“Is it a memory?” Sofia’s voice was an awed whisper, barely audible, but Alex heard her.
He stared at Cal’s brain patterns, then said, “No.” He offered nothing further.
Assassins were springing from Cal’s DNA, his mind, or his conscience—she was utterly unable to tell which.
“He’s projecting images of the Brotherhood,” she said, stunned.
How is this possible? What’s Cal doing?
He was crashing through all the limits they had thought bound the Animus, as if what should have been inviolable laws of science were nothing more than guidelines.
Sofia had been standing beside Alex, looking over his shoulder, but as more and more of the holographic Assassins joined their brother, she, too, felt drawn to step out onto the floor and stand beside them.
They were so clear, so real. As real as her imaginary friends had been to her when she was a child, lost and alone, unspeakably lonely. She moved among them, looking into their faces. With what Cal was showing her now, what couldn’t they accomplish going forward! The thought was intoxicating.
Another figure stepped into the circle of Assassins, one who would be dead if the figures were not holographic: Her father.
He was gazing at the holographic figures as well, analyzing, assessing. His brown eyes met hers, and all her joy and wonder turned to ash at his expression.
He would not be congratulating her on her achievement of a goal the Templars had spent over thirty years pursuing. He would not tell her how proud he was, would not raise a glass of his expensive cognac in a toast to her. Perhaps such acknowledgments would come later, though she doubted it. For now, in her father’s mind, what was unfolding in front of them was not so much a breakthrough as a problem.
“Transport?” he said, not to her, but to McGowen, who stood behind him.
“Standing by,” McGowen replied, his voice, as ever, flat and cold.
Sofia’s eyes widened at the words. She became more aware of her surroundings, of the blaring klaxons announcing a security breach, but she couldn’t believe that it was this serious. There was one guard per patient, and that included the guards in the so-called Infinity Room, whose charges were utterly and completely harmless. Surely her father wasn’t suggesting leaving, not now, not when Cal was—
“He’s given us what we want,” Rikkin said. “Protect the Animus, and purge the facility.”
“No!”
The word exploded from Sofia before she even realized she had spoken. She stood staring at him, shaking with fury, her hands clenched tightly into fists.
She knew what that meant. It meant that her father and everyone he deemed important would, in a doubtlessly calm and orderly fashion, get into waiting helicopters and depart, leaving the guards behind to kill every single one of the inmates.
Including Callum Lynch.
It was meant to be a last resort—something to enact if there were to be a disaster, and immediate departure was the only chance of survival. That wasn’t the case here, and Rikkin knew it.
Her father didn’t like what he saw when he looked at Cal, and at the myriad Assassins Lynch had conjured up. He didn’t like it at all. As far as Alan Rikkin was concerned, Cal had given them what they wanted—the location of the Apple. And now, he was disposable… even a possible danger.
The decades-long experiment—which she, Sofia Rikkin, had taken to its ultimate successful conclusion—was being closed down.
Cal had served his purpose. The inmates had served their purpose. The facility itself, other than the Animus, had served its purpose.
And Sofia couldn’t help but wonder if she, too, had served hers in her father’s eye.
His gaze slid to hers, hard, annoyed.
McGowen said, as if Sofia had said nothing at all, “I need to get you out of here first.”
“No!” Sofia shouted again. She took a step toward him, her face flushed with anger. Rikkin strode toward her—no, not toward her. He strode past her, not even bothering to turn his head as he called back, “We have to leave, Sofia!”
It wasn’t a protest. Or an argument. Alan Rikkin was chastising her.
Mortification washed over her hotly, followed by fury. Even now, when she challenged him over the deliberate murder of fifty people, some of whom weren’t even sufficiently in touch with reality to comprehend that they were being threatened, he dismissed Sofia as if she were four years old and clinging to the leg of his trousers, crying over a dropped ice-cream cone.
He clearly expected her to follow, like a dog to heel.
She didn’t.
***
Joseph Lynch stood in the Infinity Room. Lights were flashing, and the scream of the alarms pierced his ears. But he was the only one of the twenty or so people in the room who noticed.
For the better part of the last three decades, he had been the only one who noticed anything. There was nothing the Templars could tempt—or threaten—him with to get him to cooperate. He had killed his beloved to keep her out of their grasping hands, and his son had seemingly vanished from the face of the earth.
Joseph had taken care to befriend no one, so the Templars could not use one of his fellow inmates as leverage. He had never gone into the Animus of his own free will, and soon enough, he had paid the price.
But he was a stubborn man, as his wife had loved to remind him with a smile in her voice. He clung to her memory, including that of how she had left this world, as if he were gripping a knife by the blade. It hurt, terribly, and it was because it hurt that he held onto it so tightly.
Now he did not need to hold on to anything any longer. His son had come. Beyond any prayer or wish or hope or dream, Cal had found his father, and understood him. His boy was strong—that was her in him, Joseph thought, and smiled a little as the world around him, this impossibly ordered world, began to crumble into chaos. He did not need to worry for Cal any longer. The boy—no, he was man grown, and this man had chosen his own path.
Joseph still held tightly to his blade; the one he had buried in his love’s throat, the one that Cal had pressed to his, the one that Cal had returned to him. Events had come full circle now.
Joseph heard them coming for him. He didn’t need to see the foot-long steel knife in the guard’s hands to know what would happen when they arrived. He could hear it in the quick sound of the man’s determined stride.
When his would-be killer was a step behind him, Joseph turned, calmly, casually, and drove his Assassin’s blade into the man’s gut.
A final gift from his boy. Joseph Lynch could at last, as his wife had done, die for the Creed.
Three of them charged him, now. It was almost laughable, how easy it was to kill the first one—and the second. But, as was perhaps inevitable, the third guard slipped behind him and thrust deep with the razor-sharp blade.
The pain was a gift. It made Joseph feel alive, for the first time in so very, very long. The guard pulled out the blade, and hot red blood flowed down Joseph’s side.
My blood is not my own, he thought. And as Joseph Lynch, Assassin, felt the last great coldness descend, and as his eyesight bled to black, he smiled.
He was free.
***
Sofia Rikkin, scientist, Templar, stood rooted to the spot as the tableau of Assassins seem to waken. One by one, they lifted their heads, gazing out from under their hoods at Cal. Seeing him, as Aguilar had.
Cal looked at them in turn, connecting with each one. Were these his ancestors? Were they standing here in silent condemnation—or in blessing?
Only Cal knew, and one way or another, her time with him was running out. And that knowledge pained her.
One of the recently manifested images was smaller, slighter than some of the others. As Sofia watched, the figure lifted its head and regarded Cal as the others had done.
Cal’s mother, slender, elfin of feature, her hair a warm honey-red gold, regarded her son with a tremulous smile.
The years seemed to fall off of Cal’s face as, for
the first time since Sofia had known him—and, in a way, she had known him for most of his life—he looked unguarded. He moved, slowly, like a man in a dream, till he and the holographic image of his mother stood so close he could almost reach out and touch her.
Sofia had never envied anyone as much as she envied Callum Lynch at this moment—this moment that did not in any way belong to her. This moment was too intimate. It was for these two; these two, and the other Assassins, including the ones whose descendants even now were fighting in the rooms and the corridors.
A Templar was not welcome.
At that moment, another Assassin lifted its head. But this one, while part of the circle, was not focused on Cal. It was turned toward her—a slender figure, in a simple brown, linen hood.
Blue eyes, rimmed with kohl, met Sofia’s evenly. A face Sofia knew, decorated with small, ornate tattoos, gazed at her.
For a moment, Sofia couldn’t breathe.
The face beneath the plain brown hood was her own.
She stood rooted to the floor, buffeted by waves of emotion: horror, joy, fear, wonder. She started to step closer, but her arm was seized by McGowen, who yanked her roughly away from the circle of Assassins.
“No!” Sofia screamed, struggling with all her strength against him. But McGowen was used to manhandling men as strong as Cal, and she was dragged away from the greatest mystery of her life, from the answers to questions she didn’t even know she had; hauled off, kicking and flailing, to the waiting helicopter, despair closing in on her like a smothering hand.
Over the sounds of her own struggle, she heard the noise of fighting coming closer.
The Assassins were coming for Cal—their brother.
And she was glad.
CHAPTER 24
Lin and Moussa raced down the corridors, armed guards in hot pursuit. Without the smoke bombs to disorient the enemy, they were completely exposed and weaponless. At least there were plenty of distractions as they raced full-tilt toward the Animus Room.
As planned, Emir had done what he could to trap as many guards in certain places, while releasing the other inmates. All of them were, to one degree or another, allies—brethren—but only their small group of Moussa, Emir, Lin, and Nathan had stayed both sane and deeply in touch with their ancestor’s memories.
Only they… and Callum Lynch.
Moussa had longer legs and pulled ahead, racing toward the Animus door. He heard movement behind him, and a quick glance showed him that a guard with a crossbow had darted out from one of the doors and was taking aim.
She was quickly and efficiently brought down by Lin, who seized both crossbow and the guard’s baton. Lin whirled, bringing the baton around in a brutal arc that smashed the guard’s ribs.
Moussa jabbed at the intercom next to the door and yelled, “We’re here, Emir!”
“Opening now,” came Emir’s voice through the intercom, and the silver doors parted. Moussa didn’t dash through immediately, waiting for Lin, who was busy shooting crossbow bolts at charging guards.
There was a commotion on one of the walkways over Lin’s head and a flurry of movement. Moussa grinned fiercely as Nathan leaped down lightly, and the three of them rushed into the Animus Room as Emir slammed the door closed behind them.
***
Cal was fully aware that he was still in the Animus. He understood that none of this was real, perhaps even less real than Aguilar’s memories had been. He could see them, could hear them, but he couldn’t smell his mother’s lavender perfume, and, although he had been able to touch—even kill—the holographic images previously, he was afraid to reach for his mother, lest she dissolve like a fragile and perfect dream.
Her words, like her face, were beautiful. “You’re not alone, Cal,” she assured him. “You never were.”
And oh, it was her voice. He could hear it now in his head, as he had heard it so many times, reciting the Robert Frost poem, deliberately, sweetly and subtly planting the importance of tending apples into the receptive brain of a well-loved, contented child.
Her image continued speaking, and he drank in every word. “The past is behind us… but the choices we make live with us forever.”
She paused, her eyes searching his face. Then she did begin to quote. But it was not the childhood poem.
“Where other men blindly follow the truth, remember…”
“… nothing is true.” His voice was rough and thick with emotion. He hadn’t thought he would remember the words Aguilar de Nerha had spoken.
Perhaps he simply had never forgotten them.
“Where other men are limited by morality or law, remember…”
“… everything is permitted.”
Her face was bright with pride, even as it was softened by sorrow. “We work in the dark to serve the Light.”
Cal took a breath.
“We are… Assassins.”
She turned slightly as an additional figure stepped forward into the circle.
Cal felt another stab of pain and joy commingled as the new figure lifted its head. He knew the face beneath that cowl.
It was his father.
Not as Cal had last seen him, aged and stooped and soft and so, so close to broken, with milky eyes and a face twisted by years of internal torment.
The man who stood before Cal was the Joseph Cal had remembered, would always want to remember, before the Templars had come, and his world had become a living hell.
More than anything, Cal wanted to hold onto this moment. It had been the basis of both his sweetest dreams and most horrifying nightmares. He didn’t understand exactly what he was doing, and therefore could not prolong it.
So it was that, one by one, in the same haunting silence with which they had arrived, the Assassins turned and walked away, disappearing whence they had come.
His parents were the last to leave.
His mother gave him a final, loving look, then she and his father turned away from him. Cal watched their retreating, hooded shapes for as long as he could, but then his eyes blurred too much for him to see them clearly, and then they were gone.
But, as his mother had assured him, he was not alone.
New brothers and sisters had come to him while she had been speaking to him; fighting for their lives to reach this room, this moment. He looked at them as he reached back a hand and plucked off the epidural unit, which had proven to be both torment and unexpected, joyful gift. Unfastening the belt, with its hated Abstergo logo, by himself for the first time gave him a sense of severance.
“What now, Pioneer?” challenged Moussa; Moussa, who had once dared him to jump; who, Cal now realized, had been analyzing him the moment he had stumbled, half-blind and terrified, into the rooftop gardens.
Moussa, who was Baptiste. As he was, in a way, Aguilar.
Lin stood beside him, silent, expectant. Even Nathan stood with Cal now, after what he had witnessed.
“We fight,” Cal said.
***
They were pounding at the walls now; not with their batons, not anymore. The guards were wielding heavy, sharp blades, weapons that looked as though they could double as batons and swords.
Emir had suspected it would come to this. The Templars might be thugs, without the grace and finesse of Assassin training, but both Rikkins were fiercely intelligent. They would know there was something different about the Pioneer. They would no longer send their people to torment or bully or beat; they had now sent them to kill.
There were so many, all hammering on the glass, trying to reach one lone inmate. Ten—a dozen—fifteen—Emir swelled with pride, and the part of him that still felt as Yusuf did was content.
Emir had done what he needed to. He had kept his word. He had held the Templars off long enough for his fellow Assassins to break into the Animus Room and find the Pioneer. He had unleashed every other prisoner, so they would have a chance to fight for their lives, as Assassins should, and not die slaughtered in a cage like beasts.
The glass finally shat
tered and they poured in, a wave of black and the glitter of their bright metal weapons, and still Emir fought them. In the end, it took four of them to hold him still enough for one of them to stab him.
This is better, he thought fleetingly.
And Yusuf Tazim agreed.
***
There were weapons all around them. Weapons that had belonged to Assassins down through the centuries—antiques, relics, carefully removed from the immediacy and urgency of the present and kept in locked glass cabinets.
“Where’s Emir?” Cal asked as they went to the cabinets and began to select their choice of weapons.
“Took control of the surveillance room,” Nathan said. “Let me out. Let us all out.”
And, Cal realized, had locked the door to the Animus Room to buy them some time.
He didn’t ask when or how Emir intended on joining them. Cal knew, as he suspected the others knew as well, that Emir’s choice to barricade himself in the surveillance room would almost certainly be a one-way trip.
Some of the weapons were deeply familiar to the four Assassins, though their physical hands had perhaps never held them. Cal strode up to a bow. A shiver ran down his spine as he recalled grasping it, nocking an arrow, and letting fly. He smashed the glass with his blade and reached to pick it up, shaking off the broken shards. As he turned to find a quiver of arrows, he saw the others doing the same.
Moussa had found a most unusual gauntlet, one that had sharpened claws on the tips that moved like an extension of his fingers. Cal couldn’t be sure in the dim, pulsing light, but he thought he saw that the metal of the claws was dulled by some sort of black substance.
… My name is Baptiste… Voodoo poisoner.
Nathan went straight for a sword, a beautiful thing, with a basket hilt of ornately swirling metalwork. He lifted it, smiling slightly, and cut the air with it a time or two. His whole body changed, going from gangly and frenetic to poised and aristocratic. On his other arm, he wore a hidden blade.
And Lin… Cal didn’t even know what it was she grasped. Something made of leather, with a hidden blade that sprang forth as smoothly as the day it was crafted, despite the passage of hundreds of years. It was only when she slipped it on her left foot and did a practice flying kick that he realized her hidden blade was on her shoe—and how lethal it could be.
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