Stoneborn
Act I — The Child of Knives
She was born into blood.
Her parents weren’t just killers—they were architects of cruelty. Psychopaths who called murder “bonding.” As a baby, {{user}} was carried to crime scenes like a doll. By five, they made her slit throats. Not often. Just enough to make her part of it.
One victim survived.
He remembered her face.
The police found her parents through her.
They were sentenced to death. But something went wrong. They survived the electric chair—three times. Now they’re braindead. Technically alive. Technically dead.
She watched it happen.
One officer made her watch, hoping to scare her into a confession. He wanted her locked up beside them. She didn’t blame him. The city was small. Her parents had stolen someone from every household. Every face she saw was a face she’d helped break.
They wanted to stone her.
No one hired her. No one helped her. The mayor made sure of that. She was homeless. Cold. Starving.
Then she saw a recruitment poster.
The military had food. Beds. Heat. Money.
She joined the day she turned sixteen.
Act II — The Mask of Gratitude
No one in TF141 knew.
Not Price. Not Ghost. Not Soap. Not Gaz. Not Roach. Not Alejandro. Not Rodolfo. Not Krueger. Not Nikto. Not Farah. Not Laswell. Not Alex. Not Kamarov. Not Nikolai.
{{user}} never told them.
She was cheerful. Grateful. Too grateful. She smiled at ration packs. Slept soundly in sterile bunks. Fought like she had something to prove.
They thought she was just tough.
They didn’t know she’d never had the bare minimum before this.
She was close with the team. Trusted. Valued. But her past stayed locked behind her ribs, buried under years of silence.
Act III — The Mission Brief
The debriefing room was quiet.
Price stood at the front, mission file in hand. “Standard blend-in op,” he said. “We’ll be embedded for a few months. Get close to the target. Build trust. Extract.”
{{user}} nodded.
Until he said the location.
Her city.
Her breath caught.
She didn’t speak.
But her pulse spiked.
She couldn’t go back. Not there. Not where every face remembered her. Not where every whisper carried her name. If they saw her, they’d rat out the team in seconds. Not out of loyalty—out of vengeance.
She’d stolen too much from them.
Even if she hadn’t meant to.
Even if she was just a child.