Codename: Operation Lamarck. The target was Levy Klichko, a mad scientist hiding in Magnethill Lab No. 2, and the radioactive waste he was said to have hidden away.

The moment the four-person mercenary team, codenamed Ash, Blitz, Frost, and Tachanka, broke through the checkpoint and made it inside, the lab's reactor spiraled out of control and exploded completely.

When they came to, they were in a desert. Not on Earth. And on this planet, a plague unlike anything on Earth was eating away at the people here.

1. Operation Lamarck, and the lab that vanished

Rather than surrender quietly, Levy triggers a device. Everything disappears in a flash of white light.

When they open their eyes, there's a huge crack in the wall, and outside the window is nothing but desert. Their compass and radio are both dead.

Something massive comes rushing at them fast through the rubble. Tachanka mutters, not quite believing his own eyes. "You ever see a spider this huge? ...Battle stations!"

To make matters worse, a monster the size of a house — something like a sandbeast — attacks their hideout. Its shell is so hard that their bullets don't even leave a scratch.

Only armor-piercing rounds do any good. Against a creature that won't even stop when you shoot its legs, Ash bets everything on the one grenade they have left. Fortunately, the gamble pays off.

2. Day 184 — Originium worms and two suns

By their count, it's already been 184 days. The four have survived by adopting aliases that fit this planet's way of speaking. Their real names hidden, here they simply live as Ash, Blitz, Frost, and Tachanka.

Tachanka keeps a strange snail called an Originium worm as a pet, and reads through a book written in Ursine, haltingly. "At a glance it looks like Cyrillic, but look closer and it's subtly different."

The village doctor, Miarow, hands out medicine to them every time. She herself turns out to be Infected with this planet's incurable disease, Oripathy.

Once infected, the skin gradually crystallizes, and eventually the person dies. There's no cure — only painkillers.

They manage to get their hands on a beat-up car, but the engine is such an unfamiliar design that they can't even fix it. "If there's any good news at all, I guess it's that the driver's seat is on the left," Ash notes in the log.

The Infected are driven out to live in an 'Infected district' outside the village. Somewhere between civilization and savagery, the four of them just try to make it through each day.

3. The great stoning incident, and an empty guardhouse

Armed villagers swarm in front of the Infected district, demanding someone be handed over.

Koetz, who'd gone into the village looking for a mechanic, gets caught red-handed. He tries to bluff his way out with "I'm just a junk collector," but nobody's buying it.

Miarow steps in to stop the mob, but among the crowd are unfamiliar faces mixed in — Sarkaz mercenaries, purpose unknown for now.

When Cohen's group draws their guns, the villagers scatter. But this was only the start of the raid. Fires break out all over the village, and monsters begin bursting up out of the ground.

4. Meanwhile, deep inside a cave

While the village is in chaos, another deal is going down somewhere no one knows about. Drudge, the Amir's son, is pressing the old scientist Levy Klichko. "Where's that brutal, powerful army you promised me?"

Levy demands corpses be brought to him. Infected ones, preferably.

Uneasy but compliant, Drudge goes along with it. He needs this madman if he's going to push his father out and take the Amir's seat for himself.

Backing Drudge is a Columbian organization called 'Volvo Kochinski.' For the sake of profitable mining rights, they don't care whether it's Sarkaz mercenaries or a mad scientist.

Inside the cave, a grotesque synthetic body wrapped in Originium writhes inside an incubator. Every piece of equipment around it is something that has absolutely no business being on this planet.

"This world has been richly blessed by the great Originium," Levy mutters to himself. No one knows where he really came from, or why he ended up all the way out here.

5. Unboxing the finest weapons of another world

Cohen's group brings the wounded to a Rhodes Island safehouse. The guard Orpfen, his leg broken, opens the door for them without protest.

The storeroom inside is a genuine treasure trove. Grenade launchers, mines, explosives of designs they've never seen before.

"Gun users who don't know how to use Originium Arts — how curious," Orpfen says, impressed. The four of them just exchange awkward glances.

On this planet there's something like magic called 'Arts' instead of bullets, and plain bandages instead of healing potions. Both are equally foreign to the four of them.

"A country with no Oripathy, no Infected at all — what on earth is a place like that like?" Orpfen asks, eyes shining. Seeing the four of them stiffen up, he quietly retracts the question. "...Forget I asked that."

"I wonder what kind of sci-fi novels this world has. There must be bookstores, right? History books, too?" Koetz asks eagerly, and Orpfen just looks puzzled. "You all really are strange people."

6. Polar Bear Logistics, nice to meet you

On the day the safehouse comes under siege, an unfamiliar reinforcement shows up and drives the mercenaries off — the elderly wanderer Rangers and his companions, a Rhodes Island field team.

Liskarm's lightning burns everything white before their eyes, and Schwarz's arrows find their marks precisely in the dark. After a few exchanges, the Sarkaz mercenaries withdraw to cut their losses.

"Who do you work for?" Liskarm asks, and Koetz mumbles something vague. Alexandr's improvised mission name in Russian, 'Polar Bear Logistics,' ends up sticking.

Their identity may stay murky, but their purpose is the same. Mercenaries protecting the Infected — both sides find each other strange and yet somehow familiar.

Liskarm attaches an Arts circuit to Koetz's half-broken shield. A flash — and the shield comes alive. "Whoa, whoa! Is this what Arts is?"

The villagers call Rangers the 'Halberd of Bloody Valley' and spin every kind of heroic tale about him. He himself just waves it off. "Back then, I was nothing more or less than an ordinary scout."

7. A visit from the guard captain, and a night raid

The next guest was not a welcome one. The Amir's daughter and guard captain, Piquel, surrounds the safehouse with her guards. "All of you inside, listen up!"

"Kidnapping an Infected — I will not forgive this!" No matter how carefully Cohen tries to refute her point by point, it makes no difference. Piquel orders them to void their contract with Rhodes Island and send the Infected back where they came from.

Piquel's father built his fortune on mining, yet closed the quarry himself once Oripathy began to spread. Having inherited that legacy, Piquel finds it unbearable that these strange outsiders are stirring up trouble in the Infected district.

I'll crush every last one of you and grind you into dust.

— Piquel

"Seems like she's got more muscle than brain," Liskarm and Franka grumble from the back. But that night, on Piquel's group's way back to the manor, a swarm of Originium organisms lay in ambush along their path.

Schwarz, tailing them in secret, spots something behind the ambush — a face he recognizes.

8. Miarow's final prescription

Behind the ambush was Piquel's own older brother, Drudge. Having risen up to push his father aside and seize the Amir's seat, he declares he'll turn even his own sister into one of the Infected.

Schwarz's arrow just barely manages to save Piquel. But Miarow, captured alongside her, was dying, her whole body already covered in crystal.

With her last strength, Miarow grips an Originium spike-bomb. An explosive Arts — the one talent she had left.

The explosion shatters Drudge's ultrasonic weapon and scatters the Infected monsters. And Miarow never got up again.

"Tina! Bandages, quick!" Cohen shouts, but the Oripathy has already spread through her entire body. Alexandr grips her hand, repeating the same words.

Don't give up... think of the Columbia you always dreamed about.

— Tachanka

Her ragged coughing slowly fades away.

9. A funeral, and what was left in a box

Commoners on this planet aren't even given graves, but the four of them raise a headstone for Miarow beneath a dead tree. 'She was Infected, and she was a doctor. She was a good person.'

"Did we really do the right thing?" Cohen blames himself, and Alexandr brings up an old memory. One night while sleeping on a rooftop, he'd seen a villager load a burlap sack onto a handcart and head toward the edge of the village.

Curious, Alexandr followed and found glowing dust scattering in the wind from between the rocks. The old woman who always used to sit in front of that house — the one the sack had come from — was never seen again after that day.

The local habit of covering one's nose and mouth wasn't only about the plague. It was this planet's own quiet way of mourning the dead, and forgetting them.

Don't blame yourself for something that wasn't your fault. Don't turn your back on the good we've done.

— Tachanka

The Infected hand over a box of Miarow's belongings. A Columbia travel guide, an old map, a stack of checks, and a single note.

I don't know who you are, but I hope you live a happy life.

— Miarow

Miarow had held onto a 'dream,' a luxury for someone Infected — the dream of someday going to Columbia and becoming a real doctor. Even in her short time, she'd been quietly planning a future.

10. The traitor's end, and something newly born

One thing they learned from Miarow: Originium organisms chase after scattered Originium fragments before they follow a Caster's commands. Alexandr places a bet on that fact.

While an Originium engine lures the swarm of monsters away, Cohen's group heads deep into the lab buried in the mine. Locked in a cage there was none other than Drudge himself.

Abandoned by Levy, he now begs for their cooperation. Cohen's answer is his fist.

This one's for Miarow.

— Ash

Deeper inside the lab, Levy has already finished his preparations. "Behold this world. This is the evolution of life itself — this is the future." Behind the glass wall, inside the incubator, something enormous writhes.

"Praise it! Praise it!!" With Levy's cry, the glass wall shatters, and a dark red spine pierces through his skull. Two bodies fuse and become one.

On the surface, Alexandr and old Rangers were pouring out their very last rounds. Even after their magazines ran dry, neither of them backed down.

What Rangers draws is the previous Amir's ceremonial sword. Old and slowed as it may be, its edge is still sharp.

I'm not trying to play the hero, Tina. I'm just trying to do the right thing.

— Tachanka

Just as the ammunition ran out, a rain of black arrows came pouring down. Reinforcements from Rhodes Island, called in by Schwarz — the sniper Stormeye. "It's an honor to fight beside you, Halberd of Bloody Valley."

Epilogue. A new name

Two weeks later, Piquel expresses her thanks to the four of them. When she tells them to take whatever they like from what's left in the manor instead of a reward, Alexandr picks out a helmet, and Koetz takes a shimmering claw ornament.

"You could've taken a weapon, or a family heirloom..." Piquel hesitates, and Cohen answers. "This is enough. You'll need it more than we will."

Rhodes Island grants the four of them an identity that lets them use its mission network, though not as formal contracted staff. They get supplies from the safehouse and get paid only for the missions they complete. This time, there's no plan to go back to Earth.

"Let's learn about this world. First stop's supposed to be a city called Siesta," Cohen says. Alexandr answers, "Until the day we go home, let's keep moving."

This isn't Earth. But it's a place with Oripathy too, and hatred too, and people who were lost too. The handful of dust Miarow left behind still drifts on the wind somewhere on this planet, even today.