Altair appeared in the white room that looked exactly like it was the day before. The seats were still parted and the "screen" facing Ronald's table was still on with the same information about Denton Black but the video showed different places now.
"Put this on" David said as he handed Altair a full set of a red suit.
Trying to get a feel for it, Altair realized that the material seemed no different from a regular cotton fabric.
'Will this be safe?' Altair wondered. In his opinion, his costume was definitely safer than this thing, after all, they knew nothing about Denton Black and guns were not really difficult to get these days.
He raised withdrew his attention from the suit to voice his opinion but just as he opened his mouth to speak, he heard Ronald's voice.
"SAMANTHA, test the fabric for Mr. Rohan."
*piu-* *tst*
Altair's hand holding the suit was pushed backward from a sudden force and the suit nearly left his hand. In a startle, he reflexively tightening his grip on it.
Altair hadn't yet processed what just happened when he heard someone talk.
"So I was right about his strength," David remarked.
*ting*
'What the-?'
A small metal piece fell to floor, a thin tube slowly retracted into the wall and the wall returned to its smoothness.
"Did you just shoot me?" Altair asked in surprise. What was he even supposed to feel right now?
"The suit handed to you has CNT incorporated in it. so it's resilient enough for most things. You will wear that for now."
'Will he really not address the fact that he just shot me? What is wrong with these people?' Altair complained internally.
"Oh, stop grumbling. SAMANTHA would not miss. Besides, the bullet wasn't even shot towards you but towards the suit."
"…" Altair was speechless. These people seemed to lack common sense. But there was nothing he could do about that.
After a few seconds of questioning his life decisions and mourning for his future self, he moved on.
"Didn't you say, you would contact me through the phone." Altair asked Ronald.
Ronald replied in his stern tone. "Mr. Elliot finds a sense of joy in startling and scaring others."
David looked at James before turning back towards Altair as he added. "I guess he got no reaction from you this time."
James, as if to pout or express some displeasure just silently walked to his seat.
'So because that James guy wanted to give me a scare, they let him Sling to my place to call me instead of sending a message through SAMANTHA. I wouldn't have expected this Ronald guy to condone pranks.'
Altair thought silently while observing the three men. Then, he just took another sit with a silent sigh, still not knowing what to make of these people.
'I guess time will tell.'
With Altair in his muses, David continued. "Anyways, we had to gather because we're about to start the mission. Since you're taking part in this, you should be briefed."
David walked to the wall. "SAMANTHA, play the footage from yesterday."
The screen started showing images of Denton Black entering the shop. It was a single floor wide shop with glasses almost all around.
Then the footage changed and showed everything in lines as if in high resolution X-ray and it adjusted to show only the building's frame in lines and the interior returned to color.
"SAMANTHA, speed times four." David said. After a few seconds he turned to Altair and asked. "Can you keep up?"
"Yes, it's clear, how did you make it flow instead of skip at that speed?" Altair replied and asked.
Instead of replying, David said. "SAMANTHA, times eight." And he looked at Altair.
Altair was now squinting his eyes slightly.
David resumed talking, but Altair's focus was on the screen, trying to keep up with the footage.
After some time…
*ping* *ping* *ping*
The screen blinked with sound notifications and that seemed to drag back Altair to the present.
"Did you catch anything of what I said?" David asked.
"You're crazy for expecting him to keep up with that and still listen to you." James cut in.
"Shut up, I wasn't talking to you. Besides, he was able to keep up." David retorted.
James leaned back in his seat and said to David. "For someone who acts like he's got everything figured out, you sure like wasting time."
David did not even turn to look at him as he said. "If it's about wasting time, Slinging to his house for a prank is not very time efficient."
James scoffed. "Well, he came, didn't he?"
"Missing the point." David said almost eyerolling.
Altair just stood in the room a little confused as he looked back between the two. 'How did a briefing turn into a banter?'
Ronald sighed deeply and leaned back in his seat. "You two managed to behave for one day. One." He pinched his nose bridge. "I really thought introducing a third party might encourage a baseline of professionalism. I suppose that was optimistic."
His voice was almost flat but Altair sensed some emotions in them. Maybe it was exasperation, relief… or both, he wasn't sure.
"I'm professional." They both said at the same time.
Ronald could only sigh.
Meanwhile, Altair looked between the two, then towards Ronald, and back to the screen.
This whole atmosphere was not what he expected. He had thought of them as some kind of elite task force or something similar. Thinking they would be all cold, calculative and very coordinated. But right now, they felt like some dysfunctional family that was held together by the mission.
'Maybe I was wrong about them.' Altair thought. 'They're certainly dangerous but, they're human…' Thinking of the earlier suit testing, he corrected himself. 'Weirdly human.'
"Enough." Ronald interrupted the two. "Let's return to the mission."
Turning his attention to Altair, Ronald started. "As you saw in the video, SAMANTHA followed him from the time he did the car purchase, when he left and raced someone in the streets up to the moment he entered that building."
On the screen the video seemed paused on a particular multiple story building. The video was not actually paused and people and vehicles kept on moving about, with a facial recognition running quickly in a corner of the screen.
Ronald continued. "We tried accessing the building's register but there's no digital register and it seems they keep all their notes in books. Because of this, we must move in to the building and check the different rooms to verify which room Denton Black is using and follow him to have a better understanding of the man."
Altair raised a hand and the three men in the room looked at him strangely. He didn't seem to notice the strangeness, and seeing he had their attention he started.
"Why do we need to move in to look around? Can't SAMANTHA just do the high-resolution X-ray vision thing and inspect the building herself, or even send in your invisible drones instead of us moving in?"
"You don't have to raise your hand." David started. "You don't know this yet but the video from earlier was not made using drones. With technology evolving so much over the past few years, we avoid using those since they are so easily spotted and detected and could cause panic or hostile responses depending on who detects them."
He continued. "The video from earlier was actually from satellite view and the details were captured using different reflections and triangulation geometry to generate what we get as a video."
"I think I saw that in a movie. They had a conflict over a certain 'eye of god' technology." Altair said.
"I've seen that movie too, but it's not quite like that. Their technology uses hacking to capture different images and sort through them while ours does not. The people making those phones and cameras are also trying to find traces of our organization and hacking these devices will leave traces which they might use to track us. That's why we only use reflections."