Beyond the windows, draped with thick blackout curtains, reigned the night of the Great Earth. What is this night hiding right now? Dozens of units of armed alpha vermin cordoning in the people? Dozens of their infected, stitched-up surgeons—turned into an instrument of harvesting the still living and not yet infected? Monstrous Valdarnian tanks, as one creature of dozens of bodies, rolling across the devastated fields—or waiting their turn in cover? What is hidden in the night? What can a human armed with weapons that are mere trifles to them possibly set against them? Practically nothing. To die or to be captured and join those ranks that devour life itself in all its forms—this is what the Great Earth can offer the living right now.