“Are you sure it was a good idea to tell him about Yaga?” a concerned Fran asked me as we moved through the dense jungle.

“As much as I can be,” I shook my head, “we won’t be able to keep him a secret forever, not without making sure he can’t actually leave any facilities. Otherwise, we’d have to lock him up, and I doubt he’d be as eager to help us after that. Considering he’s basically an organic supercomputer, I’d rather not have someone like that angry with us.”

I couldn’t see Fran’s face with her suit protecting her, but I could see the wariness in her posture, contemplating options.

“No, I suppose not,” she said after a few moments longer than I’d have liked, “it really wouldn’t exactly be feasible.”

“He seems nice enough,” Alice chipped in, “I didn’t get any ‘dark lord’ vibes from him.”

We all turned to look at her.

“What?” She said defensively, “I’m just saying he doesn’t seem like a creep.”

I shook my head with amusement, then turned to my right at the sound of Daniel growling.

Without preamble he began firing out into the forest, a newly doubled quantity of gatling guns tearing through the underbrush with ravenous abandon. After the sufficient jolt of adrenaline to our systems, Daniel stopped firing, studying his work.

Triumphant, he cheered, “hah! Got the bastard!”

“What was it?” Fran asked, relatively unphased by the sudden gout of gunfire.

“One of those bastard cats with the barbs on their tails.” He said, turning his attention to us, the purple flaring light that ebbed dully from the visor of his helmet casting a pale pallor on the darkness of the forest. “They’ll run away and keep harassing you constantly if you let them go the first time.”

His explanation was well founded, I’d not run into them yet. I nodded, moving off towards where he’d let off his short hail of metal.

As advertised, not much was left of the biotic than a silvery paste, and some chunks. The sight was much numbed these days, and I was dutiful in picking apart the various bits and trying to reimagine the creature as it was whole.

Admittedly, I had to take many liberties based on the cats I’d seen before.

“Larger slightly, ranged weapons… but I don’t think this is a Gen 2 type.” I tapped my hand idly on my side, “meaning that they’re still mutating here.”

“That’s not too surprising. We had some of those in Gilramore, didn’t we?” Richard studied the scene as well, “those Grey Wolves you guys ran into?”

I paused at that, mulling the thought over, “it’s possible. I’m still not sure if they were genuine Gen 2 biotics, or if they were just Gen 1 biotics with benefits. They could regenerate virtually anything it seemed.”

“Glad we got rid of those,” Daniel shuddered, “gave me the heebie-jeebies.”

We moved onwards for a few more minutes before Terry spoke up, “alright, here’s the first spot.”

I turned to him and nodded, “we’ll keep you covered.”

“Won’t be a minute,” he gave me a thumbs up as he pulled a canister, as thick as a man’s leg, from a towed compartment trailer behind him. “Alright, this little piggy went to market.”

He pressed it a few inches into the earth, the cracking and grinding of dirt and roots giving way beneath the heavy press of the mech and rod. Satisfied that it was mostly straight, Terry pressed a button on the side and twisted the entire rod, the bottom half of which didn’t move with the top. As it did so, the lower half shuddered for a moment, the only warning it gave before a loud pop resounded from the device. It bored downward with a drill for another two meters, leaving two more meters above ground. The upper mechanisms unfurled, a spiraling device with thin, frond-like extensions laced with sensors.

Each of our suits were fed information about the surroundings in detail, expanding rapidly by the second. Light pulses raced the tips of the sensors, rapidly at first as it attentively scanned the area.

When it finished, I couldn’t help but note that it looked strangely a part of the terrain here. It appeared like a plant like, albeit made out of metal and dully emitting red light at the tips of the ‘leaves’.

“Alright, one down, a… lot left over,” he leaned over to the compartment behind him, spying a surface layer of five, and many more beneath it.

“These should help with the stealth biotics, right?” Richard asked aloud to no one in particular as he studied the sensor.

“Supposedly.” I sighed, “R&D whipped up some upgrades, but I have no idea how effective it’ll actually be.”

“It seems well enough, if there’s actually no biotics in the area.” Daniel looked over the information fed into an overlay for the area, “it’s good with mapping the area though, good range too. Couple hundred meters.”

“Well, let’s keep at it. The rest of the teams are doing the same thing, so by the time we’re done there shouldn’t be anything that can get within two kilometers of Argedwall without us knowing it.” We continued onward, meeting much lighter resistance from local biotics than what had been dealt with on the way in.

The forest, or rainforest as it truthfully was, would have been miserable to trudge through without mech suits. The mud, where it appeared, was cloying and sucking, and without the mechanical power we possessed, it would have sapped at our strength. It was hot, humid, and not the least of which smelled of an undercurrent of root rot as plants that were unsuited to the terrain were slowly drowned and strangled by parasitic vines.

There had to be a Gen 2 biotic here modifying terrain. It wasn’t the Carrier’s either, they would have changed the terrain to match what we’d found in Damond. The question became what our Gen 2 here was.

I paused as one of the new sensor nets swept the area, giving me a heads up of a creature slowly moving towards us. With sound cut off from the outside, I quickly called for a full stop.

“You see anything?” Fran asked, hovering over Daniel’s shoulder.

I frowned, glaring at the area in front of us. Supposedly something was practically right in front of us.

Nothing, though, just an area of more mud, some vegetation. No biotic or otherwise.

“Hold on.” I focused my own sensors, feeling an electronic buzz as I poured through all of the data it fed me. At any given time I could have my power armor feeding me details about the environment around me, thermal, light, motion, and to a lesser degree radiation.

As I focused the sweep, the onboard devices responsible for their respective categories bombarded the area in invisible beams. Infrared and sound were the ones primarily at work, and after a few disappointing seconds without results, something began to appear as a picture.

Beneath the muck was a strange collection of bones, or something similar. They seemed to be connected to each other as well, though I’d hardly call them animals. To my knowledge, bones shouldn’t have barbs attached to them.

“Right there,” I confirmed the sensors findings, “boney mass with spikes.”

“Those are annoying, too,” Daniel nodded, “kinda like the scarecrows, but like three of them were taken apart and shoved together.”

I didn’t need to ask if they were dangerous, I’d seen a few other mechs with deep gouges in them from being embraced by these things for too long.

I walked into the area with heat humming from the red edges of my newly drawn blades. “Uh, Matt, they’re really fast.” I could hear Daniel say, concerned in his voice, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

Idly I turned my gaze back to him, “oh, I’m not walking in there.”

He stared, confused, before asking, “then what are you doing right now?”

I gestured to the tree near the clearing, a thinner one, and he nodded in realization. The others did as well, Fran’s feathers ready to fly an intercepting path between me and the mud, just in case.

The thing beneath the mud stirred slightly as it sensed my approach, but didn’t move. I was careful to keep outside of its reach as I skirted its extremities. When I hit the tree I was glad that it hadn’t moved much at all. It seemed to be a dedicated ambush predator, luckily enough.

I glanced at my blades before deciding to put one away. As I twisted, one sword clutched with both hands, I kept an eye on the area just beside me.

A powerful swing was all it took to cut straight through the thinner tree, about the width of a young man's waist. I quickly repositioned, putting myself on the outside of the now unstable tree. Spikes deployed from my armors grieves, giving me valuable traction as I pushed the tree into falling.

For a precarious second it began to lean, groaning as it did. Then the snapping of vines and of intertwined branches filled the air.

It crashed down into the mud, hard, and all at once the biotic exploded into action.

Thick boney protrusions snapped angrily at the bark, reaving thick swaths of wood from the offending tree. Branches were quickly shredded off even as the bones gripped tightly, using the leverage of hooks to half swing, half roll the rest of its mass across its quarry.

Of course, we watched this all with a blend of fascination and horror.

“I don’t want to think what would happen to a person in the middle of that,” Terry swallowed hard, “it’s like a living blender.”

“Well, that’s enough gawking,” I watched as it slowed, seemingly in confusion at the fact that it wasn’t feeling any kind of struggle.

We opened fire on it immediately after that, turning it, the tree, and the mud beneath it into a churned, hot mess.

“Alright, so we can safely say that they’re not a major threat to mechs so long as someone is nearby to kill it.” I nodded, “but if you don’t at least have power armor on, it’ll turn you into paste in seconds.”

“Yeah. I’m going in the trees when I can now.” Richard shook his head in exasperation, Alice looking equally annoyed.

We pushed onwards, running into a few other biotics. The fungal ones were easy to find now, we’d managed to have our sensors alert us to variances of a few degrees in temperature, and once the fungal biotics lost the ambush advantage, they were utterly helpless.

That did bring up an interesting question though.

“Why are all of them so keen on ambush?” Alice broached the question, “or hit and run. It’s like they’re not trying to siege Argedwall at all.”

“What do you mean?” Fran asked.

“Well, think about it. If you wanted to siege a city, you’d want to evolve something that could break through defenses, or were fast and hard hitting. Like, consider Damond. Those things were practically purpose-made for sieges.”

I contemplated what she was saying before realizing that I’d noticed the same. Having it put into words, though, somehow gave it new life.

“Hmm… maybe they’re somehow being engineered, then?” I contemplated, “remember that there are crab-type biotics in New Damond that are practically useless for anything except being super durable. The Carriers were using them to push the Spindlies destructive power as high as possible.”

The implication sat cold in our thoughts. None of us wanted to deal with a biotic that was purposefully created for destruction.

“I’ll update the Legion,” I sighed, “there’s not much we can do aside from be aware that there might be some greater intelligence at work behind these biotics.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Alice sighed, “but hey, at least things are going pretty well.”

Terry finished planting the sensor immediately afterwards, turning his attention to the others. “Well, that’s most of them. I’d say we made pretty goo-” he suddenly stopped, turning his attention to the sensor, “-fuck. Heads up, either this is malfunctioning or we have company.”

I turned my attention to the map overlay, and noted the swarm of red dots that were swiftly making their way towards us.

“You just haaaad to say it,” Terry said good naturedly enough as he looked to Alice.

She huffed, “but they were going pretty well.” As she notched an arrow, the rest of us took up our practised positions. Other teams had more personnel by design, we had plenty of firepower and a balanced toolkit to handle a lot of things that might come our way.

Granted, it was still always alarming to see a horde of monsters charging through a forest at you, hungering for your flesh.