Yes, I know the chapter title sounds pathetic, but hear me out.

Rumors spread across my prep school, Crown's Academy for Future Leaders (CA). People suspected my family was a part of the Reapers, and no one wanted to be friends with a kid whose family were gang members. I wouldn't blame them. I didn't even want to be involved with my family.

Ashton was the exception to this rule.

Ash wasn't exactly eye candy. In fact, his name matched his dark skin—dry to the point of looking like ash. He wasn't the strongest looking guy in the classroom as he walked into my seventh grade Spanish class. His eyes were pale brown, like the inside of bark torn from the trunk of a tree.

Yet, his hair was black, and shiny, styled like Elvis Presley. He had a smile that could make dead flowers bloom; and his voice sounded mature and confident like a competent leader.

After the teacher introduced him to the class, he sat at the only empty seat in the room—the one next to me.

Today was conversation day, my least favorite day. It usually ended up with me awkwardly trying to find a partner to pair up with to practice Spanish conversation on a particular topic. As I said before, people viewed me as the plague so I kind of had it rough finding anyone to chat with.

But with Ash being new, he had no clue who I was. "Hola, puedo hablar contigo?" He sounded like a Texan trying to speak Spanish. I chuckled at how he said "con-TIN-go."

I turned my chair towards him. "Por supuesto."

The topic was food. I found out he was a huge fan of ice cream, which we debated whether it actually counted as food or not. His favorite flavor was rocky road. I had to ask him what rocky road even consisted of.

"Tiene almendras con chocolate, helado de chocolate, y..." he paused thinking. "I don't know how to say marshmallow in Spanish."

"Malvavisco," I said thinking that was a horrid flavor. I'll stick to pistachio.

A former student of CA stopped by the classroom and the Spanish teacher started to chat with the guy. Meanwhile, the rest of the class used this time to chat and gossip in English.

"The name's Ashton in case you forgot, but you can call me Ash." He pointed to his skin. "You can't miss me."

At least he owned up to it. "My name is Zaslay, but you can call me Zay."

"Zaslay," he repeated in that deep voice of his. "Epic name. Sounds like a superhero's name."

I almost coughed up my lungs. "Far from it."

"So tell me Zay," he folded his hands and leaned closer. "Do these kids strike you as..."

He searched around the classroom. Most of the gossip was about us. Eyes glanced in our direction. Dangerous accusations were thrown in the air, mostly revolving around Ash dying.

"Assholes?" I completed.

Ash smiled. "Looks like we're on the same page."

I sat back impressed that I found another person who wasn't blind at this school. "What made you transfer here?"

"My dad," he said. "He just got a new job. He said I couldn't go to the local public school anymore, so he sent me here thinking I'd be safer."

"A new job, huh? What does he do?"

Ash leaned in a bit excited. "He's the new Mayor of Chicago."

I've heard a lot about the new mayor of Chicago from my father's rants. Mayor Dayton ran on an anti-corruption campaign, guaranteeing to clear out the politicians in the city that were controlled by the international corporations or powerful organizations.

Like the one my family runs.

As you can deduce, my father wasn't a fan of the Mayor. He called him a fool for thinking he could rid the city of a cancer it didn't have. What the Mayor called corruption; my father simply called governing.

"That's awesome," I said. And I meant it. Yet at the same time, I felt scared.

Because people my father disagreed with had a tendency to disappear.

The bell rang. Chairs and desks were being shuffled back into place to prepare for the next class. Before Ash pulled his desk away from me, he asked, "Wanna talk more at lunch?"

I nodded, hoping the negative rumors about me wouldn't infect him by then.

Either the rumors failed to reach Ash, or he simply ignored them. By the end of the day, we were walking out of school together chatting about the week ahead.

"You should come with me this Friday to City Hall. I can show you my dad's office."

Sure, I can just swing by before I go assassinate someone.

Couldn't say that.

"I'll ask my parents," I said.

Ash was jumping with excitement. "Cool, see you tomorrow Zay."

For once, I was actually looking forward to school the next day.

***

My after-school regiment consisted of homework, studying, and training to kill people. You probably only care about the last part.

Typically, training consisted of running a course my parents had created each week. They hired experts, ex-CIA, Navy Seal, KGB, anyone and everyone who has experience killing people with little to no traces left behind.

Monday was reaction day. It was also the most important day of training for me. At any instance a target can become an adversary. My father would always tell me to never let your prey become the predator.

Especially since I allowed it to happen once and my brother died in the process.

I was walking down a tight European street, with apartments rising on both sides. I heard a whizz and found myself doing some moves out of the Matrix to dodge knives tossed from machines hidden behind ground floor doors and windows. I twirled out of their paths, redirecting my own throwing knives at the machines to deactivate them.

Robots with extreme speed and close-quarters-combat skills crashed through windows to swing, jab, and slash at my body with real serrated knives. I had to rely on my senses to avoid them. I kept my eyes on the two in front of me, smelled the motor oil of the two robots behind me, and heard the shutters to the balconies slide open.

I decided to take a break from the Katana and tried out the Dao instead. This Chinese instrument of death was crafted by the finest bladesmith in the Western Hemisphere. Modified to cut through steel, I swung this single-edge sword around my body and rendered four robots into eight halves.

As soon as I finished this, I smelled gunpowder moments before rifles laid down fire upon my position. Being one step ahead saved me again as I ducked inside a ground-floor building, where I was greeted with darkness.

Sight was useless. In fact, I kept my eyes shut to tune into my ears, nose, and touch. I felt a ripple of wind coming from my right. I heard the gears of the robot swinging for my head. I ducked and flipped the machine over. It weighed as much as a small couch, but Tuesday's vigor training days have greatly improved my strength. As assassins we occasionally come up against targets two, three, or four times our size, especially here where people dined exclusively on fast food.

Someone flashed a light in my face, trying to blind me, but my eyes were closed. It appeared as a hue of pale white with my eyelids closed. I jabbed my Dao forward and heard it pierce through wires and metal. I withdrew it, swinging it around my back to slice off the head of another bot who tried to sneak up behind me to slice me open like a piñata.

Satisfied that the bots were dispersed, I snapped my fingers, listing to the way it bounced off of the plastered walls, the wooden floorboards, and slithered up a staircase to the second floor. I felt my way along the handrail.

Floodlights shun from above. I heard the safeties of three, four, six guns turn off. I peered through my eyelids and saw a sturdy elevator towards my right. I ducked inside and closed the door behind and punched all the floors. As the box rose, bullets raced from assault rifles, trying to pierce through thick layers of steel surrounding the elevator.

The elevator rang with a ding when it stopped on the first floor. I rolled out the box and kept myself behind the railing. When the enemy on the first floor stopped to reload, I tossed a single knife through its skull and it collapsed to the ground. I ducked back into the elevator, just in time as the doors closed and rose up to the second floor.

The next bot was waiting by the door. I saw him before he noticed. I leaped across the walls and planked myself on the ceiling. When the elevator stopped, he walked in wondering where the heck I went. I let go and sliced my sword straight down its body, splitting the whole thing in half.

I did not anticipate a friend of his waiting outside. I was out of knives, so I tossed my sword at him like a javelin and it impaled his chest. The elevator closed and rose up to the third floor.

Two more floors, two more robots decommissioned. I borrowed one of their rifles and when I arrived at the sixth floor, I rushed towards the roof of the apartment.

I pushed open the rusty door and it cried on its hinges as it swung forcefully open, exposing the rays of sunlight that bathed my face. I caught someone dressed in a suit on the roof. He wore a striped suit and was smoking a cigar casually. It looked like a human. I wasn't sure if this was a part of the course.

My parents were known for putting tricks in the training courses. Sometimes they mix in a couple of rabid tigers with the robots, a swarm of wasps, and once my oldest brother had his actual contract included in the course as well.

I placed my hands on the trigger about to fire.

But, like a flash, the figure was gone.

And I knew I was grounded. "Too slow Za-Za."

I felt a hand whack me in the back of my neck. I collapsed onto the hot asphalt roof and immediately blacked out.