The hut exploded. The world of the simulation blew apart in another mind-splitting flash of light, shredding the figures of Cortés, Marina, and Gerónimo de Aguilar. An arc of pain shot through Owen’s head, and he resisted the urge to cry out, clenching his eyes tight until it stopped.
They were back in the Memory Corridor, still clad in their ancestor’s bodies.
“What the hell?” Javier said. “Why did you pull us out?”
It’s, uh, complicated, Monroe said. The simulation was about to become unstable. Better to get you out before that happens.
“Better than what just happened?” Owen said. “It felt like my brain was burning.”
Sorry about that, Monroe said. Just sit tight. I’ve gotta check a few things …
“What things?” Owen asked.
But Monroe didn’t answer him.
“Can you believe that battle?” Javier said at Owen’s side. “Wasn’t that wild?”
“Yeah,” Owen said. “Except my ancestor was a monster.”
“He doesn’t seem too bad,” Javier said. “For a conquistador, I mean.”
“You don’t know what he did,” Owen said, feeling the polished pommel of his sword. “And I don’t like thinking about it, so don’t ask me.”
“I won’t,” Javier said. “I think I can guess anyway.” He looked down at his hands. “Chimalpopoca did some crazy stuff, too.”
“Chimapowhat?”
“Chimalpopoca. That’s my name—I mean, his name. Starts to get confusing, doesn’t it?”
“No. I’m not like this guy at all.”
“It’s still pretty wild, though, right?”
Owen shrugged inside Alfonso. “I guess—”
Okay, Monroe said. I’m ready to pull you out of the Corridor. You ready?
“More than ready,” Owen said.
Okay, simulation ending in three, two, one …
The Corridor fragmented, but more gently than the simulation had a moment ago. Owen closed his eyes again, and when he opened them, he was lying on the floor of the bus, staring into the empty blackness of the dead visor. He tugged the helmet off and saw Monroe above him, quickly unhooking Javier from the recliner.
“So, how was the simulation unstable?” Javier asked.
“This Animus isn’t designed to share a simulation between two people,” Monroe said. He finished with Javier and bent down to Owen, unhooking him and pulling him to his feet, his movements rough and hurried. “My modifications can get overloaded. When that happens, it shuts down.”
“And you knew that before you sent us in?” Owen asked.
“Uh, yeah, I did,” Monroe said. Then he ushered them forcefully through the bus, past all the monitors, toward the door up front. “Sorry about that. I thought it would hold.”
“This is messed up,” Javier said.
“Hey,” Monroe said, “at least you got to experience the Animus for a little while.” Then he opened the door to the bus. “But it’s time for you to go.”
“Hold on,” Owen said. Monroe was obviously trying to get rid of them, acting strange. The kids at school trusted him because he was cool, kind of a rebel, and as the IT guy, he’d turned a blind eye to a lot of what they did on the computers and online. He was always laid-back. Now he seemed freaked-out by something. “Seriously, what just happened?” Owen asked.
“Nothing.” Monroe shook his head, and gave them both a nudge down the stairs. “Just an adrenaline rush. I got a little spooked there.”
Javier stepped down from the bus and hit the ground first. “Wait, were we in danger?”
Owen got off the bus, too, and turned to look back up at Monroe.
He rubbed his forehead. “Maybe. But I think I got you out in time.”
“You think?” Owen asked.
“I did,” Monroe said. “I did get you out in time.”
Now Owen felt himself starting to freak out, just a bit, wondering if that machine could somehow damage his brain.
“Just head on home,” Monroe said. “Quickly. You’ll be fine.” Then he shut the bus door.
Owen and Javier stood outside in the gravel. Neither of them said anything. They just looked at each other, and then back at the bus.
The engine started and all the vehicle’s lights switched on, the pale headlights and the red brake lights at the rear shining through a sudden cloud of burnt-smelling exhaust. The gears grunted and then the vehicle moved. Owen and Javier stepped clear as Monroe backed it out of the spot where he’d parked it, and then slowly drove away, leaving them alone in the industrial park.
“What the hell was that?” Javier asked. “Where’s he going?”
“I don’t know,” Owen said.
“What was he freaking out about?”
“Before he killed the simulation, he was asking about something.”
Javier shrugged. “That was just weird, man.”
“Which part? Monroe? Or the Animus?”
“Both. All of it. The Animus. I mean, that was crazy, right?”
“Right,” Owen said. “Crazy.”
Javier jammed his hands into his pockets. “Well. I better get home.”
“Yeah.” Owen wondered if this would change anything between them the next day at school. “Me too.”
So they parted ways and Owen rode the same buses back, but had to walk a lot farther now that the final line had stopped running until morning. By the time he reached his grandparents’ house, the dark sky had just enough light along one edge to say that night was over. But it was still very early. Too early for anyone to be up.
Yet all the lights were on inside.
His grandparents and his mom were awake, sitting around the kitchen table. His grandma wore her fluffy, Pepto-Bismol–colored bathrobe, her hair in curlers beneath her hairnet. His grandpa had thrown on some sweats and a T-shirt, while his mom was fully dressed. As Owen came in, they all looked up, and his mom rushed out of her chair to throw her arms around his neck.
“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I thought you’d …” But she didn’t finish.
“Thought I’d what?” Owen asked.
“Where’ve you been?” his grandpa asked, his voice a lot harsher than it had been earlier that afternoon in the shop.
“Just out,” Owen said.
“Out doing what?” his grandpa said.
“Just walking,” Owen said.
His grandma sighed, propped her elbows on the table, and rubbed her eyes.
“Just walking,” his grandpa said.
“Yeah,” Owen said. “Just walking.”
“Well, you’re home now,” his mom said.
Owen tried to smile. “Sorry to worry you.”
She gave him another hug and then released him. “I think we should all get back to bed and try to get at least a little sleep. You have school and I have an early shift.”
“That would be good,” Owen said, relieved and surprised that she seemed so ready to let it go.
But his grandpa sat back in his chair and spread his hands like wings. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to say about this?”
“Dad, please—”
“No.” He shook his head. “No, this is serious. You don’t know what he—”
“I know he came home safe,” his mom said. “That’s what matters.”
“That’s not all that matters.” Owen’s grandpa stared him in the eye. “It matters what he was doing out on the streets at this hour. You shouldn’t let him just walk away from this. You shouldn’t—”
“He’s my son,” she said. “I raise him my way.”
“You’re under our roof,” his grandpa said. “And if you remember, he’s not the first kid in this family to go sneaking out at night. I for one would rather not repeat the past.”
That stopped Owen’s mom, and she seemed to lose whatever it was she’d briefly found in herself to come to his defense. Owen could see he was on his own again.
“You got me, Grandpa,” he said. “I was out robbing a bank.?
??
His grandma’s hands fell to the table with a rattle of her fingers. His grandpa’s eyes opened wide, and his mom sighed.
“Yeah,” Owen said, not finished yet. “I just got this irresistible urge, you know? Like when you need a hamburger or something. I just needed to rob a bank, like it was an instinct. But don’t worry, I gave the money to an orphanage on my way home. I’m more of a Robin Hood kind of guy.”
“Owen, please,” his mom said. “You’re not helping.”
“Neither are you,” Owen said.
“Don’t you speak to your mother that way!” His grandpa stabbed a finger toward him. “Show some respect.”
“Respect?” Owen said. “I don’t even know what that word means to you.”
“Yes, you do.” His grandpa rose to his feet with slight complaints from both the chair he pushed away with the back of his knees and the table he pressed his knuckles into. “Or at least, I’ve tried to teach you respect.”
“How?” Owen said. “By trashing my dad all the time?”
His grandma spoke up then. “We only speak the truth—”
“That’s not the truth!” Owen shouted.
“Yes, it is,” his grandma said, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Your father had a gambling addiction that none of us knew about. He got a crew of his old friends together and robbed a bank. He shot an innocent guard who had a wife and two children waiting for him at home. Your father was lucky he didn’t get the death sentence—”
“He did get a death sentence,” Owen said.
Her lips tightened. “We don’t expect you not to love your father. But we do expect you to be honest with yourself about him.”
Owen was honest. That’s why he didn’t believe any of what she’d just said. There was simply no way his father had done those things. Believing it would be the easy way out. The harder truth was that his father had been framed by his old friends.
“Speaking of honesty,” his grandpa said, “I still want to know what you were doing. Don’t be a smart aleck. Just tell me. Because at this time of night, I don’t like any of the ideas coming to my mind.”
Owen decided the only way out of this would be to give them some truth. “I met up with Javier.”
“That gangbanger?” his grandpa said. “Why?”
“He’s not a gangbanger,” Owen said, checking his frustration. “I … just had some stuff to talk about.”
“What stuff?” his grandma asked.
“Stuff to do with my dad,” Owen said. “Stuff I obviously can’t talk to any of you about.”
That silenced them for a moment or two, because after what they’d just been saying, there wasn’t any way they could argue with him.
“Thank you for telling us,” his mom said.
Owen shrugged. “Yeah, well. You didn’t leave me much of a choice, did you?”
“Next time, just let us know when you’re going out,” his grandpa said. “I can respect you needing someone your age to talk to. I can respect your privacy. But we need to know you’re safe.”
“Fine,” Owen said.
“And remember what I said earlier.” His grandpa came over to face Owen and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s easy to get in over your head. So just be careful. Okay?”
“Okay,” Owen said.
After that, he was allowed to go to his room where he never really got to sleep.
Javier was waiting for him outside the school when Owen arrived there later that morning. Owen was a bit surprised, but glad to see that maybe the experience in the Animus simulation had restored some of their friendship.
“Everything okay when you got home?” Javier asked.
“They caught me coming in,” Owen said. “I’m pretty sure my mom thought I’d run away. But it’s fine.”
“They caught you?” Javier whistled. “Man, if my mom had caught me I wouldn’t be here right now, I can tell you that. She’s so freaked-out I’m going to join a gang like my brother.”
They turned and walked together toward the school’s main entrance. “How is your brother?” Owen asked.
“Out of jail. Trying to stay out of trouble.”
“And your dad?” Back when Owen and Javier were closer, Javier used to talk about how he was never hardworking or tough enough to please his father, who had started life with a lot less.
Javier looked down at the ground. “He’s the same. How’s your grandpa?”
“The same.”
They reached the school doors and passed through them into the main common where students sat and ate breakfast or just clustered together talking before class. A huge banner hung from the ceiling emblazoned with their school’s mascot, a Norseman complete with the kind of cartoon horned helmet that Javier said Vikings never actually wore.
“I want to talk to Monroe,” Javier said. “You coming?”
“About last night?”
“Yeah. I want to know why he pulled the plug like that.”
They walked through the common, and then up the wide staircase to the second floor. From there they made their way to the school’s main computer lab where Monroe had his office. But when they knocked on the door, another man answered, some balding guy in glasses wearing a button-down plaid shirt and khaki pants.
“Where’s Monroe?” Owen asked.
“No idea,” the man said. “Left a message last night that he quit.”
“He quit?” Javier asked.
The man nodded. “Didn’t even give two weeks’ notice. I’m filling in for now.” He looked over his shoulder, back into the office. “Still trying to figure out what he was doing, to be honest. Is there something you need?”
“No,” Owen said. “No, we’re good.”
“Okay, then.” The man turned around and went back to Monroe’s old desk.
Javier made eye contact with Owen and nodded him away from the door. After they’d walked some distance down the hall, Javier said, “This is getting weird.”
“I know.”
“How exactly did you hook up with Monroe in the first place?”
“There wasn’t much to it. I just heard from this kid he had an Animus entertainment console and he let students use it sometimes. No one else I know has one. So I asked him if I could use it, too, and he told me when and where.”
“But now he’s gone. And he’s got our DNA, along with a bunch of other students’.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure he was up to something.”
Owen had no idea what that might be, and it didn’t seem they would ever be able to figure it out. The bell rang before they could talk any more about it.
Javier glanced around at the students passing by on their way to class, and suddenly he looked like the new Javier again, the one Owen didn’t know. “Guess I’ll see you around,” he said in a final kind of way.
“See you around,” Owen said, realizing that maybe things weren’t as back to how they used to be as he’d hoped.
Javier walked off. Owen went to class.
The rest of that day he spent wondering what had happened with Monroe. He’d only worked at the school for a year, and who knew what he’d been doing before that? Working for Abstergo at some point. But the way he’d yanked them out of the simulation and then abruptly quit his job led Owen to agree with Javier that something was definitely going on.
The climate back at Owen’s house, on the other hand, seemed to have improved noticeably when he walked in. His grandma turned off the TV and offered to make him a sandwich. Then she sat with him in the kitchen while he ate, talking about her gardening, asking about his day. Shortly after that, his grandpa needed to run to the auto parts store, so Owen rode along with him, and they grabbed a milk shake on the way back. It was as though both his grandparents felt bad about something and they were trying to make it up to him.
“We’re going to visit your great-aunt Susie tomorrow,” his grandpa said as they reached their block. “She’s having a proc
edure done, and we’ll be staying the night with her.”
Owen’s straw gasped and gurgled as he sucked out the last of his caramel shake. “Okay.”
“So you’ll be on your own until your mom gets home from work.”
“That’s fine.” He’d been on his own lots of times before now. It seemed that Owen’s late-night absence had really rattled them.
“Your mom is working a late shift,” his grandpa said.
“I’ll be okay.”
“All right, then.”
Owen’s father didn’t come up at all that evening, and neither did Owen’s grades. But neither did the confrontation from earlier that morning, and they never actually apologized for anything. When his mom came home, she hugged Owen a lot without saying anything, except for the quiet desperation she communicated with her tired, sad eyes, and Owen knew that nothing had really changed. His life was back to what it had been, except now he had even less than what he had thought was his last option.
On the way to school the next day, Owen felt as if someone was following him. He thought at first it was his grandpa checking up on him, but whenever Owen turned to look, he saw nothing but ordinary pedestrians and traffic, and he knew his grandpa wasn’t that smooth. But the prickly sensation of eyes on him never lifted from his neck until he reached the school.
Monroe was still gone. For good, it seemed. Owen had to somehow come up with a new way to prove his father’s innocence without genetic memory. Before pursuing the Animus, he’d written to all the justice organizations that took on wrongful convictions, but they had all turned down his case. Those lawyers spent their time and energy freeing living clients from prison, they said, not exonerating the ones who had already died there.
Things with Javier were a little better, but not much. When Owen passed him in the hallway after second period, Javier nodded and said hello, but he was with his other friends and he didn’t stop to talk. Javier did catch up with Owen after school, though, as Owen was walking home.
“Hey, you hear anything about Monroe?” he asked.
Owen shook his head. “I don’t think he’s coming back.”
“Almost like he was running from somebody.”
“It felt like somebody was following me this morning,” Owen said.