A/N: Too long, too long. That's all I can say. Even I am disappointed in myself. With me starting school in September, though, it clogged up my schedule with papers and everything. Plus the place I work at becomes very very busy around Christmastime. That's why I have a special announcement for you guys. The next update will be not one chapter, not two, but all the rest out of Sequence 3! That will cover everything out of Season 4's first half, heading into the part that I am most excited about now, Sequence 4.

Quickly, for any readers of mine who may not have caught this, I want to also mention that one of my favorite games of 2016 came out between this update and the last: Dishonored 2. Any fan of the Assassin's Creed series owes it to themselves to play this amazing stealth game. While I enjoy AC's story immensely, Dishonored 1 and 2 currently have me for having much better gameplay and adaptive story content than AC. In Dishonored, your choices truly will affect everything around you. Check it out, because anyone who is caught up might find something new coming into Asgeir's story soon enough... And if anyone has read any of my other content, they might notice something about where Asgeir is when the flashbacks start...

Hope you guys enjoy this chapter. Thank you for waiting patiently, and I promise that next update will be the rest of Sequence 3 all in one package! Bye!

Chapter 35: Past- Myling

January 1st 2012 12:30 AM

The riverbank was covered in thick, foggy ice as I climbed out, shivering. I felt colder than I ever had before, yet I knew I'd survive freezing to death. The curse would see to it that my pain would be made as long and as bad as possible. I just lay on the ice, hearing it crack lightly under my weight. It was thick enough for me to just lay there, wishing I was dead.

I didn't regret what I did to get here. Bill just would never believe that I did it to finally try to grab and take back what life always insisted on taking away from me at every step. After Ingrid, anytime I tried to get close to happiness or hope, it would be taken away from me.

I turned my head slightly over, looking out at the river. I saw the Brook Horse stick it's head out from the river. It held its right hoof upstream. Out of the darkness, out of thin air, a small wooden bridge appeared to let me cross.

I thought that it meant I would get the key as well, but then the Brook Horse held out it's empty left hoof to me, summoning the key in its right. I understood. It wanted something from me, and I knew what, thanks to my research.

Crossing the bridge, I kept running it all through my head what I was seeing. More and more information lost to the Assassins was suddenly being shown to me in pieces, but what did it all have to do with the Masters? Why did Matthew and my father even destroy the pages in the first place, then lie that it was the Templars that had burned them? Shay had faced little opposition on his path to claim Arendelle for the Templars. He had eventually turned the King and Queen he loathed, or their children, because it was what made the most sense to me. The same went for the Lady Jannika and her future with the Rogue. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but I could tell this woman would be the one that Shay took for his wife when all the fighting was over. All the pieces were coming together for Shay to take over Arendelle. But there must have been something that toppled his whole structure over. Otherwise he would have been spoken in such positive light in the history books of Arendelle. But as Anna had once told me, Shay had never been mentioned in the history books. This murder of Gustav Vollan however, had been now that I thought about it. Murdered by a disgruntled servant, so it was said.

I needed to stay focused, however. I would freeze if I didn't keep moving, and I did not need the ice in my heart to get any help. I needed to get the key from the Brook Horse, and I knew what it wanted in return. A Myling.

Now considered to be one of the most heinous crimes imaginable, some women throughout Ancient Nordic lands were known as Angel Makers. They spent their days seeking out poor mothers who could not afford to care for a newborn they had, and gave them the hope of homes for their babies. It cost the mothers nearly everything that they had, but the Angel Makers would promise they would have proper homes. And then they would drown them. The sorrowful souls of those young lives lost to the monsters came to be known as the Mylings. Often it fell to the Brook Horse to take them onto the next realm. Yet, clearly this one didn't have one to take to the afterlife, so it wanted a trade. A Myling for him, and the key for me.

The bridge was studier than it looked, and I could feel the Brook Horse eye me as I kept walking through the trees on the other side of the river, which began to thin out more and more. Soon enough it became even clearer to me than before that I was no longer in the Interior. Flat farmlands stretched as far as my eyes could see in the snowy darkness. And not far away was a windmill.

Worn and weathered, I knew that it wasn't put there by anyone else if there truly were more souls in this realm. Why would anyone put a sole windmill with nothing else close by to show signs of a village or anything else nearby? This was all the structure that existed in this demiplane.

Had what I done truly been enough to make me deserve this? Was I now forsaken by all to die in the cold, in the darkness, all alone with the eyes of five devils watching my every move? I kept thinking this as I opened the door.

It was not a windmill inside. It was a pub. A familiar pub. Modelled to look like an older Irish pub, but this one was straight out of the West Side of Manhatten. People were inside, as if it was any Friday afternoon, and the stool I usually sat at was vacant. Suddenly I knew what I was seeing.

"NO!" I thundered. "I WILL NOT! SHOW ME NO MORE!"

But it was too late. The door into the windmill closed, and when I tried to open it again, I saw it lead out to a concrete staircase up into the streets of New York City. I was trapped. I yelled and slammed my fist, but none of the patrons around the bar even took notice. No response of any

With no other options left, I closed the door and sat at my place at the bar. This time, the bartender noticed me, and took my order of a pint. I sat back, knowing what was coming. This was how it happened. This was how I was sent to The Gates.

March 2006

PTSD. That's what the therapist diagnosed me as when I returned from my last mission from the Masters about 8 months ago. I was relieved of active duty for the Assassins and told I could sit out for the foreseeable future. I took it reluctantly, yet with some relief; I had had enough fighting after seeing the worst of mankind and the things that they could do.

I found a decent place in New York, and soon settled into my routine. No need for a job or much. Just did my best to hide from the Templars in the Big Apple, and on a few occasions, do what I could to drink myself into an early grave. If only Anna and Elsa could see me now. Yet another chapter in my life ending with everyone I cared for either being killed or pushed away.

Three pints in, and only 3:54 in the afternoon. Not sure if I would call it a good start, but it was a start of some sort.

"This what I was to come to expect of you one day, Asgeir?" Said a voice. "Drinking your way to dust?"

I glanced over my shoulder, then rolled my eyes, grabbing a handful of nuts in the bowl beside me.

"What do you want, Bill?"

"A pint of that would be nice." He said, rubbing his beard. He waved at the barkeep. "What he's drinking." He said, nodding to me.

"Alright then." He said. "Want a top up, Asgeir?"

"No thanks, Carl." I said. "I was just about to leave. Add it to my tab."

"Surely." He said, grabbing a glass for Bill.

I got up from my seat, but Bill planted his arm firmly on the bar table.

"I'm not here for the beer, Asgeir."

"I would figure not." I said, idly. "But if you want my help for whatever it is, then you can find someone else. You made it clear to me last time we saw each other what you thought of me."

Bill shook his head. "There is no one else for this job, Asgeir. Which should tell you just how badly I need your help for this job."

I pulled my hoodie off the bar stool. "You hated how I handled the last job, and told me to go burn in hell for how I did it. You really want me to do it again?"

"No. Because it's an extraction, not extermination."

He avoided using the word "assassination" for obvious reasons.

"Then it makes even less sense for me to join up. I said find somebody else." I said.

Bill turned on the bar stool just as Carl put his beer on the bar table. "And then leave all the info we found on your aunt buried?"

I felt the blood leave my face. What little I could see of my own nose went gray. I could barely respond except with my breath getting caught in my throat.

"We've been looking into all the information you tried providing us for the past year. I got a call after you moved here telling us to bump up tracking her down to one of the highest priorities. Sit down, please."

I did. The Masters had lived up to their end of the bargain, making sure that this was my payment for the last couple missions from them.

"Our intel teams think that we're looking into her because she's a Templar." Bill said, lowering his voice. "If you help with the extraction, we give you all that we have on her, along with a list of possible locations."

I looked over at Bill. "I want more than the promises of an old man, Bill." I said. "Words are wind."

"I had a feeling you would say that." He said, reaching into a briefcase he carried with him. He took out a piece of folded up paper, and slid it right in front of me on the bar.

"A contact passed this to me through Boston's police database. Someone froze to death in Franklin Park last winter. No one gave a second thought about the death, except one woman walking her dog around the time of potential death came forth with a suspect description. This was the sketch they got from it." Bill took a large swig of his pint.

I gingerly unfolded the paper, stopping only when I was able to unfold the top half. I had serious doubts seeing her whole face wouldn't send me into a flying rage.

I eyed the drawing. Blonde hair, yes. Significantly old, possible mid-forties, early fifties. But it was those eyes. Cruel, cold, and insane.

"There's much more, but only when you finish the mission with us. You're leading the team."

I folded the paper, putting it back into my pocket, my fingers trembling. "I can live with that." I said, coming back to the pub.

We didn't say much more until after Bill finished his beer and paid for it. Then we headed back up into the streets of New York. If only I knew that I wasn't going to be paying back that tab any time soon.

"We got a name on the guy we're snatching, Bill?" I asked, hailing a cab.

"Yes." Bill replied. "He's the reason I only have so many people that I can trust with this mission: my son, Desmond."

An older sedan cab pulled up, and we climbed in.

"Where to, fellahs?" The cabbie asked.

"JFK airport, and fast." Bill replied.

Bill was still trying to be as cautious as he could, especially at the airports where the Templars had a lot of their eyes and ears pointed at. He avoided saying too much in the cab, and at the terminal. Too much sensitive information to be just handed over to them. I was already using three different aliases at the moment to hide from Abstergo. A quick stop at my apartment to grab my personal things, and we were off.

Soon enough we were walking across the runway at JFK airport, where Bill brought about the briefing.

"We're chartering a jet for this mission. Abstergo's systems tripped an alarm in a village north of Helsinki. We believe Desmond is out there."

"Finland?" I asked. "Why would he go that far?"

"You weren't at the Farm that much when he was with us, Asgeir." Bill said. "My relationship with my son was… complex. I reckon he wanted to get away from me as far as he could."

I knew Bill to only be hiding the truth from himself. He was little more than a drill sergeant, viewing his son as a soldier, and not a child. One might argue he should have been better prepared for our war against the Templars, but I can at least say that what few memories I have of my father, he knew when to be a good teacher, and when to be a good father.

"In any case, we reckon that Abstergo will be sending in its forces to grab Desmond. That's where you come in. I need you to lead the team into the village. Find Desmond, and get out. Fast."

He took out a file from his briefcase and handed it to me. "Your team members." He said. "What you need to know."

"We don't have time for that yet, Bill." I said, taking it. "I'll read it on the flight."

"Alright." He replied. He handed me a large sealed envelope as well. "This is to be opened when you land. The instructions including where the weapons cache is."

We walked into the hanger doors where mechanics walked quickly around the jet we were chartering. Already it looked like they were finishing up the maintenance, which meant that we were about to take off A small private passenger jet. Like the ones billionaires flew in. Made me wonder how much of our finances we were spending just to get the kid out of Finland. Too much, I began to think.

A blonde in a white hoodie sat on a metal crate, pushing bullets into a clip.

"Miles." She said, looking up at us. "You're late. They were gonna take off in fifteen."

"Apologies, Galina." He replied. "Just needed to grab our team leader for this op."

She eyed me, raising her brow. "Never seen him before. You sure he not one of Abstergo bastards?"

She had a heavily accented voice. Russian, I guessed.

"Not Asgeir, Galina." He replied. "But he is the only one that I can trust to lead this op, so you will be following his orders."

She shrugged, shaking her head. Then she murmured something in Russian before climbing up into the plane. I could make out a few other people inside from the tiny windows.

Bill turned to me. "Galina's like that. But she has good judgement. She likely would have a good reason if she doesn't do what you tell her to."

I was not impressed. "First you tell me this op is of the most sensitivity that you need me after damning me, and then you tell me that the first member of my team has a record of disobedience? I can't have that, Bill."

"Then you know just how bad my choices were for this team if it's made up of the only people that I can trust with the mission."

I groaned, then shaking my head, began climbing up to the plane. Already I was hearing the chatter amongst the pilots in the front cockpit to the tower, and mechanics clearing out.

"You're not coming with us?" I asked.

"No." Bill said. "With things as complicated as they had been, I think it best that Desmond be brought up to speed before seeing me."

"Alright, then." I said, understanding. "We'll find him, Bill."

"I know." He replied. "See you soon."

I turned and headed into the passenger cabin just as the plane's door and ramp began to close.

Galina was standing by the doorway when I came in, with the rest of our team sitting around in their seats. I saw a boy around 20 with dirty blonde hair, a slightly older woman with dark hair cut short and a pair of headphones typing away at a laptop in her seat, another Assassin seated in a chair facing away from me and his hood up, and… no.

She still had her hair pulled back in a tight bun to keep it out of her eyes, and I even spotted the sole Templar ring hanging from a chain on her neck. A souvenir, much like the ones that I had taken from other Templars over the years, except she only took the one when it was enough to satisfy whatever personal vendetta she had against Abstergo.

I fumbled with the file in my hands, cursing me at not bothering to look at the file. She glared up at me as I flipped through the pages. The picture of her in her profile had a similar angry look, but she didn't always have that scowl on her face. I had once gotten her to smile.

And there her name was; right at the top of the page. If I had bothered to look into the file before I climbed into the plane, I'm not sure I would have gone. Even for the file on Ingrid.

"Ruthe."

She gave a rude noise in her mouth. "Asgeir."

Three hours into the flight and I began to ask around. I needed to know my team if I was to lead them into battle. Not Ruthe. I couldn't face her just yet.

Galina was quiet, but using what little Russian I knew, I got some from her. It turned out she was the last of the whole Russian brotherhood. She had recently killed a lot of that branch after most of them were driven insane by Abstergo's new project. A computer able to make people relive the lives of their ancestors by decoding their DNA. They called it the Animus. That was all I was able to pry from her before she shut herself up under her hood. I could see the anxiety and pain of what she had to do in her eyes.

I got up from my seat, walking across the cabin, and sat across from the other girl. I gave a glance at her profile while she kept typing away at her computer.

"Not that much to read, there." She said, not looking up from her screen,

"Sorry?" I said, a little surprised.

Setting her computer aside, she pulled her headphones off. "There's not too much interest you might find there. My profile."

I shook my head. "I might beg to differ, Rebecca Crane. Not every day you find a computer engineer who has a history like yours."

"Flattering." She commented. "You think that's going to get the whole lot of us to follow your orders? I mean, I will. But I've been assigned as more of the eye in the sky on this mission."

"If you know Bill, then you'd know that he has an infinitely good reason to have me lead his team. I at least hope that we can get along here."

"Yeah." She replied. "This guy Desmond I've heard a thing or two about. Says he's really important, but he's his son. What else is he supposed to say bout him?"

I shrugged. "What is it you've been working on? I've barely seen you look up from the computer since we reached cruising altitude."

"Just a project of mine. I've been working with the other engineers we have on our sides. Been programming the new drone technologies we've stolen from Abstergo."

"No kidding?" I said. "So you have all this stuff at our disposal for the mission?"

"Yeah. Bill wanted to make sure I'd have every way to provide support. Field work isn't exactly my forte, you see. As for how I'm doing it, I couldn't stand with the garbage computer programs Abstergo programs into their drones. I've been working on my own for a long time. They may have all the money and best brains, but they don't get it. This is art as much as it's science!"

She clearly was proud of her work, and rightfully so from what little I could make out as she showed me. She used a lot of big words as she showed the process of the program.

"Anything they do, you do better, I guess." I admitted.

Rebecca smirked. "Hell yeah."

The younger boy Assassin ducked out of the cockpit and sat down across the aisle from us. "Boring our leader with all that PC bullshit, Becs?" He chuckled, faking a yawn.

Rebecca lazily waved her hand away. "What do you have to work on, Pat? Go wipe your nose."

The words were hostile, but the tone was not. These two were friends.

I had seen a bit of his profile, Patrick Lozada. Joined with us in early 2002 after dropping out of Columbia Law School. The profile didn't list why, though. At his discretion.

Then there was Scott. He had his back to me when I walked in, but he and I spent the good first hour talking, and he turned out to be a lot more on board with following me than anyone else.

"That's an interesting name, Asgeir." He said. "Where are you from?"

"It's Norwegian." I replied. Because it is. "I was raised near London, but I was born in Oslo."

It had been the story my father gave me the first time he took me to this world. I was five, but had been raised smart enough to understand most complicated matters. Death and war, among other things.

"Not bad. Somerset, meself. Never thought much of those big city folk. Especially in Westminster. Always think themselves the top of the food chain while the heels of their boots crush the life out of the rest of us."

"And that got you to join up with us?"

"Nay." He replied. "My reasons are sort of the same as Pat, you see."

I hadn't spoken with him yet, so this caught me for a bit. Scott could see that based on my expression.

"Oh…" He whispered. "Aye, you don't know. Did you read his file?"

"Briefly." I replied. "He joined up with us back in early 2002. Had to drop out of law school."

"Aye. And I don't blame him for doing so. He lived in the Bronx, you see."

I started to wonder what Scott was implying, thinking hard. Living in New York, early 2002. I started to work my way back in time before it hit me.

"That's right." Scott said, reading my face again. "His uncle worked in the North Tower. They had to bury an empty coffin."

"Fuck… and you?"

"I didn't have family in New York at the time." He replied. "But after September I knew that I couldn't stand by if the world was fated to be thrown into fear and chaos. Luckily I was found by the right people in my efforts. I'm pretty good with computers, you see. Not nearly as good as Becs, but good enough. My presence on Abstergo's networks while I was snooping tripped the Assassin's presence there, and they contacted me not long afterwards."

"Good for you, Scott." I said, quietly.

"And you, mate?"

"Born into the order." I replied. "My father, and his father before him, and so forth. My father told me it went as far back as twenty generations."

"Mother Mary!" Scott exclaimed. "You serious?"

Even I didn't believe it the first time I heard it, but it made as much sense to me as anything else.

Ruthe peeked her head out of the front cabin. She was about to say something to Scott, but then stopped herself as she glanced at me, briefly. Then she pulled her head back in.

"You know Ruthe?" Scott asked.

I looked back at him, and solemnly nodded. No words, no breaths. Just a nod.

Scott looked like he could fill in those blanks. "I'm sorry, mate."

I was too.

It was nearly 3 AM when we landed in Helsinki. The car rental place closed hours ago, so we would have to wait until dawn.

Sitting down in the waiting area, the team eyed me as I took out the envelope, and cut it open. But as I began to look it over, I groaned.

"Does anyone know Assassin ciphers?"

I held out the paper. Instead of coherent words, the instructions were all written with random letters. Random to me, at least; I hadn't dealt with Assassin ciphers in over a year.

Rebecca took a look at the paper. "Not a cipher I'm exactly familiar with. Maybe the Vigenere cipher?"

Scott took it from her, and eyed it. "Maybe. Yes, that would be my guess." He said. "But it's useless without the keyword. Anyone got any paper?"

Ruthe quietly took out a pad and a pen, handing them to Scott.

"Thanks." He began to draw furiously a grid down.

"This part of the cipher?" I asked.

"Yes." He replied, not looking up from the paper. "Bill obviously doesn't want the instructions to fall into the wrong hands during the mission, so he had them encrypted. If I start the grid, I may be able to figure out the message."

I thought for a moment. A keyword would be needed to encrypt the whole thing.

"How does it work?" I asked.

Scott held out the grid he was writing. "The basic setup is this: You write out the message, then write the keyword down underneath the message over and over and over again until it goes through the whole thing. See here…" He pointed. "The x axis represents the message letters, and the y axis represents the encryption letters. You take the two letters and find the letter that meets those coordinates. That's the new encrypted letter."

"So to decipher it…" Patrick said, catching on as I was. "You'd write…"

"You'd write the keyword over and over underneath the encrypted message." Scott said, nodding. "It's pretty much going backwards."

"And you need a keyword." I said. I had an idea of what it was. "Maybe try…Desmond."

He said. "Alright." He jotted down a few of the letters, taking it through the cipher matrix. "Hey! It's worked! The first word is 'instructions'."

"Then we're on the right track. Keep it up, Scott." I replied. I turned to the others. "We got a few hours before the rental place opens." I said. "Until then, we have some time to kill. Go get something to eat, or sleep. We're going to need it for the job."

"Da." Galina replied. "Place opens at 6. We meet back here?"

"Yep." Rebecca replied. "Let's do it."

Everyone else headed off in different directions. I remained sitting there near Scott, and opted to instead get some sleep. I pulled my hoodie off, rolled it up into a pillow, and fell back onto it, going out like a candle.

It was reaching dawn when I awoke. The only person sitting beside me was the one person I was both dreading to talk to, but knew I had to.

"Hi."

She didn't know I was awake, nearly jumping out of her pale skin as I spoke.

"Asgeir." She said quietly, but no less harshly.

"Are we gonna speak again to each other, or is this how it's gonna be for the rest of the mission?"

"There's nothing worth talking about anymore." She said. "You made it very clear to me what really meant the world to you."

"You still do." I replied. "You still mean everything to me."

Her eyes shined angrily. "You dare try to lie to me again? Asgeir, I was one of the only people who believed in you after Steven. And maybe it felt real once, what we had between us. But you could never move past what had happened."

I scowled. "The freak made me so that I could never die no matter how hard I tried."

"And is that what you wanted?" She snapped. "To die even though I was there for you?"

"No." I muttered. "Not instantly. I wanted to grow old just like any other human being. Live a proper life and then die. But she took that away from me."

"I know. But I did all I could to console you, and it wasn't enough. You were obsessed with the woman."

"I am not obsessed!" I snapped.

"You were, and are." Ruthe growled back. "You are so obsessed with finding her and killing her. It happened almost twenty five years ago, Asgeir. If you truly wanted to move on, you could have done it with me."

This was what I dreaded. My pride was stopping me from admitting the one thing here. I knew that Ruthe was right. I had met her years ago, and we had hit it off. Even while on the run from the Templars after the Purge, she and I still stayed together. But I knew that if I had wanted to really live a life with her, I would need to kill Ingrid. Take away my immortality so I could die with her. She saw obsession, and maybe she was right. But she didn't know what it felt like to have my entire family killed by that madwoman.

"And then I hear about the termination job three years ago?"

That struck a chord with me. "Bill tell you about Jeff?"

"Of course, he did. He knew about our history. He wanted me to know that instead of finding some reasonable way to move on from me, you made that poor boy suffer too far."

"What I did to Jeff had nothing to do with you, Ruthe." I snapped. "He was an animal who too much pleasure in cutting people open and leaving their houses a mess of meat and blood."

"And so, what? You make him suffer as they did? That's what the Templars do, Asgeir. Not us."

"My life was stolen from me, Ruthe." I snarled. "And I will not stop until everyone responsible for taking what was most precious to me is wiped from the face of existence."

Ruthe looked horrified, of course. She tugged at the bun on her head. "You were what was precious to me, Asgeir. I loved you!" She whispered. "I just wished that you could say the same for me. But we both know that if you did, that would be a bigger lie than either of us have heard. All that's left for you is blood."

Galina came out of the washrooms, then looked out the glass wall overlooking the arrivals lane of the airport.

"Guys!" She called. "Patrick's here with the van!"

The drive took almost an hour as we headed North. It was very cold out, this particular day. There was silence except for Scott, who's directions became more and more numerous the further we drove North. The seats in the van were oddly arranged, with two seats in the front, a row facing backwards, and the last two rows facing forwards. Patrick and Scott sat at the front, Rebecca and Ruthe in the next row, and Galina and me sitting further back. The last row of seats carried the bags that didn't fit in the trunk.

"Bill said the cache will be here. Turn right here." Scott said.

Rebecca unplugged something that had been hooked up to her laptop in her bag.

"Let's just check it out first." She said. She flipped a switch on the object, and it jumped up, hovering in the air for a second. It was a camera drone.

Galina cranked her window down to let the drone loose. Rebecca began typing in the commands before taking out a joystick, and sending the drone out into the frost.

Scott turned around so that he could see what was on Rebecca's screen. Then there was more commands from him as he guided her with the drone.

"There!" He suddenly said after a while. "That's the crate. We take what we need from it, and leave the rest."

Galina and I jumped out to grab the crate, leaving the van behind. It was buried underneath some snow behind the abandoned shack at the edge of these woods. Someone came across the drift, they likely wouldn't think anything off it since the snow was still here.

Galina dropped down onto her hands and knees, digging furiously for the crate. I only stood by. My lack of effort didn't go unnoticed.

"You gonna help me, Mudak?" She said.

I shook my head. "I hate snow." Ever since...you know.

She scowled, shaking her head, and muttering in her language once more.

Soon enough she pulled out the crate from the snow, this time with my help as we carried it to the van.

"First come, first serve." I said, pulling the door open. "Let's go."

Nearly everything in the crate was either bladed weapons, or guns with silencers on them. Though Bill had made it clear that he didn't want any more attention to be brought to us with this job. We had to be as discreet as we could, and this was the best that we got.

"Asgeir!" Patrick called for me. "This gun's been labelled with your name on it."

I looked over, puzzled. Patrick handed me then gun, which I indeed noticed to hold my name on it. It was my old air rifle. Still with the grenade launcher attached, but the only ammunition that had been provided for it were pouches of berserker and sleep darts.

"It is yours, isn't it?" He asked.

"Yeah." I replied. "You see if my Hidden Blades are here, too?"

"Yeah, those are labelled the same way here." Scott called from the other side of the crate. Then he strapped a sword onto his jeans.

"Alright." He said. "Bill told us to leave the crate here, so we do that. The area where our intel believes Desmond to be is within walking distance. We head through the woods to the North-East."

"I'll drive over with the van." Rebecca said. "Thank god for Google. I got a good idea where these houses are. You head on foot and then I'll pick you up."

"Saddle up, then." I replied.

Scott gave me the compass to lead the team. It was a simple route. The trees were thin enough that we didn't have to change direction that much. We kept heading due North East for about half an hour before they thinned out enough for us to make a small group of houses on a small hill. We hid by the trees.

"Scott?" I asked.

Scott looked down at his notepad. "Instructions say that Desmond is living in the number seven house. Second one from the southern edge."

"Alright." I said, taking out the binoculars. I peered through and looked hard at what we should expect. "Let's take this quietly. Two of us take the front door, two to the back, and two through the balcony door."

"Windows?" Galina said.

"I doubt Demond's going to run that far from us since we aren't here to kill him." I said. "But if he does go through one of the windows, I can hit him with this." I tapped my air rifle. "Now pair up."

Then came the little snag. We had only five with us with Rebecca as our getaway driver. And I knew for a fact Ruthe wouldn't dare pair up with me. She already grabbed Galina's wrist and held it so tightly she cried out.

I sighed as I saw the boys pair up. "Fuck. I'll take the balcony"

This was like those classroom assignments they have in elementary schools. In an odd numbered class, one of those blokes was gonna end up all alone and have to do the project themselves.

It was a large field separating us from the houses. We kept as low as we could and headed across the field. The whole neighborhood seemed a bit deserted but I could hear the grinding of a swing on a swing set in one of the fenced backyards as we circled around, and the bark of a dog. I even saw a few neighbors over by a driveway on the far side chatting away with each other.

This place was almost like some kind of European suburb. But Desmond was supposed to be in his twenties. I couldn't shake the confusion I felt that he wasn't here as I climbed the stairs up onto the balcony. It wrapped around the house before coming to a door on the back. Ruthe and Galina walked around the house to the back door, while Scott and Patrick got to the front.

"Ten seconds." I said through the radio. I began to count as I got ready to bust the door open.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…

*BAM* *BAM* *CRASH*

We broke open our doors and I jumped inside, pulling out my rifle.

"Desmond Miles." I called out, looking down the hallway.

No response.

"Clear down here." I heard Scott call.

"It's all clear here." Rebecca replied. "No one's outside."

"I got something here." Galina replied. "TV's on in the next room."

I looked down the darkened hallway, inching down it with caution. There were three doors down the hall, so I did what I felt and opened the first door.

Something flew out of the doorway and smacked me in the face. A dark figure jumped for me and punched me once, twice, three times.

"Young man. Mid twenties." I heard him whisper. He looked back into the other room. "This isn't Miles. Find the others."

"Yessir." I heard a reply.

It suddenly processed with me. The figure tried to cover my mouth, but it was too late.

"TRAP! IT'S A TRAP!" I hollered. "GET OUT OF HERE!"

The figure took out a cloth and shoved it into my face. It was a strong odor and it made me dizzy. Then I felt the carpet come up to meet my face.

Next moment I felt, my face was on pavement, instead. When I lifted my head a bit I felt that oh so familiar object on the back of my head, followed by a click.

"Don't move, Assassin." I heard say right above me.

I didn't. Because for now, they didn't know about my regeneration.

It looked like I was laid on the ground right behind a large truck, which was getting packed up with various crates. Men with rifles rushed back and forth between the trucks and whatever was behind me.

"What are we keeping the prisoner alive for, Juhani?" I heard two troops talking.

"Ask Cross when he comes around. Orders from command that we deliver this guy to their headquarters in Helsinki. Don't know what comes next. As for his friends, do we have their location?"

I heard footsteps, and a familiar voice. "No." He growled. "They were slippery little bitches. But we'll get them."

The man turned me over, then put his foot on my chest,

"Asgeir." Daniel Cross sneered. "Too long, old friend."

I scowled. "Fuck you." I replied.

"Here we were, setting up a trap to lure William Miles out of hiding and instead we get you, The Reaper." He turned to the others. "My employers will be very pleased. This guy may not be who we were hoping for, but I know that they will be happy we grabbed him instead."

"Command told us that they were planning on bombing this neighborhood, Mr. Cross." The taller troop said.

"And they were, Lieutenant Berg." He replied. "You're looking at an officer of one of the Western world's most active terrorist groups."

"There's gotta be more to this that you aren't telling us."

"Juhani…"

Daniel narrowed his eyes. "I would advise you to listen to your teammate, Berg. This was a matter of concern for Abstergo, not the Utti Jaeger regiment."

I still don't know to this day how Abstergo was able to get a division of Finland's own military to get involved with this, but to this day I don't exactly care. It happened, nevertheless, and as Cross had his men jam another sedative into my arm, the only thing that kept my hope alive was the thought that Ruthe and the others had gotten away.

I felt myself fall backwards through the darkness, right through a doorway and into snow. The arms of a windmill loomed right above me. I was back in Hell.

I got up, dusting the snow off me for what felt like the seven-hundredth time that night.

I had loved Ruthe a long time ago. She told me herself that she loved me. The time I had spent with her, it was all that I did to try to move on from what Ingrid had done to me, and to try to move on past Elsa and Anna's deaths. She was all that I had left to love. But she said that she saw an obsession with me. Despite the fact that she claimed to believe that I was from another land, and everything else I told her about the other realms, she began to think that I loved the idea of slicing Ingrid's throat open more than getting the chance to see her smile.

I now look back and know that she was wrong. If I could go back, I wouldn't change anything because deep down, she just couldn't believe what I told her. That's what I saw. And blood.

No, I actually was seeing blood. Blood in the snow, right at my feet. Droplets of it fell down from above to a puddle in front of me. When I looked up, I saw what I was looking for. The Myling.

It was silent, looking like a paper white baby in a paper white bundle, with blood streaming down its eyes, nose, and mouth. It was just within arm's reach.

I jumped and grabbed it. Instantly, it began to wail loudly, crying more shrilly and more loud than any other baby I had heard before.

"Shush!" I cried, carrying it back the way I came. "We aren't done here, yet. Not without you."

It didn't help. The Myling kept wailing so loud and so fiercely, I was beginning to fear it was going to attract a bear or something worse. This was only the third of the Watchers I had faced, and there were two more left. Two more that were even worse than this little bitch.

The Myling wailed all the way to the river. As the Brook Horse eyed me from the water, I groaned. Carelessly, I chucked the Myling right at it. The creature still took it from me, and not long after conjured back up the key, sending it right to me.

I was about to grab it, when I heard a croak. Not of a toad's but of a crow's.

"No!" I cried. "My key!"

It was no use. A dark shape swooped down and grabbed the key, it's wing suddenly striking me in the face. As I did, another image hit me.

Black hood and furs. It was the same face I saw, but I could just barely recognize him. And he sat by another fire with another familiar face. Kristoff.

A black void in his eyes just like the last time. But another shape took form from within, as well. A half circle.

I barely recognized him because I didn't think that what I was seeing was possible.

What the Watchers were showing me were three different stories. The first was Shay's story of what happened after destroying the Assassins of the Colonies. The second was what had happened to me to get me sent to the Gates. And the third… the memories flooded in in chunks. This was an alternate present. One where Anna was dead, and Elsa had turned the whole of Arendelle into her own kingdom. Just as the freak had…