AC: Subject 15 (Bis) Day 1 at Abstergo

Vidic sighed putting down on his desk the file about Amanda Parkers.
She was a replacement for the first Subject 15 who had been a dead end after few tests.
He read it one more time.

Amanda Parkers was 26, dark chestnut hair, blue eyes, 5ft 9, fit and a bit too muscular for a girl.  She suffered from dissociative personality disorder and signs of schizophrenia since the age of six. She lived in New York since highschool and she was enrolled in some kind of art academy.
He read her psychotherapist's report again: he said she used to suffer from hallucinations until she got 13 in which she claimed  Helen stalked her and that Helen broke or damaged her stuff.  It was a kind of sensorial hallucination because the good doctor was there once she had a seizure because she couldn't bare Helen trying to take over her body. And another time, the" Helen personality" took control and was extremely violent  and not polite at all. She trashed every single thing in his studio before he could administrate a tranquillizer.
In short, if Amanda took her pills, she was the nice art student who loved painting and do the stuff art students do. If she didn't take her meds, her other personality would come out and mess the place.
Vidic wondered how long it would take before her other personality manifested.
By the way, he was ready: he had tons of tranquillizer and restriction tools there.

Meanwhile, Mandy was following her ancestor from the Crusades period, named Shahr.
Actually, her full name was Shahrizad, she was an experiment of the Mentor of the Assassin Brotherhood in Masyaf. The first  female Assassin, who trained together with the men in that huge fortress. She didn't have marked feminine characteristics, so the others were mistaken and ended up treating her as a younger brother or a novice. She had three people she trusted who knew she was a girl: a tanned boy with blue eyes, named Malik, his younger brother Kadar and a tall boy with golden eyes, named Altair.  They grew up together in the Brotherhood. They teamed up when they lost their parents and became a family with strong bonds.
That, until the day after her 21 birthday, when she heard about the failure of her bros' mission.  That was the memory Mandy was in at the moment.                                 She rushed to the infirmary, just to find Malik badly wounded. Her heart was stricken by worry. When she asked what happened and was answered that Kadar was dead, she felt a knot in her throat. The knot became worse when the healer talked about amputation.
"Is there any other way?" She asked worried.
"He keeps bleeding like this and he'll die. And the muscles of his arm are damaged beyond repair." the healer replied, grabbing different blades and a saw. "It's better this way."
"But there must be another way! He might die faster because of that!"she stated pointing at the cutting tools.
"Not if we cut and cauterize the wound. I need help to pin him down. I'll try to finish this as soon as I can, using few cuts."
Malik was almost unconscious. Shahr could see the white of his eyes under the trembling eyelids.
They had cut off his assassin robe to the  waist and she could see the mass of mauled flesh which had been the heart of a lethal weapon before.  
"Help us pin him down." The healer said while placing a cloth in Malik's mouth. Shahr  got on fours over the table and pressed her knees against his hips, placing her hands firmly to block his shoulders. When the healer began to cut him, Malik opened his eyes and started to scream and spasming wildly. Shahr felt her eyes burning hot and found herself talking to him trying to distract him. It was useless. He freed his other arm and grabbed her left arm over the elbow and squeezed tightly . She thought he could break her bone, but she just kept him pinned on the table, bearing the pain until the healer ended his work cauterizing the stump with a hot large blade. Malik passed out. Shahr was relived and sad at the same time. One of the novices rushed in and told her that the Mentor wanted to execute Altair because he was responsable for the failure of their mission and because his questionable  deeds caused the Templar attack on the fortress a while before.
Leaving the healer disposing of the amputate limb, she stormed out of the infirmary, rushed up the stairs to the small square near the entrance of the fortress. She was blocked near the stairs by two brothers.  She felt despair clinging over her heart.  Kadar was dead, Malik could be dead in a few days due to infection or fever and she was about to lose Altair too.
"Mentor, don't ."she shouted with her hoarse voice.
"He broke the rules of our Creed, young one. This is the punishment people like him deserve." The old man replied before sinking a sword in Altair's body.
Shahr bit back a cry. When she saw him fall on the ground,  she felt like she had lost her family again. She made few steps towards the still body, but the old Mentor stopped her.
"Shahr, you'll help the healer tending the wounded. You'll stay there until I'll summon you."
She wanted to cry out it wasn't fair, but everything she replied was a clear:"As you command, Mentor."
She went back to the infirmary, trying to ignore the two man who carried Altair's body away. She was lucky that their robe had a hood to hide her eyes which were glittering with tears she managed to suppress when she got at the door of the infirmary.
Malik was still out, but he burnt with fever. The healer asked her to wash her hands before touching clean bandages. Shahr did as she was requested. The small water basin was placed on a worktable which had a small mirror on the wall. She took off her hood to wipe her face. Her green-blue eyes were empty, her sharp and not so delicate tensed features made her look like a man even more. Her hair, cut short like all the men in there, reinforced her disguise. Her necklace with glittering squares pendant was about to sneak out her robe. She put it back and walked to Malik's bed.
She sat near her comrade, grabbed a piece of wet cloth and put it on his forehead.
The healer couldn't give him something to dull the pain due to his blood loss.
A couple of hours later, Malik opened his eyes and it looked like he didn't have any clue about where he was. There was just pain, the overwhelming pain, the burning absolute pain. She could read it on his face.
She made him drink some water. Hours later when he emptied the jar, the healer gave him a light potion to ease the pain.  Night passed, Shahr kept her place, sometimes changing the water, sometimes changing  blood soaked bandages. She even held him when he was delirious and she managed to keep him down when he wanted to wander around the fortress.  Ten days passed, when finally Malik opened his eyes.
He didn't recall at first why he was there. Looking around, his sight found Shahr's head leaning on the bed.
She probably felt he was awake because she suddenly woke up.  He tried to sit upright but Shahr grabbed him.  He had tried to lean on his arm…which wasn't there anymore.
Shock, horror, wrath, rage. Shahr saw all those emotions in his eyes. She tried to do something, but Mandy didn't knew what happened next because she desynchronized.

Mandy rubbed her eyes. She felt sore especially her neck where the pendant of her necklace had left a bright red mark. It was a single square golden piece of metal. It wasn't gold, but she cherished it because her acquired grandma gave it to her. She noticed that the little thing she had looked like the one her ancestor had. Maybe it was an accident, a casualty. Nothing important.
The machine overheated so Mandy was free for the rest of the day.
While she was stretching her limbs, Doc. Vidic came in to check the data on the timeline.
"How is going here?" he asked.
"Really good until the machine overheated." The assistant replied.
Mandy kept stretching, walking near the window and looking at the landscape outside it.
Vidic got a phone call. Mandy didn't get all the conversation, but she managed to understand that some Abstergo's top was sending something for him to analyze.
A couple of guards came in carrying a reinforced briefcase, the kind you use to carry important/extremely precious and fragile things.
She was a bit curious, but she behaved like she didn't care and watched with the corner of her eye.
Vidic opened it and checked its content. She ignored him.
She was concentrated on the sudden warming feeling she felt around her neck. It was her necklace, but it wasn't that strange, minutes before it was heated by the Animus and was burning hot. But the heat should have worn off. It looked like it was burning hot again. She grabbed it with the tip of her fingers: it was almost burning and there were strange cravings all over the small surface.   Even the tiny chain was burning up.
A curse from the assistant made her turn to the group in front of her. They had small cubelike things in their hands which were sparkling and they had subtle lines craving them. She was clueless when her piece gave out some kind of vibration, like a giant bell was resounding or something like that, filling the room with golden light. The assistant got near her and his piece began to vibrate strongly. When he put it against her chain, it locked together with the chain of her necklace. The other pieces went flying and locked on the chain as well. Then the light became so bright no one could see a thing and went out as it suddenly sparkled.
When Mandy opened her eyes, she noticed her necklace had become thicker. The chain which was thin as a thread, now was thick like an internet cable. The cubelike things were perfectly locked on it and from one she got ten of them around her neck. She could slide them over the chain, but as the assistant tried to unlock one, she couldn't separate them from the necklace. That poor guy got electrocuted by it, so they stopped trying to obtain the necklace. Vidic made some phone calls and requested that Mandy stayed in her room, while he, the guards and the assistant stormed out of the place.
She didn't complained because, one, she didn't get what the hell happened and, two, she didn't get what was all the fuss about.

She was wondering all that while lying on her bed when the lights went out, cameras and emergency light included. That was calculated power shortage. She knew because she did something like that when she was in high school. She heard some noise from the air conduct over her head and she sat up when she heard it opening.  A sudden torchlight cut the complete darkness. It was a young man, twenty something, kinda blonde, maybe blue or green eyes. In the tiny light she couldn't catch many details.
"Who the hell are you?"she whispered grabbing her sketchpad, thinking about slamming it on his head..
"Can't tell you names. Too dangerous. For both of us." he replied.
"And how can I call you, mystery man?"
He smiled bitterly. "I'm a guest, like you. You replaced the one before me. We're on the same side."
"I don't know you. How can you pretend I cooperate?"
"We have to. After the show you put on, they're worried. A lot."
"You mean the necklace? I don't know what the hell happened! It just..happened."  she whispered franticly.                                                                      He chuckled then he tensed like he was hearing something she couldn't and got back from where he came from, shutting the grid closed again.
She laid again on the bed. After a while, the power came back.
She couldn't get that guy out of her head. Too many riddles. He said she was a replacement.
Oh, yeah, Vidic  said to his assistant that she was a replacement for the fifteenth subject.
Then, if she thought that right, he was..
Sixteen she thought. She was suspicious. Was he a enemy? Was he an ally? Was he a decoy to trick her?
She hoped to have the chance to find out.
He had a nice anatomy, though.

Typical of you focusing on the anatomy you can draw.
A wicked voice whispered sweetly.

She got up alarmed. Nobody was there, and she was sure no one spoke from the speaker. Then..
Fuck! Not again. She cried silently.

Yes, exactly. The voice smirked.