Vieille Charité, Old Charity, was quite a building. It was made to house, educate, and sometimes hire the desperately poor, but proud in its design, in some ways reminding him of La Sorbonne, and in other ways the Mediterranean essence of the rest of the city. A small domed chapel with strong and erudite Greco-Roman style architecture was at the center of a courtyard which was wrapped in a rectangular building closed from the outside except at the front but lined with arcades on the inside. There were two floors of arcades at the front, three at the back and sides.

There were a lot of desperate looking characters about its premises, many skinny and ragged, some deformed, like a man with a horribly mangled hand he had just seen. For every ten of them, there was perhaps one guard and educator or head hunter (or that's what Arno assumed they were based on their superior attire). Arno was counting on blending with the latter group. He had been trying to find the Spaniard amid the crowd, checking the courtyard and the chapel, afraid to ask: that would draw attention to himself and burn his face into the mind of anyone who might be questioned when 'Diego' was found dead

Feeling he had spent enough time on the first floor, not wanting to linger too long so as to avoid questions from the guards, he began heading for the stairs to the second floor, at the back of the facility. He had no particular destination in mind, and was not going to branch out into the many smaller auxiliary chambers if he could avoid it.

Up the stairs he passed a relatively well kept middle aged woman before making it to the second floor.

The second floor hallway was made of dry beige stone and titian tiles. He was at the back, he looked out to the front, where the rooftops were a story lower than those of other three flanks. Those second-story roofs would be his means of escape, at least if he found Alejandro on one of the top two levels.

He began heading to the right, passing an empty bench. If the Illuminatus spotted him first, he already had a story in mind. He had been doing extensive silent planning before and during this expedition.

He turned the corner. Arno could hear some muffled speaking through a door ahead. He peaked through the door's glass window. It looked like some kind of class. He did not want to enter and call attention to himself, nor linger outside the door, so he continued a little further through the open-air corridor. Then he looked across the courtyard. On his current floor, opposite side, there were a couple of people conversing, neither of whom were the Spaniard. On the floor above, the section he could see, he saw no one.

He decided he would head up to the third floor. That would be the ideal place for an assassination, anyway. He headed back the way he came, passing closed doors and empty benches.

He went up the steps again. He braced himself excitedly as this would be the ideal floor for an assassination.

Arriving, he saw someone exit a door around the right corner. He could only see a sliver through the arcades at his angle. Was it Alejandro? He had looked short and stocky enough. Arno began walking vigorously in that direction as, if that were Alejandro, he wanted to be as close to the front of the facility when he slew him. Then it would be a simple escape. This was almost the sweetest outcome he could have imagined.

Indeed it was.

The Spaniard stopped, finding the tall, imposing Frenchman right in his path.

"You...you were one of the trainees, were you not?"

"Yes, I was."

"Did you come here looking for me?"

"Yes, I did."

"What is it you want?"

Though he had a story in mind, he decided not to drag this further. This was a great time and place for the kill.

"Let me show you."

Arno pulled the Alejandro's head towards his shoulder to muffled the screams, then stabbed him in the gut. Hot air poured onto his shoulder before he pushed him off, the stocky foreigner falling upon the tiled floor.

The Illuminati traitor looked up at him. The Assassin stared into his grey, old eyes.

"Assassin. After you killed those agents of Servan, we should have known it was only a matter of time before you showed up here."

"Indeed. Guy-Marcel's time will come as well."

Alejandro laughed, breaking into a fit of coughing, crimson erupting onto his lower lip, before he wiped off his mouth, and grinned. "The Templars don't mind the work you do as much as you think."

"I'm well aware of your little civil war."

"And yet you chose to come after us? We're flattered," he said with a smile, teeth red. "Perhaps you do know we are the true heirs to the spirit of Jacques de Molay."

"You hold the artifact. That makes you a much greater threat. That's all that matters," Arno said flatly.

"Por supuesto. That little metal ball was all we needed to topple the Aztec Empire, imagine what it can do here in Europe."

By 'we' must have meant the Templars.

"How did the Templars find another Apple so quickly?"

"It was waiting for us at...Yucatán. We just had to read the signs."

"Yucatán?"

"The peninsula in Centroamérica. That's all you need to know."

Arno looked at him quizzically. Somehow, that prompted him to continue. "The Templars had...help. Guidance, telling us to sail to the New World. A source beyond your comprehension. One Weishaupt was...was denied. One he may yet r-." He looked to the side and broke into another fit of coughing. Blood splattered onto the tiles. Arno waited through the awkward scene. Then the Illuminatus collected himself, with a deep breath in and out. "-reclaim. Your kind once knew him as...as Abu...Abu...Abu Fahima..."

Then with those words, he surrendered to death, his body going fully limp, his eyes resting on the ceiling above.

Dorian looked down on the thoroughly bloody, broken man, his gut entirely painted. Death had taken its sweet time. Abu Fahima. Where had he heard that before?

Then memories of his youth history lectures hit him:

Baphomet. The Father of Understanding.

A voice from the present ripped him out of his thoughts. "You, what the hell are you doing!?" a man behind him called.

Arno knew it was time to run.