Fate of the Gods

  “I actually agree with Owen,” Victoria said. “But Javier and David haven’t been through the collective unconscious simulation, so they’ll stay here. Monroe can run them through it while Griffin takes a team to Sweden.”

  “I’ll go to Sweden,” Owen said.

  Natalya weighed her choices, but made up her mind when it occurred to her that Sean might also be in Sweden. “I’ll go,” she said.

  Griffin nodded.

  “I’ll stay here, if that’s okay,” Grace said, and looked over at David.

  “I need all hands on deck,” Griffin said. “Your brother will be fine.”

  Grace bit her bottom lip, and then she nodded.

  “I’ll buy four tickets on the next available commercial flight,” Victoria said. “I can’t charter an Abstergo plane without drawing attention, but I can use a corporate credit card.”

  “Commercial,” Griffin said. “That means no weapons.”

  “I’m afraid so.” Victoria focused on her tablet. “Isaiah left no weapons behind anyway. The only thing left here at the Aerie are some tools and devices used for pest control. At any rate, it’s highly unlikely that Isaiah has the ability to monitor commercial air travel, so this is the safest option to avoid detection. To be on the safe side, you’ll be traveling with fake passports.”

  “We will?” Owen said.

  “Of course.” Victoria smirked, then tapped the screen. “You can’t land in Stockholm. That would create unnecessary ground travel, and depending on which route you take around the lake, it could put you too close to Uppsala.” She tapped again. “Ah, this will work. There’s a flight leaving for Västerås in eighteen hours. The airport there is only fifteen miles from the prong’s location.”

  “No sooner flight?” Griffin asked.

  “No,” Victoria said. “But everyone needs rest anyway, after their simulations.” She looked at David, and then the others. “The Animus keeps your mind stimulated, but your body is active and it still feels the effects of fatigue, even if it hasn’t set in yet.”

  It occurred to Natalya that she didn’t even know what time it was, just that it was late, and she suddenly felt exhausted, as if Victoria had just flipped a switch by mentioning it.

  Monroe pushed himself up out of his chair. “I’ll go see what I can cook for everyone. Then you can all get a good, long rest. You’ve earned it. I’m proud of you.”

  “So am I,” Victoria said. “It’s too late at night to call your parents, but you should all make a point of doing that in the morning.”

  As soon as she mentioned that, it was like she flipped another switch, and Natalya suddenly felt very, very homesick. She wanted her own bed, or better yet, her grandparents’ sofa, where she sometimes slept better than anywhere else, and woke up to the noxious smell of buckwheat porridge on the stove, which she would gladly eat right now if her grandmother put it in front of her.

  Monroe headed for the door. “Meet back here in twenty or thirty minutes if you’re hungry.”

  Natalya decided to just stay put and wait.

  “My mom still thinks I ran away,” Owen said.

  “Mine too,” Javier said.

  “Why?” Natalya asked.

  “Because that’s what I told her,” Owen said. “I couldn’t make up a story about being at a special Abstergo school. We were with Griffin.”

  Javier hung one arm over the back of his chair. “It’s closer to the truth than what you guys tell your parents.”

  Natalya was too exhausted to argue with him; besides which, he had a point.

  “So what’s this Instruments group that you were all talking about?” Javier asked.

  “Oh, right,” Grace said. “You guys weren’t there. It’s kind of hard to explain, but basically, the Instruments of the First Will is a group of Templars who want to bring back the civilization that created the Pieces of Eden.”

  “And that would be a bad thing?” Javier said.

  “Probably,” Owen said, “since they destroyed themselves.”

  “Why do they want to bring them back?” David asked.

  “Because they’re Templars,” Griffin said.

  “I object to that statement,” Victoria said. “The Instruments seek to restore Juno as their master. They believe humans should be slaves to the Precursors.”

  “Slaves?” David asked.

  “Yes,” Victoria said. “The Instruments are not true Templars.”

  “Or are they the truest Templars?” Griffin asked. “Maybe they’re just the logical result of what the Templars started. The whole reason we have the Animus is because the Templars wanted to find Pieces of Eden. Your Order went digging for Precursors, and once you start down that road, where does it end?”

  Victoria’s lips thinned, and she offered no response.

  “Sounds like it ends with the Instruments,” Javier said.

  Victoria rose from her chair. “I’m not hungry, and I have to arrange your flights. I’ll see you all in the morning.” With that, she swept from the room.

  Griffin’s argument echoed much of what Natalya had been thinking since this ordeal had begun. She didn’t think anyone should have the Trident. Yanmei was dead because Natalya had tried to keep the others from finding the second piece of it. Once you allow yourself to use a power like that, where does it end?

  How does it end?

  Natalya shook her head. Griffin was wrong. “I don’t think it ends with the Instruments,” she said. “I think it ends with Isaiah. He doesn’t want to bring Juno back. He wants to be the master. He wants to destroy and enslave the world.”

  The room went quiet after that, and it stayed quiet until Monroe wheeled a cart into the common room carrying plates and a big pot.

  “Isaiah took most of the nonperishable provisions with him,” he said. “The perishables have all gone bad. So for dinner we have buttered noodles with some garlic and thyme.” He looked around the table. “Where’s Victoria?”

  “She doesn’t like where things have ended up,” Griffin said. “I think she’s feeling a bit defensive of her Order.”

  Monroe nodded. “Can’t say I blame her for that.” Then he stuck a serving fork into the pot and dropped a pile of noodles onto one of the plates. “Who’s hungry?”

  Owen raised his hand. “Me.”

  Monroe passed him the plate, and then dished up noodles for everyone else. They all ate, and Natalya thought it actually tasted pretty good. Several minutes went by without anyone speaking, but then Monroe put his fork down.

  “Of course, to be fair, the Assassins have been guilty of their own excesses. Haven’t they, Griffin?”

  Griffin stopped chewing.

  “What excesses?” David asked.

  Monroe picked his fork back up. “It’s hard to say for sure, since the Brotherhood likes to keep everything in the dark. Especially their mistakes. Abstergo historians blame the burning of Constantinople on a man named Ezio Auditore, one of the most revered Assassins in history. Countless innocent deaths during that disaster. And then of course, one of Javier’s ancestors, Shay Cormac, became a Templar after he caused an earthquake, and blamed the Brotherhood for it. And then there was Jack the Ripper.”

  “He was an Assassin?” Grace asked.

  “No, he wasn’t,” Griffin said, his hands in fists on either side of his plate. “Not a true Assassin.”

  “Or was he the truest?” Natalya asked. “Assassins kill people. Once you start down that road, where does it end?”

  “And who gets to say who’s true and who’s not?” Monroe asked.

  “No one does.” Griffin now rose to his feet. “Our Creed speaks for itself. Anyone who violates it is not an Assassin.” He turned away and stalked toward the door, but before he left the room, he turned back and said, “Assassins stopped Jack the Ripper. We clean our house.”

  Then he was gone, and after he’d left, everyone finished dinner quickly. Natalya had pretty much lost her appetite with the mention of a serial killer, and only took anoth
er couple of bites.

  “You all head to bed,” Monroe said. “I’ll clean up.”

  Natalya felt very heavy as she tried to get out of her chair, and her feet dragged a bit as they all walked to the Aerie’s dormitory wing. She found her room and fell into her bed still dressed, and when she opened her eyes again, it was light outside, and she hadn’t moved at all during the night.

  She climbed out of bed, feeling sore everywhere, and trudged from her bedroom to the common room. David and Javier were there, and they seemed a lot more alert than she felt. Grace sat in an armchair, staring blankly, and Owen hadn’t appeared yet.

  Natalya shuffled over to Grace, and winced as she lowered herself into the armchair next to her.

  “You too?” Grace asked.

  “Yeah, what’s the deal?” The Animus sometimes took a toll, but mostly in the form of headaches. A simulation had never left her feeling this beaten-up the next day.

  “I don’t know.” Grace pointed her chin at her brother. “He was in for a lot longer than me, and he was practically skipping this morning.”

  “Javier looks fine, too.” Natalya decided that the difference must have something to do with the collective unconscious, and she hoped that meant the simulation had worked after all.

  A few minutes later, Monroe strolled in carrying a tray of biscuits he’d managed to bake up, along with some peanut butter and jelly to spread over them. The biscuits smelled like butter, and Natalya finished three of them before she stopped to wonder how many she should eat.

  “Save some for Owen,” she said.

  The others all looked down at their plates, and then at the tray. There was one biscuit left.

  “He’ll be fine,” Javier said.

  That biscuit was cold by the time Owen stumbled into the room, and not long after that, Victoria appeared with their passports and plane tickets. Natalya went back to her room and took a shower, which helped soothe her sore muscles, and then she changed into a fresh set of Aerie-issued sweats and hoodie. By the time they left for the airport in an Abstergo van, she felt slightly closer to normal.

  Monroe drove them down the mountain, with Griffin in the front passenger seat. Neither man spoke to the other for almost the entire drive, but as they pulled up to the airport curb, Monroe lifted the gear into park and twisted in his seat to face the Assassin.

  “Listen, what I said yesterday about the Brotherhood … I was talking about it as a whole. Not about you.”

  Griffin nodded. “I appreciate that.”

  “And you do keep a pretty clean house,” Monroe added. “Considering.”

  “Considering what?” Owen asked with a grin.

  Monroe shook his head. “Get out of the van, you little punk. And stay safe. All of you. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

  “We won’t,” Grace said.

  They all piled out, and Monroe pulled away. Griffin led them through security without setting off any alarms, which meant he had either left his hidden blade back at the Aerie, or he had found a way to make it truly hidden, and they boarded their flight. Victoria had bought them first-class tickets, something Natalya had never experienced before, and probably never would again. But as she took her wider, softer seat, her sore body felt deeply grateful for Abstergo’s corporate card.

  She sat by a window, next to Griffin, and as the plane lifted off, he leaned back and closed his eyes. “See you in Sweden,” he said.

  Natalya looked out the window at the shrinking buildings and roads. “See you in Sweden,” she whispered.

  They landed in the early afternoon. Grace had slept for part of the flight, but she’d also watched a couple of movies, and that had been a weird experience. With everything going on, movies seemed completely trivial, and even worthless, but what else was she going to do while she was stuck on a plane? One was a superhero flick, and the other was a comedy, and both had actually done a pretty good job distracting her from the reason she was stuck on that plane to begin with. Maybe that’s all movies needed to do.

  The city of Västerås looked lovely from the air, situated on Lake Mälaren, with a river running through it and a few small islands offshore. Once they’d landed at the small airport outside of town, Griffin rented an SUV, and then drove to a hardware store. He went in alone, and came back out with two shovels, which he threw in the back of the car. Then he drove them into the countryside, passing numerous farms, with barns and silos, ponds, grain fields, and pastures. They traveled through small stands of trees as well, but it wasn’t until they were several miles from the city that they reached true forest.

  When Grace thought of Hansel and Gretel getting lost in the woods, she imagined it to be a place like this. Huge pine trees and oak trees kept much of the forest floor in shadow, which felt oppressive in one moment and comforting in the next. Its depths both beckoned and threatened her.

  “It’s like the Forest,” Natalya said.

  “Without the giant snake,” Owen said.

  Grace rolled her window down, and cool, pine-scented air blew across her forehead. Above the car’s engine, she heard a variety of birdsong coming from the trees, and then suddenly, as they came around a bend, she glimpsed a moose just off the road. The back half of its huge body stood in the shadows under the trees, while its head and broad antlers caught the sun. She’d never seen a moose in person before, and whipped around in her seat to get a second look, but it had already disappeared into the woods, probably startled by their SUV.

  “The location David identified is on private property,” Griffin said. “We don’t have time to get permission from the owners, so we’re just going to not be seen. Owen and Natalya are fairly proficient at not being seen.” Grace could see his eyes in the rearview mirror looking at her. “What about you? You had an Assassin ancestor in New York, right?”

  Grace nodded. “Eliza.”

  “Did you pick up anything from that experience?”

  “Some,” she said. Owen’s ancestor, the Assassin Varius, had trained Eliza, and the Bleeding Effects had given Grace some of her ancestor’s hand-to-hand combat skills, and some free-running ability. “I’ll try to keep up,” she said.

  Griffin drove them another few miles, and then turned the SUV onto a rutted forest access road, where a short distance in he stopped and killed the engine. “We’ll walk from here.”

  They all climbed out, and Grace looked up into the trees and the filtered green sunlight, breathing the air in deeply. This place felt right to her, familiar, and she realized that she had been here before. Not this spot, specifically, but this land that her ancestor knew so well. She hadn’t spent much time in Östen’s memories, but it had apparently been enough to leave an impression.

  “It’s weird to do this without any weapons,” Owen said. “No crossbow. No grenades.”

  “What about your hidden blade?” Natalya asked Griffin.

  He held up his right forearm and tapped it with his other hand. “Ceramic. You guys get these.” He handed Owen and Natalya one of the shovels each, and then he pulled out a phone. “Hang on while I pull up the location on GPS.”

  But Grace didn’t need GPS. Östen always knew his way home. “It’s that direction,” she said, pointing off into the woods.

  Griffin looked at her, then at the forest, then at his phone. “You’re right. How did you know that?”

  “Bleeding Effect,” she said. “You’re in my house now.”

  “Your Viking house,” Owen said.

  Griffin slipped the phone back in his pocket. “Lead the way.”

  So that’s what Grace did, guiding them through the woods past boulders she recognized, though the streams they crossed flowed differently than she remembered. They didn’t come across another moose, but they did see a small boar that bolted away, and through Östen, Grace knew that it was a young sow, and shy, and normally hard to spot.

  They came at Östen’s old farmstead from behind, walking up the backside of his hill where a cell tower now stood. The sight of it bo
thered Grace, but she knew it would probably bother her more to see what had become of Östen’s land on the other side. There wasn’t anything she could do to change it, though. It was just the passage of time.

  “Let’s be as quick as we can about this,” Griffin said as they came over the top of the hill.

  But Grace knew instantly there wouldn’t be anything quick about it.

  Below them, what looked like a small factory occupied the space where Östen’s farmstead had once stood. A chain-link fence surrounded it, enclosing the spot that should have been Östen’s spring. But instead of the spring, Grace saw a small brick building with a thick pipe running from inside it down the hill to the factory.

  “It looks like they’re bottling the water,” Natalya said.

  “That’s exactly what they’re doing.” Griffin pulled his phone back out. “I don’t understand. This wasn’t listed.”

  “Look at all the dirt.” Owen pointed at several places around the site of the factory where the turf and the trees had been cleared. “That’s all fresh. I think they just built this.”

  Griffin pointed at the brick building. “That springhouse is sitting right on top of the Piece of Eden.”

  “So what do we do?” Owen asked.

  “I’m thinking,” Griffin said. “You do the same.”

  Grace tried hard to see the place through her ancestor’s eyes, hoping it might give her an idea. She remembered Östen digging out a pool around the spring, to collect more of the water before it ran away to join the streams and the lakes. The rock had been hard, and the labor difficult. To build that new brick springhouse, they would have dug out even more, which meant they might have disturbed the dagger.

  “When they were building this place,” Grace said, “what do you think they did with any historical stuff they found?”

  Griffin raised an eyebrow. “Now there’s an idea.”

  Grace looked down at the factory. “I think we should ask if they give tours.”

  “Right,” Griffin said. “Owen, Natalya, you stay here and keep out of sight. Grace and I will go down and check things out.”