Hitman with a Badass System

(Almost twenty years ago on earth)

The browning street was emptier than usual due to all the riots in the nearby city.  Buildings on the weather side of the browning street looked worn out, as though they would collapse any second. It had been a couple of decades since a building got new paint. The paved stone streets were all broken and messed up. As a result, the streets had more puddles than gray stones. Due to the high crime rate in this part of the city, the street was void of any taxis or crowds. Except for a couple of junkies in the dark alley, there was no one. Despite the afternoon time, the browning street looked gloomy because of the dark storm clouds above.

The lines of buildings on either side were built to put as many people as possible within. Thus, the architecture looked like buildings made of matchboxes, no style, and no class. They were built to reduce the slum population. In one of those buildings, painted with white but now turned gray, a man wearing a fedora looked down the street from the twentieth floor. The man was way out of place as he wore a black tuxedo, oxford shoes, a black tie, and a fedora hat.

He was neither too young nor too old, probably mid-thirties or early forties. His stubble beard and hazel eyes gave him a friendly charm to wooe any strangers to trust him. He looked at the street below, where an old man was lying in a pool of blood. His arms and legs looked crooked, as his head was mangled by hitting the ground with such force.

"Another one down," The man wearing the fedora smiled. He took out a notebook from his inner coat pocket and crossed a name off the list with a pencil. After putting the notebook and the pencil inside, he turned around and left the balcony. Silence fell over the browning street. Even up to this moment, no one had seen the dead body lying in the street. The junkies hiding in the dark alley were busy snorting white powder.

Eventually, the man climbed down all the twenty stairs to the ground level. He threw one last look at the dead body before disappearing into one of the dark alleys. To an oblivious man, the man fell from his balcony and died. But only a few knew that it was an assassination. The dead man was a CEO of a pharmaceutical company who was living in the browning street until he could leave the country. He committed various frauds and pissed off too many powerful people. When these powerful people want a certain someone to disappear, they would call a shadow organization known as the underworld. It was a glorified name for a society full of criminals, assassins, and drug kingpins.

Since the CEO had his own special force people guarding him in what he thought was a safe house, the underworld put their best to work, Spectre. He was the deadliest assassin in the world. Once someone ends up on Spectre's hit list, no one can save them, not even the most powerful law enforcement. After killing his target, Spectre calmly walked down the dark alleys. He always felt the need to do something else after an assassination. He called this feeling Post Murder Tension. Normally, he would take a long walk, go to a park or visit some exclusive escorts.

"I am getting bored," Spectre stretched his muscles. Not only physically, but he was also mentally exhausted. When he took out his first target, he was fifteen years old. It had been thirty years since he entered the assassination business. The spark of killing people once he had slowly dimmed out. But he knew very well that there was no retirement for an assassin like him. There would be always more people who need killing, and the clients always liked to work with the best. The underworld was not a place he could go and sign out his retirement. The second-best assassin could always try to end him so they could become the number one.

The best way he could come up with was getting a disciple, a murdering protege, or a group of prodigies train them and let them do his work. That way, Spectre could sit back and enjoy his life a bit. He would be forty next month, and it would take atleast a decade for him to train someone. Unfortunately, there wasn't a place to get prodigies with murdering brains. He wanted someone young, someone who didn't fear the strong, and someone who would be willing to kill without blinking an eye.

As he was pondering about his future, he heard a commotion nearby. His ears twitched. Usually, Spectre wouldn't poke his nose into where it doesn't belong. But for some reason, he felt curious.

"What the heck," Spectre shrugged and followed the sound of the commotion. After taking several steps, he reached a corner. He peeked around the corner, standing in the darkness to see a group of men beating the life out of a young kid. The men showed no mercy to the kid. The poor kid looked like he was ten or nine. He was skin and bones as though he hadn't eaten in weeks.

"Little twat asking for more than he deserves,"

"What did we tell you about taking this route huh?"

The men yelled at the kid without taking a break from kicking the kid. But despite their beating, the kid didn't cry. Instead, he curled into a ball, covering his face and abdomen as though he was used to getting beaten.

"If we see you in this route again, I will choose one of those little bitches and put the product in their bellies. Got it?" A bald, burly man with a body full of tattoos spat on the kid. If Spectre wanted, he could beat the crap out of the three of them in a few minutes. Normally, he would have because it was a good outlet for Post Murder  Tension. Even if Specter killed them, no one would bat an eye. Why? Because they all had a black mamba tattooed on their necks. As a dweller of the underworld, Spectre knew every criminal organization there is. This particular gang specialized in drug and weapons trafficking. As far as law enforcement considered, these guys did not exist. They had no passport, no identity card, or any bank accounts in their names. Suppose Spectre killed them, the gang would clear the body and evidence for him because the last thing they would do was seek the help of the police.

However, Spectre did not do such a thing. Instead, his focus was on the little kid on the ground. After such a beating, a grown man would cry, let alone a nine-year-old kid. At first, Spectre thought the kid had lost consciousness, but he was proven wrong when the kid uncurled himself, crawled towards a dumpster, and got to his feet using the dumpster as support. His ragged clothes were torn and had countless holes.  When he finally got back to his feet, Spectre saw the boy throw out blood due to the beating.

"What are you holding in your hands?" Spectre saw the kid holding something inside his shirt. Even when he was getting kicked like a human football, the kid curled into a ball, protecting something. To Spectre's surprise, it was a piece of bread.

The kid wiped off the blood running down his mouth and finally stopped throwing out blood. For a moment, Spectre lost his interest in the kid. It looked like a typical orphan stealing bread from the wrong place. Thousands of kids died of hunger each year. There was nothing Spectre could do or nothing he would do. As far as he was concerned, these kids were born to suffer. When he was about to turn and leave, Spectre saw something that made him frown. Instead of running away, the kid went to the doorstep and spat on the door.

"One day, I am going to kill every single one of you," The kid spat at their doorsteps. Spectre's mind played a trick on him by creating a dark cloud around the kid for a moment. As a killer, Spectre could tell the difference between a born killer and a temper tantrum-throwing kid. That kid wasn't being angry. He was just giving Spectre a glimpse of the killer hiding within him. When the kid turned around, he saw the predatory eyes of the kid. They were not of an angry kid but a killer's. A true-born killer.

"What an interesting find," Spectre was amused and slightly excited. Thus, he followed the kid who limped away from the door. Thanks to the dark alleys and way too many dumpsters, Spectre was able to follow the kid without getting detected. Still, the kid surprised him by turning back, looking around to see if anyone was following him. Spectre felt like he was following a tricky little assassin.

Eventually, the kid reached what looked like an abandoned manor near a stinky polluted river. The water in the river was as black as tar and smelled like a public toilet and a used diaper with a baby. Near the manor, Spectre noticed several large concrete tubes. Supsirngly, several children and a young woman were standing inside the tube. When they saw the limping kid, the children cheered.

"Kind heart orphanage," Spectre read the worn-out board handing on the manor. He wondered why these children were outside instead of staying inside the manor. Luckily, there were several construction materials between Spectre and the kid. So he used them as a cover to get close enough to see what was happening. But when Spectre got close, he noticed the brand new state-of-the-art CCTV cameras fit around the manor.

"Interesting…" Spectre couldn't help but wonder why an orphanage needs high-tech CCTV cameras. No matter how many cameras they had, they weren't a challenge for the number one assassin in the world. He moved swiftly through the concrete materials, avoiding the cameras like a fish in the sea. Eventually, Spectre reached a concrete tube next to the tube where the children were staying.