Altair

I watched Alanna pace the length of the small living room, nearly to the point of pulling her hair out in frustration. She had told us what she knew, but then in the same breath said she did not trust her own memories. I felt for her, I really did, but I knew she would hate me when I opened my mouth in a second.

"Alanna, I believe when we go to rescue Kate, you should stay here." Here we go.

She stopped suddenly and turned to stare at me. "You have got to be kidding me."

I stood and walked over to her. "You are not ready for something like this. I do not want you to get captured." I knew she was not ready. She may be able to fight, but was she ready to kill? I did not believe she was ready for that. Not yet, and if I had my wish, she would never be ready. She had a chance to start over. I had wished sometimes that I had a chance like that.

Her eyes widened. "You think I can't handle myself?"

I was about to step in it deep if I did not choose my words carefully. I knew the Alanna now was easy to placate, but somewhere in that wreck of a mind of hers laid the most stubborn woman I have ever known. At any moment she could rise from the dead and eat me alive.

"You said yourself you did not want to kill. I am trying to see that does not happen, but where we are going, the belly of the beast, you may have to. They would not hesitate to put a bullet in you. I would not hesitate to put on in them. Can you say the same?"

From the look on her face, I knew I had her. She was still torn about the whole killing part. I knew she would just be a distraction for me if she went.

"Can I jump in here for a minute?" Ezio asked as he pushed off the wall he had been leaning against the whole time. I nodded and as did Alanna. "Good. I think we can find something for her to do on this mission that does not involve killing someone."

What could he be thinking about? Unless he was thinking what I just had pop into my head. "Are you talking about a driver?"

He nodded, a smile spreading across his face. "Normally we have Desmond be the driver, but under the circumstances, I think she would do just fine, but we could use another person on the inside."

Four heads turned and looked at the Native American sitting on the arm of the couch. He stared at us like we had just lost our ever loving minds. "Uh…no. I have enough problems with the Templars hunting me. I have not been like you guys and hiding what I am. I have been out there and destroying them wherever I can find them."

"Well son, you haven't been doing that good of a job if one, they are still here and two, they are not hunting you that bad." I smirked. "I destroyed three city blocks one time and they hunted me for two years. I could not stay in the same place twice. Hell, I was sleeping in sewers."

Conner stood and walked over to the small group. "I do just fine. At least I am not too big of a chicken shit to live in the open. You hide behind your new identities and your technology. I fight them the way I did when I was mortal. I just upgraded the weapons over the years." He went toe to toe with me.

Oh, the kid had an attitude! I was going to enjoy taking him down a few pegs and lay him out on the ground. "We shut them down for nearly five years. Can you say that?"

He laughed. "They will never be down for long, you know that. I fight them all the time. You like to wait until they are amassed in a group. I know what you did for the last ten years. Oh yeah. I have heard about that. Killing them at parties, wedding, funerals, and the like. I think that's about the only time you and I have ever been alike."

"You did what?"

I turned to see Alanna looking at me, gray eyes large and in shock. I never wanted her to know about that time. Hell, now I wish I could forget. "Alanna that was a different time. I thought they had killed you." I reached for her, but she backed up.

"How many innocents?" She whispered.

"I don't know." I hung my head. "I wanted them to suffer the way I did. I wanted them to feel what I felt."

She turned and fled the room, sealing the fact she was not Alanna any longer. She was, but in the same breath, was not. I narrowed my eyes at Conner. "I will deal with you later. She was not supposed to know about that. She is not the same woman we all knew at one time."

I raised my fist to hit him, when someone grabbed it. "Hitting him will not make it better. You knew what you were doing when you did those things, Altair. You wanted them to hurt. Well, they did. Now, you have to live with that and try to regain what little footing you had with Alanna." Ezio stepped in front of me. "Go deal with this problem now, and I will try to find out what I can about where Kate is being held."

Nodding, I lowered my fist and glared at the other man. "This is not over. Not by a long shot."

"I wouldn't dream of it." He smirked and took a seat in the chair behind him.

I quickly left the room in search for Alanna. I found her a few minutes later in her room, lying on her bed. I knocked on the open door. She turned enough to see me and rolled back over. "May I come in?"

She did not answer, so I stood in the doorway. How do I fix this mess? I was not the one that came up with the good ideas. She was the always the better of us to do this. "I never wanted you to find out like that."

"But you did it. You used revenge as a means to slaughter innocent people." She spoke low and from the tone, I could tell she had been crying or was crying.

Now I was starting to feel about an inch tall. "Alanna, I was hurting. I thought I had lost you, and I had nothing left. I could not die. I was going to live without you for forever, and I wanted them to see their world could be taken away as well. I did not care at that point."

She finally looked at me, her eyes were red and shone with unshed tears. "I thought we didn't kill the innocents? Isn't that we were always taught? 'Stay your blade from the flesh of the innocent'. That was one of the tenets, wasn't?"

She spoke the truth. I had done the same thing that took the life of Malik's brother, Kadar, back at Solomon's Temple. "I have done wrong. I know I have, but I did not know what else to do. When I awoke to find my family was nothing more that dust in their graves, you showed me how to channel that grief into helping others so no one else had to go through what I did."

I had betrayed her and myself. I broke everything I stood for. For what? My revenge? Now that my mind was clear and I had focus once more, I could see the errors I had made the last ten years. So many died that did not need to. Now I really needed to have a drink, but even that would not help when you cannot even drink the memories away. "I am sorry."

"I know why you did it." She came to me, and cupped my cheek. "I might have done the same thing if I was in your shoes, but there is so much blood on your hands. In that same time, there is much on mine, I suppose. I was like you at one time. I have killed many, haven't I?"

"No, you have not killed anyone. I may call you Alanna, but you are not like her. You have something she lost a long time ago. Innocence. I hope you stay that way. If blood needs to be spilled, I shall do it for you." I looked into her eyes.

Her smile warmed me a bit. "You cannot fight all my fights, but you can fight this one. I will stay behind when you go get my mother. I don't think I can handle being there if something went wrong."

She was hinting at Kate being killed. I knew what she was saying, and I understood. "Alright." Then I finally did what I had wanted to do for weeks now. I kissed her.

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

"We are a go here." I spoke low into the mic I had clipped to the collar of my jacket.

'West entrance is clear as well.' Desmond came over the line. He had shaped up nicely in his years of exile.

'Garage secure. Will enter on your signal.' Conner finally agreed to come when Alanna asked him.

She had stayed behind like she said she was going to. I would not fault her for doing so. She had the courage to admit she could not do it and we all looked up to her for that.

Ezio held his SIG Sauer P220 at ready, and my Colt 1911 was in my hand. I was not worried about being silent once we got into the building. They had cameras everywhere inside and there was not a way to shut them down remotely. I had asked Rebecca about that. She also told me that once we popped the doors, a silent alarm goes off that tells them where they have been compromised. That was why we were striking from three angles. Conner was in the garage, Desmond had taken the west entrance, by the research labs, and then Ezio and I were entering through the roof. A few well-placed shots with a sniper, two zip lines, and we were up there.

From the Intel we gathered, they were keeping Kate in the basement detention center. It was closest to Conner, but we all had our areas to clear.

"Let's do this gentleman." And I nodded my head. Ezio planted the charge and we covered our ears. It blew open easily and with minimal backlash. He was the expert at explosives. Sometimes I wished I had paid that close attention on my travels and less attention on other things, like what type of steel swords from around the world were made out of.

I entered first, clinging to the walls as I made my way down the stairs. Ezio followed right behind me. Upon coming to the first door, I signaled him to get ready. Popping open the door, I saw at least a half dozen guards in heavy riot armor. My gun and Ezio's would be useless against that. I crept back to him.

"They have heavy riot. This is all you." I let him go ahead of me.

He pulled a cylinder out of his pocket that looked like a thing of Chap Stick, but I knew better. I really wanted his secrets in bomb crafting. Cracking the door open enough to roll it in, he brought out the detonator. Once he hit the button, the door flew off the hinges and out came a spray of blood, tissue and other assorted pieces that was once a man in riot gear. Now he was just a greasy smear on the walls, ceiling and well, everywhere.

"Remind me not to piss you off when you have one of those on you. That could be very bad." I whispered to him, looking at the carnage that replaced the men.

"Remind me to take the one out from under your bed then." He grinned at me.

Was he serious? With the Italian, I was not quite sure. Like the rest of us, he was not completely mentally stable and his work with explosives shows that. "Come on."

We made it to the service elevator on the other side of that floor with no more heavily armed or shielded men. I started to get the feeling something was about to go south, and rather quickly. I stopped short of the door and as I did I saw the elevator was moving.

We backed up and around the corner. We heard the ding, and then more men in riot gear ran out. Ezio pulled out another explosive. I shook my head. We were too close to them for it to miss us. I could not have us hurt this early into the extraction.

Frowning, he slipped it back into his pocket and pulled out a smaller one. We had to get on that elevator; because that was the only way down to the floor we were going to meet up with the other two. He lobbed into the middle of them. We dove for cover and by the time they realized what was at their feet, it went off, knocking them off their feet.

Quickly, we took them out and got on the elevator. Punching the floor we needed, I backed myself into the corner on one side and he did the same on the other. That way, if they tried to fire on us when the doors opened, they had a smaller percentage of hitting us.

The damn thing felt like it was taking forever, but when the doors opened I was surprised to see Desmond standing there, rather bloody. "Thought you two would never get here. Conner is clearing the corridor now. We are going to meet him in a few minutes."

"What's the guard situation down here like?" I asked standing up at full height. My legs had gotten quite the workout for crouching as long as I did.

He checked the clip in the Browning Hi Power he borrowed. It was once Alanna's choice of sidearm. "They have retreated back to the detention area. At least a dozen to a dozen and a half."

"Well, that sounds like it's going to be a blast to get past." Ezio checked his cargo.

I would not carry explosives like he did, but he was the expert. I had not seen him have an incident in at least a hundred years. The last one was rather nasty that leveled a barn, a chicken coop, and blew up seven chickens, two goats, a cow, and knocked the top off the well. I had to pick large pieces of wood out of him and some metal. All I heard him bitch about was how I lacked any medical training. This was true. I was more of the weapons master and ammo specialist. Now I was the mechanic and handy man. I still hated computers.

We heard rapid machine fire and then a small explosion. Conner came running out of the hallway, AK 47, slung over his shoulder and a few guards on his ass. "Help would be nice."

I dropped to one knee and began to fire. Ezio and Desmond did the same. After emptying the clip into the guards, and making sure they were not getting up, held out my hand to pull Conner off the ground. "What the hell did you do, talk to them?"

"Ha ha, you are a laugh riot." He sneered. "No, they tried to ambush me. I had one small charge and nearly out of ammo."

"Here" Des pulled out his spare gun and it over. "That's why we always a pistol along with whatever we are carrying."

"Well, I was not planning in storming a Templar compound when I came to bring Alanna her journal. I left a lot of shit at my place in Texas." He slipped the pistol into the back waistband of his black cargo pants.

Ezio slipped a fresh clip into his SIG. "Now is not the time for this. We need to get past them, or through them, and get to Kate. After that, you two can argue until you fall over from lack of breath."

I glared at the Native American, and he glared back. "Let's get this over with."

Working as one unit, we over took the next room, with only one wound. A bullet grazed my leg when I distracted the guards for Ezio to get past. He shot them with a sticky dart that had a small charge on it. It worked well enough to kill them quickly.

Tying a piece of cloth around the wound, I growled at the pain that ran up my leg. "Let's keep moving."

"You sure? We could go ahead and take them out." Desmond looked at me, then to the bandage on my leg that was already becoming saturated with blood.

"I'm fine." I tested out my leg. I could bear weight on it, but I would not be doing any running.

A bit slower this time, we made our way deeper into the bowls of the detention area. A stray guard here and there was nothing we couldn't handle, but when we got to the actual area they were holding Kate, that all went down the shitter.

Twenty five guards sporting riot gear and automatic assault rifles greeted us. We were so fucked.

"Gentlemen, please lay down your weapons and kick them in this direction." A man walked out from behind a wall and smiled at us.

"Like hell." I narrowed my eyes at him.

He held up a hand and the guards raised their rifles. "Lay them down and you will not be harmed."

I looked at the guys and dropped the Colt. The others did the same. I booted my gun in the man's direction. "Now, what the hell you want with her?" I pointed to Kate's cell.

She looked at me and finally realized who I was. "Where's Anna?"

"Safe." I replied but I never took my eyes off our captor. "Want to answer?"

"She was once a mole for us then went rogue. Joined your little band of wannabe assassins. Thinking you had a chance of winning. Took us ten years but we finally found her, only to be foiled by a woman we knew nothing about. Kate, it seemed, had found a bodyguard." He smiled at Kate and she glared back.

"Now the funny thing is when we went to talk to her, Kate got her to leave, leaving herself open for capture."

"Then we show up and ruin your plans." I smirked. "I love doing that to you bastards."

He walked over to us and looked at us each very closely. "I know you." He pointed to Desmond and then looked at Conner, "and you. You two have a long history of making trouble for us."

"I try, but I can only do so much, so I found these guys and we can cause more mayhem for you." Conner smirked and met his eyes. "Now, what are you going to do about it?"

"Kill you."

"Like hell." Dawson threw a grenade into the room and everyone dove for cover. He knelt in front of me. "Let's move before they get their acts together."

I saw Becca over by the cage and freeing Kate while Tom sat in the rafters and fired at the enemies, keeping them distracted and confused. Once Kate was free and weapons collected, I followed the others out the door.

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

None of us stopped running until we were outside and at the van we had parked in the garage. Desmond fired up the engine up once Tom was in, and we took off.

I turned to Dawson. "Thanks for saving our bacon back there. How did you know where we were?"

He smiled and handed me a phone. "You might want to call that woman of yours. She thought something bad was going to happen, so she called us. Tom had just happened to pop in for his yearly visit and got roped into helping."

I nodded my head and took the phone he handed me. I dialed the number at the ranch and Alanna answered. 'Hello?'

"Thank you for the backup. It came in handy." I smiled into the phone.

'Altair, I am glad to hear from you. I was worried something happened, so I called Becca because I remembered she was one of us and asked for her help. I was just glad I could help. There was no way I could have made it all the way down there in time to do any good.'

"We are heading in your direction now. Everything okay up there?" It was just good to hear her voice.

'Everything is fine. I have some news for you when you get here. I had a breakthrough with my memories.' She sounded excited about it.

"Like what?" I was not sharing her excitement. I did not want to see her lose that innocence she has now. If she remembered too much, I was afraid that she would be Alanna once more and the woman she was now would go away.

'I'll tell you when you get here.' She laughed a bit. 'I will let you go for now. See you soon.'

"Alright, bye." I hung it up and handed back. "She had some more memories come back."

Kate smiled. "That's a good thing."

I looked out the window. "Maybe, maybe not. It all depends on what she actually remembers."

I know the ending was a bit rushed. I am working up to something big. Well, I'm trying to. Bear with me for a bit longer. The next chapter will be wilder and a few more things answered. Until next time.