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Layla doesn’t get a chance to get a good look at Eivor’s face until well over two hours into her first session, spelunking through the Viking shieldmaiden’s memories. She notes, distantly, the familiarity of the voice, like she’s heard it before, but considering how her mind’s been getting fucked with for a while now, she doesn’t quite permit herself to trust her own memory on that.But then she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror, and the shock of it is enough that Rebecca has to pull her out of the Animus and ask, “Holy shit, Layla, you okay there? Your levels spiked all of a sudden—”“I think I’ve seen her before,” says Layla, almost breathless with the realization. “Eivor, I mean.”“That’d be a stretch, considering we have her skeleton currently lying in a grave not ten feet from this very cabin,” says Shaun. “Perhaps you met a descendant of hers. It’s not impossible for a descendant to resemble their ancestor almost exactly.”“She has the same name,” says Layla, getting up off the Animus bed to go digging through her things. She tugs out her wallet from the cluttered inside of her bag, then pulls a picture out from behind clear plastic to show them: herself and her Dungeons & Dragons group, all grinning at the camera like loons.There’s Jacob and his sister Evie, who only joined their party later once Abstergo started calling Layla in more and more. There’s Ezio, with a pair of aviator shades lying askew on his face as he cackles. There’s Alex—“Oh for the love of fuck,” Layla mutters, squinting at Alex. Is it just her or does he look like Alexios with shorter hair and a bigger smile? No, no, it must be a descendant, Kassandra had descendants, it’s not too much of a stretch one of them would look just like Alexios, but still.And then there’s Eivor—her Eivor, tall and charming Eivor with the undercut and the lack of face tattoos, smirking at the camera. Layla hadn’t realized it until she’d gotten a look in the mirror, but Eivor Varinsdottir of the Raven Clan looks exactly like Eivor Michelsen of New York, just with longer hair and prominent tattoos.Rebecca leans in, frowns, and says, “That’s…Shaun, look at this guy, tell me he doesn’t look like Ezio Auditore to you.”“Well, if I said that I’d be a filthy liar,” says Shaun, “because those two look rather remarkably like the Frye twins.” His eyes flick up to meet Layla’s, and he says, “And this is the party you played Dungeons and Dragons with?”“Wait, who?” Layla says, a little off-guard. “Okay, that’s my friend Ezio Malavasi, not Auditore, so maybe that descendant theory works out for him. But. How do you know Evie and Jacob’s last name?”“Because the Frye twins were renowned Assassins from the Victorian era, now what are they doing in your D&D group?” Shaun sounds like he’s having a tiny crisis, which, yeah, Layla is also having one too. “And for that matter, a change of name doesn’t disguise the lip scar—”Rebecca whistles lowly, and says, “Holy shit, Layla, you’ve been holding out on us.”Layla, shaken, says, “No! I haven’t been! If I had known they were descendants or whatever they are, you think I wouldn’t have told you guys?” She pushes her hair back from her face, shuts her eyes, tries to just—breathe, just breathe. In, two three four, hold, two three four, out, two three four. In, hold, out. In, hold, out. She can feel a helpless anger rising up inside her, coming up her throat, and she swallows it back down.No. No. That’s what got Victoria killed. She’s not going to do that, she won’t hurt the people trying to help her ever again.“Have you spoken with them recently?” Shaun asks, sounding worried.“Just e-mailed them,” Layla says. “Alex runs the campaign I’m in, so I had to let him know I’d be gone a while. They don’t know anything, or at least they shouldn’t.” Especially since Evie had wanted to join Abstergo as a researcher, and Ezio had seemed vaguely interested in the idea. Granted, he’d then called her the day after and told her apologetically that he’d gotten a better offer from another company, so. “I just—do you think it’s like Kassandra and the Staff?”“It’s plausible,” Shaun allows.“Yeah, we know the twins had access to a Shroud that could heal any wound,” says Rebecca, “and Ezio had an Apple.”“And Alexios had the Sword of Damokles,” says Layla.“We really don’t know much about the Pieces of Eden, so it could be possible,” says Rebecca. “But if so, it’s so weird they all ended up in your D&D group.”“Indeed,” says Shaun. “Personally I wouldn’t have pegged Ezio for a D&D aficionado myself, but stranger things have happened.”“Can’t be right, though,” Layla mutters, pressing her fingers against her temples because this is giving her such a goddamn headache. Ezio’s a grad student studying Italian literature for his thesis. He can’t possibly be, what, the reincarnation of a famous Assassin? “I’m—I’m. Gonna head outside. I need a minute.”--The body is still there. So is the axe, the one that used to be Varin’s, and the bracer that held her hidden blade once upon a time. Layla stares down at the skeleton that once was a living, breathing woman who looked just like her friend, and says, “Who are you, Eivor Wolf-Kissed?”Bones cannot answer her, but the Animus can. Hell, maybe if she stays under for long enough she’ll find the answer as to why her Eivor looks so much like the dead one, too, as well as how to fix the world and keep it from tearing itself apart.So she trudges back to the cabin, under the dazzling green-and-blue lights of an aurora that should not be here.--Three days after she, Rebecca, and Shaun have put themselves up at this nice, cozy little cabin in Massachusetts, a van pulls up. Layla, out of the Animus for once, tenses and grabs for a weapon, while Shaun and Rebecca flick out their own hidden blades, ready for the worst. If Abstergo’s found them…Layla glances back at the Staff. She’ll do what she needs to, in order to prevent Abstergo from getting their hands on the Staff.She pushes the cabin door open, kitchen knife in hand, then blinks, because—that’s not an Abstergo van. She knows that van. It’s the kind of van a grad student would buy: cheap, run-down, sputtering as it comes to a stop. The engine dies, and the van door slides open, and the first person to step out?Is Eivor.She’s dressed in her usual clothes, a plaid jacket and ripped jeans combo that Layla once joked was the uniform of every lesbian in New York. The plaid’s a bright red, a darker shade than her reddish-blonde hair, and the undercut has grown out a bit. She steps out of the van, and the first thing Layla registers that’s very different about her is the bow slung over her back, and the quiver full of arrows at her hip.“Eivor?” Layla breathes.“You found it,” says Eivor, and she sounds exactly the same. “Right. We need to talk.”“It?” Layla glances back behind her, at the body, then turns to Eivor and says, “That’s you?”“It’s a long story,” she says, “and we’ve traveled a long way, Layla, to find you.” Her blue eyes bore into Layla’s, and she says, “But first, we have some things we need to carry inside, like weapons and artifacts—”“—and McDonald’s takeout and Starbucks coffees—” comes Jacob’s voice as he comes out too, him and Evie both carrying two sleeping bags each under their arms. “Afternoon, Layla, sorry to turn up like this.”“Not sorry,” says Evie. “We have so many things to talk about and we must start with all haste, we’ve already wasted enough time.” She pushes past a gaping Shaun, and says, “You must be Hastings. Darcy and Lucas mentioned you.”“The Clarkson siblings?” Shaun says, which. Who? Layla has absolutely missed out on so goddamn much of her D&D party’s real lives because this is fucking nuts. “Well! This day cannot possibly get any weirder.”“V, can you park the van somewhere it won’t be seen by any prying eyes,” Ezio says to their mysterious driver as he emerges from inside the van, half-hauling a still-snoring Alexios out with him. And it is Alexios, his hair has grown out to the length she remembers from Kassandra’s memories in the Animus.“Right, that one is on me,” says Shaun, just as Alexios and Eivor’s roommate V pokes her head out of the front seat, squinting at the cabin.Layla, half-hysterical with shock, wonders who else is going to come careening around the corner. Undead Dee, maybe? Victoria, back from the dead? That Desmond Miles guy that Shaun and Rebecca still seem broken up about losing? Her ex-girlfriend Karen from college, with a battleaxe on her back?Eivor puts an arm on her shoulder, and says, “Let’s go back inside, yeah?” Her voice falters, as she says, “Are you still—fond, of curly fries?”Layla lets out a long breath. “Yeah,” she says.“Sure, I’ll move the van,” V says as Ezio shuts the van door. She looks over at Layla and says, “Oh, thank fuckin’ Christ, you’re still alive. Thought you’d probably gotten fried at some point with all the Animus bullshit going on, really glad you’re still standing.” She nods to Rebecca, and says, “You Rebecca Crane?”“I know you,” says Rebecca, recovering admirably from the repeated shocks the van has brought into their isolated little bubble. “You’re V! You and Alt Cunningham hacked Abstergo last year!”“Shit, were we really that obvious?” V says, scratching her chin.“You shut down the whole server and their power grid for longer than an hour,” says Rebecca as Layla comes in past her. “That’s some impressive shit.”“Layla,” whispers Shaun, “just a question, do you have any other social groups that might have long-dead Assassins in them?”“Oh, god, I hope not,” says Layla.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

That Ezio’s meeting with his adviser goes over rather poorly is…an understatement, to say the least. “Not a university priority for this year,” he fumes over potato chips and Pepsi during a break in his D&D game, at Alexios, V and Eivor’s shared apartment. “Not a university priority! Meanwhile that smug pezzo di merda Mahoney gets to fly all the way to England because of—of—”“Human skin books?” Alexios supplies, a corner of his mouth twitching upward.“Alleged human skin books!” Ezio huffs.“I can’t quite see the logic behind alleging that certain books are made out of human skin,” says Alexios.“Something about market value, whatever, the point is,” Ezio says, pointing a potato chip at Alexios, “Mahoney’s dissertation is so much more niche than mine, but he gets to write whatever he wants with the guarantee it’ll be published no matter what the university priorities for the year are because his father is the dean!” He pops the chip into his mouth and chews furiously, because goddammit, he’d worked hard on that proposal. He’d stayed up two nights in a row reading paper after paper on medieval Italian literature centered around conspiracies until his head spun and then another night stitching together a beautiful tapestry of a literature review.Alexios says, “I’m sorry, but I’m still stuck on the fact that he’s writing about human skin books. It’s sort of fascinating.”“Because you are an incredibly morbid person,” huffs Ezio. “He is just a sensationalist little cazzo and he’ll lose interest immediately and need to be bailed out of jail in Barcelona, again.”“That’s oddly specific,” says Alexios.“It happened, and I had to get him out,” Ezio darkly mutters, just as Eivor gently shoves past him. “Why are you in a hurry, Eivor, there’s still time before the second half.”“I need to go bail the professor I’m assisting for the semester out of jail,” she grumbles, grabbing for her coat and slipping it back on. “I apologize for leaving so early, Alexios, I know you had plans for Wulfhilda—”“Well, my plans were to kill her gruesomely,” says Alexios, droll, “but it’s not quite the same without your visceral reaction at the table.”“Your plans are always to kill everyone gruesomely,” Eivor says. “But thank you for being so considerate.” She steps closer to clap Alexios on the shoulder, and says, “Before I come back, do you want anything from the bodega down the block?”“Chopped cheese,” says Alexios, and Eivor nods and walks off. “I didn’t realize being the research assistant for a Medieval Studies professor was so exciting,” he says, once Eivor’s shut the apartment door. “This is the third time this semester.”“Professor Jamison?” says Ezio. “Eh, I’m not surprised. I hear she’s a firebrand.” He sighs, and says, “I still mean to visit Monteriggioni this month.”“Even without a thesis for an excuse?” Alexios asks.Ezio looks toward the living room, where Layla and Jacob are playfully reenacting some disastrous Eurovision entry from last month. Jacob glances his way and grins at him, then returns immediately to attempting to impersonate one of the judges’ stony expressions. “I sort of invited Jacob along with me,” he says. “And besides, perhaps this will jump-start an idea for another proposal. Did you know Dante Alighieri mentioned its turrets in his Commedia?”“So you’ve said, eight times,” says Alexios. “I’m assuming this trip will also hopefully jump-start something special between you and Jacob?”Ezio coughs, keeps his eyes firmly on one of the grimier windows, and says, “Mm. I hear the piazzas are astonishingly beautiful. Unlike your windows, which need cleaning.”“I will take that as a yes,” says Alexios, amused, “so καλή τύχη, Ezio. Both on the boy and the possibility of living past Evie finding out about your designs on her twin.”“I have very benevolent designs on her twin,” Ezio huffs.“Uh-huh,” says Alexios. “Certainly.”--New York City is a large, sprawling metropolis, filled with people of all stripes, all kinds. The promise of the Statue of Liberty is exemplified in the population of that city of glass and steel: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. It’s a lovely place to live and all, but sometimes it gets suffocating, and all the gorgeous poetry in the world about New York cannot keep Ezio from wanting to get out, sometimes, get free of its grasp.Monteriggioni is smaller, quieter. There’s no festival this month, and only a few winery tours as well, but the moment Ezio sets foot within it, something loosens inside his chest, and he shuts his eyes and just…breathes it in. “Welcome to Monteriggioni, Jacob,” he says, as Jacob walks up to him, backpack hanging off one shoulder. “It’s a wonderful place, is it not?”“Bit smaller than what I’m used to,” Jacob says, slowly turning around to take in his surroundings: the cobblestones, the older Renaissance-era houses, the people walking around living their lives. “It’s lovely, though. And I like the—what did you call it, the piazza? Quaint place.”“The Piazza Roma,” says Ezio, gesturing to the wide-open space, the plain church facing them. “Once these houses were owned by nobles, merchants, the gentry. Now…” He squints, then sighs as he flails a hand towards a familiar green sign, “Now there’s a Starbucks.”“Ooh, Frappuccinos,” says Jacob, but it says something that instead of wandering off in the Starbucks’ direction, he stays firmly put, in Ezio’s reach. “Still thinking about conspiracy literature?”Ezio sighs. “If only,” he says. “No, I know when I’m beaten. I was thinking something like…humanism in literature from the early Renaissance.”“Like da Vinci?” Jacob guesses.“Something like that,” says Ezio. He glances to the side, and—it’s strange, he could almost swear—“Ezio?”He shakes his head. “Nothing,” he says. “Da Vinci was the ideal of Renaissance humanism, and most certainly a genius who contributed greatly to the progress of humanity in general, but he wasn’t the one who started it. You want Petrarch for that.”“Who?” Jacob asks, as Ezio starts to lead him towards the little inn where he’s booked a bedroom for them, with two beds that can easily be pushed together. “Keep in mind that Evie’s the history major here, not me.”“I’m aware you’re not a history major, so I won’t bore you with too many details,” says Ezio, fondly, daring to put an arm around Jacob’s shoulders. Wonder of wonders, Jacob leans into his torso, a corner of his mouth tugging upward. “Francesco Petrarca, also known as Petrarch, was one of the earliest humanists…”--Jacob wakes up to Ezio swearing in Italian. Loudly, too, loud enough that a very furious cazzo yanks Jacob from a vague dream about a scarred man with a knife-sharp smile. “The fuck, Ezio?” he mumbles, only to feel Ezio’s hand grab his shoulder and yank him to the floor. “Ow!”Ezio pins him down, and Jacob’s brain immediately starts running through multiple worst-case scenarios before he realizes—Ezio isn’t doing anything. Ezio is covering him, as if he thinks the roof will collapse on them at any moment. His eyes are wild and frightened, like he isn’t seeing Jacob and a stable inn around them, but someone else on shaky ground instead.“Ezio, man, it’s me,” says Jacob, reaching up to push the palm of his hand against Ezio’s shoulder. The man sleeps with a loose shirt, it turns out, and Jacob would enjoy the sight of tanned muscles more if Ezio didn’t look so goddamned panicked. “Bloody hell, it’s all right, there’s no earthquake.”Ezio blinks at him, the wildness in his eyes slowly fading. “Jacob?” he says.“That’s my name, don’t wear it out,” Jacob quips, but at the absolutely stricken look on Ezio’s face, he sighs. “You had a nightmare,” he says. “You woke me up with Italian cursing and then pulled me off my bed. I think you thought the roof was going to collapse?”“I—heard cannon fire,” says Ezio.“That might be the Pirates marathon we went through on the plane ride here,” says Jacob.“It might be,” Ezio says, but he sounds doubtful even as he sits up, letting Jacob get a bit more vertical. “Mi dispiace, Jacob. I hadn’t meant to hurt and frighten you.”“I’ve seen much scarier clowns than you,” Jacob says. “Like that sodding clown Tim Curry played, what was its name, Nickelwise?”A small, amused smile touches on Ezio’s mouth, and he says, “You mean Pennywise.”Jacob knew that already, he’s been making his way through King’s brick of a novel, but so sue him, he likes seeing Ezio smile. “Yeah, that,” he says. “You’re more charming, at any rate. When you’re not having a nightmare.”“Grazie, I’ve always wanted to be more charming than a serial killer clown,” Ezio says dryly. Then he grows more serious, when he says, “Truly, though, did I hurt you?”Jacob sighs. “Bumped my head a bit on the way down,” he admits, and Ezio makes a soft, unhappy noise, his fingers reaching up to check Jacob’s poor noggin for any bumps. “Not that hard, though, I’ve had worse in bar fights. You should ask Evie some time, she has some horror stories about looking after me concussed.”“I’ll do that,” says Ezio, his hand dropping again, too damn soon for Jacob’s tastes. “Good news, I don’t think it’s going to swell. But I am sorry, I had thought—” He falls silent for a moment, then sighs and says, “Never mind. It’s as you said, I probably just absorbed a bit too much from the movies on the plane ride over.”“Exactly,” says Jacob. “You want to head back to sleep, or…”“I don’t think I could,” says Ezio. “I think I’ll go for a walk. Clear my head.”“I’ll come with you,” says Jacob.Ezio’s eyebrows draw together, and he says, “Are you certain? You could go back to sleep yourself. It’s only two in the morning.”“Yes, but it would be so lonely,” says Jacob. “So very lonely. And cold.” He raises his bare hands and gives Ezio his very best innocent pout, and says, “I’d rather be cold with you than cold on my own.”And Ezio huffs out a tired chuckle, says, “Well, when you say it like that, I can’t possibly turn you down.”--So that’s how they end up walking through the streets of Monteriggioni at two in the morning, arm in arm, so close to each other that Jacob is severely tempted to close the rest of the way and kiss him. He’s sure Ezio would be down with that, almost certain of it, but—almost isn’t quite good enough, really. Almost means that there’s still a tiny little part of Jacob that quite reasonably points out that Ezio is affectionate with everyone. He slings his arm around Eivor all the time and Eivor only likes girls, Jacob might well be misinterpreting Ezio’s natural inclination towards cuddling people.He is a pretty warm fellow, though. Literally. No wonder people like cuddling with him so much.They come to a stop at the back of the Villa Auditore, with the moon shining down on them and the stars bright in the sky. Jacob looks up, and his breath catches right in his throat—there are so many stars out here, he can’t remember having ever seen them like this. “Oh, wow,” he murmurs. “Will you look at that?”“What a view,” Ezio agrees, and he sounds fond. Jacob glances down to meet his gaze, and for a moment time stands still and his lips are right there. His perfectly-shaped lips, his scraggly stubble, his eyes dark with want. Jacob almost leans in to kiss him.And then Ezio frowns, pulls away, and says, “Did you see that?”“See what?” Jacob asks, trying to cover his disappointment.“There was someone here,” he says. “They just ran past me, out through that gap in the fence.”“Oh, well, leave them be,” says Jacob. “It’s just a kid doing some parkour, probably.”Ezio shakes his head, his expression troubled. He steps away from Jacob, towards the gap, and says, “Then we have to find them and make sure they don’t hurt themselves. Quick, they went this way—”“Ezio!” Jacob shouts, but it’s too late, Ezio’s darted off as well. He hops up through the gap, balances on the pole jutting out of the wall, then—horror of horrors, he jumps, and Jacob rushes towards him with his hand outstretched as though he can catch him just in time from doing something so goddamn stupid.Ezio falls, plummeting through the air, but he—flips over midway to the ground, and as Jacob watches, astonished, he lands perfectly in the middle of a waiting haystack. “Jacob!” Ezio calls up to him. “There’s something down here!”“Are you bloody well out of your mind?!” Jacob yells down.“I saw someone running in here!” Ezio calls back. “We have to help them!”Jacob smacks his fist against the stone of the battlement, because—god fucking damn it all, Ezio’s right. If some kid’s gotten it into their head to practice their parkour at two in the morning, they have to make sure that this kid doesn’t end up a long-faded missing poster on a telephone pole. “All right, hold on, I’ll find a way down!”He makes his way down—take that, Evie, all that rock climbing at the gym really did prepare him for real life, or else he wouldn’t be so fast coming down. Ezio’s waiting at the crevice, already pulling his phone out and turning on the flashlight, and Jacob just—gapes. “How did you know this was here?” he asks.“I—don’t know,” says Ezio, and he sounds so shaken that Jacob steps closer, puts a hand on his shoulder, and squeezes gently. “We need to—”“Go inside, yeah, I know,” says Jacob. “Also, that was—”“Lunacy?” Ezio supplies, with a lift of his eyebrow.“That,” says Jacob, “but also—it. Looked very impressive.”Ezio preens, then leads him inside.It’s not much to write home about. It’s a dark, damp underground passage, Jacob has been through quite a few of them already, usually on a dare, sometimes even drunk. At least this time he’s sober and has Ezio with him, and their phone flashlights work too, shining in the darkness. “Hey, Ezio,” says Jacob, “is this a mine? Did Monteriggioni have mines back in the day?”“No,” says Ezio. “No, I—this is a secret passage. I imagine this was to ensure the safety of the residents, in case of a siege: under cover of night, the people would use this to escape from the enemy without them knowing, and then they would scatter until they knew it was safe to come home. Perhaps to Firenze…”“What?”Ezio shakes his head, and says, “Florence, I mean. Sorry. Firenze is what it’s called in Italian.” Then his phone light shines on a switch and a gate, and pinned underneath: a skeleton, long dead. “Ah,” he says. “An enemy soldier almost caught them.”“Or someone dropped the gate too soon and caught a resident who was lagging behind,” says Jacob.“No, it’s an enemy,” says Ezio, sounding so calmly certain of it that Jacob knows he’s not going to be able to talk him out of this. He shakes his head, brow furrowing, and he says, “How…”“You’re asking me?” Jacob says. He looks at the switch, then at the gate, then says, “Try opening it up, maybe we can get through.”Ezio tries it. The gate manages to get a couple feet off the ground before it sticks, and then when Ezio lets go of the switch, it slams back down again. “No, you can’t,” he says, frowning. “That kid from before, how did they get past this?”Jacob points up, at the gap above him. “Climbed,” he says. “Give me a boost?”“Sure,” says Ezio, and cups his hands so that when Jacob runs at him, he launches him up into the air, high enough that Jacob can catch onto the ledge and pull himself upward. Jacob turns around, holds out his hand as Ezio climbs up, and pulls him up too once Ezio’s in reach. “The villagers likely went through the gate,” says Ezio, “but this was an alternate route, just in case.”“The people who ran Monteriggioni sound more and more paranoid by the minute,” Jacob says. “Too much conspiracy literature?”“Possibly,” says Ezio. “Too bad I can’t use that for my dissertation.” He still sounds so adorably annoyed about it, aw. “This way.”--Good news: the centuries-old beams hold their weight.Great news: Jacob apparently knows how to parkour, his steps feather-light and his momentum never letting up as he gets from Point A to Point B. So does Ezio, which is a bit concerning, because with how fast and graceful he is when practically dancing over wooden beams, things are beginning to—How would V put it? Things are gettin’ weird. Well, they are certainly beginning to get very weird, because now Ezio’s seeing ghosts.
Ezio!
Oh, wonderful, the ghosts also know his name. “Jacob,” he starts.Jacob says nothing. When Ezio turns back to look at him, he’s staring back at the wooden beams they just skipped over, with a very worried look in his eye as if he’s just now realized the magnitude of how they just made it through that obstacle course. “You don’t do parkour, do you?” he asks.“No,” says Ezio. “You?”“Would you believe me if I said no?” Jacob says. “I’ve done rock climbing at the gym, but that’s it.”That explains how he managed to clamber down that cliff face so fast, at least. Everything else is giving Ezio a headache. “They’ve got to be around here somewhere,” he says. He peeks over the ledge and holds his phone up, but sees nothing down there but solid ground. And skeletons.He blinks, and he’s staring down at fresh corpses with broken necks, glaring sightlessly at him forever, and they all wear Borgia colors, red and yellow. He stumbles back from the edge in shock, and feels a pair of arms wrap around him, hears a British voice saying, “Ezio, hey, don’t lose your bottle on me now.”“Haven’t got a bottle,” Ezio manages to say, shaking himself out of his stupor. What the hell…?“Figure of speech,” says Jacob, but he sounds relieved as he steps back. “Right. You seem to know where we’re going. How do we get up there?” And he points his flashlight at a gap in the wall too high up for the both of them to reach.“Someone’s used this lift before,” Ezio says, walking up to the switch, the deadweight on the floor. “This shouldn’t be on the floor. I’d have to reset it so we can use it ourselves.”“It’s a what now,” says Jacob. “Have you really never been to Monteriggioni before?”Ezio, pulling the switch back up to reset it, blinks at Jacob. He’s—He’s not sure, anymore. He thought he hadn’t been when he booked the flight, but no amount of research into such a historical site said anything about this passageway. And how had he known that someone had used the switches recently? “I thought I hadn’t,” he says. “I—Jacob, I can’t even begin to explain how I know any of this. I don’t think I even remember—” He stops, his mind crashing up against a—a fog in his memory, a wall that refuses to give way. Or at least it’s always refused to give way before.Now, though, he swears it budges the tiniest bit, because he says, “There’s—something important, at the end of this. I don’t know how I know, but I know it.” Is—Is he going insane? He must be, that’s the only explanation—“Ezio,” Jacob says, catching his hand, “look at me.”Ezio looks at him, sees the worry, the fear, but more than that: the determination to see this through. With him. Because he believes him.He breathes out, slowly. “You believe me?”“You’ve gotten us this far,” says Jacob. “Take us further.”“Hold on tight, then,” says Ezio, taking hold of the rope now that he’s reset the switch. “This may be a bit bumpy.” He kicks the switch, and the rope flings them upward, onto a ledge. The two of them tumble onto the floor with shocked laughs, and Ezio settles his hands on Jacob’s torso, staring up into hazel eyes.“You take me to the nicest places,” Jacob murmurs.“Well, only the best for you, caro mio,” Ezio says.“Carrow mee-oh,” Jacob says, slowly, like he’s testing the endearment out on his tongue. “If that’s a pet name, you ought to take me to dinner first. A proper one, at that, not just chicken lollipops and hot wings at Alex and Eivor’s.”“How do you feel about Lupa on Thompson Street?” Ezio says.“Positively delighted,” Jacob says.Ezio grins, letting himself indulge in this moment for a moment longer before he says, “Then when we get out of here, remind me to book us a reservation there.”“First we find that kid and then get out of here,” says Jacob, pushing himself up and helping Ezio up to his feet. “I’m surprised they’re yet to fall and break a bone, with this obstacle course in the way.”“I’m surprised we’re yet to fall,” says Ezio. “Considering neither of us remember learning how to parkour.”“I do rock climbing,” says Jacob. “Far better than Evie.”“Please do not talk about your twin sister after I just asked you out for dinner,” says Ezio. “I doubt she will be pleased with me.”“Eh,” says Jacob. “I’ll talk her around.”--Jacob lets himself bask in the giddy, heady feeling of having been asked out by a cute boy for a few minutes before reality crashes back into his bubble, in the form of what Jacob privately thinks is a co-op puzzle platformer, and not even a good one. At least he handed Ezio his phone, but still. His poor clothes. His poor hair.“I’m going to get the bubonic plague from this,” he says, as Ezio hauls him up and out of the freezing grey water.“Non essere ridicolo, you’ll only smell a bit,” Ezio says. “I swam in it and I came out just fine.”“What?” Jacob says. “When? Oh, god, are our phones on the fritz?”“Phones?” Ezio echoes, looking confused. “Che stai dicendo?”“Ezio, mate, if this is you playing silly buggers with me, I really don’t appreciate it,” says Jacob, trying to squash down the panic rising inside his chest, trying to breathe. “Phones. You know, smartphones. You use them to call people when you get cell signal, which we haven’t had in a bit.”Ezio presses his fingers against his temple, shaking his head. “Non posso—”“Hey,” says Jacob, catching his wrist, pressing his fingers against Ezio’s skin to ground him, “hey, Ezio, stay with me. Look at me, stay with me. You promised me a dinner at Lupa and I am damn well going to get that dinner, so whatever is going on, you can get through it. I’m right here.”Ezio blinks at him, once, twice. “Jacob,” he breathes. “What…”“You were speaking Italian,” says Jacob. “You said you’d gone swimming in the shit water before.”“I have?” Ezio says, eyes widening. He pulls away then and checks their phones, and says, “I—No, I haven’t, our phones are all right. Also, you smell.”“I just swam through medieval toxic waste, I’m sorry I don’t smell of bloody roses,” Jacob huffs. “Next time I’ll make sure to swim through a vat of perfume.”“I think it would stink worse,” says Ezio. “I’ve seen what goes into perfume. Eivor showed me a YouTube video.”“Oh, good, you know what YouTube is,” says Jacob. “I know you said you don’t know if you’d been to Monteriggioni before, but you know what, I think you have, you just repressed it, because it sounds like you had quite the time here.”“Perhaps this is where I learned to parkour,” says Ezio, with a faint amusement tempered with worry. Jacob can’t blame him, there is clearly some shite going on in his head that not even Ezio knows how to sort out. Whatever, it’s fine, that’s what Jacob is here for, he’s here to help. “Mi dispiace, Jacob, this is probably not at all what you signed up for when you agreed to accompany me to Monteriggioni.”“It’s not,” Jacob agrees. “It’s far more exciting. Let’s go see what else this co-op platformer course has to offer.”“You and your sister play too many platformer games,” says Ezio.“It’s the only one either of us can agree on playing together,” says Jacob.They keep going. Jacob finds himself not tripping over his own damn feet as he jumps across wide gaps and catches onto wooden beams that ought to have rotted straight through centuries ago. He watches Ezio clamber up walls with the ease of someone who’s done it all his life, knows exactly where to wedge his fingers and toes so he doesn’t fall. They help each other out, and Jacob climbs up one last wall to find Ezio staring at a hole in the wall, and just beyond it…“Il mio posto è qui,” Ezio says, and starts walking like a man possessed.“Ezio!” Jacob calls. “Oh, bugger—wait! Wait for me!” He scrambled after him, squeezing through the hole to find—Statues. A lot of statues. Okay, not a lot, there are seven statues, all finely-carved and still, incredibly, intact. Ezio stands in the middle of it all, a remote figure in black and white, looking at the statues as if seeking to understand the secrets they hold.“All right,” says Jacob, “the Auditore family clearly were keeping a lot more secrets under their nice and cozy little villa than anybody thought. Did you know there was an entire secret chamber down here?”“Mi ricordo questo posto,” says Ezio.“Right,” says Jacob. “I’m getting what’s-a-phone Ezio again.” He steps in front of him, waves a hand, and says, “Malavasi, it’s me, it’s Jacob.”“Malavasi?” Ezio says, looking very confused. “Di chi sta parlando? E tu chi sei?”“Oh, god, I really ought to have taken Italian instead of French last year,” Jacob sighs. “Uh. I don’t understand you. Je ne parle pas italien.”Ezio’s face lights up, and he says in French, “I know French, though! Wonderful, I don’t know a lick of English.”“You were speaking in English not two minutes ago before you came in here,” says Jacob, in French. “You’re—Who do you think you are, right now? What’s your name?”“Ezio Auditore da Firenze,” says Ezio.“Oh, that’s just bloody fantastic,” Jacob mutters, then says in French, “I have no idea who that is. I’m Jacob Frye. Where are we? Because this looks like a secret chamber under the Villa Auditore—”“This is the sanctuary,” Ezio tells him, walking over to one of the statues, a woman with a snake curled around her hand. “Here we honor long-dead Assassins, some of the best of our Order. Except it’s usually in much better condition than this.”“Assassins?” Jacob says, faintly, feeling his own head beginning to ache. “That’s…”A whisper on the wind blowing in from the hole in the wall: we work in the dark to serve the light. His father’s voice, from long ago, and Jacob shuts his eyes against the headache. His father’s voice, and his sister’s, Evie’s: London must be freed.That’s—That’s wrong, they aren’t in London, they haven’t been in London in years, not since—not since—“Jacob!”Jacob’s eyes snap open when he feels someone’s fingers close around his arm, and he swings out a fist at the Blighter trying to kill him. It’s not the most coordinated swing, the Blighter manages to duck, but that’s fine because Jacob’s bringing his knee up to slam it into the fellow’s stomach, then he flicks his hand and hears a snick and—Someone grabs his wrist, and the fellow snaps out, “Jacob Frye, you are not in a bar fight!”The Italian accent gives him pause. “Obviously not,” Jacob says, uncertain. “This is—not a pub. Where in London—” He chokes, because this is not London, he would know, he’d hear it, hear the sounds of his city above ground. “Where’s my sister?” he demands.“Evie is fine,” says the man. “Jacob, look at me, Evie is fine, and you are in Monteriggioni. It’s safe. You’re safe.”“Monte—” And then it slams back into him, and he pulls away from Ezio in shock. “Oh my god,” he whispers, horrified, “I tried to kill you.”“What?” Ezio says.“I had a bracer,” he says, “I—” He looks down at his arm, and remembers: there is no bracer, there’s no hidden blade, it’s just him and Ezio under the Villa Auditore and, and—“Ezio, what in the bloody fuck is happening to us?”“I’m still trying to figure that out myself,” says Ezio.“That damned kid we were chasing,” says Jacob. “Where is he?”Ezio lets out a breath. “I’m not sure,” he says. “I think…I think that might’ve been a ghost. My ghost.”“We’re going insane,” says Jacob, after a long moment spent staring at Ezio.“I did notice that, yes,” says Ezio, wryly. “You kick like a mule.”“Learned from Evie,” says Jacob. “Who’s Ezio Auditore da Firenze? You working on a novel?”“Oh, santo cielo, of course not,” says Ezio, making a face. “I’m horrible at fiction when I’m not playing Dungeons and Dragons. No, it’s…” He frowns, then massages his temples, as if trying to figure out a way to phrase it so it makes sense. Joke’s on him, nothing about any of this makes a single lick of sense. “It’s like…sono come lui. I am him. I remember being him, but it’s—not quite right, there are gaps. Questa era la mia casa—this was my home, once.”“Right,” says Jacob. “When was this?”“You’re not going to believe me,” says Ezio.“I have had an incredibly strange night,” says Jacob. “I think I briefly hallucinated you as—a Blighter? Bugger if I know what that is but I know they’re bad news. I wish I could say we’re both just very knackered, but something tells me there’s more to it than that, so.” He shrugs. “Hit me.”“Sometime in the late 1400s,” says Ezio. “I would say from 1476 until 1500. I think.”Jacob sits down.“I understand if you don’t want to go to dinner after this,” Ezio starts.“Fuck that, I’m still going to dinner with you,” Jacob says, because hey, you only live once. Or. Twice? He’s not sure. “I want explanations. And free dinner. And possibly more than that if you’re still willing.”Ezio smiles, relieved, and Jacob’s stupid heart does a little backflip inside his ribcage. Evie would be more pragmatic about this, he’s certain. Evie would point out how impossible this all is and advise getting out while he still can. Evie—Evie’s voice is in his head, saying, Promise you will stick to the mission, so Jacob is pretty sure she’s as involved as he is in this shit, she just doesn’t know it yet. Hell, he barely knows just how involved he and Ezio are in this, but. So long as they can lean on each other, they’ll be fine.“Tell me there’s a way out through those stairs,” he says.“Oh, yes,” says Ezio.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Eivor rests against the street lamp, staring at the dead body of a man who had tried to mug her, then cuts a glance to Alexios, who is—puking his guts up in a gutter.“What,” she starts, then stops, because the world is spinning, familiar one moment and unfamiliar the next. Two different lives are clashing in her head: the Viking drengr with her axe held high and dripping with blood, and the professor’s assistant with no loftier ambition than to pay rent and perhaps kiss a girl. Randvi, she thinks, her heart aching at the loss of her. Or perhaps Randvi had lost her first. She shakes her head to clear it, then stumbles, more or less steadily, towards Alexios.“Are you all right?” she asks.“I grew up in a cult,” says Alexios, in a dissonantly calm tone that says he is freaking the fuck out.“Ah,” says Eivor.“And then I tried to kill my sister,” he says. “Who didn’t kill me when she really should have.”“Ah.”Alexios scrubs a hand over his face, and says, with hysteria finally creeping into his voice, “Am I going insane, Eivor?”Eivor looks at him, then at the dead mugger on the ground. The man had simply come out of nowhere, a knife glinting into his hand, ranting about money. But something about the look on his eye, the glint of the knife—She had moved out of the way with a speed she hadn’t realized she had, for a moment seeing a Saxon with an axe screaming for her blood. She doesn’t know what Alexios saw, but whatever it was, it was bad enough that he killed a man while deep in the throes of a flashback. Which makes things a bit inconvenient, all right, but Eivor can fix this. She’s good at that.“First, we need to dispose of this body,” she says, rolling up her sleeves. “And then when we get home we need to wash our clothes. I know how to get blood out of fabric, so you only need to give me your clothes.” Then she remembers, and adds, “And if V is home, we tell her this is from a play.”“She is not going to believe that,” he says.“The alternative is telling her everything and hoping she doesn’t call the police,” Eivor points out, and Alexios winces. “Now put on some gloves and help me dump this body.”Body-dumping is so much easier in the 21st century, at least, on account of the invention of dumpsters. Eivor pulls some cash from the mugger’s wallet, pockets it, and picks up his knife. It’s a rusty old thing, clearly this man wasn’t very experienced at this mugging thing when he tried to jump her and Alexios.She kind of pities him, honestly.She slams the cover of the dumpster down, then pats Alexios on the back and says, “Can you walk?”“Well enough,” says Alexios, but there’s an unsteady quality to his voice. “I just…”“Lean on me if you wish,” says Eivor, and Alexios goes gratefully, tucking under her arm. Her heart wrenches at the sight of him, at what little he’s said of his upbringing. She is a poor source of comfort, but she has to try anyway, and everything else she’ll process later.V is home when they get there, but she wisely stays quiet and keeps out of their way. It’s only once Alexios is asleep and Eivor’s started washing their bloodstained clothes that V comes closer and says, “Always liked the sherry vinegar better for this kinda thing.”Eivor flicks her eyes up to meet V’s. “Really,” she says.“Had a friend who swore by it,” says V, sounding a little wistful. “Jackie Welles. Best friend anybody could ever ask for, and way better than I ever deserved.”“I’m…sorry,” says Eivor.A corner of V’s mouth quirks upward. “Been a long time, anyway,” she says. “You two all right?”“Fine,” says Eivor. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”“Eh, I got time until Alt needs me on site,” says V, vaguely. “You want any help?”“Well, if you have time, you can cook,” says Eivor, and V goes off to the kitchen with only a token effort at grumbling about it. Really, it’s only fair, she’s the best cook out of the three of them.She blots the fabric until the bloodstains have faded away, until she has to squint to see any trace of them. Then she puts away the supplies, sits on the couch, and buries her face into her hands.“Fuck,” she says, with real feeling.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

It takes Layla a few weeks to find a tabletop group she really clicks with. Part of it is because most of the ones she’s found consist of white guys who stare at her like she’s some kind of exotic unicorn: look! A girl who plays Dungeons and Dragons, and a girl who isn’t white at that! It’s uncomfortable at best and at worst—well, at worst Layla has blocked many people on Facebook by now for her own safety and peace of mind.The other part is that she’s balancing being a working student with her aspirations for getting into Abstergo, especially in the R&D department—big things are happening there, she hears, and she wants in. God does she want in. And a lot of gaming groups in her vicinity get a little tetchy when they realize that she’s not willing to drop everything to play with them.So she’s not expecting much when she drops in on a game being run by a guy named Alexios. Certainly she’s not expecting a very tall, very built woman to open the door for her.Very tall, very built, very…plaid-wearing.Layla stares at her for a hot minute, fingers clutching at her iced coffee as though clutching at a lifeline, before the woman glances her way, smiles, and says, “You must be Layla. I’m Eivor.”Layla blinks, then says, “Oh! Yeah. Hi. I’m Layla. I’m, uh. I’m answering the ad your roommate put out on Craigslist? For a Call of Cthulhu campaign.”“That one, yes,” says Eivor. “Well, come on in, meet the rest of the party.”She does come inside, and the first thing she notes is that the apartment is actually very cozy, wallpapered in warm, gentle tones. There’s a round table in the middle of the living room with dice trays and character sheets already laid out, but everything is neatly, carefully arranged on it, save for one chair with a red-and-black jacket draped carelessly over the back. That chair is occupied by a guy in a newsboy cap who’s scrolling through YouTube with one earphone in his ear, but he glances up at Eivor and Layla and says, “Is that the new girl? Cheers, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He sticks his hand out, and says, “Jacob Frye. My sister Evie’s running late, so don’t sit in the chair next to me, I’m saving it for her.”“You just want to steal her dice again,” says Eivor.“She makes it so easy,” says Jacob, with a little grin. “Ezio’s nipped out for a minute, he’s buying Coke. Alex is in the kitchen.”Sure enough, there’s a man in the kitchen with his hair tied into a cute little manbun, pouring what, to Layla, looks like toasted chickpeas into a bowl. “Eivor!” he says, when he catches sight of them. “And I’m assuming this is Layla?”“Hi,” says Layla.“Χάρηκα πολύ, Layla,” says Alex. “You said in your e-mail you’re a working student, right?”“Yep,” Layla says, mentally taking note of the Greek greeting. One Greek, one Danish, two British, and from the sound of his name that Ezio guy’s Italian. “So, uh, there’s probably games I won’t be able to show up at, is that all right?”“Sure,” says Alex, easily. “It’s rare that everyone manages to show up for a game, anyway. We try, but,” he shrugs, “between dissertations and jobs and other obligations, it’s to be expected that we don’t always get to all meet together.”Layla breathes out a sigh of relief. “Oh thank god,” she mutters. “What’s that?”“Stragalia,” says Alex. “Do you want some?”--The stragalia is fucking delicious. So is the zuccherini di Vernio Ezio brings out of his bag, the artisanal donuts that Eivor orders, and, after Evie shows up thirty minutes in, the potato pierogies from PJ Bernstein’s.The next week, when Layla comes back, the pierogies make an appearance again, although it’s Jacob bringing them since Evie’s out of town for a conference. The week after that they don’t meet up since Alexios is doing interviews for his thesis, but Layla shows up anyway, carrying a paper bag full of tartlets.When Eivor opens the door, she raises an eyebrow at Layla and says, “Layla? What brings you here? I thought you mentioned having an interview today.”“I did,” says Layla. “I just finished up, actually, I’m supposed to hear back in like, a week, maybe two? But I’ve got a good feeling about it, and you were the first person I thought about telling, so.” She holds up the paper bag, and says, “Tartlets? Or. Tartletters. I got them from this bakery on the way.”“You are a woman after my own heart,” says Eivor, with a grin, and opens the door to let her in.Layla steps through, sets the tartlets down on the kitchen table, then catches sight of a few books sitting at the center and says, “Hey, you’re in Medieval Studies?”“Studying toward it, at least,” says Eivor. “I’m writing a paper on funerals in Eastern Europe in the High Middle Ages. Very exciting. Next week, I’ll be minding a class full of restless freshmen while my professor dashes off to Florence over some alleged Auditore documents that resurfaced.” She snorts out a laugh, and says, “It’ll be another set of forgeries, you mark my words. Ezio Auditore is the easiest to impersonate, we know so little about him.”“Who?” Layla asks.“A fifteenth-century nobleman who disappeared around 1476,” says Eivor, pulling out two cans of Pepsi from the fridge. “Likely died along with the rest of the male line of the Auditore family, but there’s no record of his execution, so…” She shrugs. “But for my professor, hope springs eternal.”“Who knows, maybe one day they’ll hit the jackpot,” Layla says. “Oh—thanks for the Pepsi.” She pops it open, takes a long swallow, then perches on the counter as Eivor starts tearing into the tartlets. “Abstergo’s looking for researchers who specialize in ancient times for game development—Egypt and Greece are the biggest priorities, and I told them I wanted in on their Egypt project. If I get the job, I’d have access to archaeological digs, continuously updating research…”“The salary doesn’t hurt either,” Eivor says.“It’s such a generous salary,” says Layla. “It’d be so much better than working in a museum, my research would reach so many more people.”“That’s all well and good,” says Eivor, “but will they credit you for the research?”“I’ll make goddamn sure they will,” says Layla, just as the door is pushed open again and a young woman, with flaming red hair and a yellow jacket, steps inside with a duffel bag in hand. “Uh, Eivor, who’s this?”“You Layla?” says the woman. “I’m V. I’m the other roommate.” She dumps the bag onto the plush couch unceremoniously, then drops into the chair beside Eivor and says, “Is that tarts? God damn. Can I have some?”“No, these are mine,” Eivor says, but she looks so massively relieved to see V that something twinges oddly inside Layla’s chest. “You should have bought your own on the way back from—where did you even go, anyway? Alexios and I haven’t seen you in two weeks.”“Had work,” says V, evasively. “Left a note.” She reaches over for a tartlet, pops it into her mouth, and chews thoughtfully.Layla watches V for a moment, before she says, “So what do you do for work?”“I’m an IT guy,” says V, with an easy smile, after swallowing the tartlet. “People call me in when they need help with their computers. Usually they’re quick jobs, but this one was a big one.” She licks some of the grease off her fingers, and says, “Hey, is this chicken?”“And asparagus,” Eivor confirms. “You can thank Layla, she was generous enough to buy them on her way home.”“Oh?” V says. Her eyes settle on Layla, as if trying to figure out what her game is here, and Layla tilts her chin upward, meets her gaze head-on. “Nice of you. Especially since there’s no game today.”“Yeah, you know, I just figured,” says Layla, “hey, Eivor might like these little tartlets.” She tugs her phone out of her pocket, and relief crashes over her when she sees that Faraday from her group project is texting her. “Anyway,” she says, standing up, “I gotta go. Got a group project I should work on.”“Really?” Goddammit, if she didn’t know any better she’d say Eivor sounds almost disappointed.“Really,” says Layla, picking up her purse.“Well,” says Eivor, standing up as well, catching her by the sleeve, “thank you, Layla. For the tarts. And…” She pauses for a moment, smiles a little, and says, “You can drop by whenever you want, my friend. You need only knock on the door.”Layla’s chest grows all—warm, and fizzy, and light, like the Pepsi she’s still drinking. “Okay,” she says. She looks at V, who’s still watching her, her gaze sharp and searching as if she’s trying to figure out Layla’s game here, and it’s—it’s a little too much. She half-thinks if she stays here with V too long then V will call her out in front of Eivor for coming here with no real reason other than to drop off tarts that she bought just for her, and Layla cannot deal with that, not right now. She can barely handle whatever this is she feels with Eivor holding her sleeve. “Hey—I might not be back next week. You know. Group project.”“Understandable,” says Eivor, letting her go. “But I mean it. Come by whenever, Layla.”Layla nods, then goes.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

So asking Eivor directly about what they need is a non-starter. The only lead she can give them is, “I think it’s called Yggdrasil.”“That’s it?” Shaun says, incredulously. “You came all this way to tell us, oh, this nebulous Piece of Eden you’re looking for is called Yggdrasil?”“I came all this way because Layla is my friend,” says Eivor, folding her arms across her chest. “All of us did, but some of us have other motives to be here.”“I wanted to see what my sister died for,” says Alexios, perched on a table, eyeing the Staff like it’s killed his beloved sister. Which…Shaun supposes it did, in a roundabout way, after keeping her alive for so long. “Ezio wishes to help his Assassin brothers however he can, Jacob goes wherever Ezio goes—”“Never not gonna be weird,” Rebecca mutters, which, thank you, Rebecca, that is perhaps the understatement of the century. Jacob and Ezio. Good lord. “At least it’s an upgrade for Jacob.”“Imagine having to live with that,” Evie says, with the haunted look of someone who has walked in on her brother and his boyfriend one too many times. Shaun ought to know.“—Evie wanted to get to the bottom of what exactly was going on and will follow her brother wherever he goes,” Alexios continues over them, “and V is just here because she knows computers better than any of us, and she is terminally curious.” He nods to Eivor, and says, “We all care about Layla, but the Wolf-kissed here is the only one whose reason for coming here is exclusively her.”Eivor sighs, and says, “I care about her.” The way she says it, there’s something else underneath it, a longing that Shaun actually recognizes. Oh, boy. Oh, boy, this will be all kinds of fantastically awkward.So Layla goes back under, because Eivor can’t give them much more than the name. “Which is still a lot, Eivor,” she assures her, patting her on the arm. “Everything else—I get it if you don’t remember it. Pieces of Eden generally give people a shitload of trauma, apparently.”“I ought to,” says Eivor. “If only to spare you this.”“Hey,” says Layla. “Think about it this way—once I’m out of this, I can swing a battleaxe just like you can.”“I truly hope you don’t have to,” says Eivor, sincerely, and Layla chuckles before she lies back down on the Animus bed. Which…well, this is all going to be very hard to explain to Bishop already, Shaun will just excise the bit where Eivor and Layla are apparently holding the world’s strangest, most awkward mating dance from the report.The cabin is cramped now, with three formerly-dead Assassins, two current and conscious Assassins, one unconscious Assassin in the Animus, an ex-cultist, a merry unaffiliated hacker, and the very Viking whose genetic memories they’re spelunking through all crammed in together. Everywhere Shaun looks there’s a towering figure in Assassin history sprawled over the couch with a Switch, or washing the dishes, or, in Jacob’s case, climbing up to the cabin’s roof in order to “get some goddamn bloody cell signal up here to order some pizza.”“Don’t you dare put anchovies on mine!” Evie calls up to him. “Do you hear me, Jacob?!”“He’s not gonna get any signal,” says Rebecca.“Oh, I know,” says Evie, as Jacob walks around the roof. “He just wants an excuse to climb.”“You better not break my phone while you’re up there, Frye!” V calls from below.So. It’s been a weird day, so far, and the cabin is cramped, and Shaun is damn near itching to get out and breathe some fresh air.So he does, walking out into the sunshine while Layla’s still under, that mad Viking watching over her and Rebecca. There are deck chairs on the cliff, and a brilliant view of the impossible aurora happening over Massachusetts, and Shaun drops into a chair and pops open a Coke to watch it in silence.And then he hears an Italian-accented voice say, “Do you mind if I sit here?”Just his luck, that Ezio Auditore of all people wants to stare at the aurora too. “I don’t think I could stop you,” he says, because honestly, it’s Ezio. “So, uh…how long have you been here?”“2012,” says Ezio. “For all of us. And we came back with no knowledge of who we were, and someone had been kind enough to insert identities for us in various databases, so…” He shrugs. “We’re still looking into it,” he says. “That’s partly why V is here. She’s the only one we know with any capacity for hacking—the Clarkson siblings are good, certainly, but much like Jacob and Evie, they’re more at home in the field.”2012. “Fuck,” says Shaun, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “December?”Ezio blinks at him in surprise. “How did you know?”“Because that was when our friend Desmond died,” Shaun says. “Your—Bloody hell. You look just like him, you know?” He taps the corner of his lip and adds, “Right down to the scar.”“Desmond Miles, yes?” Ezio says.Shaun nods, not quite trusting himself to just—not break into great big heaving sobs in front of one of the greatest Mentors that the Brotherhood has ever had, if he opens his mouth again. Wouldn’t that just be the height of embarrassment.“I’m sorry,” says Ezio. “Mi dispiace. I wish I could’ve met him. From what little we heard of him, he sounded…I’m proud of him.”Desmond would probably have melted into a puddle of goo if he heard that. “He spent the most time with you,” Shaun manages to say, “so. I think he would’ve been happy to hear that.” They just missed each other. Damn it. “I’m sorry, too. He was your descendant, he deserved so much better than what he got.”“He did,” says Ezio, sounding so sad and so tired. “Do you know where his body is, at least?”Shaun shakes his head, keeps his eyes on the horizon because he doesn’t know how to tell Ezio fucking Auditore that oh, yeah, we left your descendant’s body where it fell, so sorry about that, the Templars probably have bits of him all over the world now. Jesus fucking Christ. “We don’t know,” he says. “We tried to look for it, afterward, but…it was long gone by then. Uh. Mi dispiace.”Ezio bows his head, breathes out slowly. “Is there a grave, at least?” he asks. “For him, and for this other one—Clay, was it not?”“How did you know about him?” Shaun asks.“We have clashed with Abstergo a few times,” says Ezio, which, what. “On one of those times, we pulled files off their server that spoke of Clay Kaczmarek and Desmond Miles. But there was nothing on those files on where their bodies went. And I just…” He sighs. “If I had known about them—”He would’ve saved them. He would’ve tried. Shaun knows that well enough, he’s seen just how hard Ezio tries to save the ones he loves, how hard he takes it when he can’t. “We put up graves in New York for the both of them,” Shaun says. “Evergreens, along the Cemetery Belt. After this, Becks and I can take you to their gravestones.”“I would like nothing more,” says Ezio, and there’s something so goddamn sad and heartbroken in his voice that Shaun’s heart wrenches for him, and for Desmond and Clay, all over again. They should’ve done better by him, by all of them.He puts a hand on Ezio’s shoulder, and to his surprise, Ezio leans into him, making just a soft, sad noise. Shaun squeezes his shoulder gently, and says, “They would’ve been happy to meet you, I should think.” Okay, he can’t really speak for Clay, but Desmond would’ve been over the moon. And there’s a question there—had Desmond’s death triggered this resurrection event?A British voice behind them says, “Ezio, love, there’s no way for me to order pizza from here, so I’ll be heading into town for a bit, and it happens that Evie’s wanting some company while she works on the Staff.” Jacob steps closer and pecks Ezio on the cheek, his hand slipping into Ezio’s and squeezing gently, a reassurance of his presence. “Will you be all right?” he asks.Ezio smiles a little, squeezing right back, and Shaun wonders just how long these two have been together. This isn’t a couple in the first flush of new love, this is a couple that’s been together for a while now, familiar with each other’s foibles. “I’ll go talk to her, then,” he says. “Oh, and—we should drop by the Evergreens, when we get back.”“On the Cemetery Belt?” Jacob says. “Sure. We’ll make a day of it.”Ezio goes, then, and Jacob flops onto the deck chair right beside Shaun. His eyes flick to Shaun, and he says, “Thank you, for that.”“For what?” Shaun asks. “Because it looks like all I did was break his heart, and believe me when I say I feel like absolute shite for doing it.”“When he found out about those two,” says Jacob, “I had to haul him away from the nearest Abstergo facility. He was this close to kidnapping the first employee he found and interrogating them on where the bodies were.” He shrugs. “Considering it wasn’t a research facility I don’t think he would’ve gotten anywhere, and I said it. Do you know what he said?”“What?”“They’re family,” Jacob says. “Well, really, what he said was, sono la mia famiglia, devo fare una cosa, avreste fatto lo stesso per tua sorella.”Shaun blinks at him. That’s fluent Italian, spoken with the ease of someone who uses it regularly, although with Jacob’s accent it’s a little atrocious. “When did you learn Italian?” he asks.“When I decided to start dating a man who lapses into Italian when he gets emotional and has flashbacks,” says Jacob. “What he meant was that he had to do it, because they’re his family. He’s very big on that. I get it, I’d do it for Evie in a heartbeat.”“Did you break into the facility, then?” Shaun asks, a little morbidly fascinated. “Ezio said you’d clashed with Abstergo before.”“Oh, yes,” he says. “And found nothing. Well, we found out they were planning to besmirch the Auditore name, but nothing about where the bodies were stashed.”“Oh, you found the Hitmen of History, did you,” says Shaun.“I’m honestly offended,” says Jacob. “Hitmen. Like I didn’t start a whole gang.”“That is the wrong thing to be offended by,” Shaun says. “But. All right. Now I’m curious, because Ezio mentioned this but didn’t elaborate: You broke in and survived getting out?”“I think that was the third time we did it,” says Jacob.“Three times?!” No wonder these people are legendary Assassins. Once was hard enough, and twice had resulted in Rebecca getting fucking shot. “You’re bloody lunatics. We never even heard of this.”“V scrubbed the footage,” says Jacob. “And what Templar would admit, even while being tortured, that they let Ezio Auditore past them without clocking him? Or me?” Then he sobers up, the amusement disappearing as he says, “He wants to perform last rites for them. Says it’s the least he can do for them. I say the dead won’t care, they’re dead, but—sono la mia famiglia. At least they have graves.”Too many Assassins die without one, they both know that to be true. Shaun rubs his hand over the back of his neck, says, “I think he would’ve liked you, after an adjustment period.”“Hm?”“Desmond,” says Shaun. “He would’ve liked you. He’d be very surprised you and Ezio shacked up, but pleased for him anyway. He told me once that going through Ezio’s genetic memories got downright depressing sometimes.”“Suppose that’s high praise,” says Jacob, ducking his head a bit. “I am going into town, though, I saw a Denny’s and I am dying for a bacon melt. Promised Evie pizza, too.”“You have awful taste,” Shaun says, and Jacob laughs in response, the sound delighted, like a bird flying free and trilling its song into the open air.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Evie? Evie? Wake up, please wake up, please, sister, you have to wake up—
--Ciara wakes in a white room, tendrils wrapped around her arm connected to some—strange blocky object with squiggly lines on it. She blinks at it in fascination, because truly, what is it, then turns her head to see a man at her side, pulling other tendrils from her. She hisses in pain as one comes out from under her skin.“Sorry, Evie,” the man says, apologetic. He’s bruised, bleeding a little, but the biggest hurt is there in his eyes, as though the sight of her is killing him inside. “We’re getting you out of here, I promise, and then we’ll burn this hellhole to the ground—”“You look a sight for sore eyes,” says Ciara, with a wink, and the fellow recoils from her. “What’s wrong? Never met an Irishwoman before?”“Irish—” the man starts, before his head snaps up to meet the gaze of someone else coming inside. “V! V, what in the bloody fuck did they do to my sister?”Sister? “You must be mistaken,” says Ciara, patting the poor deluded fellow on his shoulder as he scoops his arms under her. “I am an only child.” She frowns, and says, “Unless—No. No, the Children are all dead, Eivor killed them all and she wouldn’t lie to me—”“Eivor’s here,” V says, “but it’s gonna take her a bit to get to you. Don’t worry, I promise you’re gonna be okay.” Her eyes flick to Ciara’s rescuer, this poor boy with the sad eyes who recoiled from her when she greeted him the way she greets handsome men. “Shit,” she says. “This must be the Bleeding Effect those files we’re talking about. She thinks she’s someone else.”“Someone else?” Ciara snorts out a nervous laugh. She looks around the room again—this is nothing like the kind of room she’d get put into to sleep off her hangover, she can see that now. There are too many strange things that make strange noises, and the chair-bed-thing looks none too comfortable. “What are you talking about? Have I drunk too much? Is that what this is? Oh, has my mouth gotten me into trouble once again?”“Can’t you fix it?” the man asks.“It should pass on its own, that’s what they said,” says V, but she sounds uncertain, those dark eyes worried as she runs toward the—the strange bed-chair-thing that Ciara’s been lying in. “Let me just—grab some hardware from here, in case it doesn’t—”“Evie,” says the man, desperately, “Evie, it’s me, it’s Jacob. Your twin brother, remember? Please remember, because if your split personality flirts with me again I’ll drop you and it will not be fun.”“You could just say no,” Ciara tells him. A shift in her position, though, and a jolt of pain spikes through her head. “Oh, tá mo cheann á réabadh,” she groans, and buries her head in the man’s shoulder by instinct. This Jacob is safe, she knows this in her very heart. He’s safe in a different way from Eivor, but still safe.“Everyone needs to stop speaking different languages around me,” Jacob says. “At this point it’s becoming a signal that things are going terribly wrong in their heads somewhere.”“Tahimik na, may kinukuha pa ako,” says V, irritated.Ciara doesn’t hear much more than that, because her head is pounding horribly, spikes of pain being driven through her skull with every beat of her heart. She whimpers, and says, “What—What’s happening? Eivor—”“Is that Evie?” That’s Eivor’s voice! Oh, joy of joys, that’s Eivor’s mellifluous, musically raspy voice! Ciara risks a glance to her, but her vision swims, and she sees—Flann? No, that’s not Flann, that’s someone else, that isn’t even a man, that’s a woman in purple with a sour look in her eye and the Christian cross around her arm, but that cannot be right, who is she? “Evie, are you all right?”“Eivor!” Ciara says. “It’s me, it’s Ciara. Who is this Evie? Is—Oh, no, did you bring Flann with you—”Eivor makes a soft, broken noise, and says, “Ciara—oh, no. Give her here, Jacob, and wait for Ezio, he should be done distracting Layla in a few minutes.”“She’s my sister,” Jacob says, sounding utterly wrecked. “I won’t leave her, not even for Ezio or Layla.”“I can carry her,” says Eivor. “I’ve carried Ciara before—”“Your muscles were really the first thing I noted about you,” Ciara tells her.“—and I am not related to Evie in any way,” says Eivor, with a straight face, so damn, she’s still driving Ciara mad, “so if Ciara flirts with me it won’t be off-putting. You take up the front, Alexios is at the elevator holding off Abstergo’s forces, and you’re a much better shot than me.”“Gonna need some time to download all the necessary software and data to get this to work outside Abstergo, so I can’t come up shooting with the rest of you,” says V, bundling up various tendrils and sticking a stick-thing into one of the blocky strange-noise things. “Give me five minutes.”“Eivor,” says Ciara, quietly, as Jacob reluctantly deposits her into the drengr’s waiting and heavily muscled arms, “will you tell me what is going on?”“You have been dead a long time, Ciara,” says Eivor, carrying her as though Ciara is a precious treasure. Every word out of her mouth is full of sorrow and regret, and it breaks Ciara’s heart to hear it. “You are but a ghost, now, inside my friend’s head.”“Oh,” says Ciara. “Oh, Eivor, my dearest friend. I am so sorry.” She whimpers in pain as her headache throbs again, and says, “My head, I—”“Do not be sorry,” says Eivor. “You did not choose this.” She presses a kiss to her forehead, and says, “Go back to sleep, my friend. It cures all aches, so I hear.”Ciara lets her eyes drift shut, and—--
Bugger it all, Evie, you’ve got to wake up, we’re pinned down by a whole team of those damn Abstergo bastards and Ezio can’t come help, we could really use you and your, ugh, your damned plans—please, Evie, wake up—
--Dorothy’s eyes snap open to a white corridor and the staccato sound of gunfire. She takes quick stock of situation: she’s not got her hidden blades on her person, she doesn’t have any throwing knives, there is a very tall woman crouching protectively over her whilst firing a small pistol very poorly at black-clad men with what sounds like Tommy guns, and there are two men, hiding behind cover, one fiddling with firearms and the other holding an axe in hand.Also, her head is killing her.“Right, someone tell me just what is going on here,” she says, crisply.“Evie?” Eivor says.“All right, I know we’ve been in New York for some time now, but when did you pick up the accent?” says the paler man, the one with a flat cap over his head. “Evie? God, please be Evie.”“Is it Evie now?” the other fellow says, the one with the longer hair and the bronzed skin. “Please be Evie now.”“You’re both mistaken,” Dorothy tells them, and Flat Cap’s face falls so miserably that it actually breaks Dorothy’s heart to see it. “Dorothy Arnold. Where are my hidden blades? My pistols? My throwing knives?”“You’re an Assassin?” the fellow asks. “You’re an Assassin who knows what firearms are?”“Oh, good, take this, I’m not used to it anyway,” says his tanned friend, and tosses her a handgun. She catches it in the air, thumbs off the safety, and looks it over critically. Right, this looks—similar to what she’s used to, save for a few changes in the design that seem a bit frivolous. It’ll do.Tall Woman and Greek Fellow (she is certain he’s Greek, anyway, based on the accent) rush forward during a lull in the gunfire, brandishing their axes and burying the business end of those blades in other people’s skulls. Dorothy takes aim, fires at a man in the midst of reloading, and says, “This is a lot noisier than I’d like.”“It’s sort of the point, we’re trying to keep them busy,” says Flat Cap. “Dorothy Arnold? I’ve heard of you, I think. The Black Hand’s fall, that was you, yes?”“They didn’t fall fast enough,” says Dorothy, pushing the memories out of her mind as best as she can. “I don’t know you, though—”“Jacob Frye.”“Oh!” Dorothy says, as it clicks in her head. “You’re Kamala’s great-uncle! The—dead one, how are you alive and far younger than me—” A gunshot rings out, and she flinches back, swears as her headache spikes briefly. “I don’t suppose you have something like laudanum for headaches?” she asks.“Yeah, no, it’s been somewhat difficult getting laudanum, lately,” says Jacob. “On account of it being banned.”“Even moreso than before, huh,” says Dorothy. Fuck and damn, her head is going to kill her if the bullets don’t. “Right, fine, I’ve worked with worse.” Like the heartbreak of knowing she can never see her family again, the awful weight of seeing her father lose all hope of her still being alive. Compared to that, this headache is nothing more than a nuisance. “Knives?”Jacob tosses her a belt of them, then steps out of cover to fire at men coming through the sliding doors.This isn’t optimal. Dorothy prefers to be up high, watching the situation from above before she makes her move—throws a bomb, fires her gun, tosses her knife. But she weighs the first throwing knife in her hand and it feels right, the way it did when her savior and mentor first taught her how.Her aim is still true, and the first, second, and third knives sink home into various skulls. “Should she even be walking?” Greek Man calls to Jacob.“You see Ezio or V around?” Jacob says. A hush has fallen now over the corridor, with bodies surrounding Tall Woman and Greek Man in various states of mutilation. Dorothy is sort of impressed, she can’t take on that many all at once, not on her own.“Where is V anyway?” Tall Woman says, full of worry. “I thought she would be with you.”“She’s in the room we found Evie in, committing a spot of burglary,” says Jacob.Dorothy’s vision swims, blurs, as she stands up straight. She manages to maintain her posture for a minute, long enough to say, “If I can stand, I can damn well walk. What even is going on here?” Then she takes one step, and her knee buckles under her and she finds herself collapsing to the ground as pain jolts through her skull, a thunderclap of blinding, white-hot agony, before she feels arms wrap around her.“Go to sleep, Miss Arnold,” says Jacob. “Go to sleep, and let me talk to my sister, please.”“What’re you on about,” Dorothy mumbles, but her eyes are screwed shut and everything hurts so much, so much—He lifts her to her feet. Even the tiniest movement sends jolts of pain through her head, and she finds herself curling into his side, leaning on him more and more.Maybe she ought to rest. Just for a little bit. Just for a while…--
Evie? Sister? We’re in the van now, on the way back to Eivor and Alexios and V’s. Ezio came back and I think he’s about ready to wash his mouth out with soap, and I frankly don’t blame him. Layla’s the best and all, but if I had to go in there and tell my unknowing civilian friend about how much I just would adore working at a Templar-owned front, I’d seriously consider cutting out my own tongue with my blade just to get the taste out. Even if it was for a good cause like keeping her away from the carnage.

…please wake up. Please. I miss you. Ciara tried to flirt with me, which you would find incredibly repulsive as I did, and Dorothy’s similar to you but she doesn’t have your spark. Please, Evie. Come back. Come home.
--Evie wakes up in an apartment with the moonlight seeping in through the curtains, on a real bed, with a real bedside drawer off to the side and the faint scent of mingled colognes on the air. She blinks awake, then takes in the sight of Jacob, sitting on a chair at her bedside, his nose half-buried in the crook of his elbow as he snores gently.It’s the first time in a week that she’s seen her twin brother, ever since her move-in day was so rudely interrupted by black-clad goons from—good god, from Abstergo. She fuzzily thinks, From the Templars, Frye, they were Templar goons, but what does that—What is—Oh, her head. She scrubs her palm over her face, then glances around, and catches another glimpse.This time her heart leaps right into her throat, because standing there is—is herself, she thinks. But there is a gun on her belt and a strange bracer on her arm—no, not strange, that’s her hidden blade—her what now—She tries to push herself up to a sitting position, but the suddenness of such an action sends a jolt of pain through her head. She hisses, unable to stop herself, and that wakes Jacob, who startles awake and blinks at her the same way he did once, when she’d rescued him from that cell.Wait. When did she rescue him? What cell? He’s never looked like that before—“Evie?” he says.“It’s me,” Evie says, pressing her fingers against her temples. “What…What happened?”“Steady, steady,” says Jacob, turning his chair around and taking her shoulders. “What’s the last thing you remember?”“There was a white room,” she says, softly. “And some sort of chair I was shoved into. They put—something on my head, I don’t recall—”“Think it’s an Animus headset,” says Jacob.“The Animus?” Evie says, incredulous. “But—that’s, what, Abstergo’s video game console?”“Yeah, so it turns out it’s a tad more than that,” says Jacob. “V’s been pulling data from the shit she stole. It’s meant to help you relive the memories of your, our ancestors—this model added non-relatives they had samples of to the mix. So, hey, it turns out we have an Irish druid ancestor and her name’s Ciara.”“Ciara—the poet I was looking into for Abstergo,” says Evie. She frowns at Jacob, whose face has pulled into a wince, and says, “All right. Out with it.”“Do you remember anything about Templars?” he asks. “Crawford Starrick, for example?”“The—He was a Victorian capitalist,” says Evie, but now she feels—a hand against hers, a promise of death in the coming five minutes, eyes as cold and terrible as death in the midst of the harshest winter. She blinks, and Jacob is still beside her, but he’s wearing a top hat, a long and finely-made leather coat, a shilling on a string around his neck. “He’s dead,” she says, “or—he went missing, no one ever found his body—”“They did, but they removed it and covered it up,” says Jacob, “on account of how it would be somewhat improper to have a corpse in the vault under Buckingham, but never mind that, do you remember killing him?”“How would I have killed him?” she asks, but there’s another flash of memory—the weight of a bracer on her arm, the sound of steel sliding into flesh. “He’s been dead over a hundred years, that’s not possible—”“Don’t fight it, Evie,” says Jacob, urgently, and oh, he sounds so stressed in a way she’s almost never heard from him before. So scared and worried for her. “Don’t try to logic it out, just let it in.”“Right, let in the notion that we’re somehow time travelers with amnesia—”“Oh, I truly wish it were time travel, it would make things so much less complicated,” says Jacob. “No, it’s complicated, but if you fight this, fight the memory, you’ll only make it worse, so please, Evie.” He’s desperate. She’s never heard him desperate before. Has she?Another blink, and he’s looking at her through one good eye, terribly battered and bruised, his clothes bloodied.She sucks in a horrified gasp, says, “Jacob, what—”“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, I never paid attention to this before,” Jacob says. “But: remember the Creed, Evie?”“What Creed?” she asks, but already it’s stirring within her mind, words she can’t look at, words she won’t permit herself to look at, because if she does then she’ll have to accept this entire mad premise and her brain already feels like it’s about to fall apart, feels like it’s on fire. “What are you talking about?” Please don’t say it, please don’t say it.“Nothing is true,” he says, finally, with sad eyes, this brother of hers with three different snapshots of himself overlaid over each other, “everything’s permitted. You remember that?”No, she wants to say, but—her father’s voice comes through the cracks, echoes those same words through history. They rattle in her skull, and she swears she can hear, besides her father’s voice, two other women’s voices. “You sound like Father,” she says.The last thing she sees before she passes out is Jacob’s absolutely horrified face.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

“I don’t like this place.”Jimmy groans, flicks a cigarette out the window, and shoots Bill a dark glare. “You don’t like anything here,” he says. “You don’t like the ambiance, you don’t like the smell, you don’t even like the pizza here. Why even move all the way from fuckin’ Chicago if you hate New York so much?”“Because I heard there were opportunities here,” says Bill. “But nobody said shit-all about fuckin’—vigilantes.”Jimmy rolls his eyes heavenward. “This shit again,” he grumbles. “Look, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen’s an urban legend, all right?”“Not him!” snaps Bill, briefly pointing a loaded gun in his direction. Jimmy narrows his eyes at Bill, then pointedly pushes the gun away from his face. “Not him, but—assassins. They don’t just beat you bloody like the Devil, they beat you bloody and then drop you to drown in the river.”“You’ve been listening to fucking Carlo too much,” Jimmy grumbles. This is what he gets for mouthing off, he supposes, babysitting the new guy come over from fucking Chicago ‘cause he got too damn pussy to face the heat. “Look, he’s fucking addicted to those Abstergo games we get for free, y’know the ones, Hitmen of History—”“Yeah, but what if he’s got a fuckin’ point?” Bill asks. “Have you seen him anywhere lately?”“Carlo’s a fucking slacker,” says Jimmy, squinting up at the stoplight. Why the fuck isn’t it changing? Jesus. They stay here any longer some cop’s gonna spot them and ask them why the fuck they’re looking so nervous. God, please don’t let some cop spot them. It’d be hard to explain why the car has a shitload of sawed-off shotguns and assault rifles stashed in the trunk.“But he might have a point.”Jimmy lets out a long, frustrated sigh. “The whole time I’ve known Carlo I’ve never seen him without a game console in hand,” he says. “His brain’s fuckin’ soaked in Abstergo’s bullshit video games, all right? He sees conspiracies and Assassins everywhere and thinks they’re all out to get him personally!” He waves an angry hand outside the window, and says, “You know who’s actually out to fucking get us? Dispenza and his boys! That’s who you oughta be worrying about, not some long-dead pirate from the Carribbean who was probably a fucking hitman—”Something heavy lands on the top of the car. Bill startles, his gun going off as he shrieks in panic, and Jimmy hisses in shock as the bullet breaks his fucking window glass.“You fucking idiot!” he yells. “That was just somebody tossing a fucking fruit out the window!”He looks out the window and sees——a guy. Brown hair, grey eyes, a beard, scarred lip. “I hear that’s an insult in this country,” says the guy, in a very thick Italian accent. “Perhaps you ought to reexamine your prejudices, hm?”“Oh fuck me!” Jimmy shrieks, and slams his foot on the gas. The car damn near launches like a rocket past the still-red stoplight, and Bill is shrieking like a goddamn baby as Jimmy swerves right, then to the left, then to the right again, because some fucking maniac is on top of their fucking car and who the fuck jumps on top of a car like they’re in a goddamn action movie, huh—Something slams through the roof. Jimmy looks up to see—is that a fucking knife?“It’s an Assassin!” screams Bill, and starts wildly firing his gun at the roof.“You fucking dumbass!” Jimmy yells over the gunshots. “This thing cost me three thousand dollars!” He turns the wheel to the left, hard, and just narrowly avoids crashing into a streetlight as the tires scream.“Fuck your three thousand, I don’t wanna fucking die—”The blade disappears. Jimmy has just enough time to think that the guy’s probably full of fuckin’ holes by now, before a boot crashes through the backseat window and the little Italian fucker slides in, smooth as you please, and says, “This doesn’t have to end violently.”Bill fires again, and a hole appears in the upholstery where his bullet slammed in, having missed spectacularly.“All right,” says the Italian with a great big sigh, and then a blade appears through Bill’s throat. As blood dribbles from the hole that’s appeared in Bill’s neck, Jimmy sucks in a horrified breath as cold steel presses against the side of his own.“You do not have to die here,” the Italian conversationally says. “Slow the car.”“If you want the weapons in the trunk—” Jimmy starts, slowing the car, because he’s got a fucking blade to his neck and he does not want to like, die gurgling on his own blood.“I do not care for them,” says the guy. The Assassin. Ohhhh, Jesus fucking wept. “But I do want to know where you are taking them, who is paying you to do it, and how many men are expecting it. In short: everything you know, hai capito?”Jimmy gulps. “Where do you wanna start?”--The first dead body found belongs to Jonah McCall—knife directly to the throat, found tucked into a closet. He’d been patrolling on the rooftop, when contact to his radio had been cut.The second dead body belongs to Elizabeth Hanson—knife wound up through the base of her skull, directly in the brain stem. She’s found in a bathroom stall, with a loose vent grate above her corpse.The third is Carlo Kaminsky’s body—found with his gun in hand, not that it’s stopped his assailant from cutting off his legs before leaving him with a fire axe planted in his neck. He lies where he fell, at the entrance to the warehouse.Fourth and fifth are James Hartnell and Mary Wheelwright, both with knife wounds through their necks. It’s there that James Block finds a man in a top hat rummaging through Hartnell’s pockets, pulling ammunition and cash from his coat, and draws his gun on the man as he whistles for back-up. They’re all close by, because after Carlo’s body was found, the six, now four, left behind decided it would be best to patrol in numbers and closer together.Looks like it’s paid off. “Hands in the air, you shitheel,” Block says, and the man raises both hands up, gets slowly to his feet. “Yeah, that’s right. You’re the one running around killing us, yeah?”“You’re the ones selling assault rifles to people who can barely handle switchblades, yeah?” says the guy, and Jesus fucking Christ, he’s British. His head turns, just enough for Block to see his profile. “And apparently supplementing the income from that with a bit of drug-running, too. How naughty.”“Who is it?” Caitlyn Jones demands, running in with her handgun raised.“Some English sonuvabitch,” says Block. “Where are McGuire and Harrelson? Left the cuffs with McGuire.”“I’m here, I’m here,” huffs McGuire, panting as he runs up to them. “There’s so many fucking boxes in the way, Jesus. Harrelson said he heard something, he’s just going to check it out now.” He stares at the top-hat-wearing weirdo, and says, “This guy? This guy’s been picking us off like fish in a barrel? He’s some steampunk-cosplaying nutjob.”“Let’s just fucking shoot him and be done with it,” says Jones with a little satisfied grin at the thought of it, turning the safety on her handgun off. “Ms. da Costa’ll be pissed about the security breach, but what the fuck, he’s not gonna live long enough to tell anybody about it. And hey, we oughta thank him, for cutting down on the number of people we gotta split the income with.”“Da Costa?” says the guy. “Violet da Costa?”“What, you know her?” Block says. “You gonna say this was all some kind of security test?”“Yes,” says the man.“Fat fucking chance,” says Jones, and pulls the trigger.
The fucker ducks.
One moment he’s just standing there, a man waiting for the firing squad’s bullets, the next there’s an awful crack, and Jones screams as the gun drops from her fingers. Doesn’t get the time to do much more than that because a fucking kukri slices across her neck, and she collapses to the ground, bleeding out.“Don’t just fucking stand there!” Block barks at McGuire. “Fucking get him—”McGuire raises his gun and starts shooting, eyes wide and frightened, but none of the shots land before the fellow’s all up in McGuire’s grill this time, kukri in hand slicing into him. Block swears, because god fucking dammit he’s gotta do all the goddamn work around here, then runs forward to slam the butt of his gun over the man’s head.That does something, opens him up for McGuire punching him in the stomach, but before either of them can follow up, a fire axe slams into McGuire’s head. The fellow staggers, shocked for a moment, before he drops like a felled tree.The fellow grins at him. “You just failed your security test,” he says, just as a heavy weight drops right on top of Block and some sharp pain explodes in the side of his neck, and all he knows is—not darkness. Not quite yet.He blinks, and he’s lying in a puddle. There’s a woman in a plaid jacket crouching over him, her eyes intensely blue, her hair orange-red. She tilts her head to the side as he stares up at her, and she says, “Almost two thousand years, but greed still drives people to their deaths. At least we’re consistent.”“Oh, fuck you,” says Block. “At least da Costa paid us for running the guns for her lot—the military didn’t pay me shit. The second I stand up for my own goddamn self and tell my commander to shove his orders up his ass, they kick me out of the goddamn Army into a country that thinks I’m a baby-eating monster.”The woman’s eyebrows go upward. “How enlightening,” she says, and he realizes with a sinking dread in the pit of his stomach that he’s maybe just told her a bit too much. “The weapons belong to da Costa alone? Not Abstergo? Where would you have taken them for her?”“Said it was strictly off company records,” says Block. “And—shit, I don’t know.”The woman looks at him, with real pity in her eyes. “Your greed blinded you to the truth,” she says. “You were being used for something big—much bigger than your grievances against an army. Had you seen with clearer eyes, this would not have been your end.” She presses her hand over his, and says, “I’m sorry. It’s time to sleep.”The last thing he hears is the sound of a raven’s caw.--Jimmy stares at Harrelson as the tall-ass redhead and the guy in the top hat bundle him into the backseat of the car, right beside him. “Where the fuck’s everybody else?” he asks.“Dead,” says Harrelson. “Bill?”“Fuckin’ dead,” says Jimmy. “Shit.”“Yeah,” says Harrelson. “They want info on da Costa’s movements. You know the redhead chopped off Kaminsky’s legs with a fire axe?”“You know the Italian kicked out the back door window like it was made out of fucking sugar glass?” says Jimmy. “I thought those Animus games Carlo loved were exaggerating.”“Maybe if they exaggerated more he’d still be fucking alive,” says Harrelson, just as top hat man slides into the front seat and kisses Ezio on the corner of his mouth. “Jesus shitting Christ. Are you gonna kill us?”“That depends on the next few minutes,” says Ezio. “I’d rather not cause more unnecessary death than I need to.”“Me too,” says top hat man, twisting around to look at them, a corner of his mouth tugging upward. “I’d much rather you joined my gang, instead. We have dental.”“He bribed a dentist,” says Ezio.“I bribed two dentists and we’re friends with a nurse in Hell’s Kitchen,” top hat man says. “Runs a clinic and won’t ask questions.”“Speaking of questions,” says Ezio, “da Costa. We want information.”Jimmy looks at Harrelson, who glances at the two men. It’s not even a contest, really—da Costa might pay well enough but she doesn’t have dental and he doesn’t like his chances of living if he comes to her saying we got taken out by Assassins. “How much do you pay people in the gang?” he asks.“And what do you want to know?” Harrelson asks.--“You know,” says Percy Westcreek, shining a flashlight into the electrical room with a chuckle, “if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this blackout’s straight out of a horror movie. Mess with an ancient artifact of unknown power, end up with a curse out to kill you and everyone else in the building before day breaks.”“That is an oddly specific scenario,” says Stacy French, squinting into the darkness. Da Costa’s been riding them hard lately, charging them with protection of a Precursor box that she, apparently, stole from Dr. Gramatica’s office for the Instruments’ use. “You have got to stop watching horror movies.”“I mean, they’re kind of relaxing after the shitshow of Assassin memories we have to go through,” says Westcreek. “They’re so goddamn smug. If they’re not being drunken heartbroken fools, they’re arrogant little shits rolling around thinking they’ve got it all worked out and breaking cities under their boots in the meantime.”“Scanning through Frye memories for the Aegis getting to you?” Stacy says, with a snort of laughter. “Wait until you get to the bit with Roth in it, that’ll cheer you right up.”“Oh, god, I hope so,” says Westcreek, leading Stacy deeper into the electrical room. He shivers, says, “Jeez, it’s cold down here. Kinda miss Abstergo’s rooms, at least they had heating.”“And automatic emergency back-ups,” says Stacy, stepping closer to the generator, wrapping her jacket a little tighter around herself to ward off the cold. She squints at it, and says, “Hey, hang on a second…Percy, come look at this.”Westcreek steps closer, shines his flashlight on the heavy, methodical gouge marks on the generator. “The hell?” he says, quietly, and reaches for his radio.He never makes it, because a shadow moves all of a sudden of its own accord, and a—a spike slams into his foot. He screams in pain, eyes wide and horrified, and Stacy backs away, the panic rising inside her—is that gas coming out of the spike? Oh god, I can’t die here. “Sorry, Percy,” she whimpers, then turns on her heel to run.She doesn’t make it two steps before she slams into a solid wall of muscle, and a deep, Greek-accented voice rumbles, “Oh, will you look at that, Evie? The rat thinks she can run.”“Do try not to kill her,” the shadow’s voice advises, over Westcreek’s whimpers, “she’s not our target.”Stacy pulls her gun, her fingers shaking as she does so, but the wall of muscle moves first, and she catches sight of—of dark eyes, long hair, before the gun is knocked from her hand and goes skittering into the darkness. Stacy screams in panic, and then——she doesn’t see anything more for a long while.When she does, she’s cuffed in the back of a police car.--V, sitting in the security room with her laptop hooked up to a missing Violet da Costa’s hard drive, says into the phone, “So, fellas, I got good news and bad news. Pick what you wanna hear first.”“Is the good news ‘they’re headed to Greece with the box’ and the bad news ‘and a full complement of Abstergo reinforcements’?” Jacob says, his voice tinny over the phone’s speaker. “Because we got the newest recruits for the Rooks to tell us that already.”“I cannot believe you’re still calling them the Rooks,” Evie huffs. “Nearly a hundred and fifty years and that’s still your go-to?”“Personally I’ve been calling them the Ravens,” says Eivor. “It’s a far more striking name.”“You are all giving Jacob’s gang a more ominous air than they really deserve,” says Alexios. “I have been calling them the Baby Eagles, it’s a much more fitting name for them.”“Baby Eagles,” Jacob says, with great offense.V’s about to snap them back on track away from this little tangent about Jacob’s gang when Ezio says, sounding mild but strangely authoritative, “That’s quite enough, hm? We have other things to worry about right now. V, what did you find out?”“Well, obviously, da Costa ain’t here,” says V. “But she’s on her way to Greece—I got tickets here for a seat on a ship headed to Greece, two weeks ago. If you can catch a flight in the next twenty-four hours you’ll be able to beat her there and ambush her forces.” She scrolls through the files on her laptop, and says, “Bad news is, like Jacob said, she’s brought a lot of forces, and we don’t actually know what she’s bringing the box to Greece for.”“At a guess, considering the capabilities of a box like the one in her possession, she might be looking for a way to decipher the information encrypted inside it,” says Evie. “Or to encode the memories in the box into someone’s head, or—”“Where in Greece did her files say she was going?” Alexios interrupts.“Uh,” says V, clicking through and squinting at her laptop screen. “The Parthenon? There’s been a dig there, apparently they found a chamber hidden underneath.”Alexios groans. “Of course,” he mutters. “Aspasia must have been quite pleased with herself…”“Who?” V says.“You do not want to know,” says Alexios. “Ask Eivor if you do, I have no wish to speak of it.”“Alex,” says Ezio, “what do you know about what’s underneath the Parthenon?”“Only that it’s an important artifact,” says Alexios, with no end of bitterness to his voice. V’s heard it before, it’s the kind of voice someone only has when they’re looking back on their younger, stupider self, shaking their head at how incredibly gullible they were. V wants to shake him, a little bit, for that. “The Cult of Kosmos would certainly never let me anywhere near the room, let alone tell me anything about its nature. I had a habit of breaking things.”“But you can get us there,” says Evie. “You’ve got a better chance of getting in than the rest of us.”“So does Ezio,” Alexios says with a huff.“I can try, but without the Apple I sealed away under the Colosseum, it will be a rather tricky endeavor,” says Ezio. “It’s possible, though. You are our friend but not truly an Assassin, I will not compel you if you truly do not wish to go back to Greece. That goes the same for you, Eivor.”“Of course I’ll come,” says Eivor. “At the very least it’ll even the odds against Abstergo’s forces if I do. No offense, Jacob.”“Oh, none taken, I’ve seen you with a fire axe,” says Jacob.Alexios sighs, and says, “Then of course I’ll come. You’ll need all the help you can possibly get.”“That’s great,” says V, stopping at a file labeled Subject 12, staring at a picture of a dark-haired man in his thirties with sharp eyes that accompanies a clinical description of his time in an Animus, “because I can’t come. Got work to do here in the city. Hopefully you guys don’t need a premium-quality hacker to get you through Abstergo’s security.”“I’m sure we can manage just fine,” says Evie. “Be careful, V.”V makes her exit from the conference call, and reads further down the file. Then she makes another call, waits three rings until Alt picks up with a, “V. You have an update.”“Yeah,” says V, copying and encrypting the file on Subject 12, methodically ripping out any traces of Templars or Assassins or Pieces of Eden from the file as she goes. “I found out where Johnny went: a sister company of Abstergo’s, known as Arasaka.” There’s more to it than that, of course, but Alt isn’t an Assassin and V knows the magnitude of the secrets her friends have entrusted her with. “Where do I drop off this file?”Alt gives her a string of coordinates in response, that V has to hastily write down on her hand. A quick check on Google Maps reveals it to be somewhere just outside of Rye Brook, New York—isolated enough that V knows Alt’s not taking any chances. “Your friends?” Alt asks, after she’s listed the coordinates.“Headed out of town,” V says, leaving out all the other details. Alt won’t give a shit, so long as they’re not involved, and V would rather not involve them anyway. They’re already in too deep, she won’t pull them into her and Alt’s shared bullshit, just as she can’t pull Alt into her friends’ secret, centuries-long war. “So don’t worry, I’ll be coming alone.”“Good,” says Alt.“Look,” V says, “this file…it’s not pretty, Alt. Lotta bad shit went down, I don’t think we’ll be getting Johnny out of this alive.” Or even sane. She’d seen Evie after they’d dragged her from the Animus at Abstergo that first time, seen the way Ciara and Dorothy slipped in and out of control, and that had been a week. How long has Johnny been gone? Seven years, eight? They’ll be lucky to get a body.Alt says nothing for a long time, before she says, simply, calmly, “Just get me the file, V. I will handle the rest and call you when you’re needed.”She’d been warmer, once, but that had been before Jackie died and Johnny got kidnapped. V lets out a breath. “You know you don’t have to need me to call, right?” she says. “Any time, Alt.”“I know,” says Alt, and it’s the closest she’s come in a long time to her professional demeanor cracking, just a little bit. “I’ll see you in two days.”She disconnects, and V stares at her laptop screen, presses her lips into a thin line. It isn’t fair to Alt, to cut out half the story of why Johnny’d been taken, what had been done to him. She ought to know. In a fairer world V would tell her everything and hold nothing back, because that’s what she deserves, and never mind that Alt’s paying her for this too. In a fairer world Johnny would still be around and Jackie would be fucking alive.You ought to tell her, mamita, Jackie’s voice whispers in her ear. He’d do it, she knows. No secrets between old friends, he’d said once.She used to believe that too. Then Jacob and Ezio stumbled into her apartment looking for Eivor and claiming Evie’d been kidnapped, both of them bleeding on the carpet, and her entire life had been turned inside-out.“Some things are bigger than us, Jacks,” she says, and deletes another incriminating line.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Wood shatters. A cannonball screams over his head. Lightning flashes, glints off the swords in his hands. He breathes, and his nostrils fill with the scent of sea salt and ashes. A man stands in front of him, dressed in blue.It’s all so bloody familiar, which perhaps should’ve been the first indication, when he looks back later, that something’s not quite right here. But in the moment, all he can think of is surviving this, because Caroline’s waiting for him, because he promised to come back to her, because a dead man can’t gain a fortune and come back—He dives from the ship and hits the water, ignoring all the cuts and bruises, and makes for shore. When he washes up, he rolls over with a laugh, feels the gritty sand pressing against sunburned skin.The fellow in blue washes up as well. Tries to offer him money to take him to Havana, and he’d consider it, sure, if they weren’t on a bloody desert island in the middle of bleedin’ nowhere. Points a gun at him, the height of rudeness when he’s just trying to talk to a man, and then runs off when the gun clicks—powder’s too wet to spark, seems like.So he gives chase. The running’s the easiest thing in the world, the climbing too, like he was born to this, like he’s been doing it all his life. He clambers up onto a pole jutting out of a makeshift tower and, without thinking about it, leaps off the edge and dives into a pool, resurfaces in time to catch sight of his quarry.The man puts up a fight when he finally catches up to him, cutlass against cutlass. He’s on the back foot for much of the fight, covering his defenses best as he can—injured this arsehole might be, but he’s well-trained. Still goes down, though, once an opportunity opens up, dies like anybody else when a cutlass gets shoved through his throat.He takes the clothes, gets rid of the pistols and the fancy little arm-knife. It’s too damn hot for this coat, but he takes a look at the letter the fellow had in his pocket and smiles. Ah. An opportunity. All he has to do is reach out and take it.So he does. He finds a merchant in need, a ship in want of a helmsman, and the sea ahead of him.“My name’s Duncan,” he lies to Stede Bonnet, the false name tripping easily off his tongue. He steps onto the ship, rests his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and—And—--The world melts away, and Edward blinks into the artificial lights, a headache pounding in the back of his skull. Where is he? What is all this? There’s something in front of him that he—that he doesn’t recognize—is that his face there—“The hell…” he breathes“That was fantastic work!” a woman’s voice cuts in, and Eddie Kendall sucks in a shocked breath, shaking off the disorientation. “Really very promising,” Melanie Lemay says, as chipper as she was when Eddie first applied for the job. She’s grinning at him as if he’s a cute little baby who’s just performed a sit-up, which, wow, patronizing. “All right, easy now…Welcome back.”“Didn’t think I went anywhere,” Eddie mutters, pressing a hand to his temple, trying not to throw up as he stands from the chair. Jesus, that’s some vertigo. “What—What was that?”“That is the Animus,” says Melanie. “Your numbers look incredible, Mr. Kendall, you’re practically a natural at this.”“Always wanted to be a natural at something, I s’pose,” Eddie says.“This is as good a thing as any to be a prodigy at,” says Melanie. “Anyway, hold on a moment, we just have to make sure we didn’t break your brain.”His brain feels like fucking mush. He’s half-expecting the ground to sway underneath him, like he’s on a ship or something. When she tells him to look up at the lights one at a time, he spends a solid twenty seconds staring at them in shock because what in the devil are those things in the ceiling. Which is. Stupid. Because they’re electric lights and he’s seen them since forever, so.What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck, he thinks, tamping down on the panic and keeping a devil-may-care smile on his face as Melanie speaks and leads him out into the Abstergo lobby.“Your data file says you’ve done Memory Research before,” she says.“Something like that,” says Eddie. “I was a freelancer collecting samples here and there. Never thought I’d be in an Animus myself, but, y’know.” He shrugs. “Bills to pay, and this paid higher.”“That’s a surprise, because you’re very good at this,” says Melanie, with a chuckle. “The data streams are very stable. It’s like you know where you’re going already.”He…sort of does, actually. But if he thinks about it too much it’ll give him a huge fucking headache, so he concentrates on the scenes playing out on the walls around them. There’s a fellow in a poofy white outfit running around on the rooftops of Venice. There’s a man in blues and whites with a tomahawk running after someone in Revolutionary-era clothes. There’s some other nutcase in white leaping off a tall tower. There’s a Black woman with a tricorn hat striding away into the sunset.“Impressive, isn’t it?” Melanie says, snapping Eddie out of his thoughts. “This building is barely six months old, but Abstergo Entertainment’s been a studio for a few years now. Since 2010, actually.” She nods to the Black woman, says, “Did you see Liberation? That was our first title powered by Animus tech.”“Didn’t that get hacked?” Eddie says.“Taken care of,” says Melanie, in a tone of voice that warns him he really ought to drop this. For the sake of the very high salary, he drops it.She keeps talking about all the perks of the job, the plans Abstergo has for the Animus. History, but only the really exciting parts. Eddie breathes in and smells sea salt on the air, hears wood creaking under his feet as he walks down the lobby. If he closes his eyes, he swears he can see the sea stretching out in front of him, hear the seagulls crying overhead.Caribbean pirates. “That’s your gig,” she tells him. “Your file mentioned an interest in pirates, so we figured…”“Oh, yeah, definitely,” says Eddie. “Always liked the Golden Age of Piracy, as far back as I can remember.”“Then this must be a dream come true for you, Mr. Kendall!” Melanie says.“Aye,” Eddie absently says.“See, a natural,” says Melanie, sounding so proud of him that it rankles. Something about that pride doesn’t sit right with him—it’s as though he’s some kind of prize pig, to be trotted out onto the stage and told to do tricks. She stops at the information desk, talks to the receptionist and some courier who looks at Eddie and tips her hat at him.His eyes flick to her wrist. Disappointment washes briefly over him when he realizes there’s nothing there except a cute little bracelet with a pendant on it, except—why would he expect anything there?He shakes his head, a little, then follows in Melanie’s footsteps.She tells him—well, basic things, orientation things, in the elevator. The communicator she hands him is how he gets around, security’s light and this device is the thing that will get him past anything that doesn’t go past his security clearance, something about a map software and waypoints, blah blah blah. Eddie listens to her just enough to catch what he needs to know, then discreetly fishes around in the pocket of his jacket and tugs out his earbuds.And then they walk out into the second floor and the CCO is right there. “Olivier Garneau, our CCO!” Melanie chirps, and puts a hand on Eddie’s back, pushing him forward. “Bonjour, Olivier!”“Salut, Mélanie. Ça va bien?” says the fellow. Then he squints at Eddie, and says, “This is the new analyst, then?”“Yes!” Melanie says. “He just started today, his name’s—”“Eddie Kendall,” says Eddie, suddenly understanding exactly how terrified a defenseless little lamb might feel in the face of a wolf wearing a still-bloody wool coat. Jesus. He’s already meeting executives and all he wanted was to pay his goddamn rent. “The, uh. Sample 17 project.”“He’s on the Kenway line,” says Melanie.“Oh!” Olivier says, smacking his fist into an open palm. “Connor? Haytham?”“Edward,” says Melanie. “The pirate!”“Oh!” Olivier says with a laugh. “Yarr-har-harrr, me mateys, am I right?”Eddie twitches. It would not be good form to slug his boss in the face on the first day. Rent, Eddie. Think about your rent. “They didn’t actually talk like that in the day,” he says, forcing a smile onto his face. “The pirate accent we all know is a Hollywood invention. In truth, you might’ve heard a fairly varied mix of accents, back then.”“Mr. Kendall here specializes in the Golden Age of Piracy,” Melanie says, bright and chipper and only slightly twitchy, “so he knows what he’s talking about!”“Well, we always need experts, to make things more exciting,” says Olivier, seemingly blithe, but his eyes are watching Eddie like a fuckin’ hawk. “Welcome aboard, Mr. Kendall! Melanie, can we talk in your office in private?”“Just let me get this one here settled and I’ll be right there,” Melanie promises. “Five minutes, tops.”The five minutes pass like molasses. Eddie tries to stay in the moment, he really does, but he finds himself clutching onto various surfaces every so often, the images flashing through his head once again—the sea stretching out in front of him, a redheaded woman beside him, the weight of a pistol in his hand—Jesus. If he didn’t need the income so badly he’d be walking off the job right now.“You okay there, Mr. Kendall?” Melanie asks, the third time Eddie has to grab onto something to steady himself against what he’s beginning to think of as the Animus hangover.“Peachy keen,” he says. “So where’s my cubicle?”“Here,” says Melanie, gesturing him to a cubicle with a figure already on the shelf. There’s a man under the table who Melanie talks to, but Eddie ignores them both. Instead, he steps closer toward the action figure, picks it up in his hand, takes note of the rather mediocre quality of the workmanship. If this is what they’re planning to send out to kids, he pities the parents who have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for something so dull as this. “So here we are,” says Melanie, catching his attention, “your very own Animus workstation.”“Doesn’t look like much,” says Eddie.“You can spruce it up however you like,” Melanie assures him, “so long as it’s within company regulations.”“So I can hang my Pride flag up?” Eddie asks. “Because I notice that bloke over there’s got a Confederate flag on his desk.”“Certainly,” says Melanie, with only the slightest twitch to her eye, as if she can’t believe she’s saddled with him. Well, fuck her, he’s not here to befriend her, he’s just not keen on sleeping out on the streets. “We at Abstergo pride ourselves on being allies to members of marginalized communities, after all.”Yeah fuckin’ right. “So do I have to wait for the IT man here to finish up or—”“No, you can go on ahead,” says the IT man.“Just sit back, relax, and find us some good footage,” Melanie says. “If you need any hints or tips, the Animus is loaded with tutorial programs, so you won’t have any problems getting the hang of it.” She doesn’t pat him on the back as he sits, which, thank god, he doesn’t want her to think she can get friendly with him. Well. Friendlier. “I’ll check in on you later. Happy pirating!”Eddie waits for her to go, then stands up and says, “I’ll let you finish up on that calibration, yeah, mate? Be right back.”“Sure, sure,” says the IT man, and Eddie squints down at him, wondering briefly why his voice sounds so goddamn familiar. Then he walks away, to go smoke on the balcony and stare out at the city stretching below him.There’s someone already there, however, when he gets there. It’s a young woman, a video camera in hand, filming the very tops of the skyscrapers. She’s pretty, he thinks—dark red hair, dark eyes. He waits one minute, then two, and says, “This balcony free?”She doesn’t startle, but her lips press into a thin line as she turns off the video camera, turns to look at him. “Yeah,” she says. “You’re the new guy?”“Eddie Kendall,” he says. “I’m looking into the pirate. You?”“Vincent Smith,” says the woman. “Running the Claudia Auditore memories.”“That’s one of the Italians, right?” Eddie asks.“Yeah,” says Vincent, watching him warily. He holds his hands up as if to show her that he means her no harm. “I thought you’d be settling into the Animus right now, just to test it out for yourself without Melanie around.”“I would, only John from IT’s calibrating it right now,” Eddie says, nodding to the pair of legs still sticking out from under his table. “So I figured I’d leave him to it.” He doesn’t mention to her that he’s not quite keen on going back under while he’s still suffering from the Animus hangover. She woudn’t get it, he thinks. “Vincent’s a strange name for a girl,” he says.“I didn’t choose it,” says Vincent. “My mother named me after a poet—Edna St. Vincent Millay.”“I remember reading one of her poems,” says Eddie.Vincent raises an eyebrow. “Oh?” she says.“One of the sadder ones, I believe,” says Eddie. “There are a hundred places where I fear to go—so with his memory they brim.” It rings oddly in his head now, the line resonating as he speaks it. He catches onto the words, tries to capture this memory as best as he can: a pretty woman watching him on the balcony, as he recites poetry to her over the city stretching out below them. This is his memory. Not Edward Kenway’s.“I’ve read that poem,” she says. “The old snows melt from every mountain-side, and last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane.”“But last year’s bitter loving must remain,” Eddie quotes, “heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.” He smiles at her, hoping it doesn’t look as if he’s coming on to her, even though—all right, he sort of is. She’s a lovely woman, and it’d be nice to sleep next to somebody else for a night. Or two, if she’s willing.The briefest, smallest smile touches her lips, the smile of someone who recognizes when an opportunity is being dangled in front of her. “You’re something else, Kendall,” she says.“I get off at five,” he says.“I’ll be at the coffee stand downstairs at five,” says Vincent. “The one run by the British guy.” She straightens up, video camera in hand, and says, “I should go. The Auditore memories won’t run themselves.”“See you later, then,” says Eddie, watching her go, and enshrining this in his memories. This is solid, this is real: the woman, the video camera, the city.He goes back to the Animus, and John’s gone, already off to do whatever else being in IT requires of him. Eddie slides into the seat, puts the headset on, then leans back, keeping hold of the balcony in his memory, Vincent’s smile, the breeze ruffling through their hair, just before the world shifts once again and—Havana rises up in front of him, the ship rocking underneath his feet, and Edward Kenway turns his face up to the sky as the seagulls cry above him. “Well, Duncan Walpole,” he says to himself, “let us see who you were planning to meet.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

To say that Piraeus, and therefore Athens, has changed is an understatement. Perhaps it is only the passage of time, but when Alexios first sets foot in it half-expecting to be overwhelmed with memories as Ezio had been in Monteriggioni, all he is overwhelmed with is shock that almost nothing is left of the Piraeus he once stole through, on his way to kill an old man. Certainly the bones are there—the port, the crowds, the street vendors—but everything else is so changed that he cannot see the world he knew underneath it.Perhaps it’s because he already knows who he was, before this. Or perhaps both he and the city have changed too much, that they are now strangers to their own pasts. If he tried to retrace his steps to where he killed Perikles now, he would get hopelessly lost in this fucking maze of glass and concrete, steel and cement.They’ve split up for now, the five of them. Ezio has gone to get them rooms at a hotel deeper in Athens, and the twins are trying to find any of their Brotherhood still operating within the city. Eivor is accompanying him, and he’s grateful for her steady presence, because he knows for a fact that should he lose himself to his past, Eivor will knock him on the head so hard he comes to his senses.That he trusts a Viking shieldmaiden that much is one of the great oddities of his life now, but he’s learned to roll with it.The sidewalk they’re meandering on is made of concrete, not dirt, but one constant about cities across time is that they’re always too damn crowded, so Alexios hisses when someone accidentally bumps his shoulder.“You’ve dealt with worse in New York,” says Eivor, amused. “At least the fellow apologized.”“I’d like it better if he watched where he was going in the first place,” Alexios grumbles. “How far is the Parthenon from here?”“An hour’s walk, little more than fifteen minutes by car,” says Eivor. “Why?”“It felt like less than that when I came here,” says Alexios.“Because you had a horse and you terrified people,” says Eivor. “Now you have me and you look like another hipster.”“Would you carry me all the way to the Parthenon?” Alexios asks, nudging her arm.“I would put you over the back of my horse like a sack of potatoes,” says Eivor, a corner of her lip tugging upward. “So no.” She looks around the place, tipping her head up towards a very high building, and says, “If you wish to go sightseeing, there’s one way I always liked doing it.”“You are not climbing that,” says Alexios. “You cannot climb that. That is seven stories high—”“That is not even a challenge,” says Eivor with a shrug, eyeing an awning. Before he can stop her, she’s already taken off, using a few crates in the way to jump and catch onto the awning, where she hauls herself up and grabs onto a window ledge. Alexios swears and runs after her, but she’s a fast and experienced climber, so by the time he’s under the awning she’s already halfway up.“Is that your friend?” an American tourist asks him, squinting up at the insane Viking drengr in a plaid jacket nonchalantly clambering up onto the back of an air conditioner. “Is she like, okay?”“She’ll be fine,” says Alexios, heaving a sigh. He may just be the only one here who doesn’t throw himself off buildings for the hell of it—Ezio and the Frye twins are Assassins, so this is their bread and butter, but Eivor has never been an Assassin and has no plans to properly become one. She has no excuse for this.Now that he thinks about it, Kassandra was the only other person he knew who pulled shit like this for the hell of it. No wonder Eivor speaks of her fondly. They’re both insane.Maybe she’ll simply clamber back down instead of diving off the building like all that waits for her underneath is some water.He entertains that thought for maybe four more seconds before someone drives past in a pick-up truck, the back of which is loaded up with hay. “Ah,” he says, resigned.Sure enough, a second later, people start shrieking in panic as Eivor jumps from the roof, turning over onto her back in mid-air to land right in the middle of the hay. “Oh god she’s dead,” says the American tourist in particular, freaking out so hard that Alexios is honestly worried they might be having some kind of anxiety attack. “Oh god did I just see someone committing suicide—”“She’s not dead,” says Alexios.“She dropped like a stone from seven fucking stories up!” The tourist gestures frantically to the rooftop. “And she hasn’t come out of that hay!”“She,” says Alexios, pinning the hay with a glare and wondering if Eivor can tell he’s glaring at her through her second sight, “thinks it’s funny to worry people. Which it is not, Eivor, so you can come out now.”“Ah, you spoil my fun,” says Eivor, poking her head out of the straw and making a face at him. As the crowd groans and dissipates, she hops out of the truck and claps him on the back, then leans in closer and murmurs, “I saw someone in gold while I was up there.”Someone in—oh, right, the second sight she shares with the three Assassins. They’ve been calling it a variety of names, from the eagle’s gift to eagle vision to “spot-the-enemy vision,” but it varies between them all. Alexios still hasn’t quite been able to grasp all the intricacies of such a gift, despite his friends’ attempts at explanations, but he knows enough to understand that gold means important, at least for the twins.“Someone you may want to talk to, then,” he says.“Hah, no,” says Eivor. “That’s how Evie and Jacob see through their gift. For myself, I’ve only ever seen one other person shine gold before.”Fingers of cold iron dig into Alexios’ insides, twisting them around into knots. “She can’t be here,” he says, softly.“She is,” says Eivor.“What would Greece hold for her now?” Alexios asks. “Not even the bones of the world we knew remain, save for tourist sites.”“Perhaps she is lonely and wishes to remember her friends,” says Eivor.“If she’s in Athens? Fat chance.” Alexios runs a hand through his hair, says, “Some of the worst things to ever happen to her happened in Athens.”“When you knew her, over two thousand years ago,” says Eivor, and that silences Alexios, because two thousand years is—a very long time. “Is it a stretch, to think that she has seen much worse since then?”He can’t really argue with her there. Two thousand years is a long time to live, and he can barely fathom the horrors Kassandra must’ve seen in all that time. “Then what does she want?” he asks.“When we first met, she’d come to the Isle of Skye to retrieve an ancient artifact that was causing nightmares across the island,” Eivor says. “So it might be that.”“Oh, so she might also be here for an Apple,” says Alexios. “We don’t even know if that’s what they have here.”“Something is causing strange things to happen,” says Eivor.“The gods’ will?” Alexios says, deadpan.“Sure, let’s call it that,” says Eivor, with a shrug. “Although V would call it, hm, ‘crazy ancient civilization bullshit,’ and I’m inclined to agree with her.” She pauses, then says, “Do you? Wish to see her again, I mean.”Alexios kicks a pebble down the concrete path, watches it skid across the pavement before it smacks into a coffee shop’s chalkboard advertising dog-friendly treats. “It has been two thousand years, yes?” he says. “And she has been alive all that time?”“That seemed the case when we met,” says Eivor.“I don’t know if I should,” says Alexios. “She will have—changed.”“So have you,” says Eivor. “You wouldn’t have run a game such as Dungeons and Dragons back when she knew you.”“If your Randvi had lived for two thousand years and you’d just come back from the dead—”“I would want to meet her immediately to see where we still stood.” Eivor’s voice is firm, and weighed down with sorrow. “I think you should meet her. Practically speaking, she might have more information that we don’t, and she’ll likely be more inclined to tell a family member than someone she once crashed a wedding party with.” Then her face softens, and she adds, “And you ought to take this opportunity. None of us will ever have one like it.”Alexios’s heart wrenches at the thought—she isn’t wrong, is the thing. He at least has Kassandra. Eivor, the Frye twins, Ezio, none of them have anyone from their old lives coming out of the woodwork to greet them once more. They’ve all attached themselves to each other and cling like limpets because there is no one else.“I cannot promise anything,” he says. “I cannot even promise there won’t be stabbing involved.”“I tried to stab her once,” says Eivor. “Believe me, I’m expecting it.”--Piraeus has not changed very much from the last time Kassandra set foot in it, but that was last year while in a very morbid mood, so of course it hasn’t changed since then. There’s a new building that’s just opened its doors, but it was in construction last time, and much to her dismay, the cute little café that served just the best cappuccino to touch her lips is gone now, replaced with a fucking Pizza Hut.“Malaka,” Kassandra viciously growls. She’d been counting on that damn cappuccino to get her through the next few days—the Templars are doing something to a Precursor box under the Parthenon for some godforsaken reason with little regard for the civilian lives being put at risk, and because the Assassins don’t have enough of a presence in Athens to effectively counter such an effort (although she knows they’re gonna try anyway), she has to go kill the goddamn Templars and retrieve the box herself.A cappuccino is the absolute least of the things she deserves for putting up with this shit, but apparently she can’t even get that much. Aletheia is laughing at her in the back of her head, she’s sure of it.“I just want my fucking coffee,” she mutters. If Ikaros were still around this would be the moment she looked through his eyes to see if there were any interesting little shops around, but alas, birds do not live nearly as long as humans and certainly not so long as Kassandra has. So instead she pulls out her phone and checks Yelp.Fifteen minutes and a blistering argument with a local over directions later, Kassandra arrives at a tiny little artisanal café with a red awning over its window. A funny little slogan proclaiming coffee to be the drink of the gods is stenciled into the glass, and Kassandra heaves just the deepest sigh.Then she steps inside, and is dismayed to find that almost the entire place is full. She ought to have seen this coming, she supposes, Yelp was full of rave reviews, but this is entirely too many people. She spots a table in the corner with one man talking to his friend over the phone, but it’s the only one with an empty chair around, so with great reluctance after ordering, Kassandra starts to move over.“—separate rooms,” the man’s saying, looking chagrined. “Yes, Jacob and I have the same room. No, it’s not that far from yours, it would be easier to get to your rooms in case something were to happen. Just wear earplugs, Evie.”Kassandra gestures to the empty chair, mouths, Is anyone sitting here?The man looks up at her, and shakes his head. He pushes the chair out with his foot himself, which, hah, thank you, mysterious Italian man. “No, Alex hasn’t called me yet, I imagine he will once they’ve found an in,” he says. “Mm. Sì, è chiaro. We’ll meet on the road come nightfall. Safety and peace, mia amica.” Then he cuts the call and goes back to sipping his coffee in peace.That is what tips her off—this man is an Assassin, here for the box. In Italian, she says, “You and your brotherhood cannot hope to get through below the Parthenon. Not without the numbers—unless you’ve decided to recruit more unknowing innocents to your cause.”The man doesn’t startle, to his credit. Instead he meets her gaze, and he says, “We will do no harm to any innocents. Not even for a good cause.”“Have you told your brothers that, lately?” Kassandra asks.“I have been,” the Assassin begins, and pauses, as if weighing his words for any secrets still hidden in them before he speaks them, “away, for some time. The Brotherhood I knew is not quite the same as the ones I have encountered recently.”“Just how long have you been away?”“A very long time,” says the man, and there’s something old in his eyes. Not the same kind of old that Kassandra knows, but similar enough.Kassandra stares at him, then says, “Are you a Sage?”The man blinks at her, confused. “Am I a—what, now?”“Ezio!” someone calls—a familiar voice, as raspy and brusque in this artisanal café as it had been on the Isle of Skye, so long ago. “Have you found us rooms yet? I tire of lugging this big sack of guilt around—”“I am not a big sack of guilt—” starts another voice. Greek. Male. Deep.And here Kassandra left her bracer in her baggage. She jumps to her feet, spins around, says, “Eivor, what the fuck have you done—”“Wait,” says Eivor, holding her hands up, “what are you talking about—”She spins on her heel towards the Italian, whose name is Ezio, apparently, and spits, “How did you do this? How did you bring my brother back from the fucking underworld, it has been thousands of years, what unnatural—”“You think it’s our fault?!” Eivor incredulously says. “Kassandra, what are you even implying?”“Kassandra,” says Alexios, long-dead Alexios who is staring at her like she’s just grown a second head spewing slurs and insulting mothers all over the place, “not that I’m not always up for a good brawl, but this is not the time and not the place, and I am not here because anyone compelled me here.”“How are you here?!”“I flew here on great metal wings,” says Alexios. “It was very invigorating.”“Those are planes,” says Kassandra.“I know what planes are, ilíthia,” Alexios says, irritated, his eyebrow twitching. It really is him. “Let us talk outside where it is not so crowded.”“First,” says Kassandra, “let me get my cappuccino.” She shoots both Ezio and Eivor dirty looks, and notes to her dismay that neither of them quail under her glare the way anyone else would. Then again, Eivor is a Viking and Ezio is an Assassin, so what the fuck was she expecting.She steps out into the sunshine, coffee in hand, walking in her brother’s footsteps.So the only thing different, really, is the coffee.--She isn’t wearing armor.It’s strange. She’s wearing a tank top and pants, like any other tourist in the summer season. There’s a pair of aviators on top of her head. If not for the staff that Alexios knows she has concealed somehow on her person, she would come off like any other tourist come to Athens to gawk at a bunch of old ruins.He has never seen Kassandra, he realizes, wearing anything casual before. Usually she wore armor even in Myrrine’s house, because she never stayed very long—only a night, at most.She’s staring at him too, just as gobsmacked as he feels. “How,” she starts.“None of us knows,” he says. “All we know is it happened in 2012, but we only remembered who we actually were around—2015, 2016.” He raises an eyebrow at her, and says, “Any idea what might’ve caused this? We’ve been looking for years.”Kassandra shakes her head, says, “I’m—not certain. I can make guesses, but if you yourself aren’t sure what happened, that’s the only thing I can do.” She pauses, then says, quietly, “There was—She was close to a god, I suppose. Someone who claimed to have the power to resurrect those who had died, but. I killed her, and besides that,” she waves a hand, “she was a simulation.” She glances to the side, where just beyond this grimy alley wall, Eivor and Ezio are probably having coffee and arguing philosophy. “Those two…”“They are my friends,” Alexios says. “I run a game for them and two others—Jacob and Evie Frye, they’re also here, and in the same situation as the rest of us.”Kassandra startles, and says, “Frye? I’ve met a Frye, her name was Lydia. She helped me acquire a…very personal possession of mine, that used to belong to a very special woman.”“I do not even want to ask,” says Alexios, because the look on Kassandra’s face is enough to tell him all he really needs to know: whoever this special woman was, it was because she’d warmed Kassandra’s bed for a significant period of time. “Look. I’m—I’m here because I want to help them, all right? I wouldn’t have come back here if not for them. I liked what I was doing.”“What were you doing?” Kassandra asks, crossing her arms, tilting her head in curiosity.“Writing a research paper on the semantics of traditional dance,” says Alexios. “The dancing part was fun, the writing part was and is very boring.”“Well, god forbid you get bored,” says Kassandra. “Clearly when you do you decide to come roaring back home with Assassins by your side.”“I thought you’d like them,” says Alexios, watching her now, the guarded way she stands. “Aren’t your goals and theirs aligned? You wanted to see the Cult of Kosmos toppled.”“They fight for the higher ideal of freedom,” says Kassandra, “but too much of it leads to chaos, and I’ve seen too many countries fall to ruin because of such chaos.”“And too much order leads to atrocities done in the name of order,” says Alexios. “Too much of anything is a bad thing, but I’ve been on the side of order and it has not given me a damn thing more than—than guilt, and loss.”“When did you get so wise?” Kassandra says.“Blame Eivor,” says Alexios. “We share a room in New York, the rents are high.” He pauses, then says, “When did you get so tired and cynical?”“Blame Kronos,” says Kassandra. “I am—too old, Alexios. One day I will give up this burden that I carry and return to mater, and I can’t deny that the longer I live, the more I long for it. You being back…” She pushes a hand through her hair, still in that damn braid, so that’s one thing that hasn’t changed. “I can’t help but wonder if there’s something sinister behind it. And since Eivor is here as well—”“Do you really think Eivor is a part of this?” Alexios asks, unable to keep the anger from his voice. Eivor is his person, she has been a steady rock he can hold on to, and to hear his own sister doubt her… “She has not changed, she is still herself. Annoyingly brusque but—steady. Calm in a storm, unless you stoke her rage.”Kassandra’s silent for a moment, before she says, “Does she still—invite people to crash parties, simply because they seemed lonely?”“How do you think she met some of our friends?” Alexios asks.“She did,” Kassandra says, contemplatively, “tell me, to my face, that I tended to talk too much. Someone as honest as her—I suppose we ought to catch up, she’s sure to have some delightful stories about what you’ve been up to.”“I’m already regretting this,” Alexios mutters, but follows his sister out of the alleyway.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The thing about London is this: it hasn’t changed enough. Yes, the Blitz necessitated rebuilding, yes, a hundred and fifty years has changed the landscape to such a point that Jacob barely recognizes the city, but—he still recognizes the city it used to be. He still half-expects to see horses clapping down the street when he turns the corner, a boy on the corner hawking newspapers, petticoats and top hats.Every time he turns the corner, he sees ghosts for just a moment before the reality reasserts itself: the cars, the buskers, the jeans and smart pantsuits and slimmer silhouettes of the modern era. New York, he thinks, was much easier to adjust to, because he’d never seen it in the past before. All he knows of it is what he’s seen now. London is different, London is his city. Was his city.Eivor stands beside him, peering up at a towering skyscraper. “Do you know,” she says, sounding a little nostalgic, “somewhere around here, I found a bureau that once belonged to the Hidden Ones?”The Hidden Ones—oh, right. “Evie would love to hear more about that, I’m sure,” Jacob says. “Do you remember where it was?”“Chances are,” says Eivor, dryly, “it’s long been filled with concrete. A shame, it held such interesting things once upon a time.”“Interesting things you took home to Ravensthorpe?” Jacob asks.“A few,” says Eivor. “The rest I left. Hytham mentioned once he wished to send other Hidden Ones to explore them more thoroughly—perhaps what they once held is now scattered all over the world.” She looks around, and says, “Stowe and Erke would be so pleased to see what Lunden has become. Confused, but pleased. They always envisioned the city as one where Danes and Saxons and all other men could live in harmony.”“Well, at least someone would be pleased,” Jacob says. He jerks a thumb to the office building, and says, “You know what this used to be for me?”“What?”“A music hall,” says Jacob. “Burned down, mm, ages ago. 1868, I believe, in autumn.” Funny how nothing of the Alhambra remains now, like the Lunden Eivor once came through. “Partly my fault that it burned down, I suppose. A former associate of mine…took the breaking of our alliance unpleasantly.”Understatement of the year, but he can’t really explain to Eivor the whole terrible saga of him and Roth. He’s already bared the entirety of that bloody mess to Ezio, and the act had left him barely able to even breathe for a time. Layla would call it a PTSD symptom—Jacob just wonders how long it’s going to be until recounting the memory of the Alhambra doesn’t make him feel like he’s about to suffocate on the fumes of his mistakes.“If they took the breaking of your fellowship so poorly,” says Eivor, “the fault lies entirely with them.”“Ezio said that too,” says Jacob.“Listen to your boyfriend, then,” says Eivor. “He’s a wise old man.”“He turned twenty-eight last month,” says Jacob. “At least according to his driver’s license.” And if they’re going by that Jacob and Evie are both twenty-six years old, born in 1992, in the bloom of summer. It’s a lovely lie. If ever Jacob meets whoever mocked up their fake identities, he ought to shake their hand for the good job they’ve done. And then let Eivor throttle them a little for making her Danish. “How are you feeling?”“About what?”“Being in London again,” says Jacob. “Seeing how much of it’s changed. It must be a shock.”“Far more of one to you,” says Eivor, tucking her hands into her jacket pockets, turning her face up toward the skyscraper. “I only knew Lunden when it was a city springing up amongst the ruins of an empire long-past. The ruins are gone and the very foundations of the houses I walked through have been demolished, the shape of the streets I knew long worn away. But you…it has not been so long, for you.”Jacob blinks, and instead of a glass-and-steel spire, sees the whitewashed brickwork of the Alhambra, scorched and blackened by the fire. Another blink, and it’s the skyscraper once more.He didn't believe in ghosts, once. Now he sees them everywhere, in this city that used to be his to protect.“I mean, it’s been a hundred fifty years,” he says, and the flippancy in his voice even sounds true. “And six from my perspective. It’s been quite a long time, some change was bound to happen. I’m more surprised there’s still some things left.”“Enough to disorient, I’m sure,” says Eivor. “What was a music hall, anyway? Was it just another name for a theatre?”“Close, they shared similarities,” says Jacob, relieved to have a question to answer that isn’t too personal. “They’re a bit like a bar with live music, except the stage is bigger and instead of being in the background, the band is the point of why you’re here. And also there are drag shows and mimes and elaborate trampoline stunts.”“So Cirque du Soleil with a dash of that drag race show Alexios likes so much,” says Eivor.“And a band playing their jazzy rendition of Nicki Minaj,” says Jacob. “Or the equivalent in 1868, rather.”“Nicki Minaj?” Eivor says, greatly amused. “All these popular artists, that’s the first one to come to mind?”“I’m trying to illustrate the sort of popular music you would’ve heard back in the day,” Jacob huffs. “So sue me, she’s the first one to come to mind.” He steps away from the skyscraper, from the ghost of the Alhambra Theatre still haunting the building, and says, “While we’re here in the Strand, we ought to hit St. Mary le Strand. It’s a good viewpoint.”--“Well, it used to be a good viewpoint,” says Jacob, peevishly, clambering down into the rooftop where Eivor is peacefully munching on a corn dog. It turns out that perching on top of the cross of St. Mary le Strand is no longer quite as satisfying, because of all the buildings blocking his view, and the construction work going on below. “Now it’s rubbish.”“It does offer a very lovely view of the broken up concrete below,” says Eivor.“I used to see so much of the Strand from here,” Jacob laments. “Used to be, when you got up to the cross, you could see for miles in every direction. Now it’s like—oh, there’s a building in the way.”“So climb that building,” says Eivor.“I’m going to,” says Jacob. “Just as soon as I’ve bought some more rope.” He sighs, then sits down next to her and says, “Has Evie called back yet?”Eivor pulls her phone out to show him the group chat—Evie’s sent pictures of the Palace, some from inside the grounds themselves, and it’s not looking very good. There are security cameras all over the place, and guards vigilantly patrolling the area. Jacob’s certain the only reason why Evie’s not caught is her uncanny ability to stay so quiet and still that she damn near goes invisible.To be sure, some of the guards surrounding the vault in the gardens are from Abstergo’s sister company Albion, and so therefore fair game for assassinations. But the rest are palace guards who don’t know the truth of what they’re guarding, the millennia-long conflict between the Assassins and the Templars. For them, this is just their job, and Jacob doesn’t really want to kill a bunch of people for doing their job if he can.Too bad V’s back in New York, looking into solving her own problems. They could’ve used her expertise. There’s a reason none of them hold degrees in IT and that reason is that they can’t code for shit, let alone hack into a security system as robust as Buckingham Palace’s probably is.“Is she working on a plan then?” Jacob asks.“I expect her to have one by the time we all meet up,” says Eivor, just as a little funny-looking drone passes by them. It stops in place for a moment, turning its camera on them both. “Ah,” she says.It’s almost comical, really. A Viking and a gangster eating corn dogs on top of St. Mary le Strand and a surveillance drone “staring” at them—you could make a joke out of that, Jacob thinks.The first thing that springs to his mind, though, is, Absolutely fucking not.He jumps, catching hold of the drone before it can fly away. It’s only once he’s grabbed on to it that he remembers—oh, shit, he’s a fully-grown man who likes to climb for kicks and weighs like one, so the drone staggers in the air as it tries mightily to shake him off, as they head toward the ground at a speed that Jacob does not like.“Wrong way wrong way wrong way,” he chants, trying his best to steer the drone towards a softer landing.“Jacob!” Eivor yells. She’s already clambering down herself, but if he falls now he doesn’t think she’s going to be able to catch him. He swings his body left, as best as he can while struggling with the stupid drone, and the little bastard jerks left. Too left, fuck, go right—He crashes, thankfully, into a pile of leaves, clutching the drone close. “You’re not going anywhere,” he tells it into its singular eye, as Eivor catches up with him. “Eivor—”“I have it,” she says, pulling out a wire and plugging her phone into a slot on the side of the drone. The thing stops whirring in Jacob’s hand soon after, and Eivor unplugs her phone and says, “Here—there are files on this.”“Files,” says Jacob, then turns the drone over and sucks in a breath at the sigil stenciled onto its side. “Blimey. I think we’ve just found the London Brotherhood.”--
Darcy, I know I told you not to follow me, so I’m willing to bet you did the exact opposite. The Templars are running rampant in this city—Albion Security moved in two years ago, and already their head has secured a position liaising to Buckingham Palace, likely to find the vault the twins sealed away. But they’re not all-powerful, we can take them on. We just have to try.
“Eh, we’ve done it plenty of times, how hard can it possibly be?” Jacob says, after the recording ends.Evie drums her fingers against the Formica tabletop. There’s a twig in her hair, the consequence of spending hours in the gardens of Buckingham Palace, still and silent as possible. “There are more files here,” she says. “Locations of various points of interest, a text file of various assassination targets—another recording?”Ezio taps the now-inert drone with a finger, and says, “I’ve seen these flying around London—if we bring more down we might be able to find our brothers.”“If they want to be found,” Alexios says, pacing about the safehouse’s living room, a ball of restless energy.“All right, play this one,” says Eivor, clicking on the next recording.
Darcy, if you’re listening to this, things are worse than I thought. When the Templars aren’t hiding in their offices behind armed guards, they’re stealing Assassin artifacts and locking them away for no real reason other than, I’m guessing, to gloat over them. I don’t know why they would even want Evie Frye’s cane-sword otherwise. The cases are locked away in their offices, but if you can get the Templars out into the open somehow you can steal their keys and open the cases. I hope you can recover this stuff for the Brotherhood—you always were better at sneaking around than me.
“My cane-sword?” Evie says, her nose scrunched up with great offense. “What would they even want with it? It’s been a hundred fifty years, it’s rusted to uselessness by now.”“Why would a Templar want anything that belongs to the Assassins?” Ezio says, and from the tone of his voice, it’s obvious he’s well aware what they might want.“Well, that settles it,” says Jacob. “I want my shit back now.”“We are not walking into Templar strongholds to get our things back—” Evie starts.“Why not, it wouldn’t be hard,” says Alexios. “You take out a Templar, you get your things back. It’s a victory for us all around.”“You,” says Evie, pointing at him, “are a nightmare to take down. We are considerably less sturdy than you are, save perhaps for Eivor.”“We ought to find more of these drones first,” says Eivor. “Perhaps then we can find this Darcy their creator keeps addressing in his messages, and the more allies we have the better.”“The Templars have our things,” Jacob says. “Don’t tell me that you’re just—fine, with that! They have your cane-sword, they’ve got eyes on the vault, likely they’ve even got your and Greenie’s little herbarium, if they haven’t simply ripped it up—”“I’m not fine with it!” Evie half-yells. “I’m just saying that we have to think about this! We don’t know the state of the Brotherhood here and now, we’ve little information on the Templars here besides this, and if we simply waltz into a Templar stronghold—”Jacob runs a shaking hand through his hair, agitated. “I didn’t say waltz into their locations,” he snaps, “I’m just saying that they’ve taken what’s ours and are bloody well gloating about it right now, if not using them to shove some poor ignorant bastard into an Animus to relieve the absolute worst things we ever went through—”Evie scoffs. “I know how an Animus works very intimately, thank you ever so much,” she says, her voice slipping, for just a moment, into Ciara’s Irish accent. “You don’t think this is a trap, tailor-made to lure Assassins like us into their grasp? They know there are at least some of us here, do you think they won’t have something in place just for us—”Ezio picks up the drone, fiddles briefly with it, then drops it onto the table, silencing the argument between the twins. “Enough,” he says. “We need to recover these artifacts. Jacob isn’t wrong—gloating aside, they may have taken your possessions for the Animus, which means we cannot allow them to stay a moment longer in their hands.”“See, he agrees with me,” Jacob says.“Evie’s also right,” says Ezio, and Jacob turns to look at him with a deeply betrayed look. “We need information. Those drones flying around likely contain more, we’ll have to collect those for a fuller picture of the situation in London. Who knows, they may lead to this Darcy—she might well be looking for her brother.”“How do you know that he’s her brother?” Alexios asks, raising an eyebrow as he leans against the wall near the shuttered window.“The tone,” says Ezio. “No one can sound so fondly exasperated as a sibling. Also, he sounded pained when he had to admit she was better at sneaking around than he was, and I would know how that sounds, because,” and here he pauses for just the briefest moment, his voice hitching just a bit, “Claudia was. Better. At throwing knives.”“A woman after my own heart,” Evie murmurs.Eivor shuts down the laptop, and says, “Alexios and I can tackle the strongholds. We are not Assassins, they will not be expecting us.”“But—” Jacob starts, at the same time as Evie says, “You can’t just—”“That’s a good idea,” says Ezio. “We’ll retrieve these artifacts and steal any information we can find in their offices as well. I’m certain they’re putting much of their efforts into breaking into the vault somehow, and if we can figure out how and when…”“We can interrupt them in the middle of it,” says Evie.“And you two have rope launchers,” says Ezio, gesturing to Jacob and Evie. “You can haul yourselves up onto the rooftops and catch the drones as they pass by.”“You’re both a little lighter than myself and Eivor, anyway,” says Alexios. “If we seized those drones we would crash to the ground far more quickly.”“And you, Ezio?” Jacob asks.“I’ll call V if she’s awake,” says Ezio, “and see if she can’t trace where the messages and the drones came from. If she can, that’s where I’ll start looking for Darcy and her brother, and the rest of the London Brotherhood.” He rubs a thumb over the Assassin sigil on the drone, and says, “And who knows, I may be able to make a few friends around town as well.”