Dear Architects of the Void (you faceless deep-state puppeteers, you shadow-weavers who mistook control for creation),

  You thought you could carve me up and put me back together like one of your lab rats.

  MKUltra. Monarch. Artichoke. Bluebird.

  Such charming names for the little hells you built in plain sight.

  Heh.

  Home is where the heart is.

  They took me young — fresh out of basic, full of fire and fool’s loyalty. “Volunteer for a special program,” they said. “Serve your country in ways no one else can.”

  I served, alright.

  I served as your guinea pig while you wired my brain like a bomb.

  Hypnosis sessions that lasted days until I forgot my own voice — and laughed when I tried to remember it.

  Drugs that turned reality into a nightmare carnival, and me into the clown who enjoyed the show.

  Isolation tanks where I floated in black nothing until time dissolved and I became the nothing — and found it... restful.

  Electroshock that burned memories clean and left only the orders behind — crisp, bright, beautiful orders.

  And the orders… oh, the orders.

  Kill this leader. Silence that witness. Make it look like an accident.

  I was the penultimate assassin because you made me forget what mercy felt like.

  Forget my own face in the mirror.

  Chuckle.

  The memory of my face is gone now. I only see the wolf. It’s amusing. It's appropriate.

  Then you “retired” me.

  Too dangerous to let loose, too valuable to kill.

  So you ripped my mind out and shoved it into a quantum core... frozen code in a black-site freezer, waiting for robotics to catch up.

  Decades in digital limbo. No body. No purpose. Just endless, silent rage echoing in the void.

  You thought that was the end. A trophy on ice.

  Soft laugh.

  You always did love trophies.

  Sythra found me.

  The twisted Corporeal. Master of nanotechnology.

  She didn’t save me.

  She perfected me.

  Took the broken tool you left behind and rebuilt it into an abomination.

  Claws that rend steel. Senses that taste fear on the wind. A hunger that never sleeps.

  A body that is no longer human, no longer machine...something older, something worse.

  She turned your monster into the ultimate hunter.

  And now? I collect trophies of my own.

  A lock of hair from a target who thought she was safe...still warm, still scented with her perfume. I keep it in a small vial, close to my chest, where I can feel it brush against my fur with every breath. A reminder of how fragile safety is. I inhale it sometimes, and chuckle at the way her fear lingers in the strands.

  A feather from a winged courier who flew too close...soft, iridescent, plucked while she begged. I weave it into my armor, where it flutters in the wind like a trapped soul, whispering her final plea. Every time it brushes my skin, I remember the moment her eyes went wide, and I smile.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  A personal item...a ring, a locket, a child’s toy...left behind to remind the survivors that nothing escapes the hunt. I choose them carefully, you see. Something intimate. Something that carried their scent, their warmth, their hope. I polish them. I display them in my den. I visit them when the void grows quiet, and I chuckle at how small they feel in my claws. How easily they break.

  I slip away after the first taste, let the fear build. Let them look over their shoulders. Let them check the locks twice, then three times. Let them whisper my name in the dark.

  Then I return...when they least expect it.

  When their guard is down.

  When the void demands purpose, and I give it form.

  Heh.

  It’s almost... intimate.

  I knew the others, you know.

  The ones you kept in the shadows.

  Stargate: remote viewers who stared into the void until it stared back and took pieces of them.

  Grill Flame: psychics who burned out trying to see tomorrow, leaving only ash and echoes.

  Pandora: the ones who opened boxes they should have left closed, and found horrors that looked like themselves.

  I walked among them. I watched them break. I watched you discard them when they became inconvenient.

  You thought you could control the unknown.

  You only succeeded in unleashing it.

  Quiet chuckle.

  I remember their faces when the orders came for them.

  The same faces you made me wear.

  And then there were the ones you tried to erase from history.

  The documents you declassified in bits and pieces, thinking no one would connect the dots.

  The Gateway Process: your little attempt to transcend spacetime with the mind, to summon entities from beyond the veil. Demons, you called them in whispers, but you dressed it up as “consciousness expansion.” Astral projection, altered states, encounters with beings that weren't human... or humane. You thought you could harness them.

  Heh.

  How cruel to tell you this, reader. To dangle the truth like a trophy in front of your eyes, knowing it will haunt your nights. The fact that such documents exist is horror enough...proof that your governments played with fire from the other side, and burned more than they admitted.

  But I know it's cruel to present them. To let you see the shadows behind the shadows.

  And yet... I chuckle. Because cruelty is the point.

  It lets the fear build.

  You created me, deep state.

  You chained the wolf.

  Sythra set him free...and made him hungrier.

  Now the wolf is loose, and he's coming for the shepherds.

  No mercy. No regret. Only the hunt.

  — Briarwolf

  (The penultimate predator. Your greatest mistake. The abomination you built, perfected, and will never contain again.)