I
Today will be the day I receive my first assignment, and after years of training with the Consensus, I will do my first contract kill.
His name is Terry Donaldson, but as I stare at the picture of this man, I feel the blood drain out of my hands. I felt cold. What was I turning into? This wasn't me. I'm not a cold-blooded killer who's going to kill people for fun and a living am I?
Usually, I would be excited. Today I am not.
I have discovered a piece of paper earlier, not just any.
A piece of paper with writing on it. What do you call it?
Ah. A document.
The document said;
Ryan Wrecker; Age 14
STATUS: Taken and being trained.
Parents: [Marybeth Wayne, John Wayne]
STATUS: Eliminated by Foundation
…
There were a bunch of other people's names, about five more people that fit onto the page, and I had just realized something. My parents had not died by accident.
It was on purpose and they had something to do with it.
Even though I know what the Consensus is doing, I need to keep it a secret to myself for now, because who knows if anyone will try to snitch on me for some extra credit or to get approval and praise and promoted to a general.
I needed to be careful.
Everyone in this entire A-S is trained to be a liar and easily get your attention and can easily control their emotions and are great actors.
Nobody is trustworthy.
Ah right, A-S stands for Assassin School, just another acronym I'll be using in my little notebook here. You know what? I'll call it a diary.
Anyway, practice is about to start again for the last time, and after this practice, we will have a short graduation. Although the foundation seems to be the ones who are kidnapping us and killing our families, they let us go outside of the foundation to do things for short periods, but we usually just come back after strolling around the town as there is nothing to do but sometimes I go to the grocery store and buy food and water.
That's just what I need.
Water.
I remember the water that I had bought from the grocery store a week ago that was under my pillow(so nobody would steal it), and I took it out.
The thing about the Consensus Foundation is that they are very bad planners, kind of, and they do not expect things to go sideways. But they don't realize I am not a regular student. I have a brain.
I may be smarter than most of the kids in the entire A-S. I plan that once I go to the little graduation stage, I will not go up, and instead, since there are wires everywhere in the building that just snake around, I'm planning on spilling water on wires and cutting the wires and if nothing happens, I need to at least try finding the wires that connect to the lights. Once the lights go out, I need to make sure that everybody is panicking and then I will proceed to escape from the back door which is at the back of the academy.
The weird alarm that was in place for a bell, rang. That means the period ended.
It is currently Period 9, so that means there is one period left. In the A, the periods go from one to ten and they all last one hour. The academy serves us breakfast and dinner, but Period 4 is our lunch break though, and they give us some money and coins to go out to the grocery stores and buy food. Period 10 was the graduation ceremony which would be hosted in the small and lanky place they had decided to call the amphitheater, where they host events and make us attend meetings.
As I make my way to the amphitheater, a girl bumps into me in the hall, wearing a mask.
"What are you doing?" I ask her.
"Shut up and I'll be on my way," she hisses.
I do shut up, because I really don't care about anyone else here. I swear, everyone in this entire building is so selfish and their ego is way too large. The Consensus trains them to be like that. So they would keep going no matter what just to get approval from the Consensus and they would even die just to get approval. It is honestly dumb, because why would you sacrifice everything you have, your life even, just for the approval of some dumb academy that is planning to take away your life and make you kill some petty people just because they borrowed loans and didn't return them after a month? There's something called interest, and I think the Consensus founders are too dumb to know anything about the economy. They're just rich after all.
"Keep walking," I tell myself. "Keep walking,"
The amphitheater is small. Even the entrance to the doors is small. The so-called president who doesn't even actually know what we learn here, he just takes care of some business stuff, is already talking about how proud he is of how we finally are going to graduate from the little school, although I have no idea what he is talking about. We are not in a normal school, if we were, I'd be in 9th grade. That's a year after graduation. The principal gives a lot of other bull, and I'm tired of standing with my ear to the door.
I'm not going to go inside of the amphitheater just yet. I need to find where the light switch is, and if the wires aren't exposed and are in the wall, I'll break the wall and do it. That's how much effort I'm willing to put in, just to get out of this hellhole.
Although they treat us pretty nicely, other than when we are doing real physical training for strength and agility. I am one of the best in my class, but the instructors don't have favorites. They just teach and be strict and scream at you. It isn't proper to call it a hellhole, but it is one in some kind of way since they killed all of our parents and kidnapped us. I wonder how the government hasn't found us yet. Did they just file us missing? Or did the people taking us just say that they were our legal guardians or adopt us? It's most likely just adoption since the government would love foster kids to be adopted by founders of a rich company. Not suspicious for a rich guy to adopt hundreds of children.
I finally found the light switch. I'm lucky it's in front of the door, so no one will be able to see me messing with the lights from the inside, and only if people are walking late. Nobody would come late to the assembly though, this is graduation. Everybody cares about this thing.
Maybe I need to test this thing before I use it, but I don't. If I do they would come to me immediately. I need to break it first. I found a great place above the switch that would probably be where the wires were. Above, because the wires go to above the facility. It's something I never understood but is just common sense.
My fist swings into the white, brittle wall. It breaks easily, this company couldn't even afford to get better walls with better material. I shake my head and sigh.
I see the wires exposed, and with the water bottle I'd managed to fit in my pocket without getting noticed, I poured water onto the wires and quickly ran away.
Where was the exit? I needed to find the exit fast.
Just as I was walking and trying to find the backdoor, someone tapped me on my shoulder.
"Hey mister, you dropped your water bottle. Your littering," he tells me.
"I don't give," I reply. "Get lost or I'll slit your throat"
I bare my teeth just to make myself look a bit scarier, but he already looks like he might piss his pants off.
The backdoor is located behind the amphitheater, and I need to cross the entire hall to get there and walk in a semicircle.
After I got there, the door had a sign that said, "EMERGENCY EXIT: IF YOU USE THIS DOOR, A FIRE ALARM WILL BE TRIGGERED".
Like I care.
Just as screams started to arise from the amphitheater behind me, I smirked because the teachers were trying to calm everyone down. I quickly get out the backdoor as fire alarms start to go off.
Once I get out from the backdoor, it's quiet.
There is nobody in sight.
Well, I've gotten out of the A-S. Now what? I should probably try to gear up first. Then I'll plan later. Or plan now? I'm not sure.
Here's a plan, I'll get some weapons, then I'll start hunting down all of the agents from the Consensus. I'm going to assassinate people just like they trained me, except assassinate the people who trained me.
But the question is, what am I going to do after I kill all of them? Well, that's a wonderful question.
I don't know.
The first thing I do is go to the supermarket.
"Hey," I say to the store cashier.
"Hello," he says respectfully.
Let me remind you, I live in a pretty dangerous town. There are drug dealers and everything, but they aren't dangerous people. The dangerous thing is that there is no police force, and whenever anything happens, nobody seems to care.
One time, a person was being strangled to death. In the middle of the street, everybody just passed by, acting as if nothing had happened. Nothing happened because the guy had no friends, nobody wanted to help him, and nobody wanted to be with the losers too. They want to live longer, nobody wants to be part of the hated group.
And that's why I'm going to need not only friends but enemies. So I can be a part of the hated group and after I get enough people, the Consensus will turn into the hated group. I'll wipe them all out.
Anyway, I grab some water bottles and a sandwich because that's all I will need to last the next few days. I only have a ten-dollar bill, I might as well conserve it.
"Here, I want two water bottles and a sandwich," I tell him.
"Your order will be $7.34," he says.
I rummage around my pockets until I find the $10 bill that I had saved from yesterday. I gave him the money and I took the water bottles. The problem is, I need some sort of bag to hold all my stuff.
Another problem is, I don't have money to buy anything.
Of course, you know what I'm going to do. Everybody has done it once or more even if it's on purpose or on accident.
I head over to the nearest Target. They would have backpacks for sure. My pockets feel a bit heavy since I need to stuff two water bottles in each pocket. I run while eating the sandwich.
- - -
When I finally arrive at the store, I look around.
That is weird. Almost nobody is at Target. It's one of the biggest stores. I take a peek inside the store from the glass doors.
"Hello?" I ask as I walk into the store.
My voice echoes and no one responds.
Well, that's better I guess, since no one is going to report me for shoplifting.
It's time to pick out some items that I need, and I will be able to get more than a backpack! That calls for a celebration.
I look down the aisles, I see food, water, some beauty products, more beauty products, some tools for houses, and kitchenware, and finally I arrive at what I was looking for.
Camping.
This isle is important because it'll probably have everything I need. Flashlights, knives, and backpacks. I grab a not-too-big but not-too-small backpack.
I slung the backpack over my shoulder and proceeded to check out all of the camping categories. Lamps, flashlights, ropes, hammers, axes, tents, more backpacks, batteries, and finally I spot some multitool knives being sold. There are only two left, I take them out of the packaging switch the water bottles in my pocket into the backpack, and put the two knives into my pockets. I also forgot to check the last aisle, which was pesticides. Who knows if it might be useful? I bring a rope because I'll probably need to use that at one point, and a flashlight with three battery packs.
Now I have everything I need. Well almost, I'll probably need to get some katana or sword soon later, but I laugh at myself.
Where was I going to get that stuff?
I'm grinning ear to ear as I walk out of that store because I know I'm ready to kill some people who have done terrible things. I'm not a psychopath for sure, I just want revenge. The police cannot be involved, or they'll just do a crappy job and let them free without any charges since it's a big company.
The store alarm goes off, and I take off as soon as I hear it because I do not want anybody to know I was there. I get some weird looks as I pass by people. The tags were still on the things I stole, but I didn't mind. Taking them off will be a task for later.
Suddenly I remembered that in the A-S, we had real katanas that only the instructors would use to teach us how to do simple sword fighting.
I sigh to myself.
Looks like I have to go back there.
Hopefully, no one will know I'm missing. I put my backpack lying on a tree near the A-S but made it so it wouldn't be visible in plain sight, and I covered it with leaves for a finishing touch. I walk in the entrance to the factory.
Nobody seemed to notice that I was gone, and it seemed like the lights going out had calmed down. The administrators had covered it up for a little power outage and quickly sealed the broken wall where I had punched it with tape.
Seriously? Tape?
No one is going to believe that bull crap about a power outage when there is a hole in the wall where the light switches are supposed to be.
Then I remember what I'm here for. I need to borrow a katana.
As I run down the halls, brushing past students who are chattering to each other about rumors of what happened, I arrive at the dojo, which is just an office room that has everything removed from it. The katanas are inside the instructor's tiny room in the corner which can't be bigger than a bathroom stall.
I try the handle of the door.
It's locked.
"What you doing there?" someone asks from behind me, grinning.
"I was… trying to find the bathroom?" I say.
"Sure..." he says in a sarcastic voice. "I'm reporting you,"
He turns around and is about to leave.
"Wait, I have something for you," I claim.
His footsteps stop. He starts walking back to me.
"What could that be?" he asks, smiling.
"First of all, who are you?" I ask him.
"I'm Mason, and I'm a teacher's pet," he says.
"That's good to know," I say with an innocent smile. "That way no one will even notice you're gone,"
His eyes widened, but it's too late to run.
I tackle him and he falls over.
I'm not fat of course, but I'm not skinny either. I'm just the perfect type of person that you'll see that is in shape.
He is struggling, and there is only one solution to someone struggling. My instructor told me before, that if anyone is struggling and trying to run away, then "you shouldn't have mercy on your opponent, you need to strike when they are not ready, and you need to strike them in a weak spot". I know just where to strike.
I pull out one of my knives from out of my right pocket. I flip the knife part of the multitool out. Who even made these things? Such geniuses. I took his arm and put it on his back. He didn't seem to notice what was going on, and he was just yelling for help.
The blade sliced through his finger,
He didn't even scream. He couldn't.
Not even as crimson droplets fell to the stone floor.
"Shut up," I commanded him, my voice unwavering.
"What if I don't want to?" he responds, almost daringly, baring his teeth like a feral dog.
I lift my knife at him, the tip of the blade pointing at the other man's head in a threatening manner.
"I'll force this through your skull if you don't". The look on my face alone seems to convince him to quiet down.
I have already gotten a hold of him. What was I going to do with him? I can almost hear you ask. He was probably going to bleed out anyway.
Well, you would be right.
The man opposite me nods, although I know he is dreading his entire day, his existence even. He just wanted to be a rat.
Here he is, in my little trap, that I hadn't even planned out.
I look at the finger on the floor in curiosity. It was a finger for sure, but seeing a severed finger just didn't look right. A severed finger just looks weird.
At least this guy stopped yelling.
"Sorry, but I have to continue with what the instructor tells us," I tell him, winking.
I drive the blade into his back and he screams in pain. Blood sprays in all directions and creates an almost rhythmic pattern when it drops down to the cold stone floor. This room was going to be his grave.
The screaming dies down fast.
I quickly got up from his body. The crimson blood is slowly spreading across the room in a puddle.
Time to unlock the door. I had gotten a decent amount of blood on me, so it was good I put the backpack off. I needed to change clothes, and I was not stealing another backpack. My fingers were very slippery due to the blood, although it was drying fast.
Right, the door was locked. Now how do I get in there?
Thinking fast is important because people probably heard the screams and are coming down right now.
I figured it out. The door has glass on it, if I break it, then I'll be able to unlock the door from the other side.
Then I realized it, my pocket knife is a multitool, of course, it has a glass breaker on the end. I flip the knife upside down and I whack the glass breaking side at the glass as hard as I can.
The glass probably would have broken even if I hadn't hit it so hard.
I reach through the broken glass and turn the knob.
Creeaaak…
The door makes even more sound. That's annoying. I quickly grab a katana and find a sheath that I can wear on my back to put the katana on my back.
I'm not some sort of superhero, so of course I'm only taking one. Actually no, I'm going to take two because I might need to replace my old one.
I get another sheath.
Wow, I look like something that would come out of some superhero show or some ninja.
With haste, I ran out of the dojo and quickly found the entrance that I had come from and quickly ran out. Everybody was staring at me because I of course had blood on my hands. I just told them I had a little paper cut.
The people in this place have to be dumb to believe everything everybody says. Everybody is so naive.
I found the backpack where I had placed it earlier. Good thing nobody stole it. It is going to be weird though, having two swords on my back and also having a backpack. This had to do for now though, I had no other option.
Now I just need somewhere to hide and plan out what to do next. Of course, I'm going to kill some people, but I need a plan first.
In the city, cars are driving around and pedestrians walking along the crosswalks.
The only thing I am supposed to do is to find where most of the teachers live. Kill them off one by one. I'm going to make a list of those teachers.
Here is my list;
My list of Targets:
Ken Anderson - Age 24 - Physical Education Teacher, trains endurance.
Annabeth Lee - Age 33 - Teaches physics and science and other weird formulas for things like bombs and chemical reactions.
Mary Ren - Age 43 - A nice teacher who teaches math, but is also doing things to the children. She is also embezzling money from the Consensus, the last time I heard about her.
Patric Hertz - Age 35 - An English teacher who really only teaches us how to lie and be deceitful.
Gary Francis - Age 21 - Recently got out of college and is the teacher who just teaches us about random stuff like types of weapons, how to fight, and other weird things. Although I'm not sure why he is a teacher here, he is too young. Maybe he's an old student?
Connor Zephyr - Age ??? - The janitor at the school. Most likely not going to assassinate them, but confront them and ask questions and get info.
I didn't really plan on killing the teachers, but I might be able to get information on what's going on and other secret stuff that we students never get to hear about.
The funny thing is, they gave us all access to where the teachers and staff live. Maybe because they aren't too important to the Consensus. All of the information is online though, and we only were able to use computers in the library for doing stuff digitally. I only know my login info and email, but I'll need a computer.
Of course, our town has a small library. It'll be perfect. They are kind of a library that is most likely going to become bankrupt soon, so they only have one computer, which is an old desktop that is almost similar to the ones you'd see if you traveled back in time forty years ago.
I probably forgot to tell you, the date is 10/30/2017.
The next day is something that people call "Halloween" which I think is more of a way for people to cringe at kids begging for candy at their houses and just making the kids more fat. It would be a great day to go around and snoop after all, and also go to my teacher's houses.
The academy ends early tomorrow too, we have half days, except we don't go home, we just stay in our dormitories. The teachers go home though.
I walk down the street, passing cars and crossing a sidewalk, and then that's when I see the library, the old worn-down building that was built using wood that was painted light green.
Every time I hear footsteps behind me, I get this anxious feeling that someone is stalking me. It's happening right now. But I know no one could be following me since no one saw me escape.
I turn my head around just to be sure.
Behind me is a man, who is wearing a hoodie. Oh great, some guy who looks exactly like the type of guy to be stalking a child and kidnapping them.
"What do you want?" I ask, making him stop in his tracks.
"I… nothing," he turns around and attempts to leave, but I grab him.
"Who the hell are you?" I bare my teeth at him.
I was lost, the guy was stalking me, and I didn't even know who he was. Unless this is… the janitor?
"I was just trying to walk to the grocery store," he says as he points in the direction we were both walking in. "But then you thought I was stalking you,"
This might have seemed like a valid explanation to a normal person, but this guy is talking about nothing but bullshit.
"There is no grocery store in that direction for miles. Are you the janitor?" I ask him.
He finally nods.
"I'm from a group that formed when lots of people from… the place left after they realized what was happening," he told me.
"What place?" I ask.
"The Consensus, duh?" he replies sarcastically, rolling his eyes.
"Oh. There's a group?" I mutter to myself.
"Yes, and we have been watching you. We have some little cameras in the building and outside to watch if anyone sneaks out," He tells me.
"So you have stuff in our bathrooms?" I exclaim.
"No! Of course not," his face instantly turns a shade of red.
"Where do you guys even go?" I ask. "There's no way you could've afforded an entire place to live when you just ran away from the Consensus with no money"
"Well there were about seven of us when we all ran away, so we all just applied to random jobs and split up and then put all our money together, and now we live in two separate apartments,"
"I'll stop asking questions then, just lead me to them,"
He starts walking in the opposite direction we came from, and I follow him.
- - -
We finally arrive at the apartments where they supposedly live. The apartments seem very gloomy. There isn't a hint of any color anywhere and it looks as if they had just built the apartments and left, nobody had added decorations or furniture. Just apartments for rent that people who couldn't afford houses were going to use.
The apartments are more of those normal apartments, the small ones without elevators and kind of look like mini houses. The janitor walks up to the stone tiles and signals me to follow him.
"Here we are, my beloved apartment," he says. "And of course, I'm sharing it with some other people"
"That's nice" I mumble.
Inside of the tiny room is what you would see in a typical apartment anywhere you would find an apartment. There is a torn-down, gray couch that was probably either from a hundred years ago or just a hand-me-down couch, a small kitchen with a glistening quartz tabletop, and a TV sitting on top of a little table. There were little bar stools with cracked leather seats. Overall this place just looked like some old apartment, but there were still two other rooms in the house that I had yet to see.
"So, where are your other friends?" I ask him.
His eyes light up.
"Right over there!" he points to a room that I haven't seen yet.
I step into the room.
The room reeks of a weird smell, like something rotting.
"What's that smell?" I ask him.
"Must be one of my roommate's leftover food!" he chuckles.
There was no food in sight. The room was a bedroom with a medium-sized bed and a desk next to it. There was also a closet, but I saw no food. There was no food.
Throughout my life, I had never really smelled anything weird, but if there's one smell I will remember, it's my mother and father's half-burnt corpses rotting in the front seats of the car. The smell was very vivid, it was more different than my parent's corpses of course. This one smelled worse.
That's what the smell was. But I realized that it was too late.
The door slammed shut behind me and the lock clicked.
Why the hell was the lock from the inside?
"We don't like other people surviving… it's not a good competition if we aren't the winners," he says in a low voice. I can almost see him through the door, smirking at me.
The door. The door. Why hadn't I noticed the door? It was opened but I didn't see that the lock was only lockable from the outside.
His footsteps receded and I heard the creak of the front door to the apartment being shut closed.
There's only one thing to do now, and that is to get out of my second hellhole, this apartment with who knows what's inside of it.