CHAPTER 1: Fool's Ideals
Journal Entry — Date: January — Time: 23:00 hrs.
I think I'm the last one left. I'm writing these lines not looking for salvation; we committed the ultimate act of stupidity, and I thank God I'm the only one still breathing.
My role was perhaps one of the lowest in the entire hierarchy: I was the scout who blew the whistle when the cops arrived.
We had pulled off similar operations in the past, hiding mysterious funds—which somehow always ended up in our leaders' deep pockets—behind slogans, banners, and moral outrage. That was how we got paid. All of it under the protective wing of public sympathy... We were "the good guys."
The problem is, we weren't.
I knew how many local businesses went under because of us, how many working-class people lost their jobs and hit rock bottom. The agricultural belt—where crops were so poor that farmers could only grow cattle fodder—gave birth to massive industrial swine complexes. God, how I hated them. We all did.
Day after day, our leaders fed us horrific undercover footage. They handed us evidence of animal abuse without a shred of hesitation, and that was our call to action. Once a plan was greenlit, we had two or three days to prep.
I kept myself in peak shape. I could outrun anyone in the crew, and I kept my eyes sharp to spot patrol cars or any flashing lights that signaled incoming riot police. I could even mimic bird calls to signal my team while guards just thought they were listening to a screech owl with a terrible accent.
But this... this was supposed to be the crown jewel of our operations.
We were going to tear down the heavy steel gates of the largest pork production facility in the region. Inside, over ten thousand pigs—not counting the off-the-books numbers—were crammed into little more than five acres. A fully automated, self-sustaining fortress of concrete, skeleton crews, and row after row of industrial torture cages.
I saw the footage, and I was dead sure the only right thing to do was release those animals into the wild. Give them a fighting chance to survive.
Among us, there was one guy who didn't buy into the plan. We called him "The Neurotic" because he constantly questioned our grand designs. Naturally, we locked him up back at the safehouse; we couldn't risk him blowing the whistle. The cabin was spacious, and I'm sure the leaders made sure he had plenty of supplies—even if he was zip-tied to a radiator. His muffled screams haunted me all the way to the van as we rode toward what I genuinely believed would be my masterpiece as an eco-terrorist.
I don't mind the label.
The facility looked imposing in the dark. Honestly, I was terrified we'd be surrounded by swat teams the second we tripped their perimeter sensors. That was when I found out this wasn't even our plan to begin with. High-rolling backers—people with real money and elite hacking capabilities—were pulling the strings.
I never really understood what "hacking" meant. I used to think guessing someone's email or social media password made you a hacker, but this was on a whole different level.
I'm not writing this down so you can learn the logistics. I'm writing to keep my mind off the agony. There's a gaping hole in my right leg, and if I bother to wipe away the blood, mud, and rot, I probably won't find half of my foot. Don't bother sending help; there are no pharmacies for miles. The facility we raided was fully automated, far away from any living town.
I'm not getting out of here... Believe me! I can't drive. I'm doing everything I can to stay conscious while the stench of rust and iron fills the cab of the truck. At least the adrenaline got me this far.
Where was I? Right.
The tech guys were working their magic, and suddenly, every single floodlight illuminating the main yard went pitch black. Everyone had their assigned tasks. As I said, I stayed near the front gate—it was the easiest gig, and the pay was great.
An hour passed. Fear started creeping in; they had never taken this long. But the internal radios were dead quiet, so I pulled out my phone. I scrolled through pictures of cute mini pigs, contrasting them with the raw human cruelty of factory farming. I kept hoping I'd find a little piglet to take back to my apartment. I'd raise it, keep it safe, and make sure it never met a butcher's blade.
I don't think I was distracted for too long, but out of nowhere, cheers erupted from the dark. I assumed they had managed to override the main containment doors, not just the outer security grid.
I set up the camera, of course. The massive hydraulic doors of the loading docks slowly ground upward, and then it hit me: the stench. Did you know pigs defecate when they're stressed, excited, or just existing? And it doesn't smell like farm air. It's a toxic reek of cheap, high-calorie slop engineered to make them gain weight fast.
Next came the noise. The same sounds from our briefing videos, but amplified tenfold by the concrete loading bays—a wall of shrill, deafening shrieks.
Before I even saw the first pink snout emerge, a few of our team members stumbled out of the dark. They looked suffocated, frantic rather than victorious. But I paid no mind to it. We still needed to throw open the main perimeter gate that stood between those innocent animals and slaughter.
I still want to believe they're innocent.
I focused the lens on one of our field leaders—a gorgeous girl I had always wanted to ask out for a matcha latte or whatever it is girls drink these days. I zoomed in on her smiling face as she reached a gentle hand out to pet a massive hog stepping out into the yard.
You cannot comprehend what five thousand animals look like in one place. Especially when every single one weighs well over four hundred pounds. It was an ocean of pink flesh. And in all her pure-hearted idealism, she just wanted to touch it.
Something shoved the hog from behind—probably another pig in the crush—and it snapped. Her outstretched hand was the closest thing to its jaws. On the phone's 4K screen, I watched her fingers vanish into its mouth in a blur of bone and gristle. It dragged her down instantly. Her beautiful expression twisted into pure, unadulterated horror as she was pulled straight under the trampling herd.
I stopped recording.
Everyone panicked. The only ones who survived the initial rush were those who sprinted away from the gates. The idiots who tried to pull her out didn't even make it three steps. The smell of fresh blood sent the herd into a frenzy. Their squeals rose to a frequency that felt like a solid wall hitting your chest.
All I saw was a filth-covered, pink tidal wave surging toward me, streaked with crimson.
I scrambled into the truck. I almost made it. But right before I could slam the door, a heavy snout smashed into the frame and jaws clamped onto my calf with terrifying force. I felt the bone snap like a dry twig. Another massive boar slammed into the first, ripping my foot clean off in the crossfire as they fought over the scrap of flesh.
In absolute hysterics, I pulled the door shut and locked it. I dug through the glovebox for a first-aid kit, but all we brought were DIY remedies for tear gas and fake press vests to hide behind if the cops showed up. None of it could stop arterial bleeding.
There were fifty of us. I don't think anyone else is left alive.
I even tried dialing emergency services in my delirium, but those tech masterminds—those absolute bastards—had jammed all cellular frequencies in the area to prevent us from being tracked. My signal bar was dead.
So to whoever finds this phone: clean up our mess. And God forgive us.
The journal was recovered five months after the disaster, heavily stained with what forensics confirmed was the author's dried blood. At the time, law enforcement had no record of the breach; the corporation had attempted to handle the containment internally.
This entry was the first piece of evidence uncovered by corporate recovery teams, alongside scattered skeletal remains across the perimeter. "The Neurotic" was later found back at the safehouse, still zip-tied to the frame, his skull caved in by a blunt instrument.
The corporate "solutions" that followed would only make things worse... In hindsight, the nightmare was an inevitable powder keg, built by corporate greed and ignited by idealistic fools.