“It is good to see you, Natalya,” she said. “So good to see you. We’ve missed you coming around. Are you home from that school now?”
“I am,” Natalya said. “Home for good.”
“You did well at this school?”
Natalya smiled. “I did.”
“Then why did they send you home?”
“They sent everyone home,” Natalya said. “They ended that program.”
“That’s too bad.”
They walked into the living room, where her grandfather sat in his recliner reading the newspaper, his reading glasses sitting so low on the tip of his nose, Natalya wondered how they stayed on.
“Natalya!” he said, folding the newspaper to set it aside.
She walked over to him and leaned into a hug. “Hello, dedulya.”
“What is wrong with this school that they send you home?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “It was only a temporary program. It’s over now.”
“Ah,” he said, looking at her over the rim of his glasses. “Well, you’re too good for them. You hear me? Don’t you worry about it.”
Natalya smiled. “I won’t,” she said, and she put her arm around her grandmother. “There are a lot of things I’m trying not to worry about anymore.”
Owen had the car drop him off a couple of blocks away from his grandparents’ house. He wanted a little extra time to think about what he would say when he walked in. They thought he had run away, and there would be lots of questions about that. There would be lots of doubt and suspicion at first, and Owen understood why. He accepted that.
His grandpa would probably want to take him for a drive to get ice cream, to see if Owen would tell him something he wouldn’t tell his mom or his grandma. His mom would come into his room that night for the same reason. But Owen wouldn’t tell them anything beyond what he had already decided, which was to be honest.
He had gone looking for information about his dad.
They would want to know where, and if he had found anything.
He would tell them he had been looking in the wrong place, and that he hadn’t found anything. Monroe had made good on his promise, and offered Owen the simulation of his father’s memories, but in the end, Owen had decided not to. If he needed so badly to know the answer to those questions, then the answers would have too much power over him, no matter what the answers were. Owen had decided he didn’t want that.
He wanted to be okay not knowing. He wanted to accept that his father might have done those things Isaiah had talked about. But Owen also wanted to hope that his father hadn’t. That was a strange place to be, sitting right in the middle, without answers. But it was the best place to be for Owen to move forward. Like his dad would have wanted him to.
Eventually, his slow walk brought him to his grandparents’ door, and he tried the knob. It was locked. So he knocked on the door, and he took a deep breath.
He was home.
Javier sat in his bedroom with the door locked. Alone. Finally.
It had taken hours for his mom to calm down, but she had, and she accepted that he didn’t want to talk about where he’d been for now. She wasn’t going to let it go, and he knew that, but at least she allowed him some privacy for the moment. His brother wasn’t going to let it go, either. His dad would just let his mom and brother do the work of hounding him, but he would want to know, too.
Mostly, they were all just glad to have him home safely. They worried about him more than they needed to, but Javier understood why. There were still places where it wasn’t safe to be himself, openly. But that was getting better, too.
He sat on his bed and looked at two things. The first was the ceramic hidden blade that Griffin had given to him. The second was a phone number.
He hadn’t asked Monroe for it. But Monroe had given it to him, and told him not to tell Victoria under any circumstances. Javier was to simply hold on to that number and use it when he knew what he wanted to do. Who he wanted to be.
He looked at the Assassin gauntlet for another moment, and then tucked it into a shoebox under his bed. Then he memorized the phone number, and tore up the piece of paper. Javier had always had the best memory of anyone he knew. Now that he had that number saved in his head, he’d never lose it. He didn’t know exactly who would answer, but he had a pretty good idea. He could call it if he decided to.
But deep inside, he knew it wasn’t actually a question of if.
It was when.
Sean sat in the waiting room, flipping through an uninteresting magazine he’d picked up without thinking about it. He and the receptionist had already finished their normal exchange. He’d told her school was going well. That he was feeling better. Then she had gone back to answering phones, and Sean had wheeled over to an open space between two of the chairs.
Before he reached the last advertising pages of the magazine, the door opened, and Victoria called his name.
“Good to see you,” she said.
He let the magazine fall with a slap onto the chair next to him. “Good to see you, too.”
She held the door open while he wheeled through, and then she led the way through the downtown Abstergo offices to another door with her name on it. She opened it, and Sean wheeled inside.
Victoria sat down in a white leather armchair, crossed her legs, and held her knee with interlaced fingers. “Any visual hallucinations this week?”
Sean wheeled his chair over to face her, parking himself about six feet away. “No.”
“What about auditory?”
“I still hear some things. When I’m falling asleep. But I can’t really make it out like I used to.”
“That likely means they’re fading, too.”
“I hope so.”
She pulled up her tablet and tapped at it a few times. “Your neurovitals have certainly improved. They’ve almost returned to normal parameters. You’ve been doing the meditation exercises?”
“Yup. Except when I forget.”
She frowned, but it felt more like a smile. “And how often does that happen?”
“Oh. Just weekdays and weekends.”
“Sean. You know how important they are.”
“I know.” Meditation was supposed to promote “mindfulness” and connect Sean to his body, but he didn’t feel as though he needed to do that three times a day for twenty minutes. He was feeling better.
“As soon as you’ve fully recovered,” Victoria said, “we can get back to the work Abstergo started on your prosthetics. You’re almost there.”
“I know.”
She looked at him, tapping her lip with her stylus, and then put her tablet aside. “Do you not want a prosthetic that might help you to walk?”
“No, I do,” he said. It would be great if he could walk again. How could it not be? That would certainly be more convenient than his wheelchair. There were still a lot of places that weren’t accessible to him, like some stores and restaurants that weren’t up to code.
“Then what is it?” Victoria asked.
“I’m …” Sean shrugged. “I’m just not in a hurry, I guess.”
Victoria nodded. “Well. I’ll take that as a good sign of your recovery. You’ll be back to your old self soon.”
“No,” Sean said. “I’m going to be better.”
Monroe had disappeared once before, and he could do so again. The Ascendance Event had shown him that his work wasn’t done, but he wouldn’t be able to pursue that work in cooperation with the Templars or the Assassins. They would never be able to see past their ideologies. He would have to find his way alone, just as he’d been doing when he found Owen and the others.
The headlights of the sleek Abstergo car he’d stolen reached ahead of him as he drove along the dark highway. His Animus core and what was left of the Trident sat in the back seat, also stolen. Natalya had insisted all the power had gone out of the Piece of Eden, but Monroe wasn’t convinced the relic had given up all its secrets, and he planned to study it as soo
n as he found somewhere safe enough to proceed.
He also suspected that he wasn’t quite finished yet with the teens. As with the Trident, their DNA held profound secrets that Monroe had only begun to unravel.
But for now, they deserved a long rest.
And, as always, their freedom.
Matthew J. Kirby, Fate of the Gods
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