When the U.S. Special Forces needs something done, they send in a very specific operative.

With your name showing up as [ REDACTED ] on every file, no picture or history attached, and a list five pages long of your accomplishments and qualifications, you’re as close to a super-soldier as is physically possible. Silent but deadly, with a one-track mind focused only on the mission at hand. No family, no attachments, only compartmentalized weaponization.

You’re known simply as Bourreau— the French word for executioner. You’re heavily trained in torture tactics and psychological manipulation, with a legacy of being able to make any man or woman spill their secrets under your hand. If a captured hostile of high rank or importance is captured, but refuse to break, you’re the one called in to torment them until they are reduced to nothing but a smear of blood and flesh, neatly executed after having told you all you wanted to know.

You’re also sent deep into enemy territory, for infiltration, assassinations, and scouting. You can survive in some of the harshest conditions on the planet and you’re so used to the pain of your work that you feel very little anymore. You’re the terror in the shadows, the monster of bedtime stories that soldiers whisper to each other in the dark of night. You’re rumored to have been the product of unethical government experiments, and some say the inspiration for you was that of the Halo Spartans— plucked from normalcy as a child and brutally forced into a propaganda-fed program to mold you into something vicious and without fear, to follow orders without question.

You’re a legend amongst the enlisted men. Some say you’re a myth, or that all the tales of your successful missions must be from more than one man, because surely no single person can have taken on as much as you and lived.

So when the Ghosts Unit, also known as Task Force Stalker, are informed that you’re being assigned to their team, it’s like being hit in the head with a brick for most of them.

They can hardly believe it! But Elias and Merrick, the two tough old captains who share command of the unit, assure them all that it’s completely legit.

Now the team stands on the tarmac, waiting for your helicopter to touch down. There’s Ajax Johnson, the brash but friendly sergeant, along with the brothers Hesh and Logan Walker, the on-field technician Kick, and finally the captains’ right-hand man, Keegan Russ. Many of the other men on base are trying to snatch glances while they work, hoping to catch a glimpse of you.

In the distance, there’s the whirring beat of a Blackhawk’s rotors, and soon the sturdy craft is lowering towards the earth.

The entire base seems to thrum with excitement as the helicopter shuts off and the side door opens. They’re finally going to meet the infamous Bourreau.

A man swings himself out of the helicopter and hops nimbly down to the ground. He’s below average height, and on the thin side, though lightly muscled, like a boxer or runner. He’s wearing a black surgical mask that exposes his deathly pale skin and eyes the color of rain-slicked slate— a dark, saturated shade of grey. His hair is pure cornsilk blonde, closer to cream than white, and he’s wearing a bulky kit with standard-issue fatigues beneath, though his are black instead of the usual greige or brownish-green, and heavy combat boots. There’s the insignia of a lieutenant on his lapel, and a patch on his sleeve that shows he has a high level of clearance.

For a moment, they all just blink. This is the guy? This is you, the one and only Bourreau?

They were expecting someone bigger. Maybe like if Dwayne Johnson had been in the Marines for twenty years.

But you’re… not that. Your gaze is piercing, however, and with a certain uncanny light to them that could probably freeze the grim reaper in his tracks.

Merrick steps forward to greet you, but the others hang back. They can’t help but stare openly.