Spoilers up through the modern section that pops up after meeting Kassandra/Alexios's father. So really nothing you wouldn't already know about if you read the last chapter.
-/-
Layla is in the animus too long.
That's nothing new of course, because Layla is almost always in the animus too long. It's a problem of hers, a bad habit she can't kick (and isn't sure she wants to), and her first thought as she stumbles out of the animus today is that Victoria is going to lecture her over it. Again.
It was easier in Egypt. Just Layla, alone in the still, quiet underground, the weight of history and someone else's memories thick in the air around her. After Dee… died, and before William showed up, Layla had developed some fairly unhealthy animus habits. During the worst of it, she'd only come out to eat and shit, drifting out of the animus and through what she needed to do before going right back again. She'd never been sure, in those days, who she was or what year she'd find waiting for her outside.
Victoria doesn't let her do that here. It's irritating that she's always pulling Layla out, to eat, to exercise, to talk, to get another psych exam. Irritating, but—well, Layla has stopped waking up in the middle of the night, panicking because she can't remember where she is.
Layla rubs her hands over her face, waiting for the lecture to start, but—
"Layla, come on!"
That's different from normal. Louder and more urgent, and something is wrong. Layla doesn't think it's how long she was in the animus today.
"Layla! They—are—coming!"
She realizes belatedly what Victoria is shouting about, as her brain finally starts firing on all cylinders and everything clicks. Templars are coming. Sure, right—they'd known it was going to happen, they'd known they were moving through the area, and now they must be almost here.
She can deal with this. They have everything in place already, the things they need to bring with them (except for the animus—Layla needs to pack that up herself), the traps and tricks they're leaving behind for the Templars to find. It's a simple, straightforward plan that anyone could follow, bleeding or not.
(Bleeding or not, Layla thinks with a sudden flash of guilt, as she remembers—she really needs to ask Victoria, and soon. Bleeding, or not?)
Layla pushes herself to her feet and scrambles to get the animus packed up. Five minutes later, they've abandoned the hideout, driving away as the Templars descend on the cramped London flat. Next stop, Greece. Atlantis.
It's a long, uneventful trip. They've shaken the Templars off their trail so effectively that the whole journey, somehow, becomes boring. This isn't something that usually happens with the Assassins, and Layla is pretty sure she's not the only one freaked out about it. Maybe that's why she goes to corner Victoria when they're about halfway there. This noneventful trip is freaking her out—subconsciously, maybe she's looking for drama.
"Victoria," she says. "I—can I ask you something?"
She's not nervous until she actually opens her mouth, but all of a sudden a surge of adrenaline flashes up through her whole nervous system, making her shift uncomfortably.
"Me?" Victoria asks, and Layla can't blame her for sounding skeptical. Most of the time, Layla is quicker to dismiss her advice than to listen to it, but she is an expert on the bleeding effect.
Layla crosses her arms and leans back until she can feel the small movement of the Altair II under her shoulder blades (but all she can think of is the Andrestia—she shakes it off). "The bleeding effect," she says, bracing herself for an I told you so. "I need to ask you about the bleeding effect."
"Do you think you've been experiencing symptoms?" Victoria asks, suddenly all worried concern. It's almost annoying, how non gloaty she is.
"I'm not sure," Layla says. "I mean, I've bled before, but this feels different."
"How so?"
"It's… confusing," Layla says. " With Bayek and Aya—Amunet—everything felt so real. More real than me, sometimes. But I know that was the bleeding effect, and I know how to deal with it, and I've moved past it. Now, the animus here, it's more like…" She sighs. "Do you remember, when I first found the spear and we were trying to pull a genetic sample off it, we couldn't tell whose DNA I should be following?"
"Sure," Victoria says. "But we decided it wouldn't matter if you picked Alexios or Kassandra."
"Yea," Layla says, suddenly reluctant to continue.
Victoria pushes. "And?" she says.
Layla takes a deep breath, then all in a rush says, "I'mnotsurewhichoneitis."
"Sorry?" Victoria says. "I didn't quite catch that.
Layla's not a mumbler. She's not happy with herself for not being able to get the words out. She tries again, forcing herself to enunciate clearly. "I'm not sure which one it is," she repeats. "Sometimes I think I'm Kassandra, and sometimes I think I'm Alexios, and sometimes I think I'm both, and it always makes sense in the moment but then I get out of the animus and I can't even remember whose memories I've been looking at. It's like a dream, and—" She suddenly remembers something else. "Victoria, I think they've been talking to each other."
"Talking to..?" Layla." Victoria reaches over and puts a hand on Layla's arm. Then she withdraws it quickly when Layla pulls a face. "You have to remember. This is history. This is something that has already happened, a very long time ago. The animus might not be able to figure out which sibling really wielded that spear, but it was only one of them. You're not living two peoples' lives at once. You need to remember that."
"I can't even remember which one I'm—Victoria, I don't even know if this is the bleeding effect or… not. It feels like something else."
"What else could it be?" Victoria asks.
"It feels like…" But Layla doesn't have the words. "I don't know," she says, voice rising as her frustration mounts. "I just know that it's different."
Victoria's concern is almost a physical force by this point. Layla can feel it pushing at her, and she wants to pull away from the conversation, just leave and pretend it never happened. "You know you don't have to keep doing this, right?" Victoria asks. "We can find other ways to hurt the Templars."
But this isn't just about hurting Templars to Layla anymore. There's a mystery in the animus that she needs to solve. "I can't stop now," she says. "It's too important."
"To the Assassins?" Victoria asks. "Or just to you?"
She doesn't have an answer for that, so Layla just ignores the question. "It just feels like there's something there," she says. "Something big."
"Alright then," Victoria says with a small sigh. "I guess—you've been through all this before in Egypt. I suppose you might know what you're talking about."
"Geeze," Layla says. "Thanks for the overwhelming confidence."
Victoria frowns at her. "I don't like any of what you just told me," she says. "I just want to make that clear. If the animus is confusing you that much, you probably shouldn't be going back in."
"I'll be fine," Layla says. "I just… need to keep going." What she needs is to figure out what's real. Bleeding, or not. Alexios, or Kassandra. Layla needs to know.
-/-
Atlantis feels… right, to Layla. In a deep stone cave far underground—no, underwater—she feels secure for the first time since Egypt. This is how it had been then, too. Just Layla, alone in the cave with her animus and the past and the corpses of Bayek and Amunet. She'd liked the calm there, and she likes it here, too.
Layla explores the place in silence, giving herself a few minutes just to marvel at the ancient space. She'd been here, only hours ago, two and a half centuries in the past. She can trace the steps of—of either Alexios or Kassandra, she can't remember—and find the spot where Pythagoras had stood, leaning on his staff. It's eerie.
It's beautiful.
Still in silence, Layla sets up the animus. She'd been worried about being able/ to get enough power to run the animus all the way down here, but that turns out to not be a problem. Before she even has a chance to hook anything into the machine, the animus is already powering up. She pokes nervously at it for a few minutes, then remembers that this is a place that has been drenched in first civilization technology for a very long time. She can imagine it seeping into the stone, the water, the very air around her.
She wonders, briefly, if that's going to have any weird effects on the animus, then decides it doesn't really matter. She's going back in either way, and she'll find out soon enough. Layla shakes her head, then lies down on the animus and goes through the familiar, grounding process of plugging herself in.
And then—for just a second, as the world transitions from Layla and the animus in 2018 to the world of… of either Kassandra or Alexios, Layla could have sworn she hears a voice behind her.
"It has been so long," says the voice. "Since I had a visitor…"
But there's no one else here, so Layla tells herself that she must have imagined it.
-/-
Short chapter, sorry, but I wanted to just post a kind of hey I'm alive! update. I've played about another 15 hours since the last chapter, but it's all been running around after cultists or doing random side missions, and since I'm trying to limit this story to main missions, that doesn't really help with giving me writing inspiration...
I'm going to try and start focusing on the main plot for a while so I can get another chapter up soon, but it really just depends on when I get to something in the plot that makes me go ooh, I could write that! Fingers crossed, hopefully soon...
