The sound of his phone buzzing had almost gone unheard over some movie he had playing on his laptop -- a bad one with Jessica Alba featured as some attempt at a manic pixie dream girl -- but it caught his attention regardless. Pausing the movie, he didn’t recognize the number, and upon answering with a simple, “Hello,” he didn’t recognize the voice either. It stirred up only a bit of anxiety within him, but more than that, a sense of excitement and purpose.
Hello Mr. Miles. I just wanted to inform you that we are sending someone to help you relocate to France for your new mission in a few days. Be ready.
That was all they had said, and that was all he needed to hear. He had only been waiting for such a call for years, having heard almost nothing since he was kidnapped. If it could even be called that when it was all planned so meticulously, even outside third parties like Erudito were convinced he was still an Assassin, not to mention his own dad. The fun part was that the girls who picked up his teenager hitchhiker self and had told him about how New York was a great place to build a life from nothing also were Templars by inheritance, and as they said -- the rest was history. Desmond Miles was a marked man from Day 1.
So it was a simple enough act to call in with food poisoning to his bartending job and fill in the hours somewhat restlessly with exercise and Netflix -- the rest was just a waiting game for that knock on his door, aware that they’d known where he was for the majority of the time despite the years of silence. And when he finally heard it, Desmond wasn’t exactly tripping over himself to answer it, but took his time, mind buzzing with the classic Assassin-ingrained paranoia before finally opening the door.
“You definitely took your time.”