How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 40: GET OUT

Infiltration was only as good as one's exfiltration skills. Otherwise, it was a one-way ticket, and the life of an assassin thrives on roundtrip journeys.

The two guys were young men, probably in their mid-twenties. They were just as surprised as we were when they encountered us on the porch. One of them reached for his smartwatch and pressed a button. Ash and I were coughing and dizzy, but we managed to take them both down in a matter of seconds.

"What did you do?" I asked the one guy who touched his watch. I twisted his arm behind his back for extra motivation to tell the truth.

He cried out in pain and cast a warning. "You should go while you still can. They'll be sending a squad car here in seconds."

As if on cue, I saw the headlights of a car a block away making their way to the cul-de-sac. I pinched a pressure point on the guy's shoulders that instantly rendered him unconscious. It wouldn't hold for long. I helped Ash put his guy to sleep too and we lifted Jazz towards a row of bushes just near the gated wall. On the outside was a security camera on a swivel. We had to time this right while also getting Jazz over as well.

I was digging through my bag for a rope gun when the headlights from the squad car turned onto the cul-de-sac and I heard four guards emerge from the vehicle, dressed like police officers. Their hands reached for their guns. They approached the house we were in. Stumbling from the house was the old lady, disoriented and disheveled from our encounter.

Bang!

The old lady relinquished her grip to gravity and collapsed down the porch stairs, blood trickling from her head.

I'm used to seeing people die, but somehow even this made my heart skip a beat in fear.

"She was one of the workers," I heard a female officer say as she approached the porch.

"Who cares," the shooting officer said with a deep raspy voice. "Just dump her with the others."

"And what about those two?" asked the female.

The shooting officer studied their faces. He pulled out a gun and shot both of them point-blank.

"Sir," the female stuttered. "They were still alive."

The male officer got really closer to the female officer and scolded her. "We don't reward incompetence." He motioned to the two cops standing motionless in the background waiting for orders. "In the bed with the others."

The two officers approached the bodies and carried them to the ATV bed that was loaded with bodies of people, many black and brown, many unshaven, with tattoos, sores, and cracking skin.

As the officers went inside to inspect the house, I turned to Ash who was by Jazz's side feeling for her pulse. He looked at me with a long face and shook his head.

Damnit, I thought. We lost her.

Then Jazz released her grip on the book she had been holding onto. Ash picked it up and started skimming through it until I scolded him.

"Ash, this isn't a time to read."

He said nothing as his eyes recoiled in horror. Then he offered the book to me. I took it and closed it shut.

"That journal," Ash's voice was shakier than a child who had discovered monsters beneath his bed. "It has everything Jazz saw."

I opened it back up and flipped through the book. I saw dated entries, depicted diagrams, tallies of lives lost, and even illustrations of sites she spied on. One of them showed a vast area of land and a dumpster truck unloading decaying bodies into a field of ash.

I continued flipping through the book. I saw a diagram of the sprayer and the tank. She wrote notes on the side, "Chemical spray, composition unknown. Speeds up decomposition. Breaks down flesh and bones into ash."

Pages of notes detailed the facets of the community. "Security guards are confirmed Reaper members," I saw on one page. "Cleanup crews are graduates from the training program," I saw on another. "Failed candidates poisoned with potential carbon monoxide-cyanide mixture in houses."

I dropped the book. That dream wasn't just a dream. It was real. Noa was showing me something important—my dad created this community to weed out the weak from the fallen. Those in poverty who wish to stay in poverty and receive free handouts, he ended. Those who took the opportunity to rise up, were given the task of killing off their fellow poor members of society who gave them a bad rep.

Part of me wanted this to be untrue. There's no way my father would do all of this. What would possess him to do so?

There was only one way to find out.

"We have to go," I said picking up the book and shoving it in my bag.

"What about Jazz?" Ash looked at her. "Auntie wants her back dead or alive?"

Another squad car pulled up to the cul-de-sac. I heard cages rattling inside, and then a sound barrier collapsed and barking erupted.

"Sniff them out and find them!" I heard the shooting officer's raspy voice echo across the cul-de-sac.

I looked at the fence and then at Jazz's body. "There's no time." The dogs' barks were growing louder. Their teeth chomped with emphasis. Their handlers would have to fight to restrain them from eating whatever it was they found.

Which would be us.

Another squad car pulled up. I heard boots slap onto the pavement and start breaking down doors into various houses.

Ash must've seen the quagmire we were in and he sucked his teeth. "Sorry Jazz," he said touching her forehead. "But your journal will save lives. Your death will help bring this hellhole down."

Ash and I waited for the camera to swivel away from where we would land, then we scaled the fence and raced through the surrounding woods until we reached the car.

Xavier unlocked the doors and started the engine. "Glad to see you two are safe," Xavier said. "Where to?"

"Home."

***

Once we were back at the estate, I told Ash to wait in the car. I handed him my bag with the journal. "Stay here. I need to check something."

"Are you sure I can't come..." I slammed the door, cutting off his question. I jogged to the front door and entered the pin.

Once inside I called out, "Dad."

No response. I knocked on the door of his office. The lights were out. No one was inside. The lamppost outside provided enough light to illuminate his desk and cast a fast fallout shadow upon the face of the painting of the farm. I opened the door and went inside, closing it behind me. I walked up to the painting, grabbed the frame, and pulled it off the wall.

Nothing. The wall was plastered.

"Where's the safe?" I asked myself. It was here in the dream, and if everything else was real, why wasn't this?

The lights came on in the office. I turned around and leaning casually by the bookshelf was my father.

"Looking for this," he said holding a USB. The same USB that contained all the information on Operation Sweeper that my brother uncovered in my dream.

He walked up to the holographic table and plugged the USB inside. "Xavier called, telling me of your discovery of the community. I deduced you were on a mission for the Locusts, who must've been investigating Cosecha Meadows for quite some time now."

A virtual file was projected onto the table, labeled, Operation Sweeper. "I might as well include you in on the plans before you get the wrong idea like your brother did."