UPDATE: As I was (finally) working on chapter 3, I came back and noticed a rather important line got cut/incompleted. Whoopsie. It has now been fixed!

Without further ado, enjoy the next chapter of Firewall! The Cat is Out, But You're in the Bag Now


Emma had a nagging feeling creeping up her neck as she started rooting through whatever file drawers would open. She couldn't leave though, not yet, not without some hard evidence that would get her the warrant she needed to thoroughly search the rest of the building. Her word against theirs wouldn't do her any good when she would not be able to explain exactly where she was when she heard such information. No judge would sign off on that.

So she was left to scramble up something, though the feeling only continued to get worse. 'Cop Sense' her Dad had called it, and it had been in the family ever since they first started wearing a badge some generations back. It had never led them astray, and had been the reason many of them made it to retirement.

Emma chose to ignore it for this exact moment, choosing instead to pick the lock of the secured cabinets. There had to be some sort of paper trail for what the company had been up to, she only hoped there were hardcopies somewhere. She lacked the time and skill to hack their computers.

With a frustrated huff, the locked drawers provided nothing beyond Abstergo's financial reports. Not a damn thing in this room could be used to get her warrant.

The feeling grew to the point she could no longer ignore it, and, checking to be sure the hall was clear, slipped out. She was loathe to give up tonight, but she'd already spent nearly an hour in this building, spending more was tempting fate beyond reason.

So she headed for the stairwell to go back to the first floor. There would still be a cop or two downstairs finishing the last of the paperwork for the mess she'd created, with luck she could slip out unnoticed.

Her sense told her to duck; she did, but her reaction was just a moment too slow.

Pain exploded across her head and her world tilted and dimmed. Did he hit her with a brick or something?! Bastard. She pitched forward, unable to stop herself or cling to consciousness.


"Son of a bitch." Emma hissed when she came to, head pounding and vision fuzzy as she tried to reach up and rub her abused body. Only her arm refused to budge, and a tight rubbing around her wrists clued her in that her hands were bound behind her. Damn. Shifting, she managed to get herself at least sitting up, cursing at finding her ankles bound as well. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

The room…closet…wherever they had thrown her was dark, empty and utterly bare of discernable details other than two doors on either end. Altogether not something that bode well for her, especially considering they had left her gun at her hip. Unreachable, it was as useless as the knife strapped to her ankle, or the pepper spray that never left her desk.

"Ah finally awake I see." A male voice made her jump and awkwardly attempt to turn to face him. She achieved at least twisting partially to face him, cursing herself for not hearing the door open. She squinted at him, head pounding even worse as she forced the part of her Cop Sense she could control to work. Very faintly, the man outlined in red. "You have become a colossal pain you know."

He was musing, like one who was acknowledging the irritation of an itch on the nose. Emma ground her teeth together as he continued, "First you were simply an annoyance, but now I can only wonder what it is I can do with you."

Her blood ran cold at what he was insinuating, and she worked at her wrists more than ever, rubbing the skin raw. A little pain would be well worth her life. His brows raised slightly, and he almost seemed….amused at her attempts. "Lucky for you, a…complication has arisen, and we have use of you yet. The struggling will need to cease."

She glared at him, tugging at her wrists more, attempting to work the knot loose without being able to see it. He sighed, as if dealing with a petulant child. Did he honestly believe she would stop fighting to get free just because he said she was 'some use' to them?! HA! She'd rather not be anyone's plaything thank-you-very-much.

"I did offer you the easy route." He grabbed a handful of her blonde hair, yanking her head back and holding it steady as he pulled a syringe from his pocket and injected it into her neck.

The effect was almost immediate, her head felt light and woozy, and her body stopped responding to her commands. Whatever it was was knocking her on her ass. Bastard.

In the haze that followed, she blearily made out another man entering the room, and the vague feeling of being lifted and moving. She could not move on her own, and at best her vision was blurred beyond recognizing the shapes of people. Her hearing had not been impaired, though it took her several seconds longer to process exactly what they were saying.

"Take her to thirteenth floor, into the testing room." The original voice commanded.

The one carrying her shifted, and her body swung limply against him, his shoulder digging into her gut. "The Firewall project? It is operational again? I thought the last test had split the dog in half."

Great. Fantastic. She was going to be a fucking guinea pig for something that would most likely kill her.

The first man didn't make a sound, but he did something that had the other backtracking. "I am sorry Sir, it will be done."

Not another word was spoken as they continued to the elevator, up too many floors and then down another hall. Emma was too delirious to make any sense of the direction other than the wrong way. She had to go that way, back, the way they'd come. Whatever awaited her would be terrible; there was no doubt about that.

She was set down on a platform of some sort, her body slumping against the back of the tubular structure built around it. It was probably some sort of machine based on the humming around her, but Emma's vision was too blurred to make any of it out. Her bound hands were freed, but when she tried to twitch a finger, it was a very slow, languid move. It was something, but not enough. Not nearly enough.

Several people were moving around, talking to each other about data, the latest fixes and tests but it was a mash of gibberish that went right over her confused head. Lights flashed, commands were shouted and the people moved about in such an organized fashion that Emma had the strange thought of looking at an anthill, everyone doing their jobs with precision and efficiency.

"Do we have them?" One voice drifted over to her, clearer over the rest.

"Yes, the journals of both Cesare and Rodrigo, as you requested." Another responded. Who? Why the fuck would anyone want someone's journal?

"Excellent, let us begin."

Computers chirped, alarms sounded and the anthill moved faster as every one of them cleared out, leaving her completely alone. She closed her eyes. Her hand twitched. It wasn't enough.

A low hum vibrated the platform and the structure she was leaned against, and she idly thought how she would be the first cop in the family to die before retirement and what a shame it was that they would lose that bragging right. Even her brother had survived war in the Middle East, but not her. No, she goes out following the advice of a loon. And the Darwin award goes to…

A kaleidoscope of blurring colors and shapes swam before her eyes as the room spun. The humming grew louder and heat seared her skin, as if she was standing too close to a fire. She shifted away from it, but the flames leapt at her from every direction. It was too hot, she thought for sure at any second she would feel her skin begin to burn.

If this was to be the end, then damn it she was going to see what she could of it. There was no fire, in fact it was nearly dark, with small spots of light flickering here and there. Her vision was getting better, but it was still impossible to make out the details beyond buildings, shingled roofs and brightly dressed shapes that could have been people. Everything was dim in the darkness, and it was only when the shapes passed by the tiny spots of light that she could see any colors. People. They had to be. Where was she? This wasn't Abstergo.

She opened her mouth to call to them, for help, but when her lips parted, no sound came and the heat returned. Blinking, the city was gone, darkness replaced by blinding light and a freezing chill swept over her in an instant. What the fuck?

The metal structure she had been leaned against, that had been replaced by cool stone, now felt like rough bark. She tipped her head back, body shivering as her arms twitched to try and wrap around herself. The sun was high but offered no warmth, only reflecting miserably off of a cold white that blanketed everything. Snow? But it was June!

What could only be trees surrounded her, trees and snow. Cold wracked through her again, water seeping into her clothes. She was grateful for the invisible fire to claim her again.

Her movements were slow and sluggish, but at least she could control her body when she blinked again and found herself leaning against a dusty structure in the dim light of dusk. Small pebbles and sand scraped against her palms as she tried to push herself up straight. She only half succeeded, and let herself slump back against the wall, waiting for the heat to claim her again and continue this hallucination.

It did not come.

She even blinked, closed her eyes for a full minute, but still the only warmth that touched her was what was left in the air after a hot day, cooling as night staked its claim but comfortable still. Her heart pounded like war drums in her ears as she opened her eyes and made out the same dusty structure in front of her as had been there a minute ago. Where was the lab? Where was the Abstergo goons? She was completely alone in this alley, in a place that was most certainly not New York City.

When night completely fell, there was not even the small flickering lights that there had been in the city, the moon was absent and darkness reigned so supreme she could not make out a single fuzzy object. With the sedative still flowing through her veins, Emma let herself fall against the wall and rest, hoping dawn would bring answers, and an escape home.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Otto slammed a fist against the one-way window with a growl as lights flashed and alarms blared. "Damn it! What went wrong?"

It hadn't been their first human test, no, captured Assassins had been elected for the very first trials, and none of them had made it, neither had the beasts they'd used when they ran out of captives. This one, according to the readings, was alive at least, so there was progress. But the damn thing was off.

"I don't know. All of the preliminary checks went fine, it was set to your precise date and location, everything was normal until it tried stabilizing her." One of the lead engineers on the project rattled as she rushed into the testing chamber, pulling up the data on the machine's computer itself.

"It was accurate the first was it not?" Otto asked, following the most competent scientist in the room. None of the others were even brave enough to look at him, idiots. Robin Kelly had no such cares about his authority. Her life was her work, and right now it was this project and this machine. She would get it functioning if it was the last thing she did.

"It was." She answered after a minute, looking at the readouts, "It was exactly accurate, 1475, Florence, the alley across from the home of Uberto. It was perfect, it had her stabilized to 90 percent before it glitched."

"Where did it glitch to?" The equations she was reading was only somewhat recognizable to him. She'd done all the coding in her own personal language, so that no other—namely the Assassins—could never duplicate it. As such, even Otto knew only little of it.

The screen she was reading flashed more numbers. "The middle of the Russian forests, 1307, it only reached 70 percent before it jumped her again. She has stabilized now, and it has lost its grip on her."

The woman pursed her lips, getting absorbed into the readings as she typed away at it. Otto nearly growled at having to ask. "Where? When did it drop her?"

She blinked up at him, as if she'd somehow forgotten he was there. "Twenty-two-hundred hours, July 3rd, the Rich District of 1191 Jerusalem."

"Will it keep track of her location and time?" Robin had claimed that would be the easiest part of the project considering, but none of the tests had been successful enough to find if her claim was true.

She nodded. "Yes, coordinates within a square mile, the time to the second, until the moment she dies, in theory. But there is no way to bring her back."

Otto stared between her and the screen, a slow grin working its way across his face. This had gone far better than he had thought. In fact, he dare say it ended better than he had originally planned. Why target the one who rebuilt that damned Brotherhood when he could have the one that started it all? Cut the head from the snake and there will be nothing to rebuild come the Renaissance.

"Marcus." He called for his ever-present shadow that was fairly useful at retrieving things for him and delivering messages but not much else. "Find me Robert de Sable's journal and the Codex pages."

Twenty minutes later he was in a high security conference room with six of the highest ranking and most trusted of his colleagues, the requested book and pages out before him. They had all gone through them, but nothing had changed of the versions they'd memorized long ago. Every historical record of that time and place they had had been examined as well. There was not even a footnote different to suggest any part of history had been changed by the appearance of a 21st century woman.

"Will she die so soon there is not even the chance for a butterfly effect?" One asked, eyeing their 'expert' on time travel. As if he had anything other than guesses at this point.

"There are three theories for this." Said man pulled his glasses off, rubbing the lenses on his shirt. "The first, and the one I believe to be the most likely, is the Theory of Time."

He paused, as if that was supposed to mean anything to anyone. "Basically it means that we will not see any of the effects of her presence until she has caused them in her own time. Essentially, if it takes her six months to be noticed enough by Robert that he would write of her, it will take six months before we see the change in the journal."

Placing the glasses back onto his face, he glanced around the room to be sure everyone had grasped the concept. "The second is the Alternate Verse Theory, in which the woman was sent back, but all resulting ripples will only be known in an alternate universe, one where that is always the past."

"You mean to say that no matter what we would accomplish with this project, we'd still be plagued by these damn Assassins?" A third spoke up, leaning forwards against the table to stare at their so-called expert.

The man, to his credit, didn't even flinch under the imposing stare. "If that is the theory that comes to fruition then yes, however I believe it to be the less likely."

"And the third?" Otto cut in before anyone else could drag this out with more questions. More importantly, he wanted to know, for one-hundred percent certain, that this machine had worked. It was all good to for a computer to say someone was someplace, at some time and alive, but in reality? He knew nothing, and he would determine his actions based only on things he knew by fact. Seeing a ripple, or some change created by the woman, if she were in fact when and where the machine said she was, would confirm that for him and put the rest of his plan into motion.

"The third is a simple theory, that she was always going to go back, that she already had, and absolutely nothing is going to change because she has already changed what it would have been like without her." This had never been an extremely promising project, not on the drawing board and not now in practice. The very fact the machine seemed to have worked was impressive, but now they had only a one in three chance of it meaning a damn thing.

"So our next course of action?" A fourth asked, composed and cool as always, not even Otto could read his expressions, concerned or hopeful, he always looked like he'd been told his stocks had dropped ten points.

"We wait." Otto decided. "We fine-tune the machine and we wait for confirmation of our success. And then, we shall destroy the Assassins before then can begin."

There was much work to be done and the deadline could happen upon them without any warning, they had best get started immediately. With a dismissive nod he rose and exited the room, noting one more thing had to be done; all evidence of the woman being there had to be erased.


Captain: So yes, Emma does have a variation of Eagle Sense, part of it being a *slightly* heightened sixth sense for when trouble is coming and a bit of the Vision, however it's very weak colors and not nearly as honed as Altair's. This is not here just for making her 'more interesting', but those details will be revealed later as the plot requires instead of an info dump.