An exclusive update from our lead investigator Mr. Erpel, currently reporting from North Africa. (Edited for clarity by the publishing board).

LOCATION WITHHELD – To my loyal readers: I promised you I would return once I was my old self again. I also promised myself I would treat whatever affliction I contracted in that damp English prison with the same rigorous investigation I apply to my exposés. I thought if I traveled far enough south, into the blistering heat of the African continent, the fierce sun would sweat out this cave-dwelling parasite.

I was wrong. The sun here is not a cure. It has become my greatest enemy.

I am writing this column from a stifling hotel room in a city where the temperature hits 40 degrees by noon. I have not seen the sky in a week. I had to tape thick cardboard and aluminum foil over the windows. If even a single sliver of daylight hits my hand, the skin blisters and burns within seconds.

The medical professionals here are as baffled as I am. The first private clinic I visited told me I had a severe case of late-stage rabies from the bat bites. The second doctor suspected a mutated strain of Porphyria, a rare blood disorder. The third doctor simply packed his bag and ran out of the room when he put a stethoscope to my chest and realized my heart is only beating twenty times a minute.

But it is not a virus. Viruses do not heighten your senses like this. I can hear the stray dogs breathing in the alleyway three floors down. I can see the dust mites floating in the absolute pitch-black darkness of my room. And the hunger... the hunger is defying all medical logic.

Normal food tastes like ash and rot. I forced down a piece of bread yesterday, and my body violently rejected it. I was shaking, sweating, dying of a starvation I could not understand. Last night, driven by a desperate, instinctual need for iron, I went to a local butcher's market at 2:00 AM. I paid a man an obscene amount of cash for a cup of fresh goat's blood, telling him it was a traditional remedy for severe anemia.

I drank it in the shadows behind his stall. Raw.

The moment it hit my throat, the shaking stopped. The agonizing pain in my muscles vanished. I felt stronger than I have in my entire life. I sat in the dirt, wiping the metallic taste of copper from my lips, profoundly terrified of my own body.

I remain completely lost, but as any good journalist knows, you follow the leads. Some of the locals here whisper about an old, secluded healer tribe deep in the sub-Saharan basin. They practice rituals involving blood-borne diseases and physical metamorphosis. I do not believe in magic, but I believe in the evidence of my own changing physiology. I am heading further south tonight.

I will report back when I find answers.