The plane flew down towards the Himalayas. A few faint lights on the ground shone out of the darkness from a short runway near the base of a mountain below them, surrounded by jagged rocks. There were a few buildings on top of the mountain, with a wall around them, even though the altitude meant humans would struggle to survive there. Aside from that, there were no signs of life for miles around.

They landed and Wesker stepped out, while Merlyn stayed in the plane. The air was cold enough for even the breath of a dead man to form clouds of condensation. A thin layer of snow coated the ground, swirling in the wind that whipped around the rocks.

The plane took off once more, leaving Wesker standing alone, looking up at the steep slopes of the snow-covered mountain in front of him. Soon, the sound of the plane's engines faded into the distance. The mountains were now silent except for the howling wind. Wesker quite liked it here—it made a change from cities crowded with humans—but he knew he was unlikely to be truly alone. After all, he wasn't here for a holiday: this was a test, and he needed to be alert. Still, that just made this all the more interesting.

The buildings on top of that mountain had to be connected to the League of Assassins. There was no reason for ordinary people to live somewhere so dangerous, and it couldn't be a coincidence that the runway was here, either. The test was unlikely to be as simple as "get to the top of the mountain", but it was a good way to start.

Wesker ran up the lower slopes of the mountain; it was practically effortless at first, but the mountain became steeper as he got higher up, and soon he found the only way up was a vertical rock face. He ran towards it and jumped, grabbing onto a handhold halfway up, and started to climb.

The rush of air alerted him to the arrow flying towards him just in time. Wesker reached to one side for another handhold, pulling himself out of the arrow's path—it hit the rock face next to him and bounced off. He looked over his shoulder to see where the arrow had come from.

At first, there seemed to be no-one in sight. It was the glint of starlight off the Assassin's bow that gave away their position as they crouched behind a rock on a wide ledge halfway up the rock face.

Wesker climbed across the rock face towards the Assassin, and landed on the rock they were hiding behind just as they were preparing to shoot another arrow. They stood up, backing away as fast as they could. Wesker jumped down onto the ledge to close in on them. He couldn't risk letting them escape: they were well-camouflaged in dark grey armour that blended into the rocks, with a mask covering their entire face except their eyes. They could easily disappear into the darkness to attack again later if he didn't deal with them now.

The Assassin drew a dagger and lunged towards Wesker. Of course, they never stood a chance of hitting him. Despite their training, they were as pathetically slow as any human. He grabbed their wrist with one hand and pulled the dagger out of their hand with the other, then drove the blade into their stomach. With his superior strength he was easily able to force it through the armour.

The Assassin stumbled backwards with a gasp of pain, the knife still in their stomach. Wesker charged forwards and punched them in the face. They fell to the ground. He slammed his foot down on their head, crushing their skull.

Someone wrapped an arm around his throat from behind in a stranglehold. Where had they come from? Wesker quickly grabbed their arm with both hands and wrenched it down to break their hold on his neck.

The sharp crack told him that wasn't the only thing he'd managed to break. Keeping hold of the Assassin's broken arm with his left hand, he reached behind him to wrap his right arm behind their head, then threw them forwards and off the ledge.

The Assassin hit the rocks below with a crunch as more bones shattered. If they weren't dead, they soon would be; they had no chance of getting down the mountain and to safety before they bled to death.

Wesker looked around, trying to figure out where the second Assassin had attacked from and whether there were any more. A cave further up the rock face caught his eye. They must have been hiding in there, and jumped down when he was distracted by the first Assassin.

Wesker climbed up to the cave to see if any more Assassins were hiding there, but it was empty. That made sense; spreading themselves out would make their attacks less predictable. He continued climbing—it was getting harder now as the rocks were slippery with ice. He reached the top of the rock face, pulled himself up onto a shallower slope and started running. The snow was deeper here, and Wesker soon found himself having to slow down slightly to avoid crevices covered by the snow, but he was still running at superhuman speed.

"Finally." A young woman's voice, with a heavy Texan accent. Wesker looked up to see her standing on an outcropping above him. "Ya know, it's borin' as all get out up here."

Unlike the other Assassins, this woman wasn't wearing a mask and wasn't nearly as heavily armoured. She'd also made no attempt at camouflage—it was still too dark to see what colour her costume was, but it didn't blend into either the rocks or the snow.

"It might surprise you to know I'm not here to entertain you. If anything, I think it might be the other way around."

She grinned. Something about that smile suggested mental stability was not a strong point. "I'm sure we're both gonna have plenty of fun."

She leapt down towards him, launching herself into a jumping kick. Wesker dodged. She immediately charged forwards and attacked again—a downwards elbow slash aimed at his chest. Again, he dodged. By human standards, she was quite fast, but of course she was no match for him.

She was watching him now, clearly surprised at his speed and being a little more cautious than before, keeping her distance and facing him in a Muay Thai stance. Her technique so far suggested that was the only martial art she knew, although she was clearly skilled at it. Wesker faced her in the same stance—let her think she could predict his actions, so she'd get overconfident. That way he could end this quickly.

Wesker feinted with a hook, allowing her to block it with her arm. He grabbed her with one hand around the back of her neck, then hit her with a knee strike in the stomach. She stumbled backwards, half-doubled over and gasping for breath. He leapt towards her, ready to impale her with a spear hand—

She moved forwards at the same time. Her elbow slammed into his shoulder with a horizontal strike. It wasn't enough to hurt, but the impact to his arm slowed down his attack, making him miss. She then hit him in the face with a spinning backfist.

Of course, it hurt her hand more than it hurt him. She gave a sharp inhale as her fist connected. Wesker smirked. Did she really think she could harm him?

The woman glared up at him, her teeth gritted in a pained grimace. "Wipe that smirk off your face, Blondie. I ain't done with ya yet."

She was persistent, at least. Not bad for a human. Well, that only made the fight all the more enjoyable.

Wesker struck her shoulder with a thrust punch, sending her flying backwards. She climbed to her feet almost immediately, however, then lashed out with a foot jab. Wesker dodged, moving into a cartwheel with one smooth motion.

As he'd expected, the woman clearly had no idea how to react to a technique that wasn't used in Muay Thai. She instinctively backed away, hands raised in a defensive position. He took advantage of her confusion to strike her in the side of the face with a reverse roundhouse kick. Her neck snapped as the impact forced her head to one side, then she slumped to the ground, dead.

Wesker smiled in satisfaction. The League of Assassins had clearly underestimated him. If anything, he wished his opponents had presented slightly more of a challenge. Still, if nothing else, the fight had taken his mind off other matters. In combat, the only thing of any consequence was destroying the opponent; it gave a certain clarity, perhaps because it made more sense than anything else had recently, perhaps just because it was too immediate not to be real.

The sun hadn't yet risen, but the first light was starting to creep over the horizon. Wesker checked his watch: 2053 hours in Eastern Daylight Time, and depending on where in the Himalayas he was he'd be between nine and ten hours ahead of that. He'd been here for nearly an hour, and he was just over halfway to the summit.

Wesker brushed his hair off his face—he'd forgotten how inconvenient it was not to have it slicked back—and continued on his way up the mountain. Something moved in the corner of his eye, off to his left. He turned towards the motion, but no-one seemed to be there. After watching for a moment, he ran on, but kept an eye out in that direction, on guard for another attack.

A knife flew towards him. Wesker caught it just in time. It had come from the opposite direction to the movement he'd seen moments before. No human could have moved that fast; either his attacker was superhuman or there was more than one of them.

Wesker turned to face his attacker, knife raised in a guard position. A short man with wild blue hair and white face-paint grinned up at him from a monkey-like crouch. He held a jagged knife in each hand.

Wesker ran towards the man, attacking with a horizontal knife thrust aimed at his eye. The man ducked under Wesker's attack, then leapt to his feet, stabbing up towards Wesker's chest with the knife in his right hand. Wesker grabbed the man's arm with his left hand before the attack could hit him, twisting it until the Assassin dropped the knife. Wesker kicked the knife away, keeping hold of the Assassin's arm. He attacked again with an upwards slash towards the Assassin's throat.

The Assassin ducked his head to one side, avoiding the attack. At the same time, he slashed towards Wesker's face with the knife in his left hand. Wesker drew his arm back just in time to parry with his own knife. The Assassin's blade broke on impact; it flew through the air, then clattered across the rocks when it hit the ground.

Wesker moved in closer, still keeping hold of the Assassin's right arm. The Assassin lashed out with a left-handed punch to his chest. Wesker dodged with a slight step to one side, and stabbed up through the lower ribs on the Assassin's left side. The Assassin howled in pain. Wesker pulled the knife out, blood dripping onto the snow that covered the ground.

Wesker hooked a foot behind the Assassin's legs and threw him to the ground. The Assassin landed sprawled on his back. Wesker crouched over him, pinning the Assassin's right arm down with one hand. The Assassin reached his left hand upwards towards Wesker's face with a tearing motion, long claws extending from under his fingernails—slashed the side of Wesker's face, leaving several shallow cuts, narrowly missing his eye—

Blood was running down his face—he'd been lucky not to be blinded—but at first Wesker felt nothing, too caught up in the fight. Even when he noticed the sharp stinging pain, he didn't care. He was so unstoppable that even pain was exhilarating; nothing could truly harm him. Wesker grabbed the Assassin's left wrist with one hand, keeping him pinned down with the other. The handle of the knife pressed against Wesker's palm as he twisted the Assassin's wrist. He snapped it easily, then slit the Assassin's throat.

Still crouched over the corpse, Wesker examined the Assassin's clawed hands. How did they work? The tips of his fingers had small openings under the fingernails for the claws to come out through, but the claws couldn't have been stored inside his fingers. If they had, he wouldn't have been able to bend his fingers or grip anything. They were too long to fit inside the back of his hand, so they must have been able to retract into the arm.

Wesker carefully sliced open the corpse's forearm, revealing sheaths for the claws, and a complex muscle and tendon structure to extend and retract them. The bones in the hand were also different to those of a human, presumably so the claws could move through without damaging anything. Had he been born like this, either because of genetic modification or natural mutation, or had this been done through surgery? Wesker memorised every detail in case it could be useful for a BOW.

Wesker stood up and wiped the blood off the knife. He might as well keep it. The sun was rising, and Wesker narrowed his eyes against the light as it shone off the snow, unused to not wearing his sunglasses. He continued up the mountain; he was getting close to the top now. The air was thinner here; it didn't affect him nearly as much as it would a mortal, but any opponents he had yet to face would probably have had time to acclimatise.

So far, the initiation had been easy, serving as a reminder of his superiority to even the most skilled humans. He was unharmed except for the shallow cuts on his face, which had stopped bleeding and no longer hurt. Apparently his healing factor was now working as well as it ever had.

However, he knew better than to let his guard down. Especially when he once more caught a movement off to his left. No, not just a movement. The morning light revealed a flash of bright yellow. So, there had been more than one person following him earlier. Whoever this other Assassin was, they were apparently rather overconfident, considering their conspicuously bright choice of outfit.

Wesker decided to attack first. Why not give the Assassin a bit of a surprise? He sprinted towards them with a sudden burst of speed—not quite as fast as he could have been if he hadn't been running over snow and ice-covered rocks, but still fast enough that he'd appear as a blur to the human.

As he ran, his attacker threw a flurry of shuriken towards him. Wesker dodged each one with little effort. He closed in on the Assassin—a masked man in a yellow version of the Assassins' uniform, wielding two steel tonfa, one in natural grip and one in reverse.

Wesker drew his knives, holding them in reverse grip, one out to each side, then struck downwards diagonally with both knives at the same time. The Assassin raised the tonfa in his left hand, blocking one of the blades at the last second. He tried to twist out of the way of the other knife, but wasn't quite fast enough. Wesker had aimed to stab him in the chest—instead, the blade raked over the Assassin's ribs, not deep enough to kill him.

The Assassin stumbled, blood soaking the right side of his uniform. Then, with a click, a hooked blade slid out from the tonfa in his right hand. He lashed out with it, aiming for Wesker's face.

Wesker grabbed the tonfa with one hand—keeping hold of the knife—before the blade could get anywhere near him, and forced it upwards, bending it. He kicked the Assassin, driving his foot into his wounded side.

The Assassin was hunched over now, his breath heavy and pained, but he didn't back down. He struck upwards with the tonfa in his left hand, slamming it into Wesker's jaw, but he was too weak for the strike to be painful.

Wesker slashed at the Assassin's face, forcing the Assassin to step backwards and move into a defensive position, tonfa raised. Wesker leapt over the Assassin's head with a front flip, landing behind him, and stabbed him in the lower back, straight into one kidney.

He pulled the knife out. The Assassin crumpled and slumped backwards to the ground. Wesker stabbed him once more in the femoral artery—might as well be thorough—then cleaned off his knives again and sheathed them.

Half an hour later, Wesker reached the summit of the mountain. The final part of the climb had been less interesting, as no more Assassins had attacked him. Thanks to the Assassins' outdated weaponry, he didn't have bullet holes in his clothes after all. He was covered in blood, but most of it wasn't his. There were worse situations to be in. Wesker couldn't help but give a brief triumphant grin as he surveyed his surroundings.

The mountain was the highest for miles around, with thick clouds around it and below it. Several centimetres of snow already covered the rocks, and now more snow was falling. Even from this height, he couldn't see any buildings in the surrounding mountain range or the more distant valleys.

In contrast, the League of Assassins base in front of him seemed even more out of place. The white stone wall towered above him, easily thirty feet tall, and featureless apart from the spiked metal gate set into it. Wesker studied it for a moment. Was he expected to break in? He'd be more than capable of it, of course, although he couldn't discount the possibility that there was some kind of trap ahead.

"Not bad, recruit." The voice interrupted his thoughts. Wesker recognised it instantly as the man who'd spoken to him on the phone.

Thanks Taff for betaing, and thanks to everyone who has reviewed, followed or faved. It's great to have got to ten chapters and I have much more planned for this story. As always, concrit or any other kind of feedback is welcome.