The sound of high heels echoes through the air in the large foyer of Abstergo Industries. People who are close enough to the passing young woman can faintly hear the music pouring out of the earbuds that she wears. As she passes the information desk ,she waves pleasantly to the receptionist, a small, secret, smile on her lips. As she passes the coffee kiosk, her hands now in her pockets, her gaze slides over to Sean, the man with the glasses who serves the coffee, and Rebecca, the company's messenger. In the midst of their conversation, their gazes slide over to meet hers. The young woman's secret smile transforms into a smirk as her gaze slides away from them and she looks forward again, her sight locking on the elevator just ahead.
"Good morning," Olivier's number one minion greets as the young woman steps onto the elevator. The young woman pretends she can't hear through her music, keeping her gaze straight ahead as the elevator ascends through the building. The doors open and she is the first to step out of the elevator. Her steps, made loud from the heels of her boots, are sure and quick as she passes her station, her animus, and makes her way to the third level security clearance room.
She presses the button on the cord of her earbuds and the singer stops mid-lyric, a new voice coming through the speakers. "Ready?" John, one of Abstergo's many IT workers, asks.
"Ready," she answers, a secret fire in her eyes and that secret smile playing at her lips.
The red light on the door turns green as she glances over her shoulder. With nobody watching, she's safe to push the door inward, swinging it open, and steps inside. She sits down at one of the many computers in the room, positioning herself so that she can see the door but no one can look through its glass and see her. She turns on the computer and pushes a flashdrive into the USB port. "Make it quick," she instructs quietly.
"Yeah, yeah," he answers lazily. But she can hear his fingers flying across the keyboard through the radio, moving so fast that she wonders how he can possibly keep track of what he's doing.
"Everything else is done?" she asks as he works.
"Of course," he answers with a smile that she can hear even though she can't see it. "You're in."
Once the computer is hacked, music comes back on through the earbuds as the young woman gets to work. She pulls all the information about Desmond Miles' ancestors that Abstergo Industries had ever managed to collect, all the way back to Altair. She doesn't bother with anything before then, because even though Altair may not have been the first of the blood to become an Assassin, it still all started with him. He was the first to find any piece of Eden, they first to make a mark on the Assassins and their Creed. It all began with him, this war that's still being fought even almost a thousand years later.
When all of the information is transferred from the company database to the flashdrive, she pulls it out of the port and tucks it into an inside pocket of her jacket as she rises to her feet. She leaves the room the same way she came in: unnoticed. This time, as she passes her station, she pauses. She pulls an envelope from another inside pocket of her jacket and drops it on the desk in front of her animus. On the front of the envelope is Olivier's name, neatly written in script that could have come right out of a time long passed.
"Leaving already?" the receptionist in the lobby asks as the young woman passes her again. This time, she's completely ignored, as the woman pretends she can hear nothing through the music pouring into her ears. She slides her gaze over to the coffee kiosk again. Rebecca and Sean are gone. As is John, from wherever the IT boys hide away.
Her steps echo through the lobby as she approaches the door. As the glass doors slide open for her, she stops and turns around, facing all that she has seen for the past months. Facing all that has been done to her, recently and in the distant past.
She takes it all in, one last time, knowing that this will be the end. The war will not end, perhaps it will never end, but her life on the run, hiding from everything, fearing everyone, will. They made her fall once, took what made her stand from her twice. And now she'll make sure they lose what makes them stand, again and again, and she will make sure they fall, again and again, as many times as it takes until they cannot rise again, as she did.
Now the tables are turned. Abstergo Industries is no longer at the advantage, and they don't even know it yet.
Oh, but they will. They will know, very soon, and they will fight back. And, with any luck, they will fight the old way, instead of their ridiculous newly found way that enables them to hide away behind their computer screens.
She turns back around, pulling her hand out of the front pocket of her jeans. Hidden like a coin for a magic trick, snug in between her index finger and middle finger, is a device no bigger than a coin. But far more useful.
The young woman slaps her hand against the wall as she goes through the door, letting the device stick to the wall.
By the time she's through the door, Abstergo Industries has been robbed of every bit of information about Desmon Miles' ancestors that they ever recovered from any man or woman's memories. By the time she steps off the curb, their entire database, systems, security, and everything else that they've managed to build up, have all been fried and destroyed beyond recover. By the time she reaches the sidewalk on the other side of the street, the prisoner in their basement has disappeared. By the time she reaches the corner at the end of the street, Abstergo Industries, in all its branches, has come to ruin, and one simple message is left behind, appearing in bold red letters across every screen in the building: The Cross is Next.
I smile as I round the corner and disappear, a ghost who was never known.
They'll know me now.