Assassins High School

How fitting that my name be associated with death considering how I seem to cause it to everyone around me. Even as a child, death followed me, as it was in my blood. I took my first life before I was even a day old. My mother died soon after I was born. The pressure from the labor weakened her heart so much that it gave out. My father kept no pictures of her around because that pain was too much. He named me Elizabeth Tessa Moreau which sounds innocent enough but he named me after one of the first female serial killers. My mother, whose name was Lorain, picked it out. She thought the name of a killer might help me in this life. Both of my parents were assassins.

My mother was apparently amazing at her job, never failing to kill her mark. She had graduated with a degree in criminal psychology from Florida Institute of Technology which was the best place to study that field. She met my father there as he was studying the same thing but also was a biochemist. In other words both of my parents were very smart. They were both approached to join what they thought was a secret organization, but was a school for killers. Unfortunately, they both enjoyed it. As they trained together they fell in love and got married. They completed missions and kills together. I couldn’t understand how my mother still did her work while she was pregnant with me. After she died my father, James, hated me. But he at least pretended to care or maybe I just thought he did. I wasn't sure. But I knew he cared about me enough to teach me the family business, becoming an assassin.

He has been training me since I was five. Luckily I was not alone. My father left his agency and decided to form a school for the children of assassins. He disguised the school's name calling it The Moreau School for Gifted Children. We built it in a town in Texas called Midlothian which was around twenty miles north of Dallas. We were a school dedicated to the training of assaines, spies and all other manners of covert operatives.

The school was built just on the outside of town where we were close enough to head into town but far enough that no one would know what we were doing. My dad and mom built the building as a safe haven for me and other children while also giving us a place to train. The building was made of tall gray stones and marble columns. It used to be a mansion but my father had transformed it. The windows were large but you could only see the halls, never classrooms. There were dozens of rooms including the dorm rooms that were in two separate buildings in the backyard, one for boys and one for girls. Even with the dorms there were about twenty acres of wild forest and a river. Unfortunately no one was really allowed to be in the woods unless we were training for survival in the wild. The reason why was because there were too many animals in the woods for it to be safe without a teacher or instructor.

Our classes were the same as the ones you would find at a normal school. Science, math, history, geography, and english. But then there were the special classes. Assassiation 101, intro to poison, hand to hand combat training, and a few dozen other classes some required like hand to hand combat, that was basically P.E.,but others were chosen by the student based on what they wanted to do. Hacking, assassinations, spying, hitmen, and basically any other job where a person has to maybe bend rules or morals or even flat out break them you could find the training here.

There weren’t many students at the school even though the classes spanned from kindergarten to advanced college classes. Even with such a large difference in grades there were only about two thousand students. Which seems like a lot but it really wasn’t. I am a senior in high school and there are only maybe two hundred other teens that were in my grade. After this year if I want to leave I can or if I want to continue my training I can.

“Ugh,” I grunt as I am thrown backward by a kick to the stomach. I hear a laugh coming from the other side of the gym.

Our gym was the same as any school with hardwood floors and fluorescent lights on the ceiling. Basketball hoops hung from the walls and on the side was the set up for a volleyball net. We have blue mats that we can pull from the wall for training. The major difference between this gym and the ones at normal high schools was the giant wall filled with weapons of every shape, size, color and origin. My father had taught me to use all of them. It was the middle of the night, me and one of my best friends, Halle Zackery, were sparring with bow staffs.

Halle Zackery was the daughter of a spy who had come to know my father years ago when they had met on a mission to kill the same target. They argued at first and then gained a mutual respect for one another, leading to them becoming friends. She was the second student to enroll in the school.

That was eleven years ago and a lot has changed since then. I looked at Halle. She was short, only standing at about five three and a half, but there was no denying her strength and spirit. Her medium length dark brown hair hung down in two braids down the sides of her head with bangs that hung in her eyes. Her pale skin looked almost translucent in the light of the gym. Her eyes were green and almost cat-like though they were covered by glasses with black frames that basically had a super computer in them. Her body was thin and fluid as water when she moved. She is beautiful and she is the only person I know besides my father, who could best me with a bow.

“Are you okay?” she asked me and she charged her bow raised ready to strike me in the neck. I shot up my bow in response, saving myself from the hit.

“Fine,” I said through clenched teeth as I pushed her back. I was at least five inches taller than her but she still ended up not going very far, no more than three feet away. I actually wasn’t okay but I didn’t want to burden her with my problems. This time I charged her. I made it seem like I was going for her head, but at the last second I swiped my bow down at her feet. She jumped up just barely avoiding the blow. At that moment she swung at my side and I barely blocked it. We swing and aim at each other fiercely. I felt my arms burn as I continue to swing. I was angry and I couldn’t hold back my fury. I wanted to forget my worries and this was the best way to do that. It always was.

Halle kicked at my stomach again and this time I blocked and pushed harder this time using all the anger and hurt i was feeling. She went flying back, her bow fell from her hand.

“Okay something is definitely bothering you,” we were both breathing heavily. I put my hands on my knees to steady myself. Once I did I walked over and pulled my friend up off the floor.

“I don’t want to talk about it,”

“Anytime you don’t want to talk about something you need to,” she could read me like an open book. “Liz, did your dad-”

“No!” I knew what she would ask. Was he hurt, was he dead? I didn’t know. All I knew was that he took a job, the only job he’s taken in almost eighteen years. That was three months ago and he still hadn’t come back. I was so worried, he was all I had left. But that wasn’t what was making me so angry.

“Then what’s wrong?” she was persistent that was for damn sure.

“Look, let's just go back to the room before someone sees us,” I laugh trying my best to change the subject.

“No, what's going on? We are not leaving until you tell me.”

“You can’t keep me in here,”

“Wanna bet?” she asked an eyebrow raised in defiance.

“Fine! Damn okay you can’t get mad,”

“Okay well now I know I’m going to be mad,”

“Kathryn-” she held up her hand signaling me to stop talking.

“Oh, not Kathryn Bates, what did she do this time?” her tone was angry and her arms were crossed. Not a good sign for anyone, especially not from Halle.

Kathryn Bates was basically my nemesis, she was perfect in every way I wasn't. Her olive skin always seemed to glow. Her hair was long and dark with perfect curls. Her eyes held a doe like innocents to them and they were black as obsidian. Her body was similar to Halle but her breasts were slightly bigger making her curvy and she was a few millimeters taller than me. Her lips were full and she often wore red lipstick. She had all the boys in school wrapped around her finger. She was a great fighter and specialized in training to be an assassin like me and her preferred choice was poisons, something I hated. And ever since she came here when she was seven she made it her life's mission to make mine hell.

“We were in hand to hand combat class and for some reason she wanted to fight me today. While we were fighting she brought up my mom,” I feel my vision go blurry and my face grow hot. I looked at Halle and her face was filled with anger that was probably almost as bad as mine.

“Okay be prepared we are all about to be singing ‘ding dong the witch is dead’,” she did it in a sing-song voice which made me laugh but I still had to grab her arm to make sure she didn’t actually go and kill her.

“You know you can’t kill her,” the good thing about this school was no one was allowed to kill any other student while they were enrolled in the school. The assassin kids did kill but they were all murders anyway, men who killed for the simple pleasure of it. I enjoyed being an assassin but I was killing people who, more than likely, deserved it. My father said that he was frequently hired by the American government when he was hired. Every once in a while it was some billionaire that had someone who had seen too much but he told me that those people didn’t deserve to die so he never took those jobs. His thing was keeping an honor code for all students and staff members. Never kill the innocent. It was strange having an assassin father with a moral code but it wasn’t a bad one. But killing was just part of the job.

“Fine, but once we graduate she's fair game!”

“I might beat you to it,” we laughed. She didn’t ask me anymore about what happened but I did almost break her arm. He knew my mom was a sour subject and any mention, good or bad, would set off a fire in my chest that burned with rage as it’s fuel.

“Okay well I hope you sufficiently got out your anger because I’m tired, we have the big test tomorrow in field class, and Kathryn has hand to hand combat class with me tomorrow so i will give her a sufficient ass kicking,” she yawned and stretched. It was late and we had been in here for almost three hours. It was four in the morning and class started at seven. I don’t know how I'm going to get through it. The test in field class is what made me the most nervous.

Field class was basically field training. It varies day to day what we learned but the tests were hard. They usually had us in the real world, which was rare for us. They had us pick out who was a spy or a target or learn to use sleight of hand skills to steal information or give it. Tons of places in the nearby town gave the perfect place for drills where we could practice blending into crowds or any other drill where they would have to be inconspicuous. The best part was it was the only time where we could get out of the school.

Well for most of us. The college students are allowed to leave and come back as they pleased but not the high school students. It was a combination of keeping the secret of the school safe and keeping us safe. There were plenty of enemies of my father and of the school

“I’m exhausted now,” I yawned and stretched. “Let's go back to the room. We have to be up in a few hours.”

“Finally!” she yelled. “I’ve been wanting to go back to sleep after we were done with the damn knife training,” she rolled her shoulder that I had barely scraped with a knife. I rolled my eyes.

“You left yourself open for one, two that was the first thing we did, and we only trained for half an hour with them,” a laugh escaped me.

“Exactly,” she stared at the ground for a second. “But you seemed like you needed to talk,”

“I did and I needed to hit something,”

“You always need to hit something,” we laughed as we left the gym.

The walk to the dorm is short but loud as the smallest footsteps could be heard. An unfortunate consequence for a school of spies and other people whose goal was to be quiet. Like in real college dorms RAs were responsible for the floor, but unlike college dorms the RAs here looked after five year olds to adults in their mid twenties.

I caught a glimpse of my face in a window on the way out. I never thought I looked attractive by any means, but I looked even worse now. My skin was slightly tanned but that was as dark as it would go or I would burn. Right now my skin shined with sweat on my round face. My eyes were nothing but a boring light brown with short lashes and dark brows. My lips weren’t very full but they were a nice light pink. My hair was a light almost platinum blonde with a few streaks of darker hair. It fell a few inches past my shoulders, but I often had it up in a short ponytail. When I did have it down I would change it from curly, wavy, or straight but this was rare. But now half my hair was falling out of my ponytail and small strands clung to my sweaty skin. My clothes were clinging to my skin as well like a seconnd skin. My skinny, lean body almost cat-like.

“Dear lord, I look awful!”

“You always think you look awful,”

“Because I do,”

“Okay this is so stuipd and if we get caught and get detention I swear I’m going to kick your ass,” she whispered to me, her voice slightly joking but also not as she rolled her eyes. The rooms were big so groups of three or four would be able to stay in them. This also made my father think that maybe it would keep the students from doing things that might be inappropriate. Though it did nothing. The only thing it did was make morning a nightmare with four girls, two sinks, and one toilet. A nightmare to be sure.

The only good thing about it was it was impossible for a normal person to get into. For the spy students that had a gift for lock picking it was simple, hell it was simple for me. But the retinal scanners made it hard for a normal person and if they did they would most likely get caught and those people would never see the inside of the building again. I had the door scan my eyes and we walked in the room.

The rooms were huge, probably about the size of a normal house’s living room. Two bunk beds stood on opposite sides of the room. My roommates and I had decided to keep the room as bare as possible so we could practice and train without the fear of hitting something important. So we decided that we could decorate the space near our bunks instead of the whole room. The only other piece of furniture in the room was a bookshelf that barely went past my knees. Our other two roommates, Brailee Tallen, daughter of the best hacker at the CIA, and Kailey Brooks, the daughter of another of my father’s spy friends, were both sound asleep. One of them snored quietly but with no sound anywhere else in the room we could hear it.

“At least someone got some sleep,”

“Why didn’t you wake them up?”

“Because I knew that you were already awake,” she crossed arms and pouted.

“I was about to sleep!”

“No you weren’t,”

“No I wasn’t,” we did our best to stifle laughter. We tiptoed over to our bunk. I got in my bed as Halle climbed. I looked over at my small amount of decorated wall. Twinkle lights and small picture clips with photos attached lined the wall. I had pictures of me and dad at my fifth birthday, my roommates and me when we were ten and had just completed a week long test where we had to sneak into a famous museum. We picked the Museum of Natural History and we took a dinosaur tooth. No one even knew. I had a dozen other photos like that. It helped me to remember that I could be a normal person if I wanted to. These small moments that made me feel normal. I heard the subtle creak of Halle’s mattress.

“Boo,” she said as she swung her head down and startled me. I jumped enough to knock my head on the wood of my headboard.

“Haha,” she laughed so loud our roommates began to stir. It's kinda pathetic that I could get scared by my friends when assassins are supposed to be fearless or emotionless. Some are but I wasn’t. My emotions were a burden but I was scared of what I would be with them. I knew so many spies and assassins that did unspeakable things to innocent people. I refused to do that.

“I hate you,” I whispered.

“You love me,” she said in a sing-song voice again.

“Go to sleep,” I laid down on my pillow and drifted into peaceful sleep.