Operation: One percent

Chapter 2

Margaret

"The point of having a profile is monitoring the civilians" as one of my clients said back in the day.

"Government just wants us all dead." said another.

The government of Rintalis figured out that our social media was a powerful tool for terror. The practice of lighthearted posting of photographs, quotes, and updates has long vanished. It is not like we were forbidden to do it, it's just that everyone was hesitant to do so. The sinister nature of SierraTech's mobile application had the sole purpose of control.

The government would inform the population of new policies or news, and if a person had no credits, they would be as good as gone.

The commenter's thoughts together with every private information would be leaked and posted with no authorization. The more emotional the thought was, the more information would be unveiled about the commenter. That way, they would declare the person as the enemy of the government, justifying the reason for what was basically, a witch hunt by the bounty hunters. After all, according to them, they had visible proof that the person was a terrorist. Unfortunately, rare were the people who had a nice opinion about the government.

In the past, the news would spark outrage, such as the prevention of abortion for women, regardless of the cause of pregnancy, or a ban on all artistic forms. The death toll after the ban on abortion law was one of the highest I have seen, and the protest that followed was quickly silenced with militia intervention.

Naturally, the journalists only served the government, posting articles upon articles about how great and incredible Rintalis was, and that the Demoris republic is evil and forever a threat. It was obvious that they were spoon-feeding us with lies, but it seems that nowadays, an all-present apathy was the true ruler among the citizens.

The cost of not posting thoughts, potentially saving your life, varied from month to month, but this time it was 5000 credits.

Employing bounty hunters was never admitted to, as the government would never admit to killing their people. Rather, it was public knowledge as it was never addressed by the political leaders of Rintalis. It was enough to see that the police did nothing when bounty hunters came after them.

They even added the name to the indelible mobile app- Lilith. The app which can never be uninstalled. 

Getting rid of the phones didn't stop the thoughts from being posted in case the payment wasn't made. There was no escaping Lilith.

It seems funny how a piece of software could have more humanity and importance to the government, rather than its people.

Now 34 and an assassin, I took a moment to check my next target.

Ace Mountangue, the same age as me, has never been married, nor had any children. Learned to play the piano at the age of 6, was top of his class at Yolenda University with a degree in business rated 4th richest man in the country.

I took a moment to see where he worked, and to my surprise, it was the company that was responsible for the development of "Lilith"- SierraTech.

At that moment, my resolution steeled and crumbled just as quickly when I read that he was well-versed in martial arts. This meant that taking him head-on was a no, as I had no official training in fighting, and I avoided direct combat as much as possible.

As an ordinary person such as myself, I went through the means that I knew the human race could not possibly escape. Arsenic and ingested poisonings were my go-to's, but I did carry two daggers with me in case of emergency. I have used them only once.