Chapter 2— "A Prophecy Hidden in Darkness, Brought Forward to Serve the Light"
Yggdrasil Supercomputer Lair, Hordafylke, Norway
Year 2034- Present Day
Elijah Miles- Age 29
Elijah snapped out of his trance not long after he started the sudden rush of traumatic memories.
Are these memories being brought up by one of the voices I know about? He thought. Or maybe… him?
He then thought, no… this is something new… or someone.
Said revelation bothered him, but he managed to shut the voices that were concerned about the new voice out.
Elijah was on his way to enter the hidden lair built by the Precursor Race known as the Isu. Inside was an ancient supercomputer known as Yggdrasil; this supercomputer was responsible for housing part of the Grey– a digital afterlife where humans and Isu alike could upload their consciousnesses to the Isu network lying underneath the Earth.
The Koh-i-Noor, one of the various "Pieces of Eden" that the Isu left behind after going extinct, had shown him the path here.
He made his way to the entrance, and spoke in the Aesir dialect of the Isu language the password to open the vault's doors. He managed to pick up on their dialect relatively easily after stealing some files on it at another one of Abstergo's headquarter buildings local to Stockholm.
After all, he was a reincarnation of an Isu himself.
Aita.
"Do you have any sage advice of your own, Aita?" said Elijah as he spoke to the Isu consciousness in his head he managed to come to terms with before managing to put a stop to his attempts to drive Elijah's own human consciousness insane until it dissociated from reality.
"How comical," said Aita as he appeared before Elijah.
"Still bitter that I killed Juno?"
Aita smirked in response.
"Of course," Elijah said. "You're trying to get under my skin by not answering."
"We were this close to becoming rulers of the world, and you chose to seek petty revenge on her… Such self-destructive human emotions. Not to mention you're still pursuing your goal to turn back time."
Elijah frowned at this, and chose to shut Aita out as he entered Yggdrasil's lair.
After he rode down the futuristic ancient elevator, he climbed down the ruins of the Isu lair until he reached the center of Yggdrasil.
Thank goodness the radiation down here's no longer dangerous… let alone deadly, Elijah thought.
Looking up at Yggdrasil, he made note of the shape of the life tree's "roots" that humans attached their bodies to in order to connect to the Grey.
They look vaguely like the type of Animus device that I heard the one Assassin, Callum Lynch, was put in, he thought, but I doubt that they'd be doing as much moving around as he did while inside the simulation.
Activating Yggdrasil's roots via the nearby Eye on its glowing pedestal, Elijah stepped towards one of them as it lowered toward him, and grunted as its mechanisms started to dig into his spine and central nervous system until his mind entered its simulation.
For a second, he could see a distorted version of his childhood home in Manhattan.
Opening the door to the apartment, his mother, Tori, was waiting inside.
"You're back, Elijah," she said, smiling at him.
"Mother?" said Elijah.
"Are you ready to go to your friend's birthday party, Elijah?" she said.
"I—" Elijah looked around in confusion.
"You're nervous to go?" she said before smiling again while kneeling down and looking up at him. "There's no need to be nervous."
Elijah was shocked. Her mother was repeating words she said to him during his early childhood… It all felt so real. The only difference was that his mother had been kneeling and looking down at him rather than up due to his height difference at the time of the event.
"Mother, what is all this?"
Grabbing Elijah gently by the hand, she said to him, "It's all right, Elijah… After the party, you'll get to come back home. Then it'll be just you and me…"
Looking down at his mother's hand, he thought, her touch feels real…
"…forever…" said his mother.
…and now it doesn't.
Shutting his heterochromic eyes tight as the simulation started to fall apart, Elijah thought, no… you're not real. They took you from me.
As the simulation dissolved into digital particles and lines of Isu code before his eyes, he pulled his hand away from his mother and the two of them dissolved as well…
…until he found himself within the Grey.
There, in this simulation that resembled the limbo-esque room in the Animus that he went through before the genetic memory loaded, he looked at a set of calculations that stretched upward, making it look like a massive neon tree whose blinding white branches stretched out and covered the ceiling.
Standing in front of it were two glowing holograms in the shape of people.
"Desmond, who is that?" said one of the holograms in a female voice.
Desmond? Elijah thought as his eyes went wide.
"Elijah Miles… My son… you're here," said the other hologram in a voice that eerily resembled Elijah's.
"You're… ?" Elijah stopped mid-sentence, and frowned as he said, "My last name's Chastain."
"I understand you still hate me for abandoning you and your mother," said the hologram whom Elijah now realized was his father, Desmond Miles.
"You don't know the half of it," said Elijah.
"Unfortunately, I do…" said Desmond, "and I'm sorry. Fate had different plans for me."
"Fate my ass," said Elijah. "You could've chosen to stay with her."
"Not long after I met your mother at that party," said Desmond, "I was kidnapped by Abstergo… If I was able to stay with Tori… if I knew about you… I would've."
"I learned about you through the Grey. I'm glad you avenged her and me by killing Juno. Doing so prevented her from taking control of humanity."
"I did it for her," said Elijah. "Not you."
"I assume you're here to locate the Ankh," said Desmond.
"I wasn't able to find it with the Koh-i-Noor," said Elijah. "I need it to bring her back."
"Said future conflicts with the one that would involve the survival of humanity from another catastrophe," said Desmond.
Elijah frowned at this.
"This is Layla Hassan," said Desmond. "She was able to help calculate a future in which the world and humanity was saved, and became truly free from Abstergo's grasp, by looking back to futures where I failed to save the world from the catastrophe in 2012."
"It's a pleasure to meet you," Elijah said sarcastically. "I'd shake your hand if you weren't a hologram."
"Your father and I have been trying to find a potential future here through Yggdrasil's calculations as its Readers… One where the next catastrophe, a human one, is prevented. We believe you're at the center of it," said Layla.
"Another prophecy?" said Elijah.
"It's hard to accurately predict given the length of the timeline," said Layla, "but we do know this… To save the world, you're going to have to sacrifice the person you love most in order to save someone else. You'll have to bring down the Templars and the Instruments of the First Will."
"I reject your future."
"Perhaps this will change your mind… at least somewhat," said Desmond. "The CEO of Abstergo, Lucas Winter, is planning to continue the Phoenix Project where it was left off… Resurrect the Isu… including Juno."
Elijah's frown deepened.
"You're lying. Juno's gone."
"She never truly will be," said Layla. "The Isu are cunning. She's been plotting to be reincarnated and to enslave humanity once more from beyond her grave. The Grey is able to manipulate consciousnesses human and Isu alike in all the ways a computer can manipulate files and more. Juno managed to make a copy of hers, and she's just waiting for someone to let her back out again."
Elijah sighed as he rubbed his hand through his curly black hair, "You mentioned that Lucas Winter is the CEO of Abstergo… but he's not. Sofia Rikkin is the current CEO. He's just on the board of directors. Maybe your calculations are off?"
"Most of the possible futures indicate that he's on the verge of a coup d'etat, and that said coup will succeed," said Desmond.
"You're talking about a schism within Abstergo?"
"Yes," said Desmond, "one not unlike the schism that helped the Templars evolve their ways of tyranny from monarchical rule to that of capitalism back in the late 18th century, all during several revolutions… Make no mistake, Elijah, he's an existential threat to humanity."
Elijah frowned as Desmond said to him, "The truth lies in what Subject 16, Clay Kaczmarek, told me a while back through a cryptic message… 'Find Eve; she's in Eden… Her and your DNA are the keys to stopping the human catastrophe.'"
"What human catastrophe?" said Elijah.
"Mass genocide, on a scale humanity has never seen before," said Desmond. "Unless both of you stop it, most of humanity will die. Their sacrifices will be used to control the final result of the new iteration of the Phoenix Project."
"The final result?" said Elijah.
"Hybrid Earth," said Layla.
"Hybrid Earth?"
"Unfortunately, there's no more time to explain," said Desmond. "Templar agents have followed you here… If you don't eject from Yggdrasil, there's no hope for you or the rest of humanity."
"Damn it…" Elijah said.
"Go, son," said Desmond. "Find Eve's descendant! She's in Eden."
"But where's Eden?" said Elijah.
"There should be clues to its location where the root of the Assassins' origins lie," said Desmond.
"The Assassins… You mean Masyaf?"
"There's something–or someone–getting in the way of our calculations. But somehow they're assisting you through the Bleeding Effect," said Layla. "Regardless, because of the external interference, we can tell that you have access to the consciousnesses of all the Assassins, Templars, and proto-Assassins whose memories Desmond and I relived through the Animus."
"How's that possible?" said Elijah.
"We don't know," Layla said.
"Your ancestors will help guide the way via the Bleeding Effect," said Desmond. "We've transferred their memories both of us relived via the Animus to you during our time together in the Grey, along with several other individuals that existed throughout history. Now go!"
Elijah frowned, and nodded as he exited Yggdrasil's simulation.
As Elijah was ejected from Yggdrasil's roots and hit the floor, he could hear two of Abstergo's elite soldiers conversing nearby.
"Any sign of the target?"
"Nope… just a bunch of Isu shit lying around."
"Well keep looking. Intel says he's here."
"Copy that."
Elijah climbed beneath a ledge to hide from them, then shimmied past them and pulled himself up to sneak up behind them.
He then managed to snap the first soldier's neck and take him human shield, grabbing his cattle prod spear and knocking the second soldier out cold by slamming the spear into his solar plexus and zapping him before he could properly strike Elijah.
Hearing more soldiers incoming with the help of his enhanced senses, Elijah quickly put on one of the two Abstergo soldiers' uniforms and helmets and strapped their laser rifle, laser handgun, and cattle prod spear to his back.
He then managed to sneak past the other soldiers, hiding in plain sight.
"Have you found the target?" said one of the soldiers as Elijah passed them.
Elijah shook his head, and kept moving past them.
After escaping Yggdrasil's lair, Elijah made the trek down the snowy mountain path to where an Abstergo black helicopter was waiting at the bottom of the mountain.
Opening the helicopter door and hopping into the cockpit's passenger seat, the pilot said, "Where are the others?"
"Stranded or dead. Like you," said Elijah as he shot the Abstergo pilot through one of the eye holes in his helmet with his laser handgun.
Kicking him out of the helicopter, Elijah then got into the pilot seat, and spun up the helicopter's rotors before taking off in the middle of the whiteout.