He crept across the living room and silently opened the door to one of the bedrooms. There was someone sleeping under the blankets.

He had been told that there should only be one person in the apartment that night. This sleeping person must be his target then.

He quietly stepped towards the sleeping boy.

He grinned. There was always something satisfying about a clean and easy kill. It meant he’d done everything right up to that point and when it came to assassination, preparation was key.

He lifted up his knife high above the boy’s chest.

Sayonara kid, he thought to himself.

He plunged the knife into the sleeping kid, stabbing him through his blankets.

The knife bounced back. Blood didn’t splash or leak the blankets. A few tiny down feathers flew in front of him.

Ninja swiped the blanket away to see that he hadn’t just attacked a sleeping kid, but rather a pile of pillows.

What the—!?

SLICE!!

A bright golden light of energy pierced Ninja’s back and shot through his stomach and intestines out the other side.

The light of the energy blade glowed up at him, revealing the bleeding hole in his stomach.

The energy blade disappeared, slicing out of his flesh, leaving the open wound to simply gush blood.

Ninja fell to the floor.

How is this possible...?

A voice spoke behind him. Male. It was the kid he was meant to kill.

“I lived most of my life in an orphanage with an abusive perverted old man. I’ve slept with one eye open for most of my life.”

But the boy is unranked, thought Ninja, wincing in pain as blood poured out of his stomach and onto the living room floor.

How can he be so powerful?

“Who are you?” demanded Max. “What do you want from me?”

Ninja couldn’t believe this was it. This was supposed to be a trivial assignment. An errand. A chore no one wanted to do.

Yet he was dying. He was going to die here.

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a red pill. Trembling, he lifted the pill to his mouth.

Ninja had no other choice. If he lived tonight, he’d be jeopardizing the whole plan. There was only one thing left that he could do to help the cause. One last act of redemption after he’d failed here so miserably tonight.

He placed the pill on his mouth and quickly swallowed it.

* * *

“Tell me now,” shouted Max at the man trembling on the floor in the darkness. “Who are you!?”

His attacker didn’t respond and then—

Poof!

The man disintegrated into puff of black dust. Even the blood that had leaked out of him so profusely only a few moments before had disappeared as well.

Max stared at the ground. He turned on the light.

The floor of his bedroom was completely empty.