His Gold Assassin

Part 3

 On Aurum I was a member of the species that the Aurum people controlled and manipulated to their will. Our species, despite looking similar to Aurums aside from the gold sheen to their skin, have been serving the people of Aurum for hundreds of years. However for them to have successful and self capable spies and assassins they needed us to be intelligent; and knowledge was another word for power.

Those of us who excelled in primary school, the only school for our kind, were hand selected and tested for a special profession that would allow us access to more training and skill than any of the others of our kind were ever granted on Aurum. Where they slaved away day and night repeating the same tasks over and over, us few gifted ones were given fresh material everyday and expected to perform it without flaw by the morning. Many cracked both mentally and physically and the numbers of people in my classes dwindled over the years as we progressed to higher levels of training. But those of us who were still alive gained an intelligence and self awareness of our position on the planet, a planet that deemed us unworthy only because of the lack of gold shine to our skin. But we had to pay for the knowledge we were given.

Therefore us few were deprived of things that even the most back broken slaves on Aurum were allowed. Strict rules forbade us from touching each other for more than a simple, formal hand grasp, which restricted us to never truly knowing how to give or receive affection. Emotions were prohibited which cut us off from showing or portraying empathy towards one another, disconnecting us mentally. And one of the most important rules was the stripping of our identity-the only thing that could make us feel like something other than Aurums' property. We were not allowed names on Aurum. We were instead given numbers that we were to be addressed by as though we were not living, breathing, feeling beings that could bleed like everyone else. We were tools owned and cataloged by the military, branded with heated metal as soon as we entered the academy. We were made to do unspeakable things to both those who deserved it and to those who didn't.

During missions we donned fake names, as was protocol, ones that we heard here or there throughout our galaxy. And some of us kept those names and called one another by them in private as a remembrance that we were not simply spies with no mind. I called myself Elpida when I was away in space. But on Aurum we had no names. On Aurum I was known as 8 6 8.