TWO MINUTES
"What are you waiting for?" Charles yells, tearing down the tower steps. "Guards, anybody! Bolt those doors!"
Two Templars stare at each other, baffled, as their Grandmaster hurtles past them. Against the maddening crowd outside, they run backwards through the South Tower doors. Up the stairs, which they know will be rubble in minutes. Two floors they ascend and — in a rush — pick up the metal poles. They hear the slide of the metal into the door slots, secured.
What they do not hear, is the rattle of the door handles on the other side. They do not hear someone's feeble hands shaking the frames; discovering that they are trapped, and pounding on the door with a grief-stricken roar.
"Bastard!" The voice is wild with rage. Subhuman. Distressed beyond measure.
Nobody — not even her own children — has heard Kaniehtí:io Kenway scream with this much raw emotion. Seconds ago, she was on the brink of collapsing from her injuries. Now, all of her physical pain seems to have gone...for it is shrouded in a more heartbreaking agony than anything she has ever felt: she kneels helplessly by the locked door, the life ebbing away from her lover.
There must be a way, she thinks, there must be a way!
Tears swept across her cheeks, she turns to face the window. Hundreds dash far beneath it; very far indeed. Haytham would not survive if they were to jump from it and run. She might — just about — but there is no hope for Haytham now.
Haytham...
She cannot bear to look at him. Like the skin of an eagle, his cloak is sprawled across the floor beneath the burning pillars. Blood trickles through cracks in the floorboards; it even reaches Ziio where she kneels. Haytham lies on his back — his breath resembling helpless coughs — and the blood gushes with every tear that drops as he winces; with every pitiful moan he makes.
It dizzies Ziio in every possible way. The vertigo of losing consciousness, the swirls of smoke choking her, the sounds of suffering within and out. The bell is no longer an urgent wail, but a slow funeral chime as she limps back to Haytham.
"Haytham, are you alright?" she cries in her confusion. "No, no, of course you're not...here, let me cover the wound..."
She kneels in a growing pool of his blood. The burning beams illuminate every bead of sweat in his face; each tells a story of pain. His eyes are closed; his lips are moving slightly.
"N-no," he says, as Ziio takes off her cloak to put around his injury. "No use. You go. You at least have a chance."
"I have no means to escape," she begs. "And besides —"
She is interrupted by a splintering crack. With a violent flare, the left beam gives up and topples. With it comes the crash of the shelf above it, rolling down and blocking out the light. It takes barely a knock before the second beam buckles. The light is completely eclipsed as the rubble engulfs the exit. Ziio jolts, shuffling away from the flames as they hiss even louder than before.
Trapped beneath blazing wreckage. It seems all too familiar to Ziio.
Instinctively, she bends to look at Haytham. The fire around and above them spreads and flashes to reveal his eyes, open. Just.
"M-move the rubble," he groans frailly. "Ziio, please..."
Ziio's heart shatters a little more as the light, the passion and fervour — sealed in the indigo of his eyes — is leaving him. It is this light she fell in love with; it is this light she vowed to stay with till death.
And she will. His death and hers.
"I won't leave."
"Where are they?" Connor yells. "I have not seen them!"
"They will catch up with us, I'm sure." Eva grabs his arm with an urgency of panic. "We can't afford to wait any longer. Run!"
But Connor stands in the middle of the maddening crowd, like a white boulder in a blue stream. His eyes are fixed on the South Tower as the faces, voices of panic and striking bell melt away from him.
"Connor? Connor!"
François, Aveline and Eva's voices enters his ears, but does not register.
"Connor!"
Finally, the three Assassins wrench his body forward; he is woken from catatonia. His feet go forth one after another. He is running for the exit with the tide; with the Templars; with his closest surviving allies. No Templar attempts to kill any of them; each face which passes seems as perplexed as their enemies. Not that Connor sees this. The colour has washed from his face like the dye from his shirt. His breeches are torn, like his own trail of thought. His eyes are immobilised. Unseeing. The boy's mind sees only three people.
Ziio, Haytham...and Death.
Aveline and Eva overtake him and sprint ahead, but François still forces Connor's enormous frame to run. He does not resist the older man...but he wishes, with every footstep, that he did.
Will I ever see you again?