"Sir, shall I call in a clean-up crew?" Xavier asked my father once we were back in the car.

My father shook his head as he placed his foldable scythe into a briefcase. "No, the contract calls for his body to be discovered and plastered over the media. Let it serve as a sign to those who target the hard-working people of society."

"As you wish," Xavier said, driving the car off of the property and onto the road.

My father then pulled out his tablet and was tapping away for a couple of minutes until he finally spoke to me. "When you get home, I want you to pack your bags. You're ending the school year early. You'll spend the last third of the year overseas."

I wanted to argue, but I wasn't in the mood. In fact, he was probably doing me a favor by putting me as far away from him and the memory of this day as possible.

"Your older brother Kaorc has been tailing and attempting to kill a high-priority target in Africa. It has been months and yet no success. He says the boy is 'unkillable.' You'll verify that for me while clearing your head of all this."

My father shut off his tablet and stowed it in his briefcase. "I suggest you gather intel on the boy first. You'll be attending the same school as him since he's of your own age. I expect success where your brother has failed."

Then he placed a hand on my shoulder, and I recoiled as if a bird had pooped on me. My father gently pulled back. "Perhaps by summer's end you'll put all of this behind you."

And for the rest of the car ride there was silence until we reached the estate.

***

By the end of the week I was gone, flying to Lagos to admit myself into a boarding school where my target was attending. On the long flight over, I promised myself to finish this quickly. I didn't need the thought of a contract lingering on my mind for several weeks.

But I won't do it the way my father intended.

If I was going to finish this contract, I'd do it like Noa would've done it. I'll keep the boy alive and gone. My days of killing for money were over. I had only one outstanding contract that could be resolved with violence.

And I wasn't even strong enough to complete it just yet.

I quickly found out that this boarding school was going to be much tougher than I had imagined. The school looked more like a prison. It had electric fences, barbed wire, security guards, and gray buildings that looked like a place where innocence went to die.

Yet, when I got inside, I saw banners encouraging reading, trophy cases, and lockers. Children were tripping each other, guards were trying to separate fighting students from one another, and a group of thugs were tossing textbooks at cowering students while shouting horrible slurs.

I wasn't the only white girl at the school. In fact, there was a large chunk of white people at the school, with a majority of the student population being local Nigerians and the sprinkle of other ethnicities. Spotting my target wasn't difficult. He had copper-bronze skin that looked like a third-place trophy. Dirty blond hair reflected the lights from the hallway onto the gray lockers against the wall, many tagged with genitals and curse words. He wore the school's uniform, a plaid gray polo with navy blue shorts.

He was opening up his locker that was tagged with words like "freak," "ghost," "demon." As people walked down the hallway, they seemed to cross to the other side of the lockers just to avoid being within his gravitational pull.

Of course, there were always exceptions to the rule. A group of bullies had no problem surrounding him each holding an odd assortment of objects in their hand.

They didn't even say anything. They just unloaded the objects at him. Crumpled pieces of paper, pencils, pens, textbooks, even a stapler were tossed at him from close range.

Yet everything they threw at him hit the walls of the locker and he seemed unaffected. I shook my head to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Was this kid that good at dodging stuff? I definitely wouldn't mind having him on my dodgeball team.

Then the group ran out of ammunition and made a run for it, one of them shouting, "Anuofia!"

The copper boy who had just avoided the assortment of school supplies clenched his fists. He then picked up a fallen stapler and tossed it at the person who insulted him. He hit his target in the back of his head, and the kid collapsed to the ground, knocked out cold.

Curving from around a corner was a school administrator, perhaps the director of the school, who saw only the last bit of the exchange and ordered for guards to detain the boy and to lock him up in his room.

"You never learn your lesson, do you boy?" The guards carried him off and I trailed them.

They led me down a hallway past two security guards who were standing watch over an exit. I tried to follow the boy through the door but was stopped by a hand against my chest.

"Where's a pretty young girl like you off to?" he asked.

"I forgot my books," I said while pulling the guard's hand off me. He didn't seem to like that.

"You go back to class you hear?" he said.

"Or what?" I asked.

They reached their hands towards their batons. But they were down and napping before they could withdraw them.

Once the guards were taken care of, I pushed through the doors and caught a glimpse of the boy being led past a small outdoor courtyard, up to a third floor where he was being shoved into a room with the door closed behind the two of them. I followed towards the door and peeked inside. I saw the guard tying the boy in restraints, almost like he was being placed in solitary. There were no windows in the room. The only glass pane was at the door to get a view of the person on the inside. He was strapped to a bed and the guard shoved his finger towards his chest, leveling inaudible threats. Then the guard turned to leave. I went and took cover behind a pair of trash bins as he exited the room and made his way back into the school building.

I picked the lock with ease and opened the door.

The boy was just standing there, dusting himself off. The straps on his bed were still tied down. How did he manage to wiggle free?

The boy looked at me and I saw some pretty amazing golden-green eyes. They were cosmic galaxies viewed through the lens of a telescope that had a limited capability to capture the sheer awe of its power.

"Who are you?" he said with an accent that didn't quite fit in. It had a slight tinge of British mixed within the background. Perhaps South African?

The door shut behind me. "Doesn't matter who I am," I said. "What matters is that someone wants you dead."

The boy shrugged his shoulders and reached for a book on a shelf. "Let them try."

He sat down and started fanning through the pages. It was an old torn-up cartoon book that he was reading backwards from right to left. I wasn't sure if he was okay in the head.

"Look, I'm here to get you away from here and by the looks of it, you'll be thankful for that."

He turned a page and giggled. Then he showed me the drawing on the page. It was like a weird comic book with Japanese lettering. "Look, boobs."

I snatched the book away from him and tossed it aside. "This is serious. You need to leave, or I'll have no choice but to kill you myself." Something I didn't even want to contemplate doing. But even Noa told me sometimes the threat was necessary in order to make this work.

"Nah, I'm good." He walked past me and picked up the book and returned to his bed to continue reading. This kid was already pushing my patience.

"I don't have time for this," I said grabbing his hand. "You're coming with me."

"And where will we go?" he said, yanking himself free from my grip.

That I had no clue, but anywhere but here. This place was a glorified prison. "Somewhere other than here," I said.

He returned to his bed and kept on reading.

"Do you want to die?"

"Nobody can hurt me."

This kid honestly had zero care. He was living in a solitary confinement room, strapped to a chair, bullied by a group of thugs, and yet he preferred to stay here? What the heck was his deal?

I didn't want to do this, but it looked like I needed to drag him from this place.

I latched my hand around his wrist and pulled him up from the bed. Either I was too strong, or he wasn't expecting this. He lunged forward and collapsed onto me as we tumbled towards the ground.

I shook my head and felt his hands around my chest.

The boy looked like a child upon unwrapping his presents on Christmas day. "Who needs manga boobs when you can have the real thing."

That was it. I pushed him off my chest and was on top of him now. I readied a punch to land square across his face. I unleashed it with all my strength.

Somehow, I missed and punched the concrete floor instead.

I pulled my hand back in pain and cursed out loud before trying to punch him with my other hand, this time, holding his neck down with one hand while I punched with the other. There was no way I'd miss again.

I punched again and was met with the same result. I backed off of him, hugging both of my hands in pain. Then I reached into my bag and pulled out an electric baton. The boy seemed to rise up from the ground as if the wind was helping him up.

I swung the baton across his body.

The baton cut through his body.

I froze with the baton appearing to be stuck in his chest.

"I take it you don't like me touching you."

The boy was dense in the head and simultaneously transparent. I pulled the baton out and set the electrical setting on high. I swung again and the baton passed through him once more. I might as well have been trying to fight fog.

"What the hell are you?" First my father teleporting and murdering people on the spot, now a boy who was transparent. I could see why Ka failed and called him "unkillable."

The boy picked up his book and turned towards his bed. He laid down and started reading. "A ghost. A freak. A demon." He turned the page and kept on reading. "Choose your label."

I turned off the baton. My father said someone important wanted this boy dead, a boy hidden in a prison school out in Lagos, Nigeria. Who the heck wanted him dead? This strange power made him difficult to harm, but I wasn't sure if he was truly unkillable.

Deep down, the assassin in me wanted to find out.

I pulled out my knife, coated in poison, the same I used on the Mayor. I took a step towards him.

"You can leave now," the boy said. "You're just like the others. You say you're my friend, but it's a lie. You ask me to leave. You fail. You try to hurt me. You fail. You try to kill me. You fail. You leave and then you never return."

I stopped in my tracks, ashamed at what I was doing. I had a little trouble getting this boy to listen to me and already I was returning back to my old murderous ways.

I sheathed my knife and held my hands up. "I'm not going to hurt you," I said. "And I'm not going to run away from you."

The boy spoke without taking his eyes off of his book. "How do I know you won't just get in a car and leave me here alone with nobody again?"

I wasn't sure when I had done that in the first place, but I was certain this boy has had a difficult past. I walked over to his bed and sat down on it. "You know, you remind me of a friend I had..."

"Must be nice to have friends." He said turning the page.

"It is nice. He was the best friend a girl could ask for," I said trying to forget the last image of Ash's dead body. Ash saved me from loneliness. He came into my school, into my life, and showed me a better path forward.

If Ash was here, he wouldn't abandon this kid. He would befriend him.

I reached my hand forward. "I'm Zaslay. But everyone calls me Zay."

The boy closed his book slowly and sat up on his bed cautiously. He saw my extended hand and looked at it with confusion.

I whispered, "This is when you take my hand, shake it, and tell me your name."

He did as he was told. "I'm Alpheus, but no one calls me anything but hurtful names."

People, including kids, could be horrible. "Alpheus uh? Mind if I call you Alpha then?"

I never saw a person's face brighten up like Alpha's face when I gave him his new nickname. He wrapped his arms around me in a hug, then quickly pulled back awkwardly. "I mean, I love it."

I smiled. My father said I couldn't have friends in this line of work. He insinuated that they all die at some point because of my profession.

He failed to account for Alpha, the boy who was unkillable.

Whether that was true or not, I would make sure Alpha remained unkillable for as long as I lived.

He pulled up his manga book and showed it to me. "Want to read this with me?"

I looked down at the Japanese lettering and I might as well have been looking at chicken scratch. "I can't read Japanese."

Alpha scooched closer to me so I could get a better view. "Don't worry, I'll teach you. This word here means..."

Alpha would go on to teach me a lot of things. Most importantly, he introduced me to a world that was much bigger, much more complicated, than an assassin could have ever imagined.