Everything in my life had once been perfect
or at least I believed it was.
I was proud to be a son.
Grateful to be a husband.
Honored to wear the badge.
Then it collapsed.
No.
It wasn't an accident.
They made me do this.
The night had felt harmless. Warm laughter. Clinking glasses. My promotion celebrated by the people I trusted with my life. My teammates surrounded me, smiling, cheering, raising their drinks like we had survived something together.
My best friend stood beside me, refilling my glass.
He had worked just as hard harder, maybe. Everyone thought the promotion would be his.
But it was mine.
The morning arrived like a curse.
I woke in a place I didn't recognize, my skull splitting, my mouth bitter with regret. My limbs felt heavy, unfamiliar, as if they belonged to someone else. I told myself I had drunk too much. That was all.
I dressed and went home.
Only halfway there did I realize I hadn't called my wife.
I hadn't told her I wouldn't be back.
The street was crowded.
Too crowded.
Neighbors stood outside my house, whispering. Watching. Their eyes slid away from me, filled with something I had never seen there before revulsion. Fear. These were people who once greeted me with respect. Now they looked at me like a stranger.
Like a monster.
My chest tightened as I pushed through them and ran inside.
That was the moment my soul broke.
She was there.
My darling.
Hanging.
Her body was still, the life erased from her face. The room was silent, yet my ears rang as if the world itself were screaming. legs gave out. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't move.
This couldn't be real.
Not her.
Not us.
My mind fractured, grasping for reason in a place where none existed.
Then my phone vibrated.
One message.
One video.
From him.
My best friend.
I watched myself on the screen drugged, hollow-eyed, broken. A body obeying commands while my mind screamed from somewhere far away. He had done this. He had destroyed me. Destroyed her. Destroyed everything I was.
Why?
Because I stood where he never could.
Because I lived the life he wanted.
I walked out of that house without knowing where my feet were taking me. I wasn't a husband anymore. I wasn't a cop. I wasn't even human.
There was only one thing left alive inside me.
He had to pay.
I returned to the shrine where my grandfather once brought me as a child. Incense clung to the air, thick with memory. I collapsed before the altar and begged the gods to return her.
They never answered.
Behind the altar rested my ancestors' Blade, once carried by samurai who lived and died by honor. My hands trembled as I lifted it.
I took an oath.
I would take revenge on those who turned my life into this nightmare.
I would not let others suffer the pain that hollowed me out.
When I walked into the office with the Blade in my hand, they understood immediately.
Guns were raised. Orders shouted. My name barked like a warning.
I didn't care.
Reflexes I never knew I had.
Speed I never imagined.
Strength born from grief and fury.
When it was over, blood covered the floor.
He was there hiding.
I dragged him into the light. He collapsed to his knees, forehead pressed to the ground, sobbing. I asked him what happened that night.
He confessed.
A drug bought from the dark web.
XEKTOR.
Multiple variants.
He had used XEKTOR-H2 a compound that rewires hormones, fractures identity, forces the brain to believe it inhabits the opposite gender.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"For your wife."
His apology ended there.
By nightfall, I was declared the number one threat in Japan.
And my war had begun.
They would come to know me by a name whispered in fear.
The Last Rōnin.
Night didn't forgive me.
It wrapped Tokyo in neon and rain, washing blood into gutters and pretending nothing had happened. Sirens wailed somewhere far away, but none came close.
They were afraid.
They should be.
I scrubbed my hands in a public restroom until the water ran clear. Skin peeled. Knuckles split. The mirror showed a face I didn't recognize eyes hollow, jaw locked, grief fossilized into something sharp.
I kept seeing her.
Not hanging.
Smiling.
That was worse.
Sleep abandoned me. Every time I closed my eyes, the video replayed behind my eyelids my body, not mine, my mind trapped in a cage of flesh.
XEKTOR-H2 didn't just drug the body.
It erased identity.
I understood then: this wasn't revenge.
It was containment.
If XEKTOR existed, no one was safe. Husbands. Wives. Children. Anyone could wake up as a stranger inside themselves.
I followed whispers into the city's underbelly abandoned shrines, fight clubs beneath train stations, nameless clinics with surgeons who never asked questions. Every path smelled the same: fear and money.
By dawn, I found my first distributor.
He laughed when he saw the Blade.
"Samurai cosplay?"
I didn't answer.
I carved the truth out of him slowly. Not for pleasure for certainty. Pain loosens tongues faster than loyalty ever could.
XEKTOR wasn't just a drug.
It was a project.
Variants designed to fracture gender perception, identity, memory, obedience. Some created euphoria. Others violence. One erased guilt entirely.
They were testing gods.
I left him alive—barely—and sent him crawling back with a message written in blood.
I was coming.
By the third night, they had named me.
A cop without a master.
A man without a future.
Government broadcasts called me a terrorist. Online forums called me a myth. Mothers warned their sons with my name. Criminals began locking doors that had never known fear.
But XEKTOR kept moving.
So did I.
The lab hid beneath a corporate tower white walls, stainless steel, antiseptic failing to mask rot. Scientists screamed. Some begged. Some recognized me and went silent.
They already knew.
I found the files.
Human trials.
Unconsented.
Successful.
My wife wasn't the first.
She was just collateral.
Something inside me finally went quiet.
I burned the lab to the ground.
As flames climbed the walls, I felt nothing no triumph, no relief. Only purpose, cold and endless.
That night, standing on a rain-soaked rooftop with my Blade heavy in my hand, I understood the truth.
There was no redemption waiting for me.
No ending where I survived.
But as long as I breathed,
XEKTOR would not.
And somewhere in the city, the people who created it finally understood.
They hadn't made a monster.
They had made a war.