” Xiphos was going to say pet, I knew it, but she corrected herself quickly. “It grabbed Kaiser as well, didn’t it?”

Kaiser barked once. Yes.

“Then we need to scan two members of our team to make sure they’re not contaminated,” Xiphos said. “Until then, I want everyone on guard. We know they’re waiting under the dirt for us now. If we encounter any other Nemorti we put distance between us and take them down with extreme prejudice. Do not let them get close.”

We all agreed, and Kaiser barked his approval too.

Just as we started to walk around the room, looting the corpses of the Nemorti, a dread howl came from outside the town hall. The tortured yet furious cadence of the mournful dirge stopped us all in our tracks as we turned towards the town hall’s door.

Stiletto and Khopesh ran at the door as I saw dark figures moving in the falling snow outside. They slammed the doors shut, then wedged some tables between the door and the floor, hopefully blocking entry to whatever made that awful sound.

I swallowed nervously, then looked to Xiphos.

“What do we do now?” I asked.