Happy Holidays!
Altair had requested a sim room for the entire week for private use. Usually, normal Assassins of Altair's rank could only request them for a few hours at a time and only First Classes could commandeer sim rooms for a day or days at a time. But, like nearly everything about Altair, he was an exception to the rule. When Alpha-One requested a sim room for a week, he got a private sim room. Or really just Altair. Not even Giovanni could have gotten an entire week of private use for a sim room. Altair had no thoughts that it didn't have something to do with the fact that Rauf was a First Class and that Mario liked him. Or liked him enough despite Altair always being a bit of an annoyance for him.
For the first time in two months, his entire squad was together too with no Alpha-Betas getting in the way. Or rather, this would be Ziio's final test since she'd already proved herself in a live fire test out in Colorado. In his head, Altair was already thinking of Ziio as Alpha-twelve so it was just semantics and to make sure she could push through. All of them had to push through.
He did a final count to make sure everyone was here. All twelve were here, even Diyari. He'd postponed another week so Diyari could get a feel for his new prosthetics and he was standing on his own between Sally and Ziio in numerical order. Altair was glad he was there. Mostly glad he was just able but also glad so he didn't have to pick someone from a lower squad like Foxtrot to elevate to become his new medic. Medics were rare to come by with any real proficiency because of the things upper squads went through to alter their bodies.
"Alright then," Altair said after looking them over. "You've all survived your pressure tests, which is good. Now reconditioning begins." He paused a moment. "I'll be honest, kids," he frowned as he spoke, "a lot of the other squads think you're green and shitty. And they aren't all wrong. Most of you are young and we've had a lot of training to work on that but you aren't Alpha. Not the Alpha I came into.
"Which is my fault honestly. I didn't train you well enough, so you're not what you should be. The Alphas before you have all been better. They were real top of the class. The pinnacle of what an Alpha should be. You're… not quite up to it. Which again, probably my fault because I've also seen what Alpha goes through. I know what they become. I know how amazing they are, and how deeply they fall when they lose it. My old Alpha-mates resent being else then what they were. They were Alpha to death, but Alpha didn't kill them, so instead they have to live without. I'm glad you're all not as close as you could be, as close as my old squad was, but I also see that that's a mistake.
"I failed you in a way really. Because I didn't train you as hard or as long or as closely as I was you're weaker than what you should be. Alpha should be an unchipped sword edge of the Order. Under direction of their leaders, they strike true. And we've been striking… a bit off the mark. If I had trained you as well as I should have, and known I should have, Utah wouldn't have happened." A few of them glanced at Diyari but Diyari was just looking right at Altair without flinching. Altair's lips twitched. "We wouldn't have been compromised in the first place and the collateral fallout on the Grand Temple wouldn't have happened and what's happening in Colorado right now also wouldn't be happening.
"The Mentor foresees Colorado becoming a nonentity within a few years. Either they destroy themselves in their civil war, or Utah takes them over and we lose all of Colorado to them. The FRN and Texas governments are in talks now to decide what they want to do for Colorado. To help them, or let Utah take them over. I don't know how many of you are keeping up with the world bulletins sent out every day, which judging by your faces that isn't a lot of you, but casualties in Colorado are starting to stack up. They don't know if sending troops to aid Colorado will be good for them or will just extrapolate the problems already going on there.
"And that is our fault. It is completely our fault. Because our squad was compromised in Utah and then the extraction was blown and the Grand Temple suffered severe damage. And because it's our fault it's my fault, for failing you guys. For not making you the best you can be. Wonder why other than that mission to Manapose we haven't had any work which we all know was a punishment? Not because of the training. But because the Mentor knows we suck. Because we failed and screwed up so badly he doesn't trust us to not do it again. The continent can't afford another Colorado. As members of the highest squad in the Order, it's our job to keep wars like this from breaking out. Instead; we started one. So yeah, we suck. We suck real bad." He jabbed his finger into his chest to make a point. They sucked. They deserved the things the other squads said about them. Because Altair hadn't been good enough for them, had failed them in their conditioning and training.
Taking a breath Altair looked down at the tablet he was holding and flipped through a few prefabs. He'd spent a few hours a day for a week or so during their pressure tests plugged into a terminal with the Core Programmers to make the various scenarios he was going to drill into them until it was a natural response on how to respond. "That's why we're starting over. Today. Starting today I'm going to work you so hard you're going to beg me to release you from Alpha." He selected one of the prefab sims and the room started to distort and change. He looked up at them with grim promise in his voice. "But I'm not going to. Rules of Alpha, as they've always been, that unless injury stops you from performing, or the Mentor or One gives you leave you are in Alpha." The sim room solidified around them into Salt Lake City. "So now we're going to run drills and I'm going to run you into the ground until I know you're perfect. Just like my One did for me and his before his. Cause we aren't going to suck anymore.
"I'm sorry I wasn't a good enough leader to you till now and didn't give you the training you needed. But I'm new to this whole thing same as you and we're learning together. So since I'm learning from my mistakes so are you.
"Now. Here's our failure, kids," he said and turned around to face the simulated building. He was standing in front of the Grand Mormon Temple. The simulation was so perfect you could feel the wind on your skin and see the fine grain of the stones that made up the Temple. "We're gonna figure out where we went wrong and what you should have done instead of blowing it up." He turned back to them. "Any questions?" No one said anything and they were all gravely serious looking at him and the building behind him. He'd already beat them down. Good. That meant the only place they could go was up.
—
It was exhausting. Every inch of Haytham's body hurt and burned and ached. The pressure test had been hard but actual Alpha conditioning was brutal. He just hurt and he hurt everywhere. He wasn't the only one laid out on the floor staring up at the Utah stars. The Alpha sim suit was heavy on him in a way his real Alpha suit wasn't. Altair said he'd made them heavier on purpose. Bastard. Those who weren't laid out were sitting or leaning on one another. Except one. Altair was still standing. He'd been going through the same simulation as them and his suit was even heavier than theirs but he was standing casually, looking at the tablet he'd kept attached to his hip the entire time. He'd run the entire sim, fighting simulated Utahans who fought like Assassin field agents, with a foot and a half wide tablet strapped to his thigh like it wasn't even there. He'd done it and hadn't even noticed it. Because he was better than them. He'd always been better than them and not just because he was old, but because he'd been trained better. Nothing bothered him.
Haytham wanted nothing more than to be like Altair in that moment.
Not for the first time, Haytham was reminded he was just a kid. Even compared to the rest of Alpha. He'd just turned twenty last roll over. He'd joined Alpha around that time too. Everyone else had more experience than him. More field experience, more life experience, and more time to build up endurance. Even their Alpha-Beta was older than him. But right then Haytham didn't want to be this weak kid he was. He wanted to be better. He knew this was why Altair was driving them into the dirt and showing them over and over again how bad they were. So they could get better. So they would be standing there like Altair and not exhausted on the ground.
Haytham sat up and grabbed his sword. He used it to push himself up so he was standing. His arms ached and his legs screamed in protest. He'd worked his body harder than he ever had before with climbing and running and jumping and holding impossible positions for minutes that felt like hours until his muscles started to shake. But damnit he was going to stand. Altair's helmet shifted a little and he knew Altair had looked at him, even if the visor was blacked out Haytham knew he'd looked.
"Everyone," Altair put away the tablet, "get up. Time for another run."
"You can't be serious?" Kanwai sighed.
"Haytham's standing. You can all stand too. If you can stand, you can work," Altair said, unrelenting. With shaky movements and stiff jerky motions the rest of Alpha got to their feet and shook themselves out. "Stretch. You have five minutes. No one is allowed to sit."
If there was complaining it was inside their helmets. Haytham read a little hostile body language in some of the squad towards him and he flinched away from it. He hadn't meant for this to happen. He'd just wanted to be strong like Altair. Regardless everyone did what Altair said and stretched to work out knots in calves or loosen up stiff muscles and joints. Haytham did the same and he heard not a few popped joints from those around him and very audible groans of satisfaction. That usually got a little laughter from everyone.
Five minutes passed too quickly and Altair called them to form up. Around them the simulation reset and they were pushed back, away from the Grand Temple on a moving grid. Haytham shook out his sword arm and hand before grabbing his short sword from the sheath at his side.
Altair stepped in front of them and Haytham went into thermals as Altair started to sign. No one said anything as the sim moved buildings into place around and before them, blocking out the sight of the Grand Temple. Inside his helmet Haytham took a deep breath and tightened his grip on his sword as Altair finished giving instructions and the sim settled. Haytham immediately broke away from the squad along with several others, down a side street. They'd meet up at the Grand Temple. At another street they split again so Haytham was just with one other person.
They'd run this part of the test about fifty times so far today because if any of them were spotted by anyone in the street or by cameras the night would turn to day and they'd have to run it again. It had been a real trial and error that took a long time and everyone had just agreed that they couldn't just run forward after the first fifteen failures. Now instead of taking only a few minutes to get to the Grand Temple in full view it took them thirty minutes or more as they learned the way cameras moved or waited for people to appear and disappear. And they couldn't learn and memorize the path from other runs since the scope and speed of the cameras as well as people moving about or people inside buildings was randomized. If any of them spotted you it'd turn day and the eyes that had caught you would project the image of the fuck up in the sky for everyone to see and a marker would appear so everyone could see the mistake. It was embarrassing but they'd gotten a lot better.
Of course in fifty attempts they'd only actually made it to the Temple about twenty of them and of those twenty only made it inside eight. They didn't have enough experience actually inside to get very far either. Everything was more sensitive and all eight times they ended up making a mistake that had sim enemies show up.
They'd learned to split up by now and only use comms when absolutely necessary. Otherwise they ran silent. Noise would attract the eyes of the sim people walking about. Even walking too loudly would do it, or running. God forbid you run in these heavy Alpha suits. It was like wearing pots on your feet.
Haytham was with Ehan. After he'd made them fail six times in a row in almost the same ways every time Altair had put him with Ehan. With that Altair had also given him the instruction of 'be quiet. Follow what Ehan does.' He'd given some other instructions to Ehan but he didn't know what they were because they'd been over private comms.
Ehan was the slowest guy in the entire squad. He also hadn't caused a fail and reset even once. The only one who hadn't. At first Haytham had been too annoyed at being paired up with the weirdo Ehan to really take what Altair had said to heart until Ehan had grabbed him by the arm when he'd about to step out of a hiding place and bodily tossed him into a dumpster because a police officer had walked by. A police officer and Haytham hadn't even heard him. Hadn't even seen him when he'd peaked or seen him on his periphery sensors. But Ehan had seen him, somehow. Or somehow Ehan knew he was there.
Now Haytham stayed behind Ehan and literally walked in the same foot steps as Ehan. Not super easy since Ehan had a longer gait than him. When Ehan stopped Haytham stopped and he watched Ehan constantly. That had messed them up a few times though when his focus on Ehan had gotten him caught. But in the forty something attempts he'd been shadowing Ehan he'd started to adapt and now could focus on Ehan and what he was doing and was fully aware of his surroundings. Or pretty aware.
Ehan was stopped at the entrance of an alley. Haytham stayed back in the shadows but was also trying to see what Ehan was seeing. The street looked empty to him except for a single camera on top of a street light down at the end of the block facing the other way. They stayed right where they were for more than five minutes and Haytham just wanted to keep moving. "Ehan," he said over private comms between the two of them, "the coast is clear." It was honestly one of the few times he'd tried talking to Ehan other than to say he'd heard something or saw something or to say he understood when Ehan told him to do something.
"No, it isn't," Ehan said.
"It looks clear."
"Look in the third window across the street," was all Ehan said.
Haytham looked. He saw nothing. "I don't see-
"The corner, on top of the computer. Use zoom. What do you see?"
Haytham did as instructed. His eyes widened. "That's an active webcam."
"Looking right at this alley," Ehan said. "I asked Mira to cause a minor power disruption to kick the machine off since I doubt it's on a power supply."
"How did you see that?"
Ehan didn't say anything at first. "I figured out the tricks Altair is using by now. Same dumb stuff that exists in society you don't think about or hear about unless it ends up on the web."
Haytham stared at Ehan. Ehan had figured it out? How? It seemed complete random and impossible to Haytham. Once again Haytham was reminded he was just a kid and Ehan was almost thirty and before Alpha he'd been a Foxtrot-eight before Altair had picked him and Munahid up to start his new Alpha squad a few years ago. They'd both been allowed to pick their numbers. Everyone else had just fallen numerically around them. He had more actual field experience than the rest of Alpha except for Altair. Ehan had figured it out because he knew what to look for, because he had experience.
Then Haytham had the brilliant insight that this was exactly why Altair had put him with Ehan. Because Ehan was experienced, and because he saw the little things that Haytham didn't. He saw the active webcam in a dark store where Haytham never would have until it had been pointed out by his failure. Altair had put Haytham with Ehan because Ehan had a lot of knowledge Haytham could use that other Alpha members might figure out on their own because they were older with more experience and he wanted Haytham to have that knowledge too.
"Okay, let's go," Ehan said and slid out of the alley without warning. Haytham hadn't even seen any lights flicker. Maybe Mira was talking into his helmet. Haytham followed after him, a step behind him, stepping right where he stepped. Then he saw Ehan's shoulders sag with a groan when the night sky changed abruptly to daylight and a picture of Chris was projected into the sky. Down the street Haytham heard Sally yelling at Chris over the external speakers for being a fucking idiot. At least Haytham thought it was Sally. She was the one of the twins who usually got mad when people were too rash or failed in stupid ways because they didn't think things through so it was a pretty safe bet it was Sally. Sarah wasn't a hypocrite enough to yell at someone for reckless behavior.
"Well, let's go back to the beginning I guess," Haytham said over the speakers.
"Right," Ehan sighed and this time Ehan followed him back to the starting position.
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