The Temple was a powerful icon. To the public, it was the grave of a once mighty order, the gleaming sword of Christendom. To the Templars themselves, it was a treasure swiped first by the vile Philip the Faire, then by the Illuminati. François Hanriot, the same man behind the lockdown and crackdown on Girondists the prior year, presided over the facility now. His office was on the top floor, and Templar intelligence said he would be out on business tonight. That top floor was her lofty target. There was a hatch on the roof.

Timothee had anguished over this operation extensively, consulting with other Templars, pouring over maps. The entire fortress was tremendous, almost like a little walled town, with a chapel, horse stables, a graveyard, and its own catacombs, and he had theorized three places the Apple could be hidden, but settled on Hanriot's office as the most likely and her target. He had shown, too, significantly more trust for her than Arno. Timothee wanted Arno to serve as an auxiliary role: just to help her over the main walls. She was to carry the Piece of Eden back alone.

Arno had served his purpose, and now she was scaling her way up the central building, which was seven stories tall. She was ascending from the outside, with a route they had meticulously scouted and planned; There were just enough ridges, window-sills, beams, arrow-loops and putlog holes to give her a path, but it was a hellish ascent, straining her muscles and putting her largely at the mercy of luck: anyone whimsically looking up could notice her. They were doing this at night so there would be fewer wandering eyes, but it was still a gamble.

Fortunately, the higher she got, the safer she was, and she was quite elevated at the moment.

She wobbled on a thick wooden beam and balanced herself, giving her dearly burdened fingers time to rest. It was not much further to get to the top floor. Its crenels waited to take the last energy left in her extremities. It was actually astounding she had made it this far. If there was a God, He had been merciful.

She leapt to the next beam, and then one final grand leap to the crenellation. Her fingers grasped the fateful finish line, and she pulled herself over, just about the last thing her muscles could take.

She collapsed onto the cold, tiled floor of the tower, heaving. At last, the summit. The impossible was conquered. She had pushed her wit, luck and muscles to their maximum. They felt like jelly now. She was moist with sweat, quivering with adrenaline, looking up at the starry night sky and its full moon.

What a life she had led: betraying her sex role, then betraying the Assassins. She had killed aristocrats, then met the King and Queen, only to attend his execution. Now she was on top of what was arguably Paris' most famous building, and one with immense significance to the Templar order.

A gust of wind blew past her. She savored her rest. What a monster she had conquered making it here.

Arno had helped, of course. Infact, she owed him her very life to him, as he had rescued her from execution not long ago. But was he a loyal Templar, or just an Assassin fighting the Illuminati? Even this operation was merely robbing the Illuminati of the treasure, it would be useless to the Templars as long as Adam Weishaupt retained his connection.

They had laughed together, shared deep feelings. But they generally avoided the subject of politics. She had tried to delicately prod his true politics many times, confessing and sometimes exaggerating her own insecurities to loosen his lips. He had voiced plenty of criticism of the Templar Order to her. She was not sure if that was good or bad, just that it boded well for his honesty.

And if he still saw himself as an Assassin? Maybe that clash of identities did not matter, because maybe they would have a common for decades to come. Maybe soon the truce between Templars and Assassins would extend the entire globe. And just maybe after working together for so long, the Assassins and Templars would come to an understanding again. The Assassins had been the Templar's talon half a millennium ago, before the Arab traitor stole the treasure for himself, and Altair Ibn-La'Had had slain him and taken charge of the Assassin Order, declaring the Apple of Eden should belong to no man. Maybe they could come to an understanding again.

Yes, her confession of love would come soon. She felt joy at this revelation.

Perhaps she would write to her father again, too. He had never received the first letter.

But for now, the present.

She stood herself up. Her limbs had been brutalized by all this, and she would certainly need to rest for days after this was over. But there would be quite a view from the edge. She went over and looked down. She could see at least a hundred rooftops, a few windows still yellow with light, all the way to the edge of the city. The people of Paris knew of the severed heads and dead soldiers, but they knew nothing about the secret society wars she had spent her whole life in.

She turned and went to the hatch at the top. She bent down and listened for any human activity. But as hard as she strained her ears, nothing. Good. Though even if she was caught, being in such an impenetrable part of the fortress would probably allow her any excuse to be there. She gently opened the hatch and climbed down the ladder.

No one stood between her and Hanriot's office, no patrol was seen as necessary this far into the fortress. She went to his door. He was supposed to be out, but she knocked just incase. If he was there, that would complicate the mission considerably. Killing him would be easy, but doing without alerting the rest of the facility? Not so much.

After a few seconds of anticipation, nobody answered. The intelligence was correct, and that brought her great joy. But that also meant she would need to pick the lock. She looked down both directions of hall. She was alone. She got to picking. As she did, she listened for any disturbances in soundscape.

To think something so legendary, it made men be mistaken for gods, lied behind this door! She wondered what Hanriot had done to earn such trust from Robespierre.

Finally, that fateful and beautiful click! She was inside the office of the National Guard's most powerful man in this city, the one responsible for the deaths of Clavière and Roland.

There was an intricately carved mahogany secretary desk filled with books. There was a portrait on the opposite wall of Jacques de Molay. And directly ahead of her, below a tri-color banner, was a chest.

The chest had another lock on it. This was all that stood between her and her prize, but she knew it would be a very, very tough lock.

She approached and began picking. This lock was complex, but she remembered her later sessions with Master Delille, just a few months before she were to head to Normandy. She had trained in lockpicking (or locksport, as he called it) even more than swordsmanship before deploying to Paris. Funny enough, their late king had been a fan of "locksport" himself, she was told. She wondered if she could have bested him.

This one was, indeed, challenging, as she had expected. If worst came to worst, she could shoot it opened, but that would alert the entire fortress.

Click.

Victory!

Tingling with anticipation, she opened the chest to behold the legendary artifact.

The Apple of Eden; not the one from the Temple of Solomon (which had begun the Assassin-Templar war), but the one from the Americas. She had heard it was the smaller of the two. She had seen it in passing, when the Grand Master took it out of his coat to persuade the soldiers arriving at the Bastille, but now she got a good look, a privilege very few were bestowed. It was bronze in color, with all sorts of strange grooves. No one knew who made it, only that they were a people come and gone long before modern humanity, and people of incredible power. The Assassins back in Normandy called the artifact "magic". The Templars refused to use that word.

She brought her hand to the legendary sphere and picked it up, spiritually electrified to touch such a thing. It was light, clearly mostly hollow inside. She rotated it in her hand, marveling. The grooves etched on its surface did not seem to be any arcane language. They were circles and lines, all of the lines stretching at least a quarter of the balls' circumference and some circles encased in larger ones.

Now to store it, as its light could not shine on the non-immune. She put it in the thick leather pouch Chobat had given her for the occasion.

Her mission, as daunting and even ridiculous as it had seemed, was accomplished. She had already planned her way down.