Assassin

Inspired by this writing prompt by u/casualfreeguy from the r/writingprompts subreddit. The actual response is in a separate thread here.

The assassin had counted the exits, memorized the faces of the patrons, and took an unassuming stance that hid his weapons. He was working.

"Large caramel macchiato with a pinch of salt. Swiftly, please," he said. This was the code to identify himself as an associate of the Boss and that he was ready to receive a new task.

His line of work was hard. Back in the golden days of his superiors the job had been far easier. Now in the day of ubiquitous security cameras and the absurd surveillance capabilities of the information technology sector you had to be the best to survive.

He was the best of the best, so it was without surprise that he saw the barista freeze up when she heard the passphrase. She was a new hire, a rogue employee of the coffee shop that he'd yet to see before. Her tag said "Claire", and he hoped for her sake that wasn't her real name.

"Oh- R- Right away sir!" She said. She looked over to one of the exits, where he had seen her manager go out for a break moments earlier. It would have been an unacceptable breach of protocol to make a scene by calling over a manager.

He noticed a nasty scar on her arm, a long recovered deep wound. He imagined scenes of drunken mothers or dog attacks. He'd caused plenty of wounds like that, before he'd gotten good enough to win before they were allowed to heal.

"How much will that cost me?" He said. His tone was perfect for someone who was just having a casual conversation with a skittish barista: Awkward, but also with a slight undertone of unwelcome subverted expectations about the cafe experience.

"That'll be $4.99," she said. She looked genuinely afraid of him.

He payed his fees and waited for his order. Moving his head constantly would have been too suspicious, so instead he used the subtle reflections in the windows to cover his blind spots. He was so discrete that you would have to already know what he was doing to understand the intent.

"Oder for-" The barista stopped herself, probably realizing that she didn't even have a name to call for the assassin. Not that she should have called a name anyways. He would have to make sure that future visits to the cafe were timed better so that he wasn't ordering when she was running the cash register. He needed competence and trust to do his job effectively.

There was a small impulse to offer some advice, to tell her that she should just quit now if she didn't have the guts for this line of work, but people were watching (and perhaps listening) so he instead took his coffee and left with a friendly goodbye.

He wasn't fool enough to read his order while in the cafe. What if someone were to walk up to him at the moment he viewed the incriminating information? It was through paranoia like this that he had lasted so long in his field. Even the Boss thought it excessive, but since he got results he wasn't questioned about it too hard.

In the sidewalk, keeping pace with foot traffic as to not arouse suspicion, he took a casual sip of his order. It was overloaded with cream and salt to the point where it would have made someone unprepared gag. This meant that the order was a kill, one that would need to make headlines.

He let no indication of his increased heart rate; his body screamed for immediate action, but he knew from experience that a kill like this would take months of prep work. He would have to find this person, learn their schedules and who they knew, understand who would find their body and alert the police and press, and so on. He took another sip of his "coffee" to confirm his suspicions of its contents, and also to distract his excitement.

The abandoned factory was a perfect location for him: no electronics, no people, disconnected from the grid, and even in a satellite deadzone that destroyed cell calls. After doing his customary hour long check of every inch of the building and pre-starting a fire to burn the evidence he finally felt safe enough to see what his task was.

The cafe had a gimmick; their cups had stickers you could peel off to get ironic motivational quotes. If you were lucky you could also get a free cup. If you were working for the Boss you got different messages.

His cup had a cat hanging from a tree by its paws saying, "Hang in there!" This was normal. He brought out a black light and shined it on the picture to reveal...

Nothing. He shined the black light all over the cup, poured out the contents to look inside of it, and even tried ripping off the first layer of cardboard, to no avail. This was a normal cup.

He cleaned up his mess by spreading the ashes of the fire around to look like indiscreet black smudges in the factory. No liquid coffee had been left, he had drank it even though it was disgusting. Paranoia was the name of the game, especially when there was a mystery afoot.

Yet there wasn't much mystery was there? The new barista had probably just grabbed the wrong type of cup out of habit of grabbing normal cups. He would return in a few days and order a new cup and lodge a complaint with the Boss later. You had to be patient to succeed in this line of work, and he was the best.

His apartment in this town had been strategically set up so that his walk from the factory to his apartment would go past the cafe, just in case there was a problem that he had to discreetly scope out. Now that he thought about it, he'd been in this town for a few months now, and it was almost time to leave before people started to expect him to be around.

But nobody was looking at him, they were looking at the two plumes of smoke in the sky. The assassin had a well practiced sense of scale and direction, and so he immediately noted that they were rising from the cafe and his apartment complex. He slowed his walk to match the pace of the gawkers and thought hard.

Someone was targeting him. Having both his info location and his residence burning at the same time was too much of a coincidence to swallow.

He got closer to the cafe, where he could finally confirm it was actually burning. He was familiar with using fire intentionally, and even from the distance of the police delimiter he saw the signs. Fire didn't usually spread like that, and he was confident an investigation would reveal arson. It was sloppy work.

One of the employees recognized him. The assassin approached the group with a casual worried look, like this was the first time he'd ever seen something so tragic in person, "What's going on?"

The employee said, "I don't know... It just happened. Did- Were you-"

"Shut up," he said. He didn't glance the police and firemen, that would have been stupid, "Tell me what happened."

One of the managers spoke up, "It started at the counter, near the cash register. Spread like hellfire, sir."

"Oh jeez," he ran his fingers through his hair in the exact nervous way he'd seen others do when stressed, "I was just here, actually," he looked around for the obvious up-close witness, "Where's that new barista girl? The one named Claire? I hope she's okay?"

"Claire? Nobody named Claire works here. Not that I know of, at least," said the manager.

"Thank you. Is there anything else I ought to know?" he asked. This was bad.

"No sir."

The assassin left for one of the nearest bug-out bags he'd stored around the city. It was hidden in a dark alley inside of a locked biohazard receptacle that had long been abandoned and sterilized. He had to assume he was being watched, so he tried his hardest to pretend he'd stumbled upon it by accident; instead of using the correct combination he used a rock to knock the lock loose.

Inside the bag was money, weaponry, ammo, clothing, and an electric razer.

The single easiest way to hide your identity from a casual glance is to cut your hair. For this reason the assassin always kept a full beard and long hair, so that he could change his appearance quickly in case of an emergency.

He went into a crowded mall, trying to blend into the crowd, and made his way into the bathroom. This was a single family bathroom that you could lock to not let anyone else in, which was exactly what he wanted. Hopefully he'd lost anyone who might have been trailing him.

Inside he cut all the hair on his head and face and put on new clothing. When he was finished he used a dry paper towel to pick up every loose hair, and flushed them down the toilet.

If someone had seen him holding the bag, they could use that to narrow down who he might be. So he turned the bag inside out, and made plans to get rid of it at the nearest opportunity.

He thought back to the fires. They were clumsy, obviously targeted towards him. The barista girl who had messed up his order apparently had never been there. Either he was overestimating his competition, or they explicitly wanted him to know that he was being hunted in order to maneuver him into a more advantageous position. Something was afoot, and he didn't know what.

Without outward hesitation he left the bathroom with an easy smile, like he knew exactly where he wanted to shop. Inside, he was memorizing faces, trying to match them up with anyone at the cafe, and anyone who had reason to kill him.

Most of all he was looking for a single person, the most likely suspect: "Claire" the barista with the scar on her arm.