[WP] In a school for assassins and mercenaries, you're a beloved lunch lady. You ruefully realize that you're the only person nearly everyone trusts. Then you get framed for placing hemlock in an administrator's meal. The school board rushes to fire you, throwing the academy into turmoil.
*****
Only a few people knew about Spyder, the 'school' for assassins, mercenaries, and other well-trained operatives who offered their services on the black market. But to those who knew of its existence, they could attest to the fact that it was the most dangerous school in existence.
Having been in existence for about 120 years, it had steadily produced many assassins and the likes, an example being Gustavo Princip, the man responsible for the assassination of the Archduke of Serbia, an event that snowballed into the blot on human history known as World War I.
With the characters, the school possessed, everyone was very wary of each other, from top to bottom. These were people being trained for various forms of espionage, so trust was something they learned to kill off from the onset. Thus, they knew that anyone on the remote island where Spyder was located could be an enemy sent to kill them.
This put a real dampener on the atmosphere, and everyone was tense. Whenever fights broke out, which was relatively less frequent, it was common that deaths would be recorded. At the very least, injuries worthy of a visit to the Emergency Room would be sustained.
And there was I in the midst of it all, being the single person everyone could trust. Because I was the one who made their food.
They say that there are two people - or three - you have to trust - or you shouldn't mess with... I am not sure which is it, since I didn't go to school. But I believe those two people are your cook and driver.
I fed every human being on that island - about eighty of them, sixty being students. I was the only person who cooked, supervised the delivery of condiments and all of that stuff. I was the one who was responsible for their feeding, o they had no other option than to trust me.
I, Maria Hernandez, a slave who knew not her origins.
I had grown up with a man called Dmitriy. In Russia. He let me keep my name for some reason, but was not kind to me at all. He beat me constantly and forced me to cook his meals to perfection. It was under his roof that I learned to cook, and he always reminded me that he had bought me off my dying father while he was in the UK, and he had come back with me.
I was his property. In 2020, I was a modern-day slave, and one day I got sick of it.
That day was my 18th birthday, and he told me that I was 'ripe' for 'harvesting'. He tried to force me to fellate him, and in response, I almost bit his pen!s off. I escaped unto the streets, where I almost died of cold until I was somehow found by Amanda Keller, the Director of Spyder.
She was on those sane streets looking for prodigies at the bottom of the barrel to bring up into malleable weapons. I had that fire in my eyes, or so she said, but my body was too frail and weak for extensive field action. I was only good at cooking, but that was certainly good enough for her.
I had worked there for 20 years now, and I needed nothing else. When I was not cooking or overseeing any duty, I spent my free time with Miss. Keller in her office, She was six years older, and very much interested in me romantically. If we were not having heated romps in her room, we were discussing any topic that popped up.
I never got a formal education, I refused one, in fact, deciding that I didn't need it. I just learned to read, to write, and to hold guns and shoot without missing. In the world we lived in, a degree didn't matter as much as survival skills did.
Why is all this backstory necessary?
Because in one day, all that I had struggled to build came crashing down when I was summoned to the administrative block. I was asked the question I never, ever wanted to hear.
"What did you put in this food?"
Amanda's eyes were icy as she glared at me, as did the other six administrative officers.
The Unarmed Combat instructor always hated me, and his sly, crooked smile churned my insides. "I always told you that no one can be trusted, Miss Keller... Especially not a street rat like this one. A leopard can never change its -"
"Leave. All of you."
They all walked out, and soon after I began to hear loud noises around the school block.
"I swear I-"
"You shut your mouth, Maria. You're the only one allowed to handle my food, so how do you expect me to believe anything you say? Where did you get the hemlock you used in this food?"
I gasped.
Of all the deadly poisons used, it was hemlock.
*****
To Be Continued.
I'm positive that this will be even more interesting than The Seal of Magic.
What's hemlock though???