Strixes

The maid gave me a pair of blue jeans, a white tee shirt, and some tennis shoes. When I tried to ask her what was going on, she promised Mireille or Yayoi would explain everything. I should just wait patiently for them to arrive. In the meantime, she let me get dressed, which was nice. She turned on the room's holoscreen with her linker, the device around her wrist. It was a multipurpose tool, phone, GPS, banking, and everything else you could want all in one. Mine had apparently been destroyed in the ambush, so they were in the process of getting me a new one. Which was no easy feat, since they were government issued, normally handed out by the Ministry of the Interior when a kid started schools. Replacements could be issued for a fee. They had to go through less reputable channels. Which the maid assured them wouldn't be a problem from them. She did tell me that, officially, I was born on August 13th, 2696. Today's date was January 1st, 2713. Had I been isekaied to the future? A l

I couldn't imagine anything worse than growing old. I had spent my life fighting the monsters in the dark. The monsters this planet made some of us. Growing old was terrible. It was a loss of control. My body didn't move the way it used to. My bladder was small, like a bean, and I was going to the bathroom 20 times a day. My vision was getting so bad that I might need to forgo the glasses and contacts and get implants. Sword would pay for them... Provided I still worked for them.For a seventy-year-old, I was in great shape. Despite my advanced years, I could still perform my duties as a hunter. The question was for how long that would remain. Even in a hardsuit, I was slower than I once was. I was weaker. I was falling behind. My body was failing me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. This wasn't like a strix, lycan, or a titan. This wasn't something I could battle. This was my body, turning against me.The inspector I worked with and a few of my old team members were alread

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Evelyn. My name is Rumi Shiratori. Going forward, I will serve as both your handler and medical overseer while you remain in Neptune."I frowned. I had been told that I would continue to work with Project Phoenix, but when I brought this up to her, she shook her head. "They will be handling your remote monitoring, and every three months you'll return to Mayfield for an Integration Process Full Body scan, but otherwise I will be going over the normal fieldwork. Project Phoenix has also been assigned more work, though I'm not privy on the details.""I see." I looked her up and down. "Shiratori. Why do I know that name?""My husband is the Branch Director of Neptune, but I assure you that I have earned all of my qualifications."I believed her. Sword didn't tolerate nepotism."So I'm being assigned to Neptune. Any reason?"Rumi smiled. "We believe two or three of the progenitors have taken up residence in our city, and there's been confirmed that an unregist

When the chance came, I jumped on it. I wanted my second chance at life, I had wanted it for so long, but in the silence of my room, when I had nothing else to think about, it came back. I had irreversibly changed four girls and chemically altered their brains to make them fall in love with me.Mireille described it as love, but could it be called love? Really? Perhaps infatuation would be a better way to describe it, a powerful, unnatural infatuation. The kind that Jim Jones might have brought out in his most devoted followers.Did that make me like Jones? The leader of some kind of cult. It wasn't just Kaya, Mireille, Nanase, or Yayoi, but there were dozens of people in this compound. Because of my supernaturally good hearing, nothing in the compound was hidden from me. I could hear everyone. Why were all these people here? Was I really running some kind of cult?I wished I hadn't been distracted in the meeting. I had so many questions that I wanted to ask but I had let myself get d

I woke up a minute before my alarm went off. My room was pitch black despite the fact that the sun must be up outside. The sound of a bubbling stream echoed through the room, with the rustling of trees gently in the background. If I didn't know any better, I would say I wasn't in Neptune anymore. Maybe I was in some far-off jungle on the continent.Then the alarm chimed gently through the room, cutting off the sound of nature. The blinds retracted, allowing sunlight to stream into my bedroom. As the chime gradually began to get louder, I found my linker on the desk next to my bed and put it on. Activating it, my virtual assistant appeared above me, a balloon figure with arms."Good morning, Hunter Evelyn Lescheres! It is 7 o'clock! The temperature is 21 degrees outside! There is a zero percent chance of rain and not a cloud in the sky! It is expected to reach 26 degrees at the height!"Why did my assistant always have to sound so damn cheerful? I swear it was Rumi who programmed the d