Chapter 2— "External Forces"
Aboard the Paladin, Somewhere Over the Atlantic Ocean
Sam abruptly snapped out of his nightmare.
"Sam! Time to wake up!" said Vic.
"Vic…" said Sam, "you're still okay."
"'Course I am," said Vic. "I may need a cane to walk right now, but I'm managin'. That's what happens when you try to protect someone from a grenade with your own body. Right now, the team's more worried about you slumberin' before the mission."
"You know me, Vic," said Sam. "I fall asleep and wake up on command."
"You and every other combat vet. Anyway, that's I woke ya," said Vic. "Grim wants us in the command room for debrief."
"Didn't we already do the debriefing?"
"Yeah, but the mission parameters have changed."
"Right, good."
"We don't know if it's good yet… or do we?"
"No, I don't," said Sam. "I was just worried about getting senile in my old age."
Vic smirked. "Wise ass. Do me a favor and at least try to keep your sense of humor intact."
Sam smiled slightly, and walked out of his quarters with Vic toward the Paladin's command room.
Sam, Charlie, Briggs, and Grim were crowded around the Strategic Mission Interface.
"What's going on, Grim?" said Sam.
"Several portable nuclear devices just went missing," said Grim.
"Just another day on the job," said Sam as he ran his hand through his hair. "What intel do we have?"
"We managed to briefly get a positive ID on the person who stole the nuclear briefcase from some flight manifests leading into Moscow," said Charlie.
"He's an ex-MI6 agent who went rogue after blowing the whistle about a conspiracy related to the Third Echelon conspiracy. One Omar Shaheed, rumored to be working with a terrorist organization that wants the United States to stop intervening in foreign affairs." said Grim. "Sound familiar to you, Sam?"
"The Third Echelon conspiracy? Of course it does, what about it?" said Sam.
"That wasn't what I was talking about."
"Then what were you talking about?"
"An ex-MI6 agent going rogue with anti-American sentiments, allying with terrorists whose motive it is to coerce the US to bring its troops home."
Sam grimaced.
It was the Engineers.
Sam said, "I thought the Engineers dissolved into sleeper cells not long after we hunted down their leaders."
Briggs said, "We may have gotten Sadiq to give away a few of the Engineers' sleeper cell locations, but I suspect he's hiding something from us."
Vic said, "It makes sense. He did go right into the heart of the US and risk sacrificing his position as leader when he attacked Site F like that. He would've likely had some sort of backup plan."
Charlie said, "Hey Sam, you don't think what Sadiq said about twelve nations standing behind the Engineers is true… do you?"
Sam said, "We had a hard time tracking down intel on them from the get go. Sadiq was always one step ahead of us. Now, just when we think we're ahead…"
Vic said, "So let's get back ahead."
"Right. What do the Engineers want with nukes."
"Obviously nothing good. They're terrorists," said Briggs.
Charlie said, "Wait, hold on a sec, I thought their motives were that they wanted to obtain all of the dirt on the US from the servers in Site F?"
"Motives change," said Grim. "What's your point?"
"What if they found something out that they were looking for in Site F somehow, just through another channel."
Briggs says with a frown, "You didn't screw up again with your other friends, did you Charlie?"
"Nice of you to consider me a friend," said Charlie sarcastically. "No, that's not possible. With that said, I did a little digging into Sadiq's background through my… other friends."
Briggs put a hand to his head in sync with Grim.
"Well for starters, he had a wife who allegedly died in the Iraq War. She was pregnant with his kid at the time. Maybe he really wanted some type of revenge for her death?"
Sam frowned at this.
"You dug into MI6's servers just to find that out?" said Grim.
Charlie looked at Grim in confusion. "How did you know that was where I looked?"
"Because you're predictable."
"Regardless, no one else found out, I made sure of that, plus I'm getting sidetracked anyway. I looked at some of MI6's recent investigations into the Engineers' activities as well, and apparently the suitcase was stolen from a manufacturing facility in Shanghai, an energy company that was shut down years ago."
"Shanghai?" said Sam.
They looked at the SMI as Charlie manipulated its screen with his tablet and fingers.
Grim looked worried. "That shell company belonged to Dr. Aswat, the man who worked with…"
"John Brown's Army," said Sam.
The others looked at Sam as he grimaced.
"We're dealing with Red Mercury," he said.
Sam had a lot of traumatic memories from that time he worked undercover as a terrorist for the JBA. Watching Enrica be shot in front of him before he was threatened himself for sabotaging a nuclear catastrophe from happening in Cozumel. Nearly being imprisoned under the pretense of going rogue. Shooting Lambert to preserve his cover. But most importantly…
The news of a certain car accident.
Sam had never forgotten that moment he heard the news in Iceland. He'd go back to prison in seconds if it meant blocking out the memories. He was just glad that the story he had been told wasn't real, but then again, he also wasn't glad that it existed in the first place.
Charlie looked around at the others and decided to break the silence, "Is there something I'm missing here?"
Sam looked at Grim for a moment and frowned.
Seeing this, Charlie said awkwardly, "Anyway… I also found evidence buried deep within MI6's servers that the shell company was owned by a larger conglomerate of some kind known as Abstergo Industries," said Charlie.
"The pharmaceutical company?" said Sam. "They lobby practically every government in the world, including the US's. Why would they be involved with Dr. Aswat? Was he some kind of rogue member of the shell company?"
Charlie looked at the others with concern on his face.
"Spit it out, Charlie," said Grim.
"I've been looking into their connections," said Charlie. "Apparently, you're right, Sam, but not in the way you think… they were trying to influence Dr. Aswat into meeting with the JBA. Based on that along with research I did into the JBA's allies, I think… I think the JBA was a false flag terrorist organization, working for Abstergo."
Sam grimaced. Grim looked at Charlie, then at Sam, then away for a moment.
"Sam, you don't think Abstergo could be Megiddo?" said Charlie.
"Megiddo?" said Vic. "Shit, just when I thought they were old news…"
Grim sighed.
"Charlie," said Briggs. "From what Grim told me? What little we know about Megiddo is that little is known about them, other than what Lucius Galliard told Sam before he was assassinated. They're 'the ones running the show' in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing, probably among other governments and corporations all over the globe. And President Caldwell refused to cooperate with them. That's it. You're chasing after conspiracy theories, again—"
"Charlie's right, Briggs," said Grim.
"What?" said Briggs.
Sam looked at Grim, and frowned as he walked toward Grim.
"Easy, Sam…" said Vic.
"I was right not to trust you," said Sam, breathing heavily. "What do you know about Megiddo that you've been keeping from us?"
"Not much," said Grim, "other than what little I know about Abstergo from what I found out while I was working as a mole in Tom Reed's Third Echelon. Charlie's right. It adds up from Lambert's files, Sam. Think about it. Lambert was secretly guiding you without your knowledge in the direction of stopping Megiddo when he had you take on the assignment of the JBA. They were a false flag organization, and Megiddo… or Abstergo, managed to frame you as part of their group after tipping them off about Lambert. They nearly found a way to leverage you, but Lambert helped you avoid them from doing so."
Sam said, "The Engineers, Megiddo, Red Mercury… they're all still threats on the table, and you told us nothing, Grim!" said Sam, slamming his fist against the SMI.
"Sam!" shouted Vic.
Sam's angry glare remained fixed on Grim; he refused to relent.
"The situation is more volatile than you think, Sam," said Grim.
"How so, Grim?" said Briggs.
All eyes were on her now.
"Abstergo somehow has their hands on practically every corporation, government, and institution on Earth. Their main bases of operations may be in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing… but…"
"We get it, they're omnipotent," said Sam. "But if they're targeting the US because they can't control it right now, then why shouldn't we go after them? And also, why are the Engineers on their side?"
"I agree with Sam, we should go after them," said Briggs. "And that last part doesn't make sense either," said Briggs.
"Yeah," said Charlie. "If Abstergo's as big as you say they are, Grim, then the Engineers and Megiddo should be going against each other, not working together. Megiddo should be everything they despise, being super rich and in charge of Western nations and all through lobbyism. The ones responsible for the suffering of the nations the Engineers want the US's troops removed from…"
"That's the part I don't get either…" said Grim. "I still don't have all the facts. And President Caldwell is losing faith in this team fast, so some of my usual channels are getting cut off."
"To be fair, we did break a lot of protocols along the way when each of us tried to call audibles back when we worked on preventing the Blacklist…" said Briggs.
"You don't think she's starting to be influenced by them too, do you, Grim?" said Vic.
"Maybe," said Grim, pacing for a moment. "Their influences are deep, along with their resources... She may have caved."
Sam still looked at Grim, squinting furiously.
There's definitely something she isn't telling us, he thought.
They paused their quarrel when Charlie said, "Something came up on the SMI."
"My god…" said Briggs.
"The same man who stole the nuclear devices was deployed to Rome. And an Engineers sleeper cell there just went active…"
"They're going to detonate one of the devices in Rome," said Vic.
"…but something doesn't make sense…" said Charlie. "I managed to hack into Abstergo Headquarters' security cameras… the man is there with several mercenaries, shooting up the place! But it's nowhere to be seen on the local news," said Charlie. "This is really bad. If that Red Mercury goes off…"
"Our little argument can wait," said Sam as he glared at Grim, "but it's not over. We need to get to Rome ASAP."
"One of the pilots here will use the chopper in the Paladin's cargo bay to deploy you there via HALO jump," said Grim.
"Where are we going to land?" said Briggs.
"Where do you think, Briggs?" said Sam.
…
Sam and Briggs were suiting up to get on the chopper as they entered Italian European airspace when Charlie approached Sam.
"Sam, I have a question."
"Can it wait?"
"I'm not sure. I mean, it's not too serious, but it's been bugging me…" said Charlie.
Sam said, "Then hurry up and ask it."
"I don't know the whole story on the JBA incident. A lot of the info on the MI6 servers was redacted… probably by Megiddo."
"We might as well call them Abstergo now, Charlie," said Sam. "Given Megiddo is named after the hill that the Biblical battle on Judgment Day is supposed to take place on, Abstergo has a nicer ring to it. One that helps me sleep at night better," Sam said as he looked away.
"Do you have any idea who stopped the JBA from detonating those Red Mercury nukes before? I mean, I heard rumors that SWAT discovered the nukes were disarmed before they even… holy shit… you're—"
Sam frowned. "Sounds like you just answered your own question, Charlie," and was about to turn around when Charlie said, "Grim said Megiddo had tried to leverage you, Sam. What did they use against you?"
Sam's frown got worse. He turned around again to get on the chopper with Briggs.
"I'll give you a hint, Charlie," he said with his back to Charlie. "What they used against me wasn't a 'what'. And it cost me years worth of my life."
Charlie looked at Sam in confusion, just standing there as he and Briggs got on the chopper as the pilot began to start its engines and spin up its rotors. "Okay?" he responded.
He looked back toward the SMI room, frowned, and headed back as the chopper took off and the cargo bay doors opened.
… … … … …
Sam and Sarah were walking in the streets of Washington, DC, enjoying the serenity of the daytime as they were on the way back from a visit to the Lincoln Memorial to have lunch. It was 2008.
"I'm glad you were able to come to my graduation ceremony last year, Dad," she said.
"I didn't want to miss it," Sam said. "I'm proud of you, Sarah… I know you don't hear that enough from me, but…"
"It's all right, Dad," Sarah said. "I know I haven't seen you since then, but I know you tend to be busy."
Sam said, "Well I'm here now. It's nice to be away from work for a change. Speaking of which, how's your job hunt been going?"
"It's been going," Sarah said. "Despite the internship I got last fall, job availability's gotten competitive lately."
"It's probably due to the recession," Sam said. "I'm sure you'll get another job, Sarah. It's just a matter of time before an offer shows up."
"Dad, have you ever considered retiring?" she said. "I'm worried about you."
Sam said, "You don't need to worry about me, sweetheart, I'll be fine. Right now, you just worry about you. Trust me when I say filing for unemployment's a nightmare."
Sarah smiled, and looked away for a moment.
"Hey dad, I think I see one of my friends!" said Sarah. "Mind if I go say hi to them?"
"Sure, Sarah," said Sam, and looked away for a moment as he saw someone standing in Elysian Fields Cemetery… someone wearing an oddly familiar cheap-looking jacket and bad haircut full of gel.
"Fisher?"
Sam squinted. "Kobin?"
"Fisher, look, I'm sorry about what happened w—"
"Dad?" said Sarah.
Sam turned around to look at Sarah for a moment. When he turned away, Kobin was gone.
"Are you okay, Dad? You seem kind of out of it today."
Looking back at Sarah again, Sam said, "I'm fine. Just had déjà vu for a moment—"
Then out of nowhere, even though Sarah was on the sidewalk, a drunk driver sped through a red light at highway speed and the front of the car slammed into Sarah, smashing and practically tearing her body in half and running her over seconds before she was too far gone to scream.
"SARAH!"
Above Rome, Italy
Sam abruptly woke up with cold sweats, breathing heavily.
Sam and Briggs were still on the chopper.
"You okay, Sam?" said Briggs.
"I'm fine," lied Sam. "I must be getting altitude sickness or something."
"That's bad," said Briggs, "because we're about to do a HALO jump."
"Right," said Sam. "I'll manage."
Sam got up from where he was lying and strapped on his parachute, oxygen tank, and helmet.
Briggs said, "You go first. If your altitude sickness gets bad enough for you to lose focus on the drop zone, I want to be able to know."
"Seriously, Briggs, I said I'm fine—"
"Approaching the drop zone," said the pilot.
They approached the edge of the opening door on the side of the chopper's rear bay. They were jumping in the middle of a lightning storm.
Sam said, "Just when I started to like the fact that someone went before me."
Briggs tried to contact Grim. "Grim, should we try landing instead of doing the HALO jump? Might be safer given the lightning and all." He tried to adjust his subdermal transmitter. "Grim's not answering. Hey Pete," Briggs said to the pilot, "can you still contact the Paladin?"
"I've been trying to for the last fifteen minutes now," said the pilot. "My radio isn't doing shit. And I don't think it's because of the lightning."
"Shit," said Sam.
"You don't think they could be jamming us?" said Briggs.
"There aren't many other reasons the radio might not working that I like, Briggs."
Briggs looked down and said, "Let's hurry up and jump before the storm gets worse. And before Rome goes up in a mushroom cloud."
Sam nodded, finished clicking his helmet into place, and jumped into the dark abyss of rain and thunder.
"Briggs? Don't tell me you have altitude sickness too?" Sam joked as he flipped over to see if Briggs had jumped yet.
Five seconds later, Briggs jumped after him, only for the chopper to explode a couple seconds after he started the free fall.
"BRIGGS!" yelled Sam as the explosion blinded him temporarily.
As his vision cleared, Sam flipped over and looked up to see the sky on fire.
Horrified, Sam flipped his body around and looked down, and then realized something was definitely wrong.
The city he was looking at beneath him wasn't Rome. As a matter of fact, it was a city unlike any he had ever seen… its towers managed to reach the clouds, and their design was extremely unique and futuristic-looking.
He could see lightning bolts striking its massive towers.
Beneath, he could see civilians scurrying like ants as the ground gave out below them and they fell into the Earth's fiery core.
What the hell happened… thought Sam.
He could hear a screaming baby. He had a flash of a woman with long black hair carrying her child in her arms as the world exploded around her.
He then could see an image of a man on a hill, watching the exploding city from a distance. The man looked eerily similar to him, only his skin color suggested he was Arabic, and he had a beard and long hair. He looked older than Sam, and was a lot taller and bigger than him, too.
The man briefly looked up at the sky.
Sam looked down at the burning futuristic city, and then at the man, when he faintly heard a voice.
"…Sam, are you there?"
Shaking his head, Sam blinked heavily for a moment.
"Sam, it's Grim! Come in, over!"
Sam had a vision of when he was in bed, recovering from his service in the Gulf War.
"Daddy?" said a young Sarah.
Sam groaned while in bed.
"Daddy, I'm hungry."
Sam was having trouble getting up.
"I want pancakes and bacon and orange juice."
"SAM!"
"Come on, Daddy, wake up…" said Sarah as she nudged Sam with her tiny hands. "You've been sleeping so much ever since you got back from your trip. I want to play with Daddy!"
Sam sighed, and said, "All right, sweetheart… Daddy's awake," and got out of bed.
"…Grim?" said Sam.
As the fog in his mind started to clear, he realized the sky wasn't on fire anymore, and Rome was still beneath him.
And he was approaching the target deployment altitude fast.
Sam shook his head again, and shut his eyes for a moment.
He kept seeing that image of the sky burning.
"Thank God, I thought the explosion got you," said Grim.
"Explosion?" said Sam. "Did the nuke go off!"
"What? No!" said Grim. "A drone was jamming our transmissions until now; it must've shot down the chopper not long after you jumped."
Sam shook his head, and shut his eyes again then opened them.
He was back in Roman airspace again.
"You said the chopper was shot down?" said Sam as he fell out of the sky in the middle of the lightning storm's downpour.
"Yes… I haven't been able to contact Briggs yet."
"Briggs?" Sam turned over and looked for Briggs above him. "Briggs, do you copy?" said Sam. He tried to look for Briggs in the midst of the storm, but the rain and lightning were blinding him too.
"The explosion might've gotten him, Sam… You need to focus on landing safely yourself at this point."
As Sam tried his best to slow his fall for a moment and flip over to see if he could spot Briggs, he yelled, "Wait, I see him!"
Briggs' parachute had come loose of his suit but was stuck, and his oxygen tank was leaking. They were getting close to reaching deployment altitude. Sam tried to move toward Briggs and grab him. He missed a couple of times, and had to fly around to correct his course.
"Briggs!" Sam yelled as he grabbed Briggs.
Briggs was running out of oxygen.
"Briggs, I need you to breathe—"
"F- fin—"
"Sam, I don't know if you can hear me, but Briggs' vitals are looking pretty bad!" said Charlie on comms. "If you don't manage to get him some oxygen, he may not make it to the ground alive!"
"You're closing in on critical altitude, Sam, Briggs may be a lost cause at this point! If neither of you deploy your chutes in time, no one will be able to stop the nuke!" shouted Grim.
"F… fini…"
"Stay with me, Briggs!" said Sam as he strapped his oxygen tank to Briggs' back, and attached its tube to his helmet.
"Sam, you need to deploy your chute, now!" yelled Grim.
Sam looked down as the Abstergo Headquarters rooftop was growing larger and larger, and he could practically see the Roman skyline just by looking sideways by now.
"Breathe, Briggs!" yelled Sam as oxygen began to return to Briggs's helmet.
"F… finish… finish the job, Sam!"
Sam looked at Briggs's parachute, untangled it, pulled its strings, causing Briggs to be yanked upward above Sam by his chute, and then Sam pulled the strings to his while flipping over.
He managed to hit the ground rough, and ended up sliding and tumbling toward the edge of the skyscraper he landed on. Sam barely managed to slow himself down before he fell off the side of the skyscraper. The landing had knocked the wind out of him, but he was alive. He had deployed his chute just in time.
Briggs floated to the rooftop floor, and unstrapped his tank, helmet, and chute.
He walked over to Sam. "Sam, are you all right?"
Sam looked at Briggs without responding, his face blue.
Briggs pulled out an adrenaline syringe, and jammed it into Sam's arm.
"Any second longer and you'd have likely been dead," said Briggs. He looked at Sam. "I suppose it's a good thing you went first after all. You just saved my life."
Sam got up as his pulse kicked back to life. "Of course, Briggs," he said, doing his best to breathe in and out. He looked down at the bright night skyline of Rome below them, and then looked up at the logo sign building he was on top of.
Abstergo Industries' main headquarters.
"Sam, Briggs, do you copy?" yelled Charlie.
"Not so loud, Charlie," said Sam.
"We're here, Charlie," said Briggs.
"Thank God," said Grim. "All right, the mission's a go."
Sam looked at the Roman skyline for a moment.
What was all that I had seen up there… It felt too real to be a hallucination…
"You good to go, Sam?" said Briggs.
Shaking his head, and rubbing a hand across his forehead, Sam said, "Yeah… Let's go, Briggs."
Sam turned away from the ledge of the massive skyscraper, and he walked with Briggs toward the stairway entrance to the rooftop. Using matching hydraulic rescue tools they brought, they began a dual breach of the stairway entrance doors, and entered Abstergo headquarters, where they heard gunfire within the nearby hallways.
Abstergo Headquarters, Rome, Italy
The stairs had a few bullet-riddled corpses lying on them along with trails of blood.
"The terrorists must've come in by chopper," said Sam.
"That doesn't match what I saw on the security feeds," said Charlie over comms. "It seems like they walked right in before shooting up the place Matrix-style."
"I scanned the rooftops with night vision and thermal," said Briggs. "Several Abstergo agents toting sniper rifles lying dead all over."
"Was it Vic's team who got them?"
"If my boys got them, Sam, they would've cleared them from an adjacent building with some sniper rounds of their own. But right now they're dealing with the situation on the ground, evacuating civvies."
"That tracks," said Briggs, "given that the Abstergo guards' throats were stabbed."
"Stabbed and not slashed?" said Charlie. "Weird…"
"Why is that weird, Charlie?" said Briggs.
Charlie didn't respond. He seemed to be deep in thought.
"You don't think there could be multiple teams that entered the premises?" said Sam.
"If there were, we'd know about it… at least before and after they managed to cut the power to the building…" said Grim.
"They did what?" said Sam.
"Grim's right, Sam," said Charlie. "I detected this when I managed to hack into their security systems. The building must have a backup generator or something. But now someone's shutting me out."
"Then cut the connection, Charlie," said Sam. "I don't want the Paladin to nearly crash again like last time."
"Rog'," said Charlie.
Briggs shook his head as they entered the penthouse corridors.
"What the hell have they been doing here…" said Briggs as they walked by several prison cells as well as several sets of odd-looking machines.
Staying hidden in the darkness, Sam turned off his goggles and examined the machines that were under the light for a moment.
"Looks like some kind of VR device," said Sam.
"Do you think they were forcing prisoners to use this?" said Briggs.
"I'm not sure. But what I do know is that it's uncharacteristic of a pharmaceutical company to keep unwilling test subjects in their headquarters."
They heard gunshots nearby.
"Keep it tight," said Sam as they continued onward toward the noise.
The further they got into the building, the more gore and corpses of Abstergo employees they saw.
Then Sam and Briggs saw them.
The Engineers.
"Should we take them out, Sam?" whispered Briggs into his subdermals.
"No, wait… let me get closer," said Sam.
Sam crept through the darkness, and found a pipe to climb up on. He then climbed up to the ceiling, and used the laser mic built into his goggles and headset to eavesdrop on the terrorists, who were talking into the radio.
"This is Jotnar Five with Six and Seven. Our assigned sector of Asgard is cleared out."
"Charlie," said Sam, "can you hack into their comms if I manage to steal one of their phones?"
"Sure thing, Sam," said Charlie.
"Briggs," said Sam, "I'm going to take out the guard who's alone smoking on the left. Once I do, we'll take out the other two together."
"Roger," said Briggs.
Sam climbed across the horizontal pipe to get a little closer to the guard beneath him, then he hung upside down, reached down, and snapped the first Engineer's neck.
He then jumped down, and trained his SC-20K assault rifle's reflex sight on the second guard.
"On three, Briggs… One, two, three!"
Sam shot the second guard in the head with a burst of silenced SC-20K fire, and Briggs shot the third with a powerful silenced sniper round to the heart.
"Good," said Sam.
Before hiding their bodies in a set of nearby crates full of medical supplies, Sam and Briggs picked up their phones.
"Patching you in, Charlie," said Sam as he plugged one of Charlie's hacking USB drives into the phone.
"All right," said Charlie. "Strange… their encryption protocol was nothing like what they've been using before. Hacking into it was easy… Too easy."
"That's not like them," said Sam.
"Anyway, I'm uploading their comm links to your OPSAT to monitor."
"Good," said Sam.
"Be careful not to let them monitor us, too, Charlie," said Briggs. "Something about this whole mission seems off."
"Of course, careful's my middle name, Briggs," said Charlie.
Sam could practically see Briggs roll his eyes underneath his goggles and mask.
Sam listened into their comms.
"Jotnar 1 to Loki, over."
"This is Loki," spoke a startlingly familiar voice over the comms.
Sam's eyes went wide as he heard the voice.
"The package is with Freyja now. She's trapped in the main tower of Asgard."
"Good. Wait for Midgard to find her and attempt to deal with the package. After that, you're to leave for Jotunheim."
"Copy that."
Briggs said, "Sam, was that who I thought it was?"
Sam frowned and nodded. "Majid Sadiq." Sam said to Briggs as they continued through the corridors, "Send a signal requesting an OPSAT link to the SMI."
"But I thought you said—"
"Sadiq's supposed to be in prison. I want to talk to Grim about this."
Briggs nodded, and said to Grim, "Grim, why is Sadiq communicating with the Engineers here at Abstergo? He's supposed to be locked up in Gitmo!"
"He what?"
"Grim…" said Sam.
There was pause on the other end of the line, followed by the sound of her manipulating the SMI in the background.
"While I don't know how he's communicating with the other Engineers, I do know that recently President Caldwell had to strike a deal with the UK's Prime Minister. He's being transported back to London on a prison boat to be interrogated and imprisoned by MI6."
"Shit…" said Sam. "Why wasn't I aware of this!"
"I just found out now via the SMI… and your intel. Caldwell is keeping something from us… we're losing her trust fast."
Sam said to Grim, "I think she's not the only one."
"Keep focused on the mission for now, Sam," said Grim. "I can't have you and Briggs dying in the center of a nuclear catastrophe."
Sam grunted, and kept moving.
They fired their SC-20Ks at three more Engineers hanging out in an empty conference room; corpses had fallen from the chairs they had been sitting in, and near where they had run from.
Then they continued down another set of stairs.
"Hold up," whispered Sam.
"I see it," said Briggs. "Camera."
A 360-degree hemispherical security camera was scanning the stairway from left to right.
Sam looked at the camera's rotation pattern, and said, "We'll sneak around it; it's best not to tamper with it yet… they may have hijacked the security systems."
"Roger," said Briggs as they pressed themselves against the walls of the stairway and snuck around the camera as its rotation pattern began to switch from counter-clockwise to clockwise. They managed to get past it just in time.
On the office floor level, they cleared the offices of Engineers room by room while hiding in the darkness. Occasionally the lights flickered on and off; Sam had to use his handgun's underbarrel OCP attachment to disable a few lights to preserve their stealth.
They approached a security center on the office floor level where several guards had been stationed outside; they had managed to hijack the security systems.
As Sam and Briggs shot the Engineers outside, the ones inside came out to investigate.
"Who's there?" said an Engineer.
Sam and Briggs froze for a moment. Inside the security center was a technician calling for status reports.
Sam said to Briggs over their subdermals, "Snipe as many of them as you can. I'm sneaking around them to get to the technician first."
Briggs nodded, and Sam crept around the Engineers in the darkness, using the office's furniture and desks for cover as they searched for him while donning their sonar goggles.
"You see anything?" said one Engineer approaching Sam's cover point.
"No," said another.
Sam had no choice.
He used his Karambit to slice the first Engineer's throat.
"What the hell—"
Then a silenced sniper bullet penetrated the second Engineer's skull.
The technician said, "What the hell's going on out there?"
Sam had to act fast.
The technician grabbed his smartphone, and spoke into it. "Gunnloo to Loki, Midgard is with us!"
"Are they with Odin or Freyja?"
"They're with me!"
Too late.
Sam took the technician human shield, forcing him to drop his phone.
He then turned the technician around, pulled out his handgun, and shot the approaching Engineers in sync with Briggs until they were all dead.
He then used his OCP to disrupt the phone's signal.
"You must be Sam Fisher," said the Engineer technician. "Sadiq said you'd come."
Sam grimaced, and pressed his Karambit to the man's neck.
"And how did he know I would?"
"You won't get anything out of me—"
Sam sunk his Karambit into the man's shoulder and began to turn while covering the man's mouth as he screamed.
"I tend to dislike destroying people's will to live… along with their bodies. Tell me how he knows we would come."
"He has… people… working with him… within the intelligence community, that is—"
"Is he working for Megiddo?"
The man laughed in a pathetic, wheezing-sounding manner. "You're calling Abstergo by the name it's known as in political circles… and the intelligence community. Typical American cowboy, fighting for a cause without knowing, questioning, or caring what the cause even is in the first place… or whether or not it's right."
Sam sunk the knife deeper into the man's shoulder until he began to howl at the top of his lungs. He was losing a lot of blood.
"Is he working for Megiddo?"
"Arrgh- no! He hates Megiddo, especially the man running it! He has his own schemes he works on… he never says what a lot of them are, though."
"Tell me one of them you do know about then… why does he plan to create a nuclear holocaust in the middle of Rome?"
"You'll have to… ask him yourself…" said the technician as he bit down on something in his tooth and his mouth began to foam.
"Damn it," said Sam.
Briggs entered the security center. "He used a cyanide pill."
"Maybe Charlie's right," said Sam. "Maybe Sadiq is acting as a lone wolf."
"I wouldn't trust that piece of shit," said Briggs as he looked at the dead technician on the floor. Sam turned his head to look at the security center's computer consoles, and the laptop the technician used to hack it.
"Charlie," said Sam, "can you hack this laptop?"
"Do you have to ask?" said Charlie. "Plug in the flash drive, and I'll crack this bad boy and reverse the Engineers' grip on Abstergo's security systems in no time."
"Just be careful," said Sam, and plugged in the flash drive.
"Working on it… Damn, at the very least, this technician's encryption key is much more impressive than PGP, that's for sure… Wait, wait- I got it!" said Charlie. "Patching the security camera feeds to your OPSAT, Sam."
Sam nodded, and scrolled through the security camera feeds until he found Sadiq's lieutenant talking to some heavy-armored Engineers.
"Facial ID?" said Sam.
"Working on it…" said Grim. "It's confirmed. That's Omar Shaheed."
"Strange," said Sam, "the bomb's not with him."
Sam listened in to the lieutenant's conversation.
"Loki just told me that Midgard is with us. They've gained control of the Observatory. Ragnarok begins now. Practice Jotunn," he said while snapping at his subordinates. They began to converse with each other.
"Have we been able to find Odin?"
"He's locked in his tower still. We can't get to him."
"And Yggdrasil?"
"We can't enter Valhalla's halls yet. We may need Midgard to do it for us, along with accessing Asgard."
"And Freyja?"
"She's on her way to Hel now… The package is with her. It will help the process."
"Good. Midgard will follow."
"Damn it, they're speaking in some kind of code," said Briggs.
"Based on Norse mythology," said Grim.
"Hold on, the laptop has an encrypted file on it named 'Jotunn Dialect' explaining their code talk… but…" said Charlie.
"Is there a catch?"
"The file was too easy to access… different from the rest of their encryption key."
"I don't like this at all," said Briggs.
"It's almost as if they want us to know what they're doing," said Sam. Breathing out in frustration, Sam said, "What does the file say, Charlie?"
"Let's see… Obviously the Jotnar are the Engineers… the Aesir are Abstergo… Odin is a member of the board of directors of Abstergo, but not the CEO. Lucas Richards. He's mostly known for his philanthropic work nowadays. Sending you his picture now, Sam."
Sam looked at the man. Weirdly enough, the man was blonde and looked almost Norse despite that his file said he was American.
Sam said, "I already found out Loki was Sadiq. Lucky guess. Who's Freyja?"
"The current CEO of Abstergo," said Grim. "Sofia Rikkin, daughter of the deceased Alan Rikkin, who was the previous CEO."
"Asgard must be the panic room in the penthouse. Maybe Lucas is hiding in there," said Briggs. "We need to find him."
"What about Jotunheim?" said Sam.
"Likely their nearest sleeper cell," said Charlie, "but that one's redacted so I'm not sure. As for Yggdrasil and Valhalla; they're the Abstergo central servers and the files on them. Sadiq must really want them for some reason."
"Strange…" said Sam as he rubbed his chin, "that pairing doesn't line up with Norse mythology. I figured Valhalla would be the afterlife they gain access to once they die in the nuclear fallout of the attack. Also I figured they'd go with code talk more Christianity-related since they're in Rome."
"Now's not the time for dark humor, Sam," said Briggs. "What's Hel, Charlie?"
"An abandoned apartment, recently bought up by local corporations due to the housing crisis," said Charlie. "I think that's where they're going to detonate the bomb."
"Then that would make the package…" said Briggs.
"It's the Red Mercury," said Sam.
"You all are very perceptive," said a hauntingly familiar voice over the phone lying on the ground as the OCP's effects turned off.
Sam looked at the phone's screen.
"You should've killed me at Site F, Sam," said Sadiq. "Now it's about time for you to see what the fallout of your false altruism led to."
Sam grimaced, and shot the phone with his pistol.
"Waste of a good bullet," said Sam. "Is Yggdrasil nearby, Charlie?"
"Yes," said Charlie. "You're going to have to open the dual locks to the vault where the server's stored with my flash drives, but I've deactivated the laser grids and other security systems within it. It's on the level beneath the penthouse on the tower that's part of the section of the skyscraper adjacent to where you are now. You're going to have to…" Charlie gulped.
"Spit it out Charlie," said Sam.
"…climb the skybridge."
"In the pouring rain?" said Briggs.
"The skybridge is crawling with Engineers," said Grim. "You don't have a choice."
"Right," said Sam. "We'll make it happen."
They headed out to the skybridge.
Sam and Briggs were climbing along the sides of the slippery skybridge walls and windows with their new climbing adhesive gloves and boots that helped them attach and detach to unclimbable walls.
"Good thing Fourth Echelon invested in this new tech," said Sam.
"Don't get too comfortable with it," said Briggs, "Charlie likely 'borrowed' it from one of his friends."
Sam looked through the window in the pouring rain as the Engineer grunts were patrolling through the skybridge interior.
Then, for a second, one of Sam's gloves and both of his boots' adhesive grips malfunctioned because of nearby lightning.
If it weren't for his left glove, Sam would've fallen to his death.
"Sam!" said Briggs.
Sam struggled to regain his grip on the wall, but his other glove's adhesive controls were flashing red, indicating their batteries might've been fried.
"Shit," muttered Sam as he desperately clawed at the glass, which made a noise that attracted some heavy Engineer grunts.
"Midgard is with us," said one of them as they came closer to seeing Sam through the rain and the darkness outside the glass window, when all of a sudden a small blade of some kind pierced through one of the Engineers' necks.
What looked like a man in his early 20s with curly black hair, an impressive physique, and heterochromic eyes who was wearing a hooded white leather jacket began to slaughter the Engineers on the skybridge with just a pistol and blade attached to his wrist along with an improvised flashbang grenade.
Luckily, Sam managed to look away. His ears were still ringing though, as he looked back toward the skybridge interior.
The curly-haired man was looking right at him, along with an attractive, timid-looking blonde woman who was also likely in her early 20s.
Sam couldn't hear them talk, so all he could do was read their lips.
The blonde woman had a feverish look in her eyes. She said to the curly-haired man, kill him!
The curly-haired man's heterochromic eyes studied Sam. He then said, no, followed by do not compromise the brotherhood. We have to leave anyways. Our extraction is waiting on the roof. We have to… Then the man turned his head to the side, and Sam couldn't quite make out what he was saying.
As the man and woman left and stepped over the pile of bodies they left in their wake, Sam sighed and his gloves and boots' sensors turned green like the color of his trifocal goggles again. He re-attached to the wall.
Briggs said, "You all right, Sam?" as Sam caught up with him.
"Yeah," said Sam. As they were almost across the bridge now, Sam said, "Grim, Charlie, did you by any chance see any of that?"
"There aren't any cameras on the skybridge," said Charlie, "just security gates I thought I'd deactivate in case you guys needed an escape route. Why?"
"I saw a man with curly black hair and heterochromic eyes and a woman with blonde hair and blue eyes just slaughter a bunch of Engineers like it was nothing. I was hoping you could ID them."
"You're out of luck there, Sam," said Charlie. "Sorry."
"Grim?" said Sam.
Grim said nothing over the line, but she was frowning over his OPSAT's visual interface, as if she was thinking about something.
"Fine then, play the quiet game," said Sam. "But regardless, I think I found the external force that infiltrated Abstergo through the roof. And they're about to get away."
He and Briggs finished crossing the bridge and began to scale the skyscraper with their adhesive grip, then attached their rappel lines to a set of antennas on the side of the building, and rappelled down slightly until they came to a window, then Sam used a glass cutter to open the window with one free hand, and then kicked the circle of glass he created in and jumped through it.
As they approached the vault on the skyscraper's penultimate floor, Sam and Briggs saw that several Engineers were trying to gain access to the vault with torches, along with a technician telling them what to do while searching the bloody corpses of some Abstergo technicians that they had brutally interrogated.
"This steel is impossible to torch! Can't you just hack the locks somehow?" said one of them.
"They're locked with five-twelve encryption," said the technician, "along with the central server and the Phoenix Project files."
Sam frowned while hiding in the darkness, watching his prey.
"Well, if you can't unlock the locks then how will you unlock the servers?"
"Our best shot at that is with Lucas… his panic room has to have the access codes lying around somewhere."
Briggs looked at Sam. "They've got their backs turned to us. You thinking what I'm thinking?"
Sam said, "Time to mark and execute."
Sam and Briggs quickly blasted the Engineers with a barrage of silenced SC-20K assault rifle and underbarrel shotgun fire, and sniper fire, respectively.
"We're at Yggdrasil, Charlie," said Briggs as they approached. "Inserting the flash drives into the dual locks now."
Sam hesitated as Briggs inserted his flash drive into the left electronic lock.
"Come on, Sam, what's wrong? We're on a timer!" said Briggs.
"Grim, do you by any chance have a sample of the Masse Kernels stored somewhere?"
"Yes, why?"
"Give them to Charlie."
"What?"
"The locks and servers have five-twelve encryption. We're not getting in without a kernel."
Grim reluctantly said to Charlie over the other end of his OPSAT, "Don't do anything stupid with this, Charlie?"
"Oh, wow, I don't know what to s- I… I mean I don't plan to," said Charlie. "Guys, I'm uploading a Masse Kernel algorithm to your flash drives. This should get you in."
Sam inserted the flash drive, and they entered the vault room.
Inside the white tile room was a single computer. Sam uploaded the flash drive to the computer's port, and began to download the files.
"Briggs, cover me while I access the computer for a second," said Sam.
"Roger," said Briggs.
"Whatever Abstergo might be hiding within these files, the Engineers want it bad," said Sam. "By the way, Grim, how did Abstergo get their hands on the Masse Kernels?"
"To be honest, I imagine they got them quicker than Shetland did," said Grim. "He likely stole them from them."
Sam remembered what one of his closest friends said years ago before he had to kill him.
"America is sick, Sam… she's dying; the politicians, the bureaucrats, the whispered backroom deals, it's all life support for a sick old woman dead long ago."
Sam said to Grim, "You and Lambert discovered the existence of Megiddo and the mole inside Third Echelon around the time you found out about Displace being behind the theft of the Kernels, didn't you?"
"That's correct," said Grim. "Displace was in competition with Abstergo after cooperating with their agendas initially… Shetland quickly turned into a very cynical man after he chose to side against them."
"Cynical as in wanting to start World War III cynical," said Sam. "The Engineers seem to have a similar agenda… maybe. The nukes sure remind me of his… cynicism."
"Now's not the time for feelings to get in the way of the mission, Sam," said Grim.
"You're right," said Sam as he frowned. "You really were lying to me for years."
"Download's complete," said Charlie. "Despite that the five-twelve encryption took care of bypassing the server's firewalls and decrypting the files, they're still in some sort of gibberish font. Looks super ancient. Maybe I screwed up somehow."
"That's not a font, Charlie," said Grim. "It's a language- a… coded language."
"Do you know it, Grim?" said Sam.
"Few people on Earth do," said Grim.
Sam grunted. I'm getting damn sick of people talking in riddles.
Briggs said, "That was an easy babysitting op, Sam."
"I'm older than you are, Briggs," said Sam.
"Let's go then, old man," Briggs said with a smirk as they exited the vault and headed up the stairs to the penthouse.
Abstergo employees' corpses and gore stains covered the floors of the otherwise gorgeous penthouse, complete with the Abstergo logo on the walls, plush furniture and Renaissance paintings lining the walls, along with several televisions displaying Abstergo's advertisements on a loop. After clearing out the room of Engineers, Sam examined Lucas's massive desk while Briggs looked around the room for the panic room entrance.
"There must be some sort of clue as to where it is," said Sam. "Search for it."
"Sam, listen," said Briggs. "Do you hear it?"
"Yeah," said Sam as he turned around. "Over there."
A female employee wearing a casual work outfit was lying in a pool of her own blood, with several bullets in her back and a blood trail coming from behind her.
She was still breathing.
Sam helped turn her so she was facing them.
"Can you speak?" said Sam.
The woman began to shake. "Oh god!"
"Calm down," said Sam, "we're not with the Engineers. Where's the panic room entrance?"
The woman began to frown. "You're here to kill Lucas, aren't you?"
"We're here to ask him why the Engineers are targeting him."
The woman said, "He said he loved me… then he locked me out and left me here to die."
"You're his mistress?" said Briggs.
"Just one of them…" she said. "He's a womanizer… and a psychopath. There is a button with a strange symbol on it beneath his desk. It has the letters 'IotFW' inscribed on it."
Sam said to the woman, "Do you have any idea what the letters and symbols mean?"
Briggs eyed Sam for a moment.
"It means… Instruments of the First Will… the symbol… is their insignia…"
Sam said, "Are they some kind of group?"
The woman was shaking as she was beginning to die. "Be… careful… when you go in there… he's unlike any enemy you've ever met… he's… he's… O—"
Sam's eyes went wide.
"Why'd you ask her about that of all things, Sam—"
"Get away from her, Briggs!" Sam yelled as he pushed Briggs backward.
"Sam, what the hell is wrong with you! You're starting to seem like you're off your game."
"I already nearly lost Vic to a suicide bomber. I'm not losing you too."
"What? But she's just a secretary—"
"Listen, Briggs!" shouted Sam. "Something is not right about any of this. Regardless, Megiddo and the Engineers are two sides of the same rotten coin to me… all of these people that the Engineers killed around us? We need to see them as threats too."
"But they're just civilians!"
"Briggs…" said Sam, trying to calm down, "when I was in Iraq with Vic, combatants posed as civilians all the time. It was hard even then just to figure out who was innocent and who was the enemy. You of all people should understand how asymmetrical warfare works, Company Man. It doesn't matter if we take a few lives that don't deserve to be taken along the way. There is a fucking nuke here in Rome. All that matters is the greater good."
"Affirmative," said Briggs.
Sam went under the desk and hit the button.
As the giant Abstergo logo on the wall opened to reveal the panic room, they entered.
"Please don't kill me!" yelled Lucas, putting his hands up.
"Relax, Lucas, we're not going to kill you," said Briggs.
"But we do want answers," said Sam. "Why are the Engineers targeting Abstergo?"
"They're anti-Western terrorists…" said Lucas. "They don't like the 1 percent."
"Bullshit," said Sam. "The Engineers were trying to access a vault of some kind on Abstergo. They don't just want to nuke Rome. They want information."
"What?" said Lucas. "Did they gain access to it?"
"No," said Sam, "but what would happen if they would?"
"I… I assume they'd either blackmail us or release the information to the public, try to accuse us of wrongdoing."
"They won't have to try very hard," said Sam. "I know that Abstergo is Megiddo. You wanted to destroy America just because we refused to play ball with you."
"You must be Sam Fisher," said Lucas. "I was told about you in my briefings after the Third Echelon Conspiracy."
"I think I understand what's going on now. Sofia Rikkin is the CEO of Abstergo, not me. Her father, Alan, was the one who was responsible for orchestrating everything. She wants to follow in his footsteps after he was murdered by an American Assassin named Callum Lynch.
She's planning something with the Engineers. Likely a do-over of some kind, similar to what happened with John Brown's Army… only this time the threat is global."
"That doesn't make any sense!" shouted Briggs. "Why would the CEO of a corporation that literally runs the world want to nuke it?"
"Don't you get it?" said Lucas. "Abstergo's a corporation. Some people are willing to destroy the entire world just to make more profits. I was hoping to reform Abstergo! And now she's sent the Engineers to kill me, and is likely going with the terrorists to help them detonate that nuke!"
"Do you think he's telling the truth, Grim?" said Briggs over his subdermals.
Sam said, "Whether he is or not, we need to trace down that nuke."
"I overheard where they're going using the security cameras in here," said Lucas. "They're going to an abandoned apartment complex, somewhere in Rome."
"Charlie, have you got the coordinates?" said Sam.
"Yep. I've also noticed that they're evacuating via a convoy of stolen trucks from the Abstergo underground parking lot. One of them must have the bomb in it."
"It doesn't matter. We know the location they're going to," said Sam. "Let's go Briggs."
"How are we going to get down the bottom of a building so quickly?"
"My private helicopter is up on the roof," said Lucas. "There are parachutes onboard for me and my mistress. Please stop them! I don't want to die!"
Sam and Briggs said nothing to Lucas as they headed out of the panic room.
"And be careful! Sofia is a psychopath; she's likely planning a trap of some kind!"
"Careful's my middle name," said Briggs.
"Good luck," said Lucas, who couldn't help but make a sickening grin as they left the panic room.
"I don't trust that guy as far as I can throw him," said Sam as they jumped off the side of the skyscraper and deployed their parachutes before they hit the ground. "And I can throw men like him a very long way."
"I know," said Briggs. "He was acting, I could tell. But we have bigger problems on our hands right now."
Another Abstergo truck was leaving. Briggs fired an armor-piercing sniper round through the windshield before the truck picked up speed. Sam quickly took the wheel and kept his pistol near in case he had to shoot while driving; Briggs hopped in the back of the truck.
"Holy shit… Sam, you're not gonna believe this…"
"What is it, Briggs?"
"It's Sofia Rikkin! She's alive, badly roughed up though. Bound and gagged… oh god… she's got a bomb strapped to her chest!"
Sam looked through the window of the front-seat into the back of the truck.
Briggs was right.
"That's the Red Mercury, Briggs! Defuse it, quickly!"
"Jesus Christ…"
"What is it, Briggs?"
"I'm sorry, Sam… looks like this is it…"
"What?"
"It's going off!"
Sam hit the brakes, and looked in the back of the truck in horror.
The beeping noise coming from the bomb became fast, and the timer on the built-in remote detonator said it had 3 seconds left to detonate.
"Sarah…" said Sam.
2… 1… 0…
Click.
Sam was bracing himself for the end, when he realized the bomb hadn't gone off.
"Briggs, did you defuse it?"
Briggs was cowering in the corner.
"What the hell… it didn't go off!" yelled Sam.
Briggs opened his eyes.
"It was a dud?"
Sam grimaced. "She's got some explaining to do."
"She's barely conscious, Sam," said Briggs.
"I don't care. After we converge on the Engineers' sleeper cell, we're bringing her to the ship."
Sam got back at the wheel again just as Sofia's eyes opened again. She began to scream under her gag.
"Sofia, listen to me, it's all right," said Briggs.
"No… not all right… Go…" Sofia said wearily.
Sam was driving toward the sleeper cell at the apartment complex when Sofia mumbled to Briggs, "Go… save yourselves… you're…"
"What is she talking about Briggs?" said Sam.
"I don't know!"
"We're almost to the complex!" said Sam.
"Save yourselves… Go… Abstergo… The Engineers… Lucas Richards… Majid Sadiq… You're… you're… their… their…"
Sam arrived and hit the brakes while smoothly parking the car.
As he opened the truck's back doors, Briggs said to Sam, "It's hopeless, we need to get her to the ship to get treated—"
"…you're their scapegoat!"
Then, out of nowhere, someone shot Sofia in the head with a shotgun, decapitating her.
Sam turned around out of instinct, and shot the perpetrator in the gut with his handgun.
Briggs looked at the perpetrator bleeding to death on the pavement of the apartment complex. Sam frowned.
"You shot a cop, Sam!"
"He's no cop… Look," said Sam.
The man was Omar Shaheed.
He had the weapons of the Engineers strapped to his disguise's holsters. Worse, he had a smartphone that was ringing.
The man laughed as he began to cough up blood, and turned on the phone.
"If you don't take responsibility for your mistakes, Fisher… Sarah's next," said Sadiq over the phone.
Furious, Sam took his pistol, and shot the man in the head this time, then took the phone and crushed it under his boot.
Briggs looked at Sam in shock. "Fuck…"
"This apartment complex is empty. The trucks aren't here, they're leaving Rome. Contact Grim, Briggs. Tell her to find us an extraction plan, now."
"You don't want to talk to her yourself?"
"I need to call Vic. Ask for another favor."
Briggs nodded, and called Grim.
"We're FUBAR, Sam. We're going to have to steal a car."
"You're kidding."
"Grim's not. And she's got some bad news. From President Caldwell herself."
"It's not about Sarah, is it?"
"No," said Briggs. "It's about us."
Sam and Briggs managed to escape Rome and make it to Tuscany under Grim's orders, where the Paladin had landed at a remote location.
The Paladin, Somewhere in Rural Tuscany
Sam was twitchy, his hands shaking until he clasped them together, as he said to Grim, "Any reason why we're not taking off the ground?"
"Lucas was lying to us. He left Abstergo and decided to throw a party with some of his business associates at his private estate right after seemingly being scared for his life, right after an alleged attempt at a nuclear terrorist attack. It's not far from here."
"It's going to take a while for Vic to procure a new chopper for us, so we need to be ready to take off once you get out of there. As desperate a move as it is, the best place to hide is sometimes in plain sight."
"I prefer working in the dark," said Sam. "And why can't President Caldwell get us a new chopper?"
Grim and Charlie looked at each other with ominously terrified looks on their faces.
"What's going on, Grim," said Sam.
"You need to watch the news, Fisher," said Charlie, as he used the SMI to turn on the news.
"A police officer identified as one Omar Shaheed was found dead at an abandoned complex where evidence of a sleeper cell belonging to the group known only as the Engineers is beginning to be investigated by local authorities. The CEO of Abstergo Industries, Sofia Rikkin, was also found dead, along with an improvised explosive device strapped to her chest. The device was disarmed upon finding it, and the police officer's fingerprints were found on the bomb, leading the authorities to believe the police officer was responsible for the disarming of the bomb. The authorities are also cooperating with NEST teams and have confirmed the bomb to be nuclear."
"In addition to that, a recent stealth terrorist attack was launched on Abstergo Industries… This came as a surprise, given Abstergo's rapidly increasing profits have allowed the company to invest in impressive new security technology from the Blume Corporation as well as a security detail from some of the most respected PMCs on the planet, some of which are subsidiaries of the larger Abstergo conglomerate. A survivor of the attack, the member of Abstergo Industries' board of directors who is known mostly for his philanthropic efforts nowadays, Lucas Richards, is stepping up to be the CEO of Abstergo Industries out of grief for the loss of Sofia Rikkin and several other members of Abstergo's leadership who had been killed during the attack. We admire him for his bravery in this time of heartbreak for various victims' families throughout Rome.
"He also provided an eyewitness account as well as security footage from inside his panic room of two men interrogating him. Based on the footage, authorities have identified these two men as Sam Fisher and Isaac Briggs, the respective leader and operative of an initiative created by US President Caldwell known as Fourth Echelon. This program was allegedly used to hunt down the Engineers and Third Echelon conspirators after the attack that occurred in Washington, DC several years ago. The program was highly secretive to even most government officials. Two other prominent members, Anna Grimsdottir and Charlie Cole, are the analytical and technical support of the team, and their whereabouts are currently unknown. Fisher and Briggs, however, were last seen fleeing on the outskirts of Rome."
"Given Fourth Echelon is believed by the public to be working with the Engineers now amidst a terrorist attack unprecedented in caliber on Europe, President Caldwell is being pressured to provide information about the Fourth Echelon program, and is being threatened with an impeachment hearing by the US Democratic Party, as well as her own. An arrest warrant has been issued for all members of Fourth Echelon throughout the EU and most other governments on Earth, as well as Interpol. The leader, Sam Fisher, who is an elite clandestine black operations veteran known as a 'Splinter Cell' is considered to be the most dangerous out of this splinter faction. His daughter, Sarah Fisher, has been deemed innocent but has received countless death threats already and has been scorned by her colleagues at her new job, and has since been put into protective custody."
"The question has arisen outside of the US now about how much foreign intervention the US government, military, and intelligence agencies should be permitted to have after this shocking turn of events. While it initially seemed like this was the very goal of the Engineers according to their ultimatums released on social media, their current motives are no longer clear—"
"Turn that off, Charlie," said Briggs.
"I have to anyway," said Charlie, "we're getting a call from President Caldwell."
"Don't answer it, Charlie!"
"It's all right, Sam," said Grim. "She's still on our side."
Sam hadn't been this furious since the day his daughter had allegedly died.
"President Caldwell," said Grim.
"You four caused a hell of a mess in Rome," said Caldwell. "I'm receiving massive amounts of pressure to expose secrets dangerous to both you and my administration. While I have no choice but to disavow Fourth Echelon, you're also the only ones who know the truth. I'm tasking you with hunting down this nuclear threat posed by the Engineers and Megiddo."
"They were working together all along," said Sam furiously. "Our lives are over, and if we fail now, which is likely, the world might end as well! Why didn't you tell us?"
"We initially didn't know much about the two factions' relationship, but we suspect that Majid Sadiq and Lucas Richards developed some sort of business agreement with each other as of recently. We don't know what."
"For Christ's sake, why am I still being kept out of the loop of all this?" shouted Sam.
"I think it's all she knew, Sam," said Charlie.
Sam looked down at the SMI for a moment, then looked back up.
"Promise me you'll keep my daughter safe."
"I will do my best, Mr. Fisher," said Caldwell, "but you won't be able to contact her like this. Perhaps never again, for the sake of her safety."
"I know," said Sam.
"This lead on Tuscany sounds like your next move. Hopefully attending Lucas's party will give us some answers and help facilitate your next move."
"We can't attend it while we're Public Enemy Number One," said Briggs. "It'd be suicide!"
"We may not have a choice," said Grim. "The estate is heavily fortified, and crowded as well. There won't be many dark corridors to deal with this time. Once we're out of the exterior areas, since it takes place at night…"
"We'll have to hide in plain sight," said Sam, who sighed. "I look like shit in a tuxedo."
"I thought Charlie was supposed to be the funny one," said Briggs.
"I disagree!" said Charlie.
Briggs eyed Charlie.
"Sorry, shutting up now."
"Fortunately, the party requires that masks be worn, as it's Carnevale season. So, we'll have some element of disguise," said Grim.
"We?" said Sam.
"Someone's going to need to access their security systems physically. That'll have to be Charlie," said Grim.
"I'm going in the field?" said Charlie.
"It's not as fun as it sounds," said Grim. "There'll be heavy guard detail. We'll all be putting ourselves in grave danger. Briggs will provide cover for our extraction by infiltrating the rooftops and then helping drive us back to the plane. Sam, you'll be tasked with making it to and eavesdropping on a secret meeting taking place between Lucas and his most trusted business associates that the party is likely a cover for."
"What'll you be doing?" said Sam.
"Providing a distraction," said Grim. "I'll be switching places with one of Lucas's mistresses."
Sam said, "How will we even get into the party?"
Grim said, "Charlie will have to dummy up some VIP passes for us."
Charlie smiled and said, "I can't wait to show off my dance moves!"
Sam looked at Charlie, then back at Grim, and said, "This is insane."
"Not for us," said Grim.
"And I thought I was supposed to be the party planner." Sam said, "All right, listen up! This mission is what we've trained for our whole lives. Lucas said it himself, if we can't stop the Red Mercury threat, the whole world's future will be in jeopardy by his doing. We have to stop him, no matter what."
The others looked at Sam as he continued, "This mission will not result in glory or happy futures. Worse, it won't even let us return to the shadows of our ordinary lives. We're going to be enemies of the state whether we save the world or not until we die. But that doesn't matter, because we're disposable. We knew that the moment we signed up for the job. We're Fourth Echelon. We are Splinter Cells. We're go for Tuscany."
"Go for Tuscany," said Grim.
"Go for Tuscany," said Briggs.
"Go for Tuscany," said Charlie.
Sam headed off to his quarters to get prepped, and to think about everything that had just happened to him.