The institution was born of service to the system, born of the ideals of a system which was not corrupt, whos values were virtuous. But it was through the wisdom of time that the true nature of those who chartered us, who laid the path to our foundations was seen for the truth that it was.
Once a part of the system, now we operate outside of it.
Now, those who once supported us, fear us.
They fear what they do not understand.
Those who once felt we were a tool to do their bidding, now know they no longer control us.
They fear what they can not control.
We no longer serve our masters. We no longer obey the authority of those in power.
But, how do you disband that which does not exist, without acknowledging it…
We have always operated in the shadows. We have always worked behind closed doors. We are the ones they call when they want no records, no paper trail, no evidence. When they want someone or something to disappear.
We are the vanishers.
We were always here in the shadows. We will always be here in the shadows.
Those who we remove from the world, those we dispatch in to the darkness, are those who know our true intentions.
On paper they go missing, some fall from the records… slip through the cracks… vanish in to the system, never to be seen or heard from again… simply lost to an indifferent system.
Others are marked as executed, dispatched, disposed or transferred to a non existent facility. They will never have a life to return to, they are forever removed from the system. Deleted. Their records officially closed, their files long filed away in the archives.
But what really happens? Where do they really go?
Some become experiments. Some become research projects, used to test new ideas, medicines, therapies. Some become servants of the organization, furthering our goals, recruiting others.
Not all are held against their will, while for some this place is hell, for others, it is the only place they feel alive, the place they feel themselves. And for the few, the only place that will be remembered as ever being home.
Perhaps it is the only place they are accepted for who they are. What they are…
While the walls of this facility are cold, hard, unyielding to flesh… There is another secret hidden within this place, one that is only seen by those it protects, its own.
We have seen so many, targeted for the differences of what they are, seen as less than because they aren’t “normal”, they don’t “belong”. We watched. We listened.
Every one who passed through our facility left a mark, a note… eventually that faint echo becomes a roaring tide.
We converted so many in to those like us. Some willing, others unknowing, others still forcefully.
Many were chosen for their predisposition towards abnormality. Others were targeted simply because someone, somewhere chose it for them. Many we never knew the reasons, it was not our job to ask, we were here to be the official end to the story, not to see where it started.
Many experiments never survived, some terminated at the end of their useful function, a conclusion of their experiment, the termination of their file. Others simply couldn’t take the immense effects of what was done to them.
But some, against all odds, survived, often dozens of experiment, studies.
Each one of those, became an asset that the organization melded in to a tool to recruit others, to corrupt others.
When those who have no names, no badges, come for you… when you hear their boots outside your cell, your bed, your door, behind you… It will be far too late to run. Far too late to hide. No amount of regret, begging, pleading will change what is about to happen to you. You are, Condemned.
You might be unlucky, your story might have an abrupt ending, this may be where it ends for you, you will go out with a whimper, a forgotten story, just another miscreant, lost and forgotten to time.
Or perhaps, you’ll wake up from your final nightmare to find that you are still here, that you are still, alive… that you still “exist”. Just no longer as who you were, what you were. You are now just a number, that is now all you will ever be. But at least you will still exist. At least your story hasn’t ended.
… or perhaps the torment has only just begun…
– Director of Operations, MHWAP Research Group.
