How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 35: MY NEW MISSION

The wafting of air through tubes, the beeping of a machine, the hum of a television, the whispers of a prayer.

This is what my ears woke up to when I reentered this world.

"Please God," I heard a shaky voice next to me. "Help her. They're going to pull the plug this afternoon, and I can't stop them."

I heard him sniffling. It was Ash. It was always Ash.

"I lost mommy, I lost Darius..." he wept. "I even lost my old dad. Please God, I'll do anything. Just, don't let me lose her too."

I moved my hand in the direction of his voice. I opened my eyes and the world took a second for the darkness to get vacuumed away and the white fluorescent lights of the hospital room to reflect a blurry vision of the reality I had returned to.

I felt my hand rest on Ash's. He looked up at me and paused for a second. He was frozen almost, like he couldn't believe that his prayers were answered. For a good ten seconds the only thing moving were the tears down his face.

He said nothing as he reached in to hug me. He held nothing back either. He collapsed into a sob that I'd never expect to come from a boy. But in the end, he was just a boy. We were both children growing up in this tainted world—a world left to us by corrupt adults who wished only to pass on their hatred onto their children so they could keep it alive for the next generation.

I wrapped my arms around him and although I didn't explode into tears, I did feel something building up inside me. That crack from shattered glass...somehow pieces were left hidden beneath the rugs of my mind. It would be impossible to build back the original design—I didn't even remember the shape in which the glass took. But I could at least find a way to put some of the pieces back together.

"I'm sorry Ash," I said.

Ash kept on sobbing. And I thought of his tears as a baptism into my new life—my new mission. I will become the Reaper Core member I was supposed to be—the one Momma Emma would want. I will become the leader of the Reapers...just like my father wanted, but I won't do what he desired. Ash will become the leader of the Locusts, and together, we will use our combined forces to protect the unprotected.

That will be our song, and I'll prove to Momma Emma that when she hears us sing it, it won't be of our dreams, but of our accomplishments.

A black female doctor came in to check on me. She saw Ash crying and started to comfort him. Then she saw my head turn and she dropped her clipboard and ran to get more staff—most of whom spent their time prying Ash away from me while they examined my condition.

***

My body was well taken care of during my coma. However, my legs had atrophied, so it took a couple of days to almost rebuild the strength to walk. Ash treated me like a grandma constantly guiding me around the tunnels of the Hive. Each time I did, we got greeted by the same people that put us in this situation. As much as I wanted to make them feel my pain, many of them already had. Those initiated fully into the Locusts have gone through the same fifth stage. They understood the pain I went through. Many also admired Ash's willingness to step in and help. A few people disagreed and said that I was cheating, but they were of the minority. They believed that Ash's willingness to bear the brunt of the pain to save my life was an act that they had rarely seen, and the few times they had seen it, it was always a mother stepping in to save her teenage child.

After all, there was no rule against aiding the person through the Tunnel of Punishment. But who would want to bear the load of another member's beating? Not even the apostles sought to be crucified alongside Jesus. They mostly sat there and watched.