The line went dead, leaving the boardroom in absolute silence. The emergency meeting had been delayed for far too long, and the executive team in charge of this colossal fuck-up could no longer sweep it under the rug.
I like to think I sit at the very top of the food chain—I'm the division head, after all. Yet here I am, forced to stand in front of a room full of rednecks who will never comprehend how much money it's going to cost me to hire them... and, judging by their sheer incompetence, how much more it will cost to make them stop.
I can already see the headlines. My promotion, my coveted transition into the international market, ruined because a few low-level idiots couldn't secure a bunch of walking meat sacks. Our entire swine operation, years of relentless effort, flushed down the drain just to play nice with a bunch of self-righteous eco-terrorists who are now rotting six feet under.
It wasn't hard to guess what would happen if we didn't use lethal force against those eco-idiots. But what truly keeps me up at night—and what we are still investigating—is who the hell is jamming our network and GPS tracking systems.
Those hogs were our golden ticket into the Asian market, offering ultra-high-grade lean pork that made Spanish Ibérico look like trash. We spent over a decade of genetic research and selective breeding on this line, engineering a pig with dense muscle fibers and just the right amount of intramuscular fat to produce a mind-blowing sear on the grill. They were designed to be the Wagyu of pork.
And then, a group of entitled activists decided to "set them free."
As I said, the failure of our next-gen RFID tracking chips is my biggest nightmare. The loss of livestock and the massive hit to our reputation once this leaks are bad enough, but losing this genetic line—the life's work of dozens of scientists and billions of dollars in R&D—was something the plant director refused to admit. His incompetence pushed the crisis straight onto my desk, threatening my career. After all, creating these beasts was my goddamn plan.
We had previously cleared the surrounding civilian population using methods that some bleeding-hearts might question, but let's be honest: nobody belonged there anyway. I made sure to buy up all the adjacent land at a reasonable price to prevent complaints about odor and environmental hazards. We even invested in a state-of-the-art waste treatment facility, because God knows those things excreted a ton.
But the final product... oh, it was magnificent. We had already tested the cuts: the meat was exquisite. Maybe not for traditional local recipes, but sliced thin for hotpots or thick-cut for crispy pork belly, it was perfection. Even with its astronomical production cost, it blew cheap US imports out of the water. Once we secured the official certification, we were going to own the market.
Just remembering it makes my blood boil. That's precisely why the plant director never made it back home. If his wife ever wants to speak to him again, she better buy a Ouija board.
Regardless, the crisis was already here. I was forced to seek external help, and the only muscle available was the group of useless mercenaries standing in front of me. I don't even need to hear them speak to know they butcher the language, using trashy slang they wear like a badge of honor. But at least they came armed.
Not that I care. We are way past the point of recovering the livestock alive; I just need these bottom-feeders to ensure that meat never reaches rival distributors. If they end up eating it themselves or selling it off to some ghetto butcher shop, fine. I just can't afford to let that proprietary genetics fall into the hands of real competitors before we launch our next production cycle—even if it takes us another three years to rebuild.
I watch with disdain as a few of these backwoods hunters attempt to take notes while others nod along, pretending to understand while secretly doing the math in their heads. Of course they're counting: we're offering $500 per carcass. I don't even care if they bring the bodies back; I just want the meat off the map.
Meanwhile, our chief scientist explains the biological hazards of the species: its ravenous appetite, incredible stamina, and complete immunity to gastrointestinal infections. They don't have hyper-developed senses—they aren't "super pigs." I didn't care about giving them eagle vision or pin-drop hearing; they were factory-farmed hogs bred for consumption.
Judging by the blank stares, these hillbillies aren't absorbing a single word.
I'd gladly throw this scientist out the window if he hadn't been instrumental in their genetic design. He keeps insisting we capture them alive, but this isn't a movie. We don't have time for live field studies or bleeding-heart nonsense. We need PR damage control and immediate containment.
We are talking about five thousand initial head of swine. The scientist claims most of them are still alive. What I want to know is why the hell their meat hasn't popped up in local black markets yet. Why the silence? In the past, any wild animal roaming those woods would have been trapped, slaughtered, and sold within hours. I came from poverty; I know that when people are desperate, they eat whatever moves. Yet, nothing.
I've been monitoring local social media channels. Total radio silence, save for a few brief news reports about abandoned rural towns. Of course they're abandoned—I cleared them out myself.
The briefing didn't even last two hours. It was painfully obvious the scientific jargon was going way over their heads. I was bored out of my mind too, but at least I caught the key takeaways: extreme physical resilience, brute strength, and a high risk of hyper-aggression. Because we bred them for high muscle density, these hogs are unnaturally vigorous. They have an average litter size of ten piglets, provided they stay fed. Which means I have no idea what these idiots are about to face out there.
Despite my reluctance, I'm going to have to supply them with real firepower. Most of them showed up carrying .22 caliber pistols, as if they were going on a squirrel hunt. I consulted with the remaining scientist—I haven't even bothered learning his name, he's not worth it—and he urged me to supply heavy-duty weaponry. I sourced high-caliber rifles off the black market, cleared under customs paperwork as "security equipment for agricultural asset protection."
These fools have no idea how massive our enterprise is. This high-tech facility, which swallowed the GDP of a small nation, was just one pawn in my bid for a regional executive seat. A bet I just lost.
I'm not going to cry over spilled milk. I ordered my staff to hand out the weapons crates and strap body cams with built-in GPS to their chests. If I can't track my pigs via RFID, I'll track them through these idiots' lenses.
They leave the facility cheering. From my window, I can see a few of them slumping as they walk—I can't tell if it's some primal ape-like posture or if they just couldn't resist drinking on the job. I hate using scum like this, but they're the only ones who take these jobs without asking questions. Their first words are never "Why are we doing this?", but "When do I get paid?"
Of course I'll pay them. They're going to clean up my mess because, at the end of the day, the buck stops with me.
I went home, ate the meal my private chef prepared with meticulous care, spent the night with one of my mistresses, and made a quick video call to the mother of my only child. We didn't last long, but not due to a lack of chemistry: she was deeply compatible with my bank account, though less so with my need for basic discretion.
The next morning, my first alarm went off at 3:00 AM. I got up to run and lift weights—right when the brain is most active. The "witching hour," when the line between reality and the supernatural supposedly blurs. It's all superstition, but elite trainers recommend working out before 5:00 AM anyway.
I was about to call my assistant for breakfast when the video notifications started flooding in. I was surprised they found the herd so quickly, especially after our search teams in trucks came up empty. Drones are useless out there without a proper network signal, but the body cams were transmitting through the cell towers we recently installed.
I checked the GPS coordinates: they were still near the facility perimeter. On one hand, good—they made contact. On the other hand, bad—they shouldn't be transmitting from there already. It was a waste of time.
I opened the live feeds. The first streams showed small ghost towns, no more than ten streets wide. The kind of places that used to have a single bar, a church, and a general store.
But something was wrong. I had evacuated those towns months ago.
The footage showed overwhelming debris and bloody scatter. People had been living there after the eviction. Despite buying out the locals, forcing out the squatters, and bribing the mayor to retire somewhere nice... people had moved back in.
I kept watching the feeds as my chauffeur sped toward the command center. It was like watching a horrific train wreck: you knew something terrible was coming, but you couldn't look away.
And there it was. Scattered among the ruins, the cameras picked up mangled human remains.
The hunters, who had clearly snorted something stronger than alcohol judging by their manic euphoria, were laughing and placing bets on who would find an intact corpse first. They complained about the stench, calling it a "pigsty." I couldn't blame them: any place where untended swine gather smells like hell.
I fired off a text demanding to know what the hell was going on. One of them finally snapped out of his trance and sent a voice note: they had found shredded clothes and the bones of homeless people and elderly squatters. Nobody was supposed to be there. I made sure of it.
Panic set in. This was a public relations nightmare waiting to explode. I even started contemplating calling in a strike to eliminate the mercenaries once they finished the job.
And then, the gunshots started. Heavy, frantic, desperate gunfire. It didn't sound like a hunt; it sounded like a frantic struggle for survival.
The screams echoed through my office all day. I had to cancel all my meetings. On my monitors, the body cam feeds were going dark one by one. There were fifty men out there—scum with zero morals, sure, but hardened guys who knew how to handle a gun. And they were getting slaughtered. I couldn't even tell how the first dozen died.
By mid-morning, I finally saw the attacker... or rather, the mass.
There were too many of them. One mercenary's camera captured the entire sequence: the guy dumped a full magazine from his sidearm with a manic grin. It didn't stop the boar. It just drew the rest of the herd. It was sickeningly unnatural: the gunshots didn't scare them; if anything, the noise drove them into a frenzy.
As flesh and blood splattered across the lens, I dialed the chief biologist. He needed to explain this now.
Ten more camera feeds went pitch black before the scientist stumbled into my office. I tinted the smart glass windows, projected my phone's screen onto the wall, and had to pause the feed to call janitorial services. I needed biohazard bags and heavy disinfectant to clean the tile floor... my stomach couldn't take it.
When we resumed, only ten tiny signal blips remained on the map. I demanded to know why these animals weren't running from gunfire. Pale as a sheet, the biologist watched as massive snouts, crushing hooves, and tusks the size of hunting knives tore through the last remaining team.
He stammered that he needed to run urgent tests and promised to meet me first thing in the morning.
I didn't go home that night. I waited in my office as hunger gnawed at my gut. I couldn't sit still; I started researching neighboring corporations that might be impacted, knowing this disaster was about to explode beyond containment.
I kept waiting for that hunchbacked silhouette and those sharp, intelligent eyes—the eyes that held the only solution to my problem.
I waited until his assistant walked in, clutching a stack of research notes and a neatly typed letter.
The bastard had fled the country.
My only consolation was that, in the letter, he took full responsibility and cleared my name before the board—a touching gesture, if it weren't so pathetic. I fear the body count has only just begun.