The first thing Edge learned about Corrupted Australia was that the wildlife had opinions.
Loud opinions.
Violent opinions.
Opinions that were currently being expressed by a kangaroo the size of a small building, wearing boxing gloves that glowed with corruption energy, standing in the middle of what appeared to be an actual boxing ring that had materialized out of thin air.
"What," Edge said flatly, "am I looking at."
"A CORRUPTED KANGAROO," The Abyss supplied helpfully. "LEVEL 2, POSSIBLY APPROACHING LEVEL 3. IT APPEARS TO HAVE MANIFESTED A COMBAT ARENA AS PART OF ITS CORRUPTION."
"Why boxing gloves?"
"KANGAROOS NATURALLY BOX. THIS IS DOCUMENTED BEHAVIOR. THE CORRUPTION HAS SIMPLY... ENHANCED THE CONCEPT."
The kangaroo—which was easily twelve feet tall, its fur matted with something that might have been blood or might have been corruption residue, its eyes burning with an insane red light—spotted Edge and let out a roar that sounded distinctly like a boxing announcer having a very bad day.
"CHALLENGER DETECTED! ENTERING THE RING IS MANDATORY! REFUSAL RESULTS IN DISQUALIFICATION! DISQUALIFICATION RESULTS IN DEATH!"
The corruption energy around the ring flared, and Edge felt an invisible force yanking him forward. His feet left the ground—
And he landed in the ring.
On the opposite side from the kangaroo.
Which was now bouncing on its enormous feet, throwing practice jabs that created visible shockwaves in the air.
"ROUND ONE! FIGHT!"
The kangaroo charged.
Edge dove to the side, barely avoiding a punch that cratered the ring floor where he'd been standing. The corruption-enhanced boxing gloves weren't just for show—they hit with the force of a small explosion, leaving behind afterimages of red energy.
"Little help here!" Edge shouted.
Lucy was already at the edge of the ring, her pistol transformed into a rifle. She fired—and the shots bounced off an invisible barrier, dissipating harmlessly.
"I can't get through! The ring has some kind of shield!"
"THE RING IS SACRED!" the kangaroo announced, throwing another punch that Edge barely ducked. "NO OUTSIDE INTERFERENCE! THIS IS A FAIR FIGHT! MANO A MARSUPIAL!"
Brick slammed his fists against the barrier, heat waves rippling off his body. "The shield is too strong! We can't break through from outside!"
"Then I guess I'm doing this alone!"
Edge reached into The Abyss, searching for something—anything—that could help. His hand closed around leather. Familiar weight.
He pulled out the guitar.
"ILLEGAL WEAPON!" the kangaroo screamed, its voice reaching octaves that shouldn't have been possible. "THAT'S NOT BOXING! THAT'S NOT WITHIN THE RULES! I'LL ALLOW IT BECAUSE RULES ARE FOR THE WEAK!"
The corruption logic made no sense. Edge decided not to question it.
He struck a chord.
The Beat exploded outward, slamming into the kangaroo mid-charge. The corrupted creature staggered, its rhythm disrupted, its movements suddenly jerky and uncoordinated.
But it didn't stop.
"NICE TRY, MATE!" The kangaroo recovered faster than Edge expected, its boxing gloves glowing brighter. "BUT I'VE BEEN TRAINING FOR THIS MY WHOLE CORRUPTED EXISTENCE! WHICH IS ABOUT THREE DAYS! BUT STILL!"
It launched a combination—left jab, right hook, left uppercut—each blow faster than the last. Edge played frantically, using the Beat to dodge, to predict, to find the gaps in the kangaroo's offense.
But he was losing ground. The corrupted creature was too fast, too strong, too insane. Each near-miss sent shockwaves through the ring that threw off Edge's footing.
"YOU'RE TRYING TO OUTFIGHT IT," The Abyss observed. "THAT WON'T WORK. IT'S A BOXING KANGAROO. BOXING IS LITERALLY ITS ENTIRE EXISTENCE."
"Then what do I do?!"
"CHANGE THE GAME. YOU HAVE THE BEAT. USE IT."
Change the game. Right.
Edge stopped trying to play defensively. Instead, he focused on the ring itself—on the corruption that had manifested it, on the rules that governed this insane arena.
The kangaroo wanted a boxing match? Fine.
But boxing had more than just punches.
Edge slammed out a new rhythm—aggressive, driving, the kind of beat that made you want to move your feet. The Beat spread through the ring floor, and suddenly the canvas was alive with energy.
"What—WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"
"Changing the rules!"
The ring began to move. The floor shifted, tilted, became uneven. The ropes started swinging on their own. The corners expanded and contracted randomly.
The kangaroo stumbled, its perfect boxing footwork suddenly useless on terrain that refused to stay still.
"THIS—THIS ISN'T BOXING! THIS IS CHEATING!"
"You said rules are for the weak!"
Edge charged. Not with fists—he didn't know how to box and wasn't about to pretend. Instead, he swung the guitar like a bat, the Beat concentrated into the instrument, turning it into a weapon that hit with the force of a concentrated sonic boom.
The guitar connected with the kangaroo's jaw.
The corrupted creature's head snapped back, its body lifting off the ground, sailing through the air—
And crashing through the barrier of the ring.
Which, apparently, only blocked things going in. Not things going out.
The kangaroo hit the ground outside the ring and didn't get up. Its body twitched once, twice—and then dissolved, the corruption energy dissipating harmlessly into the air.
The ring flickered. Faded. Disappeared.
Edge stood alone in an empty stretch of corrupted wasteland, breathing hard, the guitar still clutched in his hands.
"Did you just..." Lucy stared at him. "Did you just beat a boxing kangaroo in a boxing match by making the ring floor dance?"
"I didn't beat it in a boxing match. I cheated. Extensively."
"Same difference! It's dead! You won!" Lucy tackled him in a hug that, predictably, shoved his face directly into her chest. "I WAS SO WORRIED! THAT THING WAS HUGE! AND IT HAD BOXING GLOVES! BOXING GLOVES, EDGE!"
"Mmrrph."
"Oh! Sorry!" She released him. "I got excited. Hugging happens when I'm excited."
Brick was examining the spot where the ring had been, his expression thoughtful. "The corruption here is... different. More structured. In the American Outskirts, corruptions are chaotic. Random. Here, they seem to have... themes."
"AUSTRALIA HAS BEEN A HIGH-CORRUPTION ZONE FOR OVER A DECADE," The Abyss explained. "THE CORRUPTIONS HERE HAVE HAD TIME TO DEVELOP. TO EVOLVE. THEY'RE MORE DANGEROUS BECAUSE THEY'RE MORE ORGANIZED."
"Great. Organized Australian nightmare creatures." Edge slid the guitar back into The Abyss. "What's next? A drop bear with a wrestling championship?"
Brick pointed at something in the distance. "Actually, it appears to be a nest. Of some kind. Do you see those webs?"
Edge looked.
He wished he hadn't.
The structure in the distance was massive—a dome of webbing that stretched easily a hundred meters in diameter, shimmering with corruption energy. Inside, he could see shapes moving. Many shapes. Many-legged shapes.
"Those are spiders," Lucy said, her voice suddenly very small. "Those are really big spiders."
"Corrupted spiders," Brick confirmed. "Possibly a colony. They appear to be—"
"NOPE."
Lucy was already running.
Not toward the nest. Away from it. At considerable speed.
"Lucy!" Edge called after her. "Lucy, where are you going?!"
"AWAY FROM THE GIANT MURDER SPIDERS! THAT'S WHERE I'M GOING! FAR, FAR AWAY!"
She disappeared over a ridge, her pink hair the last thing visible before she was gone.
Edge and Brick stood in silence for a moment.
"She has a fear of spiders," Brick observed.
"I gathered."
"It's quite severe. During her Full Bond evaluation, they tested her against simulated threats. She destroyed all of them efficiently except the spider simulation. That one she simply... ran from. For three hours. Until they turned it off."
"And nobody thought to mention this before we got sent to Australia? The spider capital of the world?"
Brick shrugged his massive shoulders. "The Outskirts did not consult us before sending us here. Perhaps they assumed we would adapt."
"Or perhaps the Outskirts have a sick sense of humor."
"THAT THEORY HAS SIGNIFICANT SUPPORT," The Abyss agreed.
Edge sighed. "Okay. You go after Lucy. Make sure she doesn't run into something worse while fleeing the spiders. I'll... investigate the nest."
"Investigate? Alone?"
"We need to know what we're dealing with. If that's a corrupted spider colony, we need to understand its capabilities before we engage." Edge reached into The Abyss, pulling out a pair of binoculars that definitely hadn't existed until he needed them. "I'll observe from a distance. Strictly reconnaissance."
Brick looked unconvinced but nodded. "Very well. But if you are not back in one hour, I will come looking. And I will bring fire."
"Bring lots of fire."
"Always."
Brick jogged off in the direction Lucy had fled, his muscles already starting to glow with thermal energy. Edge watched him go, then turned toward the spider nest.
Reconnaissance. Just reconnaissance.
He started walking.
The nest was worse up close.
Edge had found a vantage point about fifty meters from the main structure—a collapsed building that provided decent cover while giving him a clear view of the webbing dome. Through the binoculars, he could see the spiders clearly.
They ranged in size from "large dog" to "small car." Their bodies were covered in corruption marks—glowing lines of red energy that pulsed with their movements. Their legs ended in points sharp enough to pierce steel.
And there were hundreds of them.
"THIS IS A MATURE COLONY," The Abyss observed. "ESTABLISHED. ORGANIZED. THEY APPEAR TO HAVE A HIERARCHY."
Edge could see it. Smaller spiders scurried around the edges, apparently on patrol duty. Larger ones clustered near the center, guarding something. And in the very heart of the nest, barely visible through the layers of webbing—
"Is that a queen?"
"LIKELY. CORRUPTED COLONIES OFTEN DEVELOP LEADERSHIP STRUCTURES. THE QUEEN WOULD BE THE SOURCE OF THE CORRUPTION SPREAD. DESTROY IT, AND THE COLONY FALLS."
"And getting to it would require fighting through hundreds of giant spiders."
"CORRECT."
"Pass. Hard pass. We need backup for this."
Edge was about to retreat when he noticed something else. Near the base of the nest, partially obscured by webbing, there were shapes that didn't look like spiders.
He adjusted the binoculars.
People.
There were people wrapped in webbing near the base of the nest. Some were moving—struggling weakly against their bindings. Others were still.
"Oh no."
"SURVIVORS. THE SPIDERS ARE KEEPING THEM ALIVE. POSSIBLY FOR FOOD. POSSIBLY FOR SOMETHING WORSE."
Edge felt his stomach turn. Those could be civilians. Cleaners. Anyone who had been unlucky enough to wander into the colony's territory.
He couldn't just leave them.
But he also couldn't take on an entire colony alone.
"Abyss. Can you create a distraction? Something to draw the spiders away from the prisoners?"
"POSSIBLY. BUT IT WOULD BE TEMPORARY. YOU WOULD HAVE MINUTES AT MOST."
"Minutes might be enough."
Edge started circling toward the base of the nest, staying low, moving carefully. The spiders were focused on their patrol routes, their attention directed outward. If he could get to the prisoners without being seen, free them quickly, and escape before the colony realized what was happening—
A scream split the air.
Not from the nest. From somewhere else. Somewhere deeper in the corrupted zone.
It was a human scream. Male. Full of pain and terror.
Edge froze. The spider colony had frozen too, thousands of legs going still, hundreds of eyes turning toward the sound.
Then, as one, the patrol spiders began moving toward the scream.
Not attacking. Not hunting.
Investigating. Like they recognized the sound. Like they were checking on something.
"THAT'S... INTERESTING," The Abyss said slowly. "AND CONCERNING."
Edge didn't respond. He was already moving, taking advantage of the spiders' distraction to rush toward the prisoners.
The webbing was tough but not invincible. The Abyss extended tendrils that sliced through the sticky strands, freeing the first victim—a man in Cleaner gear, Australian insignia on his shoulder, barely conscious.
"Hey. Hey! Can you hear me?"
The man's eyes flickered open. They were filled with fear.
"You... you need to run..." His voice was a rasp. "He's... he's feeding them... using us to..."
"Who's feeding them? What's going on?"
"The human one. The corrupted that... that talks. He has the others. He's... he's draining them. Says his master needs energy. Says we're... we're just batteries..."
Edge felt cold. A human corrupted. One that could talk. One that was working with the spider colony instead of being consumed by it.
That was wrong. Corruptions didn't cooperate. They consumed, destroyed, spread chaos. They didn't form alliances. They didn't have masters.
Unless something had changed.
Edge cut free two more prisoners—both Cleaners, both barely alive, both mumbling about "the human one" and "the master." He couldn't carry all of them. They could barely stand.
"Can you walk? We need to move. Now."
"The nest... the queen..." one of them gasped. "She's connected to him. To the human one. They're... they're building something. A network. Spreading the corruption faster than..."
Another scream. Closer this time.
And then the spiders returned.
Edge ran.
It wasn't heroic. It wasn't tactical. It was pure survival instinct, carrying one Cleaner over his shoulder while the other two stumbled behind him, the spider colony in pursuit.
The Abyss extended behind him, forming barriers, tripping up the lead spiders, buying seconds that felt like eternities. The guitar was in his hands again, the Beat pulsing out in waves that disrupted the spiders' coordination, made them stumble into each other, slowed their advance.
But there were too many.
"EDGE!"
Lucy appeared on a ridge ahead, her weapon already transformed into something massive—a cannon that pulsed with barely contained energy.
"CLOSE YOUR EYES!"
Edge closed his eyes.
Even through his eyelids, the flash was blinding. The cannon discharged with a sound like reality itself cracking, and when Edge opened his eyes again, the spiders behind him were gone.
Not dead. Blinded. Scattered. Fleeing from the light that had seared their corruption-enhanced senses.
"Flashbang cannon!" Lucy announced proudly, the weapon already shrinking back into a pistol. "Developed it last month! Very effective against light-sensitive enemies! Which is most things that live underground or in nests!"
"How did you know to come back?"
"Brick found me! Said you probably did something stupid! So we came to save you!" She noticed the rescued Cleaners. "Oh no. What happened to them?"
"Long story. We need to find Brick. Now."
"He went ahead! Said he heard screaming! Wanted to investigate!"
Edge felt that cold feeling again. The screaming. The human corrupted.
"Which way?"
Lucy pointed.
Edge started running again.
They found Brick standing at the edge of a crater.
The big man was completely still, which was wrong. Brick was never still. Brick was motion, energy, enthusiasm. Seeing him frozen like a statue sent alarm bells ringing through Edge's mind.
"Brick? What's—"
And then Edge saw what was in the crater.
It had been a research station, once. Australian Cleaner insignia were visible on the collapsed walls, on the scattered equipment, on the uniforms of the people who were currently hanging from meat hooks in the center of the ruins.
There were maybe a dozen of them. All Cleaners. All alive.
All being drained.
Corruption energy flowed from their bodies through tubes and wires into a central device—a pulsing mass of technology and organic material that looked like it had been grown rather than built. The energy moved through the device and then out, spreading through cables that disappeared into the ground, into the walls, into the corrupted earth itself.
And standing at the controls, adjusting dials and checking readings with the casual efficiency of a technician doing routine maintenance, was a man.
Or what had been a man.
The corruption had taken hold, that much was clear. His skin was mottled with the distinctive red patterns. His eyes glowed with that familiar insane light. But unlike other corrupted, he hadn't lost his form. Hadn't become a monster.
He was still human-shaped. Still wearing clothes—a lab coat, Edge noticed, with an Australian research division patch. Still moving with purpose and intelligence.
And he was humming.
A cheerful tune. Something that sounded almost like a nursery rhyme.
"Brick," Edge said quietly. "We need to—"
"VISITORS!"
The corrupted man turned, and his face split into a grin that was too wide, too full of teeth, too wrong.
"I wasn't expecting visitors! The network said there were intruders, but I didn't think you'd find my workshop so quickly! You must be very persistent! Or very stupid! Probably both!"
"Let them go." Edge's voice came out steadier than he felt. "Those are Cleaners. Australian defense forces. You're draining them."
"Yes! Yes, I am! It's wonderful, isn't it?" The man gestured at the device, at the prisoners, at the spreading corruption energy. "They're so full of energy, Cleaners. All that training, all that power, all those awakened abilities. And it just flows right out of them! Into the network! Into the master's grand design!"
"The master," Edge repeated. "Who is your master?"
The corrupted man's grin flickered. Just for a moment. Just enough to show something underneath—fear, awe, absolute devotion.
"The master is everything. The master is the future. The master is what corruption was always meant to become, before you Cleaners started interfering." He spread his arms wide. "And soon, the master will have enough energy to wake up. And then... and then everything changes."
"Wake up?" Brick spoke for the first time, his voice barely above a whisper. "What do you mean, wake up?"
"Oh, you don't know?" The corrupted man laughed—a high, hysterical sound that echoed off the crater walls. "You really don't know! That's precious! That's adorable! You come all this way, stick your noses where they don't belong, and you don't even understand what you're dealing with!"
He leaned forward, his glowing eyes fixed on Edge's.
"Australia isn't just a corruption zone, you idiots. It's a nursery. The corruption here isn't spreading randomly—it's being cultivated. Fed. Grown. All to wake up the thing that's been sleeping under this continent for thousands of years."
"What thing?"
The corrupted man's grin returned, wider than ever.
"The first corruption. The original. The one that all others are just... echoes of." He gestured at himself, at the prisoners, at the glowing network spreading beneath their feet. "And when it wakes up... well. Let's just say your little Cleaner organization won't matter much anymore."
Edge felt The Abyss shift on his shoulders. Felt the coat's alarm, its tension.
"HE'S NOT LYING," The Abyss said quietly. "I CAN FEEL IT. SOMETHING IS DOWN THERE. SOMETHING OLD. SOMETHING VAST. AND IT IS... STIRRING."
The corrupted man clapped his hands together.
"Now! As much as I've enjoyed this little chat, I really do need to get back to work. The master is hungry, and you've interrupted feeding time." He gestured, and corruption energy flared around his hands. "So you have two choices. You can leave now, go back to wherever you came from, and pretend you never saw any of this. Or you can stay and become part of the network. It's really quite painless, once you stop screaming."
Edge looked at the prisoners. At the device. At the corrupted man who had somehow maintained his sanity—or at least, a twisted version of it—while serving something ancient and terrible.
He looked at Lucy, her weapon already transforming.
At Brick, whose muscles were starting to glow with barely contained heat.
At The Abyss, coiled and ready on his shoulders.
"Option three," Edge said.
"There is no option three."
"I'm making one."
The guitar was in his hands before he finished speaking. The first chord rang out across the crater, the Beat slamming into the corrupted man with enough force to send him staggering backward.
"YOU—YOU DARE—"
"BRICK! FREE THE PRISONERS! LUCY! COVER HIM!"
Lucy opened fire, her weapon cycling through configurations faster than Edge could track—rifle, shotgun, cannon, something that shot what appeared to be concentrated screaming. The corrupted man threw up barriers of corruption energy, blocking most of the shots, but it kept him distracted.
Brick charged past, his body wreathed in flames, heading for the prisoners. His fists tore through the restraints, the tubes, the wires. Each freed Cleaner fell, and Brick caught them, carried them, moved them to safety with a gentleness that contrasted sharply with the destruction he left in his wake.
Edge played.
Not a song this time. A duel. A battle of rhythms.
The corrupted man had his own Beat—a discordant, horrible thing that scraped against Edge's senses like broken glass. It pushed back against Edge's music, tried to drown it out, tried to replace harmony with chaos.
But Edge was stronger.
He didn't know how. He didn't know why. But when the two rhythms clashed, it was the corrupted man who staggered. Who screamed. Who fell to his knees as the Beat tore through his defenses.
"IMPOSSIBLE! YOU'RE JUST A CLEANER! JUST A HUMAN! YOU CAN'T—"
"I'm not just anything."
Edge struck the final chord.
The corrupted man exploded.
Not into gore—into light. Into music. Into a thousand fragments of corrupted rhythm that dissipated harmlessly into the air.
The device behind him flickered. Sparked. Died.
The network of cables stopped glowing. The energy stopped flowing.
Silence.
They rescued eleven Cleaners from the crater. All alive. All damaged, but alive.
The Australian defense forces arrived three hours later, guided by an emergency beacon that one of the rescued Cleaners managed to activate. They came in force—transports, weapons, medical teams, all of it.
And questions. So many questions.
Edge answered what he could. The spider colony. The human corrupted. The network. The master.
The thing sleeping under Australia.
The Australian Cleaner commander—a weathered woman named Harrison who looked like she'd seen every nightmare the continent had to offer—listened to it all with an expression that grew grimmer with each detail.
"We knew something was wrong," she said finally. "The corruption here has been behaving differently for months. More organized. More purposeful. But we didn't know it was this."
"What do we do?" Edge asked.
Harrison looked at him. Then at Lucy and Brick. Then at the crater where the human corrupted had died.
"You do nothing. You're not Australian division. You're not equipped for this. We'll handle the investigation, figure out what's really going on, and—"
"With respect, Commander." Edge's voice was flat. "We're already involved. The Outskirts sent us here for a reason. And that man said the thing under this continent is going to wake up."
"He was a corrupted. They say a lot of things."
"HE WASN'T LYING," The Abyss said, projecting its voice so Harrison could hear. "I FELT IT. SOMETHING IS DOWN THERE. SOMETHING OLD. AND IT IS HUNGRY."
Harrison's expression didn't change, but Edge saw her hands tighten on her weapon.
"Then we'll deal with it. Australia takes care of its own problems."
"And if you can't? If whatever's down there is bigger than your division can handle?"
Silence.
Harrison stared at him for a long moment.
"Then I suppose we'll be in touch." She turned away. "Get some rest. You look like hell. And if you're going to stay in Australia, you'd better get used to it. Things are only going to get worse from here."
She walked off to coordinate the rescue efforts, leaving Edge and his team standing at the edge of the crater.
Lucy broke the silence first.
"So. We're staying?"
"We're staying," Edge confirmed. "Until we figure out what's really going on here. Until we stop whatever's waking up."
Brick nodded slowly. "This is good. A proper challenge. A worthy enemy. I was beginning to worry that my muscles would atrophy from lack of use."
"You fought a boxing kangaroo three hours ago."
"That was a warm-up! This is the real thing! An ancient evil beneath Australia! Very exciting! Very terrifying! Same difference!"
Edge looked at the red sky. At the corrupted wasteland stretching in every direction. At the ground beneath his feet, under which something old and terrible was stirring.
He thought about Marcus. About the burned-out burger flipper who had wanted so desperately for his life to mean something.
Well. Here was meaning.
Possibly more meaning than he could handle.
But that was fine.
He had his team. His coat. His guitar.
And apparently, a continent to save.
"Alright," Edge said. "Let's get to work."
TO BE CONTINUED...
END OF CHAPTER 4
NEXT: The Australian Cleansing Arc continues as Edge and his team dive deeper into the conspiracy. What is sleeping beneath Australia? Who is the "master" the corrupted spoke of? And why does Edge feel like he's forgetting something important?
Also: more wildlife. Much more wildlife. Australia has so much wildlife.
Send help.