"The Sage's name is John Standish," Berg tells Bayek. "And he's an asshole."
The two of them are in the cramped warehouse kitchen, facing each other over the top of a tiny, circular table. There's not much in here, apart from an underpowered microwave and an overused coffee machine, so Berg is confident no one else will be bothering them at this time of the day. It's late enough in the afternoon that even the most caffeine dependent Templars and Assassins probably won't be coming in for a coffee fix, so it's the safest place in the warehouse to have a private conversation. Bayek, at least, is still speaking a language that Berg needs an earpiece to understand, and no one else but Layla and Khemu can speak—but Berg will be using English, and he'd rather not be overheard.
"But does he know things," Bayek urges, leaning (carefully, around the coffee stains) further over the table. "About Juno? About her people?"
"No," Berg says. "I don't think he ever did. The man was insane and an idiot. He worked in IT, at Abstergo, and died after he tried to kill an employee for no apparent reason."
"But he still might know something," Bayek urges, and Berg resists the urge to roll his eyes. Whatever Sages Bayek met in Egypt must have been really exceptional examples, because the ones Berg's aware of never had that kind of wisdom.
"Can't you just go back to the ones that told you how to time travel in the first place?" he asks. "If you need more information, that's probably the place to look."
Bayek shakes his head. "They told me everything they knew before I left," he says. "We need… well, we need more."
"The Sages in this era aren't going to be able to get you anything more," Berg says skeptically.
"Sages?" Bayek repeats. "As in more than one Sage?"
Berg sighs, reluctantly. "Possibly," he says. "I… know about the one that I told you about. Standish. But I also heard rumors about another Sage."
After a quiet minute, Berg asks, "Why are you so reluctant?"
To Berg's own surprise, he finds himself thinking about answering. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have believed he could trust an Assassin with information like this, but a lot of things have changed. Just this morning, he'd passed an Assassin historian and the head of Abstergo's Historical Research Division arguing something incredibly specific and boring about the American Civil War, and the night before he'd found a Templar giving advice to an Assassin about avoiding the Bleeding Effect. Things are changing. The people here are different than they were before. More trusting of each other.
"The Sage is a child," Berg says at last. "Whatever else he is, he deserves to be protected for a few more years."
"Oh," Bayek says, leaning back in visible disappointment.
"Let's see." Berg leans back as well, crossing his arms. "From what I remember, he was born in 2005. That would make him… about seven years old. Almost as old as your son." And not much younger than the Elina that Berg had left behind in 2017, either.
"A child," Bayek agrees. He glances down at his hands, thinking, then says, "I'd still like to talk to him."
Berg groans. "Bayek—"
"I would never do anything to harm the boy," Bayek says. "Never. I've killed men before for raising a hand to a child, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Berg, I swear to you in the name of all the gods that I will not hurt the Sage."
Berg gives a little snorting laugh at that. There's just something so odd about a man in the twenty first century invoking Ancient Egyptian deities for a promise. But he knows they're important to Bayek, he knows the man has built a small shrine behind the warehouse, and he visits almost every day. It's as good a promise as he's going to get from Bayek.
"Alright," he says. "I think I'd be able to find him. Assuming he's still living in the same place now as he will be in 2015. That's when the Templars first found him. If he's not there, then I'm sorry. It's the best I can offer."
"And more than you wanted to give," Bayek says. "Thank you."
"We'll leave this afternoon," Berg says. "As soon as I've had a chance to tell people we're going. The boy lives in New York—we're not far. We can be back by evening."
"Good," Bayek says. "Thank you."
Berg turns to go, and then stops, his hand on the doorframe. "There's… one other reason I didn't want to tell you about the Sage," he admits reluctantly. "But you should know, since we're going to see him. The Templars found the boy—his name's Elijah—when his mother took him to an Abstergo clinic in the city. They have a policy of taking genetic information from anyone that comes through, and so of course they took his, and they tested it. And that told them that he was a Sage, but it also… it also told them something about his ancestors. And his paternal line matches Desmond's ancestry exactly."
In Bayek's defense, the concept of genetics is new to him, which is probably why it takes him a minute to get it. "Desmond is the Sage's father?" he asks.
"Yes," Berg says. "Almost definitely."
"Does he know?" Bayek asks.
"No," Berg says. "I don't think so."
"Hmm." The look Bayek gives him at that answer is unmistakably disapproving. "That does complicate things a little bit, doesn't it?"
-/-
They find Elijah easily enough. He still lives in a small apartment with his tired looking mother, at the same place he'd lived in 2015 when the Templars found out about him. When Berg and Bayek get there, the boy—wearing the face of every Sage Berg has ever seen in animus records, or in person with standish—is sitting on a low stone wall in front of the apartment building, hands folded in his lap.
He's wearing what looks like a school uniform, dull grey with a crest sewn on the chest, clearly secondhand. His pants are neatly creased, and the backpack resting on the sidewalk in front of him is clean as well.
Berg and Bayek come up the street on foot, after Berg parks a few blocks away. From the second they set foot on the street, the boy's eyes are fixed on the two of them. At first, Berg thinks it's coincidence, but as they walk, the boy's eyes move with him.
"It looks like he knows we're here," Bayek murmurs, unnecessarily.
"You think?" Berg asks. There's something about the boy's stare that makes him think he's been wrong about him. It's not the stare of a child.
"What do we do now?" Bayek asks. "Do we still go talk to him?"
"No," Berg says. "I talk to him, because unless he's a lot older than he looks—" With that stare, he might be. "He's not going to understand anything you have to say." He sighs. "Listen. I know what you want to ask him about. I can ask him for you, and tell you what he says."
Bayek clearly doesn't like that answer, but maybe if he wants to be able to deal with more people, he should spend more time learning English. He nods tightly, and even agrees to stay back when Berg goes to talk to Elijah. One huge man towering over the kid is going to be enough, no reason to terrify him any further.
As Berg gets closer, the boy stands, hoists his backpack onto his skinny, little boy shoulders, and stands waiting for Berg to come close. His face seems almost frozen in an unreadable expression, unnaturally still. Berg, who has never thought of himself as a person easily cowed, is suddenly lost for words. He stops, a few feet away from the boy, and finds himself waiting for Elijah to speak first.
"I'm ready," Elijah says, tone absolutely serious.
"Ready… for what?"
"I'm going to go with you," Elijah says.
"No you're not," Berg says. "I just have a few questions."
"I'm going with you," Elijah says again. "I'm supposed to. I know it."
"You know it?"
"I know things sometimes," Elijah says. "And it's time to go."
Berg is still trying to find the right thing to say when the door to the apartment building opens, and a woman steps out. "Elijah," she calls, beckoning him toward her. "Elijah, come inside. And what have I told you about strangers?"
"I'm leaving, Mom," Elijah says, without taking his gaze off Berg, not even blinking—Berg isn't actually sure if he's seen the boy blink at all since he and Bayek turned onto the street.
"Elijah, don't be—"
"It's time to go," Elijah says, turning around to look at his mother. "I know it."
Those three words seem to freeze her in her tracks, and Berg wonders what this poor woman must have been through in the past eight years. How often she must have heard those words, for them to have that kind of effect on her now. What have these two been through together?
The woman walks forward, and bends in front of her son. She hugs him, and Elijah stands there, blank and uncaring. And if he's been like this from the very beginning, then Berg can't entirely blame the mother when she straightens, and looks at him.
"So you'll be taking him away from me," she says.
"I—no ma'am," he says. "I wasn't exactly planning on it."
"It's very hard to plan for things when Elijah gets involved," she says, smile only a little bitter. "You'll learn that soon enough."
"Hold on," Berg says, voice rising a little. "I didn't come here to take him—I just had questions."
"You'll have more after you spend some time with him," she says, raising her eyes to heaven. "And I hope you have more luck getting your answers than I ever did."
"But—"
"It's time to go," Elijah announces, as he starts walking in the direction of where Bayek is waiting. Berg turns to watch him, speechless, but before he can figure out what is going on here, Elijah's mother reaches out and grabs his wrist.
"He's never been much of a son to me," she says, in a voice like iron. "But even if he never cared a fig about me, I love him. Don't you let him get hurt."
"I never even said he was coming with us," Berg says, voice rising. "That's the last thing I wanted when I came out here."
The woman releases him, and steps back. "You think you have a choice," she says. "You don't. Elijah's already made up his mind." And with that, she turns and disappears inside, closing the door behind her.
-/-
Several centuries in the past, and with no idea what Bayek and Berg are going through with Elijah, Layla is waiting in the keep at Masyaf to be allowed to see Altair. It had taken some doing—whereas last time, it was easy enough to just fall out of the sky in front of him, now she has to be allowed.
The first time she'd come, the man she spoke to had looked at her and her modern clothes in absolute confusion, before turning her flatly away. So Layla had been forced to go out into the village to steal some clothes that fit the time better, and in the process she'd been shocked to see the devastation there.
She'd had no idea this was supposed to happen. Honestly, she'd had no idea what happened in Altair's life at all, apart from the small sliver she'd seen for herself. Maybe if she'd been an Assassin for a longer time, she'd have known more—all the other people at their warehouse, even the Templars, seem to know a lot about him. Layla has no idea what she's walking into here, but something has obviously changed.
When she goes back a second time, and talks to a second man, she's allowed inside, where she still has to wait a while to see Altair—apparently, he's a very busy man these days. Layla, who has always hated waiting, spends most of her time trying to surreptitiously play games on her phone, until finally Altair is available.
When she sees him again, her first thought is how tired he looks. "What happened to you?" she asks, standing up and quickly tucking the phone away out of sight—she has a feeling Altair saw it anyway, but at least he already knows what she is and where she's from.
"Al Mualim decided he wanted the apple for himself," Altair says tiredly. "He would have enslaved us all, just the same as Juno."
Well, Layla thinks. Probably not just the same—she doesn't think anyone else could ever be as truly terrifying as Juno. "I'm sorry," she says out loud, because whatever it is Al Mualim had planned with the apple, she knows it won't have been good. "Did you stop him?"
A look of genuine pain crosses Altair's normally unreadable face. "I killed him."
Layla doesn't have to know all the details of their relationship to understand that even with the apple, and Al Mualim's betrayal, Altair has lost a mentor and a friend. "I'm sorry," she says again.
"I did what I have to," Altair tells her. "And now I've been put in charge of… of all this."
"You'll be great at it," Layla says. "I know we didn't work together long, but you… I mean, if it hadn't been for you, Juno would have won right here and now. I was useless, and you walked right in and knew what to do."
"Layla…" Altair gestures for her to sit, but once she has, he stays standing himself. "Listen to me. I can see that you're doubting yourself, and there's no need for that."
"You've known me a day," Layla says. "Less. And all I did during that time was mess up. How can you possibly say that?"
"Because Desmond trusts you."
She's quiet for a moment, then asks, "Can you still… feel him, or whatever?"
"A little," Altair says. "Distantly. Sometimes I even think I hear him, but it's… difficult to tell whether that's just wishful thinking. I've been trying to see if I can get in contact with him using the apple, but—"
"You've been using the apple?" Layla demands, half rising from her seat.
"Not against anyone," Altair says. "Never. But I've been trying to learn from it. There's a lot it has to teach, and I knew you would be coming back for it soon enough. I didn't have much time."
More information… would be helpful, Layla has to admit. She opens her mouth, then hesitates and says nothing.
"There's so much to learn," Altair says. "And I've barely made a dent. If I had more time, I was thinking I could write it all down. In a codex, something like that. But that would take years, and—"
"Keep it," Layla blurts, standing fully.
"What?"
"We need more information," Layla says. "Desperately. If you're willing and able to do that, and still in contact with Desmond, then we can use that. Besides." She whistles for Senu, and the bird flaps in through the window, narrowly missing Altair, whose face twitches into a smile. "I think Juno won't be willing to come back here any time soon—you really scared her off, and then she'll be expecting us to want it in 2012. She won't look here."
"You're sure?"
She nods. "Write your codex, Altair."
And then she lets the eagle guide her back to the future. She thinks the others will understand the change of plans, and if they don't… well, she's just going to have to convince them.
-/-
Special announcement, I guess? So I'm starting a spin off fic for Khemu and his adventures. Since it's focused more on day to day stuff than world saving stuff, chapters will be shorter and updated less often, but I figured I'd put it out there and see if anyone was interested. It's called Khemu of the Twenty First Century, because I am bad at titles.