Altair tries his best to look like this is just a normal day when he walks into Abstergo, but he hasn't quite figured out what it means to be normal in the twenty first century yet, and anyway this isn't a normal day. Not even for him.
He stops at Shaun's coffee stand on his way upstairs. It's not safe to talk openly, especially with what he has planned, but he feels like he needs to at least clue the other assassins in that they've got something planned.
Shaun jumps badly when he sees Altair. Apparently he hasn't gotten used to the time travel yet, but Altair doesn't have time to ease him into it. "Keep your head down today," he says, dropping his voice.
"What?"
"Just don't do anything that will raise eyebrows if security happens to start looking into alibis," Altair says.
"What about you?" Shaun asks, just a little too loudly. He lowers his voice, and adds, "If you're going to do something stupid-"
"I'm not going to do anything," Altair says. Abstergo keeps tabs on all their employees, and while he suspects that they don't usually bother to track every single person that works in the building, today is going to be different.
"Why does that not make me feel better?" Shaun demands. "What are you planning?"
Altair wouldn't have told him anyway- not in the middle of the atrium surrounded by cameras and strangers- but before he can say another word, a harried looking woman interrupts to demand a coffee. While Shaun's distracted, Altair walks off, mind already focused on the day ahead. His part of the plan is actually the smallest, because he's the one most under Abstergo's eye right now. It's frustrating, not because he doesn't trust the others, but because he'll be left completely out of the loop. Once everything is set into motion, he'll have no idea how the plan is going until it's all over.
He takes the elevator up and heads to his desk. Melanie Lemay smiles at him as he passes and calls a greeting, which he returns. It's actually going to help that she's here this morning. Technically, everyone working with a given person's memories is supposed to coordinate and work more or less at the same pace. The idea is that different people will notice different details, or bring different knowledge and backgrounds into a given memory, and that only by working together can they get the full picture.
Nobody follows this rule. Most of them pay at least some level of lip service to the idea, but it's too difficult to bother coordinating it on a daily basis, for a lot of reasons. Everyone works at drastically different paces, because sync rates can't be improved by force. There are some people that like to explore every possible facet of a memory, and others that do only what is absolutely necessary to advance.
With Melanie around, however, they don't have much choice. She's the one who decided they should all be working at the same pace, and she's the one with the power to fire everyone in the room. Altair has already learned that her rare visits are a signal to the rest of them that it's time to actually pay attention to her rules. This is very good, actually. The plan will go a lot more smoothly if everyone's focused on the same memory at the same time.
There's are several impromptu conferences in various corners of the room. Edward isn't the only one with multiple people going through his memories, but he is the one with the most people going through them. Altair spends a solid half hour perched on the edge of a desk, listening as half a dozen people argue dates and memories and technical limitations. Finally, they settle on a sequence of memories that everyone seems satisfied with, and break apart to actually do some work.
Before Altair hooks himself into the animus, he sends a text to Ezio.
Half an hour, the message reads. Then go in.