Assassins

CHAPTER ONE

Gabriel


They were the greatest assassins that ever lived. That is what no one will say about us when we are dead.
The life of an assassin is not one to envy. We are born detached from this world, viewing everything with empty eyes. As we grow we leave all feeling behind, that is why we can kill anyone without remorse. Husbands, wives, even children, none are safe from our fire. We do not care; we were born for the kill.
Assassins aren’t meant to have meaningful relationships; we are to be elusive like shadows, leaving no trace. Never seen and never loved by anyone. But now my thoughts are not on the kill, they stay with the shaking hand that grips my shoulder, the short, sharp breaths that come from the body pressed against mine.
Perhaps one person will remember my name.
Who am I? To rival gang members, who know of my prowess in killing I am the ‘Angel of Death’. My real name is Gabriel Kynaston, but that doesn’t matter much in my business. I forgot that name long ago.
Right at this moment I stand teetering, hovering over the line of what is right and what I have always known. My gun is aimed but my hands are trembling, something they have never done before. I can no longer kill without feeling because I have finally, in my thirty-one years on this earth, learnt to care for something, someone.
The only person I have ever cared for stands behind me, leaning against a crumbling wall, trusting me with everything inside.
I know where my enemy is, he is crouched behind a bloodstained white pillar at the other end of the deserted city street, tears running down his sweat stained face. He wants me dead, I know it. I don’t blame him.
His hands are steady, so much more than mine now. These are my final moments on earth, I can’t change that.
The man that now points his gun so surely in my direction was once the exception to all assassins. He was different, so full of feeling, so emotional. But I have killed all that now and I know how it hurts him.
I have destroyed him and yet in doing so have slowly found myself. But it is too late, I was born into blood and I will die in blood.
For the first time I wish it wasn’t so.

Three years ago I was sent by Leo, the leader of The Shadows, my gang; the gang I was born and taught to serve, to attempt an assassination on the Mayor of the city. He was newly appointed and not used to the way things worked in the city. What that means is that he was foolish enough to refuse bribes from Leo. The former Mayor had been the puppet of The Shadows, this mayor refused and so Leo craved death. I was to kill the Mayor and then Leo would somehow get his friend, Dave Koller, into office. He wouldn’t even have to bribe Dave.
Dave would let Leo run everything. But I didn’t understand all the politics, all I understood was to kill and that is what I had been instructed to do, by any means possible.
I wasn’t worried about the police, they were terrified of Leo. Sure they turned up at the murder scenes, but usually a few minutes late so that any of Leo’s gang members could have plenty of time to get away. They then filed the deaths under ‘unsolved’ at the police department and left them there. It was either that or become one of those files themselves.
That day I was positioned on the roof of a wine store, pointing my gun in the direction I knew the Mayor’s car would come from. He had an open top, still green enough to trust that his bodyguards could protect him from any threat. Hah, bodyguards were all muscle; that just made them easy targets for someone like me. Shooting them was almost like fun, like a really easy arcade game. They always screamed when they died, such girlish noises from such big men.
The street below me was filled to the brim with people waving flags and smiling, welcoming their new Mayor, I ignored them; they would run away screaming soon enough. The smell of hotdogs and fish-balls came wafting up to the roof on the heavy summer air, filling my nostrils and making my stomach growl but I paid it no heed. All my thoughts were on the kill. In precisely two minutes the Mayor would come around the corner, smiling and waving back at his people and I would plant a bullet right in the centre of his skull.
Then I noticed them, they were perched on the roof opposite me, previously hidden by washing that the inhabitant on the apartment below had hung up to dry.
I knew them, Shinji Kiriyama and Joe Lin, the Japanese and Chinese respectively, assassins of the Red Flag group. I bristled; they were here to protect the Mayor. Shinji had his own gun trained on the exact same spot as me but Joe was watching me, not aiming yet but looking definetly, ready to fire if I moved.
The Red Flags were an illegal gang much like Leo’s but they weren’t dirty. They fought to maintain the peace in the city. They were more like the police than the real police. Every move Leo made the Red Flags would be there to try and thwart it. And sometimes they succeeded, but not on this day. I would let them.
I fumbled in my pocket for a grenade. If Joe moved his gun even the slightest bit I would throw it, blow them both to hell. Never mind about the apartment below, the mission was all that mattered.
Suddenly music began to play, trumpets, a cheap fanfare played straight from a crappy music box hidden somewhere under the worn leather seats of the Mayor’s car. Sure enough he sat in the open top, surrounded by five fat bodyguards, their beady eyes scanning the street for snipers like me. They didn’t spot me but they saw Shinji, panic flared in their eyes until he flashed a small red cloth in their direction. Red Flag group it told them, here to protect. They didn’t want a corrupt Mayor.
Well that was just tough, shit happens and I help cause it. I narrowed my eyes and cocked my gun, the Mayor’s head was an easy target, big and bald and shiny.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Joe move swiftly, he was fast like a cat. One moment he was sitting, watching me coolly and then he was crouched, muscles tensed and gun aimed squarely at my head.
Well, if that was the way they wanted it then there was only one thing to do. With my free hand I pulled the pin from the grenade and threw it, the pin that is. It hit Shinji who jumped, losing his concentration. He examined it, his face the picture of anger when he realised what it was. He tapped Joe on the shoulder. I had a grenade and I would use it, they had to re-evaluate their plan. And in that moment I struck, pulled the trigger and blasted a hole right through the shiny bald skull that was such an easy target. The bodyguards jumped back, splattered with blood and the people screamed, scattering into alleyways, shops, anywhere to get off the street.
I turned quickly to the rooftop opposite, Joe and Shinji were aiming at me, furious now. I didn’t have to kill them, it wasn’t my mission but I didn’t have to let them live either. I glanced at the grenade in my hand and thought ‘what the hell? Just blow them away’.
So I did, throwing the green egg like weapon with all my might. Shinji saw it first, he tugged at Joe’s t-shirt dragging him backwards but it was too late. The grenade hit a round two meters in front of Joe, I didn’t stay to watch what happened but I heard him cry out, his screams mingling with those of the people down below.
It was into the screaming masses that I disappeared, blending unnoticed, assuming a panicked look on my face to fool anyone who bothered to look.
The mission had been a success, the Mayor was dead, now nothing but another ‘unsolved’ file that would linger in the dusty police offices until the end of time.
That night Leo congratulated me personally and took me out for a drink along with the soon to be Mayor Dave Koller. Dave was a good looking man, broad shouldered, clean cut with short brown hair. Yeah he was corrupt all right; I could smell it a mile away.
He was a homo too, his hands were constantly touching me the whole night; patting my shoulder, touching my knee. I didn’t say anything and Leo didn’t stop him. I wasn’t anything but a weapon to Leo and I knew it; his to use as he wished.
Koller’s advances didn’t bother me but they didn’t excite me either. I wasn’t gay and I wasn’t straight. I was nothing; no emotions meant no lust either. That way I wouldn’t ever be attached to anyone.
I finally arrived back at my apartment at four am that morning. I owned two apartments, one in one building, which I had purchased under a different name. It was small, one mattress, a cooker, a fridge, a toilet and a shower, and a small piano, my last relic from childhood, all fitted into two tiny rooms.
The other was directly across the street; I watched it at night through binoculars. It was more opulent, perfectly decorated with a widescreen TV and a Sky box. The sort of place you might expect a high paid assassin to live. I kept it to keep my enemies away. The amount of times they had broken down the door only to find no one in was laughable to me.
I watched it like a film and then I took them out in the street as they left the apartment building. No one could catch me, I was invincible.
That night there was no one busting down the door of my fake apartment so I fell, exhausted onto the bare mattress that lay on the floor. I didn’t even have covers, the cold never bothered me. Not that it was ever really cold in the city. Even in winter the air was humid, causing sweat to form even if you weren’t actually doing anything exerting.
Sleep always came easily and I always dreamed of nothing. The days that I didn’t have a job I spent wandering the streets; buying food from the local vendors and basically watching the people pass me by. I knew them all, every face and I knew that sooner or later most of them would die by my hand.
Sometimes I saw Shinji and Joe, I had come up against them on missions more than once but on a day off they were not a threat. And so I would watch them, learning their natures, they were after all my biggest enemy.
Shinji was tall, even taller than me, and slim. His black Japanese hair was messily dyed a kind of dark golden brown and often tied back with a purple scarf. His face was thin, a wide mouth and sharp teeth, his eyes spoke volumes. Sometimes he would be happy, sometimes sad or frustrated. Whatever his mood I could always see it. He didn’t know how to hide it. He was the exception of assassins.
He wore black most of the time, black jeans, black shirt and, if the weather wasn’t too hot, a black leather jacket that looked pretty antique. It even had a bullet hole in the sleeve.
Joe Lin was his partner and his best friend. Leo had offered to get me a partner when he had hired me but I had refused. I needed no one to help me and no one to distract me.
Joe was smaller than Shinji but equally as skinny. All assassins were thin; you had to be to move as quickly as we did, to blend into the shadows. He had short black hair that fell softly over his forehead, a pointed, angular jaw and sparkling brown eyes that were so dark you couldn’t begin to guess their secrets. He wasn’t emotional like Shinji, or at least, I didn’t think he was. He wore whatever he felt like; t-shirts, jeans, shirts, leather jackets, leather trousers.
They spoke to each other in English, as neither understood the other’s native tongue. It was a pity really, if they had both been able to talk Japanese or Chinese I wouldn’t have been able to listen in on their conversations.
They were close, even for best friends. I learnt one day that Shinji’s family had taken Joe in as a child after his parents had died. Joe had been picked on at school in Japan for not speaking their language but Shinji had stood up for him. He was his protector, they were brothers.
As I lay on my mattress that night I wondered what had happened to them after I had thrown the grenade, how badly had they been injured? Had either died? They were both each others weakness, I knew that. If I killed one then the other would lose some of their power. I always kept that in mind in case I ever had to go directly against them and not just stop them from getting to someone first. In case I was ever ordered to eliminate one of them. I knew I could do it and not feel a thing when I shot either one.