Chapter 9
As expected, the Griffin Rock Hospital released Eric the next day around midday.
He was given antibiotics for his lungs and was told to take it easy for the next few days. Since Jennifer was in the middle of her shift that day, Eric was picked up by Chief Charlie Burns and his police vehicle.
Eric tried not to show that driving in the sentient police cruiser unnerved him as they drove down the road towards Crestwood.
"So…. your cars can turn into robots." Eric muttered, trying to make conversation. Unfortunately, it came out...a bit awkwardly. "That's cool. Did the local scientist come up with it or….?"
"Nah. On loan from the national government. Griffin Rock's been known as a testing ground for, well, for about as long as there's been a settlement."
Eric gave a chuckle. His eyes darted out to the people that milled about. People that didn't have to be anywhere or had the day off.
"So, uh, I've heard there's a lot of strange things going on around the island." He said. During his overnight stay, when the nurses had thought he was asleep, he overheard some of them talking about how Griffin Rock was getting stranger and stranger by the day with all these strange events.
Fires that happened without explanation, earthquakes on an island that wasn't even near a fault line, tsunamis popping up out of nowhere, sinkholes….
All these suggested that something was up, something that Eric felt wasn't any natural reason or cause for.
He would need to go over certain documents, but he was pretty sure that there was going to be a connection with the Isu, the Assassins and the island of Griffin Rock.
And that thought truly worried him.
All those years, on the road, looking over his shoulder worried about an attempt on his life were going to be all for naught if the Templars get interested in the island. And of course, the only way they were going to be interested, was if there was something that connected to the Isu. There would be no hiding from the wave of people who would come and search the island for the reason for the phenomenon. Of course, there was always a chance that these events weren't being caused by a Piece of Eden or an Observatory, and it was just a cluster of strange natural occurrences that would go away in a couple of weeks. But….
Eric didn't need to take chances with his niece and the good people of the island.
He was going to have to find a way to figure out what was going on.
"Mr. Everton?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry Chief." Eric said, jerking himself back to reality. "Got lost in thought."
"That's alright." The older man assured. "Get that all the time. But don't worry about it. We'll take care of it."
Eric nodded, knowing very well that he wouldn't leave well enough alone as he was supposed to.
Being an Assassin meant he put himself in the path of the Templars for others. He would fling himself from the shadows, exposing the Assassins and the Templars secret war to everyone if it meant that his niece wouldn't get hurt.
He glanced up, seeing that he was in front of the Crestwood. Eric gave Chief Burns a tight smile before walking towards the front porch with purpose. Evangeline was going to be with someone who would watch over her for a couple of days until Eric managed to find his full strength again, so he was free to work in full silence.
But the house felt empty.
After having Evangeline so close for so long, the big house was far too silent. Eric chuckled to himself.
"How did I ever survive when I lived in New York?" He quietly asked himself. He took a deep breath, his hurt lungs constricting the movements. What he needed to do was sift through the information left behind by Cordelia Williams, and see if something like this had happened before and if, by any chance (dear Lord, let there be a chance), there was anything that could be done.
Eric quickly brewed himself a large pot of coffee and cooked himself a good portioned sized lunch before getting down to reading through the documents.
The retired Assassin found that his ancestor wrote a lot. It was bizarre, seeing how many Assassins were too busy tracking down their targets especially in that time. But Cordelia….
Eric sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. The earliest written document that he could find was about five years before the Revolutionary War broke out, but Cordelia wrote every day. Most of the time, it was mostly mundane stuff.
What she had for breakfast, what she had planned for that day, the weather, etc.
But every so often, Eric found those gems about her Assassin jobs, most of them starting at the beginning of the Revolutionary War and onward, ending when she left the Brotherhood.
Regardless, Eric still had to read through all the documents just so he didn't miss anything. And there was a lot. By the time he made it through the first half of the journals, his eyes were burning, and his head was pounding. The coffee had gone cold, the sun had set, and his stomach demanded food.
There was too much he still had to do. Eric wished that he could just ask his ancestor what happened. That would make things so much easier.
But no. Cordelia had disappeared when she was in her early sixties, right at the turn of the century.
There was no telling where she went. Everyone thought she was kidnapped, or wandered into the woods, leaving no trace of her location or where she was going.
Her children and the locals had searched every inch of the island, finding nothing.
Eric sighed. Even when it seemed that life was going to give him a helping hand, it yeets it back without a thought. Deciding that he needed to take a break and maybe check the basement for something, he stood, standing slowly as a small wave of dizziness washed over him.
He glanced outside. The moon shone brightly in the sky, but like always, Eric moved away form the beautiful and into the dark and ugly.
Unlike the rest of the house, which had been updated to modern standards, the basement was the same as it had been when it was built. Brick walls, (thankfully updated) beams supporting the ceiling, aka the rest of the house, and a fireplace jutting out form the wall.
But between him and the other side of the room where someone had a table set up with a bunch of journals stacked high were a bunch of boxes no one bothered to move out of the house. Most of this junk looked like antiques, probably from the when Cordelia's immediate family lived in the house. Eric didn't need it with him, he still needed to be mobile and carrying around these types of items would slow him down, but he didn't need to worry about it now.
Maybe he would talk to the woman he rented the house from and organize a yard sale or something.
Carefully stepping over the boxes and items strewn in different directions Eric made his way towards the table. He hit something covered in a sheet, something metal by the way the sound reverberated through the basement.
"Son of a b-"
On instinct he stopped himself, and just went to silently fuming about the pain. When the pain subsided to a dull throb, Eric quickly uncovered the source of the offending thing. Much to his surprise, it was a motorcycle, a little bit rusted but still in good condition. Eric examined it before placing the tarp on the ground, leaving the motorcycle uncovered so he knew where it was.
He had a feeling that he would need it later.
After a moment of examining the motorcycle, he turned towards the table. He still had a lot to go through in so little time.
He didn't have a time to dawdle over the junk.
Almost the minute he reached the table, Eric turned the chair around, straddled it and opened the first journal.
The third sentence was as far as he got before he fell asleep.
He didn't know when he dozed off, all he knew that he woke up when he felt the hairs on the back of his neck standing razor straight. Sleep slid right off him, and he whirled around, brandishing the heaviest thing he could reach for blindly, that item being the journal he was reading. There were no signs that there was someone with him, but his hardened instincts told him that there was definitely someone there.
"Show yourself." Eric demanded into the air. Nothing moved, but the air shifted. It felt like a presence had moved, shifted slightly to where he wasn't feeling as ill at ease as the previous second, but it still felt…. unreal. "I mean it. You don't scare me."
"You need to listen to me Connor."
Eric's ears pricked upwards at the voice. It sounded like an old woman, arguing with someone.
"Hello?"
"There needs to be peace between the Assassins and the Templars."
"No. There cannot ever be peace."
"I know that Achilles told you that you need to wipe out the Templars, but aren't you tired of fighting? Aren't being weighed by the blood on your hands?"
The voices faded out. Eric shivered as goosebumps pickled his skin.
So, he had finally lost it. Hearing voices that shouldn't be there.
Something behind him shifted. On instincts, he swung the book, only meeting air. He was surprised when he came face to face with a wall.
A wall that….
Eric cocked his head, noticing that there was a barely seen mechanism. It was well hidden, camouflaged to the point of obscurity. Out of curiosity, Eric dropped his sight, tapping into his Eagle Vision. It felt strange, using the power that so many Assassins have after so many years, but he shook off his shock and focused.
His heart stopped.
Behind the seemingly immovable brick wall, there was a room. Seemingly a spacious room that was filled with items that Eric was unable to tell what they were through the Vision. He dropped his eyes down to the wall, dialing back the intensity of the Vision to search for the lever. A smile tugged at his lips as he reached for it. He dropped the Eagle Vision as, the moment he touched the mechanism, there was the sound of gears clicking and turning. The wall swung open.
"Whoa…" Eric muttered as he stepped into the hidden room. He backtracked a moment, his still damaged lungs not taking too kindly in breathing in dust that had been hanging around for who-knows-how-long.
Once his coughing fit was over, Eric stepped into the room. There was something…interesting stepping over the threshold and into a planning room that belonged to his ancestor. Portraits of long-since-dead men were tacked onto the far wall, all of them having red 'x's over them. There was a table pushed into the other wall, littered with pieces of parchment with frantic, almost illegible handwriting all over it. It was a far cry from the neat, pretty handwriting that was scrawled in most of the letters and journals.
"What do we have here?" Eric asked himself as he leaned over the table and started to examine the papers. His brow furrowed as he scanned over the first sheet of paper that was laying on top.
A victorious smile pulled at his lips, this time bigger and better than before.
"Now we're getting somewhere."
But as he read paper after paper, he started to get…. not worried but not exactly frantic either. Eric found himself on the border of these two emotions, especially when he started to shuffle through the others. His heart all but stopped when he spotted one with a rough sketch of what looked like the island, except it showed what looked like a hollowed underground right below water level…...
"Oh shit."
There was a secret, underground Isu Observatory underneath Griffin Rock.
Eric's heart dropped into his feet. His breath caught in his chest, and he was pretty sure that his fingers stopped working. The piece of parchment he was holding fluttered to the floor. Everything seemed to tilt a little bit, knocking Eric over to the wall. But not to the floor, thankfully.
He would need to find a way to get to the Griffin Rock Laboratory, all thoughts of giant robot aliens out of his mind.
But he did pray that if the Rescue Bots had contacted Optimus Prime, the leader of the Autobots wouldn't be so stupid to bring the Apple he left at Omega Outpost here. If that artefact was brought to Griffin Rock, if it connected with the Observatory…
He shuddered, not wanting to think about the implications that it would have for the island.
His eyes dropped to the rough sketches of the Observatory, his brow furrowing.
"What were you up to?"
Maybe his great-a-hundred-times grandmother had figured out what was going on. And maybe, just maybe, she had left a trail of breadcrumbs for him.
"Okay, Cordelia." He muttered, nodding to himself. "Let's see what you found."
