Assassin's Creed: Cipher

*The following story is a crossover between the franchises Mr. Robot and Assassin's Creed, using ideas and likenesses from both fictional worlds. It is set shortly after the finale of the Mr. Robot series re-imagined in the world of Assassin's Creed.*

What I'm about to tell you is top secret; a conspiracy bigger than all of us. There's a powerful group of people out there that are secretly running the world. I'm talking about the guys no one knows about, the guys that are invisible. The top 1% of the top 1%, the guys that play God without permission. We thought we stopped them when we went for their heart; systematically dismantling their carefully constructed invisible web around the world one corporation or corrupt politician at a time; doxxing their names, their shell companies, their offshore tax havens, their private armies who silenced anyone who came close to uncovering the truth that they'd been hiding for decades. We even killed their leader Whiterose, true name Zhi Zhang - Chinese Minister of State Security by day, and by night one of the world's most wanted cyber-terrorists obsessed with her delusional project that she thought would remake the world in her image if she succeeded. But that was our failure: Conglomerates don't have hearts. What we thought was the death blow to Whiterose and E-Corp was only the prelude - the moment we kicked the hornet's nest and learned the war we were fighting was just one more front in history's longest and bloodiest protracted struggle. There were others like us around the world ready to take the fight to them. All our leads gained from months of a hacker's cat and mouse game led us here - the beginning of the end.

But who am I? Who am I. That's a funny question. I wonder if I can still remember.

There it was. The rush. That one word that means everything; the tightness in your gut like you're imploding in on yourself, the subtle shaking in your hands, that tingling in your head. Just like giving a speech or an interview, no matter how prepared you are, or how confident you are in the moments before, you can't escape it. It's part of the job. I used to hate it. My first time hacking into the library and seeing everyone's overdue books; phishing my principal and selling everyone the answer keys for our bullshit standardized tests; getting everywhere on time by tricking the traffic signals into giving me a green light at every intersection. All those little acts of rebellion, my way of exerting power in a world that would otherwise chew me up and spit me out like the worm in a perfect green apple, they always brought with them that all-powerful sense of dread, the gnawing in the back of your mind that you're breaking the rules and you're going to get caught.

But now? After everything that's happened these past two years, I live for this shit. It's like my morphine. You keep coming back because it feels so good, over and over, all the while convincing yourself that you're not a junkie, that you can do this the right way. But there is no right way. Not anymore. And I'm starting to believe everyone when they say that once you start, you'll never be able to stop.

"Three cameras, two security guards, one woman at reception," Mr. Robot said, his eyes darting about the garish white lobby scanning for weak points. Something inside me wavered when I saw those guards carrying their huge machine guns, knowing that they were watching my every step, and one wrong move and I'd get mowed down in seconds, dooming the entire operation and everything we've worked for.

"Elliot, don't you dare even think about backing down," he turned to me, scolding. "We've got one shot at this. If we fuck this up now, it's game over. You can kiss your revolution and the glorious final execution of E-Corp's rotting corpse goodbye."

I slowed my pace, clutching at the straps on my backpack. He was right, of course. On top of everything else, Darlene's life was on the line too. It wasn't just me anymore. I had other people who depended on me now, whether I liked it or not. I gulped and resumed my pace, telling myself to embrace the adrenaline.

"Uh, hi," I said, awkwardly putting my hands on the desk. The reception girl was on the other side of a glass covering that almost looked like it was trapping her inside, a transparent jail where she could pass things back and forth but never be able to escape herself. Brunette, brown eyes, that pencil skirt and glasses. A minute ago she was staring intently at her laptop's screen, scrolling through what I was pretty sure was Tinder or some other dating app, though I couldn't be sure. When I blurted out a greeting, she quickly alt-tabbed to her itinerary and turned her screen away.

She smiled politely. "Hi," she said expectantly, and I realized that I'd forgotten to tell her why I was here. I knew He was standing off to my side just out of vision, probably uttering something about me being incompetent, but I managed to stay focused on her. I was getting better at eye contact. This was my big test, I guess. "Do you... have an appointment?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm from corporate. Here to do a routine systems inspection," I finally explained, trying to sound as casual as possible, maybe to the point of just mumbling a string of sounds that only vaguely imitated words. "They send us down here all the time."

She typed something into her laptop with a secretary's dexterity then looked up at me again. "I don't think we're due for inspection for at least another week," she said. "Can I have your name?"

"Yeah, it's, uh... Sam, Sam Sepiol. I wrote an article about cyber-genetic mapping a couple months ago, it was pretty popular."

"Very smooth," Mr. Robot scoffed. "You gonna tell her your SAT score next?"

She refreshed her itinerary twice. "Yeah, I'm sorry but I don't see you in the system. I could try phoning IT to see if there's a problem."

I nodded quickly. "No, yeah, it's probably an IT problem, that's kind of why I'm here. E-Corp is like, really concerned with security lately with all those fSociety leaks, so they're making sure all their subsidiaries are secure."

"Uh huh," she mumbled, reaching for the desk phone. I couldn't let her tip them off to my presence. I had to stay anonymous as long as possible.

"Hey," I started quickly, regaining her slightly bemused gaze. "Haven't we met before?"

"No, I don't think so," she said, running out of patience. I heard frantic typing over my earpiece. A few seconds later, Darlene started spouting out information. "Kayla. 27. Recently divorced. Laid off from SysCorp then landed an internship at Abstergo."

Divorced. I remembered her Tinder. "Yeah, I'm sure. The SysCorp Christmas party? I tried to get you under the mistletoe the whole night but I was too shy to talk to you."

She blinked, then opened her mouth in amusement. "Oh my god! Yes, I think I do remember you. We should have talked, I barely saw you around the office." She started to get a little excited, eliciting a suspicious look from one of the guards. She glanced at the security camera directly above then tried to resume her composure.

"I'm gonna be in town for the week, E-Corp set me up with a pretty good discretionary fund to check things out upstate, so after I get this inspection done I'll have a lot of time to kill." Thinking I'd gone too far, I blurted out quietly, "But you can say no, it's totally fine."

Kayla smiled and rolled her chair over to a 3D printer on the other side of her desk after clacking her keys for a minute. The machine spat out a little visitor's card, laminated, with some kind of encrypted string of characters below my name. "I'd love to," she said happily. "Hit me up on your way out, okay? My boss will kill me if he sees me slacking off."

"Yeah. Definitely. Bye." I quickly shuffled off into the right corridor, leaving behind the sunlit lobby and entering a maze of oppressive white lightbulbs. "That wasn't part of the mission," Mr. Robot mused, following close behind. "But it could have gone worse. Good for you, champ." After what could easily have been five minutes of following yellow-lettered directions through the winding halls of the inner facility, I finally reached the elevator, attended by a tall suited guy, like a bouncer with a steroid problem.

"No entry," he halted us lowly.

I showed him my lanyard with the visitor's pass. "It's fine, I'm allowed to be here."

"No one without express clearance is allowed to enter the data harvesting rooms. I'm going to have to ask you to leave." I stood frozen for a few paralyzing moments, prompting him to start moving towards me threateningly.

"Get the fuck out of there, now," Darlene shouted in my ear.

"She's right, we can't get past him. We'll find another way," Mr. Robot agreed, placing his hand on my shoulder weightlessly and trying to steer me back the way we came.

I held out my lanyard again, catching the man off guard by forcing it into his outstretched hand. "I'm Sam Sepiol," I said, trying to sound authoritative. He raised an eyebrow and inspected the laminated card, studying it closely. He quickly handed it back to me.

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't let you in."

"Thank you," I said dumbly then quickly doubled back, entering the winding corridor again. "What the hell were you thinking?" Mr. Robot admonished me. "That guy had you by the balls there."

"Darlene, find me a 3D printer," I whispered, ducking behind a wall to avoid being spotted by some shifty suit pacing down the hall.

"What?"

"Just do it."

"Fine," she said, pulling up the floor plans on her laptop. "You're still in Theta Hall?"

"Yeah."

"Take the next right, then the next two lefts. It's the cubicle wing, you should be able to find an empty terminal." I followed her instructions, speed-walking down the blinding white corridor. I probably looked incredibly suspicious, but I knew that the clock was ticking and Abstergo could shut us down at any moment.

The cubicle wing looked almost entirely empty, save one geeky-looking guy glued to his laptop sprawled out over the lounge area, a huge smart television right above him blaring out corporate jargon. I took one of the far cubicles and set to work, pulling out a small clump of sticky clay from my backpack and placing it along with the lanyard into the printer.

I sat back, letting the machine do its work. Peaking overhead, I could just see the smart TV which was displaying a quirky version of the Abstergo logo accompanied only by a robotic woman's voice. "Abstergo: Save the past, control the future!"

Unfortunately, an accurate sentiment. After we took down Whiterose, the international army of politicians, CEOs, and military contractors that she controlled were doxxed, destroying her carefully planned web of dark money contacts. E-Corp survived our hack and arguably only came out stronger, convincing the government to adopt Ecoin as valid currency in all 50 states and thus giving them a back door right into all of our asses. They did what Whiterose failed to achieve, controlling not just where the money flows, but the money itself, deciding for the rest of us how much would be in circulation and fixing the prices of their ubiquitous consumer goods.

But E-Corp wasn't the real threat. Conglomerates themselves never are. It's the men in suits at the top who try and play God without permission that control our lives, and when we took out the Dark Army, the rest of them got scared. They pooled what money they had left into Whiterose's mysterious project, the one she spent her whole life trying to build on some delusional quest to save the world. "Every hacker has her fixation," I remember she told me when we first met. "You, Mr. Alderson, hack people. I hack time." I thought she was insane. We all did, even the billionaires she owned. But then we learned that her project hadn't been destroyed. Whatever it was lived on with Abstergo, an E-Corp subsidiary which on paper conducts harmless genetic research, but the ones in the shadows cursed with knowledge knew better. Working in the dark to save the light. It sounded appealing at the time. Now, I don't know who I can trust apart from Darlene.

"You wound me, Elliot," Mr. Robot mused theatrically, dancing around the office with his arms outstretched like he was in a high school production of Hamlet. "You wanna go back to not trusting each other, after all this?"

Then there was him. The ever-present observer, and when necessary, the one in control. He was the one who started us on this path, leading me to create fSociety and start a global financial crisis without even knowing it. He was a trickster, and sometimes cruel. But I didn't hate him. Not anymore. I knew that at the end of the day, all he wanted to do was protect me, in his own calculating yet unhinged way. To be the father I never had. It's true, sometimes it's hard to trust him. But for the time being, I'm the one in control. We're not going back to the old way.

Finally, the printer completed its task, and noisily spat out the hunk of clay - molded to perfectly replicate the fingerprints put on the visitor's pass by the guard when I shoved it into his hands. If they didn't give me access, I had to take it for myself. I had a free ticket into any part of the facility I wanted.

"Huh," Mr. Robot scoffed. "Clever shit."

"Darlene," I whispered. "Are there any other elevators up to the simulation rooms?"

"No," she said, inspecting the stolen map. "Just a fire escape to far northeast. But it's fingerprint activated."

"I made a copy of that guard's prints. Let's hope it reads."

I could hear Darlene rolling her eyes over the call. "Why do your plans to save the world always boil down to throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks?"

"She has a point, Elliot," Mr. Robot mused, sing-song.

"You tried to blow up a building last year," I recalled to Mr. Robot.

"I had nothing to do with that shit. That was all you," Darlene scowled, a hint of confusion in her voice. Shit.

"You really ought to at least try not to sound insane," Mr. Robot said. Fuck you. I packed up my things and powered down the printer, dusting the entire cubicle for prints in case someone caught my trail. The far northeastern corner. I was close; just a few sharp turns, modifying my path slightly to avoid the hidden cameras as best as possible. I could only hope that Darlene's rootkit in the building's security software would corrupt the data enough to make me unrecognizable, though I knew that the people who wanted me dead knew my face very well by that point.

Hearing footsteps approaching from the adjacent hall, I held my breath and inserted the phony fingerprint into the scanner, and a moment later the door popped open, accompanied by a quick green flash and a mechanical beep. The stairs were a stark contrast to the rest of the entire facility, old and rusty, showing years of neglect. I say stark contrast, but the rest of Abstergo probably looked like this too with the lights off.

Floor 9 - the genetic data harvesting level. It was a Saturday, so no testers were obligated to come, though there's always the risk of a brown nose overworking themselves and breaking their own backs hoping the boss notices them. I navigated to terminal 919 near the center, the low light and loud hum of the super-computers making it an easy task to move like a ghost through the mechanical maze. The stolen fingerprint, as expected, allowed access into the simulation chamber, probably in case of emergency.

The room was dark and sleek, sanitized to every inch and illuminated only by the blue glow of the idle desktop. I sat down at the terminal and got to work, pulling my laptop out of the bag and opening up Ardamax with a few keystrokes. The program had installed a keylogger on to the employee's machine when we phished them the week prior, transmitting all of their movements directly on to my laptop for easy access. I CTRL-F'd down to the passphrase, collected last Tuesday morning, and carefully entered it into the locked desktop.

Access denied. What? I tried again, double checking that I entered each character in correctly. Denied. Shit. It read: Your passphrase was changed 1 day ago. "The password isn't working," I said.

"What the fuck? Why?" Darlene asked, her anxiety welling up.

"I don't fucking know. I'm gonna need to brute force my way in." I set about rebooting the desktop with BIOS, but the computer had been specially manufactured by Abstergo to be virtually impenetrable, unlike standard machines. Fuck. What now? I thought.

"This thing is a fortress," Mr. Robot said, looking around the room. "You're not gonna be able to brute force your way in. You have to find another way. That was always what you did best, Elliot." He was right. Making a high risk, high reward wager is never desirable. If there's ever even a chance of getting burned, there's no hope of any rewards ever again. At least with low risk you can get out safely with enough data to start putting the pieces together. It takes patience. I felt the adrenaline build up again, finally opening my phone and dialing tech support on Floor 5.

"Hi, this is Judy. How can I help you?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm on the data collection floor getting a project done for Mr. Gramatica, and it looks like I forgot my passphrase after changing it yesterday. I forgot to write it down so I'll need a manual reset, please."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do. Can I have your employee number, please?" she asked with a hint of suspicion.

"Yeah, sure. It's uh..." I trailed off as I frantically pulled up the document of all the employee data we could find, as a back up plan. I found 919's profile and slowly read back the string of digits to the tech person. She punched the numbers into her database.

Judy sighed with that fake corporate "too bad for you" tone. "I'm sorry, Mr. Abrams. I can't authorize a manual passphrase reset for another two weeks. It's company policy."

I froze. Another brick wall. "Could you check again?" I asked timidly.

"Jesus fuck," Mr. Robot sighed, out of patience. I felt that numbness in my mind, the vague sensation that wasn't unlike stepping out of your own body and seeing the world in third person. The next moment I was standing off to the side sifting through all the security cam viewpoints, scanning the entire floor for any signs that we weren't alone. All was still except for the little orange fish floating around in the mini aquarium, waiting patiently for their automatic feeder to toss them their scraps for the day.

Mr. Robot placed the phone on the desk and set it to speaker, quickly pulling up Wireshark on the laptop and setting about cracking the facility's wireless network. No fortress is truly impenetrable. There's always a crack, a broken lock somewhere in the dungeons that will let you pass through all the castle walls with just a little outside-the-box thinking. If I can get a list of devices connected to Abstergo's WiFi and pinpoint all the connections in Floor 5, I can narrow down the location that tech support is calling from and then find the nearest mobile phone signal, hopefully Judy's iPhone, Mr. Robot thought. It could be done quickly, but every second counted, and our time was running out. If she hung up all the devices in her office would go anonymous and be impossible to identify and exploit.

"I'm really sorry, but I just can't reset your password right now," she apologized, sounding almost genuinely concerned. "If corporate finds out, I could get in serious trouble." There it is, the company phone she was calling from; and right adjacent her personal cell. Gotcha. Mr. Robot typed the 9 digits into a public records database and pulled up everything the internet knew about Judy Damask; an extensive document containing every piece of information she shared with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or any other accounts whose parent companies could sell her data and thus permanently leave a digital footprint of her entire life embedded in the deep web. Inaccessible with a simple Google or DuckDuckGo search, but readily available if you can get your hands on the all-important keys to all their information; and what better access point than the one device everyone carries with them at all times, showing their every movement with constantly updating hidden GPS cookies and containing every secret they ever shared with all the apps they ever downloaded.

"Say," Mr. Robot said absentmindedly, buying time to keep her on the call for as long as possible. "Did you get that email last week about the Helix subprocessor records and the new software update they're rolling out?" He simultaneously copied the contents of her public records collection and plugged them into Aircrack, pulling up the Bank of E account recovery page on another tab.

Machines are easy to hack. They only do what they're programmed to; performing the same routines over and over giving the illusion of complexity while in reality just interpreting the same sets of ones and zeroes over and over again until termination. That makes them predictable, and if you can learn how to anticipate your enemy's every move through careful observation of their routines, you've been handed victory on a silver platter. People are more complex. They're more than ones and zeroes; they're the jobs they work every day, selling their labor to their bosses who they agree to let steal their wages in return for just enough to put food on the table, if they're lucky; they're their home towns; their parents and close friends; their shopping habits; their social security numbers. Even though Judy's information could be stored on a 2 GB document, that data could never let you see the world through their eyes, only let you peak into their thought processes, their wants, their needs.

So how do you own people? The same way you own machines - look for exploits. It's what I've always done; the art of seeing the worst in people and using every scrap of data you have to find what makes them tick. I could never connect to people the normal way growing up. So I started hacking them. A conversation with someone can tell you some things, but if you want to truly know someone, look for what they're storing in their browser data; what sites they're visiting in anonymous browsers when they think they can just clear their recent history and no one would ever know. Just like a decent facsimile of Judy's life could be collected by analyzing when and where she bought her coffee every morning or where she went to school with GEO-tags, you leave your digital fingerprint on every site you visit. Even the ones that promise you that you can trust them with your data. And when you leave pieces of the puzzle that is your life in a bread crumb trail across the internet, you put your life in the hands of the machines. And machines can be tricked.

"Um, no, I don't think I got that one," Judy said after a few moments of awkward silence. Just after, Aircrack finished running its tabulations of all her data, plugging each possible password into her Bank of E account until it got a positive match. From there, Mr. Robot asked the automatic bank teller to initiate account recovery, giving the website her phone number to text her a verification code which he could then intercept in transit since he'd successfully broken into the facility's network with a malicious rootkit, giving him access to all unencrypted data going in and out of the building. He heard Judy get the text message and kept talking to distract her, letting him punch the verification code into the Bank's website and break into her account. He selected her active debit card and got a rundown of all her financial transactions; she had a grand total of $1.66 cents on her account, with most of the money from her shitty paycheck immediately going into rent and hideously expensive student loan payments. Student loans; she was young, working a dead-end job at Abstergo hoping she could climb the corporate ladder high enough to eventually pay off the expenses she'd incurred from her 4 years of undergrad. She was in debt - deeply so. Looks like her communications degree didn't exactly give her a head start into the gig economy job market like her professors promised her it would.

"Sir?" Judy asked, clearly getting annoyed with the dead-end phone call that was probably well past the 5 minute mark. She was about to hang up when I felt that tingling in my head again - except it wasn't me or Mr. Robot regaining control. It was the Other one.

"Judy," he began, speaking in his unmistakable low and gravelly tone, devoid of emotion on the surface but harboring the coldest fury just below. "Your name is Judy Damask."

"Um... yeah, yeah that's me. Is there s-"

"How long do you think your dad will last without his cancer treatments?"

"Excuse me?"

"If you were to stop making those monthly payments because the student loans and rent finally pulled you under, do you think he'd make it through the month? Or would he suffer for the next year or so, hiding in the gutter so he wouldn't incur any more hospital bills to leave you with when he finally shits his own guts out in a pile of trash by the river across town? Do you think he'd wonder why you stopped supporting him - thinking that you didn't love daddy anymore or that he'd finally become too much of a nuisance to keep alive. He would never know that he died because you decided to stop doing your fucking job at work, because for some unthinkable reason you couldn't follow simple instructions, and you were immediately sacked for incompetence, and then your dad died. Do you think it would be better for him to die in ignorance or know that it was you - Judy - it was you who killed him. Not the cancer. Not Abstergo. Not the loan sharks. It was you, Judy."

Silence. The emptiness that followed was like drifting aimlessly in space, light years away from the nearest star, alone in the dark and cold void for all time. When she finally managed a response in the form of muffled weeping, I came to, knowing that I'd done something horrible by that sick feeling in my chest. I looked over to Mr. Robot, thinking he had taken over without my knowing, but by his breathless expression I knew that he wasn't responsible. Or was he? And by extension, was I responsible too? I was pulled out of the haze when the laptop gave a little ping, signifying that the spy program had intercepted a digital payload from somewhere else in the building. She'd sent the reset code to 919's work email, which was easy enough to access after looking for the password in the keylogger files.

"Uh," I mumbled, aware that I - or whoever - had just broken her heart by exploiting her for my own gain. I felt like shit. I wanted to apologize, or at least give her some sign that everything was fine and her dad was going to be okay, but I never got the chance.

"Go fuck yourself," she snapped coldly, hanging up the phone. A few keystrokes promptly let us into 919's company email securely, then type the reset code into desktop's password text box. All of this just to get into some faceless Abstergo employee's computer. It reminded me of a simpler time, becoming fixated on exacting some kind of vigilante justice on them by breaking into their online accounts and exposing all their dirty secrets to their family and friends or, in some cases, the appropriate authorities. I thought of myself as a superhero. Maybe I used to be. But this work isn't heroic. I don't have the luxury of being the good guy anymore. As far as the world is concerned, I'm the black-hoodied ringleader of the cyber-terrorist group that crippled the global economy in a vain quest to free everyone from the debt they owed to E-Corp and all the other conglomerates controlling their lives. The thing is that I'm not that special. I'm just anonymous. I am Mr. Robot.

I quickly opened the machine's Helix program, one of just two executable files within the computer's sole desktop folder. The other was a huge documented labeled "ANIMUS TRAINING PROGRAM" which gave instructions on handling the virtual reality-genetic memory protocol developed by Abstergo. I had already seen a copy of this in their database's restricted section accessible only to employees and execs, but I set aside the document just for the sake of checking for system updates later.

The program played Abstergo's 5 second corporate jingle accompanied by a robotic voice which said WELCOME TO HELIX - POWERED BY ANIMUS. Once I logged in with the same employee credentials, Helix loaded up 919's profile, showing all their recently accessed genetic memory packages and a list of projects they were assigned to. I sifted through the memories, searching for potential commonalities that could give some hint as to what Abstergo was working on.

The death of Caesar. The burning of Alexandria. The battle of Yorktown. The storming of the Winter Palace. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Interesting stuff, but I can't make any direct connections between them. 919 had spent upwards of 100 hours in each of them, though - these 5 events were of particular interest to the upper echelons of Abstergo, as the database suggested that upwards of a dozen testers had been assigned to this exact project; this exact sequence of events.

"We're missing something," Mr. Robot said, sifting through all the available files. "Try accessing the metadata, project directives, mission statements, anything you can get into with employee clearance." 919's Helix profile had its own internal messaging system which could be used to transmit information directly from corporate and into this particular machine, totally untraceable without a middleman to get a digital handshake from. I opened up the messages folder; mostly reminders about software updates, scheduled maintenance, salary adjustments, the occasional request from corporate for an update on their project. The project. I opened up 919's personal files, stored internally in this machine and, by the behavior of the code when I tried to access them, jury-rigged to corrupt itself if it receives too many invalid clearance codes.

When it prompted the passphrase I considered my options. I had no idea how many attempts I'd get to crack the code; it could be ten, it could be one, no doubt alerting the entire facility if I screwed up in order to protect whatever was being stored on those files. With only the raw data and time stamps, the keylogger wasn't of much help, as it was impossible to narrow down exactly when 919 last accessed the database and left a footprint of the passcode.

"Elliot, it's not worth it. Let's copy what information we can about the genetic memories and then book it," Mr. Robot suggested, beginning to worry that our time was running out.

"This is our only chance," I said, desperate to get to the bottom of whatever it was Abstergo was so intent on finding in those memories. With only the raw genetic data, we could do our own research to identify what they were searching for, but hacking into the company's internal records could get us everything from dates of access, who exactly was working on these memory sequences and on whose authority, to all of Whiterose's notes on her project that Abstergo were able to salvage after the meltdown. It would be invaluable, but I had to remind myself about high risks and high rewards. I have to know when to walk away with what prizes I can get my hands on with the resources I'm given. Then again...

"Darlene, I need you to open up a new virtual machine process from the van and start scanning for connections from the building's IP address," I started, feeling my tunnel vision start to kick in again. "Please don't ask why, just do it."

"You got it, boss," Darlene scoffed, resentful at being told what to do again. I never liked ordering her or anyone else around. I prefer to be responsible for myself and let everyone else handle their own shit. It's simpler that way; less potential points of failure and no need to worry about communicating all your ideas in a way they'd understand. But we'd been through hell together. I know that she trusts me, at least enough to humor my insane plans long enough to see them to fruition. If I was right, great. If I was wrong, I was wrong. She knows how this works.

While she booted up a new virtual machine from her laptop outside, I copied the same VM program I had installed on my own on to an inconspicuous little gray flash drive branded Kingston. Looks were deceiving; it wouldn't look out of place holding a 5th grader's powerpoint presentation for class, but it could store up to 2 terabytes of data - probably enough to store every 5th grader's powerpoint in the world - more than enough to store the hidden database partition which pushed one terabyte in its entirety. Securing the partition for our own purposes wouldn't do much as we could only access the contents inside by giving it the right passphrase, prompting it to decrypt itself and make the data readily available. But holding on to a copy on the off chance we could track down the passphrase couldn't hurt; I just needed enough time to transfer the code. And if nothing else I tend to work fast with a deadline.

I stuck the drive into the employee's desktop and installed the fresh VM profile, setting it up with the building's IP and the target host. Two minutes later, Darlene and 919's computer had synced, allowing her to remotely access the machine and harvest all of its protocols and subroutines; the very DNA of the desktop, including all the genetic data and hidden partitions in raw code.

"Connection established," Darlene said, getting excited as she realized what I was doing.

"Okay, I'm handing off control to you," I told her, granting total remote access from the safety of the van. "The VM program we're running will store all the data you access while you're in control. Any programs you run remotely will share its entire code with the attacker. I need you to open the partition and let your machine record the encrypted contents. The code won't be in a readable format and it'll be a massive payload - so Word won't be able to accurately copy it and your laptop won't be able to store it all. So let the VM program interpret the partition's code, and when your computer prompts you, tell it to send all the traffic to your virtual machine, and then I'll be able to upload the metadata in its entirety to my flash drive."

Darlene exhaled, as if preparing to jump from an airplane. "Alright, I think I've got this," she determined, remotely opening the partition and beginning the data transfer. "It says it'll take 5 minutes to complete the process."

Five minutes. 300 seconds, with each passing moment increasing the likelihood that Abstergo's firewall will detect the rootkit and shut the entire process down, leaving us with nothing. I bit my nails and bounced my leg watching all the encrypted characters trickle out into Darlene's system, only to be redirected back towards the nearest possible place to store itself as a backup - this flash drive. It's a funny thing - watching all the little bits of code replicate themselves and bounce back and forth between three devices all competing to retain control over them. The perfect replication of a living thing, helpless as powers beyond its understanding record their DNA and use it to grow an exact clone. In a way, Darlene and I had created our very own miniature Animus, taking the data it collects from a bygone era and using it to build the infrastructure with which to access it as if it were happening in real time.

ALERT. BUILDING ENTERING CODE RED LOCKDOWN. SHELTER IN PLACE IMMEDIATELY.

Shit. "Darlene, there's a problem."

"Really? I would never have guessed what with all the sirens and red lights going off."

"How long do we have?"

"3 minutes to completion of the script. I'll see what I can do to buy you time, but don't expect a miracle." I could hear the anxiety in her voice, the sense of dread she got when she sensed danger. A survival instinct. It had served her all her life, always the first one to book it when a bad job went south or know when somebody was on to us. She hated it all the same, coming to despise the subtle clacking of her teeth when she started to hyperventilate like a sign of weakness, a pathetic thing. This had all taken a toll on both of us, I knew that. But I hadn't considered how she was adapting, changing. I was so focused on what was above me that I couldn't see what was right in front of me. God, I sound like an angsty teen. Was I always like this?

"Focus, Elliot!" Mr. Robot shouted, sensing I was losing sight of the situation. "We still have access to the machine. Pull up a terminal and see what you can do about those alarms before we get our asses handed to us on a silver platter by some chud who thinks he's the Punisher."

I switched to Wireshark on my laptop, getting close to instant feedback on all the wireless signals being exchanged within the building: I could see in strings of code the control center ordering all the doors to shut and where to deploy the facility's security forces. I couldn't access anything on the computer while it was processing the data transfer and the programs on my laptop could only observe, not issue wireless commands. I needed to access the control center so I could take control of the building's security, maybe even use it against the guards.

"Darlene," I started, my mind racing.

"Don't sweat it, bro. I've already owned the control network." In the time between that moment and the onset of the alarms, she had identified all the personal cells located in Floor 6, the security center, and quickly sent a text to each of the employees' phones instructing them to check their emails, containing a phishing link disguised as a safety update from Abstergo. In the confusion, at least one of them had opened the link and probably shat their pants upon being redirected to an fSociety-owned website which simply read "welcome to the revolution <3 - mr. robot," in white comic sans against a black background. When they accessed that website, one of Darlene's malware programs immediately bypassed the network firewall and injected itself into the tech's computer, embedding itself within the local OS and allowing it to assume full control over the entire security network, accessible with a few keystrokes from her laptop.

"Oh. Um, thanks. Good job," I said, half-surprised at her efficiency while the other half had come to expect such underhanded plays by Darlene, using people's fear against them to force them to practically hand over all their secrets to her with a simple malicious website spoof, the oldest trick in the book. She knew her classics.

"Guess I really am the best," she opined sanctimoniously. "You've got two guards en route to your floor, elevator B. I can redirect them away from your room, but it'll take a few seconds for the commands to update."

I heard the elevator ding. They were here. "Show yourselves and get down on the ground if you don't wanna get capped!" one of them yelled. "You are trespassing on private property and we have authorization to terminate any unauthorized persons accessing corporate servers."

I ducked under my desk, but I knew it was only a matter of time before they made their way to me; I couldn't abort the computers' processes now, but their light was like an open invitation that read "come kill me!" to people like Abstergo's private security forces, itching to put holes in anyone they can get away with icing under virtually full legal immunity.

There were two distinct sets of footsteps, one approaching from the west and the other from the east. I reached in my backpack and fished for my wrist blade, handgun, and black hoodie; I pulled the hoodie over my worn blue sweater, my prospects of maintaining an inconspicuous disguise essentially dashed since the troops were on KOS orders.

The one from west kept drawing closer, his every movement audible with the clinking of his heavy kevlar vest. I counted the seconds before he reached the glass door of the room. If he found me, I was a dead man. But I knew the only chance of evasion was killing him, ending the life of some corporate chump who might have a family to feed and only took the job for the decent salary and a chance to play with an AR-15. I hate being a killer. But like Mr. Robot had told me when all this started, "fuck my feelings." My morals aren't worth shit if preserving them means I screw over everyone else that was depending on me. I can't be selfish anymore, no matter how much I want to be.

I held my breath, each step getting louder and louder until the door detected movement and swished open, the guard immediately noticing the open terminals and scanning the darkened room with his rifle-mounted flashlight. He panned ever so slowly to the desk I had ducked under, my only view of him his black leather boots. Finally, my retinas met light.

The man yelped in agony upon the penetration of the blade into his exposed shin, forcing him to instinctively buckle and drop his gun. Hearing yelling from the east, I regarded the injured guard for a split second before sucker punching his jaw, fracturing it in ways I don't want to imagine. He fell silent, his limp form slinking lifelessly on to the hard ground.

The second guard instantly rounded the corner and caught sight of the scene, shocked by the death of her comrade. Shielding my eyes from the light, I dashed towards her as she held her mouth open in terror, delaying her trigger finger for maybe half a second. Right before being riddled with bullets, I smacked the rifle out of her grip, cursing at the unexpected pain from hitting the hard metal with my bear hands. She quickly regained her composure, pivoting back a meter and equipping her baton from her belt. The guard came at me like a bear disturbed from her hibernation, swinging her baton wildly towards my head and chest and cutting through the air savagely.

Ducking a blow to the head, I sprinted forward and went straight for her neck, extending my wrist blade in a desperate thrust intended to bring the fight to a swift end. The parried the stab, batting my wrist away and making me yelp in pain. She hadn't broken anything, but I feigned extreme pain, clutching my hand desperately and slowly sinking to the floor. Slashing down at my head, she let her defenses down, believing that she'd incapacitated me; in an instant her waist was eviscerated by the cold metal, making her scream and fall to the ground. Like the other guard, killing her would be easy and probably the smarter move. But I couldn't bring myself to finish her off, ashamed at the prospect of ending the life of someone who no longer posed any immediate threat. Nevertheless, I gave her a hearty kick before bolting back to the room to see the progress. 30 seconds. Then I could escape with all the data I needed to bring Abstergo down once and for all, I hoped. I heard the elevator ding again, this time heralding the approach of at least five more guards racing towards my position.

"Darlene!" I pleaded to her, trying to keep my voice as low as possible given the situation. A moment later, I heard cries of pain reverberating throughout the entire floor; she had fiddled with the instant messaging system controlled by the central security apparatus, converting what was once a simple beep into an ear drum-shattering ring.

"It's done! Get the fuck out of there!" I raced back to the desk and immediately terminated all the finished programs, shutting down the host computer and retrieving my laptop and flash drive to store in my backpack. Time to go. I had what I came for and more. But as I made for the glass door, the ringing now even causing me discomfort, I buckled, collapsing to my knees as a shot of pain ran out from my left wrist. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Not now.

I gasped for air attempting to calm myself down, clutching my hand as I realized my feint against the guard may not have been so overstated after all. With the weight of all my equipment on my back, I relented, fearing I wouldn't be able to escape the facility as I started to shut down, the anxiety rapidly exhausting my body and mind to the point of near total exertion.

I felt a weightless hand on my shoulder. "Hey, kiddo," I looked up to see Mr. Robot, sunglasses and all, his expression not unlike a proud father consoling his son. "You just owned Abstergo. With all that data, you could identify every one of their bosses, all their banks, every single ill-gotten asset they've got hidden up their asses convinced no one would ever look up there. You fucking beat them," he smiled, a rare sight. "But I'll let you in on a little secret: They are going to fucking kill you if you don't get off your ass and haul it out of here; and let me tell you, those guys do not like pipsqueaks in hoodies."

Helped to my feet by Mr. Robot, I summoned all my courage and booked it for the elevator, shoving three stunned guards out of the way as I sprinted for my life. Just before they started to come to, I made it, and the elevator doors slid closed. "I'm okay," I told Darlene, gasping for air. "What's the quickest way out?"

"You sound great," Darlene said sarcastically. "You're gonna wanna stop on the third floor; the lobby will be crawling with those Blackwater creeps. There should be a fire escape by the-" she abruptly cut out, losing her signal in the elevator.

"Darlene?" Fuck. Not now. She'll never let me hear the end of it if I croak. Maybe I had enough information. The fire escape shouldn't be too hard to find. I could make it to the ground and make a run for it then rendezvous with Darlene later once we're sure no one followed either of us. I'm okay. Home stretch. I held my breath as I reached the third floor, the doors slowly creaking open.

"Elliot," a woman regarded me as I left the elevator. Her tone was so unassuming as to suggest it was strained in order to hide the great shock below the surface.

I tilted my head towards the voice and froze upon seeing its source, immediately going pale and breathless. This wasn't real. No chance. Another one of my delusions. Probably Mr. Robot or one of the others fucking around. Just keep moving.

"Elliot. What are you doing here?" Alas, there was no denying what was right in front of me. It was Angela, my childhood friend and partner - at least before Whiterose's goons mercilessly killed her upon her orders.

I sensed Mr. Robot and the Other behind me. "Please tell me you're seeing this, too," I managed to whisper, my voice trembling at the sight of the phantom.

"Here," she tried to assume a friendlier tone, moving towards me slowly. "Let's get out of the way of the guards." She gently took my hand - my bad hand - and led me to the adjacent broom closet, where both our guards immediately dropped.

"Angela," I started, trying to keep my composure as best as possible. "You have to tell me what's going on right fucking now."

"Why the hell are you here?" she dodged the question, frustrated with me. Not exactly the tone I'd expect her to have in this circumstance.

"How the hell are you here?" I insisted, incredulous that she apparently didn't register the fact that I was looking at my dead best friend. She sighed and backed away slightly.

"Elliot," she started. "Do you remember when, as kids, sometimes we closed our eyes as hard as we could, hoping that when we opened them, all our dreams would come true, like magic?"

This is not happening. Of course I remembered - and the terrifying realization starting to set in.

"Elliot, the machine worked," she insisted to me, smiling now. "Whiterose did it. She actually did it!" I backed further away from her, bumping into the other corner of the cramped closet.

I shook my head in denial. "I saw you. They sent me pictures of you with your brains blown out. Are you trying to tell me right now that didn't happen?"

"It did happen," she nodded, unaffected. "And then we fixed it. Just like we wanted to when we were kids." My eyes wandered toward her neck; she was wearing a small golden necklace with some pointed red symbol in the middle.

"What did Whiterose tell you when she abducted you, Angela?" I pleaded with her. "Angela, they brainwashed you. They used your grief for your mom against you and filled your head with lies - there's no way the machine worked. It's-it's impossible. It's not possible."

I caught a better look at the symbol with which she was adorned. A red cross, outlined in gold.

"It's okay, Elliot," she tried to calm me down, coming closer. "I know it's hard to believe, but you have to trust me. Don't you trust me, Elliot? After everything we went through? Everything I did for you and Darlene?" I had no words, part of my mind still not even willing to accept that she was standing there in front of me.

She grabbed my hands softly. "Don't you want to see your father again?"

I stopped hyperventilating, the shock of her last question eliciting a glimmer of a tear. The moment my heart broke. "Angela," I began to plead. "Do you remember when I forgot what my dad did to me? When I blocked it all out instead of facing it, because it made me so ashamed I felt like something in me had died?" She regarded me curiously, only vaguely recollecting the memories.

"Do you remember when you listened to me talk about how much I hated him for hours, and how you understood because your mom was doing it, too?" I asked, softly as I could. "Angela, did you forget?"

She stared at me blankly for a few moments before her lips curled into an empty smile. "Are you feeling alright, Mr. Alderson? You can talk to me if you feel bad. I'll listen. I promise I won't tell anyone..."

"Angela, please listen to me very carefully," I took a deep breath, losing my patience and my mind. "Whiterose used you. Do you understand me? She was obsessed with changing the past and so many people died because she couldn't just accept it and move on. You are not like her. Okay? You would never sell yourself to people like her who only want control. They don't care about you." I flickered my eyes down at the cross on her necklace.

Angela's smile shrank. "I feel sorry for you," she started, cynically. "You'll never see the truth because your life has always been about you taking on the forces of evil and heroically saving the day, not knowing that you - Elliot Alderson - you were the villain the whole time. I am warning you: Stay out of this. No one can stand between Whiterose and the salvation of the world. It's suicide."

"Whiterose is dead," I said defiantly, though to Angela it sounded more like I was trying to convince myself, not her.

"So was I," she said simply. I heard a cadre of guards arrive on the floor from the other elevator, guns loaded and hungry for blood. My blood. There was no time. All this - Angela, Whiterose, - it can wait. Mr. Robot was right. We beat them. Now we need to go in for the head.

"Goodbye, Elliot," she said emotionlessly as I turned and left, leaving her behind in the darkness of the broom closet. "I can't wait to see you again."