Chapter 39: Past- Church Grim

January 1st 2012 12:53 AM

One more Watcher. One last story to tell. One that I knew was coming, but didn't bother to waste any time on.

I jumped straight off the hut and down into the snow below. Ice, dirt, and much more was waiting for me down there, but I was already on my way. I had had enough here and wanted out.

I almost laughed when I reached the large set of wrought iron gates in the stone wall. As I had known for a long time, even before I was sentenced here, The Gates got their name as a sort of entrance to purgatory. Or for most, this place compared to the Gates of Hell.

Well, it was snowing in this Hell. So, I wanted out of here. I grabbed a bar of the gates hard and shoved the key into the large lock keeping them shut. It was rusted over badly, but clicked open like a charm with the smallest turn of the key.

The snowstorm was at its worst on this side of the wall. It reached its peak from within the fence, but I kept going on. I knew the last Watcher was coming for me, the worst of all.

The mists and fog in the storm began to show a shape as I moved on. It grew closer and closer as I took every step I could muster towards there before finally clearing up. I stood at the front of a church in the middle of the woods.

Was this a mockery of my ideals as an Assassin? When I was younger, I wanted to believe in a higher power to make me all the more comfortable with the very idea of death. But now I longed for it, regardless of what lay on the other side.

I didn't know what to do next. I tried to move further, walking past the church and through the snowy mists, deeper into the forest, but I ended up right back where I started, as though someone had turned me right around and pushed me back. It made me more angry than scared as I had been at the beginning of the night. The Watchers were feared by the Norse for their status as nothing less than gods, and all they had done that night was show me memories that I wished I hadn't seen. Here I was, afraid at the start of all of this that they were going to torture me to death. Pathetic.

Then I remembered. The notes that the Masters had left behind for me had something on this. There was a certain way I had to walk around the church to move forwards. I trundled forwards through the cold, walking in the way I remembered my notes saying. It felt like I was walking in a circle along a large combination lock, going back and forth, once clockwise around the church, then counterclockwise, and then further counterclockwise. At one point I just shambled, the night nearly draining all the life left within the shell of my body.

I would have given up and laid down in the snow if I didn't hear the church doors open.

"Let's get this over, old friend." I muttered.

The Church Grim awaited on the other side. He had the body of a man in a black cloak, but with the head of a goat. Some considered him to be the very embodiment of death, and the most dangerous of the Five Watchers. He clearly was a friend if he was the one to receive all the souls sent by me.

I held my breath and went in. But what I saw on the other side was not a man with a goat's head, but the interior of a familiar diner in Florida. The last day I would spend of real freedom before I would be sent to hell.

Some part of me really knew that this was my last day of freedom. I don't know how I could know that, but I just did. And I spent that day eating, drinking, reading old magazines and newspapers, and killing time before the sun went down. And remembering. A lot of remembering. I took my seat.

September 2006

How far did Altair go to kill Abbas? Not this far. How far did Connor go to kill Charles Lee? Not this far. They had years and years fighting to find and take down the people who took everything from them, but none of them physically went as far as I did.

None would ever believe that I was able to swim as far as I did, all the way from Rome to a city on the East Coast of the United States. It took me some searching to find that it was Virginia Beach I ended up in. After which, I began my hunt.

I had all the time in the world. The Assassins and Abstergo both thought I was dead, which I found out after looking into the incident online. News reports in Rome detailed my escape as two separate incidents, both of which involved suicides. An attempted suicide by a lab technician to cover up my jump from the window of the lab, and a hit and run that ended with the perp jumping and drowning in the Tiber River to cover the rest up.

Every mention of me from this incident marked me as dead. I was a ghost, a shadow… a Reaper. A Reaper with one more soul to claim.

There was no mention of a Christian Maloy in public records as I searched through the web. I kept moving through city after city, finding ways to get access to the Internet and spend time learning. I may not have known before all of this how to do much with computers, but I had two invaluable things now that I was dead: Time and Patience. With all of this, I had what it took to learn.

The days I spent in libraries and internet cafes were tedious. Every day, I took my digital battering ram to Abstergo's backdoors into their systems. Christian Maloy was not an official American citizen, so he had to have been using a pseudonym supplied by the company.

One might try to ask me about how I managed to do all of this in so little time. Matthew would one day, and I had no doubt that anyone else who would find out would as well. But the truth was, even I didn't know how it happened with the time I took. It takes years for some people to really get as good as I did with the limited resources I had. All I knew was that I had to find Maloy and end him, lest Ruthe and the others would have died for nothing. Revenge can drive so many people to do anything for the ones they care about. Ruthe was all I had left by that point, and now she was gone. I had nothing left.

Abstergo could see a pattern in the hits I gave their systems. Google, Microsoft, all those other corporate giants are all the same. They may have barriers put in place to stop people like me, but every door has a lock that can be broken. Every firewall I hit worked like the great hydra, with two more popping up with each one I knocked down.

I still needed some help trying to break into the servers, so after some searching on the side while trying to smash through the firewalls while moving through town after town, after city after city, I was able to get in contact with a hacker group in the Midwest allied with the Assassins. It took many, many lies, but eventually they were able to snail mail me a drive with a virus on it to get through the firewalls. Eventually, I found what I was looking for, and began my trek south.

Christian Maloy. 38 years old, happily married to a wife of the same age for the better part of a decade, and a beautiful home in Tallahassee, Florida. Right in the suburbs and everything.

Weeks of hiking and hitch-hiking to bring me right in Tallahassee. A week went by as I stayed there. I wanted to enjoy my time there before I did the deed and left. Maloy took everything from me, killed the rest of who I had left to love and I would do the same to him. Then I would find Warren Vidic, and Alvaro Gramatica, and do the same thing to them.

The food was good for that week. I picked a few pockets and remembered my tricks, finding places to eat and sleep. I never felt so elevated like this. Preparing to kill any Templar before Maloy didn't feel as freeing as this. He would not be the last person to die, but it would suffice for a start. I had my list of names, and one by one it would clear before finishing up with one more. The devil who started the chain of misfortunes that brought me here, Ingrid.

Before long in town, I began to stake his home out. It was on the nicer side of town, in a gated community. Nothing that didn't surprise me, knowing how much the Templars loved to use their wealth and power to their advantage. Whatever happened to one with the wealth, but still choosing a modest lifestyle? It was not unheard of some people winning the lottery, and still living their lives with the same jobs and everything.

It wasn't easy, finding the weak spots in the community. Especially when I realized it was patrolled by a private security company employed by Abstergo. It turned out that while the community had its share of plain old rich pricks in it, quite a few were high ranking Templars.

Then that night, I made my move.

Dinner was from one of the nicer diners in the area. Not as good of a facility, but with excellent food. I enjoyed dinner enough, but I black out after finishing the last bite. One minute I was finishing the meal, and the next, I was rapidly darting between the houses in the gated neighborhood; I had made it past the gates, now ready to face the true evil.

Over the years, I had felt my use for the Sight rot away. Something about how the Spell of Shattered Sight never left my eyes. It seemed to make it harder to use it, almost like trying to relearn it. It hurt, too. But there was no stopping me that night. I had a mission, and a target. Neither of which I was going to leave Florida without finishing off.

The whispers and spirits from the Sight knew what I was after, and the guided me through the high suburban areas. Abstergo security employed to protect the Templars roamed throughout the streets, but I stuck within the shadows of fenced gardens, and wooden sheds. The whispers led me deeper and deeper towards the center of the community, before stopping at one of the larger houses on the block. Three stories tall from the ground. Brick and wood stacked in that very modern way that was becoming the usual way homes were made in that year. I'd even bet there was a basement in this place, too.

I put my back up against the wall, suddenly realizing something. Not futility of the situation, necessarily. Rather this realization of how difficult it would be for me. I had no weapons, was months out of practice, and I could even feel my hands shaking. If Maloy kept his guns in the house, I'd need to find them and do it quick enough. Otherwise he would sic the security dogs onto me, and ship me back to Rome. No way in hell I was going back there. No way, no how.

"Daddy, what do you think of this?"

I froze. I listened hard as I focused my Sight. I couldn't see past the wall on the outside of the house, but I could hear a few footsteps come in my direction before stopping. A few seconds of silence before I heard the only voice I recognized.

"Oh, Sweetpea. This is a masterpiece!" Maloy said over the sound of a flapping paper. He was picking up whatever the girl had drawn or wrote.

"You really think so?"

"Oh, baby. This piece should be put up in Louvre instead of Mona Lisa!"

"Who's Lisa?"
Maloy chuckled. "Oh, it's nothing. It's wonderful, darling."

"Thanks, Daddy."

There was a pause.

"What?" Maloy suddenly said. "For me?"

"Yes!"

"Oh, I don't know what to say, dear! Thank you so much! I'm going to go right up to my office to hang this up!"

"Okay, Daddy!"

I felt myself fall down, my back still against the wall. I sat so quickly I slammed my shoulder into the hose faucet right next to me. A few drops of water leaked out as I sat, the ribbiting of a nearby frog croaking through the night.

There was no mention of a daughter. Only him and his wife.

So? What did that matter? He killed Ruthe, the last person who I ever loved. He deserved what I was about to do.

I focused back on my Sight. If Maloy had anything I could use, it would be in his office. I heard the footsteps going from the room on the ground floor to the second floor. The paper continued to flap, meaning Maloy was holding onto it with just two fingers, probably to show his daughter how much he cared.

I cared as much about Ruthe as he did of her. I knew what I could do. And I knew that after all I had been through, I would not hesitate anymore. I had been through too much after playing the good guy.

The gutter pipe was sturdy enough for me to climb up. I heard Maloy go to a room in the corner of the house on the second floor. That must have been where his office was.

It was a challenge, trying to climb around the house towards his office. Eventually made it around the corner, where I saw the window that would lead into the room. Closed. And with my luck, it was likely locked.

I'd break a window. I'd break down a door. I'd break every bone in this evil fucker's body just to make sure he knew the pain that I felt. I didn't want to kill him. I needed to.

I hung there for a moment, reveling in this thought; There was no going back for me. But then I remembered it all. The Assassins thought I was dead. So did the Templars when I was able to access my file in their database. There was no going back all the way in Helsinki. Only one direction left for me to go.

Suddenly, the window slid upwards, opening wide enough for me. The footsteps then went back towards the door of the room, and down the hallway. No second thought. Not one second passed. I just jumped for it, and climbed right in. And instantly, I saw what I was after.

The office was well made with dark wood paneling, and even a fireplace. I would even be willing to guess that this place was designed as a bedroom, but Maloy's family decided that it would be his office instead.

Like a deer or bear's head, I found a trophy of his own mounted above the fireplace. A shotgun. A familiar one.

Ammo.

I turned open every drawer as quietly and quickly as I could. I found a set of keys in the top drawer of his desk. And then after some further searching, I found a lockbox that the key fit in. A box of buckshots slid right out.

I darted over to the fireplace, and grabbed the rifle, turning around.

A woman stood in the doorway. Dark blonde hair, and bright blue eyes, she held a glass of wine in her hand, and the more prominent expression of terror on her face.

"Who are y- ugh!" She began.

The rifle's barrel smacked into her face and she fell back unconcious, wine spilling out into the white carpet. No cleaning that out, unfortuately. Or the blood that would follow.

The wine glass shattered and I heard a voice.

"Honey?"

A door down the hallway opened up, and a figure filled the frame.

We stared at each other for a second, before I charged down the hallway. He took a swing at me, but I jumped into the wall and bounced off, knocking him to the ground and onto the floor. Punch after punch after punch after punch I landed over and over. I beat him bloody, but not to death. I had something else in mind for him. Something to balance everything back to the way it should be.

When I was sure he was knocked out, I got up and turned.

It wasn't one daughter. He had two. One had reddish hair, almost brown. The other had blonde, like her mother. And they both eyed me with a mix of terror and curiosity.

No hesitation.

I had them all ready before they aroused. The mother was first, and her muffled screams woke the other two up. Then he woke.

I stroked the barrel with two light fingers. "Of course you would keep this, psycho. What better trophy than the instrument that took three good lives from this world?"

"MAUGHMMMAMMMM!"

Maloy began to scream through his gag. I had set this up almost exactly as he did for me. Except his family was tied down as well.

"Now ain't this just peachy." I chuckled. "Nice little reunion here. Not everyone present, but we'll find the other two soon enough. The Ruskie and the computer nerd."

Realization filled Maloy's face as he kept screaming through his gag. I wanted him to remember the scene right here right now as I said what he said to me before he…

I knelt down in front of his wife. "Tell your wife it's going to be alright, Maloy. Tell the same to your girls. Then you get to know what it was like to see everything you had left taken from you in less than two minutes."

I got up, and walked over to him, ripping the gag off.

"You fucking crazy bastard! You're supposed to be dead!"

"I am dead, Maloy." I said. "Thanks to you. And Vidic. And Gramatica. And William Miles. And…Ingrid."

"If this is seriously about settling the score, then do it with me, and me alone!" He cried out. "Just leave my wife and daughters out of it!"

I kept my glare on Maloy. "You think begging like that is going to stop me? It didn't stop monsters like you from taking everything precious to me. And then you murdered two of my friends, and the last person I ever loved. They didn't sign up for that."

"They were Assassins!" He screamed. "Of course they signed up to be killed by Templars! The same can't be said for my family!"

I was done listening. "Anna and Elsa didn't…" I whispered to myself.

"You wanna prove them right? Sink to the level of those 'monsters'?! You'll prove them right if you do this! You had to have had some sort of mercy once, Asgeir!"

…

"Now I don't."

"I just want you all to know, that this is personal. Very, very personal."

"What does he want Daddy?! I'm scared!"

"Look at me, Emily! Daddy's right here! It'll be alright!"

"What's the matter, boy? You scared of a buckshot to the face?"

"I'm not a boy! Leave me alone!"

"Hm. Maybe it felt a little something like this."

*BANG*

"AAAAAAAAUGH! YOU FUCKING ANIMAL! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

"You seem pissed."

"MY BABIES! DON'T HURT MY BABIES!"

"I'm counting on half of that statement, bitch."

*BANG BANG BANG* *BANG BANG BANG* *BANG*

"FUCKING SHIT! YOU MURDERER! NAAAAAAAUGH!"

*BANG*

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!"

"Should have just said yes, bastard."

"FUCK YOU, CO-"

*BANG*

I sat there for God knows how long, in the bloody mess. Looking around, I didn't even realize I was capable of this. Yet, it was all around me. Three people I cared for was taken away from me by Maloy, so I took three he cared for in the same way.

I helped myself to their liquor cabinet, and drank three full glasses after I sat back down, right on top of Maloy's shell of a body. I felt a burning sting in my throat as I swallowed deeply in the drink. How long would it take for security to come over after all the racket I had made? I would have expected them by now.

I scratched at an itch on the side of my neck, suddenly feeling a strangely shaped bump. Only, most bumps in people's necks don't fall to the ground when you poke them. And as I looked down at the bump, I noticed the brightly colored flights. It was a dart in my neck. A…

I heard the door open as my face fell forwards into the blood.

The ground shook, arousing me awake. I smelled something musty. The air was stale. I was sitting down somewhere, tied to a chair, feeling a rough material covering my face.

"Take the bag off."

Light flooded my vision as I looked around. The room was narrow, metal all around, and seats on the walls on either side. I was tied up in a chair in a plane. With a familiar man standing in front of me.

"I heard about what happened in Helsinki and Rome, Asgeir." William said. "And afterwards, we did all we could to find you. But I guess a few months of searching for you in Italy, none of us could have predicted you might actually swim back here."

I said nothing. I had nothing left to say to anyone anymore.

"Then afterwards, the hacktivists you contacted for that virus program tipped us off, and we followed the trail southwards. Three innocent people dead. That's where we found you in Tallahassee. People there now think there's a maniac with a gun out there, no qualms with killing innocent women and children with a whole family shot to death in their own home. This kind of thing could take years to blow over. We'll have to pull all our guys out of that whole state, thanks to you."

He took a step forwards. "What you did is punishable by death. In fact, I'm amazed you were given this much leeway before the Great Purge, if you even were. Maybe it's this curse of invulnerability you have. Never being able to die. Doesn't matter. Now we've put a new task into our highest priorities: finding out how to put you down like the rabid dog you are."

I still said nothing. If I hadn't said yes to this mission in the first place, Ruthe might still be alive. Maloy pulled the trigger on her face, but he, and several others collectively killed her, too.

"You wear that hood, and then cause chaos and terror at every turn. You're as insane as he was. Somehow after Jeff, you still find ways to prove that you're more of a monster than any of us are even capable of reaching."

I remembered Jeff. What I did to him. And maybe Bill was right. But I wasn't going to admit that right to his face.

"Cuff him." He ordered.

An Assassin walked up, rolled one of my pantlegs up, and snapped a large cuff to my bare ankle.

"Until we figure out what to do with you, and how we're going to execute you, you're staying in the Gates, out of trouble. The cuff'll tell us where you are at all times, so don't even think of trying to run. We'll find you."

Another Assassin walked up and strapped a large duffle bag to my chest.

"You'll at least be permitted to go to Kamloops for supplies every once in a while. We've marked a calendar in the bag with the permitted dates for the next ten years." Bill said. "Use the cash in the bag well."

He held up his hand, and I heard a loud whirring. I realized then that we were in a plane, the door behind me opening up, wind filling the cabin.

The Assassins started to push me to the edge, but then I screamed it out.

"INGRID!" I yelled over the noise. "I WANT HER FILE!"

I wouldn't be able to do anything in the Gates, but I still wanted what Ruthe and the others died for, what Maloy died for, and what I died on the inside for.

Bill looked back, then nodded. "I KNEW YOU WOULD." He called over the noise. "THAT'S WHY YOUR REWARD FOR FINISHING THE MISSION IS ALSO IN THE BAG!"

The two Assassins holding to the chair then gave it a good shove, and before I knew it, the evergreen woods of British Columbia were rushing up to meet me.

The bag served as a cushion for my landing. It didn't help much, though. Imagine having every bone in your body break at once, and then fix themselves just as fast. It's much more painful than even you can imagine.

I just lay there, in the dead pine needles. Summer was reaching its hottest point in this corner of the world, and I knew the wildfires were raging all around. Smoke was in the air all around, the mid-afternoon sun glowing bright orange above me.

The chair was shattered all to hell. So was I, even if I got what I wanted with Ingrid's file and Maloy's death. I didn't even know he existed at the start of this mission, and he shortly became my worst enemy within my reach. I stupidly wouldn't have wanted his death if I didn't want the file on Ingrid so badly. Still, what did I earn for all of this violence? What information did I earn in exchange for Ruthe's life?

I opened the duffle bag to find over seventy-five grand in cash inside. Along with a map, a notebook with half of its pages filled with instructions for me, a day planner, and a light blue folder inside.

I opened it, and everything went dark; it was empty.

He tricked me. William Miles tricked me and sent me on a suicide mission that would cause three people on both sides of the war to die…

I did the only sensible thing I could in that moment. I closed my eyes and screamed high at the sky, wishing the plane I had just been in would crash down and burn that selfish bugger to death. It was paper white, the smoke from the fires all around me and the sun high in air.

And then in a second, it turned inky black. The whole world shifted around me as snow fell down on the woods in an accelerated motion, like a tape being fast forwarded. The world was back to the way it was when I first started my Year Walk. But I was back where I started. I was back in the mortal world. I was home, left to stay in The Gates.

The woods were now just as cold as it had been hot five minutes ago. There was no trace of any of the Watchers around me. Like they had never even come to me to begin with. I had never felt so lost before.

I didn't know where in the Gates I was, but I had to start moving. Eventually I would find my way back to my cabin. With any luck. But these last six years were anything but lucky.

My foot hit something buried in the snow. It felt like a rock, and burst out from beneath the snow, sending up flakes. They almost made a pattern familiar to me in a painful way. I hurried over to the object that I hit and picked it up.

It was a kind of a box. One with various symbols carved into it. On the back of it, two symbols in the shape of a horse and a baby in a fetal position. On the front, a large dial like that of a combination safe lock, with a little goat's head pointer at the top. And on the right and left sides, similar symbols of that of a woman, and a raven.

Some of the shapes I had seen before. They were ones that my brief visions were sending. I began to turn the dial, moving the upside down triangle to the pointer, and then the half circle, and then the square.

Instantly, I felt another shockwave hit me. These visions I was being sent were not unlike the memories of Shay's life, and my final months of freedom, but something was very strange about them. I was there, as was Kristoff. And Hans had been killed by me in this reality. But the next vision showed me, climbing up a mountain into the heart of the blizzard. I knew where this version of me was going, but I didn't entirely understand why. And then the ice around me on the mountain began to crack into another shape: a right-side-up triangle.

Now

Jason sat across from me in the darkness. Through my shivers and stutters I told the story as best as I could. He had to know everything. I was done for at the rate the Assassins were going with Ingrid. Someone needed to know the truth.

"You killed two little girls…" Jason breathed. He could barely look at me, or get the words out. "Asgeir, I… How could you?"

"I know, Jason. I know."

"It goes beyond our own tenets. What about simple human decency? What about that?"

"What decency was left from me the second Ruthe's dead body hit the floor?" I said. "I can't excuse those girls' death, though, Jason. Right now, I feel nothing but regret for what I did. But ask me while I'm out of control because of the curse, and I'd say they had it coming…"

"…Fuck…"

"You know one of the scariest things about this, Jase? To this day, I don't even know if I killed those girls while under the influence of the Shattered Sight, or if I did it out of my own will, and the starvation for revenge on Maloy. So, I ask you, brother: what do you think?"

My best friend turned to face me, the room flooded in silence. A leaky pipe dripped down from above into the cell, dripping down onto the floor.

Minutes that felt like hours passed as we sat there in silence. Finally the silence was broken.

"How could things get worse?" He asked. "I was told that things got even worse following all this carnage. What the bloody hell happened?"

"What happened after my Year Walk. Almost eight full months passed before I was visited one last time by the Watchers."