This takes place in a modern world where the assassins existed the way the games portrays them. Hope you like it :) Feel free to point out mistakes, English isn't my first language and I really like to improve my language skills!
It had been raining the whole day. Raindrops ran across the windows of the old tram. Scribbles on the walls and worn out cushions on the seats made it seem much dirtier than it really was. Malik looked up into the mouse-grey sky. 5 pm. It would be dark soon. He was on his way from university back to his small apartment. He grabbed his bag and searched for the black umbrella inside it. The textbooks and folders with notes looked unimportant. Nothing had seemed important for a long time. Malik studied history. Specifically Middle eastern history. When he started to study he had dreamt of travelling to Asia and Greece, working as an archeologist and finding documents and treasures left there hundreds of years ago for future people to explore. Now in his third year of studying, these dreams were rotting away under books about dead languages, bills and photos in black frames.
Malik opened the door the apartment he lived in. A two room, bathroom, kitchen combination in the city's outskirts. The district was as old and rotten as the tram leading to it. The rain coated the concrete buildings in wet layers of dust and blended them together with the sky. Like the sea, Malik thought to himself as he looked out of the narrow kitchen window. It was ugly, yes, but it was cheap. He took of his slightly damp cloak and proceeded to brew some coffee. While listening to the blubbering of the slowly cooking water and watching the raindrops run across the kitchen window, he realized how quiet it was. He should be used to it by now, but he still wasn't.
Three months ago he'd moved out of the flat he'd shared with some friends to live together with his little brother Kadar. They'd chosen the cheap flat, saying they'd need the money for more fun things than rent. Kadar wanted to study sociology and Malik had been glad to get his brother out of the flat where they had lived together with their parents. Living alone wasn't difficult for either of them. Their parents were busy people and they had been taking care for themselves long before moving out. It had been stressful but happy days filled with work but also with dreams and hope.
Nobody knew who it had been or even what it had been, but on their way to campus Malik and Kadar hat gotten into a terrorist attack. A small bomb had exploded in the crowded main station, killing a few people and sending many more to hospital. When Malik had woken in a hospital bed, drugged and one-armed, he'd found out that his brother had been one of the victims. After that nothing mattered anymore. The discussions on why the explosion had been so small was unimportant, why no one claimed to be responsible was unimportant, that it was decided that it had been an accident was unimportant, his parents wish to live with them was unimportant and his studies where unimportant. Kadar was gone. Malik wanted the world to stop, but it kept turning. Everything continued as if the accident never happened. The professors and other students expected him to be on time and ready while he just wanted to press pause and cry. It had gotten slightly better over the past two months, but he still felt as if he was separated from their world, like they were living a happy fantasy.
The coffee was nice but homework waited, so Malik tried to focus on the ancient Arabian testament in front of him. Fifty minutes into translating, he stumbled across an unknown word. Sighing, he searched for his phone to translate it. Shit. He'd left it in the lecture hall. Damn, this meant getting back outside into the rain again.
Luckily the phone had been dropped off at the caretakers office. Back on his way home, with an umbrella in hand, Malik thought about how the others would have reacted to somebody taking their phone. He didn't really care, there was no valuable information on it, and he was so boring to his fellow students, that nobody would take pleasure in ruining his reputation. In a way, he didn't even have one. Malik laughed inwardly, looks like my social life died with you, Kadar, he thought.
Under an underpass not far from his flat, Malik noticed a strange new arrangement of plastic bags and cardboard. A bum was shoveling around inside it. Malik passed the makeshift bed without a second glance.
"Damn this fire-creator!"
He stopped dead in his tracks. Whoever had said that had spoken the same dead language that his homework was written in. Malik turned around but he only saw the bum, trying to light a match. The guy looked off. His clothes where dirty and torn, made out of scratchy rough fabric, but that was to be expected. It was the style that was unfitting. The length of his cloak, the weird cowl, the boots. "It can't be helped. It is too wet", the bum growled.
"What did you say?!", Malik asked, his voice much more demanding than he intended it to be. The man jolted back, surprised. "I no saying a thing!", he answered in broken English, while staring into Malik's eyes. What an odd color, he thought. Suddenly a knife appeared inside the man's hand. Malik staggered backwards and lifted his hand to his head. He switched to modern Arabic: "Look, I didn't mean to threaten you! You were speaking in a very old language and caught me off guard!" The stranger tilted his head to the side slightly. "You understand I?" , he asked. He must have understood most of my last statement, Malik thought. The stranger took a step forward, Malik hands still high, stepped backwards. The man didn't exactly smell like roses. "Yes I do. Why did you use that language, where are you from?" The blade vanished. "The holy land", the bum answered in his old dialect.
Malik took a deep breath. He'd gotten himself into some deep trouble. This man didn't speak proper English, or modern Arabian, lived on the street and called a box of matches a fire-creator. It was obvious that he was insane. Malik's inner voice screamed at him for being so stupid, but another part of him was glad about the strangeness and the excitement that came with it. His life had been an endless grey slur for far too long.
A trail of emotions was visible on the strangers face. From neutral, to confused, to nervous about the fact, that he didn't get an answer. He backed away slightly. Malik tried ignore the voice in his head that told him to run, lowered his arm and regained his posture. Then he took a deep breath and stared straight at the hooded man in front of him: "Are you insane?"
It was a rhetorical question of course, but the effect it had on the stranger was astounding. His expression changed from nervousness to despair and now he was holding his hands up and shaking his head. " No I'm not! I can explain this, but please don't get them!" "Who?", Malik wondered. Understanding the man' s accent was getting easier with every sentence. "The men with the blue clothes and the screaming blue light!" He used the English word for light. It sounded like it was foreign to him. Like an unknown dish or technical term. Still, Malik caught on. The man was talking about the police. "I won't", Malik answered. So far the man hadn't done anything harmful anyway, and Malik still held on to his wish that the man might be just drunk: "But only if you can explain yourself!"
The stranger fidgeted for a second and then held out a small golden ball. " I traveled trough time. I wanted to experiment with this artifact and ended up here in the future." Malik scoffed, after piecing the explanation together with his phone's translator. The man eyed the device nervously, but didn't move. "You don't expect me to believe that do you?" His companion for the evening thought for a second. "You remember the explosion in the... station two months ago?" That got Malik's full attention. The next second Malik was blinded by light and thrown back onto the ground by what felt like a fire wall. Just like on the station. Next thing he knew, he'd punched the stranger in the face. Said man had the knife in his hand again and his teeth gritted, but he didn't attack. "You killed my brother!" Malik spat. The stranger was startled and took another step back. His voice sounded worried when he replied. "Did they find his corpse?" Malik was furious. How could this scum talk about his brother like that?! He raised his fist to hit the man again, but the stranger grabbed his hand and stared into his eyes, strangely calm. "No.", Malik growled. The man's face lit up. "Then there is still hope. " Malik got himself free and punched the man again, he tumbled to the ground, a hand lifted to his face. "There is no hope!", Malik screamed "Kadar is dead, you killed him!"
Swiftly he turned around and grabbed his phone. Halfway into typing 911, he felt a hand on his shoulder. "He could be in the past where I came from!", the man said. "During my experiments this, this teleportation tended to happen." Malik eyed the ball in the man' s hand curiously. He'd seen and felt it's power and objects like these weren't unheard of. If this were to be true, there was a chance that Kadar was still alive. The man' s speech and clothing fitted his story and this was a little bit too much work, to be a teenage prank. There was also no doubt that the man had been living under poor conditions. Aside from the smell, his hair was messily cut and his face was dirty and uncleanly shaved, with lots of little cuts. He'd probably kept himself halfway normal looking with that knife of his.
"Then bring him back!", Malik demanded. The bum huffed. "I can't. The Apple is broken. I tried to a moment ago and it failed again. I try every day to go back home, but I can't figure out why it doesn't work anymore. I 'm glad you understand me. I've seen you before, you go into that fancy palace and bring out books in my language! I was wondering if I could get those, which is why I'm here tonight in the first place! I need your help." Malik couldn't help but laugh. It was absurd, but somehow it made sense. If he were lost in the future, he'd probably seek after someone or something he could understand to. Still he wasn't completely convinced.
The stranger looked rejected. Slowly he turned around to his bags, crouched and started packing them together. " So you don't believe me. I should have known that, sorry for troubling you.", he said, while getting back up. "No", Malik said, " I don't believe you yet. You said you could read those books I get from university. I've got an old text in my apartment. If you can tell me where it is from and what's its significance is, I'll believe you, and I'll try o help you. But you better hope that my brother was really transported into your time."
The stranger smiled.