A Test of Faith

Footsteps patted against the bustling sounds of New York as the lone runner scaled from rooftop to rooftop. People looked up at the sound of breaking glass as the silhouette forced itself through a fifth story window.

No one saw him as he stood waiting by the open window above.

'I don't expect it to be easy,' William Miles had said. 'But he is a target, a Templar informant, and most importantly for you, a test."

Percy flicked his wrist and looked down at his blade as he pictured his target; the killing; the escape; the outcome. He checked his hood, making sure it concealed his eyes.

'It will also diminish the Templar presence in the camp," Jackie Crowley, head of the demigod branch, had told him once they and William had parted ways.

True as it was, that didn't make it any easier.

'Little has changed since you were in the Animus. You are an Assassin, but today, you choose your family. Today, you test your faith.'

He had to do it fast and make sure his face wasn't caught. He ran his fingers down the length of the blade. What made it harder was that she was there. She and his target were meeting at a Cafe, and this was the best time to strike and run.

He pulled the mask up from underneath his hoodie, up over his nose, and secured it. But it did nothing to hide his eyes which, while in shadow, could still be visible in the light. That worried him. She would recognise his eyes.

He saw the two of them for a fleeting moment from the window in the alleyway, before they disappeared behind a building. He focused his senses. Smells and sounds became shapes and he closed his eyes, picturing all around him.

His fellow Assassin's called it 'Eagle Vision.' He thought they played too many video games.

William had called it, 'Focusing your senses, using all your assets around you to picture the world, as all Assassins should.'

He was one of few that could accomplish such a feat and he firmly believed that if the others had stopped fantasising it as a thing of fiction and put their minds to it, took the time to understand it, they could all do it too. It had taken him almost a year to gain this understanding, which when considering his ADHD was actually an achievement in itself. Some others had left the Animus with the skill, as a result of the bleeding effect. Some were born with it. Few learnt it themselves. But he had yet to fully master the skill.

"I heard about you and Percy," his target said.

"You're a bit late to the party with that one," she mumbled. Percy listened intently as the wind carried the words towards him.

"Why did the two of you split?" he asked.

"He never said. A week before he left, he was acting very weird. Looking over his shoulder; looking over my shoulder. He was extremely protective, like everyone within a metre of us was gunning for me. Like we were surrounded by assassins."

"Huh," his target said. "Weird."

Funny, Percy thought. What I would've done to have had us surrounded by Assassins.

"Then he left," she said. "Most of his belongings were gone and he left me a note on the bed, and that was that."

"I'm sorry, Anna. Did the note say where he was going, or…"

"No. Just that he loved me and that he had 'important business that I couldn't be a part of,' and that 'maybe one day, we'll see each other again.' Whatever he thinks he's doing, he says it's for my own good that I don't know about it."

"You don't sound too worried," he said.

"It's only been a month. Worse case scenario the Gods have him doing something. But I think he's trying to track down whoever… well, you know," Annabeth sighed.

"Percy's mum and stepdad, right?"

"Yeah."

"I still don't understand why anyone would kill them. I mean, we only met once, but they seemed like really nice people."

There was a long silence after that.

Pure, boiling hatred rose to his chest at the mention of their deaths.

It made his job just a little bit easier.

"So, you haven't seen Percy since?" he asked.

"No, but… I'll see him again soon. He won't be able to keep away for long, trust me. I know him-"

His focus was cut off when a large bird had suddenly flown down and perched itself on the windowsill. It was Edward, the trained eagle the demigod branch used in some missions. For a long time, he had thought he was named after a famous British skier. It's only recently that he learned that he was actually named after a caribbean pirate Assassin of the same name.

Quickly, he pulled a small pellet from his pocket and held it out to the bird, who took it in his talon.

"Go get em, Eddie," he said as he briefly scratched him under his neck. Eddie the eagle playfully nipped at Percy's leather glove, then took off.

Twenty-five seconds; he began to count.

One, two, three, four- Eddie flew into position, and began to take silent circles above his target.

Fifteen, sixteen, seventeen- He visualized what he had to do, every jump, every ledge, the assassination. He reassessed every possible way it could go down. Would he jump from atop the building or be forced to get down and blend with a crowd? Would he take him in the street or have to wait until they were at the cafe? If so, would it be outside the cafe, or from the inside? An outcome would be decided by a number of factors: The density of the crowd; the corresponding escape route; traffic, should he have to cross the road to escape; the direction Annabeth was facing - he didn't want her to see his eyes; police; where Eddie is in the sky. So many factors to think of while pursuing a target and preparing to achieve a feat of inhuman athleticism. From a fall that would kill or paralyse most people, he would have to turn into a fluid move that would suffice in both killing his target and keeping up momentum for the best possible escape.

Twenty-three, twenty-four- He quickly took a number of steps back and then set off in a burst of speed, flinging himself out the window and rolling on the rooftop below.

He watched the skies for Eddie - he would be the marker that would tell him where his target was - as he ran, jumped, climbed, from rooftop to rooftop to balcony to rooftop.

One year, he would always think in these moments. One year of the Animus and personal training, and look at me. Forget Jason, I'm practically flying myself!

He thought this as he dropped down from a six story building to a four story, with a faultless landing that only an Assassin could achieve. It was then that he saw Eddie, and it was with many calculations and years of experience - three lifetime's worth, in fact - that he made the ultimate decision. He slowed his pace slightly.

The cafe that they were headed to was to his right, some seven-hundred metres from the end of the line of buildings he was currently running across. He stopped and caught his breath.

Once his breathing had steadied he continued at a slow jog, only speeding up when it was time to clear a gap between two buildings. He kept his eyes trained on Eddie. When he was at his final rooftop, he stopped. He had around forty seconds at their current pace, before it was time for the kill.

"He's a Templar agent," he said to himself.

'An informant, that's a little different,' his conscience said back.

He's been feeding the Templars information-

'But he doesn't understand their nature,' his conscience returned.

He told them about Mum and Paul.

His conscience had nothing to say to that.

Last Christmas, the seven had all gathered together for a big christmas party. They all got to bring their friends and family, and they had it in a big hall. Annabeth brought her Dad and Malcolm Pace, her half-brother.

Malcolm saw Sally Jackson's ring.

It was her wedding ring, and looked plain and simple, or it would have, was it not for the Assassin A, the symbol of her order, engraved on it.

Malcolm was the Templar Informant.

Malcolm knew the symbol.

Malcolm told.

Three days later, Percy Jackson would come home to her and Paul, both of them dead in a pool of blood, both of them shot. His mother clutching her ring in her dead hand. The last thing Sally Jackson had done in her dying moments, was write 'under my bed' in her own blood on the wall.

It was with the information he found there, in the small metal box that he opened with his mother's own ring, that he found the Assassins.

His jaw set, he knew his time was up, and he ran.

He freed his hidden blade from it's wrist-bound sheath, as he powered across the rooftop. Eddie's head turned in his direction from high above, waiting.

Once he was five metres from the ledge, he gave the eagle a wave.

Not a second before he leaped did the small pellet Eddie was holding hit the ground and explode in a dense cloud of smoke. Months of training and centuries of experience allowed him to see through the smoke, by differentiating shapes and shadows through the grey cloud. The bare outline of his target was more than enough to go on.

Time went into slow motion.

His entire weight crashed down upon his target, as the Assassin used him to break his fall. He brought his face close to his target's, as he forced the blade into his throat with ease.

The last thing Malcolm Pace would see, through the smoke and the spray of blood, would be the sea green eyes of Percy Jackson.

Then he was dead.

Percy bolted. He slid smoothly over cars as he made his way across the road, then through an alleyway. He didn't need to look to know he was being followed. Whoever it was was irrelevant, although he was sure it was Annabeth.

Percy was confident that she wouldn't be able to catch him, but he knew that it never paid to underestimate a child of Athena. Especially not this one.

He scrambled up onto a ladder he had placed only hours before the Assassination. He and his Assassin comrades had set up about a dozen escape routes in the area to compensate for every scenario. But this one had a flaw in the event of a chase.

Annabeth pulled the ladder down, and Percy cursed himself for not going straight for the window he had been climbing besides only seconds before.

The ladder descended backwards and as a last ditch attempt to avoid a painful landing he jumped across to the the building opposite. The tips of his fingers managed to grab at a loose brick, and for a second he was safe. But then the brick loosened some more.

He pushed off the wall, and managed to grip a drainage pipe just as the brick parted with the building and smashed against the concrete below. Looking down, he saw that Annabeth was already ascending the pipe.

The Assassin shimmied up the pipe with great speed and little effort. Annabeth was having considerably more trouble, but she too managed to scale up the building and follow him on the rooftops, though Percy now had a much bigger lead.

"Stop!" she yelled out at him as he jumped from one building to the next, showing off with a casual front flip that he had hoped would tell her she was out of her league.

He heard a loud grunt and turned to see her heaving herself up the ledge he had just jumped so easily. He continued to run until he made it to the edge of the building, then he stopped. In the alleyway below, there was a large dumpster filled to the brim with cardboard, sheets, blankets, cotton, and whatever else that was on hand that would do the job. There are dumpsters like this all over the city, but in this area, so close to an Assassin branch, they are on every block.

That's one thing that will never change, he thought to himself. We Assassins will always love our theatrics.

He turned and adjusted his hood, to be sure his eyes were in shadow. Annabeth had only just cleared the building behind him, her knife held in her teeth. She dashed towards him and he stepped back to the ledge.

He deepened his voice, tried to make it a bit husky, and spoke the same words he had heard spoken in the Animus, when his ancestor, Bartholomew Louise Patricks, was surrounded by french soldiers in the city of Havana.

"De l'obscurité nous servons la lumière, nous tuons pour préserver le libre arbitre. Vous parlez notre nom, mais vous ne connaissez pas sa véritable signification. Nous sommes des Assassins."

'From darkness we serve light, we kill to preserve free will. You speak our name, but you do not know its true meaning. We are Assassins.'

He was amazed at how much he sounded like Bartholomew.

Then he closed his eyes and pushed himself off the ledge, in a leap of faith.

When Annabeth rushed to the ledge, all she could see in the alleyway below was a stray dog and a dumpster, it's lid clamped shut.

Perseus Jackson watched from above, unseen, as Malcolm was loaded into the van, ready for transport. It would not go to police, nor the coroner or the morgue. No, his body will be in the hands of Abstergo. They will conduct the investigation. That was good, it would mean they will get the message.

He heard the eagle's cry and extended his arm where Eddie perched and nipped at a stray hair that was protruding from his hood.

"Good boy. We've caused quite a fair bit of havoc today, haven't we, eh?" He gave him a good scratch.

"You sure have," came a familiar voice from behind him.

"Feingold," he said, patting the ledge next to him. "Come to join us?" She sat down next to him, swinging her legs precariously off the edge.

"Found out who your target was right before you left… I can't believe… Malcolm," she said. "Honestly, when I was told there was a templar mole in the camp, well… I didn't believe it. How can you be sure that Malcolm was... well, you know?"

"The day after the party, Mal had left the camp for unknown reasons. In a stroke of luck, one of our initiates caught this," he absentmindedly handed her a photograph.

"Oh my…"

He turned to the grey hooded daughter of Hermes.

"He was giving information to known Templar Abigale Jomain. She also met the end of my blade. That file," he tapped at the picture of Malcolm handing the now dead Templar a folder, "contained enough information to bring down you, me and about half the Hephaestus cabin. The entire greek chapter of the demigod branch would have been forced into hiding was it not for a few Assassins being at the right place at the right time.

Eddie flapped his wings and hopped from one Assassin to another.

"What about Annabeth? I was watching from over there," she pointed to a building opposite the cafe. "Do you think she suspects you?"

"I don't know," he shrugged. "I just want her left out of this war. I wouldn't have done it with her around if I had a choice. But while she chased me across the rooftops, there was a Templar agent sitting in that cafe, waiting to relay with Malcolm."

"Right. I heard that there was a brutal stabbing in that cafe not minutes after what happened. Truly tragic."

Percy smiled as he pulled a necklace with a large, red, metal cross dangling from it. The symbol of the Templar order. It was very bloody, and the chain link was broken.

"He had it out on show, like he was asking for an Assassin's attention."

"Percy, you're gonna need to go into hiding after today, and get a new hoodie. You ever consider swapping the blue for something less showy, like… oh, I don't know, grey?"

"Nah, maybe I'll go classic style. You think white and red would suit me?" he smiled.

"Oh, you'd look like a modern day Ezio Auditore," she said, as she abruptly stood. Eddie launched of in surprise. "C'mon, it's gonna get dark soon. Dinner at the branch? We've got cake."

He smiled at her, but shook his head. "I'm good." She poked him in the back.

"And icecream."

"Thanks, but-"

"Burgers, beer, chips, coke, all-six-food-groups," she delivered each word with a sharp poke.

Eventually he relented.

"Fine, I'm coming- OW! I'm coming! I'm coming!"

He got up, and together they ran the length of the building and leaped into the dark, shadowy back streets of New York, with Edward close behind.