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Description
December 6, 2015; Indianapolis, Indiana

Before I knew it, Ruby was pulling the Animus off of my face. I sat up and rubbed my head, a bit disoriented from being yanked out of the simulation like that. Ruby and Ben then hurried over to Ava, who had apparently been hooked up to her own Animus as well. Guess I wasn't the only one with a mission through history.

Chelsea rushed up to me, a concerned look on her face.

“You okay, Carter?” she asked me in that worried-older-sibling kind of voice.

“Yeah, I'm fine Chels,” I reassured her. “Just need to get my bearings.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure, Chels. Don't worry.” I paused. “What just happened?” I asked.

“Abstergo managed to hack into our Animi.”

“Wait what?”

“They tracked our codes before we could fully firewall them. And now they've got us locked out.”

“Crap…”

“Yeah.”

On the other side of the room, Ruby and Ben had pulled Ava out of her own simulation, and just as abruptly as they did me. They were explaining to her the same stuff Chelsea just told me.

“Crap. What do we do?” Ava asked them.

“I don't know,” said Ruby.

“Can't you counter-hack them?” Ben asked.

“I tried! But they hit us hard with some real complicated virus. I can't get into the code from an outside program…”

We all were quiet for a moment, each of us thinking of what to do.

Then an idea hit me.

“What if we tried to take it down at the source?” I asked. “Like, can you at least track the program back to where it originated?”

Ruby seemed to consider. “It's gonna be a royal pain to do,” she said, “but I guess it wouldn't be impossible…” Suddenly she smiled, her own plan starting to form alongside mine. “Yeah. Yeah! I can totally do that!”

She quickly grabbed her laptop and her phone. “I had some old friends back in New York I used to run with. Guys were part of a hacker group called DedSec. Best hackers I've ever seen, taught me everything I know about code. Let me go see if I can contact them and ask for help.”

We all nodded and Ruby dashed out the door with an excited smile.

“What're we gonna do when we find the source of the program?” Ava asked.

“We’ll probably make our way over to wherever it is and shut it down from the inside out,” said Chelsea.

“Oh. Cool.”

“You okay, kid? You look a little pale.”

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah. I'm fine. Still not really used to the whole becoming someone else inside a machine thing.”

“It takes a while to get used to, admittedly,” I said, laughing a bit. My laugh seemed to lighten Ava’s mood a bit. She laughed.

“Guess so,” she said.

“So, who were you in there?”

“Her name was Apsarini. She was an Assassin in Indonesia in the 1880s.”

“Oh cool.”

“Yeah.” She gave a soft laugh. “She’s got a lot of spunk.”

We all laughed together. Ava was a strong chick. She’s been through a lot, and still pulls through.

Of course… looking back…

...Well, I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Ruby came back in about twenty minutes later. “Alright,” she said. “I managed to get in touch with my buddies in DedSec. And luckily, they say they should be able to help us out.”

“Great!” said Ben.

“They say it may take them a while, the program’s a bit more complex than they’re used to, but they say it can definitely be done. Just a matter of waiting.”

“Awesome,” said Chelsea.

“They do need us to do something to help out, though.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“Abstergo’s been making some deals with with another company lately. You guys ever heard of the Blume Corporation?”

“Weren’t they the ones that got hammered down with corruption charges in Chicago after some hackers exposed them last year?”

“That’s them. They’re in the business of spying on people. They’ve been working to establish citywide surveillance systems across the country, invading privacy, watching everyone’s every move, and blackmailing everyone all in the name of ‘peace and order’.”

“Sounds like people the Templars would really love,” Chelsea joked.

Ruby chuckled. “They definitely do. And that’s why Abstergo’s been making a whole bunch of deals with them lately. Blume’s ctOS surveillance system has had Templar backing ever since they caught wind of it, and they’ve already brought it to Indianapolis. Grant it, the project slowed down after you guys took out Natasha Wolfgang, but they've sped back up and now it’s blocking our hacking efforts.”

“Sounds like we need to go shut down ctOS then,” said Ava.

“Well, it’s not that simple. ctOS is broadcasted across the city via a bunch of radio towers scattered across the districts. If we wanted to completely shut it down, we’d need to hit all of them. But we don’t really have the time or resources to do that all at once.”

“I’m sure I could do it,” I said confidently.

Ruby clearly admired my optimism. “Well, then maybe you can go around town when you get some free time and try and shut them all down,” she said. “But right now there’s one in particular that DedSec needs us to focus on.”

She placed her laptop on a desk and spun it around to show us the screen. There was a map of Indianapolis on the display, and she pointed to a point on it. “Right here,” she said. “If we can hack into this tower and stop its signal, that should be enough for DedSec to slip in and do their thing. Think you can handle it?”

“Sounds easy enough,” I said. “That's kind of a rough part of town though. I'll gather up some friends and form a plan.”

“Sounds good. Now, toss me your phone.”

“Hmm?”

“Just do it.”

I shrugged and handed her my phone.

“Thanks,” she said. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a little chip. She popped open the back of my phone and carefully put it in. She closed it back up and fiddled with something on the touchscreen before tossing the phone back to me. I looked down at it. The screen flashed in a series of lines and numbers before displaying a jagged symbol and returning to looking like normal.

“What was that?” asked Chels.

“A little program from DedSec,” said Ruby. “Specially designed for hacking into ctOS. You'll be able to stop the tower broadcast with this, and you can also hack into anything else in the city that’s hooked up to it, which is actually most electronics nowadays.”

“Sweet. Should come in handy,” I said.

“Hopefully.”

“Alright then. I should probably start making some calls and get to work.”

The others nodded, and I made my way out the door.

“Don't die,” Chelsea joked behind me.

I smiled. “I make no promises.”

------------

December 13, 2015; Indianapolis, Indiana

We had gathered on the rooftops near the ctOS tower that night. I met up with Jacob again, and asked him to help out. I also met up with my and Chelsea’s old friend, Jonathan Drysan. You guys remember good old Jonathan, right? Leader of the Assassin-allied gangs in Indianapolis who helped us take down Tyson Edwards way back when? Well, I'm happy to say he's still well on our side, ready to help save lives at the drop of a hat. This part of town had had a lot of reported gang activity lately, so I figured I'd call up Jonathan and have him bring some of his own men and women for reinforcements.

“Man, they're crawling all over the place,” he observed as we looked down at the dirty alleys surrounding the tower. He was right. There were armed thugs everywhere. No doubt the Templars knew we'd try and counter their hack, and sent these brutes as their own reinforcements.

“What do we do?” Jacob asked.

I observed the scene, pondering over what to do. To my dismay, I caught sight of a few innocent civilians wandering around with terrified faces, no doubt trying to avoid the Templar gang members and hurry home. This complicated things. I refuse to let innocent blood get spilt under any circumstances.

“Best to stay as stealthy as possible and avoid a fight,” I said. “Too many bystanders. We'll need to be careful.”

I turned to Jonathan. “Have your guys scatter around the alleys. Tell them to be as quiet as possible and take out as many guards as they can without getting detected.”

He nodded. “You got it, man. Will do.”

With that, he hurried off to play his part. I stood from the edge of the roof.

“What about us?” Jacob asked.

“We'll have to make it to that tower as stealthily as we can so that I can hack into it.”

“Is that gonna be possible? Look how well-guarded it is.”

“Nothing’s impossible, Jacob.”

“Some things are.”

“Only if you keep that attitude.”

“It's true though.”

“Nothing is true.”

I smiled, despite the fact that Jacob seemed a bit peeved by my optimism. “Come on,” I said, “let's go.”

And with that, Jacob and I made our way down into the dimly-lit alley below, pulling up our hoods (myself pulling a scarf over my mouth and nose for extra secrecy. Ruby said she jammed the facial recognition software in the area's security cameras, but I wanted to be safe just in case) and testing our blades. We clinged the shadows, avoiding any guards we saw and ducking for cover at any noise we heard.

We could see the ctOS tower in the distance, its lights blinking into the cold night. I pulled out my phone.

“What are you doing?” Jacob whispered.

“Checking for guards,” I said.

I turned on my phone and opened up Ruby's program, which turned my screen into a digital map of Indianapolis. I zoomed in close to our location, and looked at all the potential hacking points around us. I checked the security camera that sat above us, and sure enough, it was connected to ctOS. I smiled and used the program to hack into it remotely. My phone display shifted to the recording on the camera. I remotely made the camera turn to look around the corner and zoom in to spot what was there. And what was there was plenty of guards, each with knifes and guns at the ready.

“That's a heavy patrol…” I said. “We'll have to wait until Jonathan’s men take them out and sneak on pas-”

“Help! Help! Get away!”

Jacob and I froze. We looked back at the camera footage. An old man had apparently wandered a bit too close to the patrol and now they were cornering him.

“Picked the wrong side of town for a stroll, gramps,” one of the brutes said.

“Please, I just want to get home and-”

“Well too bad. This place is our turf, and we can't have people like you steppin’ into our place unpunished.”

“Please! No!”

They came closer to him, their weapons drawn. They were gonna kill him, and I wasn't gonna let that happen. I swore under my breath and I lunged out from the corner at down the alley, Jacob following close behind.

I sprinted up to one of the thugs and jabbed my hidden blade into his eye. As he fell I rolled backwards to dodge a knife attack and put myself between them and the old man.

“Stay outa this, Assassin!” the head thug demanded.

Jacob stood beside me, ready to fight as well. “We won't let you hurt this man!” he said, in a tone of voice that wasn't fully natural, by which I mean it sounded somewhat like the way a superhero might talk in an old cartoon or something. Not quite arrogant, but something similar to that. Jacob always had a strong sense of duty, but his perception of his role as a defender was almost… fanciful.

But anyways, the Templars didn't take too kindly to being denied their kill, and so they attacked.

I felled the first few pretty quickly with a swipe of my baton, and the rest were quick to learn not to let their guard down. Jacob had pulled out his gun and just started shooting as if he expected a quick result. But most of his shots went wide, and they closed in on him. I countered an attack from another thug and rolled away, using my distance to draw my own gun and carefully take aim at a single enemy before firing. The rest were surprised by seeing their ally suddenly spin away in a fountain of red, and Jacob used the opportunity to thrust forward with his knife and break away.

Three guards left. By now, Jonathan and some of his men had heard the commotion, and they appeared from the shadows to help out. We had them outnumbered now. Our friends drew their weapons, and the fight was over in minutes.

I pulled my hidden blade out of the last body and motioned for Jonathan and his friends to quickly hide the bodies before more Templars came and called for backup. They nodded and got to work. I turned to the old man.

“Is that the last of them?” he asked, and I nodded. “Good,” he said. “Still, best not to take any chances. I’ll hurry home. Don't think I'll be leaving it anytime soon either.” He lightly laughed at his joke, and I laughed with him. “You've done me a kindness, young man,” he said with a smile. “Be assured, I won't forget it.”

“It's no trouble,” I said simply, smiling.

He nodded gratefully and turned to leave, but suddenly Jacob interrupted the man's exit.

“I can walk you home, sir,” he said. Again, in that sort of altered, boyscout-y kind of voice. The man simply smiled gratefully but waved his hand against the offer. “That’s quite alright,” he said. “I appreciate it, but I can make it home by myself.”

“But you’ll need protecting.”

“I live just a few blocks down. I can make it just fine.”

“But-”

Jonathan interrupted him, a bit less patient than I was. “Man, let the guy walk home,” he said. “He says he’s fine, he’ll be fine.”

Jacob glanced over at the old man, who seemed eager to be on his way. Then he looked over at me, and I gave him a shrug and a look that told him I was on Jonathan’s side here.

“...Fine,” Jacob said, slightly irritated. And with that, the old man nodded and thanked us one last time before leaving the alley.

“I just wanted to be a good person,” Jacob said, and it was hard to tell if he was saying it to us or to himself. “I just wanted to be nice.”

“The nice thing to do would’ve been to have a bit of faith in his ability to get home alone,” I said simply.

I motioned for him to follow and quickly told Jonathan to keep watch. Jacob stood hesitant for a moment, and then finally followed me down the alleys. I pondered over his actions, his words, though only barely. Back then I gave no real thought to it, it was just Jacob being his normal nosey self. Now of course I know what it all would lead to, but not back then. The way he talked. “I wanted to be a good person” instead of “I wanted to do a good thing”. It had a certain attitude to it that looking back I feel I should’ve pushed against a bit further, but not back then. Back then, it was just him trying to do his thing, feeling big and heroic after going through so much that made him feel small and worthless. Let him have this, I thought, he’s not doing any harm.

What a fool I was.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Jacob and I swiftly and quietly made our way to the base of the tower, which was blocked by a tall electric fence. There was a door in the fence, but it was locked electronically.

“Crap,” Jacob said. “What do we do?”

I pondered for a moment, then an idea struck. I pulled out my phone and activated my hacking program. I zoomed in on the area, looking for weak links in the ctOS code, and luckily one such link was connected to the door lock. I smiled and fiddled with the touchscreen until the door lock made a satisfying beep and we walked right inside.

We rushed up to the large control panel at the base of the tower and flipped it open. I told Jacob to stand guard while I pressed a button on my earpiece and called Ruby.

“Yo,” I heard her say.

“I'm here, Ruby. What do I do?”

“Sweet! Alright kid, first you're gonna want to open up the control panel.”

“I already did that.”

“...I knew that.”

I laughed a bit. “Bit of an obvious first step, Rubes.”

“You don't know my life.”

I laughed again. She laughed along with me. And then she started walking me through the tower hacking process, which I made sure to remember for later. I meant it when I said I planned to take down all the towers in the city. Admittedly, it took a while, but I did manage to accomplish it over the next few months. No doubt Blume’s not too happy about it, but hey, being a pain to tyrants is in our job description.

When I finally synced up my phone and shut down the broadcast signal, we replaced it with a more benevolent program to keep people's every day electronics running. But now thankfully Blume’s precious cameras were shut down in the area. No more spying on the people 24/7 for them. Assassins 1, Templars 0.

I disconnected my phone and closed the panel up proudly.

“Alright!” Ruby said on my earpiece. “ctOS is officially shut down in that district. Now DedSec can do their thing without any interruptions.”

“Sweet!”

“Might be a few weeks though. It's a tough code to crack. But when they do, you guys’ll be able to hunt down the virus’s source and get our Animi back online.”

“Lookin’ forward to it. We'll go ahead and start headin’ back.”

“Cool. See ya when you get here. Bye!”

“Bye Rubes.”

I clicked off my earpiece and walked over to Jacob.

“Come on, dude,” I said. “Let's ditch this dump.”

Jacob nodded and agreed. We checked on Jonathan and his friends quickly, and we were pleased to see that they had thinned a good chunk of the Templars’ numbers here. He told me they could easily claim this territory for the Assassins and clean up the neighborhood, and of course I told him to go right ahead. He nodded and shook my hand hard before saying farewell. And then Jacob and I made our way back to the warehouse to plan what came next.

Description
December 6, 2015; Indianapolis, Indiana

Before I knew it, Ruby was pulling the Animus off of my face. I sat up and rubbed my head, a bit disoriented from being yanked out of the simulation like that. Ruby and Ben then hurried over to Ava, who had apparently been hooked up to her own Animus as well. Guess I wasn't the only one with a mission through history.

Chelsea rushed up to me, a concerned look on her face.

“You okay, Carter?” she asked me in that worried-older-sibling kind of voice.

“Yeah, I'm fine Chels,” I reassured her. “Just need to get my bearings.”

“You sure?”

“I'm sure, Chels. Don't worry.” I paused. “What just happened?” I asked.

“Abstergo managed to hack into our Animi.”

“Wait what?”

“They tracked our codes before we could fully firewall them. And now they've got us locked out.”

“Crap…”

“Yeah.”

On the other side of the room, Ruby and Ben had pulled Ava out of her own simulation, and just as abruptly as they did me. They were explaining to her the same stuff Chelsea just told me.

“Crap. What do we do?” Ava asked them.

“I don't know,” said Ruby.

“Can't you counter-hack them?” Ben asked.

“I tried! But they hit us hard with some real complicated virus. I can't get into the code from an outside program…”

We all were quiet for a moment, each of us thinking of what to do.

Then an idea hit me.

“What if we tried to take it down at the source?” I asked. “Like, can you at least track the program back to where it originated?”

Ruby seemed to consider. “It's gonna be a royal pain to do,” she said, “but I guess it wouldn't be impossible…” Suddenly she smiled, her own plan starting to form alongside mine. “Yeah. Yeah! I can totally do that!”

She quickly grabbed her laptop and her phone. “I had some old friends back in New York I used to run with. Guys were part of a hacker group called DedSec. Best hackers I've ever seen, taught me everything I know about code. Let me go see if I can contact them and ask for help.”

We all nodded and Ruby dashed out the door with an excited smile.

“What're we gonna do when we find the source of the program?” Ava asked.

“We’ll probably make our way over to wherever it is and shut it down from the inside out,” said Chelsea.

“Oh. Cool.”

“You okay, kid? You look a little pale.”

“Hmm? Oh. Yeah. I'm fine. Still not really used to the whole becoming someone else inside a machine thing.”

“It takes a while to get used to, admittedly,” I said, laughing a bit. My laugh seemed to lighten Ava’s mood a bit. She laughed.

“Guess so,” she said.

“So, who were you in there?”

“Her name was Apsarini. She was an Assassin in Indonesia in the 1880s.”

“Oh cool.”

“Yeah.” She gave a soft laugh. “She’s got a lot of spunk.”

We all laughed together. Ava was a strong chick. She’s been through a lot, and still pulls through.

Of course… looking back…

...Well, I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Ruby came back in about twenty minutes later. “Alright,” she said. “I managed to get in touch with my buddies in DedSec. And luckily, they say they should be able to help us out.”

“Great!” said Ben.

“They say it may take them a while, the program’s a bit more complex than they’re used to, but they say it can definitely be done. Just a matter of waiting.”

“Awesome,” said Chelsea.

“They do need us to do something to help out, though.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“Abstergo’s been making some deals with with another company lately. You guys ever heard of the Blume Corporation?”

“Weren’t they the ones that got hammered down with corruption charges in Chicago after some hackers exposed them last year?”

“That’s them. They’re in the business of spying on people. They’ve been working to establish citywide surveillance systems across the country, invading privacy, watching everyone’s every move, and blackmailing everyone all in the name of ‘peace and order’.”

“Sounds like people the Templars would really love,” Chelsea joked.

Ruby chuckled. “They definitely do. And that’s why Abstergo’s been making a whole bunch of deals with them lately. Blume’s ctOS surveillance system has had Templar backing ever since they caught wind of it, and they’ve already brought it to Indianapolis. Grant it, the project slowed down after you guys took out Natasha Wolfgang, but they've sped back up and now it’s blocking our hacking efforts.”

“Sounds like we need to go shut down ctOS then,” said Ava.

“Well, it’s not that simple. ctOS is broadcasted across the city via a bunch of radio towers scattered across the districts. If we wanted to completely shut it down, we’d need to hit all of them. But we don’t really have the time or resources to do that all at once.”

“I’m sure I could do it,” I said confidently.

Ruby clearly admired my optimism. “Well, then maybe you can go around town when you get some free time and try and shut them all down,” she said. “But right now there’s one in particular that DedSec needs us to focus on.”

She placed her laptop on a desk and spun it around to show us the screen. There was a map of Indianapolis on the display, and she pointed to a point on it. “Right here,” she said. “If we can hack into this tower and stop its signal, that should be enough for DedSec to slip in and do their thing. Think you can handle it?”

“Sounds easy enough,” I said. “That's kind of a rough part of town though. I'll gather up some friends and form a plan.”

“Sounds good. Now, toss me your phone.”

“Hmm?”

“Just do it.”

I shrugged and handed her my phone.

“Thanks,” she said. Then she reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a little chip. She popped open the back of my phone and carefully put it in. She closed it back up and fiddled with something on the touchscreen before tossing the phone back to me. I looked down at it. The screen flashed in a series of lines and numbers before displaying a jagged symbol and returning to looking like normal.

“What was that?” asked Chels.

“A little program from DedSec,” said Ruby. “Specially designed for hacking into ctOS. You'll be able to stop the tower broadcast with this, and you can also hack into anything else in the city that’s hooked up to it, which is actually most electronics nowadays.”

“Sweet. Should come in handy,” I said.

“Hopefully.”

“Alright then. I should probably start making some calls and get to work.”

The others nodded, and I made my way out the door.

“Don't die,” Chelsea joked behind me.

I smiled. “I make no promises.”

------------

December 13, 2015; Indianapolis, Indiana

We had gathered on the rooftops near the ctOS tower that night. I met up with Jacob again, and asked him to help out. I also met up with my and Chelsea’s old friend, Jonathan Drysan. You guys remember good old Jonathan, right? Leader of the Assassin-allied gangs in Indianapolis who helped us take down Tyson Edwards way back when? Well, I'm happy to say he's still well on our side, ready to help save lives at the drop of a hat. This part of town had had a lot of reported gang activity lately, so I figured I'd call up Jonathan and have him bring some of his own men and women for reinforcements.

“Man, they're crawling all over the place,” he observed as we looked down at the dirty alleys surrounding the tower. He was right. There were armed thugs everywhere. No doubt the Templars knew we'd try and counter their hack, and sent these brutes as their own reinforcements.

“What do we do?” Jacob asked.

I observed the scene, pondering over what to do. To my dismay, I caught sight of a few innocent civilians wandering around with terrified faces, no doubt trying to avoid the Templar gang members and hurry home. This complicated things. I refuse to let innocent blood get spilt under any circumstances.

“Best to stay as stealthy as possible and avoid a fight,” I said. “Too many bystanders. We'll need to be careful.”

I turned to Jonathan. “Have your guys scatter around the alleys. Tell them to be as quiet as possible and take out as many guards as they can without getting detected.”

He nodded. “You got it, man. Will do.”

With that, he hurried off to play his part. I stood from the edge of the roof.

“What about us?” Jacob asked.

“We'll have to make it to that tower as stealthily as we can so that I can hack into it.”

“Is that gonna be possible? Look how well-guarded it is.”

“Nothing’s impossible, Jacob.”

“Some things are.”

“Only if you keep that attitude.”

“It's true though.”

“Nothing is true.”

I smiled, despite the fact that Jacob seemed a bit peeved by my optimism. “Come on,” I said, “let's go.”

And with that, Jacob and I made our way down into the dimly-lit alley below, pulling up our hoods (myself pulling a scarf over my mouth and nose for extra secrecy. Ruby said she jammed the facial recognition software in the area's security cameras, but I wanted to be safe just in case) and testing our blades. We clinged the shadows, avoiding any guards we saw and ducking for cover at any noise we heard.

We could see the ctOS tower in the distance, its lights blinking into the cold night. I pulled out my phone.

“What are you doing?” Jacob whispered.

“Checking for guards,” I said.

I turned on my phone and opened up Ruby's program, which turned my screen into a digital map of Indianapolis. I zoomed in close to our location, and looked at all the potential hacking points around us. I checked the security camera that sat above us, and sure enough, it was connected to ctOS. I smiled and used the program to hack into it remotely. My phone display shifted to the recording on the camera. I remotely made the camera turn to look around the corner and zoom in to spot what was there. And what was there was plenty of guards, each with knifes and guns at the ready.

“That's a heavy patrol…” I said. “We'll have to wait until Jonathan’s men take them out and sneak on pas-”

“Help! Help! Get away!”

Jacob and I froze. We looked back at the camera footage. An old man had apparently wandered a bit too close to the patrol and now they were cornering him.

“Picked the wrong side of town for a stroll, gramps,” one of the brutes said.

“Please, I just want to get home and-”

“Well too bad. This place is our turf, and we can't have people like you steppin’ into our place unpunished.”

“Please! No!”

They came closer to him, their weapons drawn. They were gonna kill him, and I wasn't gonna let that happen. I swore under my breath and I lunged out from the corner at down the alley, Jacob following close behind.

I sprinted up to one of the thugs and jabbed my hidden blade into his eye. As he fell I rolled backwards to dodge a knife attack and put myself between them and the old man.

“Stay outa this, Assassin!” the head thug demanded.

Jacob stood beside me, ready to fight as well. “We won't let you hurt this man!” he said, in a tone of voice that wasn't fully natural, by which I mean it sounded somewhat like the way a superhero might talk in an old cartoon or something. Not quite arrogant, but something similar to that. Jacob always had a strong sense of duty, but his perception of his role as a defender was almost… fanciful.

But anyways, the Templars didn't take too kindly to being denied their kill, and so they attacked.

I felled the first few pretty quickly with a swipe of my baton, and the rest were quick to learn not to let their guard down. Jacob had pulled out his gun and just started shooting as if he expected a quick result. But most of his shots went wide, and they closed in on him. I countered an attack from another thug and rolled away, using my distance to draw my own gun and carefully take aim at a single enemy before firing. The rest were surprised by seeing their ally suddenly spin away in a fountain of red, and Jacob used the opportunity to thrust forward with his knife and break away.

Three guards left. By now, Jonathan and some of his men had heard the commotion, and they appeared from the shadows to help out. We had them outnumbered now. Our friends drew their weapons, and the fight was over in minutes.

I pulled my hidden blade out of the last body and motioned for Jonathan and his friends to quickly hide the bodies before more Templars came and called for backup. They nodded and got to work. I turned to the old man.

“Is that the last of them?” he asked, and I nodded. “Good,” he said. “Still, best not to take any chances. I’ll hurry home. Don't think I'll be leaving it anytime soon either.” He lightly laughed at his joke, and I laughed with him. “You've done me a kindness, young man,” he said with a smile. “Be assured, I won't forget it.”

“It's no trouble,” I said simply, smiling.

He nodded gratefully and turned to leave, but suddenly Jacob interrupted the man's exit.

“I can walk you home, sir,” he said. Again, in that sort of altered, boyscout-y kind of voice. The man simply smiled gratefully but waved his hand against the offer. “That’s quite alright,” he said. “I appreciate it, but I can make it home by myself.”

“But you’ll need protecting.”

“I live just a few blocks down. I can make it just fine.”

“But-”

Jonathan interrupted him, a bit less patient than I was. “Man, let the guy walk home,” he said. “He says he’s fine, he’ll be fine.”

Jacob glanced over at the old man, who seemed eager to be on his way. Then he looked over at me, and I gave him a shrug and a look that told him I was on Jonathan’s side here.

“...Fine,” Jacob said, slightly irritated. And with that, the old man nodded and thanked us one last time before leaving the alley.

“I just wanted to be a good person,” Jacob said, and it was hard to tell if he was saying it to us or to himself. “I just wanted to be nice.”

“The nice thing to do would’ve been to have a bit of faith in his ability to get home alone,” I said simply.

I motioned for him to follow and quickly told Jonathan to keep watch. Jacob stood hesitant for a moment, and then finally followed me down the alleys. I pondered over his actions, his words, though only barely. Back then I gave no real thought to it, it was just Jacob being his normal nosey self. Now of course I know what it all would lead to, but not back then. The way he talked. “I wanted to be a good person” instead of “I wanted to do a good thing”. It had a certain attitude to it that looking back I feel I should’ve pushed against a bit further, but not back then. Back then, it was just him trying to do his thing, feeling big and heroic after going through so much that made him feel small and worthless. Let him have this, I thought, he’s not doing any harm.

What a fool I was.

But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Jacob and I swiftly and quietly made our way to the base of the tower, which was blocked by a tall electric fence. There was a door in the fence, but it was locked electronically.

“Crap,” Jacob said. “What do we do?”

I pondered for a moment, then an idea struck. I pulled out my phone and activated my hacking program. I zoomed in on the area, looking for weak links in the ctOS code, and luckily one such link was connected to the door lock. I smiled and fiddled with the touchscreen until the door lock made a satisfying beep and we walked right inside.

We rushed up to the large control panel at the base of the tower and flipped it open. I told Jacob to stand guard while I pressed a button on my earpiece and called Ruby.

“Yo,” I heard her say.

“I'm here, Ruby. What do I do?”

“Sweet! Alright kid, first you're gonna want to open up the control panel.”

“I already did that.”

“...I knew that.”

I laughed a bit. “Bit of an obvious first step, Rubes.”

“You don't know my life.”

I laughed again. She laughed along with me. And then she started walking me through the tower hacking process, which I made sure to remember for later. I meant it when I said I planned to take down all the towers in the city. Admittedly, it took a while, but I did manage to accomplish it over the next few months. No doubt Blume’s not too happy about it, but hey, being a pain to tyrants is in our job description.

When I finally synced up my phone and shut down the broadcast signal, we replaced it with a more benevolent program to keep people's every day electronics running. But now thankfully Blume’s precious cameras were shut down in the area. No more spying on the people 24/7 for them. Assassins 1, Templars 0.

I disconnected my phone and closed the panel up proudly.

“Alright!” Ruby said on my earpiece. “ctOS is officially shut down in that district. Now DedSec can do their thing without any interruptions.”

“Sweet!”

“Might be a few weeks though. It's a tough code to crack. But when they do, you guys’ll be able to hunt down the virus’s source and get our Animi back online.”

“Lookin’ forward to it. We'll go ahead and start headin’ back.”

“Cool. See ya when you get here. Bye!”

“Bye Rubes.”

I clicked off my earpiece and walked over to Jacob.

“Come on, dude,” I said. “Let's ditch this dump.”

Jacob nodded and agreed. We checked on Jonathan and his friends quickly, and we were pleased to see that they had thinned a good chunk of the Templars’ numbers here. He told me they could easily claim this territory for the Assassins and clean up the neighborhood, and of course I told him to go right ahead. He nodded and shook my hand hard before saying farewell. And then Jacob and I made our way back to the warehouse to plan what came next.