Career Path

Fiction | Fantasy

The Master Assassin opened the large metal door, waited for his apprentice to step through, then pushed it shut with a loud clang. He pulled the rusted lever to lock the door, which resisted briefly then engaged with a grinding screech of metal.

“Does it always sound like that?” asked the apprentice. This was his first time above ground and away from the familiarity of the Shelter. He tried to control his excitement, but knew he probably failed. The Master Assassin missed little.

“Yes. It’s very old, and no one bothers to maintain it.”

The Master Assassin adjusted his pack and pointed to the path in front of them, slightly to the left. Concrete steps, cracked and chipped, led up the hill. Farther away a pebbled path was visible, leading higher up into the hills at a gentle incline.

“That is the path. Are you sure you’re ready?”

“As far as I know, teacher.” The apprentice spoke the word “teacher” as if it were a title, but also something more familiar. “All I know about this trip is that it is my last lesson under your training.”

“Then let me tell you a story as we walk.” They started up the steps, staying in the middle where the concrete appeared more stable.

“Is this part of the training?”

“No, my boy, it isn’t a test. Consider it as supplemental information. Like a target’s back-story. Useful in understanding motives and predicting future behaviors.” The Master Assassin smiled, but absently ran his fingers over the handle of his blade. It was forged from the time before, when men made blades of steel that never lost their edge and never broke. He could slice through a man’s spine with that blade, and it would be no harder than cutting through water. And the target would be dead before he even felt the cut. The handle was of a black rubber that stayed supple, even after the many decades of use, both by him and by the Master Assassin before him. His teacher had handed it down to him just as he would one day hand it down to his successor. When that exchange was made was never a certainty. The life of a Master Assassin was always in question.

“Tell me, boy, what you know of being the Master Assassin.”

The apprentice, feeling this was more of a test than his teacher let on, repeated the history that he could recite in his sleep. “The Master Assassin is the tool of the Committee and removes those that have been selected. The Master Assassin is the darkness we all fear, the justice we all need, and the security that the Shelter will never fall. There is only one Master Assassin, and his will is the will of the Committee.”

“I wasn’t testing your skills at memorization. I wanted to know what you know.”

The concrete ended abruptly and the ground leveled off. The path was gravel of different shapes and colors leading up the hill. It was a comfortable walk, and the path seemed better kept than the apprentice would have expected. It was rare for anyone to leave the Shelter. Maintaining a path outside was…well…strangely lavish.

“I know that you’re the Master Assassin, and there is only one Master Assassin at any time. One Master, and one apprentice. I know that you’ve been the Master Assassin as long as I’ve been alive. The Committee sometimes gives you the names of people who need to be removed from the population, sometimes they tell you how, sometimes you can choose on your own. You’ve taken me on a few, my guess is some of the easier ones. What more is there that really matters, teacher?”

The Master Assassin walked in silence. The apprentice had seen this before, and knew not to break the silence. They stopped at a large tree, and the Master Assassin removed his pack. Still in silence he removed a flask from the pack and took a drink. The apprentice did the same from his own pack.

“You aren’t my first apprentice, you know,” said the Master Assassin as they returned to their walk.

The apprentice tried to control his walk, but the Master Assassin had seen him flinch. “Oh?” said the apprentice.

“There’s a reason there can only be one Master Assassin. The Committee fears what we know. And they make all the rules. There is always just one Master Assassin, and one apprentice. It is for the greater good, or so I’ve been told.”

“What happened to the previous apprentice? Or apprentices?”

“You are the sixth apprentice I’ve trained, and the sixth to make this walk.”

To his credit, the apprentice’s step did not falter or change in any way. The Master Assassin could not help but be proud. “That asks more questions than it answers,” said the apprentice.

“Do you remember when you were first selected for this apprenticeship?”

“Yes, teacher. You were not pleased.”

“You have a gift for understatement. I was livid. I almost violated my oath and killed the messenger. “

“I never understood your anger. It was the will of the Committee that I learn under you.”

“Yes, the will of the Committee. “ The Master Assassin seemed unchanged, but the apprentice could detect, ever so slightly, a small flicker of anger. Like a dog’s hackles rising against its wishes. Then it was gone.

“The Committee was angry with me. I had questioned them on an earlier matter, and they felt it was time to tug a little harder on the leash.”

“I do not understand. Did you feel I was not skilled enough?”

The Master Assassin looked at the apprentice and smiled. It looked strange on his face. “Of course not. Any child of mine would be skilled enough. “

“Then what?”

The path began to change. Fewer rocks and more dirt and grass, although still maintained. Up ahead, at the hill’s summit, was a clearing with stone objects of some kind. The apprentice couldn’t quite make them out.

“You were always a very emotional child,” said the Master Assassin. “I used to think of that as a weakness. But over the years I’ve seen that it is a strength. My own emotions have been buried for so long that I didn’t even recognize them for what they were when they surfaced. In that area, you far surpass me.”

“But I think I have shown that I can control my emotions, teacher.”

“Yes, and that is good. You should never show an enemy all your weapons. Take me, for example. How many weapons am I carrying?

The apprentice pretended to look the Master Assassin over, but he had already counted. “You have your blade, as usual. You have a smaller blade in your boot. A garrote in your left sleeve, a pistol in the small of your back, a spinner in your other boot and at the base of your neck, several gas pellets around your waist, and I believe a poison needle in your buckle. Only the assassin’s blade is visible.”

“Very good, son. Very good. You only missed one, but it was a trick question.” He smiled.

“You were saying about me and the other apprentices…?”

“We have done things the same way for generations. One Master Assassin and one apprentice. When the apprentice turns eighteen, as you have, we walk the career path. I don’t know why it’s called that, but it always has been. At the top, we see if the apprentice is good enough to become the Master Assassin.”

“And you did this too?” As they came closer, he saw that the clearing held several rings of stones, fanning out from the center. The stones had writing carved on them. Some looked very, very old.

“That I did. I and Master Assassin Groud came up here. Groud was an excellent assassin, but he had gotten old, and I think tired. He lunged too soon, and I caught him under his chin. Sometimes I think he did it that way on purpose, just because he was tired of everything.”

The apprentice tensed, then forced himself to relax. “So the Master Assassin and the apprentice fight to see who gets the position.”

“Yes.”

“And you did this with five other apprentices before me.” With his peripheral vision he could see the writing on the stones were names. There were so many stones, so many names.

“Yes.”

“Is the fight always to the death? Can it be no other way?”

The Master Assassin opened his arms wide. “We are assassins, son. Everything we do is to the death.”

“Now I understand why my selection was a punishment. They were making you kill your own child.”

“Or, if you killed me, making sure that they had a Master Assassin who wouldn’t ask questions. Who knew the score. At least, so they thought. But I trained you differently from all the others. I not only trained you to be a Master Assassin, but I trained you to do so without burying your emotions. You remember what happened when you killed your first target?”

The apprentice’s face turned red. “Yes. I threw up.”

The Master Assassin smiled again. “Don’t be ashamed of that. It shows that you’re human. Your humanity is important. You will do things differently as a Master Assassin. You will question. You will relate. You will see the patterns of what the Committee does, like I did, but you will know when what they want you to do is wrong. And you will know when to act on what you feel!”

“That’s if I kill you. I won’t kill you, father.”

“That’s the spirit! Even when you know what the rules are, even when you know it’s me or you, you still take a stand for what is right. That is how you are different from every other Master Assassin!” The Master Assassin then did something totally unexpected. He hugged his son.

“If this is a trick, you don’t need it. I won’t fight you,” said the apprentice.

Still hugging his son, the Master Assassin said, “I knew you wouldn’t. And you won’t have to. I have always known you would do the right thing. Always known you were a better man than I.”

“Then…”

“But only one of us can walk down that hill. Only one of us can return to the Shelter. And the other will get a headstone up here.” The apprentice felt the Master Assassin’s grip weaken.

“What have you done, father?” whispered the apprentice.

“I have promoted you to Master Assassin, my only son.” He slid down to his knees, his arms still loosely around the apprentice. “Use the office well, and always act on your conscience.”

“Teacher? Father?”

The Master Assassin, sighed deeply, and collapsed on his side. His chest heaved in a jagged cough, then was still.

The apprentice knelt by the Master Assassin and checked for life. There was none. Then he searched the body and collected all of his father’s keepsakes. He found the weapon he had missed in his father’s backpack, in the flask. A potent and reliable poison. An assassin could time its effects almost to the minute.

After the new Master Assassin had created his father’s headstone and placed it along with the many others, he belted the assassin’s blade to his hip and started down the hill towards the Shelter. He had much work ahead of him, and with it many emotions. Anger, fear, pain, and loss. But he knew these were not weaknesses. He could use them now as his father had planned.

And he would show the Committee how much like a father a son can be.