Chapter Text
CIPHER
Prologue
- - -
Italy, September 12th, 2012
- - -
Stark moonlight was glinting off the chrome-and-glass surface of the Animus, but Lucy had no attention to spare for that impromptu piece of art, man-made and beautified by nature. Clutching the handle of the electrical shock baton, she half stood, half crouched in a corner of the wide open space, eyes riveted on the spectacle before her: Dr. Vidic, on his back and limbs flailing like a cockroach-turned-over, spittle flying from lips pulled back.
Desmond, above him, one knee on the good doctor's shoulder, the other pressed in what Lucy imagined must have been a very painful way into Vidic's groin. One arm was raised, the sleeve there already blood-soaked; Desmond, looking like a bird of prey ready to strike but savoring the moment before the kill.
Around them, the wide open space in chaos: chairs toppled over, plexiglass partitions smashed, broken and smoking pieces of electrical equipment littering the erstwhile pristine floor. A dead guard, in this corner. Another dead guard, over there.
Blood everywhere.
Lucy could only guess what state the rest of the facility was in. The lights had gone out long ago. So had all means of communication, and the elevators, the surveillance screens, the alarm klaxons. There was a cell phone in her pocket, but whom was she going to call? The Italian police? The Abstergo outpost, on the other side of the city?
“Rot in hell,” Vidic snarled, defiant to the last moment. His hands, like fragile, pale spiders, were not so much pushing Desmond away as clawing into the fabric of the white, hooded sweater. “Upstart. Loser. Deserter. Good for nothing, fucking bartender.”
Above him, unfazed, Desmond shrugged. “I've heard worse.” And brought his upraised arm down sharply, right into his target's face.
Thus ended Doctor Warren Vidic: with a crunch of bone and a grunt, followed by the visceral stench of bowels opening and emptying.
What nearly turned Lucy's stomach wasn't the stench, or the way Vidic's limbs kept twitching. It was how Desmond had to use his free hand to keep Vidic's head pressed against the floor, to extricate the hidden blade from the corpse's skull.
After, with a negligent flick, Desmond retracted the blade and stood. He looked around. He looked at her, and Lucy's breath caught in her chest at the flash of gold in his eyes. She felt stripped, naked, broken down into component parts; Lucy could only hope that what little bit of bonding she'd managed in the three days since Desmond had been brought in would be enough.
She didn't want to die. She would – knew that with as much certainty as she knew that Desmond and she were now the only living beings inside the entire facility – if she went up against him. How many people to a night shift, to keep the building secure, the wheels in motion: thirty? Forty?
She'd counted twenty-seven corpses on her way here. Twenty-eight now, with Vidic gone.
Desmond looked away from her. The flash of gold faded, leaving her to wonder if she'd only imagined it, after all.
“We should get out of here,” he said, to the moon, to the corpse at his feet, still twitching, to no one in particular. Glanced back at her and smiled, boyish and friendly. “Before the cavalry arrives.”
We.
Lucy allowed herself to experience a tiny bit of hope that her ruse held. She nodded, assuming a less defensive position. There were a million questions she wanted to ask, but there would be time for that later. The plan had been all along for her to leave Abstergo's Italian research facility with Desmond in tow; who cared if now, it was apparently going to be the other way around? Vidic was dead, but there were others Lucy could report to, even higher up in the hierarchy than Warren had been.
For now, she would worry about her personal safety. She would ensure Desmond trusted her – more than he did, already – and deal with the rest later. She would -
“I wasn't talking to you, Templar,” Desmond said gently, with a smile that didn't reach his eyes.
Lucy retreated back into her corner, hope fizzling away. He knew. Somehow, he knew. For a split second, she thought about lying – about pretending, perhaps laughing and asking him if he'd somehow scrambled his brains in the few hours he'd spent in the Animus; she could tell him that she was on his side, an undercover agent, an Assassin.
She looked at his face, and the gold glow was back. It wasn't a trick of the light, or the mind. The hood of Desmond's sweater was up and his eyes shone at her like twin pools of amber from the shadows cast over his face, lit from within.
She had no idea what it was, or how he did it.
But she knew the stance Desmond assumed now, facing her. Had seen it a thousand times before, had been trained in it and taught it to others, back when...before.
Battle-ready. Lying would be of no use to her, now.
Lucy smiled, without mirth. She stood up straight, head high, and squarely looked back at him. She didn't want to die, but she wasn't afraid of death; that was something they had trained out of her, before deserting her, leaving her here, stranded without an anchor in sight.
“How?” she asked. A flick of the baton indicated the space in chaos around them, the hallways littered with corpses.
Desmond never even looked at the baton in her hand. “You wouldn't believe me, even if I told you.”
“Try me,” she challenged. “Everything we had on you, everything they had on you. . . you were a loser. A deserter. You ran away as a teenager. You had a little more than basic training but nothing that would,” she waved the baton again, pointed it at the corpse between them, “account for this. I'm assuming that you're going to kill me, anyway, so indulge me: how?”
He made no response for the longest time, standing silent and still between her and the door. Between her and a possible chance at survival, but Lucy knew how to realistically calculate the odds – she was not going to give him the pleasure of chasing her like a piece of prey. She owed herself that much dignity.
Finally, Desmond murmured, “La shay' haqiqah, koulo shay' moumkin.“
A meaningless phrase. It sounded Middle-Eastern, or perhaps it was something he'd simply made up. Frustrated suddenly at the idea that Desmond could be taunting her, or was simply toying with her, Lucy stepped forward. She raised the baton, assuming a battle-ready stance herself.
Desmond shrugged, eying her movements carefully. “It's just something he used to say. It took me years to fully understand all that it means.”
Lucy frowned. “Who?”
“Altaїr.”
That made no sense. They'd put Desmond in the Animus twice, and Lucy had poured over the recordings of those sessions, noting every minute detail. Even if Altaїr had said that particular phrase, whatever it meant, Desmond would have repeated it in English, not what she was now assuming was Arabic. The Animus had an internal translation program. And. . .'years'?
“Explain,” she demanded. “You sound as if you know him personally.”
“I do. Him, and the other one. They raised me.”
Was the man insane? There had been Subjects – one of them in particular, but Lucy shied away from thinking of him, now – who'd lost their minds inside the Animus, unable to handle the psychological strain, the Bleed. There had been Subjects who 'bonded' with their ancestors on levels that had made Lucy uneasy. The lines always blurred, sooner or later; some handled it well, some couldn't handle it at all.
None had ever claimed to have been raised by their ancestors, however. Neither had any of them ever succumbed so swiftly to the Animus' debilitating effects.
“That's crazy,” Lucy said baldly. “You're crazy.”
“Perhaps.” Desmond cocked his head and regarded her intently. His hand flexed at his side, fingers curling and uncurling. He seemed to be making his mind up about something, and said, “It began with a flash of light.”
Lucy couldn't help it: she snorted. As if she'd needed any more confirmation that Desmond had a few screws loose. “And God said, let there be light?”
“No.” His expression hardened, making him look older, colder. She realized with a start he was being deadly serious. “Not God. There was just light. It changed everything.”
And despite it all – despite the corpse between them and the facility in silent ruin around them, despite the emergency crew possibly on their way already from all the way across the city, or the Assassins closing in, despite her death looming more closely now than it ever had before – despite the absurdity of it all: Lucy listened.
Chapter ONE
- - -
New York, April 6th, 2010
- - -
There was light.
Not at the end of a tunnel, though Desmond could certainly claim to have developed something of a tunnel-vision by now, exhausted as he was; not shining from above, either. There was no moon tonight, no stars, and the only source of electrical illumination was a lamp across the street, blinking erratically and emitting a static hum.
There was light, a tiny globe of it, floating at eye-level. Desmond stopped mid-stride, arrested by the sight of that hovering speck. It was late – or very early, depending which side of midnight you lived on – and he was tired: bone-deep weary, the kind of fatigue brought on by a seemingly endless shift at work, magnified by a heatwave that had been holding the city in an unforgiving death grip for a week now.
He blinked. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed a palm over his face. His skin was sweaty, and he longed for a shower and rest, a few precious hours of sleep with the A/C on full blast. Tonight had been so dull. None of the bar's patrons had been in a chatty mood. There hadn't even been one of the usual brawls, which tended to liven up the monotony until calls to the police and emergency services were due.
When he looked again, the light was still there. In fact, it had come closer – close enough for him to see that it wasn't a particularly determined firefly.
Desmond took a step back. He looked around. The street was deserted, not unusual for four o'clock in the morning. All the windows were dark. He was a block away from his apartment, a block away from trudging up the stairs to the fifth floor because surely no one had bothered to fix the broken elevator yet. . .
And there was a light in his way.
“What the hell,” Desmond murmured. He thought about alien abductions, the kind of stories told in cheap tabloid papers and cheaper paperbacks; he thought about his paranoia, faithful and steady companion, and how his mind sometimes played tricks on him when he was overly tired. He thought about the possibility that someone had slipped something into the one drink he'd allowed himself, near the end of his shift. “Go away. Shoo.”
The light zipped closer.
It came at him so fast that Desmond flailed backwards, undignified, a yelp of surprise making it past his lips. He'd felt the heat there, for a second, too close to his face, and his eyes were beginning to water from the intensity of the brightness.
Out of sheer reflex, he batted a hand at the light, as one would bat away an annoying fly.
The light exploded.
It consumed him. It invaded his eyes, his ears, his mouth, his nostrils: it crept into every pore of his skin and wound around the strands of his hair, and then it tore him apart. The resulting agony took his breath away.
The street vanished from under the soles of his sneakers, turning into something molten, liquid gold shot through with darker veins, sinister and powerful. When at last Desmond managed to draw enough breath into lungs that felt as if they were on fire, he screamed into a glowing void, shapeless and infinite.
A voice boomed out of that shapeless void, assaulting his ears. The words were in a language Desmond had never heard before and certainly didn't care about: his ears were bursting, his skin was shriveling up, his bones were bending -
“For you to shape and mold, Son of None,” the voice said, suddenly in flawless English. “We do this for you.”
Desmond tilted around his body's axis. His stomach rebelled. He was amazed he still had a stomach he could feel rebelling. He felt torn asunder, violated; that fucking light was everywhere and he hurt like he'd never hurt before, on levels that went beyond torn skin and broken bone.
“Do not disappoint,” the voice said.
With an audible snap, the light ceased to exist. For a bare second Desmond saw the shape of a woman, tall and imposing, stern-looking in strange garb. She smiled at him, grimly, her lips moving, forming words that never reached his ears: reality asserted itself in a renewed rush of agony, robbing Desmond of any coherent thought.
Darkness enveloped him, a welcome refuge from too much brightness. It offered oblivion, sanctuary from the pain. Thankful, Desmond surrendered to it.
- - -
Masyaf, April 6th, 1192
- - -
“. . .was a mistake!”
“I know what I'm doing.”
“Do you? Do you really know?”
Too loud. Desmond surfaced from darkness and the lulling nothingness of dreamless sleep with a groan, wishing both speakers to hell. He opened his eyes, saw indistinct shapes, blurry and fuzzy, and closed them again. He felt weightless, as if afloat, whatever surface he lay on moving in a steady rhythm that did nothing to calm the sudden queasiness that came in the wake of regaining consciousness.
“He is awake,” said the first speaker, after a pregnant pause.
“I can see that, thank you.”
Far too loud. Desmond attempted to tell them both to go to hell, but his throat felt as if it was covered in sandpaper and what came out was a croak, rough and painful. He lay on something that was moving and was covered with something unpleasantly scratchy rubbing against skin that felt far too sensitive, as if he'd sustained a sunburn.
He was prodded. He was poked. Both actions only served to drive home the point that Desmond was in pain, feeling as if he'd been put through one hell of a fight with someone twice his sight and three times his weight. He made a disgruntled noise, hoping that whoever was doing the prodding and poking would get the hint and leave him the heck alone, at least until he'd regained his bearings.
He'd been on his way home. He'd been wishing for a shower and bed.
He remembered the light.
Desmond forced his eyes open, willed himself to ignore the many aches of his body. He distinctly remembered the light, but only very little of what followed, something he had a feeling he should be thankful for. Above everything, though, he remembered the darkness closing about him, which meant he'd lost consciousness.
Which meant he had no idea where he was, or who was touching him.
He pushed himself up, both palms shoving against the moving surface. He managed to get his knees under him, but he didn't manage to stand: his muscles wouldn't properly respond to his commands, and there was something wrong with his center of gravity.
A hand at his back steadied him. It covered him from shoulder blades to tailbone.
Desmond looked up. The fuzzy shapes resolved into furniture and walls, some place he'd never seen before. The moving surface turned into a giant of a man, reclining on a sort of couch. He wore a strange kind of robe, black, with a large hood and embroidery at the lapels.
Desmond was kneeling on the giant's belly. It was the giant's hand on his back.
The giant wore Desmond's face.
Desmond sat back on his heels, stupefied. After a lengthy pause, the giant-wearing-his-face offered, “Hello.”
Someone groaned. Desmond turned his head just in time to witness another giant, sitting by the side of the couch in an elaborately carved chair, dragging a palm over his face in obvious annoyance. This giant had black hair and a scruffy goatee, gray eyes; he dropped his hand to his knee and shook his head at the other giant.
“You know nothing of children, Altaїr.”
“Neither do you,” the giant-wearing-Desmond's-face pointed out, rather testily. And added, “This isn't a child, at any rate.”
Desmond decided someone had slipped a roofie into his one drink at the bar, after all. He was hallucinating. He'd tripped over something on the way home, hit his head; he was probably lying face-down on the sidewalk right now. Hopefully, some kindhearted pedestrian would think to call an ambulance, rather than snap a photo and post it on Facebook or Tumblr with an embarrassing capture.
That would be more than embarrassing, actually. That would be downright dangerous, considering the need for anonymity much of Desmond's current lifestyle depended on. Photos of him appearing all over the Internet were the last thing he needed.
“Here,” said the black-haired giant. He offered a cup to Desmond. “Drink this.”
Desmond stared at the cup. It wasn't like any cup he'd ever seen before. It was shallow and looked hand-made. It had no handle. The liquid in it gave off small clouds of condensation and smelled faintly sweet.
'I'm going to wake up any moment now,' Desmond thought, reaching for the cup. He was parched, and really, none of this was anything but an illusion. The giants could offer him rainbow-shaped cookies and he would eat them – it wasn't going to affect him.
It wasn't his hand, reaching for the cup.
Desmond blinked. This wasn't his hand. This was a child's hand, plump and short-fingered, with tiny fingernails.
“Uh-oh,” the black-haired giant murmured, pulling the cup away.
Desmond looked at his wrist. Not his wrist. He looked at his arm, soft and round, not muscular like he was used to. He looked down at himself, saw a flat chest, undeveloped and hairless. Knobby knees. Not his knees.
Not his body.
The giant-wearing-his-face shifted and Desmond nearly tumbled sideways, too caught up in this recent development to his hallucination, dream, drug-induced illusion – whatever it was – to compensate for the unexpected movement. Hands caught him, strong and long-fingered, wrapping around his torso with a strength that hinted at the ability to crush the life right out of him.
He was lifted. Lifted!
He'd been covered with a blanket, and that slipped away now as he dangled, held aloft by the giant's hands.
He felt the pressure against his ribcage, his back where those long fingers met. He smelled the giant's breath as words were uttered, smelled a faint trace of garlic and other spices, food recently eaten. He didn't understand a word that was said, hearing only a kind of rushing noise, like the wind following in the wake of a passing train.
These men weren't giants. It was Desmond who was tiny. Tiny and naked.
“. . .can explain,” the one called Altaїr, the one wearing Desmond's face, was saying. “The Piece of Eden -”
“That's not important right now,” the black-haired one snapped. “Look at him! He's about to -”
Desmond decided right there and then that he'd had enough: he'd been a passive participant in this for far too long. Whether or not it was a hallucination, whether or not he was experiencing a very realistic effect of drugs or suffering through a head trauma resulting from hitting the pavement, he was not going to remain passive any longer. At the very least, he was going to put some much-needed space between himself and everyone else.
He kicked Altaїr in the face. Hard.
Pain shot up from his heel to his hip from the force of it, but he achieved the desired result: he was let go. Dropping the short distance to the couch, Desmond bounced – scrabbled for purchase while above him, a surprised rather than pained grunt sounded, and rolled over the edge of the seat to a cold marble floor.
He'd created just enough of a window of opportunity for himself to gain a swift overview of the room. Desmond darted for the first thing that offered shelter: a heavy, tall bookshelf, the lowest shelf just high enough above the floor that he could slip under it.
He robbed through dust, all the way until he encountered the solidity of a wall.
There, he curled up, his back against rough, cool stone. He closed his eyes, put his palms over his ears, and resolved himself to wait until all of this was over.
He waited for a long time.
He waited until the muffled sounds of agitated conversation reaching him under the bookshelf faded, and then he waited some more. Once or twice, he opened his eyes. No one attempted to drag him out of his hiding place. He was faintly surprised they didn't: the bookshelf wasn't that large. A grown man could have simply reached under it and grabbed him.
Eventually the cool stone began to leech the warmth out of him. He became aware, anew, of how he was still aching, and remembered more clearly now all that had come in the wake of the exploding light: that feeling of bending bones and shriveling skin – as though he'd been shrinking, but no, that was insane, that was crazy.
Wasn't it? He was, after all, small enough to be hiding under a bookshelf at the moment.
The third time Desmond opened his eyes, there was a pair of boots in his line of sight. They shifted, crossing at the ankles, and whoever they belonged to sat down cross-legged fluidly. A hand appeared, and Desmond tensed, but it was only another cup that was set down on the floor and then pushed gently under the bookshelf, dispensing fragrant steam.
The hand was missing its ring-finger. A minor detail, noted and immediately discarded as meaningless information. The cup was of far more interest to Desmond at the moment, but he hesitated to reach for it.
He was so thirsty. Yet caution had ruled him, caution and paranoia, ever since he'd broken free and made his own path. So far, neither Altaїr nor the other man had acted in order to harm him, but still. . .
“I can explain everything,” a quiet voice, his voice, offered, answering to his doubts. “I went through much trouble to get you. Believe me when I tell you that I will not harm you.”
To get him? Desmond remembered the woman's voice. For you to shape and mold, Son of None.
None of this made sense.
At a glacial pace, he reached for the cup, half-expecting to have his wrist grabbed. When no antagonistic move was made, Desmond tugged the cup closer, lifting himself awkwardly on one elbow to take a cautious sip. It was tea, something herbal and heavily sweetened. To mask the taste of poison?
It tasted heavenly and was a balm to his parched throat.
“Will you come out from under there, or am I going to hold this conversation with Malik's collection of maps?”
Who was Malik? Probably the black-haired man. He didn't seem to be in the room, now. Desmond took another sip of tea, weighing his options. He rather liked it here, under the bookshelf, if only because it at least offered a semblance of shelter. Half of him was still convinced he'd wake up any moment now, to a nurse's tender smile or at the very least the trash-littered sidewalk.
The other half was slowly coming to terms with the fact that this wasn't a hallucination or a dream.
That meant having to face whatever was out there, including the man who'd offered him tea and an explanation.
Desmond set the cup down. Apprehension crawled along his spine, but he beat it down; he'd never been a coward and he wasn't going to start being one now. Still, he robbed slowly back toward the edge of the shelf. There was a moment when he was half out, half still under it, when he lifted his head and looked up to see a painfully familiar pair of eyes watching him avidly, when it felt like he was making a dire mistake.
He pushed himself to his feet. With Altaїr sitting on the floor and Desmond standing, their faces were roughly on the same level. Wordless, tense, Desmond noted that although there were many similarities, there were enough differences, too: Altaїr's face was narrower, his skin darker, his cheekbones more prominent. He certainly had more of a beard shadow than Desmond, too.
He wanted a mirror, suddenly. He wanted to know what he looked like, now. Most of all, he wanted to know why they looked so much alike. Did he have a twin brother his parents had somehow forgot to mention?
Altaїr moved his hand. Desmond shrank back, bumping into the bookshelf. “Don't touch me!”
His voice sounded younger, higher.
“I won't,” Altaїr said. He reached under the bookshelf and retrieved the cup. “Do you remember what happened?”
“There was a light. . .” This was going to take some time getting used to, this voice. Desmond glared at the man sitting before him. “You said you went through trouble to 'get me'. Why?”
“The Apple said it was important that I train you.”
Desmond blinked. “A fruit told you to -”
“No. Not an apple. The Apple.” Altaїr chuckled under his breath. “Sometimes I wish it was just a fruit, but. . .” He cocked his head, regarding Desmond quietly. “Come. I will show you.”
Desmond had half a mind to kick Altaїr in the face again, if only to release some of his mounting frustration. Apples? Flashing lights that shrunk him? He'd been hoping for some kind of explanation for this insanity. Instead, every word he heard only added more confusion.
Altaїr rose to his feet, black robe billowing around him. Cup in hand, he hesitated. “Will you allow me to carry you? And perhaps, some clothes before we leave the room.”
Desmond stared up at him. “Carry me? Why?”
“It would help with the ruse.”
“What ruse?”
“That you're my son.” Altaїr put the cup down on a nearby table and picked up a small bundle of cloth. “I was going to have to explain your existence somehow, and that seemed the easiest way.” He hesitated again, glancing sideways at Desmond. “It might also help if you acted less like an adult, at least around the others.”
“I am a fucking adult!” Desmond shouted, despite all evidence currently saying otherwise. “You can't just – you can't just kidnap me! And what's with this fucking shrinking business? Who the hell do you think you are?”
Altaїr remained infuriatingly calm in the face of Desmond's outbreak. If anything, the man seemed slightly amused, which only served to make Desmond that much madder. Stalking across the room, he prepared to deliver what he hoped was going to be a painful kick to Altaїr's ankle, but before his foot connected, Altaїr bent and simply lifted him up.
Again.
“Put me down!” Desmond snarled, infuriated. Just because he was smaller now didn't mean everyone got a free turn at grabbing him whenever they felt like it. He attempted to kick Altaїr in the face again, but the man learned fast: he held him at arm's length this time. “You've got no right! Put me the fuck -”
“La shay' haqiqah, koulo shay' moumkin.”
Meaningless gibberish. “What?”
Altaїr's eyes narrowed, much of his amusement bleeding away into a sombre expression. “'Nothing is true. Everything is permitted'. So, I have every right.”
The last time Desmond had heard these particular words, it had been his father speaking them, right before launching into another lecture about Desmond's lack of understanding of what they meant. That had been in another place, almost another lifetime. Shocked to hear the familiar phrase, Desmond stared hard at the other man. Altaїr was an Assassin?
He certainly didn't look like one, what with the black, embroidered robe and the strange-looking tunic under it. And what was it with that odd, wide belt? Not to mention that red sash under it. Those clothes looked more like they'd come out of some role-playing game, someone's attempt to recreate something that might have been in fashion several hundred years -
Desmond's train of thought came to a screeching halt.
He looked past Altaїr. He hadn't paid much attention to the room before, only enough to locate his temporary shelter under the bookshelf; now he did, fighting off rising panic. There were colorfully woven carpets on the wall. Potted, exotic plants livened up the corners. There was a fountain at one wall, bubbling merrily.
There was a notable lack of anything that approached electronics or looked even remotely modern. The furniture looked handmade, lacking the uniform smoothness that came with industrialized manufacturing procedures. Even the chandelier above held what looked like real candles.
The entire place looked like it came straight out of '1001 Arabian Nights”.
“This is,” Desmond said, unable to continue. This was some elaborate plot – something the Templars had thought up, or someone, at any rate, with the intention to. . .what? Confuse him? They'd certainly managed that. “Where am I?”
Altaїr sat him down on the table. He shook out the bundle of cloth he'd held before, which turned out to be a tunic similar to the one he was wearing. Without further ado, he proceeded to pull the thing over Desmond's head, tugging and adjusting until he was satisfied.
It was a shapeless, scratchy piece of clothing, coming down to Desmond's knees, but he suddenly lacked the strength to protest the manhandling. He had been kidnapped, he had been shrunk, and he had the distinct feeling that it was only going to get worse.
Altaїr picked him up again, tucking Desmond into the crook of one arm. “The question you should be asking,” he said, walking over to a tall window and opening it, “is when.”
The sight that greeted him outside the window made Desmond forget about being angry at being picked up once more.
Sunlight, golden and warm, poured over the ragged tips of a distant mountain range, cresting in the valley below. Miniature huts clustered on the banks of a winding river, square and unlike any houses Desmond had ever seen before. The roads, mere trampled dust from the looks of it, were haphazardly laid, edged by trees and shrubbery that were foreign to him.
Everything was foreign to him. The people, moving busily to and fro between the huts, wore strange clothes. Sheep and cattle grazed on meager grass, and even these animals had a rugged, undomesticated look to them.
Altaїr climbed out of the window, ignoring Desmond's surprised, fearful squawk of protest. A short drop and a jarring impact landed them on a short walkway, ten feet or so beneath the window. It connected two towers, Desmond saw, looking around – the one they had come from, and another, even taller one.
Dizzy from many new impressions, short of breath when the implications began to fully sink in, Desmond craned his neck, looking around while Altaїr nonchalantly made his way to the approximate middle between the two towers.
Around them rose a fortress, built from and into the sand-colored rock, presiding majestically over the valley and the village below. Banners fluttered in the warm, mild breeze, emblazoned with a familiar sigil, red on white. Below them, on a steep path winding between rocky outcrops, men and women had set up a market of sorts, and many voices reached Desmond's ears while he looked, the speakers too far away to make out individual words. White-clad, hooded individuals moved between the peasants, openly displaying, and Desmond blinked at the sight of that, bows and swords.
There were horses. There were horse-drawn carts. There were fires lit, around which people sat and talked.
There were no cars. There were no telephone poles, no cell phone towers, no skyscrapers.
“Welcome to Masyaf, Desmond Miles,” Altaїr said. “The year is 1192, and it is spring.”
“Bullshit,” Desmond said automatically. “That's bullshit. You're telling me this is the past? That I'm in the past?”
“Yes.”
“Bullshit,” Desmond repeated.
Altaїr said, “Hold on.”
He'd meant it literally – Desmond suddenly had to clutch tightly at a damnably smooth robe to save himself from a sharp drop to the ground as the support of Altaїr's arm vanished and he was left dangling from the man's front. Cursing under his breath, heart beating in his throat, Desmond managed to wrap his arms around Altaїr's neck – turned his head and saw one of the towers approaching at an alarmingly fast rate -
“No, no, nononono -”
And then they were scaling up the sheer wall. Or rather, Altaїr was, while Desmond clung to him like grim death, hating this small body's slow reflexes and lack of strength. He glanced down, to where the walkway was rapidly further and further away at a speed that shouldn't have been humanly possible. How high up were they, now? Ten feet? Twenty?
A drop from that height would kill him.
He shut his eyes and concentrated on holding on.
In less than a minute, their rapid ascent came to a halt. Altaїr wasn't even breathing hard when he swung over the edge of the top of the tower, as if scaling sheer walls was something he did every day. Desmond, on the other hand, felt as though someone had torn the muscles out of his arms and shoulders and replaced them with white-hot strings of pain.
Altaїr's low chuckle did nothing to soothe beyond-frayed nerves. “You can let go now.”
Currently not trusting his voice, Desmond settled for a dark glower – and a quiet promise to himself to stab Altaїr with the next piece of sharp metal he could get his hands on. He was trembling all over and only half of that came from the strain of holding on.
As soon as there was solid ground under his feet, he staggered out of arm's reach. Desmond wasn't afraid of heights; hanging from some stranger's neck, a stranger who wore his face, dependent. . . was something else altogether.
The top of the tower was remarkably plain: rough stone, a hatch to one side that allowed access to whatever was inside the tower, a flag pole, which Desmond clutched at, catching his breath. Up here, the breeze was sharper, colder. The air smelled clean – none of the metallic tang that was so typical to big cities, where thousands, if not millions, of human beings lived far too closely together and the streets were congested with vehicles.
The view was breathtaking.
Not that there was much to see: beyond the valley and the village was open land, plain and bare under the sun to one side, while the other side was mountainous. Shielding his eyes against the brightness, Desmond turned in a slow circle, hoping for some kind of sign, something that would belie Altaїr's claim. A belching factory in the distance, or perhaps the well-known, smooth band of a concrete street, or the skyline of a city somewhere.
“Do you not wonder,” Altaїr asked, “why we look so much alike?”
There was nothing.
Desmond glanced over his shoulder to find Altaїr seated cross-legged once more, hands folded under his chin. Of course he wondered. It was impossible not to. He just wasn't sure if any more convoluted explanations weren't going to send him running screaming off into the distance, convinced he'd utterly lost his mind.
“I'm your ancestor,” Altaїr said.
“And you kidnapped me.” Desmond twirled a hand at their surroundings. “Into the past.”
Altaїr nodded.
“Why?”
“I told you: it is important that I train you. Much hinges on you in the future. If I'm to believe what the Apple tells me, the existence of the human race.”
“I. . . “ Desmond didn't know what to say, other than stating the obvious: that Altaїr was insane. Staring at the rough stone of the tower's roof, he was at a loss. He felt like screaming, after all. “I want a mirror.”
No answer came for so long that Desmond thought his request was going to be ignored. Then cloth rustled, boot scraped against stone, and Altaїr's bulk blocked the sun. Desmond was lifted once more. This time, he didn't mind it so much.
Altaїr opened the hatch and descended a steep wooden ladder into the interior of the tower. It was notably cooler inside and smelled distinctly of bird droppings. Wooden beams were arranged along the walls around them and above their heads. A pair of pigeons roosted in a corner, watching their descent.
Soon wooden ladders and beams gave way to solid stone floors and marble staircases. Voices reached them, and Desmond began to wonder how everyone around him, including Altaїr and that other man, Malik, spoke flawless English when all evidence pointed to this being the Middle East – the Middle East in the past, no less.
“Don't speak unless you're prepared to be looked at oddly,” Altaїr murmured. They were approaching a heavy door flanked by a pair of guards, who bowed shortly to Altaїr and looked with open curiosity at Desmond. “Many of my men are a lot less open-minded than I am.”
Desmond wondered what the hell that was supposed to mean, but shelved his questions for later. Both guards were heavily armed, their faces stern-looking and weathered, their eyes dark and their gazes intent.
“Mentor,” one of them, with a black beard, greeted. “I've not yet had the pleasure of congratulating you on the unexpected return of your son. Allah smiles on you, Altaїr.”
'Mentor'? Desmond eyed the guards with curiosity. The black-bearded one's greeting had been cordial enough, but there was something. . .
“Many thanks,” Altaїr said. He sounded different now, harder. Even his posture had changed, Desmond feeling the tension.
“I trust you find our great and splendid fortress to your liking?”
Desmond realized the question had been aimed at him. Floundering, he looked between Altaїr and the black-bearded guard, hoping for some kind of pointer, but Altaїr's gaze was fixed straight ahead and the guard was slowly lifting an eyebrow.
He settled for nodding, convinced that not speaking was by far the safer option.
“By Allah, he does look a lot like you,” the other guard said, stepping closer. “But his skin! So pale. Is he sick?”
“Hardly. His mother kept him indoors, that is all.” Imperiously, Altaїr glanced down his nose at the two guards, impatience barely masked. “Now, if you'll excuse us. . .”
“Of course, of course, Mentor.” The black-bearded guard stepped away and bowed once more, while his partner unlocked and opened the door. “May the evening find you and yours well, Altaїr.”
“You, as well, Abbas.”
As soon as they'd stepped through and the door was shut behind them, Desmond bent his head close to Altaїr's and asked in a heated whisper, “What the hell was that?”
“My position here and the. . .way I acquired it is the cause of some dispute. I am the Mentor of the Levantine Brotherhood.” Altaїr smiled in a way that showed teeth. “Not all of my brothers agree with that. I will explain later.”
Desmond sighed noisily. So it had been hostility he'd sensed, from the guard called Abbas. Wonderful.
“Did it ever occur to you that kidnapping me and somehow sticking me in the body of a fucking toddler is leaving me at a serious disadvantage?” They were on a wide walkway, apparently deserted, but Desmond still kept his voice to a whisper. “What am I supposed to do if one of your 'brothers' decides to come after me? Kick them in the ankle?”
Altaїr headed for yet another staircase. “That will not happen.”
“Oh, great, that makes me feel so -“
“Desmond.” Altaїr stopped walking. He shifted Desmond, just enough so they were facing one another. Gone was the smile, replaced by an expression so intent and glacially calm Desmond trailed off mid-sentence, transfixed. “They'd have to go through me, to get to you. That will not happen.”
People speaking in absolutes usually found out sooner or later that nothing in the world was purely black and white. Unsettled, but unwilling to pursue the subject further at the moment, Desmond averted his gaze. He knew he hadn't yet fully grasped all that had happened to him, but already he felt that much more insecure than he had ten minutes ago.
Altaїr appeared equally as unwilling to speak further of this. Their walk continued in silence, down a wide, marble staircase that connected to a grander staircase, which ended in a wide hall. Through an open doorway, Desmond glimpsed at bit of a garden, pleasant and neat with white stone paths and lush greenery.
Altaїr headed further into the fortress, however. Soon, Desmond lost count of the turns they took and the doors they passed; the place hadn't looked that large from his vantage point atop the tower, but he noticed now that his initial impression had been misleading.
At long last they arrived at yet another heavy door. Beyond lay a lavish room, spacious and airy. Tall, wide windows let in the full brightness of the sun and the breeze. The entire place was cluttered in the way that spoke of homeliness: bookshelves and tables were overflowing with yellowed parchment and leather-bound tomes. Clothes had been piled in one corner, black and white and brown leather, boots and sandals and slippers in a smaller pile in another corner. An assortment of odd items lined the shelves and the tables, instruments Desmond couldn't make heads or tails of, and one wall was covered almost entirely with a beautifully hand-drawn map of a city.
A wide bed stood against one wall, blankets and pillows strewn everywhere. Amid them lounged the black-haired man Desmond had seen before – Malik? He was pouring over a large tome, a plate of fruit and flat bread on a small table within arm's reach.
“News of your acrobatics up the tower are all over Masyaf,” Malik said by way of greeting. He didn't even look up from his reading, displaying none of the air of servitude the two guards had shown, laced with hostility as it may have been. “I hear the path guards already made bets as to when they'll have to scrape your shattered body off the rocks.”
Altaїr set Desmond down, apparently used to Malik's way of speaking. “I've been climbing that tower since I was twelve years old.”
“Yes, yes. . . and never fallen off once. I know.” At last, Malik looked up. “Not yet, at any rate.”
Desmond didn't know what to make of the other man. The way they conversed spoke of some familiarity, and Malik was either in Altaїr's personal chambers, or they were in Malik's. He glanced up at Altaїr, who was in the process of taking off his black, embroidered robe, noting for the first time that they even wore their hair cut in a similar style.
He looked away. Malik was eying him with unbridled curiosity, Altaїr was, for the time being, ignoring him, and that sensation of uneasiness, queasiness settled in the pit of Desmond's stomach again.
He was stranded, in a foreign place, in a time that wasn't his own, surrounded by people he didn't know, and the man responsible for it all apparently expected him to just take it in stride.
There was a mirror across the room, squeezed in between a tall bookshelf and a large wooden mannequin of sorts, the latter hung with all kinds of belts, weapons and other knickknacks. Slowly, Desmond made his way over, stepping over discarded scrolls, around a small mountain of haphazardly stacked books.
The boy staring back at him out of the mirror was a stranger.
There had been no commemorative family photos during Desmond's childhood, yet another security measure to protect the children growing up well-guarded and suffocated in that awful place, the 'Farm'. Desmond's memory of himself as a child was fuzzy, indistinct – he mostly recalled those forced moments of happiness during birthday parties, where everyone gathered to pretend they weren't raising their children in what amounted to prison, cut off from the outside world by choice.
The boy – he looked normal enough, Desmond supposed. Small, with short legs and knobby knees. The tunic hung off of him at odd angles – it was too large. His face was round, his head crowned by a tousled mess of short, dark hair. The scar across his mouth, acquired during a heated training session with his father, was gone. He looked three, maybe four years old.
Desmond wanted to scream.
Instead, he said, “This is obscene.” He half-turned away from the mirror. Altaїr had settled on the edge of the bed next to Malik, barefoot, and both men were regarding him quietly. “Turn me back,” Desmond demanded, pointing at his reflection. “You had no right to turn me into – into this.”
“I told you -” Altaїr began.
“I don't give a shit about what you told me,” Desmond grated. “Or what right you think you have! Turn me back!”
Altaїr said, “No.”
Grabbing the next thing his blurring gaze settled on, Desmond flung it in Altaїr's direction. It was a book, leather-bound and heavy. His aim was off – his strength wasn't what it used to be – and the book bounced harmlessly against the edge of the bed before it fell to the floor, scattering a few loose pages.
Altaїr looked singularly unimpressed. Malik looked like he was about to laugh.
“He certainly has your temper,” Malik commented.
Desmond wished for a knife. A stone. Anything to throw, anything that would hurt – he looked at the array of weapons hanging from the wooden mannequin, spying a set of small knives in flat sheathes. Knife-throwing had never been his forte, but he was more than willing to put what knowledge he had about that deadly art to use.
“Desmond,” Altaїr said, diverting his attention for a bare second from imagined manslaughter. He held up a dully golden ball. “Look.”
About to point out where Altaїr could shove that lump of metal, Desmond fell silent as the thing began to glow. He took an automatic step backward, vividly recalling his latest encounter with glowing things. This, however, wasn't the searing brightness that had swept him up and torn him apart. This glow was gentle, almost soothing, and there were shapes moving in that glow.
Familiar shapes. Frowning, Desmond moved closer. There was the well-known skyline of New York, brightly outlined and magnificent. A miniature sun hung peacefully above the skyscrapers, warming matchbox-cars and ant-people moving to and fro between the buildings. An airplane, trailblazing gold across the amber-colored sky, swept in a lazy curve toward Liberty Island.
The sun exploded.
That's the last time I look at anything that glows, Desmond thought, tiredly.
He braced for a renewed wave of agony as the light rushed toward him, but it wasn't pain that swept him up and carried him off into darkness, this time.
It was imagery.
- - -
Italy, September 12th, 2012
- - -
Vidic's laptop emitted a fizzle of electricity, startling Lucy. She needed a moment to collect her thoughts, realizing she stood with the baton in a loose grip at her side, completely unguarded. The moon had continued it course across the night-black sky, the shadows had shifted; Desmond was still outlined by a faint silvery glow while Lucy stood in almost complete darkness.
She cleared her throat. Still, it came out as a whisper: “What did you see?”
Desmond said quietly, “The end of the world.”