Work Text:
Story of a Generic Employee
Abstergo, Sample 17
You keep your fist under your chin to stop your head from collapsing onto the flexible keyboard on the desk. For days you’ve been replaying the same memories over and over again to find the last treasures, the last notes—basically all those little things you left behind while rushing through the main story, just so you can finally see that wonderful “100% synchro” on the progress bar you’ve been chasing ever since you became an employee at Abstergo Entertainment.
You never imagined you would get this invested in what is supposed to be the testing phase of a new videogame.
During your first visit, Melanie Lemay had talked to you about their first episode: Assassin’s Creed Liberation HD. You had mentally grimaced as if to say “what the hell even is that?”—after all, you had taken the job mostly for the generous salary.
And yet, look at you now.
The servers shut down automatically at midnight, and you promised yourself you’d find those 30 missing items before 23:55, so you’d have time to save the data and receive the bonus for achieving full synchronization.
But sleep is stronger.
Your eyelids keep closing against your will, and your brain is practically begging you: please take your eyes off the screen, it’s too much.
You don’t want to listen. You want to finish what you set out to do.
But the signals are getting too strong to ignore.
Oh come on, you’ve been here since this morning. You took a two-hour lunch break and you’re still here… you can save and finish tomorrow. Nobody is forcing you to complete it tonight—except yourself. So turn it off and go home.
You raise an eyebrow while running across rooftops to grab the last musical note—that damn musical note that, instead of turning left like it makes you believe, suddenly swerves right, throwing you off balance and sending you crashing to the ground in a flash of red pain.
You curse and throw the round, blinking wireless headphones onto the desk.
Finally you rub your eyes, stretch—and hear a satisfying series of cracks coming from your back—and sigh.
You look around.
You haven’t taken your eyes off the screen for about five hours, and you hadn’t even noticed the sun setting outside the large panoramic windows. You didn’t notice your coworkers gradually leaving either.
You’re alone now.
Just you, and a couple of security guards at the entrance, who obviously can’t leave their post before the servers shut down.
You stand up and begin wandering between the other Animus stations. Some are off, others are still running, the blinking green light makes that clear, probably because their owners thought “they’ll turn off by themselves anyway.” And honestly, they wouldn’t be wrong.
You pick one at random behind a column. After glancing around to make sure no one is nearby, you sit down and move the mouse to wake the screen.
After a moment of flickering, the power-saving mode deactivates and the brightness returns to normal.
On the right side of the screen there’s the photo and name of whoever uses that station, but you don’t pay attention. You’re more interested in the left side, where a luminous DNA spiral rotates as if pulsing with life.
Beneath it flashes the message:
L O A D I N G…
You wait to see the progress percentage of that employee.
56%
You think it would be exciting to find some hidden treasure inside Abstergo Entertainment itself, so you decide to hack the Animus of that unsuspecting random person.
You begin typing words and codes that your passion for computers has made you memorize. Eventually you reach the database screen, the computer’s sort of black box, but of course it’s protected by a complex barrier system.
No password.
No access codes.
Just a globe crossed by digital lines and a blinking dot waiting to reconnect with the Mother Green Line.
You use the arrow keys to move the dot. After several attempts, you manage to guide it onto the green line, where it begins spinning faster and faster until the globe explodes, revealing more circuits inside.
Barrier hacked. Congratulations.
In front of you appears a black screen with a “P l a y” button.
You hesitate.
Maybe these are confidential files.
Actually, no doubt about it, they are confidential files.
But the adrenaline rises, and you feel sweat forming on your temples.
You move the cursor to the center of the screen.
You click.
“December 23, 2012.
A male voice speaks. He doesn’t sound much older than you.
On the screen appears the photo of a young man and his personal data: Desmond Miles.
Head of Sample Recovery Unit. Report concerning Subject Seventeen: Desmond Miles.
Distorted images appear of a group of men in sealed, radiation-proof suits preparing equipment. On the ground lies another man.
Dead.
You raise an eyebrow.
Maybe that’s the guy from the picture.
The subject was deceased and alone.
The agents turn on the lights and prepare the area for examination.
Time of death estimated shortly after midnight, under conditions favorable for DNA sample recovery.
A man approaches. You only see the gas mask and the reflection of the camera in its glass. It feels almost unreal.
He keeps adjusting the lens.
We were concerned about potential interference inside the crypt, but thanks to the professionalism of the team we were able to collect useful data.
They take photographs, bring plastic boxes inside, analyze the ground and everything around them.
I personally recovered the subject’s backpack and extracted several objects of interest for further analysis.
Photos appear on the screen like slides: the mentioned backpack and the items inside, carefully bagged.
A cellphone.
A notebook and pen.
A plane ticket whose destination you can’t read.
The agents lift the body and place it on a stretcher.
The subject presented severe burns on the right hand, so severe that the bones had fused together, signs of trauma caused by high-temperature combustion.
You can’t stop yourself from grimacing in disgust at the slide of the charred hand.
More slides follow. Different angles of the arm. The body.
In all honesty, I have never seen anything like it.
And honestly, neither have you.
Head, neck, and torso were in good condition.
They remove his white hoodie—or at least that’s what it looked like—leaving him bare-chested.
What a complexion, you think. He doesn’t even look dead.
For a moment you linger on his face.
You almost feel sorry he died.
I selected the best agents for the recovery of blood and saliva samples. We began tissue extraction and collected several useful specimens.
More slides. The samples he mentioned.
Agents gather around the boy’s body. You can imagine they’re opening his chest to continue the autopsy.
Another wave of nausea hits you.
You don’t even realize you’ve leaned far too close to the screen trying to understand what the hell this video is and why it concerns you.
There are unpleasant sounds—whistling, scraping—but also something softer.
Yes.
They’re probably removing organs. If they keep going like this, you won’t last long without throwing up.
Another slide appears—one you don’t understand.
Black and gray bars, some marked by red arrows.
Next to it reads:
Subject 17 – DNA profiling – VNTR analysis 22133
You have no idea what that means.
Data analysis and recovery are ongoing, but the procedure appears to be considerably simple.
The camera is fixed on a close-up of the dead boy’s face.
Desmond, that was his name, right?
His eyes are closed.
You notice a scar on the right side of his lip.
Behind him the agents zip up the black body bag.
Thanks to the cloud database and the work of Abstergo’s Sample Recovery Unit Three, the legacy of Subject Seventeen will pass without damage to Sample Seventeen."
The agents drag the bag across the floor and walk away.
You feel almost offended by the way they treat the body.
Where did respect for the dead go?
Dragging him like that certainly isn’t respectful.
////// Black screen.
You remain glued to the monitor, mouth slightly open, breathing a little faster, heart pounding.
What the hell was that video?
Why was it classified?
From what little you understood, everything you’re doing here is based on that dead guy.
A shiver runs through your entire body.
You push the chair back and move away from the screen.
The display suddenly flashes red, the triangular Abstergo symbol trembling.
“What the hell did I do?!”
You start smashing random keys trying to unlock the Animus, but every attempt is answered with the same dull sound.
Duh. Duh. Duh.
You glance at the clock and breathe half a sigh of relief.
Only a few minutes remain before the servers shut down.
Maybe tomorrow morning it will reboot and it’ll be like nothing ever happened, you think.
You hope.
You return to your workstation, grab your jacket, scarf, and bag, and head toward the exit—quickly.
And yet that video shook you so deeply you can’t stop thinking about it.
What if there’s more?
There has to be more.