-Matthew P.O.V.-

In some ways, I was glad when the hive was completely empty. In the long run, that’d mean fewer hives that we’d have to clear ourselves, fewer chances that whatever had caused the beetles in the mines to exist would happen again, presumably. We weren’t experts in biotics, but I had to assume that if you left a core untapped and, for lack of a better word, uncleansed, then they would continue to generate biotics.

For that very same reason, I’d have wanted to keep the hive core from the mine for observation, had that been possible at the time. At least I’d gotten a massive haul of Matter Energy from destroying it, though, and I certainly wasn’t in a position to have captured it alive.

‘Crazy bug queen thing.’ I thought with disdain. Ziek would have been something, and who knew if Yomar was going to come back to the field. I shook my thoughts from that, turning my attention back to our travels.

Our progress was better than I’d expected by far. We were several kilometers away from Gilramore at this point, further than I’d initially intended to range so soon.

There was a reason why we’d immediately made this extended probe, however. We expected to run into dense packs of biotics that had been left to their own devices, untrimmed as this area was by my reapers these past days. Instead, what greeted us was a no man’s land, the only sound that permeated the air the monotone sounds of thrusters, engines, and the electrostatic crackle of Terry’s mech.

Alice had begun sweeping back and forth across the line as we moved forward, searching for any tracks that would enlighten us as to what was going on.

And for the tenth time, she’d stopped amidst a clearing in the trees, several of which bore claw marks and were pushed over. I didn’t need to be an expert in forestry to recognize that these had been recently felled. Shade slowed to a stop as I stepped out, the semi-sentient vehicle rising off of the ground and placing itself above the tree line, extending infrared scanners in case it could detect anything amiss.

“Anything new?” I asked, looking at the swath of destruction and numerous rivets in the earth from hundreds of biotic claws.

She shook her head, “Not really. It definitely looks like Wolven’s trail, only a lot bigger than it was before.”

I frowned at that, turning to look around. To me the area didn’t seem any bigger than it had previously. Curious, I focused my scanners on the ground, comparing it to what we’d found before. It dawned on me that the ground was deeper in comparison to the area around it, packed down hard in the places where it wasn’t upturned from Wolven’s passing.

“How much more?” I groaned, annoyed that our quarry had indeed been quite busy after its escape.

Alice shook her head, “I’m not sure, but it’s definitely intelligent to some extent, unless it intends to be moving in a column. It’s acting almost like an army trying to hide their exact number.”

“You mean walking over their own footprints, right?” Daniel piped up, walking into the clearing, twisting and looking at the area, whistling as he did so. “Damn. I wonder how anything even lets that thing get near them.”

“The biotics don’t run from it,” Alice answered with a quick shrug, “And, yeah, looks like its trying to be stealthy, but there’s only so much something like that can do.”

I gestured upwards, hearing the gentle hum of the Shade as it lowered itself. Hopping into the vehicle, I nodded to Alice, “Alright, let’s keep on it. Eventually we’ll catch up. Fran, you hear me?”

A few moments later Fran’s voice came to life over the microphone, “What’s up?”

“Think you can run some aerial recon? Not too far, I just want to know if you see Wolven first.”

“Way ahead of you,” she chuckled, “So far I’m not seeing too much beyond our slug trail here.”

Pleasant way to think about that, I smiled as we continued, the trail now so easy to follow that Alice didn’t need to help guide us. She hopped into the Sickle, enough room for two as she watched over my shoulder.

I felt a mild surge in power come from Shade at that, and wondered if it was happy for additional passengers, or annoyed. I decided it was the first when Alice declared “This seat is really nice,” and another surge came from Shade.

That was better than it hating ferrying other people, at least, maybe it was something along the lines of a vehicle wanting to fulfill its function or some such.

We continued onwards, running into several more small patches like the one we’d run across, Fran pointing each one out. After a quick once over we’d decided that nothing new would really appear.

I was beginning to regret not bringing at least one or two teams out here to help with reconnaissance. We’d been out here for hours now, traveling fast along the trail Wolven had left. By now, in spite of the light filtering down through breaks in the clouds, a noticeable tension and gloom had settled over us. Terry was the only one of us who hadn’t fought the abomination before, and even he was beginning to have a sense of disquiet at the sheer magnitude of the trail we were following. Where it started it had been less than a meter wide, hard to really track effectively were it not for Alice.

Now, it was like a freeway cleared of any whole vegetation. Ten meters of nearly clear cut forest and mulched land announced the procession. As a plus, our speed picked up considerably over the open land, perhaps at this rate we’d run into the back end of Wolven.

“Oh my god.” Fran murmured over the microphone, “Guys, this is bad.”

I clenched my teeth at that, not excited in the least to see what Fran was seeing. Nobody answered. We didn’t need too.

Soft ground and forest gave way to a gradual incline. Fertile soil and plentiful grasses should have been there, places like this often hosting fields of flowering plants that painted the world in pastel colors in the spring months. Little gullies and valley creek paths that ordinarily might have been a great place for a cottage to be in.

Alice stepped out from Shade wordlessly, her eyes hard as the rest of us scanned the ground with sensors, habit mixed with an attempt to make some sort of sense of what we were seeing.

A minute later, Alice returned from her investigation, north east.

“I think our worst case scenario happened.” Alice looked a little pale as she approached, her body taught, ready to move at a moments notice.

Daniel gestured with exasperation at the area around us, “How many did it get?”

Fran hovered above us, the ground torn up in a huge area like a giant wheel. These areas were often home to large volumes of biotics moving through, the hordes of wolves that we’d grown accustomed to skirting around before the Obelisks arrived. They were hundreds in size, and usually stayed to patrolling patterns, except the scant few that had attacked Gilramore, of which only one had actually gotten through to the city proper, but had done a lot of damage in doing so.

This had to have been one of the larger ones given the trail leading to this spot, but Wolven didn’t seem to have cared about its size. It would have been a buffet for the thing, and it looked like it baited them in, then just circled them. Over and over again, trimming the horde from the outside in, minimizing how much area they could attack at once.

It reminded me of old documentaries of dolphins in the ocean circling a school of fish, balling them up in one place for convenience.

“The trail continues,” an edge of resoluteness to her voice.

I shook off my mood, being dispirited would help nothing. “Keep going, then. We need to find Wolven more than ever.”

As we continued, we messaged and logged updates in the Reaper HQ system. I could imagine that there were several teams patrolling the area around Gilramore now. With a little warning, maybe we could mobilize enough to distract Wolven while our defenses were still being sorted out. The Bulwark was nowhere near ready for an assault anywhere other than south, though Doug assured me that the project had been moved to the north east given the new information we found. At this point, we’d ranged almost forty kilometers out, and in addition to the first circular pattern we found two more. It was highly likely that Wolven had absorbed every major horde in the area, and that was without even estimating what happened to the hives they’d come from. Could Wolven use cores? If it could, what could it do with them?

“So, Matthew,” Terry started, “How’d you end up doing all of this stuff?”

“What do you mean?” I turned my attention to the man, glad for the distraction.

“The whole biotics hunting thing,” He added quickly to that, “Not like I’m saying that’s weird or anything, or a bad thing. It’s just that you seem to take to it very… err… enthusiastically.”

I frowned, “That…” My thoughts collected a bit, the question not really something I wanted to dwell on. I noticed that Alice had perked up slightly, it seemed that the question was something she was curious about too.

“My family lived in Damond.” I decided to answer simply. It wasn’t exactly something I wanted to talk about. Losing my family at the start of all of this wasn’t something I’d expect to ever really work through. It had dimmed in pain, though I still kept them from my conscious thoughts whenever possible. The last time I’d thought about it, I’d spent the rest of the night on my own, crying and feeling sorry for myself. Thoughts like how it wasn’t fair had crossed my mind, but that was a given. Life wasn’t fair, and if anything I’d learned how frail life could be. But, that didn’t make it any easier.

“Damond?” Terry paused a moment and then the realization hit him, “Oh… I’m sorry.” I could almost see his face cringing.

I let out a silent breath of relief when no one else added onto that, though I felt like Alice wanted too. She stared at me from behind, most of her face concealed behind the visor, but even so I could virtually feel the conflict going on. I hoped she didn’t feel too bad for me, she seemed like the type that might feel guilty about still having family and trying so hard to get to them when others would never have that cha--

Okay, that stings. A lot.

“So… about this Wolven thing.” Terry coughed and none-so-subtly diverted the topic. I smirked at that, “I was thinking about some ideas, I mean, you said that it ran away last time, right? So, assuming that we can actually even beat this thing, I have some possible ideas on how to keep it in one place, or close enough at least.”

“Good, I don’t want to have to go chasing after this thing again,” Daniel rumbled over the radio. “What do you have?”

I listened to them talk, the others contributing ideas, the melancholy fading somewhat. Perhaps I wasn’t so much of a pessimist after all, but it seemed like we might actually have a chance to bring this thing down. Terry’s plan could work, too, though he did admit that we might have to change the plan somewhat given how large Wolven was by now.

“And then we can just pin it down and hammer mortar fire into it without - Hold up. Radio transmission.” Terry broke off mid-sentence, gesturing with his mechs hand like it was natural at this point. A moment later, the rest of our long-range radio’s began to go off, though Terry’s mech had a dedicated module for communicating long-distance, these had become standard issue after the debacle with Louis’ team going missing.

We were the only team that would be so far out to require these instead of obelisk communication, so it was safe to assume that it was intended for us.

“This is Reaper H.Q. to Reaper Alpha Team-” the message started, leaving me with an eyebrow cocked. Was that what people were calling me and my team? “-we have a critical situation at Gilramore that requires immediate attention. Repeat, this is Reaper H.Q. to Reaper Alpha Team, we have a situation here that needs you back ASAP. Louis’ team has been recovered as well as an undesignated possible biotic threat. They’re also coming with information on the Unique known as ‘Wolven,’ they know where it’s at.”

The lot of us stopped and looked at eachother, a mixture of relief, confusion, and dread that was altogether too much to absorb at once.

“Let’s go.” We didn’t need to deliberate this. Wolven’s path was steadily curving to the north, the last known location of the missing team. I dreaded the possibility that someone had been captured by that abomination. There’s no use imagining the worst case. I chastised myself, we’d be seeing for ourselves soon enough, after all...