The next morning, Altair finds himself walking back into Abstergo, wondering not for the first time how his life had taken him here. It's not easy to remember that there was a time when he thought his life would be spent in and around Masyaf, performing assassinations and doing the will of the order. Now he has a nine to five job at a company controlled by templars. He's undercover, not changing sides, but it still leaves a foul taste in his mouth.
He has no idea how long he'll be doing this, walking through the front doors like there's nothing wrong, like he doesn't know what they're doing behind closed doors. It could be a day, it could be months- it all depends how long Edward decides to stay stubborn, and Altair suspects that's going to be a very long time.
Just because Edward is blocking him out, it doesn't mean he can't see what's going on in the man's head. From what he can tell, Edward's going to keep blocking him out as long as he can out of sheer spite. If Haytham and Connor are any indication of how bloody minded the Kenways can be, this is going to be a long haul.
He walks past the coffee stand in the lobby without looking at it, but he can feel Shaun staring at him until he disappears into the elevator. With any luck, no one's noticed the stare, because as far as anyone knows, they've never met. Later, when they have more time, everyone's going to have to get together and figure out how this is going to work. Between Altair in an animus, Shaun at the coffee stand, and Rebecca acting as a courier, there are a lot of undercover assassins in the building.
The phrase 'too many cooks in the kitchen' comes to mind. If they're not very, very careful, someone's going to notice.
The entire floor is empty when he gets upstairs, apart from a receptionist near the elevator who smiles at Altair as he comes in but doesn't interrupt her phone call for him. Altair walks past and surveys the room with a critical eye. It's not the kind of place he's used to working in, to put it mildly. There's too much light, too much color, and security cameras watching every inch of floor space. Bright and welcoming on the outside, but underneath…
But this is what he has to work with, for now. Someday all this will be over. Someday he'll go home. But today, he has a job to do, and knowing there are other assassins in the building only makes that job more important. He won't know what Shaun and Rebecca are here looking for until he gets the chance to sit down and talk to them, he won't know what that reason is.
He makes it to his desk and then sits in his chair for nearly half an hour as people start filtering in around him, exchanging greetings and logging into their computers. He'd planned to already be in the simulation when his new coworkers came in to start the work day. The less interaction he has with anyone here, the better.
But something's wrong. Everything's wrong, really. He shouldn't be here, sitting at this desk, in this building, holding an animus headset and trying to convince himself that this isn't going to end badly. He's been on the other end of the animus dozens of times, while Desmond went through his memories. He even relived Ezio's memories through Rebecca's animus once. But this is different. This is willingly removing his mind from the present day while he sits in an Abstergo building.
"First day?"
When he looks up, Rebecca's leaning against the wall of his… what are they even called? In most places, it would be called a cubicle, but here they're round.
"What?" he asks.
"I haven't seen you around before," Rebecca says. Her tone is casual, like they're just two strangers meeting in passing. "And I'm up here almost every day- courier for the company." She holds up her shoulder bag.
"Oh," Altair nods. "First day. Yes."
"I can tell," Rebecca says. "You have that first day look. Trust me, I've seen it on the face of everyone that's ever gone into an animus. But, ah-" She grins. "It'll be fine. There's always someone watching, just in case something does go wrong." She could be talking about the other Abstergo employees, or the omnipresent security cameras, but she isn't.
"Thanks." Altair says, and means it. The four of them- himself, Ezio, Haytham, and Connor- have been on their own for nearly ten months. He's almost forgotten that there are other assassins in this era.
Rebecca nods and moves away from his desk. Altair watches her go, then puts the animus headset on. Enough feeling sorry for himself- he has a job to do.
-/-
Going to be honest here, it's been really difficult to write these last few chapters, because ACIV is the biggest departure from canon in this fic so far, which means I have to spend more time explaining what's going on. And then I waste a whole chapter on Altair's nerves. Hopefully next chapter will be Edward (haven't planned that far ahead yet). He's fun to write. :)