Chapter 6: Dettagli
During dinner, Alexis piped up. "Hey, if these are all Assassins," she gestured to one statue in particular, "how come only this guy has one of those hide-a-shanks?"
Desmond nearly choked on his soda. He coughed and sputtered.
"You okay?"
"Sorry," he gasped. "I just... 'hide-a-shank'. Pfft!" He couldn't contain his laughter. Rebecca was giggling a little as well. Lucy just rolled her eyes.
"That's Darius of Persia." Shaun informed her. "First recorded user of the Hidden Blade. Fifth-century B.C.E. It didn't really become our trademark until much later."
"Wow... just how far back in history does all this go?"
The Assassins exchanged glances. They were all thinking the same thing. Subject 16's video. Adam and Eve. Even if she could be trusted with this knowledge, it would be difficult to explain. The room was silent except for Alexis: "Uh, guys? Hello?"
"We don't know," Shaun finally answered. That much was true. The date of the memory had been redacted by Abstergo.
"There's more to it than that, though, right?" she said, her eyes narrowing. "Okay. Whatever it is, you're clearly not ready to share that info with me yet. I get it. Didn't mean to open a can of worms." She went back to eating her spaghetti.
Desmond intervened to prevent an awkward silence from descending. "You're wrong, Lexie. Altaïr's got a Hidden Blade too." He pointed to the statue given pride of place. "I was trying to tell you before but I was laughing too hard."
"Oh... I guess I missed that. So what's his story, Shaun? It looks like he's, like, the most important one here."
"You don't have to ask Shaun," Lucy said. "Desmond could tell you all about Altaïr."
"Well, maybe not all about him. I only lived a few months of his life."
Alexis went "Mmuh?", her mouth full.
"Altaïr Ibn La-Ahad." A strange accent crept into Desmond's voice when he said the name. "The guy whose memories I had to relive at Abstergo. He was a great fighter, but kind of an arrogant cock, and he didn't respect the Creed. He eventually screwed up an important mission, got another Assassin killed, and was demoted back to novice rank. Then he had to defeat his Mentor, who had been corrupted by the Apple's power. Afterwards, Altaïr became the new Mentor, and kind of reorganized... no, reinvented the Brotherhood."
"The head honcho of the Assassins is called the Mentor," Rebecca clarified.
Desmond went on to relate what he'd learned from Altaïr's writings in the Codex. "It was his idea to have secret bases instead of a giant citadel that screams 'Hey Templars, come and get us!' And he made a bunch of cool upgrades for the Hidden Blade. Made it so you didn't have to cut off a finger to use it," Alexis winced, "invented the gun attachment-"
"Gun? Yours doesn't have a gun."
"He doesn't need a fucking gun, he just sits in the Animus all day!" Shaun groaned, stabbing his fork into a meatball.
"So, yeah, Altaïr was a pretty important figure for the Assassins." Desmond concluded.
"I heard he killed Genghis Khan, too," Lucy added.
"Geez, was every bad guy in history a Templar?" Alexis said.
"This is a fascinating talk, but if you don't mind, I think we have more immediate matters to discuss," Shaun interjected, suddenly realizing a pressing issue. "When's your vacation supposed to end?"
"Ah, the return flight is on the eighth... Monday morning."
"So that gives us tomorrow and Sunday."
"To do what exactly?"
"To throw them off the trail." Rebecca said. "Once you don't return on that flight, people will start looking for you."
"You mean, Abstergo?"
"If they were behind your choice of vacation spot, then they'll be the first to suspect something's up," Shaun said. "If they didn't orchestrate this little rendezvous, they'll sure be looking into it once your family and friends file a missing person case, because that case will certainly mention the fact that your pal Desmond also disappeared recently. There's lots of Templars on the police force, you know."
"So, what do we do?"
"Make sure there's nothing in that house that can lead back here. Maybe plant something to lead somewhere else," Rebecca answered. "We'll go there tonight, you and me."
Alexis and Rebecca started up the ramp to the surface, the latter bearing an odd toolbox. "So, how long have you known Desmond?"
"Couple years... How 'bout you? You grow up with him on that commune?"
"What, you mean the Farm? Nah, I was raised in the normal world."
"How'd you get into this?"
"Not to brag or anything, but they needed someone with my kind of mad techno-skills. Speaking of skills, do you have a job, an employer who's gonna notice your absence?" The redhead nodded. "You'll need to tender your resignation, then. If you're not working there anymore, they won't be asking where you went."
"I suppose I should think of a cover story."
"You could say you fell madly in love with a steamy Italian hunk and you're moving to his rural vineyard."
"I suppose... if we can't think of anything more plausible."
When they got to the house, there were dishes in the sink, her phone was still on the bedside table, and the sheets were rumpled, but other than that, there was no sign of Alexis' brief stay.
"Get your mobile."
"But Shaun said they can track it."
"Yeah, which is why we're going to drop it somewhere. Okay, put on your CSI hat. Did Desmond leave behind any evidence that he was here? Fingerprints, body fluids, what have you?"
"Ah, we... we had some wine. There's probably prints on the glass."
"Go wipe it down." Rebecca handed her a cloth. "I'm not kidding about the body fluids, you know. He's a guy. You're his girlfriend. If you two did the deed, we gotta make sure there's nothing-"
"There's nothing! We... we cleaned up afterward." Her face had turned red.
"I'm gonna check just to be sure." The dark-haired Assassin took a black light emitter from her toolbox and switched it on. Alexis knew she was just thinking of the security implications, but it was still weird. She pocketed her phone and went back out to the kitchen to clean the wine glass as instructed. Looking around, she mentally reviewed these last few nights, trying to think if Desmond's fingerprints might have gotten on anything else.
"Welp, looks like you did a good job with that cleanup." Rebecca said as she returned to the dining area. "You got any of that wine left?"
The other woman was gazing out the window at the night sky. "You know, he ran away from me at first."
"Eh?"
"On Monday night. When Desmond first saw me, he... the first thing he did was turn and start to run away."
"Really." Well, if she had been a Templar, and had already recognized him, running away wouldn't have helped. He could have led her right to us if he wasn't careful.
"But then he came back, 'cause I was yelling his name at the top of my lungs."
"Mm. What if he'd kept running?"
"I probably would have written it off as a dream... Heh. Things have just gotten more surreal from there. I couldn't dream something this wild."
As Alexis was locking the door behind them, Rebecca pointed across the road to the bank. "While we're here, you should probably get some cash from the ATM. You're gonna be living off us for a while, and our funds are already kind of limited."
"Oh, right." She hadn't realized it before, but the Assassins were essentially providing her room and board now, and she wasn't even doing anything for them in return. She felt suddenly indebted, and knew she was blushing again.
"Don't take out too much, it'll seem weird," Rebecca cautioned. "Maybe a hundred euros or so. Speaking of money. The rent on that house-"
"It's fine, I prepaid for the week." Alexis finished her transaction and stowed the blue bills in her pocket. "Where are we dropping the phone?"
"This should do." Rebecca walked up to a white van with "Posteitaliane" emblazoned on the side. She produced something else from her toolbox. "Duct tape has a million uses. Use number 4,071: Tape your phone to the bottom of a mail van to lead Templars on a wild goose chase."
"Alex! You need to start pulling your weight around here. Stop lazing about and come help with lunch."
Alexis looked up from the Animus feed, where Ezio was stalking French soldiers. She rose from her seat next to Rebecca and went to Shaun, who was stirring some soup on a camp stove. "Okay, chief, what's my mission?"
"Make a salad to go with this. There's veg in the fridge." He handed her a cutting knife.
Guess he finally trusts me, she thought, taking the blade. She retrieved lettuce, zucchini, and carrots, and began chopping.
"Hey, Shaun, I've been meaning to ask... Do you know whose idea it was to name this thing Assassins?"
He was miffed at her use of "this thing" to describe the timeless concept of the Brotherhood, but he answered anyway, always amenable to an opportunity to talk history.
"Well, it's derived from Arabic, 'assass', for 'foundation', 'fundamentals'. But detractors throughout history have spread the false etymology that it means "hashish users", essentially slandering our order as a bunch of druggies who would literally kill to get their fix. Eventually, tales of Hashashin, Assassiun, Assassini, etc. became so widespread that the word became synonymous with any ideological killer, whether it was someone bound by the Creed or just some random madman."
"At that point, why not rebrand yourselves? I'd go for something like 'Freedom Guys'."
"Actually, in the third century, during Rome's Imperial Crisis, we were known as the Liberalis Circulum. Quite literally, 'free group'. But for some reason, once 'Assassins' caught on, nobody bothered to change it. I'll try running 'Freedom Guys' past our PR department at the next quarterly."
Alexis laughed. "PR department! Nice." She playfully chucked him in the arm, almost making him splash soup over the side of the pot. "Ah... you mentioned being 'bound by the creed'... This is like the third time someone's mentioned a creed. Care to elaborate?"
Does she ever run out of questions? "There are three tenets in the Assassin's Creed: Stay your blade from the flesh of the innocent. Hide in plain sight. Never compromise the Brotherhood." he recited, robotically.
"Niente è vero, tutto è permesso." Desmond added, his voice surprising the two. He was out of the Animus now and had come to check on the status of the meal.
"What?" Alexis asked.
"I was getting to that part!" Shaun turned the stove off and cleared his throat. "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted. A kind of corollary to the tenets."
"It sounds cooler in Italian," Desmond murmured.
"You mean, like, moral relativism?" She sounded dubious. "Wait, that doesn't even make sense. If everything's permitted then why can't you hurt an innocent?"
"It's not like that. It's kind of a metaphor... it means you're supposed to think for yourself and stuff." Desmond said. "Question everything, don't limit yourself, don't blindly obey authority, et cetera."
Alexis set out four bowls of salad. "Huh... that sounds like a pretty good philosophy. It's kinda what I strive for, actually."
"Well then you'll fit right in!" Rebecca said jovially, as she and Lucy joined them at the table. "Do we have any dressing for this salad?"
"Italian, of course."
10/06/2012
12:18 PM
RE: The new girl
Shaun,
Alexis- Probably best you picked her up. I trust you covered your tracks. I checked the databases. There's nothing on her specifically, but we have files on a bunch of people with the same surname, some allied with us, some not. For now, keep her on a need-to-know basis, and try to find out about her background, her family.
Eagle Vision- You probably know as much as I do, if not more, due to working with Desmond. He's an outlier, though, since he acquired it through the Animus. The sparse reports we have on file indicate it invariably manifests in early childhood, if not present from birth. EV was never common, but it seems to be getting rarer. Underlying mechanism remains unknown. As you might imagine, researching this is not currently a high priority.
William
Ezio seemed to be carefully examining the Rosa in Fiore building.
"Hey, Desmond, I don't know if you're looking for something from Sixteen, but last time, scanning with Eagle Vision seemed to help."
"Duh, Shaun, I don't need you to keep reminding me. I've got the hang of it by now."
Alexis turned to Rebecca. "What is he talking about?"
"Oh, you don't know... Desmond was Abstergo's seventeenth Animus research subject. The one before him was Subject Sixteen. He hid some encoded messages in the Animus memory core. Desmond's trying to find them and decrypt them."
"And, eagle vision?"
"Hm, well, it's this ability-"
"Let me show her." Desmond spoke up. "It'll be faster than trying to explain it in words." Alexis watched as, in a flash, the colors of the Animus video feed shifted. She saw, through Desmond's eyes, through Ezio's eyes, the blue glow of a gaggle of courtesans, the silvery sheen of a haystack, the red aura of a Borgia patrol rounding the corner. "And there it is." A bright blocky patch of aquamarine came into view on the wall above him. Ezio climbed through it.
"Loading...Scanning... Scanning... Scanning... What am I? What am I? Lost..." A warbling rendition of "Home on the Range" began playing. "Geez, just when I think I've seen it all. This just gets curiouser and curiouser," Alexis muttered.
Endnotes:
-"How'd you get into this?" - I love the song "Assassin's Creed" by Insane Ian. Mayan mystery, a conspiracy, How'd I get into this?
-origin of the word "Assassin" - IRL, there are actually a lot of competing ideas on this. I chose this interpretation for my story. Ref. a) the excellent paper "Assassin's Creed: A Multi-Cultural Read" by El-Nasr et al. b) the "Etymology" section of Wikipedia's page on Assassins. Yeah, I researched the fuck outta writing this one conversation.
-"Liberalis Circulum": ref. Ankh of Isis graphic novels
-As usual, this chapter had a couple of different titles while I was working on it: "Domanda" and "Segretezza". I was originally going to use "Dettagli" for chapter two.