5 The Target

At night, Ash headed back to his condominium complex. It was a state of the art modern apartment. The allowance given to him by his organization was more than enough to pay for his monthly rent. As he steps into his apartment, the lights were automatically switched on. Typically, Ash would head to directly to the shower to freshen himself up. Only then would he do other things such as his assignments or making his dinner.

Today was special for the young man. He headed into the guest bedroom that was now used as his changing room. Opening up the closet slowly, there were black, navy and white t-shirts neatly folded and stacked up on the shelving. Ash went ahead and removed the shirts off the shelf. It revealed a well hidden button on the wooden frame.

Click. The wooden frame's suspensions released slowly and half of the frame lifted upwards. There, a thin black laptop was hidden in between the frames. Ash brought the device out, headed back to his dining table and took a seat. The laptop was switched on.

'It has been far too long since I had turned on this laptop…' Thought Ash. The last time was the A ranked mission in Country H. He had just turned 18 recently and had completed his 100th mission of his career.

As the laptop booted up again after being turned off for two years, the interface screen called out, "Please look into the camera for facial and retinal scan."

Ash followed the instruction as told. If the laptop fails to recognise the user after three failed tries, the device would immediately self destruct.

"Facial and retinal scan complete. S ranked agent, Ash Vicars, welcome back to the Nexus."

That was the name of the hitman organization that Ash was involved in. The Nexus was the only internationally recognised hitman organization in the world. The organisation was first formed during the first world war. Not just anyone was allowed to join this organization. Rather, most hitmans were recruited as orphans just like Ash.

Only those that had the money and wealth to hire Nexus would be able to employ one of them. Depending on the difficulty of the mission, the mission would be ranked and given to the respectively ranked hitmans. The ranks were separated into D, C, B, A and lastly S. The S rank was the highest and in the entire world, there were only 10 spots available at one point in time.

The interface on Ash's laptop was unlocked and he clicked the 'mission' section immediately after entering. In the 'mission' tab, there was only one mission available to the young man. It wrote 'S ranked mission 0120', for which 0120 was the mission number. Till this day, there had only ever been 120 S ranked missions in Nexus. This showed how terrifyingly difficult these missions were.

Ash clicked into it and the relevant information were displayed in front of him.

Target: Jovia Tabola

Age: 32

Ethnicity: Country I

Occupation: Mafia Boss to the Immortal Blood's Gang

Current Location: Untraceable. However, base of operations are located in Country Z.

Deadline: 10.06.2102

…

Placing his hand on his chin, Ash read through the target's information. The part on the target's occupation particularly stood out. What did the Immortal Blood's Gang signify? The Immortal Blood's Gang was currently deemed as the number one Mafia gang in the entire world. They controlled over 30% of all information flow in the world. Everyone knows that Country Z was where their base of operations was. It was why no one dares to cause any trouble in this country. Even the country Z's government holds less authority than the Immortal Blood's Gang.

'Fuck… What shit stain mission did I just pick up?' Ash cursed inwardly as he frowned deeply.

Even though this was considered an S ranked mission, compared to the missions from before, this target far surpassed all previous S ranked targets. Be it the Crown prince of Country A, to the Duchess in Country B, the most dangerous target would still most definitely be Jovia Tabola, the Mafia Boss to the number one mafia gang in the world.

The worse part about all of this was that Ash knew nothing about this mission before hand. None of the S ranked hitman would be given the mission description before they accepted it. To make matters worse, once accepted, there was no turning back. The mission ending would either be the death of the hitman or the target.

That night, after taking a nice long shower, Ash did not proceed to cook himself dinner. Rather, he went straight to bed. Lights off, eyes opened, he laid in the dark as he stared up at his ceiling. The ceiling was plastered over with a star themed wallpaper. With every few seconds, the stars on the ceiling with glimmer and blink. It felt as if you were really looking up at the night sky.

The thoughts about the S ranked mission came cycling across Ash's head. There was something he couldn't wrap his head around. Was this something the higher ups had preplanned? Had they agreed to my proposal two years ago, just for this purpose?

Back then, at age 18, Ash also known as Zero, was classified as the tenth S ranked hitman in Nexus. For those S rankers, they are given more freedom in a sense that they get benefits that other lower ranked hitmans don't. One of it was that after every 100 missions completed, they would be allowed to make any request, should it prove to be feasible. This was in addition to the extra paycheque they get for every mission completed.

Ash had requested to go to university and acquire himself a degree. To Ash, the request that he had made was far fetched and almost impossible. Why would the organization allow their prized hitman to take a break for four years? Yet, they really came through with their promise and had signed him up with an identity. The place? It was none other than Country Z.

Could they have picked other universities around the world?

Yes.

Was it all a coincidence?

Maybe.