Jonathan Dubois was in a foul mood, his delivery was supposed to be here an hour ago; he was getting nervous, if the delivery had fallen into the hands of the Assassins, it would set back the company's work considerably. He reached for the phone at his desk and dialled the front desk, after two rings, the front desk manager.

"Yes sir?" came the manager's voice

"Has my delivery arrived yet?" Jonathan asked, his patience wearing thin already; He'd phoned down three times in the last hour, all with the same answer, and this was no different.

"I'm sorry sir, no deliveries or mail for you yet. I'll phone you immediately when it arrives though"

"See that you do." And with that, he angrily hung up and began pacing around his office yet again; hoping that somehow it would help his problems; though he knew it was false hope. It was becoming more and more likely that the courier was intercepted. He went to his desk and sat down and logged into the computer, his email alert flashed up after he logged in: he'd received emails since he last logged in. They were the usual, company reminders not to go talking about the affairs of the business to anyone (not that he needed reminding since they got that email about once a week) several were from news agencies asking for his comment on the recent fluoride scandal, not that he knew much about it, aside from the CEO's and people with elevated status, the companies affairs were heavily compartmentalised, no-one knew more than what happened in their department and anything that extended beyond it was carefully controlled. The only exception was this whole damn 'scandal' involving fluoride somewhere in the states. His knowledge was scarce as it is, but it was of no concern to him, he had his own hands full at the minute. He continued reading through the emails, deleting or forwarding them as necessary, until one caught his eye that was sent about an hour and a half ago. It was from his associate Michael Taylor in the police department and was titled 'Urgent'; he opened it and began reading:

Jonathan,

I came across something today and I have a good feeling you'd like to know about it. We got a call today about two bodies found in an alleyway, wallets missing / at first glance, it appeared to be a mugging, albeit with some inconsistencies, but the victims were interesting, one of them has injuries indicating he was in a fight, and then executed with his own gun, and the other was huddled in a corner, curled up and a smell of urine around him, typical in high stress scenarios and at the moment of death, but he had a clean entry wound from a precise and smooth blade, and the initial autopsy report believe it to have cleanly cut the aorta. Bottom line, the department is investigating it as a mugging gone wrong, but to me, it appears to be the work of an Assassin, based on the skill and precision. We recovered their wallets and weapons belonging to the gunshot victim, there was a wallet with a company ID in them, the stab vic also had a flash drive around his neck and a laptop missing its hard drive, it looks forcibly removed. I figure it's important to the company so I'm sending them to you. The wallet, laptop, flash drive and autopsy report are currently en route to you, expect them around 3pm.

May the Father of Understanding Guide you,

M.

Jonathan finished reading the email; it was good news and bad news. The assassins had apparently intercepted the courier, but instead of taking the flash drive, they had gone for the hard drive, a foolish move since the hard drive would be wiped after it was powered up again, a contingency plan that was put into effect last year as a countermeasure, the data loss to the company was minimal at best anyway since it auto connected to the servers when hooked up to the internet and uploaded any data changes. The only concern was how they were tracked on such short notice, but he would worry about that later, it was almost 3pm.

Jonathan had reached for his phone when it suddenly rang, he answered it promptly, it was the front desk.

"Sir? We have an officer here from the police department who says he has some documents for you?"

Jonathan gave a smile of relief "Good, send him up right away" and with that he hung up the phone

Michael opened the door and entered into his old acquaintances room, at 45, he was currently the captain of the homicide department, he'd left the company 15 years previously, but he always helped them out whenever possible or if he found something they might want to know, and as he had discovered at his time there, there wasn't much they didn't know or at the most, weren't aware of. Some of the police force they had blackmailed or pressured into helping them, but after all they gave Michael, he felt it was the least he could do to repay the company that gave him so much, especially his old friend Jonathan.

Jonathan greeted his old friend warmly and after exchanging brief pleasantries about Michael's wife and children, they got down to business.

"So what can you tell me that's off the books?" Jonathan asked, waving the autopsy report in front of him.

"The absence says a lot, it was definitely an assassin attack based on the lack of evidence and the evidence that is there. It was either a two man operation, or solo. He's been trained quite well, he managed to disarm an armed man and execute him with a single round, meaning he had to have been spotted and close, so he may be sloppy. The courier seemed to have frozen in fear or rendered unconscious based on his position, the smell of urine and the lack of any defensive wounds; he was killed by a single stab wound that severed his aorta, dead in a minute. The hard drive from the laptop was forcibly removed, meaning he probably didn't kill them subtly and had to bolt it, he appears to have missed the flash drive, probably figured the laptop would be more valuable, wallet and weapons were found discarded nearby. I got on scene about three hours ago, and I emailed you two hours ago. That's really as much as I can tell you right now"

"Quite extensive" Jonathan said, impressed "I can see it was a good call to... relocate you" he smirked and flicked through the folder and pulled out the flash drive, he held it up to Michael

"Did you go through this?"

"I just checked content, to make sure it was there and not a forgery or blank" Michael said, looking uncomfortable "I've heard the stories about people who went snooping where they didn't belong."

Jonathan laughed "They're just stories Mike, but this information is particularly sensitive, given recent events"

"I'll not ask, anyway, I'd better go before people start asking me where evidence walked off to, not that I'll catch the bastards with the law, you guys can do it easier, and it'd be better for all of us anyway. Later Jonathan." And with that, he got up and left.

As soon as the door closed, Jonathan got up and plugged the drive into his computer; it would take a few moments to validate the computer as authorised and enable the data to be decrypted, all Michael saw was just the filenames, not the content. After thirty seconds, the machine beeped and opened the contents; he scanned through them until he found the file he wanted: "LRA-UPDATE" it stood for "Lineage Research and Acquisitions Update" he opened the file and a spreadsheet filled the page, in it was a list of people, their last known locations and the person of interest as well as some other information.

Jonathan was head of the European division of Lineage Research and Acquisition, a division of the Abstergo Corporation that specialised in the research of the heritage of people, primarily Assassins and Templar's and tracked their ancestry to see if it flagged any people of interest throughout history. The division's current objective was to capture or coerce persons of interest to participate in the Animus Project overseen by Alan Rikkin and headed by Warren Vidic. Jonathan didn't have the particulars for the project; he'd gained enough to understand it somehow involved using DNA to access the memories of a subject's ancestor. Again, the company did a good job keeping information strictly 'need-to-know' all the information he was given was the person's name, typically address or some other form of residence, and the particular ancestor in question. Jonathan figured logically that some of the people 'acquired' were related on some genetic level since some names cropped up repeatedly, some were familiar, like Marco Polo, others he'd never heard of, like "Altair" or something to that effect, he didn't concern himself with that though, it was beyond his pay.

He read through the latest names and copied the file to an email and sent it to the teams positioned throughout Europe, one in London, Germany, France and so on. Usually, it was a straightforward procedure, though occasionally, they got resistance, like an assassin who knows who he is or something, or just some joe-nobody who won't go without a fight. The information gathering could've been done on-site, but the policy was to get visual confirmation of each target so as to make the information more reliable, ironically, this had cost two employees their lives, though their deaths would help the company considerably. He continued to read the spreadsheet and marked the High Value Individuals to the company. He had just sent the email when he noticed something peculiar, re-reading the names, he noticed some of them were based in Georgia and Israel, they were part of the Asia division, not Europe. He gave it some thought and decided he would investigate this later; right now he had some of the current missions to check up on.