-Jeremy Strauss P.O.V.-

I briefly enjoyed the breeze through the forest, soft and gentle looking trees entirely unlike the tall and bristley pines I was used too from the west. The dim light from the near constant state of overcast cast the forest in a serene and almost dreary atmosphere. Some thought of it as creepy, but it was honestly some of the most beautiful scenery I could ask for.

The sixteen or so wolf corpses shattered across branches and bushes, silvery gleaming blood dancing in the light, only made it moreso.

“Good job guys,” I nodded to the team around me, keeping my voice down. In specific, I walked up to our resident scout, Sammy Burbaker, a lanky, short fellow who, with his nose piercing right at the bridge and his moody attire selection of a hoodie, would easily pass as an edgy youth. Even so, the guy was anything but, good humored though soft spoken, there’s never a day that I regret having taken the - admittedly excessive - time to win him over.

I didn’t even do it for a particular reason. Though, I guess if you had to twist my arm I’d guess he just happened to fit the role of a son I never had. Being forty and having no kids might do that to a man, honestly I just liked his company all the same.

“Jer, how many groups is that now?” The teenager asked, stretching as he flipped the safety switch on his ‘modified’ assault rifle.

I did the same with my own, “Five? Allendra, you got the number?”

The short but well built woman of vaguely oriental descent made a nearly imperceptible motion with her head, tilting slightly. “Mmm… that’s eighty-two wolves.” She hefted the heavier than normal rifle over her shoulder like it weighed paper. She used to be military, one of three in my group, not that we really cared. Sammy’s aim was crap, but he had extra clips to practice with now, the rest of us were pretty good anyways. Allendra, however, was a monster with sharpshooting.

And her equally sharp appearance, half of her hair braided and parted on the left side of her head and the other side pulled back into a strangely good looking ponytail, and the black and white combat gear she wore that bulked her form with quite a decent armor gave her a pretty exotic look.

“Oh! I got one!” A sudden exclamation and muffled clap through gloved hands drew my attention. The man had the sides of his hair shaved, the top low cut, and had a stubble growing on his chin. He was quite handsome, and if it weren’t for his obnoxious hobby I might actually be willing to admit out loud that I counted him as a good friend and invaluable teammate. He wore rough leather clothes mostly, and almost every piece was newly purchased from the obelisk.

“I am given to others sometimes. But when I am, I am no more. Though, some seek me exclusively, I can be ever elusive. What am I?” Jackson Grober asked the question to the resounding sigh of almost everyone.

“I’d suggest your brain, save for the caveat that you have none in the first place.” A dry humored man with a wide grin spoke. His eyes, while sometimes taking on a far away and distant look like he’d seen some horrifying things, had a glint in them. I wouldn’t call it a twinkle of amusement, I’m pretty sure Adam Burke’s very soul might not really be capable of experiencing such an emotional high. “Given that, I’m going to say that you are a ‘Secret’?”

If Jackson took any offense to the shorter than average mans first comment, he didn’t show it. He grinned widely, taking the medics humor in stride and answered, “Yup, damn, I knew it was too easy.”

“What’s black and blue and red all over?” Denice Amore, dark skinned and ruggedly beautiful, called out with her toothy and broad smile. I’ve never seen a woman more well built than her, and I’ve also never questioned my own masculinity and my criteria for the opposite sex so much as since she’d joined up with us.

“Please, not that abomination,” Jackson cringed at the overdone riddle.

Denice laughed, “Well, it’d be harder than what you’ve been pitching. That’s 11-1 in Adam’s favor today.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Adam’s monotone response was taken as a joke to everyone, getting a giggle at Jackson’s expense. Adam tossed wrapped packages of jerky to everyone a moment later, something I took as his way of making sure everyone knew he was joking.

Or maybe just appeasing us, though that’d make me feel perhaps that he found us like animals…

Well, nothing for it. I bit into the tender jerky and sighed gratefully. The obelisk had all but made our normal rations inadequate.

“Alright, let's get a move on, we’ve got a lot of ground to cover since those twerps went and jumped the gun.” I ordered, designated team leader. I had seniority - in terms of my years alive anyways - and everyone seemed to like me well enough to join up with me.

“Louis and them picked up a greenhorn, by the way,” Allendra picked up on who I was talking about, “Ex-bulwark.”

“You gotta say ‘Ex-bulwark’ like it’s a bad thing?” Denice’s frown at Allendra was washed out as Allendra cast a glance to her.

“Look, I don’t think they’re bad guys and gals. But sitting on their asses while we do the hunting? I don’t remember when I said that it was okay that they get a cut of the Legion’s haul.”

“Take it up with Reaper then,” Adam’s flatter than usual tone betraying that he was tired of this particular line of conversation, “I’m sure he’d be happy to tell you why it’s needed.”

Allendra opened her mouth, only for Jackson to cut her off, ignoring the momentary glare she sent his way, “But why is that needed anyways? Can’t they just… I don’t know, do what we’re doing right now?”

“What’s better, a few specialized teams that won’t die to stupid shit out here, or a bunch of idiots fighting each other for prime hunting spots?” Sammy deflected the question with his own, a rare moment where he spoke up. Granted, I still wasn’t sure if this was ‘mad’ Sammy or him just guiding the conversation.

“Fair point,” muttered Allendra, “I’d still like to know what they’re really going to be doing with it. I don’t mind it going to regular people, but I don’t want them lining their pockets.”

I froze, fist coming up closed and over my shoulder as I dropped into a lower stance, gun planted firmly into my shoulder.

The conversation died instantly as we spread out, hiding among the trees.

Carefully I watched the forest ahead of me, listening. From the corner of my eye I saw Sammy and Allendra come up on my 3 o'clock, Sammy’s eyes set forward as well, searching for whatever I’d seen. Allendra as well, sighting her even more heavily modified rifle with the scope and a small attached screen on the side of the weapon. She glanced to both, casting a quick glance to me and giving me the hand-sign for ‘no-target’ that we’d agreed upon.

I went lower to the ground, hiding among the brush as Sammy carefully moved to my side.

“What’d you see?” His mouse-quiet voice barely reached my ear.

“Something tan colored moved, man-sized. Might be some guy out there… Can you scout it?” I trusted Sammy to do this quietly, but if he felt it was bad, he’d also drop and run. Exactly what I wanted from my scout.

He nodded, wordlessly slinking off. As soon as he got fifteen feet away, I couldn’t even hear him anymore, let alone see him. He’d picked up something from the obelisk, but he didn’t say what.

All I knew is that he was on another level of sneaky compared to what he was before.

Behind me, I could hear Denise slot a grenade into her launcher tube, ready for a bear. We’d all seen the impressive loadout from joining The Reaper’s Legion, the information available frankly mind boggling. Unlike a Louis and Benjamin, we’d planned our hunts, eventualities for dangerous incidents. Like them, we kitted for silence, and we intended to clear out easier low-hanging fruit - or biotics in this case - before we kitted up for taking on bigger stuff. We were wary of bears, but Denise could put one down with a good headshot with her grenades.

Theoretically.

If not, we had plenty other options. We needed to up the ante, especially after getting outclassed by not two, but three teams, one of them solo hunting, but that didn’t mean we were going to be hive-killing anytime soon. And Allendra made sure that if we even got a wiff of a unique that we’d know and be hightailing it before we even had to make eye contact.

One eye had practically been glued to that screen on the side of her gun all day.

I was far from understating how much we were all glad for that investment. That thing Wolven was a nightmare none of us wanted to deal with on even terms.

My thoughts were interrupted as Sammy intentionally made a slight ‘click’ noise as he approached, making sure we knew it was him and wouldn’t shoot at him.

He made plenty of noise after that, strolling up to me. We shook hands, our hands around each other's forearms in greeting, a ritual for good luck as I insisted upon it.

Honestly I did it before only because it bothered the hell out of the kid to have physical contact.

“Nothing that I can see, unless it's better than I am at hiding.” He nodded, to me.

I chuckled, turning to the others as Allendra made what amounted to a choked shout.

We all turned to see what she was gawking at, and saw a creature standing in the woods ahead of us, completely upright and appeared to be looking at its slightly lifted arm curiously.

It was humanoid, but didn’t look like a human at all, gnarled looking, almost like roots or fungus had mixed with a human skeletal structure. It wasn’t particularly hideous somehow, mostly covered by smooth material, a slightly warped physical form, one arm too long by a few inches, a leg too big compared to the other.

I held up my hand at the sound of safeties flipping off. “Wait.”

They did, and at that the being looked to me, and then began to mimic my movement. I frowned, slowly lowering my hand to my gun and bringing it up, leaning down to a firing stance.

Every movement was perfectly copied, though it looked silly without a gun in its hand, especially given that I could blow its chest open easily like this. There wasn’t seemingly a single trace of fear in it.

“Allendra, what do you got?” I murmured, hearing her muttering under her breath.

“Its… ummm.” She answered in clear confusion, “Jackson?”

It was rare that she ever seemed flustered, and Jackson was the only other member of our team with obelisk related tech like hers.

“Uh… yeah, no idea.” He looked at his own version, an eyepiece on his head that would give him the general readout of whatever he was looking at. “It looks… like something? The signature is really weak, but it's definitely a biotic.”

“That’s informative.” Adam murmured, “This technology certainly is useful.”

“Back away slow, guys.” I ordered, “Keep eyes all around us.”

“I see three more,” Sammy’s voice quivered momentarily before he brought his rifle up, “They’re not moving any closer than the first one though.”

I nodded, the lot of us backed away, and unnervingly the bonemen did the same thing, moving exactly as we did, and as more came, they even mimicked our formation.

Three separate formations consisting of eighteen bonemen.

“What the hell are they doing?” Denice grit her teeth, unsettled at seeing her every move copied not just once but three times across the way.

“Who cares? They’re not attacking us, so we regroup and get information to the Legion.” I heard Jackson’s terse reply, he wasn’t any happier about what was going on here.

“They’re not attacking us at all,” Sammy observed, “It’s like they’re only here to copy us?”

“I’m not sure how much I like that, but don’t shoot unless they come at us first. I don’t wanna be the guy responsible for killing the defenseless and non-aggressive biotics when we tell Reaper about this stuff.”

That sentiment seemed to be shared if the murmurs from everyone indicated anything.

We did, however, pick up the pace to get back to town. This was beyond unnerving.

Jackson suddenly smirked, “Bet you that this find is gonna be worth more than however many points Louis and his team can get.”

I suppressed a laugh, but had to admit that this would beat the hell out of any achievement most of the other teams would probably be able to get for a bit. Supposing we got to the city alive, hopefully these things wouldn’t decide they were hungry.

-Jack Knight’s P.O.V.-

There weren’t many things that I thought I could be surprised by anymore. I’d thought that to be in fair estimation, after all how much more could happen when the world was hit by several meteors and invaded by aliens?

Well, joke was on me. The obelisk, or rather several of them probably, had completely flipped the situation on its head. I’m still not sure if that was a good thing or not, because as of yet nobody really seems to know what the general plan is.

At least, most people don’t seem too. There are a few out there that seem to have an idea, that seem to get it. That we’re actually sitting on a veritable goldmine and some kind of freakily amazing technology is able to somehow magically siphon off whatever the hell kind of juice biotics have in them when they die. It’s still an amazing prospect for me, and that would be exactly why I was out in the woods hunting biotics when a few weeks ago I’d have just laughed and laughed at the idea of having enough ammo to even remotely think about doing this very same thing.

“Jack, what’s the first thing you want to look for when hunting biotics?” The team leader, Louis, called out.

Probably a slavering wolf, should you even be shouting right now? I bit down on that comment, “Probably tracks.”

Louis opened his mouth to talk, only for Benjamin’s timely interruption, “I swear to god, Lou, if you say it I’m going to sma--”

“Your gun!” He called out cheerily!

The sound of a groan coming from the rest of the team - and myself, I realized - enunciated that this wasn’t the first awful joke he’d had.

“Why did I join you, again?” I called out, unable to keep a slight smirk off my face.

Ashley Deed, an attractive woman a few years older than me with a tightly bound bun of hair and a rifle expertly carried in her arms, answered with mirth. “Because you’re as dumb as the rest of these guys?”

I frowned at that, to which she winked at me, “Sorry, I meant ‘earnest,’ not dumb.”

“No, she definitely meant dumb,” Liam Neema, a fellow of middle-eastern ancestry, spoke.

“Just us,” The last man of the team, Joseph Aerington, was a bright eyed and broad shouldered man with a bit more girth to him than most. He patted Liam on the shoulder with a knowing look. “Just us.”

His reiteration earned him a perplexed look from Liam, who just shook his head while Ashley smirked.

The forest around us was as silent as it seemed to always be these days. We hadn’t run into any living wolves at all, though we did run into some evidence that someone else had.

I pointed out yet another example to that fact, “Found another wolf.”

The others stirred from their mirth, a brief flash of the seriousness that lurked under the surface. “Make that two more,” Liam called out, “Whoever’s taking these things out had better leave us some.”

“Should we change direction, then?” Benjamin muttered as he rested against a tree. He scanned the area around him, looking off into the brush for any sign of living things.

I found myself doing the same thing, though I also found myself flabbergasted that the trip so far had been so… uneventful.

“Again?” Louis huffed, and then shrugged a few moments later after giving it some genuine thought, “Probably, I mean, whoever’s out here is doing a little too thorough of a job for us to bother.”

I nodded, leaning over the wolf corpse with a vague sense of interest. It was much easier on the eyes to look, I didn’t even want to think about what an actual wolf might look like when hit by rifle fire. They smelled more like iron and damp dirt than anything particularly foul, some small mercy compared to if these were actual dogs. The hound was breaking down, but even I could tell that something had torn into it.

Part of me wished I knew more about forensics and such, though. Looking at the thing, I could barely tell how many bullets it took to bring the thing down. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say something just stabbed right through its chest with a stick. That’d be ridiculous, of course, why would anyone want to bother getting into a melee with these things? Probably just a really big shell or something.

“Well, whatever we’re doing, I want to take a quick five anyways.” Louis called out to the rest of us, “Jack, how far out are we?”

“Uh,” I paused, glancing at the virtual map on a small wrist mounted watch. “Display says we’re barely five miles out.”

Ashley sighed, “Well, that’s depressing.”

“We’ve been zigzagging, nothin’ for it,” Liam offered some kind of consolation, “At least it looks like the biotics here in the north west are pretty scarce.”

“Yeah.” Ashley continued muttering in dismay. Yesterday she’d been thrilled to have managed to help get our team on the board. Second place was pretty impressive considering the board hadn’t been open long. Granted, the disparity in points between the number one spot and their own was pretty ridiculous now.

“They were crawling the area yesterday,” said Benjamin with a nod, “I’m sure there’s more around. I doubt any single team could clear the entire area so quick.”

That made sense, as far as he knew there was only one other team that had gone out this way. At least, according to the limited detection capabilities the Reaper database had for everyone’s use.

“Alright, Jack, Ash, Ben, you three on first rotation for watch. We’ll eat and swap after.” Louis casually dished out orders. I followed Ashley and Benjamin’s lead, they nodded and took up positions around the group, fifteen feet away, keeping Louis, Liam, and Joseph in the middle of our 3-point formation.

I glared at the forest, the dim light filtering down through the trees and the sky, the sound of conversation carrying on behind me. Part of me was a little disappointed in the showing, this was far less dangerous than I’d been led to believe. But, I could tell that Benjamin and Ashley took their positions seriously, and even though the topics of conversation were lighthearted, they were kept low in volume. I doubted that our voices would carry far, an embankment of soil rising off to one side where a broad hill would only help with displacing our noise.

I froze a moment later, slowly bringing my rifle up to my shoulder, silencer mounted to help with keeping from letting every biotic for miles from knowing where we were if we needed to take a shot at something. There was a sound, almost imperceptible, but without the backdrop of birdsong in the trees, or the rustling of the wind, it was just barely audible.

As quietly as I could managed, I knelt down and pressed the button on my earpiece, whispering as loudly as I dared, “I think we have company.”

The conversation behind me died as I heard shuffling feet as Louis and the rest of the team covered behind trees.

In complete silence we waited, and watched, eyes surveying for anything out of place, anything that moved.

We saw nothing, but could heard something, several things, moving towards us now.

“I got one over here,” I heard Ashley’s voice, “it’s not a wolf.”

That made my blood run cold, and judging by the tenseness in Loius voice following up, I doubted he felt any better.

“Biotic?” He muttered his question.

Gunfire erupted out, even muffled by the silencer on Liam’s weapon it was mind-numbingly load to the stark silence we’d had before.

“Brought one down,” He called, voice tight with strain.

“What the fuck was that!” I grit my teeth as Benjamin snarled into the radio, coming up and at attention with his weapon, looking for other targets. The rest of us did too, seeing no other sign.

Ashley’s voice was high, near hysterical, “I just lost sight on mine!” She panned around, trying to find any evidence that they’d even been there. Silence once more reigned supreme, pregnant with the promise of a fight that we dreaded would be coming any moment now.

And yet, nothing moved, no sound came, it was like they were never there.

Even so, I balked at the thought of moving from my spot of relative safety, there was no way in hell I’d be moving without knowing for sure what was going on.

The same was not true of the stomping of the short but sturdy vice-leader of the group as he bore down on Liam.

“Why did you shoot? At the least we could have coordinated! Jesus man, now we have no idea how many there even were!” His eyes were wide in aggravation, but also anxiety, “What even did you shoot at?”

Liam seemed at a loss for a minute, and bit down a retort. Mostly, “I took a clear shot, what? We were supposed to be shooting biotics! And I don’t know what it was, some kinda… freaky humanoid looking thing.”

It just so happened that I was looking at Louis when Liam was saying that, and I could see the way the color drained from his face.

“We need to leave. Now. That’s a new biotic, maybe a unique. Pack it in,” He ordered, the building irritation in Benjamin seemingly vanishing as he shook his head and moved.

My nerves jittered, adrenaline still pumped fiercely in my veins. Whatever was out here, we weren’t equipped for it. It was stealthy, and to now wolves didn’t bother being especially sneaky. That changed the game, we needed detection gear.

We moved closer and then started pulling back, trying to keep an eye out.

It was then that I heard Joseph grunt, and fall. We turned to look, his face flushing red when he realized he’d simply tripped on a root.

We were frozen in place as we watched.

A hand was extended for Joseph to rise, and he took it.

Then he looked up at the creature that hand belonged too, humanoid but so very not human.

“Oh shit.” Was all I heard him mutter, and then the shocked screaming started.

Liam shouldered his rifle, barely aiming down the sights as he readied to shoot right past Joseph. He didn’t notice the strange, almost six foot tall human-shaped thing that looked like it was made of bulky bone and fleshed out with smooth, taut fungus-looking muscles, standing behind him. It embraced him in what looked like a hug, and all of a sudden Liam was firing straight into the air. Ashley’s and Benjamins shouts and struggles met my ears as Louis called out something. His words never met my ears as I pivoted, looking to put my back to a tree.

I stared at the nearly faceless thing, and instinctively lashed out with a smack with the butt of my rifle.

It reeled back, stunned from the hit and putting a warped hand to the side of its head and… whimpered?

That was… odd.

It then tilted its head at me, holding the side of its face almost like it was asking “Why did you hit me?”

And then another one came up behind me, wrapping me in a bear hug.

Blood pulsed in my veins, adrenaline, panic, I writhed and squirmed even as the fungaloid bone man I hit picked me up by my feet with a strange almost bird-song chortle, decidedly more cheerful than I thought it should sound. Just like that, I and my team were being carried off deep into the forest.

“Let me go! What in the actual hell!?” I managed to decry my consternation, and then felt a strange sensation wash over me.

I was… very sleepy…

I shouldn’t…

...