Chapter 1 – One Last Job

[Earth, 2022 – Grand Renaissance Hotel]

Jack shot back his last mini bottle of whiskey that he had… procured… And glanced at himself in the hotel room mirror. Despite saying his goodbyes to the coolest career anyone could have he still found himself smiling in resignation. She was worth it, he reminded himself. Jack tossed the empty bottle onto the bed with the others and stumbled over to the closet where the room safe was.

“Let’s see, the code was…”

[Code Invalid. 2 Attempts Left] scrawled across the digital display. Jack let out an annoyed groan and tried again.

[Code Invalid. 1 Attempt Left]

“Fuck.”

Jack pulled out his phone and called the only number he could remember.

“Why are you calling my personal phone during a mission? We’ve been comms dark for the past hour. Also, why did you even bring a phone with you? Now I have to change my number if you get caught, asshole.” Came Hannah’s cocksure voice over the phone.

“Geez, thanks for the vote of confidence. Listen-you programmed the safe wrong. The password isn’t working.”

“Did you read the updated mission ops before you left?”

“…”

“Hello?” she repeated

“You know I don’t read those. Did you change the password or not?”

“God, you are such a shitty hitman- “

“How many times do I have to tell you?” Jack said, interrupting her. “We’re assassins, not hitmen.” He said, stressing the word.

“Like there's a difference.” She replied, sarcasm dripping from her voice.

“There is! Hitmen are just two-bit assholes who get paid to whack people off any way possible.” Jack said, frustration rising.

“You whacking a lot of people off over there?” she laughed.

“Shut up! We assassins are highly paid professionals. Any asshole can kill someone. What we do is more akin to... art.” Continued Jack.

“Akin? Now who sounds like the asshole…”

“Also, hitman isn’t even gender neutral! You can’t tell me you go around calling yourself a hit-woman. That doesn’t even roll off the tongue-“

“Are you drunk right now?” Hannah asked, interrupting his rant.

“… no?” He lied.

“Oh my god. We specifically emptied the minibar when prepping the room so you couldn’t- “

“That was you!?” Jack said, eyeing the door he kicked in, leading to the next room over so he could raid their minibar. “I was about to leave a terrible Yelp review. But now I know my own team is trying to sabotage me. Not cool Hannah. Not cool.”

“You’re sabotaging yourself. Just admit it. You don’t want to quit. Well, I’ll gladly help you fail the mission. Good luck with the safe code.”

*Click* - the line went dead.

“I can’t believe they took the alcohol…” Jack said in disbelief. A moment later, his phone vibrated.

1 New Text Message

Hannah: The code is 80085

That’s right, Jack thought to himself. I knew it was something funny. He turned back around and punched in the code.

[Code Invalid. Please Contact the Front Desk.]

Jack stared blankly at the display message, frustration rising.

1 New Text Message

Hannah: Just kidding, dumbass.

Jack grabbed the tiny hotel safe and threw it across the room.

The safe slammed into the wall, creating a nice big hole in the drywall before falling to the ground. The safe door swung open upon impact, spilling out its contents.

“And that is why you don’t use cheap hotel safes…” Jack said with a nod of appreciation as he walked over to the safe. A knife had toppled out. He picked up the unwieldy dagger in disgust, holding it by the tip with two fingers.

It looked ridiculous. The knife itself was nothing more than a cheap piece of steel with all sorts of unnecessary grooves and uneven serrated edges. The guard had a crossbones design to it, and the pommel was an excessively bedazzled skull with rubies for eyes. It looked like something you would get at a mall kiosk in a tourist town. Jack briefly considered throwing it away. Sadly, this was the mascot of the Dead Diamond Syndicate and a key piece of his mission.

Jack flipped the dagger a few times over in his hand, testing out the balance, dropping it only twice and earning himself a cut across the back of his hand.

“Piece of shit knife,” he muttered to himself. “at least I know it’s sharp,” he said, staunching the bleeding on his hand.

Jack tucked the knife into the back of his belt and tried a few test moves making sure it stabbed nothing important. Satisfied with the placement, he stepped out onto the hotel balcony into the cool night air. It was time for an assassination.

A rival organization, known simply as The Rose Association, had encroached on the territory of the Dead Diamond Syndicate, making life difficult for everyone. Their leader, Max Rose, wasn’t the one to thank for their success. His son Chuck was the real brains of the operation.

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The Rose Gang, as they were formally known, were nothing more than two-bit gangsters. Street pushers at best. Then Chuck graduated from Yale with his fancy economics degree, returned to the family business, and pushed his father out. Max was left as the figurehead while Chuck pulled the strings from behind. With Chuck's careful maneuvering, the Rose Gang was transformed into the true terror it would become today, the Rose Association.

Chuck liked to sit in his extremely well-guarded penthouse and play chess while everyone else was playing checkers. The war had gone south for the syndicate rather quickly with stash houses being raided and important head members getting ambushed. Chuck was dismantling his opponent with a ruthless efficiency. Sadly for Chuck however, his father couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He would brag non-stop about how powerful he had become, how his organization would drive out the Dead Diamonds, and there was nothing they could do to stop it. With all of his bravado, it was only a matter of time before he let slip who was truly in charge.

Enter Jack Atlas, assassin extraordinaire. He was hired to sneak into the son’s penthouse and put a knife through his heart. The job did have some annoying stipulations. He couldn’t get caught, and he couldn’t kill any of the guards. The message being that the Dead Diamond Syndicate could reach anyone. Anywhere. That’s what tipped the scales of the job from possible to impossible–and the impossible was where Jack specialized.

Provided this mission was complete within the given parameters, he was set to make a lot of money. Then I can retire. Then I can be with Sarah, he thought with a sad smile. Hannah had been more right than he would ever openly admit. He didn’t want to quit. Jet-setting around the world to assassinate mostly horrible people was such a cool job.

Jack had learned from previous experience that “Hey Honey, I kill people for ridiculous amounts of money” was the ultimate relationship ender. He’d told her he was in imports, which in retrospect was probably a little too obvious of a lie. He could see it in her eyes every time he told her he had an “importing emergency.” She was a good person. She didn’t deserve to be lied to. So he was quitting after one last job. One big score.

Jack peered over the edge of the balcony at the street nineteen stories below, then up at the penthouse balcony on the floor above. It was roughly an eighteen-foot climb. In theory, this would have been the easiest part of the job. Regrettably, his state-of-the-art grapple gun was in a state of disrepair. He’d taken it apart earlier in the evening to give it a thorough inspection and cleaning. How was he supposed to know it would be impossible to put back together? He’d already resigned to throwing himself off the balcony before calling Hannah again for a spare. Lucky for him–he found a ladder in the maintenance closet.

The ladder only stood twelve feet, so he had to stack it on top of the balcony patio furniture, giving him a few extra feet. He stared at his makeshift scaffolding and fished another bottle of mini vodka out of his pocket, shooting it in one go. With a few deep breaths and a burst of liquid confidence, it was time to get to work. The table wobbled. The ladder shook. He definitely didn’t pee himself a little when a strong breeze shook his makeshift climbing apparatus.

Jack reached the top step of the ladder after a few precarious wobbles, and carefully planted two feet onto that step that clearly states “Do Not Step.” With a natural grace provided to him by years of training and a steady buzz, he slowly straightened himself up on the top step. He looked up at the balcony with a sigh. He was going to have to jump the last few feet. This was going to be awesome. Or horrible. Time would tell.

Jack took a deep breath, channeling his inner Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible - and jumped.

The ladder toppled over as he leaped, crashing down onto the balcony below. He grabbed the bottom of the penthouse balcony railing and hung still for a moment, arresting his momentum and saying a brief prayer so that the ladder wouldn’t spill over onto the streets below. He pulled himself up just enough to peer over the edge. The guard should be coming out any minute now. That would be his ticket in.

Any minute turned out to be about five minutes. The screen door slid open, interrupting Jack’s debate on the merits of letting go and falling to his death. He wasn’t sure if it would fall under suicide or not. He didn’t want to die, but his forearms were really starting to burn.

“Finally…” Jack grumbled under his breath, using the last of his strength to pull himself up just enough to peer over the balcony and assess the situation. The guard was leaning on the railing opposite, phone to his ear and back turned to him.

“I’m sorry baby…” he could hear the guard saying. “He decided to throw a party tonight. It’s going to be another late one.”

Jack cringed at that news. A party meant people. People meant complications when your mission involved not being seen. With a little heroic effort, Jack pulled himself up the rest of the way, swinging himself over the railing and landing gingerly on the balcony. The guard was still on his phone, his conversation having moved from apologies to argument. Poor guy’s night is about to get a lot worse, Jack thought to himself as he slid in through the open balcony door.

Flashing lights, smoke filled air and blaring techno music assaulted Jack. There was definitely a party going on, or at least the aftermath of a party. He saw people passed out on pretty much every surface of the penthouse. Others were hobbling about in various states of sobriety, trying, and failing to dance to the music.

The penthouse gave off one of those “A porno was definitely filmed here” vibes, with all white furniture and unnecessary roman columns everywhere. Jack was extra careful not to touch anything, he didn’t want to get pregnant. He stuck out like a sore thumb as he milled through the crowds towards the target room, black tactical gear making it hard to blend in. Luckily, everyone seemed too fucked up to care. Even the guards he saw seemed to partake in whatever substances were flying around, though he was still careful to hide behind a poorly placed column or piece of furniture whenever a guard did pop up.

Jack reached the penthouse suite where Chuck should be. Since intelligence failed to tip him off about the party, he was starting to doubt if the target would even be in here. He put his ear to the door, but his ears had more-or-less quit working after the third blaring techno song. Whatever, he thought. He gave his arms another good shake. They still felt like putty, but it would be good enough to stab a guy in his sleep. Jack pushed open the door.

As an assassin there are a few things you never want to see. One of those things was your target, ripping lines of cocaine off his dresser and screaming at himself in the mirror. Jack stared at the man’s back. He had an enormous lion head, fitted with a crown and the letters ‘KING’ tattooed across his back. Certainly this couldn’t be the mastermind he was supposed to kill?

“THE FUCK ARE YOU?” screamed the man, presumably Chuck, white powder and red blood dropping from his nose.

“Jack Atlas, professional assassin,” he offered with his most charming smile. In response, Chuck charged at him.

Jack grunted as the man tackled him to the ground. While he was in great physical shape, he had just spent five minutes in a dead hang twenty stories up. He was also beginning to think that the smoke filled penthouse wasn’t from a fog machine. In addition, he wasn’t really a fighter. Sure, he knew a few moves to get him out of a tight spot, but if he ever found himself in a fist fight, something had gone terribly wrong. His combat prowess was in killing people who didn’t see it coming.

Chuck continued to rain down blows on Jack. The cocaine made him strong; it did not make him accurate. Most of the blows were glancing and Jack grunted under the assault, his hand scouring the ground around him for anything he could use.

His fingers grazed an empty bottle, and he grabbed it. The thing about glass bottles is they don’t break like in the movies. They are essentially durable glass clubs, at least for a swing or two. Jack swung at Chuck’s head as he reeled back for another blow, slamming the bottle into the side of his face. Chuck, to his credit, took the blow in stride. He crawled away from Jack and stood up, taking a stance.

Jack looked at the bottle and cringed. “Smirnoff? Really man?” he said, disgust in his voice.

“It tastes good,” he managed to say through a bloody mouthful. Jack threw the bottle at his face. This time it did break. Chuck hit the ground.

Jack let out an exasperated sigh and looked around the room. He was able to get confirmation that this was, in fact, Chuck. A photo of him and his dad hung from the wall, confirming it. He just happened to be a major douchebag, as well as a strategic genius, apparently.

“Good on you for not letting them put you in a box buddy! Unfortunately, the box I'll be putting you in will be rather permanent.” he said while kicking over Chuck’s body. He spurted out blood in response.

Jack placed a steadying hand on Chuck and pulled out the knife, raising it in the air and plunging down hard towards Chuck’s heart.

The world froze mid strike. A message appeared in Jack’s vision transposed over the world around him.

[Beginning Integration.]

What the actual fuck….

The world went dark.