The games ended with one black guy standing in a room covered with blood and fecal matter.

I know, it's gross, but it's the hazards of the business.

The guy was probably one of the few not in his late teens. He looked mid-twenties. He had a short afro with a couple of teeth planted inside like seeds. His knuckles were pretty torn up, as if he had fought a functioning fan. He labored with his breath like a lion after the chase.

See, when pushed to the edge, many people can become instant killers. This guy had no problem slaughtering a bunch of kids just so that he could stay alive.

It made my job to finish him much easier on the conscience.

"You've done a good job," I said walking towards him. His body was shaking as he looked around the room. He had finally seen what he had done. My voice had disrupted his auto-animal response.

I stopped him from dwelling too much on what he had done by stabbing my sword in his chest. "Too bad I'm the last one standing."

His eyes shut and just as I was about to withdraw my sword from his chest the doors behind me sprung open. The two armed guards stopped in their tracks. One of them vomited on the floor.

I yanked my sword from the man's chest, and he collapsed to the floor. The guard who had a stronger stomach wished he was a turtle and had a shell to hide in. "You—you monster. You killed them all."

"Not all of them," I corrected.

He reached for his gun, but my throwing knife got to him first. He joined the others on the floor.

I walked to the guy retching. He wiped his mouth, shaking as if he was battling a cold spell. "You're a demon. There's a special place in Hell for you."

I sighed, fearful that he was right. Even if I wanted to, I couldn't emerge from this life unscathed by eternal punishment. As much as I couldn't wait until I turned 18 to walk away from this existence, my greatest fear was that in the next six years, I would eventually fall in love with it.

Or at least find it like a drug withdrawal I couldn't defeat.

"I know," I said before ending his life.

After cleaning up the blood from my sword, I sheathed it and made my way upstairs. I was done with killing for the day, as far as I saw it. I did my job, now I had some math homework to finish up.

On my way past the curtain that divided the upstairs legitimate business from the downstairs initiation chamber, I murmured to the lady at the front desk who stared at me as if I was a ghost that had passed in front of her. "You might want to hire someone special to clean up the mess downstairs."

I pushed the door open and left her speechless.

I made my way down the block, my jeans covered in dried blood. A couple of drops also stained my hands and face. The goal was to wash myself off at a water fountain in the nearby park, but a black Mercedes stopped in front of me as I was about to cross the street.

It could've been members of the Locusts, called in to take me out. For some reason, my reaction timing to reach for my weapon was stunted. It was almost as if my body didn't want to defend itself.

Lucky for me, the back door to the car opened up and I saw the platinum suit and red tie shine from within, followed by a smile that could give a gremlin a run for its money.

"Za-Za get in," my father said.

I rolled my eyes. It was embarrassing to have my father pick me up like this after projects. I could wipe out hundreds of souls, but he still found the need from time to time to pick me up, especially during the daytime. Like vampires, it was during the day that assassins were most vulnerable.

I was about to hop in when my father stopped me. "Did I raise a savage?"

I looked down at my blood-stained clothes. "Yeap."

He pulled out a towel and a plastic bag from a compartment beneath the floorboard that was covering an assault rifle. He closed it shut and placed the towel on the black leather seat. He held open the bag. "Shoes inside here. I will not have this car soiled."

I did as he asked and was finally admitted into the car.

He tapped the divide between the driver seat and the back seat. "Take us home."

The car pulled out of Washington Park, and made its way towards the closest highway.

Meanwhile, my father examined while shaking his head. "I told you to always bring an extra pair of clothes. You need to change out of such filth after completing jobs."

"Sorry," I muttered staring away from him towards the outside window.

My father shifted in his seat, facing out towards his window as well. We passed by houses with boarded up windows, yards filled with rubbish, zombies zoning in and out of this world on the curbs.

And amidst all of this I noticed mothers cooking in the kitchens of dilapidated homes as incense of baked chicken intoxicated me. I saw children playing basketball with a soccer ball sorely in need of air and using a trash can as a basket. I saw elderly folks handing out bagged lunches to the few zombies who had awakened from their trance on those sidewalk curbs.

"Look at them," my father sucked his teeth. "Such despicable creatures the poor are. To elect to remain in such a miserable state will always baffle me. Is laziness such a necessary commodity?"

"I don't think they choose to be poor," I muttered and immediately regretted it. My father was the lecturer type, and I had walked into his trap. He ensnared me with a comment I couldn't refuse to bite back on.

"Oh Za-Za, they choose it alright. Poverty is supposed to be a temporary state. However, these people choose to stay here because they lack the will to labor. And I should know, I was impoverished myself when I was younger."

My father has never disclosed this to me. I thought he was born into wealth, into this family. He never did go into detail on how he was selected to be the new RC leader.

"My parents were poor small farmers competing with the industrial farms, foolish to believe that they ever stood a chance. After high school, I fled the coup and came to Chicago. I found a job cleaning toilets; I put myself through college; I studied computer science and engineering; and I went on to develop some of the most advanced robotic systems this country has ever seen. Even the U.S. military uses my designs for training and combat operations. And you want to know how I did all that?"

He paused and turned towards me. "Hard work. None of it was easy. Had I chosen to stay poor, to stay at that pathetic farm, I would've been like these saps you see here."

I had always thought his ancestry dated back to Momma Emma, the founder of the Reapers. But with this new information...

"So Mom brought you into this life?" I asked.

"Your mother is an astonishing woman. We met at an exhibition where she was interested in purchasing a training system for her family who were gun enthusiasts. One thing led to another and she eventually proposed to me. But before doing so, she introduced me to her family's background, what they stood for, what they fought for, and I couldn't help loving her even more."

"Keeping the poor destitute attracted you then?" I said with a hint of ire in my voice.

My father reflected that ire by firmly placing his hand on my shoulder and squeezing it. "Ah, Za-Za, we don't fight to keep them poor. They can escape poverty at any chance they wish. They simply have to get up and leave. No, no, we don't keep the poor where they are, but we also don't allow parasites."

He pointed outside the window as we passed by an unemployment office. A long line reached outside the office where men and women, many young, waited in line to get into the building. "You see that lot there? They're all waiting in line for checks from the government. They are simply too lazy, or too good to work. They rather steal from others. Taxes, my taxes, goes to them. And when they get home, guess what they spend it on?"

He pointed to the zombies on the sidewalks, the inebriated men and women walking around holding bottles inside paper bags. "They spend it on temporary escapes." I felt his hand pressing harder into my shoulder blade. "They're wasting my money on garbage."

He released his grip on me and straightened his suit. "You'll understand once you grow older and have to pay taxes and hear crazy politicians and groups of lazy young people threatening to steal more of the hard-earned wealth you fought for in order to feed people's addiction to poverty."

I really didn't know what to say at the time. At the time, I couldn't quite understand why people were poor if they received help like this.

But somehow, I felt and knew my father had something to do with this. If he wasn't directly keeping them poor, then he was another obstacle for them to overcome.

I stood silent. I didn't think my shoulder could afford another lecture.

As we turned onto the highway, my father said one last thing before pulling out his tablet. "If the poor put as much effort into escaping poverty, into actually accomplishing something, rather than suing the rich, accusing good politicians of lies, and squeezing every single penny they can out of us, then maybe they can be where we're at too."

And while my father tapped away on his tablet, I wondered to myself what role the Locusts played in keeping these people in the dregs of society too.