"I've got it." Desmond's voice was confident as he exited from Ezio's memory. "The Colosseum."

Lucy stood from her desk, purposeful and businesslike. "Let's go. We can be there before dawn." She and Desmond, with Shaun and Alexis following, made to head up the ramp to the surface.

"Wait!" Almost immediately, Rebecca put a damper on their enthusiasm. "There was something about that door. I don't think I saw a handle... Lemme run an analysis."

Alexis wondered what exactly she was analyzing.

"Great!" Shaun slumped against one of the larger pieces of rubble. "So we need some kind of futuristic key?"

"Wouldn't it be 'pasturistic'?" Alexis said. Shaun glowered at her.

Rebecca's "analysis" consisted of replaying the video from the last moments of Desmond's Animus session in super-slow motion. "It seems to open with a verbally-triggered mechanism... I've never seen anything like it."

"You mean it needs a password?"

"Try humming Beethoven's Fifth," Shaun said.

As if to punish the historian for forgetting that Ezio lived several centuries before Beethoven, the lights abruptly flickered and died.

"Damn European power grid!" Rebecca growled. "Now we can't scan Ezio's memories to find the password!"

"Then what do we do?" Alexis asked.

Nobody seemed to know, for there was only silence as a reply. Lucy found a stash of glow sticks and activated a couple, giving some faint light to the darkened sanctuary. "We have to find that password," she stated plainly.

Alexis had to fight the urge to say "No shit Sherlock, we've established that."

"Ezio knows the answer," Rebecca said, trying to sound casual about their predicament. "Problem is, he's dead."

"I can't believe we're stuck here!" Shaun groaned. Then he aimed a death glare at Desmond. "If you hadn't insisted on faffing around with that Sixteen nonsense first, we wouldn't be in this mess!"

"Don't blame me!" Desmond shot back, leaning against a weathered brick wall, his arms crossed. "How was I supposed to know the power would cut out!?"

Wanting to forestall any more angry back-and-forth, Alexis tried her best to stay calm as she asked, "Y'all pack any batteries or generators?"

Shaun shifted his glare back to her. "We were a little bit busy fending off Vidic's thugs, Alex, we barely had time to pack the Animus!"

Even in the meager glowstick illumination, Shaun's glares were powerful. Alexis held up her hands in apology. "Sorry, I'm just brainstorming."

"Well, try doing a better job at it. Or else just be quiet and let the experts handle it. That's us, the Assassins, not you, the civilian," he clarified snippily.

And so they spent a minute just standing around in the dark, each person vainly trying to think of a solution.

Then Desmond suddenly cried out "Lexie!" and pointed at her. "You're blue! When did you turn blue?"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"In Eagle Vision. You're blue, like us!"

"Uh, okay," Alexis said, a bit taken aback. "First off, I thought only Ezio had that, but I guess I was wrong. And second off: Blue is good guys, right? Why are you so surprised?"

"Yes, Desmond," Shaun piped up. "Please do tell us why this surprises you. Didn't you tell me you'd checked her in Eagle Vision before revealing all of our secrets?"

"I did, but she was colorless... a civilian, like you said. But now she's... wait, I think I got it." He smiled at her. "Yeah, you- you didn't know anything back then... and since then, you learned about Assassins and Templars, and you decided what side you're on. Now you're allied with us. I dunno how exactly, but Eagle Vision picked up on that."

"What, you mean your freaky ESP can read my mind?" she said, incredulous.

"No. Well, kind of, I guess? It's not like I can tell what you're thinking, it's just-"

An irritated Shaun cut him off mid-sentence. "Can we get back to finding that Piece of Eden now, and philosophise about Eagle Vision some other time?!"

"All right, shut up! I'm working on it. I got an idea." Desmond turned and searched the walls of the entryway until he once more found that enigmatic sequence of numbers. Something- he couldn't say what- was telling him that this was the key.

Alexis, who had followed him, since she didn't know what else to do, noticed where he was staring. "Something up with those triangles? Oh hey, that's the same triangles that were on Ezio's passworded door!"

"Yeah. And there's a message there in Eagle Vision. 1419, 1420, 1421." He gestured to each number in turn. "What if they aren't dates?"

"Oh my god!" Shaun seemed to suddenly realize something.

"What?"

"God!"

"Tell us already!" Rebecca imperatived.

"I am, I am, I am," he sputtered incoherently. "The Tetragrammaton, the seventy-two names of God, you see? They're all contained within three verses, Exodus 19 through 21! Oh, and get this, you'll like this, if you arrange the four Hebrew letters within God's name within an equilateral triangle, their numerical values add up to the same number: seventy-two!"

His pronunciation of "number" somehow rhymed with "rumba", but that wasn't the part Alexis was having trouble with. "Wait, so now Bible Code numerology shit is real, too?!"

Rebecca was skeptical as well. "Are you absolutely sure about this?"

"That's kinda why I'm saying it out loud, Rebecca, yeah, but I havent got to the kicker yet... Construction. On the Colosseum. Began. In the year 72," Shaun concluded, a supremely pleased note to his final words.

"I think we have our password."

The group, newly invigorated by this breakthrough, headed up to the surface. Rebecca got out a flip phone and started keying a message.

"Who are you texting? And I thought you said phones weren't safe?" Alexis asked.

"Newer models aren't safe, with the GPS and wi-fi and what not. And even old feature phones can be tracked if you're not careful. Need to have special mods on 'em so we can be sure they're invisible to the enemy," she explained. "Anyway, I'm letting our team leader know we're en route to secure the Apple."

"None of you are the leader?"

Rebecca shook her head.

"Then who-"

"Is it anyone I know?" Desmond asked.

"Yeah, you know him." She wouldn't say anything more than that.

"So, after this mysterious leader guy, which of you is second in command of this little squadron?" Alexis asked, then looked to Lucy. "Oh, duh, it's you, isn't it?"

Rebecca laughed. "Alexis thinks you're the boss of all of us, Lucy! I'm not sure if you should take that as a compliment, or if she's saying you come off as bossy!"

"Oh god, I didn't mean it like that!" Alexis blurted.

"You could say Lucy has seniority out of us four," Shaun said. "Been in the Brotherhood the longest. Though she did have a prolonged hiatus for quite a number of years to throw the hounds off her scent. But the ranks aren't as big a deal nowadays as they were in Ezio's time. The four of us all have different, but equally important roles, I suppose is the best way to explain it."

Presently they came upon their vehicle. Alexis suppressed a chortle. "Pfft! Featureless windowless white van. Yeah, that's not suspicious at all."

"Well, you tell me what vehicle you'd have picked if you had to cart the Animus and everything around without people seeing it!"

As they rode, Alexis turned to Desmond. "So, that vision thing. Is that what you were doing right before you said 'this is all some secret shit and don't tell anyone'?"

He nodded.

"And everyone in the uh, Brotherhood, has this?"

"No, just Dessie, because he's special." Shaun's tone seemed to imply "special as in education."

"Ohh, I see. You inherited it from Ezio!"

Desmond shook his head. "Nope. More like I learned it from Altaïr. Sometimes the Bleeding Effect is actually useful."

They passed a mail van and Alexis idly wondered where the one they'd taped her phone to was right now.

"Woah, this is exciting!" Rebecca said with a sudden gleam in her eyes. "I just realized we're gonna actually get our hands on some real live First Civ technology! This is gonna be wild! I mean, once we get past this doomsday thing, just think of the other stuff we could do with it!"

"Do you think it's still there?" Desmond asked, a note of worry in his voice. "I mean, Vidic saw Altaïr's map with all the Apple locations-"

"Ezio didn't hide his Apple till 1507, Desmond," Shaun called from the driver's seat. "And that was a map from 1191."

"Oh. Right. Duh." He felt really stupid now.

Shaun mercifully didn't compound that feeling with further slights on his intelligence. "I doubt that map was much use to Abstergo anyway, even for the other Apples. These things have a tendency to get shuffled around over the centuries. They get looted and hidden and re-looted and re-hidden ad nauseam."

"Let's just hope we're the first ones to loot this one," said Lucy.

"Who or what is Vidic?" asked Alexis.

"Warren Vidic," Desmond answered. "One of the big cheeses at Abstergo. Even for a Templar, he was a real son of a bitch. I don't know how you could stand working for that guy, Lucy."

"It wasn't fun, I'll grant that," Lucy said with a half-smirk, "but we all gotta make sacrifices for the cause."

"Déjà vu," Desmond breathed at the sight of the massive stone ampitheater, still as impressive in 2012 as it had been in Ezio's time.

There was one major difference, though, and that was the cranes and scaffolding that surrounded the structure.

"Started construction in 72, huh? From the looks of it they still haven't finished!" Rebecca laughed, elbowing Shaun in the ribs playfully.

Alexis chortled. "Y'know, I was thinking the exact same thing!"

"Ha, very funny, you two. This'll be the twenty-five-million-euro repair job they're doing."

Desmond whistled. "That's a lotta dough. But I guess that's inflation for ya."

"Yes." Shaun nodded. "Well, that, plus the fact that slave labor is illegal here these days."

"Good thing all the construction workers have left for the night," Lucy said. "Right, let's get a move on, people. Desmond, you've got your earpiece and everything? You'll be able to find the way?"

He squinted down into the exposed hypogeum with its arrayed pillars of ancient masonry. "Well, it's changed a bit since I was here last-"

"Since Ezio was here!" Alexis corrected, snapping her fingers next to his ear.

Desmond blinked. "Ah, sorry. Yeah, it's changed a bit since Ezio was here, but I think it should be pretty straightforward." He pointed. "I remember- or Ezio remembers, or something- that there's a tunnel over there."

"And I'd bet my bonnet the tunnel goes to Capitoline Hill."

"Shaun in a bonnet," Rebecca mused. "Shaunnet. Heh."

Lucy was consulting a map. "Shaun's right, that tunnel should lead under Capitoline Hill. We'll go find another entrance."

"See you on the other side, Desmond!" Rebecca thumped him on the back.

"Wait, we're splitting up?" Alexis was dubious of this strategy. "Why can't we just all go together?"

"Well, you see, Alex, historically, Assassins have always had an odd thing about hiding all their important stuff behind... hm, 'obstacle course shit' I think was the term you used earlier, Desmond. And the Apple of Eden is pretty damn important stuff." Shaun adjusted his glasses. "I'm loathe to admit any type of inferiority, but the truth is, he's vastly better at parkouring than any of us. So he's the only one that stands a chance of navigating through whatever's down there."

Lucy cautioned Desmond to "Be careful."

"Don't worry, guys," he said, stretching his neck and cracking his knuckles. "I got this." And then he was clambering down the side of their overlook to a wooden platform, then jumping away across widely-spaced wooden beams as if it were nothing more than a simple game of hopscotch.

They watched him until he shrank to a mere speck in the distance. "We better get going too," said Rebecca, twirling the van keys on her index finger. "I'll drive this time."

"Ah!" Shaun snatched the keys away from her. "Yeah, nice try. I've seen your car."

"Where are we driving to?" asked Alexis once they were back in the van.

"Formerly the Temple of Juno, currently the Basilica di Santa Maria in Aracoeli."

"Mm."

"Lucy, I'm making my way towards the entrance," came Desmond's voice from their radio.

"Roger that," she replied.

"If you see any gladiators, my advice would be 'leg it'," advised Shaun.

Alexis turned to him. "So what's your story, Shaun? How'd you get into this?"

"By 'this' you mean the Assassins, yes?"

"What else would I mean?"

"Well I," he began, putting a certain egocentric emphasis on the pronoun, "used to teach history classes at a very prestigious university. Or rather I tried to teach, but the students were usually less than eager to learn... And then I started looking into Abstergo in my copious free time, and then I made the fateful choice to post my findings up on WikiLeaks. Templars didn't like that."

"Ooh, what happened?"

"They pulled the file from the servers almost immediately. Meanwhile I was accosted by thugs and found myself in the back of some van, headed for who knows where and what."

Rebecca chimed in. "That's when I had to go rescue his ass."

"Yes, and the rest is history, if you'll pardon the idiom."

Desmond spoke through the walkie-talkie again. "I can't believe I'm actually gonna hold the Apple."

"It's been a long time coming," Lucy said. "You've earned it."

A laugh crackled through the speaker. "Earned it? Hah! I ran away from the Brotherhood and then I got caught by Templars! How have I 'earned' anything?"

"You've helped us a lot with your genetic memories."

"That's not me, though. Hup. That's my ancestors. I'm just like a TV you guys can tune in to the Ezio channel."

"You're learning his skills."

"That's still not really me. I mean, some of it's me, but a lot of it is the Bleeding Effect. Hup. Whatever... I'm just glad we got done with this before I became a TV that's tuned to all-Ezio-all-the-time."

There was an uneasy silence for a couple minutes.

Then Desmond spoke again, turning the conversation back to the Apple of Eden. "I wonder if it'll change things. Whether it can tip the scales in our favor."

"I'm sure it will," Shaun said, with none of his usual sarcasm. "It has to."

Later, Alexis would look back on that moment, when she heard the despondent tone in Shaun's voice, when she saw the yearning look in Rebecca's eyes. That, she thought, was the moment when she really began to grasp the enormity of the Assassin-Templar conflict.

"What do you think we'll find?" Desmond asked.

"Hopefully a map to those temples, right?" said Alexis.

"The Apple's just gonna give it to us, is it, yeah? Ooh, is that Elvis over there?" The sarcasm was back now, as if it had never left.

"Come on, Shaun, maybe this time we'll be lucky!"

"Hmph."

There was no more chatter for the remainder of the drive. Upon reaching the foot of Capitoline Hill, the four of them got out and climbed the hundred-plus stairs to the basilica.

Rebecca leaned against the door and spoke into the walkie-talkie. "Something's bothering me. Today's date is October tenth."

"So?" was Desmond's understandably indifferent response.

"Guess how many days there are until the Templar satellite launch."

"I'm no math whiz," he said slowly, "but I have a feeling I know the answer. Seventy-two."

"Why is today so important? We're just picking up the Apple."

"It's the door code. Someone wanted to make sure we get it right," Desmond reasoned.

Rebecca shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

"Hold up," Alexis said. "Are you suggesting that, when Ezio programmed the password, he somehow knew about a satellite launch five hundred years later? And he knew how many days it would take Desmond to sync his memories?"

"Well, maybe the Apple showed him the future, like it did with Altaïr."

"You really think so?"

Rebecca shrugged again. "Hey, you got any other explanation?"

They waited in silence, shivering a bit in the cool Italian night.

"Who are you?"

Lucy held the walkie-talkie to her ear to hear better. "What's that, Desmond?"

"Nothing... Hey, um, there's a door here, but I can't find how to open it."

"Did you try the password?"

"It's not the door, it's just a door. Guess I'll have to climb over. Hey, looks like someone left some nice bricks for me to get started. Conveniently placed and everything. See, Shaun, we've got luck on our side!"

"Hurry up!" Shaun hissed at the radio. "We're freezing out here!"

"Really? I'm not cold at all," Desmond teased.

"Of course you're not! You're working up a sweat!"

"Nah, I'm not even sweating, I'm just that badass. Hup."

"Shut up and 'hup' your way to the church already so we can get inside and get the Apple and be done with it!"

Soon they heard a rumbling scraping sound from somewhere inside the hill.

"What was that?"

"I just opened something."

Shaun tried opening the church doors, but they were still locked. "I don't know what you opened but it wasn't the church!"

"Hold on a minute, a'ight?"

"We've been holding on!" screeched Shaun, and banged on the doors angrily.

"Chill out, man," said Rebecca, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"I'm comin'!" This time they heard Desmond's voice in duplicate: both from the walkie-talkie and from inside the church. The doors opened after a few more moments.

"Took you long enough."

He ignored Shaun's snippy comment. "What is this place?"

"Santa Maria Aracoeli. See those columns on the aisles? They're lifted from Roman ruins."

"I like the ceiling," Rebecca said.

"Do you? You 'like the ceiling'? You are a fascinating traveling companion."

Lucy steered their attention back to the mission. "Where to now?"

Desmond walked down the central aisle to approach the chancel. "There's something up there. Woah!"

"What? What do you see?"

"More like who do I see." He inhaled and exhaled deeply. "It's Ezio."

"Come on, Desmond, that's just the Bleed-"

"No, Lucy, it's not! It's something else," he insisted. "I'm still myself, but I'm seeing Ezio. Up there." He pointed.

"Why?"

"I think... I think I'm supposed'ta follow him." And then Desmond was running and climbing up the sacred decor, without a care in the world for the priceless painting he was defacing with his sneaker soles.

"Oh! Well, we'll just stay down here then, shall we?"

Desmond, now perched precariously atop the spindly golden cross, turned his head back to taunt Shaun. "Hey, you're an Assassin, can't you climb? This shit's easy-peasy compared to scaling a Borgia tower!" He hopped to a railing on the very back wall of the church. "Damn, you guys look like ants from up here! Like blue glowing ants."

"So okay, you're up there, now what?" asked Alexis.

"Now, this." He pulled and twisted a lever in the wall.

A sudden cacophony ensued and a storm of dust rained down on them as mechanisms that had lain dormant for centuries now ground into action, sprouting stone and metal from that ceiling Rebecca liked.

"Oh goodness." Shaun wiped dust from his glasses. "I did not expect that."

"Woo!" Alexis hooted enthusiastically, cheering on her boyfriend as he began to traverse the balconies, hanging ledges, and platforms. "Go Desmond, go Desmond!"

Rebecca joined in. "Yeah, man, you totes mgotes pwn this obstacle course shit!"

"Don't swell his head too much, or he'll lose his balance and fall," Shaun warned.

Alexis turned to him. "Hey, you said this used to be the Temple of Juno?"

"A Temple of Juno. There was another one in Acragas. Well, actually, I should say there is another one in Acragas, since that one's mostly still standing, though Acragas is now an Italian city called Agrigento, or Girgenti in Sicilian."

"Hm." She waited, knowing he was just itching to give more information.

And she was right. "This location was the Templum Iunonis Monetæ, dedicated to Juno's financial aspect, and for four centuries, it was the only spot where Roman coins were minted. Juno Moneta was also said to keep in her temple some sort of perfect and eternal record of history, which could well mean the Apple."

"Oooh."

Shaun suppressed a snort of laughter. "Yes, 'oooh' indeed. You know, it's a bit odd: Juno, Minerva, and Jupiter were known as the Capitoline Triad, but only Juno and Jupiter had their temples on Capitoline Hill."

Lacking anything more salient to say, Alexis settled for "You sure know a lot about mythology."

"Well, natch. That's my job: to research whatever's relevant to Assassin interests. Such as the Precursors."

"Precursors... to what?"

He adjusted his glasses, a slight smugness in the gesture. "Precursors to humanity, we've told you this part already, Alex."

"Lay off her, she's new to all this stuff, and I don't think we called them that the other day anyway," Rebecca told him, then addressed Alexis. "'The Precursors' is another way to refer to the First Civilization."

"A.K.A. Those Who Came Before," added Lucy.

"Ah," nodded Alexis. "Those guys."

"Yes, 'those guys'. I've sometimes found them referenced as 'the Ancients' or 'the Forerunners' as well, and there's probably a dozen more synonyms. At any rate, the terms amount to the same thing. They're the gods of old."

"But they weren't really gods."

"Of course not," Rebecca scoffed.

"Weeellll," Shaun said, elongating the word, "You see, it all depends upon how exactly you define 'god'." He began to tick off qualities on his fingers. "Extremely powerful? Check. Work in mysterious ways? Check. Demand to be worshipped and served? Major check. But immortal? Noooo. And bloody good thing they weren't, too." His didactic discourse was interrupted when a pedestal abruptly erupted from the stone floor. "Hello, what's this?"

"Desmond, get down here!"

"Yeah, I'm comin', you don't gotta yell."

As he swung down from the ceiling, Shaun was examining the pedestal closely, poking and prodding various parts of it. "Whatever this thing is, it doesn't do anything. It's a dead end."

"After five hundred years of neglect, maybe it's broken," Lucy said.

"I'm not so sure." Desmond held out a tentative hand above the square top, which slowly lit up without him even touching it. A raucous clunking sound ensued, and the five of them all looked around to try to discern its source.

Then the marble tiles around them began to glow, and then to shake, and then to descend underneath the floor. Rebecca and Lucy grabbed each other for support, Alexis clung to Desmond, and Shaun fell to his knees and gripped the pedestal like a drowning man clutching a buoy.

When the unexpected elevator finally came to a stop, Shaun slowly got to his feet again and stuttered out, "If you want to kill us, mate, you're gonna have to try a little harder than that!"

They stepped out into a dark hallway, but as they continued on, aqua light came from an area ahead, along with now-familiar clunking noises.

"Now for that password. If Shaun's right, that is."

"I'm always right."

"About that dead end..."

Shaun's voice faded. "That... never happened, I was misquoted."

Past a pristine pool and a duo of ancient statues lay that all-important door. Desmond flashed a smile. "Think it speaks English?"

Rebecca was not amused. "Just say it already!"

"Okay... Seventy-two!" he said, enunciating loudly and clearly.

Dots of light appeared and then converged into the tell-tale pyramid of triangles, and then the door slid upwards with another shower of dust.

Desmond jogged ahead of the rest of them, and then gave a shout of excitement. "You guys gotta see this!"

"This is amazing," breathed Rebecca when they'd caught up with him.

"Wow," was all Alexis could manage. The hallway opened up into an incredibly vast room, its size comparable to the whole interior of the church above. But here there were no gaudy golden decorations, no colorful depictions of saints or deities. Just walls of some unnameable substance, neither stone nor metal, all etched with geometric lines that seemed at once purposeful and random. At the heart of the secret chamber was a lonesome platform, and upon this was a stand holding that golden relic which had up until now only been seen in visions from the past.

"The Apple seems to be in the center," Lucy observed.

No shit, Sherlock, Alexis thought for the second time that night.

"Time to find out where those temples are." Desmond approached a pedestal identical to the earlier one, and activated it the same way. More machinery rumbled, causing thin pedestals to rise from the floor and long beams to jut out from various pillars.

"Hey Desmond, those beams poking out the wall look like switches!" Rebecca called. "If you hit all of them, you might power up the bridge to the central platform!"

"Or," Shaun offered his own hypothesis, "you might cause this room to turn into an alien spaceship and fly away!"

Alexis couldn't help grinning. "Actually, after all this, I wouldn't be surprised."

"More parkour? Okay." Desmond began an acrobatic trek around the room, using his body weight to activate the power switches. Each one he pulled caused another set of pillars to emerge. The others watched him with bated breath. About halfway through, he turned and called back, "Did you hear any of that?

"What, all the bloody grinding noises? Yeah, we heard it, how the hell could we not?"

Desmond's face twitched unreadably, and he returned to his task without further comment.

"You think he's bleeding out?" Alexis whispered to Rebecca.

"Doesn't seem like it. It's probably just something about this place, like how he saw Ezio earlier."

Shaun put in his two cents. "And how only he could work those pedestals. I suppose he must have some connection to the Precursors somehow, though fuck if I know exactly how."

When at last Desmond had activated a final switch-beam, the cavernous room was flooded with a brief burst of light and a massive influx of dry-ice-like fog. Blocky obsidian pillars, so impossibly smooth that they seemed brand-new, completely uneroded by the centuries of time, rose from out of the inky blackness and formed themselves into a pathway leading to the Apple of Eden.

The quintet approached their long-awaited goal. "So where are the temples?"

Desmond turned to Shaun uncertainly. "You want me to ask it?"

"Or think it, or something," shrugged Rebecca.

Desmond stepped forward and gazed down at the thing, shining with enigmatic light. Brighter spots pulsed along the smooth lines in its surface. Then it suddenly crackled and emitted beams all around, and a mishmash of strange images was projected into the air before their startled eyes. Alexis was able to pick out the logo of Abstergo Industries, an inverted pentagram, a bar code, a tricirclic Venn diagram, a stylized depiction of a monkey, among others, all wavering and wobbling, fading in and out and back in again.

Lucy sounded worried. "You sure you asked it the right thing?"

Shaun, however, was amazed. "I know this, I know that symbol, that's a Phrygian Cap!" He pointed, though the gesture was fruitless, as the Apple's projections were all constantly moving. "It stands for... freedom... And that," he pointed out another image, "that's a Masonic eye."

As Shaun droned on, Desmond reached out toward the gleaming sphere, seemingly hypnotized by its bright light.

"Now those two come together in only one place-"

The next second- no, within the very same second- Desmond was gone, and so was the Apple.

Alexis interrupted the symbology lecture with a yelp of "Des- Holy fuck! What happened?"

He wasn't gone. He was several feet away, on the ground, next to Lucy. The Apple of Eden lay between them, in a pool of blood. "What the fuck just happened?"

While Shaun and Alexis stared dumbfounded, Rebecca threw herself to her knees beside the two fallen bodies. She felt at Lucy's neck and wrist. "She's got a pulse, but it's weak. We gotta stop the bleeding." Peeling up Lucy's bloodsoaked shirt revealed a vicious gash. "Shaun, gimme your sweater. Lex, check Desmond."

Shaun tore off his gray sweater, which almost matched the current color of his face, and handed it to Rebecca, who hastily folded it and pressed the mass of cloth against Lucy's abdomen.

Alexis pressed trembling fingers to her unconscious boyfriend's neck. "His pulse's weak too!" Her voice was unnecessarily loud, and echoed back from the walls. "It's really slow, too! And his skin's really hot!"

"Where's he injured?" Rebecca yelled back.

"He's not," Shaun said. In contrast to Alexis and Rebecca, his voice was responding to the situation by becoming much quieter. "Look..." He lifted one of his shaking hands and pointed to Desmond's arm, lying limp against the stone floor, palm upturned.

The Hidden Blade was extended, and blood shone bright upon it.

"What? No way!" Alexis cried, even louder than before. "No way! No way!" She shook her head vigorously as she repeated the denial. "No god-damn way!"

"Damnit!" Tears fell from Rebecca's eyes onto Shaun's sweater, which had become soaked through with blood. "It's not working, we're gonna lose her! Lucy!"

Unable to stand, Shaun was leaning against the pedestal where the Apple had been. "Why?" he wondered aloud. "Why would he do this?"

Alexis grabbed Desmond and tried in vain to shake him awake. "Yeah, Miles! Why?!" she questioned him angrily.

"Lucy... no," Rebecca sobbed. "This can't be happening."

"Is she..." Alexis trailed off. Rebecca's tear-streaked face was all the answer she needed.

Lucy was dead, and Desmond had killed her.

Grazie infinite for reading Rendezvous at Monteriggioni!
The story will be continued in a sequel, planned to be titled Paradigm.

I want to give special thanks:
To Ubisoft and all employees thereof, for creating the world I've lost myself in and the characters I have so many feels for... I still hate the end of ACIII though! :C
To Yvonne on deviantART for being my first commenter. She gave me positive comments soon after I posted the first two chapters, so I knew my writing was enjoyed by someone besides myself c:
To everyone who has given me the pleasure of a comment, favorite, or subscribe.
To Jack Crowder for brightening my day by sending me an unexpected note about how Leda's character "lights up my heart like a glow-worm"
To my mom, who liked the first chapter even though she knows jack shit about Assassin's Creed, and who tolerates my inane AC-related comments regularly (actually it's my whole family that tolerates those XD)
To my eldest brother, who unwittingly got me started down this rabbit hole when he rented Assassin's Creed III from GameFly
And, last but not least, to Desmond Miles. You are not getting fat, those guys are just jerks.