“I know what’s in that silo. They’re studying the Arbmunep. From what the cult leader told me, there are more of those things buried all over the world.” Earl had wanted us to gather intel, so it was worth a shot. “And that’s not the weirdest thing we’ve seen lately. MHI has had a few really odd cases over the last few years…Mr. Lindemann used the word extraordinary. I’d say that fits. What about you guys? Anything extraordinary in your neck of the woods?”

One of the other Europeans, a stout older man, leaned forward and said something to his translator. The translator hurried and spoke. “Like this thing that came from underground, there are things beneath Serbia. Tunnels from the middle of the world. The…diggers?” The older man repeated himself. “The diggers of the holes are coming into the light. These are new things, but legend says they have been here before.”

“Us too,” said a bulky man with spiky black hair. “I am from Orzel Biaiy Wojskowy Zawierajacy Kontrakt…White Eagle Military Contracting of Poland. Over last two years, we have seen many things come from below. Monsters came out of ground, revealed entrance to tunnels beneath Lodz. Things were…how you say…hibernating. For a very long time, but they woke up and now they are gone.”

Several others began to speak at once, talking about strange new monsters awaking and dragging themselves out of the earth. My Portuguese sucked, mostly because I’d learned it magically from a five-hundred-year-old dialect, but I could’ve swore one of the Brazilians said something about whole towns going missing. His translator was still trying to catch up when one of the Indians began telling us about how their government had forbidden his company from investigating a village that had been mysteriously depopulated on the border with Pakistan. Both countries were blaming the other, but the initial army scouts had reported finding freshly dug tunnels that led to what appeared to be the ruins of a city deep beneath the surface.

That had only been two months ago.

“It seems that many things long buried wish to be found again,” said the woman from South Korea. Her melodic voice cut right through the chatter, catching all of our attention. Her English was measured and carefully pronounced. “We were cautioned by our ambassador not to speak of it, but I believe we may have a related issue. In our region there was a disturbance on the ocean floor.” I hadn’t noticed that we’d been joined by one of the translators from the People’s Liberation Army. He snapped something at the woman from Korea, and though I couldn’t understand a word of her response, I’m pretty sure her sharp response basically told him to go screw himself. The government interpreter ran off, probably to tell on her.