"Sir, there's an ongoing police raid at the menagerie A site."

Dammit... What's that incompetent police commissioner doing? He was supposed to prevent this sort of thing, or at least give us prior warning. Admittedly, I'd installed him in the position precisely because he was incompetent, so I didn't have much right to complain. A competent commissioner, even a wilfully corrupt one, might start thinking that they could do better than taking my money, and that wouldn't end well for anyone. An incompetent one, while loyal, occasionally caused issues like this. That was why we had a B site.

Acquiring further information showed that the situation was unrecoverable. The facility had been penetrated, and not only was a captain involved, but none of my own men were with him. He'd even brought in an external team. There was no way they would leave without seeing things that couldn't be explained away. They all needed to die.

I gave the order to scrub the site. This was... irritating. The personnel had evacuated, so I had lost neither guards nor researchers, and the scrub team could recover some of the more transportable equipment and even some of the test subjects, but the amount they could bring would be limited, and wouldn't be enough to hold the hunt on schedule. There had been a particularly promising harpy this year, that I was greatly looking forward to hunting down personally. Ah well. If we started using B site for production, we would be able to reschedule for a couple of months time, and I could spin the cancellation as acting in solidarity with the kidnap victims' families. Feigning sympathy was always good for a few votes.

After a quick discussion with the commissioner, we drafted up a cover story that pinned the blame for everything on the dead police captain, and I returned to my day job, just in time for another urgent message.

"Sir, three bodies were just found near A site. Based on ID, the site supervisor and lead researchers. They had been... eaten. The team sent in to perform the scrub report that subject twenty-three, a fully transformed and unchipped harpy, was missing. We assume it got out, and is currently loose."

Oh? Perhaps this hasn't been a complete loss after all. Given harpy nesting habits, it would most likely come here, to Kholakel. Perhaps I could go on a bit of an impromptu hunt of my own.

Over the next couple of days, periodic reports came in of dead wildlife, gradually moving towards the city. There had even been, much to my amusement, a fully grown cow with injuries consistent with a hundred metre drop.

I made sure the information was suppressed; rather than killing the harpy now, having it rampage in the city for a bit would be to our advantage. Those ridiculous animal rights activists were even going after monsters these days, claiming they have as much right to life as we do and that they never left the woods, so were no danger to anyone. If I claimed that I only believed it safe to cancel the hunt because of their claims, and then a harpy attacked the city immediately afterwards, I'd not only get more support for the reschedule, but we could probably raise it to twice a year with no blowback. Plus it would make the protestors look like idiots, which was always a nice bonus.

The day the harpy arrived, a flaw in this plan very quickly became apparent. Harpies have human faces, and this one apparently still looked so much like the brat it had been made from that witnesses could identify it. The commissioner had already needed to terminate two people. I had to move quickly, and so sent out drones to investigate likely nesting sites. We found it quickly, but the damn thing fled into the forest.

Until now, I'd thought it nothing more than a fun diversion, but its behaviour there caught my attention. It had flown straight up. That was odd; if it was going to flee it should have gone sideways, and why did it head to the woods? On its own, I'd have just thought it strange and then forgotten about it, but there had been other bits of strangeness too. The witnesses the commissioner executed had been mugging victims, and the harpy had attacked the muggers but not touched the two victims. It had escaped the facility, not harming any of the police inside, and then immediately killed the site manager. I could chalk one or two up to fluke, but this was starting to look like a pattern.

The mugging witness had insisted that the harpy showed no sign of intelligence, as did the personnel observing it back at A site, before the raid. The drone footage was the same. Were there some lingering bits of human, giving it nascent intelligence or sharper instincts than usual? We knew that sort of thing happened; it was why we tried to keep the test subjects awake during their conversion, but it had never before resulted in them gaining morals. They were always universally hostile to humans.

The other alternative was that someone was lying when they claimed it hadn't been chipped, and that someone else held the controls. If that was true, I could guess at the end goal. It must be someone who knew me, or they wouldn't have access to the site or the chips. They would know of my... interest. Entering the city, killing once and then leaving for the woods would be nothing more than a lure. With the morality the monster had been forced to show, presumably its master disagreed with some of my more indulgent policies.

Very well, I'll play this game. We shall pitch my mana fuelled weaponry against this harpy and its mysterious backer. I could get anti-harpy armour manufactured quickly enough. A couple of days, and I would finally have prey that was actually worth hunting. I felt more alive than I had for years! Whoever they were, however they did it, I would need to thank the master of this harpy. And then kill them, obviously, but I would certainly thank them first.

I wasn't quite sure how to sell the city mayor personally going after a monster, but that didn't matter. The hunt was more important. Even so, I had to maintain the look of the thing, and we left in a large motorcade. Perhaps I could claim I was only there to supervise, and the people with me were doing the actual hunting.

I was pondering the matter as we travelled down some random street when the whole car lurched, and the windows showed the landscape retreating beneath us. Oh... well played, my mysterious antagonist. Very well played. Why wait for me to arrive before springing your trap? I had been foolish, too enamoured by the thought of the woods that I hadn't considered an attack on our way there. I could see the claws of the harpy piecing through the roof. All it needed to do was drop us, and my enemy would have won.

It didn't. It was bringing us out of the city. The fool that held the controls probably wanted to gloat or something. Well, they would never get their chance. It was difficult to get equipped in the confines of a car, but it wasn't impossible, so I started strapping on pieces of armour. Really I should have prepared before departure, but I hadn't wanted people to see me. We were originally planning to stop outside the city before reaching the woods.

We were still high in the air by the time I'd finished dressing for the occasion. I had a jetpack for air combat, so why wait for a landing? It wasn't as if there was anyone else of import in the car. I pointed my disintegrator at the one of the claws poking through the roof, and fired.

A large part of the roof vanished, and then the remaining claw tore out, leaving the car in free-fall. I jumped out of the hole, and smiled at my prey, missing one leg and barely hanging in the air with its crippled wing. I shot again, and it dodged, able to manoeuvrer in the air despite its injuries. The way it moved was completely unphysical; even when whole, there was no way those wings should support its weight, let alone permit it to dart to the side like that. But of course, that was part of the fun.

My smile widened, and I was rather surprised to see that it grinned back. Not a mocking grin, but it looked genuinely happy. "You fight well for a human," it said, and I almost lost my grip on my disintegrator.

It can speak. We'd never been able to create an intelligent monster, yet this one could talk. A high pitched voice that pierced my ears like nails against a chalkboard, but a voice nonetheless. I couldn't blame that on a control chip.

"A better fight than Maximilian put up, for sure," it continued, "He wanted to give me the world, you know. At least you seem less of a madman."

Maximilian was dead? I'd spoken to him only a couple of days ago, and I'd heard no news since. Although if there was a monster attack, they might have covered it up; Gronorlie was supposed to be free of monsters. No, I couldn't believe that. This thing was baiting me. It was stalling for time.

"Harpy got your tongue?" it added, and now I knew it was goading me. I didn't know why it was stalling, but I needed to end this now. I fired another blast, then charged. The harpy spun out of the way of the disintegrator's area of effect, then dove towards me itself. This duel was mine! I brought up my weapon once more, but the harpy started to dodge before I even had it in place. It was too slow though, and my shot still clipped it. How many more shots like that could it survive? It couldn't get close, and was now even more heavily injured. I had this in the bag.

I was suddenly wracked with debilitating pain, as one eye went dark. With no clue what had just happened, I could make no response, tumbling aimlessly through the air. Of course, if this harpy is intelligent, then naturally it would be able to utilise tactics that its dumber brethren couldn't. I didn't know what it had just done, but I'd been struck in the eye by a ranged attack. My body wouldn't listen to me, and I couldn't think of any way to recover. Maximilian had always been convinced that the moment I made a real monster would be my last, and regrettably it seems he was correct. The last thing I saw was the tip of a talon heading for my remaining eye before the world went dark forever.