The Black Dahlia

01. Mission

" X-1947, to the office."

Black's head automatically shot up at the voice flowing out of the speaker. He understood the code instantly. He had heard the code uncountable times, so he knew what it practically meant : a new mission for him.

He turned off his laptop as he stood up. Since he finished writing his report, Black decided to head to the office right away. Not many people arrived, which made office empty and silent. Nothing to be surprised about. He always came to work earlier than others. He walked towards the elevator, thinking about what the mission could be. Black had been trained for his entire life as an agent of Special Security Service of Classified Criminals-for short, SC. They dealt with crimes that were considered unsuitable to be revealed officially. Being the most secretive institution under the government, not many people were considered qualified enough to be selected as an agent of SC. Black was selected to be trained as an agent when he was 6. He still remembered the day when he left the Stanhill Orphanage and became part of national secret. Training was hard, but he was proud of having been chosen to be an agent. Now, he was one of the most capable agent of SC while being the youngest one. Merciless, they would call him. He didn't even blink, you saw it? He's only 17 year old!  Well, Black didn't care about all those comments. Warm heart wasn't really needed when carrying out a mission, anyway.

As the elevator arrived on the second floor, he  moved quickly to the office. Then, he knocked on the door.

"This is Agent Black, code X-1947 copying."

He waited for few moments and soon enough the door opened. He walked into the office without hesitation. Zach Victor, the Director of SC, didn't even bother to raise his head. Typical. Black bowed lightly, just like everyone here did when meeting Victor.

"At your service, sir."

Victor finally met his eyes after hearing Black's voice. His black eyes were as cold as ever.

"I suppose you're here for the new mission?"

"I believe I do."

"Well, then."

Victor stood up. Sound of chair being pushed away echoed in the room. He soon came back with a pile of papers, and handed them to Black. While he briefly skimmed through the pages, Victor started to explain.

"You might as well as know about the new project we've been working on since June, do you?"

"Yes."

Still looking through the pages, he answered. Of course he knew-the project was heard to be risky even for SC to handle: complete removal of Minatio, one of the biggest and the oldest mafia groups in the world. Not many knew about their activities, because the government chose to hide their crimes. It was all too gory and cruel, and was possible to make people grow anxiety towards society. That was exactly why the project was assigned to SC. Minatio's doings were becoming unable to control, but they've grown too enormous by decades. Even the government didn't dare to do anything towards them. Was he planning to assign Black to a group mission of the project?

Victor continued.

"We've tried to break down Minatio for almost ten years now. There had been few tries and all of them failed except one. We once succeeded on eliminating their boss's partner, but that's all. So this time, we're told to begin with small damages-by tearing off their system slowly."

He remained silence for a short period of time, as if to give Black a moment to take all the information in. Victor spoke once again as he laid his gaze on Black.

"Agent Black, your mission is to eliminate the boss's heir."

The boss's heir. He nodded. Black realized what they were planning to do. Eliminating-or, what you can call a murder-the boss's partner was the only strategy that had succeeded so far. It was clear that they'd choose the same one again.