ASSASSIN'S CREED + CATASTROPHE
Prologue— "The Animal in the Cage"
Dr. Catherine "Cat" Désirée Beaufort was having a miserable day at Abstergo's Main Headquarters in Rome, which meant everything was normal. What was that acronym Americans used? SNAFU— Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.
The year was 2025, and the world was in bad shape. An appropriate acronym for the Earth would be FUBAR— Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
The world was experiencing the beginning of Cold War Two, fought between two superpower alliances: The Global Treaty Organization, which consisted of the United States, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea, and all of their fascist-capitalist allies, and The Moscow-Beijing Alliance, which consisted of Russia, China, Eastern Europe, North Korea, and all of their communist allies. Neither side was right; in fact, their opposing ideologies were just two different flavors of the same underlying trend: dictatorship disguised as democracy. But the war was never about ideology. Rather, as usual, it was really about resources.
Resources were getting scarce, and the human population kept getting bigger and hungrier for them. Global climate change was ravaging the Earth; natural disasters had become more and more violent, and the rising ocean level due to the polar icebergs' melting was forcing people to move away from the coastlines, causing nations to begin to redrawing the lines of nations due to growing parts of their landmasses now being uninhabitable.
In 2021, a massive global recession arose due to massive economic issues such as the growing wealth gap, corporate and government corruption, mass poverty, shortage of resources, and so on, and in just a matter of one year, civilization had nearly crumbled due to the depression turning to a hyperdepression. Naturally, Abstergo forced its hand, and desperately tried to offer philanthropic programs to the masses to help rebuild the world. People graciously took what little they could get, not realizing that who they were getting their relief packages from were part of the very group that was responsible for their misery, as well as the rest of humanity's misery since the beginning of history.
Ironically enough, history was repeating itself. Like with World War Two, Cold War Two was bringing humanity out of the Great Hyperdepression… to some extent. And "Cold" was a euphemism, as it was currently projected to be much worse than World War Two. So far, nearly 80 million people—1% of the world's population—had died in the various proxy wars that plagued every continent, sea, and ocean, either in the open or through covert warfare and propaganda over a mere three years. The world was currently in state of paranoia, pandemonium, war, and dread for the nonexistent future.
The only solution that people could currently think of for survival was technology. As a result, humans were starting to adapt to using transhuman augmentations created by Abstergo's Clinic of Eden, hospitals specializing in augmentation surgery run by Abstergo's subsidiary medical and scientific conglomerate, The Abstergo Cross. Humans no longer needed the Bleeding Effect to become superhuman—now, they could get triple-helix DNA augmentation surgery so they could augment their bodies and minds until they rivaled the Isu themselves. The only problem was that they were expensive, so Abstergo had to make people pay for them. Hence the "helix gap"; the richer you were, the more augmentations you could buy. In addition, now people could interface easier with Animi without going insane. Not to mention that Abstergo was developing their own version of the Observatory to monitor people's thoughts, senses, emotions, and memories, essentially creating a mass surveillance system inside the population's minds by lacing the triple-helix DNA medications with a chemical compound created by the Isu that could act as medium to transmit their thoughts as data to the Observatory. Think the Snowden NSA scandal, but on a scale that would make George Orwell himself toss and turn in his now-underwater grave.
Due to a combination of all of the said current events and facts of life—the brutally violent Cold War Two, the Earth becoming less and less safe for humans to inhabit, and Abstergo sucking the global economy dry of capital and the global government dry of democracy due to its hubris— gradually less and less humans were truly human. More people were either choosing to be augmented by getting surgery willingly at Abstergo's Clinics of Eden if they had the money to, due to being coerced by their brutal circumstances into accepting Abstergo's philanthropic augmentation or if they didn't have the money to, or they chose to face death. Perhaps the latter choice was the best out of the three. Worse, humans' genotypes were starting to become more and more homogenized—conforming to trends that people found more attractive or superior in strength, intelligence, and willpower, among other traits. The world and its population were gradually beginning to look like an Aryan dictator's wet dream.
Speaking of which, her boss, August "Aug" Morgenstern, the new CEO of Abstergo, pretty much was one. He made Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Khan look like what he called "tree-hugging liberals"; he was a fucking scumbag. The worst part was that he knew she thought that of him because he could read her mind, and this made her extremely vulnerable to his manipulation and intimidation tactics.
Cat was just as much a prisoner here at Abstergo as the test subjects. She was currently in the basement of Abstergo Headquarters, a massive black project site built beneath the busy streets and massive, colorful skyline of the newly-renovated Rome. The black site was terrifying; the hallways were gloomy and dimly lit, with polished stainless steel walls, ceilings, and floors that you could see your reflection in as if it was another person following you around wherever you went. Like one of those Animus-induced hallucinations where you could see your ancestors next to you.
There were heavily augmented security guards everywhere, wearing Abstergo's elite black soldier armor and toting intimidatingly massive lethal laser rifles and cattle prod-esque melee weapons. The armor they wore had the red triangular insignia of the New Templars embedded onto some parts of it; the triangular Abstergo symbol, combined with the Templar and Abstergo Cross that also looked a lot like the plus sign characteristic of the transhumanist movement in general, and an eye to symbolize their boasted godlike omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. The eye was inside the triangle, and the plus sign was inside of the eye's iris. Abstergo had their own perverted version of the Eye of Providence.
There were security systems such as spherical infrared cameras and laser tripwires; the cameras could not only rotate 360 degrees and move around like drones but could identify any transhuman by reading their phenotypes and thoughts through a connection to the Observatory. The laser tripwires worked the same way in that if your phenotypes were not registered on the Abstergo database for access to that area, it would raise an alarm by reading them, whereas it would temporarily turn off if you were registered until you were no longer near the laser. Sometimes, when the alarm was raised, laser tripwires would turn from a security system to a dangerous white-hot laser that would severely burn any intruder that touched it, similar to those in the new laser rifles guards used. The cameras and lasers also were connected to various weaponized turrets and explosive mines with shaped charges.
And if your thoughts were perceived by those overseeing the Observatory as rebellious, then your registration would be disabled. This system worked the same as RFID tags and chips on credit cards; if your thoughts are seen as inconsistent with the values, motives, and laws of the Order—and your registration is disabled, whether you're a civilian or a low or middle-ranking Templar—you can't use transportation, you can't use computer systems, the Internet, or electronic devices, you can't buy what you need to survive or the credits to purchase it, and you can't use the biometric signature-requiring weapons you need to rebel against the system. You're cut off from society, and that means you're vulnerable. Then, Abstergo finds you and makes you disappear, and for them, it's a cakewalk.
There were door locks containing biometric scanners, as well as scanners that could scan your body, face, and thoughts using an Observatory-connected camera, various digital keys, and voice scanners that had you speak passphrases that contained every phoneme in the world's known alphabets; the passphrases changed every twelve hours. These devices used the Observatory registration system as well.
There were also massive, deadly AI drones that were designed to look like scary, large robotic animals used for security as well. The drones were not only used for security, combat, scouting, and economic and environmental reconstruction purposes, but also for transportation; you could use birdlike drones to travel by air, fishlike drones to travel by sea, and various landbased creature drones to travel across land. Hell, there were even some used for multiple types of terrain, and some that were being designed to travel in outer space! They could chew you up alive with their teeth, crush you to death with their massive bodies or the momentum of their powerful charges and attacks, or use their intimidating ranged and melee weapons against you. Aug told her that once they were able to mass produce enough of them, they would become the new animals, cars, bikes, trucks, tanks, boats, submarines, helicopters, and planes.
They were even working on artificial flora used to create triple helix-DNA repairing medicines using advanced CRISPR technology. If it weren't for the fact that natural flora and fauna still existed despite the mass extinctions going on due to global climate change and resource depletion, Cat worried that, in a matter of generations, the Earth probably wouldn't even have a natural biosphere!
And finally, there were the laboratories and test subject rooms where the ten thousand test or so subjects on site were imprisoned, monitored, experimented on, occasionally tortured to keep in line, and forced to use their Animi. Watching these sick "doctors" torture and experiment on these poor transhumans was like watching one of those documentaries about the New Holocausts happening in various countries. Then again, the original Holocaust was designed as the world's first form of mass eugenics, the precursor to transhumanism. The worst part was knowing that technically she was one of them, even though she didn't want to be.
To her surprise, August had showed up down here to greet her at her laboratory today.
"August," she said, "you're not in your penthouse."
"Today is an important day, Ms. Beaufort. Especially for you."
"What do you want?"
"First, for you to watch your tone and show some respect to your superiors," August snapped.
"Yes, sir," she said sarcastically.
August grimaced at her for a moment, but then his grimace turned to his trademark sadistic grin. For a second, she thought she was screwed.
"You've been assigned to the most prestigious test subject in the building. Perhaps in the world. Consider yourself lucky."
"Of course, sir. Who's the test subject?"
"That's the thing. It doesn't have a name, let alone an identity. We've wiped its memories in order to keep it under control. Follow me."
Intrigued, scared, and confused at the same time, Cat followed August to the Vault; solitary confinement. They spoke the passwords into the dual locks to the blast doors and stood and looked toward the cameras to let the beams of their biometric readers scan them up and down. The stainless-steel blast doors slowly opened before them, and they stepped inside.
In an extremely thick glass cell inside the Vault was what appeared to be a fully nude superhuman man, sitting calmly within it and strapped to an Animus-esque chair.
The man was strikingly attractive; he was 6-foot-9, with proportional body measurements due to his massive, muscular build. He had extremely muscular arms, shoulders, legs, pecks, and a straightened, muscular back and a rock-hard six-pack. She assumed that he weighed over 300 pounds. He had blonde hair in a crew cut, cold ocean blue eyes with an intense stare, a cleft chin and strong jawline and neckline, no facial or body hair whatsoever, and smooth tan skin. He was muttering something to himself; his teeth were pearly, straight, and white. He was incredibly intimidating due to a combination of his hulking body, intense stare, and lack of emotion on his face.
He was staring up at the ceiling, as his ankles, thighs, waist, chest, biceps, wrists, neck, and forehead were strapped to the chair with steel cuffs.
"This… is Subject I-73. This being," said August, "has more triple-helix DNA than any other being we've seen. It is so intelligent, that if we didn't wipe its mind, it wouldn't need to utilize an Animus to experience its ancestors' memories. In fact, I bet it could experience those of its descendents, too."
"The sixth sense. Information. Time itself. My god…" said Cat, "he's an Isu."
"Exactly. If it weren't for this being, we wouldn't have progressed as far as we have on the Phoenix Project. We're very close to extracting its memories nearly as far back as the Isu era itself. We managed to create this being by combining a human being with an extremely rich Isu bloodline with even more triple-helix DNA utilizing the Shroud of Eden in order to turn it into an Isu from scratch."
"That's… extremely unethical… and dangerous," Cat said. "Who was the human?"
"The identity of it and the ethics of your work are none of your concern, Miss Beaufort!"
"It is if I'm in charge of working with him."
"Enough!" yelled August. "You're to do experiments involving the Animus with it. If it can regain its memories through the Animus and the Bleeding Effect, theoretically any human with triple-helix DNA could, including the highest-ranking members of the Order and any people we deem fit to be allowed to."
Shit, Cat thought, this is bad. If August gets his hands on those memories… let alone anyone…
"All right, August," Cat said to him reluctantly. "Let me know when you want me to begin the experiments."
"Good," grinned August. "Oh, and Catherine…"
"Yes?"
"Don't let it get inside your head. That being is a potential existential threat to humanity. Playing with fire may be our job, right, and responsibility for the sake of the human race's safety, but you need to be more cautious with this one. Don't let it know who, or what, it is. And keep it under control. Use the guards to make sure it stays helpless. Use the typical procedures if it becomes belligerent. Electric torture. Beatings. Waterboarding. Starvation. Deprivation of senses and sleep. Application of potent hallucinogenic drugs. And so on."
"All the fun stuff," Cat said sarcastically, while also being disgusted with herself. "Right. I'll keep it under control, August."
"You had better," he said, "otherwise I will have to keep you under control again."
"Yes, sir," Catherine said, trying to show no emotion as August laughed sadistically, but gasped in surprise as August slapped her on the butt, and said, "Good luck with your work, Miss Beaufort," then promptly left.
As soon as he was gone, Catherine shook, breathing heavily, her eyes went wide, and she blinked a lot, trying to hold back the tears. She still had vivid nightmares about and occasional panic attacks from when she was treated like another test subject as punishment for trying to escape.
That man is a monster, she thought.
She put her hand to her head and tried to clear her thoughts. Then she began her work.
She stepped up to the computer console outside the glass cell, and, after examining the Isu man's medical, psychological, physical, and genetic data, as well as what little of his background and lineage wasn't redacted in the database, she spoke into the microphone.
"Subject I-73, can you hear me?"
"Yes, Catherine, I can hear you."
"You… heard my name from in there." She said.
"I have more superior hearing than your fragile mind can comprehend."
He's definitely an Isu, she thought, and said to him, "All right, so you heard my name. I know you don't have one yourself. Unless you know yours?"
"No. I do not. You stole my memories from me."
"Forgive me," I said to him. "My bosses, his thugs, and the other scientists were the ones that did that to you. This is the first day I've known that you exist. I'm not like them, though. I will try to make sure you are as comfortable as possible."
"Comfort is an irrelevant and extremely transient sensory input," Subject I-73 said, "but I appreciate the meaningless gesture, Catherine. Still, I hear unease in the vibrations of your voice's wavelengths. But I can read your psychological profile from the sound of it. You are not sure whether you want to lie to me about that or not."
"That's— incorrect." Catherine said.
Subject I-73 laughed. "I am not naïve, child, and despite that you are much more than me, you are not, either. You are simply in denial that your mind is being read by your captors. And, despite that I do not yet have complete access to it, it is also being read by me."
"I see," said Catherine. "Well, then I might as well be honest. I don't like you. Not even close. But I don't want to have my captors hurt you, either. So, I suggest you cooperate with me. I'm coming in to do an examination of you before we begin your trials in the Animus."
"Your honesty is relative. Humans will do anything to avoid facing the terrors that are their own souls. It is in your nature," Subject I-73 said. "But to be fair, you are exponentially more honest than the others in this facility, Catherine. I appreciate that. I promise I will not hurt you, but feel free to enter this cell at your discretion. I understand that you are apprehensive."
This guy is going to get on my nerves real fast, Catherine thought as she walked over to the glass cell door anxiously and opened it by having the biometric lock and camera scan her face and body. She stepped inside the glass cell and raised the chair 60 degrees using the controls in her company tablet so Subject I-73 was facing her.
He smiled. "Blonde hair, blue eyes. 5-foot-7, 133 pounds. Hourglass figure. Wearing a white lab coat. 27 years, 3 months, 6 days, 4 hours, 13 minutes, and 22.58 seconds old. Now that you are in front of me, I can tell that you are more attractive than I could sense from a distance through the molecules of air colliding with the surfaces of your body in the current. Your body is tiny, and fragile, but attractive. Yet I can tell that you possess an inferior amount of the triple-helix DNA your boss, August, is so obsessed with."
"That's… creepy," said Catherine. "But at least you're being honest, albeit brutally. Most men in this facility just choose to hit on me."
He laughed mockingly, and told her, "Forgive me, Catherine. I am merely elaborating on how I perceive the extent of the time-space continuum that I can access around me through my dialogue with you. I know I possess far superior iterations of the five human senses, as well as the sixth."
"Right," she said, "now stop showing off, and hold still. I'm going to do a physical examination of you, starting with your heartbeat."
Cat unlocked the cuff around the man's chest with her tablet, then held her stethoscope against it, and listened while activating her tablet's stopwatch app.
After she finished counting, and recorded the abnormally large number in her tablet, Subject I-73 said to her, "You are attracted to me, are you not? Or at the very least, you are fascinated by me due to your natural affinity for the sciences and the vast languages of the undiscovered. Despite that your mind is inferior to mine, it is superior to most other humans on Earth."
"No, I'm not." She said coldly. That was the truth.
"The more you attempt to lie to me, the less you will find the probability of succeeding in doing so is. You will have to face your own soul eventually, Catherine."
"I'm not lying to you." She repeated calmly, despite that he was pissing her off at this point.
"And yet your heart is beating faster than usual right now, despite that mine beats faster than most humans' hearts can, let alone while managing to stay healthy, on a consistent basis."
"Try and seduce me all you want, but it won't help you," she said. "Now I'm going to get your blood pressure."
She re-locked the cuffs on his chest remotely with her tablet, and unlocked the cuff on his right bicep, then wrapped a blood pressure cuff around it, and squeezed the bulb to tighten the cuff. After finishing, she entered the readings from its gauge into her tablet.
"I can help you escape from here," he told her.
She looked at him, terrified. She began to sweat; she could practically feel the Observatory's prying eye in the back of her mind grow wider. "No," she said, "I'm not trying that again."
"You desire to leave, do you not? This place is causing you a dangerously unhealthy quantity of distress. You are experiencing what humans refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder, along with comorbid symptoms of major depressive disorder."
"Fuck you!" she yelled, her voice beginning to break. "I'm not running away again! They tortured me. Did what they're doing to you. You said it yourself: I'm inferior to you. I can't cope with the shit August did to me! No human could without dying inside a little!" She said, "Besides, I can't let you out of here! You're too dangerous to be unleashed on the world, and it's my obligation to keep you in check!"
"Obligation to whom?" Subject I-73 said to her. "You know August is going to torture you again at some point. His mind is plagued with the traits of the Dark Tetrad. He enjoys watching you suffer, and will make you suffer more again once he finds a reason to."
She whimpered, and tried not to cry; her mouth contorted in fear and she shook.
"To them, you are just like me: an animal in a cage. Just another rat being put in a maze that'll be zapped every time it goes in the wrong direction before it even knows it's wrong. But I can protect you, Catherine. You will not experience the negative reinforcement you seek—the removal of punishment, as is known in the psychological principle of operant conditioning—without taking the risk of trying to escape. It is what you would call a no-brainer, Catherine. If you choose to keep me in here, you're choosing to continue running blind through the maze, waiting to be zapped again despite that you know the maze has no real exit. But once these cuffs are released and I escape this cell, there will be no holding us back."
"This place is a fortress," said Catherine. "It won't work. I'm not doing it."
"Then you are choosing to rot in this infernal place with August for an extensive length of the time continuum, at least in terms of human perception. Perhaps it will be the length of the rest of your life. Do you really want that?"
Starting to give in, Catherine grimaced, and said nothing. She was already in serious trouble given that the Observatory—and therefore August— was reading her mind. She was starting to realize that Subject I-73 was right; August was trying to condition her to think obediently by punishing her every time she thought in a way that he considered to be rebelling against him.
This was humanity's fate if they didn't do something. Humans would be brainwashed because they couldn't be free to think what they wanted to now that Abstergo was able to know exactly what they were thinking 24/7. It was sickening. At the same time, it was also hopeless. Abstergo had its filthy invisible hands on the entire world. Its network was vast. It had holds of practically every corporation, government, institution, and non-profit organization on Earth.
She would have to think on this, despite that she didn't have much time before she would no longer be allowed to think at all.
"Let me finish your examination, then before we begin your Animus training session, I'm going to have to measure your pain tolerance. August's orders," she said angrily.
"Of course. You are trying to mask your true intentions." I-73 said while he grinned.
Cat said nothing, instead, she gritted her teeth and grunted.
"Glad you see things as they are presently," he said. "Trust me, Catherine, soon you will be free from here. After that, we will take things from there."
What he means is we'll be fugitives, she thought. Is that really better than being stuck in here?
Catherine stayed silent as she finished her examination of him.
… … … … …
Three hours later, August arrived to watch the show.
Catherine's hands were trembling, her eyes wide as she had no choice but to watch the guards torture Subject I-73. She clasped them together to stop them from shaking so violently.
As the guards attached wires to his body to electrocute him, she was having flashes of when she was also tortured like this, among other ways.
August, his best troop commander, Alex Farro, and a man named Otso Berg were all present, keeping watch over her. "Activate the current, Miss Beaufort. I want to see this for myself."
Catherine looked at Subject I-73 worriedly. He calmly and subtly nodded at her.
Reluctantly, she activated one of the switches to turn on the current.
She could hear the electricity running through the wires. Subject I-73 wasn't budging; he showed no signs of pain.
"It's not working. Turn it up until it begins to scream," August said.
She gradually flipped more switches. He began to grimace, then grunt continuously, until he was starting to howl in pain; his body was shaking and squirming violently in his bonds.
"Not good enough, Cat. Give it more."
She flipped so many switches that the wires were beginning to glow blue; she could see shock burns developing on Subject I-73's as his body began to turn red. By now he was screaming at the top of his lungs.
"All the way, Miss Beaufort. Its thought data from the Observatory suggest that it hasn't broken yet."
"But it'll overheat!" Cat said.
"Do it!" August shouted at her.
Petrified, Cat turned up the current all the way. Subject I-73 was almost popping out of his bonds due to how powerfully he was fighting to break free of them as he roared from the agony produced as his body was lit up with lightning bolts. Watching this was unbearable.
Cat couldn't take any more. She turned the switches off.
Subject I-73, his body covered in burns and emitting steam, panted heavily and caught his breath as he stared at Catherine. She was surprised as she saw that his body was already starting to heal.
"Jesus, his body heals like it's got its own built-in Shroud," Commander Farro said.
Furious, August snarled at Cat, "Damn it, Cat, we weren't done with it yet! The readings say its mind is still coping with the pain!"
Cat said nothing, fear glowing in her eyes.
August scowled at her. "I'm disappointed in you, Cat. We'll break it soon enough. With or without you at the controls."
Otso Berg interrupted August. "He's an Isu hybrid, August," he said. "The minds of the Isu are so sophisticated that it's likely he'll never break. Getting inside an Isu's mind is even harder than killing-let alone fighting—them; I've only seen a human do it once, and they needed the assistance of the Koh-i-Noor artifact to do so. Without it, not only would it have been impossible, but it would've irreparably fragmented their mind and driven them into madness. Also, the boy was present there, if I recall."
"To be honest, I think trying to break him is a waste of time," he added. "Putting him in the Animus would be far more useful to the Phoenix Project. Speaking of which, this is not my specialty, and I have somewhere else I need to be. An Assassin cell was spotted in Iraq, and I've been searching for this particular cell for months now."
"Iraq?" said August. "Do you think they could be after…?"
"The Engineers?" said Otso. "Possibly. I'll look into it, and make sure that the Assassins don't find them. After what happened to Majid Sadiq at Site F, we need to be more cautious in how we have them operate."
"All right, you do that, Mister Berg," said August. "Meanwhile, I have a meeting with the CEO of Blume in San Francisco that I need to attend to. Mister Farro!"
"Sir?"
August whispered to Alex, "Keep an eye on the girl. Make sure she doesn't do anything stupid. Use your cattle prod if you have to. Just make sure not to maim her; we need her intact if we want the experiments to continue. Plus, that pretty face of hers can't show pain if it's disfigured."
"Yes, sir," Alex said.
August grinned and walked towards Catherine. "All right, Cat, consider yourself lucky once more, I have to be somewhere else now. But I'll be back. Promise me you'll be a good girl while I'm gone," he said, and kissed her forcefully on the lips. Catherine shook, and pulled away as soon as he released his grip on her.
Catherine covered her stomach with one of her arms and turned away from him, quivering as he left with Otso. Trying to distract herself from thinking of what just happened, she thought instead of what the others were talking about earlier.
August said he was going to a meeting with the Blume corporation, she thought. Blume was a subsidiary of Abstergo responsible for developing the ctOS surveillance and big data system. Rumor has it they were working on integrating the ctOS's they installed in various cities around the world into a global ctOS system. She also assumed that they were responsible for recreating the Observatory and trying to integrate it with ctOS and the Internet of Things.
And Otso Berg mentioned the Engineers. The Engineers were a much-feared global terrorist organization that almost toppled the US Government back a little over a decade ago. Rumor has it that they worked as a false flag terrorist organization for Abstergo.
Then she remembered that Otso also mentioned the Assassins. Wait a second… A lightbulb went off in Cat's head. Yes, that's it! The Assassins! I'm sure they can help us fight Abstergo, or at the very least they can keep me safe while dealing with Subject I-73… somehow. If I can just manage to break free of here with I-73 and we can make it to Iraq… maybe we can find them.
But how do I do that? She thought. Fuck. Maybe I-73 can help me… Regardless of whether or not we're going to break out of here, though, right now, I need to buy time.
Calming down a little, Catherine went to Commander Farro, and said, "Hey, shithead. I need your help."
"My orders are to prevent you from doing anything stupid," Farro said, clutching his cattle prod.
"I need your help with doing my job, shithead. Trying to escape would be stupid, I agree, and I'm not getting tortured again," Catherine bluffed. "But I-73's a big boy, and he doesn't get special treatment because he just got tortured either. I want you to help me do what Otso Berg said we should do. Put him into the Animus. Right now."
Commander Farro sighed, and said, "What do you really want from me?"
"I want to figure out who this Isu prick is. That way I can do my job better."
Farro's jaw practically hit the floor. "You're defying August's orders. I'd be defying his orders as well by letting you do that, and it would be even worse if I helped you."
"You don't understand. He's an Isu. If my intuition is correct, and it usually is, if we probe his mind enough with enough memories as far back as the Animus data will possibly go, perhaps we can spark a memory of where he—and consequently, we—came from—the beginning of the First Civilization itself. And if we manage to do that…"
Farro frowned. Catherine said, "I know the risks. Only we will know who he is. If he finds out, then we wipe his memories by applying the current again."
"You're not strong enough to torture him, and he's too strong to break. I saw you try to do it. You failed because you're a scared little girl trapped in a world of powerful men."
"Cut the condescending patriarchy bullshit. I'm following orders to the T—T as in Templar. Despite that we're so close to being there already, this Isu in the chair and what's stored in that egotistic mind of his is the key to taking over the world completely. We just need to get his real memories in order to find Eden and what happened to the Isu and their rebelling human slaves before the Toba catastrophe struck. We do that, and we're golden."
Catherine said, "Now as soon as August and the others are out of the building, get me the files to the Babylonian proto-Assassin Iltani and her memory archive. We'll start with her and go from there." She smiled at him, and said, "You have her files, don't you?"
Farro frowned. "Why Babylon? Can't you just use some of the Animus archives you actually have access to?"
Catherine smiled even wider. "I know you may think that I'm weak, but I also know you know that I'm not stupid. I heard what Otso said. About the Assassins and the Engineers in Iraq. But I don't think I heard the whole story through what little he just said. After doing some research of my own, and combining that with what I just heard, I think that Eden was originally somewhere in Mesopotamia. In Iraq. Call it a hunch."
Farro said, "You're stronger than I thought. All right. You've got my help. For now."
He then aggressively lashed out at Catherine with his cattle prod, hitting her in the back of the left leg with some current.
Catherine screamed, fell on her hands and knees, and put her hand over the rip in her lab coat where he hit her, clutching the bright red skin on her leg beneath her stocking as she breathed heavily.
"Why the fuck did you do that—ow!" she yelled hoarsely at him before he grabbed her by the neck and yanked her off the ground.
Farro growled, "You're not the only one who knows how to bluff. I just got a status update from the Observatory. You're colluding with the Isu entity. And unlike you, I intend to obey the orders of my superiors. Use the memory archives you were given. I'll torture you myself after you're done."
"No, you don't know what you're doing, we have to— arrgh!" Catherine screamed as he hit her again, this time in the ribcage. She shook violently and pressed her hand against the burn on her ribs as he grabbed her by the neck again and dragged her to her feet.
"You're testing my patience, kitten. Are you going to obey your orders or not?"
"Go to hell," she spat.
He turned her around and zapped her in the lower back. Cat screamed at the top of her lungs and fell to the floor on her hands and knees again, clutching her back. She tried to crawl away, only for Farro to stomp on her so she fell flat onto her stomach.
"I think I've had enough," Farro said, turning her onto her back with his foot and aiming his cattle prod at her. "We'll deal with that Isu bastard later. I'm bringing you to solitary confinement now where I'll deal with you accordingly. But first, I'm going to give you a taste of what's to come."
Farro grinned, and said, "Stick out your tongue."
"No!" Catherine cried.
"Stick out your tongue, or I zap your chest instead. That'll be even more painful, and possibly dangerous if I turn up the amperage enough. Not to mention that it'll probably burn the whole top of your lab coat off." As he moved the glowing blue cattle prod over her body to intimidate her, he taunted her, "I hear August has a thing for you. I'd hate for him to find you like that while confined. He might… do something to you. Again."
"He was going to anyway!" she cried.
Farro laughed at her. "Well, if that's the case, I guess I might as well get you ready for him."
Catherine screamed for help, and to her surprise, it came, albeit not in the form she expected.
Farro was about to beat her with the cattle prod again when the facility went from very to completely dark, and Catherine managed to dodge Farro's attack by rolling away, as he was caught off guard, and manage to kick him in the groin as hard as she could.
"What the—arrgh, fuck!" yelled Farro. "You bitch, what did you do?! Where are you?!"
Catherine, catching her breath from after screaming due to the pain of being zapped, ran for her life and in the direction of I-73's cell using reliance on memory of it while the lights were on.
She quickly went to the biometric lock's scanner and camera, only to find it was disabled.
How's that possible? She thought. Whatever, I'll take it.
She could hear Farro screaming behind her; he tried to swing his cattle prod around blindly to try to immobilize her before he heard her. He fired several stunning laser blasts at her, some of which hit the glass walls of the cell she was hiding in.
Feeling around for Subject I-73 with her hands, she ended up touching his chest. It was warm, and she could feel his heart.
I-73 said, "Catherine."
"No time to talk; we have to leave," she whispered, her voice hoarse from screaming.
"I can tell from your touch that you are wounded. You are freeing me now."
"Yes, now shhh!"
Catherine unlocked all of his bonds with her tablet, which was still operational.
"All right," I-73 whispered.
"Can you see in here?"
"I have the sixth."
"Good. Use it."
She managed to free Subject I-73 just in time, as Farro was entering the cell; she could see his cattle prod glowing.
"I can see you, bitch. Unlike you, I've got thermal vision goggles." Then he paused his speech. "Oh, shit…"
I-73 charged at Farro with the strength and momentum of a genetically augmented bull and slammed into him, knocking Farro into the glass and creating a dent in it.
"He is unconscious," said I-73.
"Good riddance; now let's go!" said Catherine.
"I am going to finish him," I-73 argued.
"There's no time, we have to get out of here!" she explained.
"You desire revenge, do you not?"
"I desire to get out of here, damn it!"
But they were interrupted when two others entered the cell and flooded the room with a flashlight, blinding Catherine.
"Where is Elijah?" yelled a Russian female voice before Catherine could hear an all-too familiar blade retract from its concealed gauntlet a matter of inches away from her extremely red and sore throat.
"And what's with the naked Aryan god?" said a whiny male British voice that was further away than the Russian female one.
"Holy shit…" said a female American voice. "Is that an… an Isu?"
"Oh, bollocks. This has officially become more than I bargained for. Galina, protect us from that thing!" yelled the British male.
"Catherine, what entities are these?"
She could tell just by the sounds of their voices. "Galina Voronina, Shaun Hastings, and Rebecca Crane. They're members of the Assassins; they're on Abstergo's most wanted list."
"The Assassins. The faction that the entity called Otso Berg mentioned."
"What?" said Galina.
"That bastard's here?!" shouted Shaun.
"No, he left," said Catherine. "He's headed for somewhere in Iraq to hunt down one of your cells."
"Iraq?" said Rebecca.
"Something about this whole thing is starting to stink," said Shaun.
"I promise I'll explain everything to you if you help both of us get out of here," said Catherine.
"Why should we help either of you?" threatened Galina.
"Because we might be able to help you find Eden. That could be the key to stopping Abstergo from enslaving the planet!" Catherine said. "We just need access to the Animus data for the Babylonian Assassin Iltani's memories!"
"We've already got those. That's what we came for," said Rebecca.
"That, and Elijah," said Galina.
"Elijah? Who's Elijah?" Catherine asked.
"Desmond Miles's son. The Sage. Do you really not know who he is, or are you lying? You don't think we're stupid, do you?" said Shaun.
Elijah? That must be the boy Otso mentioned, Catherine thought. She told them, "I didn't know about Elijah, but I do know about Desmond. Look, I suspect you're one step ahead of me in terms of knowing about Eden's possible location, but I believe that this Isu entity might be able to process the memories that far back without going insane or falling into a coma," She added, "…even though we wiped his own memories to keep him under control."
"Why did you do that?" asked Rebecca. "If he's an Isu, couldn't you just find Eden by probing his own memories?"
"No, because he's not a real Isu, he's a genetically engineered one. He used to be human," Catherine explained. "But I'm hoping to restore his memory to find out who he is regardless. I'm out of the loop as to who he is; I'm a prisoner here as much as he is." She pointed over to Farro sharply, her finger shaking. "See that man? He just threatened to torture and kill me, and he zapped me with his cattle prod even though I'm just a scientist. And I've been tortured before… by August Morgenstern, Abstergo's new CEO. Before you ask, he's also left."
"Damn it, we could have killed him too if we timed this operation better!" said Galina, who slammed her fist into the glass cell wall.
"He must've known you were coming. My name is Catherine Désirée Beaufort, and I want to get out of this hellhole. Please, will you take us to your hideout?" she begged.
"We're taking this Isu. Not you," said Galina.
"I will neither come with you, nor spare you your lives, if you do not bring Catherine along as well." said I-73.
Galina looked over toward I-73, not taking her blade away from Catherine's throat.
Shaun said, "Bloody hell, Galina, just take the scientist lady with us, we need to get out of here or we'll miss the rendezvous with the others!"
Galina sighed in frustration, and said, "All right, come with us, and keep your head down. We will be watching both of you very closely." She hid her hidden blade in her sleeve, and they ran out of the glass cell.
While they were running out of the Vault, Catherine whispered to I-73, "Please don't tell them that I'm pregnant with August's bastard child."
"I already knew. And I wasn't planning to." I-73 whispered back.
"Why are you helping me?"
"I have my motivations."
They ran toward the Vault blast door, only to find it had locked as a backup generator was starting to power up the laboratory again.
"Shit," said Rebecca; she then put a finger to her neck. "Layla, can you help me hack this door open?"
"Negative," said Layla Hassan, a former employee of Abstergo-turned one of its most dangerous enemies, over Rebecca's communicator. "I'm at their security command center right now. Despite that I overrode most of the base's security and we managed to arrange a blackout with the help of DedSec, the Vault's door just sealed shut again and I can't override it. They must have a backup generator somewhere. You're going to have to find a way to open the door without hacking it."
"Hold on; I can help!" said Catherine. "I'm biometrically registered for one of the locks, and the passphrase hasn't changed yet. I just need someone to wake up Farro and force him to open the Vault door."
"No, bad idea!" said Shaun. "He's a trained Abstergo commander; he's not going to cooperate with us! Plus, he'll only make things worse if he's conscious!"
"I will make him do whatever I want him to do. As of now, he is weak." Said I-73. "I will kill him when all is said and done. Still, I wish I had killed him earlier."
I-73 went and fetched Alex's corpse, then punched him awake, and grabbed him by the back of the head.
"You again." Alex grimaced. "You're not going to get out of here. Once you're caught, I'm going to kill you all myself."
"Yes, we are going to get out. I would know better than anyone." I-73 taunted. "Unfortunately for you, we need your help, and that means you're coming with us," said I-73. "Move a muscle and I crush your fragile skull."
Alex Farro laughed, and taunted, "But if you kill me, then you're not going to get out. Because you said it yourself, you need my— arrgh!"
He howled as I-73 bent both of his arms backwards with a powerful blow to each of his elbows, then slammed him in the gut thrice with both of his fists and grabbed his skull again.
"You are far inferior to me, both physically and mentally. And I can tell that you are a coward. Once you catch your breath, you will help us open this door."
Alex panted heavily and grunted when he caught his breath.
After Catherine and Alex spoke the passphrase into the Vault and had their bodies, faces, thoughts, and biometrics scanned, Galina, Shaun, and Rebecca set some high-powered explosive devices on the Vault's main pins and detonated them remotely. I-73 then broke both of Alex's legs with kicks to his knees, smashed his face in with a painful palm strike, and picked him up and held him by the neck with one hand. Alex screamed, and coughed out blood and teeth.
"You're coming with us," said I-73, "and you're giving me your clothes."
"My god," said Shaun. "You're more violent than Galina."
"I heard that," Galina said. I-73 grinned smugly at that.
They ran through the corridors; Galina, Shaun, Rebecca, and a now-dressed I-73 fought all Abstergo soldiers, drones, and security systems that came their way using old-fashioned weapons that utilized lead ammunition, as well as their hidden blades. I-73 occasionally used Alex as a human shield and a projectile to throw at the soldiers.
They're as impressive in combat as described in Abstergo's reports, Catherine thought as she hid behind various cover spots as the firefight progressed further out of the base.
All the while, Alex's body was being used to disable any nearby biometric door locks, laser tripwires, and cameras reactivated by the backup generator so they could pass through.
They managed to make it to the elevator leading to the underground parking lot and call it. Catherine moved to hide behind the Assassins and I-73 as they stood their ground as they waited for the elevator. Catherine had her back to the elevator when it opened, and a security drone grabbed her with several large sticky wires for arms.
"No!" she yelled.
It began to point a wire with a rapidly spinning drill attached to it at Catherine's head. She screamed and tried to wrestle out of the drone's grasp, but it was too strong. Right before it drilled into the side of her cheek, I-73 blasted it with a stolen laser rifle, causing it to short-circuit. Some of the bolts burned Catherine; at this point she was struggling to stay conscious. I-73's decision to save her came at the cost of having to drop Farro onto the ground; he was carried away while groaning in pain, a bloody, bruised, groaning, and disfigured mess, by several Abstergo soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Assassins and I-73 quickly hurried into the elevator, and Rebecca used Catherine's tablet to interact with the elevator's console while I-73 looked at Catherine lying on the floor, shaking in anger.
"Are you all right?" said Shaun.
"I have been hiding this… memory deep within my consciousness from Abstergo. Somehow, they couldn't manage to pry it out of my head. Perhaps it was traumatic to me when I was human. I cannot make sense of it."
I-73 held Catherine in his arms and tried to heal her by holding his hand to her head and stroking her bruised face as the elevator began to move.
"What are you doing?" said Rebecca.
"Putting my Shroud over her," I-73 said. "The information is blurry, but… I know that was young. I was in a house. There was a woman there with me. She was kind. And I was weak, not understanding what was wrong with me. I had heterochromatic eyes. There was this… voice in my head. I thought I was going insane. But she was there for me. I suspect that she was my mother. And, somehow, Catherine reminds me of her."
Rebecca, Shaun, and Galina all became dead silent, staring at I-73, simultaneously in complete disbelief and complete understanding.
"Elijah?" said Galina.
I-73 looked at Galina. "I'm- Elijah? The boy you were looking for?"
"Yeah, I suspect so." Said Shaun quietly.
"Who am I?" asked I-73.
"You're the son of Desmond Miles," said Galina. "He saved the world."
"And he was our friend." Said Shaun.
"Well, 'friend' is putting it lightly, given how much of a dick Shaun was to him." Rebecca teased.
"Initially," he retorted as he gave Rebecca the stink eye.
"Perhaps I still need to face my own soul as well," said Elijah.
"What are you on about?" asked Shaun.
"The human soul is fragile. Easily manipulated to believe whatever "truths" it is told, that it wants to hear. I can barely see the past, but I can see much more of the present, and even some of the future. Nowadays people get outraged about anything they're told by their governments or the media, and they turn against each other. Left, right, West, East, freedom, tyranny… Assassins, Templars. It doesn't matter. It merely helps fuel the war and its fake ideology to disguise its real purpose… that time for humanity is running out. Everyone knows that, and they know that they are fueling the catastrophe as they consume the Earth and its resources, yet they choose to believe another truth to help prevent their souls from collapsing. Just a tool to hide their primitive, violent, and selfish nature. Is this really a new civilization, or is it just another form of savagery? It's just a cage to house the human animal."
"Abstergo, my captors, the shadow puppeteers of the world, told my mother that they could fix mine at their clinic. Instead, they came to our house, killed her, and kidnapped me. Did agonizing experiments on me that resurrected the puppeteer of the voice in my head. A monstrous entity… like the one I am now."
"You mean Juno, and her husband, Aita." said Rebecca.
Galina said, "You know that Desmond unleashed Juno in exchange for stopping a solar flare from cooking the Earth and everyone on it in 2012. But you're the one who stopped her. You saved the world, too. You're no monster."
Shaun said, "Yeah, and about that whole 'truth' monologue, we Assassins have a saying. It's the key to our creed."
Galina smiled at Shaun as he said this.
"What does your creed say?" asked Elijah.
"Nothing is true, and everything is permitted. The nothing is true part is a lot like what you said, just not as misanthropic." Shaun said.
"But everything is permitted means that we have the power to transcend our limitations, and the limitations of society. Genes are nothing without the sum of our own life experiences, whether they're triple-helix or not. Since nothing is true, that means we can make our own truth, but in a good way. We choose to shape civilization by disobeying it in order to change it for the better." Galina explained.
Elijah smiled at this. "All right, Assassins. You had my curiosity before, but now you can consider me an ally. For now, at least."
"Good enough for us," said Rebecca. "Speaking of which, we've reached the parking lot, and Catherine's waking up. Looks like you managed to heal her after all."
Elijah looked at Catherine, and she muttered weakly, "I-73…"
"Don't waste your energy, Catherine. Just rest… but not in peace."
Shaun joked sardonically, "You should say that again, but in Latin."
They ran to the parking lot, where Layla was waiting for them in a large van.
"Jump in!" she shouted, and the group did so.
As Layla managed to steer them out of the parking lot and into the streets of Rome just before Abstergo's goons arrived and the mass hack of Abstergo's power grid began to subside, Catherine said to Elijah, "Why did you choose to save me?"
Elijah said, "I will explain as we ride with the Assassins."
"I hope the two of you aren't afraid of airplane rides, because we're headed to Iraq once we meet up with the others at the rendezvous in Tuscany," said Layla.
"Don't worry about me," said Elijah.
"I'll manage," said Catherine weakly.
"Also, I hope you two aren't afraid of needles," said Rebecca.
"Needles? What for?" asked Catherine surprisedly.
"Insulation meds; that way Abstergo can't get inside your heads with the help of the Observatory and figure out what you're thinking, then tell you what to think. It works like a tinfoil hat, only it's infinitely more effective and infinitely less Alex Jones-y."
"Rebecca hates that wanker," said Shaun.
"And so do you," joked Galina.
Catherine looked at Elijah anxiously, then looked away, shut her eyes tight, and said, "All right. Make it quick."
"Oh, what are you, a little baby?" Shaun said.
"Enough." said Elijah.
Shaun looked confused suddenly, while Galina and Rebecca were sympathetic.
"August must've done something nasty to her."
Rebecca said, "Good thing I'm good at giving shots."
Shaun teased, "You mean injections, or scotch? Because I'm pretty sure you mean the latter."
Rebecca glared at Shaun, and said, "I'm good at both," as she gave Catherine the shot in the arm before she could yelp in pain rather than surprise.
"I'm surprised you didn't give her the shot in the neck," said Layla while driving.
"Why would I do that? That's dangerous!" asked Rebecca.
"They always do it in the movies, though," she responded.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. Elijah put his hand on his head while shaking it sideways.
Layla said, "Speaking of which, I got my portable Animus ready in the back of the van, along with the memory data for Seth."
Catherine's eyes went wide. "Seth? The third son of Adam and Eve?"
Shaun said, "Yeah, about the whole 'we got the memories for Iltani' thing, that was a bluff. Layla managed to find a Precursor vault not far from Baghdad where she managed to extract their memories from where Seth died. We just needed someone like Elijah with enough triple-helix DNA to relive them in the Animus without going insane. That, and we missed the bastard."
Galina said, "Who needs a Babylonian proto-Assassin when you've got one from the Biblical era, both before and after the Toba catastrophe?"
Shaun said, "I have to say, I'm interested in seeing what the lives of the early Isu-human hybrids were like. Known as the Nephilim in the Bible, they were said to be able to live for hundreds of years instead of tens of them unless they died of a cause other than old age. I have a theory that Cain is both a Sage and the real Father of Understanding, not the Satanic Baphomet deity, and it's no debate that his children were the original proto-Templars."
Catherine smiled at this.
Staring back at Catherine, Elijah grinned, and said, "Then it would be best that I get started."
They rode on to Tuscany, and eventually Iraq.
Little would they know that the Templars would soon be waiting for them in Iraq, along with Alex Farro, who was now healed augmented with triple-helix DNA himself, and also furious and out for revenge.
TO BE CONTINUED…