Tomb of the Khan

  After he said that, Natalya seemed to calm down a little. “That’s true …” she whispered.

  “So what’s the deal with Sean and your sister?” Javier asked David. “Are they Templars?”

  “Maybe Sean is,” David said. “But not Grace.”

  “Then why did she stay?”

  Natalya picked her water bottle back up. “I told you, you don’t know how it is there. You feel like you’re in a prison, even though there aren’t any bars.”

  “There were last night,” David said. “They locked us in our rooms.”

  “That’s what finally pushed me over the edge,” Natalya said.

  David had already figured that out. Her decision to stop cooperating with Isaiah had followed the director’s announcement of the new security measures.

  “But I feel bad for Sean,” Natalya said. “Isaiah is manipulating him worse than any of us.”

  Griffin’s screen went black, and the Assassin rose from his chair to face them. “Rothenberg already made contact,” he said. “He’s not happy about the raid. Not at all. He almost cut off further contact, but Gavin talked him down.”

  “What did he say?” Javier asked.

  “Isaiah is mobilizing. He’s pretty spooked now that we have Natalya, and he’s mounting an expedition to Mongolia.” Griffin stepped closer. “Does he know where it is?”

  “Not exactly,” Natalya said. “But he knows the area to look.”

  “And what is the area?” Griffin asked.

  “The Burkhan Khaldun,” Natalya said. “It’s a mountain where some of the Great Khans were buried.”

  “That’s a big area,” Griffin said. “But it seems Isaiah is desperate now.”

  “Does Isaiah know about this hideout?” Javier asked.

  “He’s focused on the Piece of Eden. We’re safe here, for now. Rothenberg will notify us if that changes.” Griffin grabbed a water bottle from the fridge for himself. “Isaiah’s force won’t be ready to fly out to Mongolia for several days. I know this is a lot to ask, Natalya. I know the Templars have been using you. But would you consider going back into the Animus? We need to narrow down that location, and get there before Isaiah.”

  Natalya didn’t answer. She got up and walked over to the table with all the files, and seemed to be thinking.

  So everyone waited.

  David realized then that it wasn’t just about the Templars controlling her. She didn’t want the Assassins controlling her, either. Maybe, like Monroe, she didn’t want either group to find the prongs of the Trident. But what would Griffin do if she refused to help?

  A moment later, she turned around and lifted her chin. “I’ll help you, but under one condition.”

  “What condition?” Griffin asked.

  “You take us with you to Mongolia.”

  “That—” Griffin grunted and dragged a hand down his face. “That’s not my decision to make. I might not even be going to Mongolia. Gavin will make that call.”

  “You take us with you, or I won’t help you.” Natalya folded her arms, her voice as hard and cold as steel. “And then Isaiah will find the prong. I promise you that.”

  While growing up, David had known better than to cross his older sister. She was immensely stubborn and strong-willed, like their dad. But now he was seeing a new side of Natalya, and realizing that she could rival Grace, and maybe even beat her at this game. He was impressed.

  “Okay,” Griffin said.

  “Okay, what?” Natalya asked.

  “You help me, and I’ll take you to Mongolia.”

  Natalya turned to Javier. “Can I trust him?”

  Javier nodded. “Yes. He’ll keep his word.”

  “Then we have a deal,” Natalya said.

  Griffin sighed. “I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to Gavin.”

  “Just let him talk to Natalya,” David said. “He’ll understand.”

  The Assassin actually smiled at that. Then he went to a closet door, opened it up, and pulled out several sleeping bags, inflatable mattresses, pillows, and blankets. “Before we do anything in the simulation, you kids need to rest. Especially you, Natalya. Fatigue and the Animus don’t mix. I already lost Owen to the Templars tonight. I’m not going to risk Natalya’s neural health. We can spare a few hours’ rest and pick this up in the morning.”

  In the last hour, it seemed to David that Griffin had shown more genuine concern for them than Isaiah had in the past weeks. But that couldn’t be said for Victoria. David had always believed her to be sincere, and he wondered where she had been during all the action at the Aerie.

  David got up and walked over to the pile of bedding, where he grabbed a sleeping bag and a pillow, then used a hand pump to blow up an air mattress. The others did the same, and once again, David thought about the difference between this hideout and the complex from which they’d just escaped. Unless you had a thing for underdogs, David could understand why the Templars would seem so appealing. They promised a lot more than the Assassins did, namely prosperity, security, and stability.

  Griffin had gone over to the conference table and started looking through the papers there.

  “What is all that?” Natalya asked, spreading out her own bed. “I saw Owen’s name.”

  Javier did the same as her and lay down. “That’s the evidence they used to convict Owen’s father.”

  “Of what?” David asked.

  “Murder.” Javier propped a pillow under his head. “During a bank robbery.”

  Natalya lay down next to him. “Why does Griffin have it?”

  “Because I stole it from a police warehouse,” Javier said. “Owen says his dad was innocent, and I believe him. We just have to prove it.”

  “Is his dad still in prison?” David asked.

  “No. He died there.”

  David swallowed his voice and went quiet, unsure of what to say after that. His own dad had always been around, solid and loving, and he took that for granted.

  “I had no idea,” Natalya whispered.

  “It’s not something he talks about with just anybody. But you guys aren’t just anybody anymore.” Javier sighed. “That was how Monroe pulled us in. Owen wanted to go into his father’s memories, but Monroe couldn’t do it.”

  David remembered what Grace had said about the Animus not being a game. He had known she was right, on a certain level, but it wasn’t until now that it really occurred to him how personal and important genetic memories could be. It was one thing to go to West Africa, or New York, or even pilot a plane. But this thing with Owen was something else. His father’s memories mattered right now, in a different way than the Pieces of Eden.

  Maybe that’s what Grace and his dad had been trying to tell him. Maybe Grace’s simulations had meant something to her, but he hadn’t paid her attention. Maybe Sean’s had meant something to him, too.

  Maybe that’s why they had stayed behind.

  It wasn’t long after the others had left that Isaiah came with his agents to Sean’s room. Sean had already climbed from his wheelchair back into bed, and was lying there on his back, with his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Is everything all right, Sean?” Isaiah asked, without turning the lights on.

  “What’s going on out there?” Sean asked.

  Isaiah stepped into the room. “Everything is under control. Have you seen the others?”

  Sean didn’t want to betray them, but he also didn’t want the director to think he was with them. “I don’t speak for them, and they don’t speak for me.”

  Isaiah paused. “Fair enough.” He turned to the nearest agent. “Check the other rooms.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The agent left, and Isaiah stepped closer to Sean’s bed. “I believe this night will prove to be very decisive in many ways.”

  Sean waited in the darkness.

  Isaiah continued. “Lines have been drawn and crossed. You have chosen well, Sean.”

  “I feel like I chose a
long time ago.” Sean looked down at his legs. “I just didn’t know it.”

  “Perhaps that’s true.”

  “But it’s not about good and evil,” Sean said. “They’re still my friends. They’re good people. That doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong.”

  “That is exactly right.”

  The agent returned. “Sir, Grace is in her room. David and Natalya are gone.”

  A moment of silence passed, and then Isaiah inhaled. “I have matters to attend to, Sean. Remain here, and try not to worry. All will be made right.”

  Sean nodded, and then Isaiah and his agent left, returning the room and the entire building to silence. The rain had stopped, but shouts could be heard outside. Sean ignored them, but made no attempt to sleep.

  He couldn’t take it personally that the others had left him. This wasn’t about him to them, and it wasn’t about them to him. This was about himself, and where his life had brought him. This was about the best way to make a better world for himself and others like him. The Assassins had their way, but Sean believed those methods could only ever lead to chaos. Vigilantes and rebels and terrorists trying to overturn the world. Abstergo and the Templars promised something better.

  Someone knocked at his door.

  “Yes?”

  “Sean?”

  It was Grace. “Come in,” he said.

  The door opened, and Grace stepped into the room. “Can I sit with you?”

  Sean sat up. “Uh, sure.” Then he maneuvered his legs over the side of the bed, so that Grace would have a place next to him.

  “David’s gone,” she said, sitting down near enough to him that they shared the same indent in the mattress, falling slightly together.

  “I heard.” He folded his hands in his lap. “I’m sorry.”

  She started crying.

  Sean didn’t know exactly what to do, but he felt for her, and he felt like he knew her well enough to put his arm around her. When he did, she turned into him, and covered her face with her hands, her cheek against his shoulder, and he noticed that she smelled like sweet almonds.

  “Maybe Isaiah will stop them,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t want him to.” She leaned away, wiping under her eyes with her fingertips. “David wanted to go, and a part of me doesn’t want to be responsible for him anymore.”

  Sean nodded. “I think I get that.”

  “You don’t think it makes me a bad sister?”

  “No, I think we all need to be responsible for ourselves. David too. He made his choice, and you made yours. It’s okay that those choices are different.”

  Grace nodded. “I don’t know what I’m going to tell my dad.”

  “Leave that to Isaiah,” Sean said. Then he looked down at the floor. “Can I ask, why did you stay?”

  Grace didn’t answer for a few moments, and Sean waited.

  “I think …” she finally said. “I think I’m still figuring that out.”

  “That’s okay,” Sean said. “I’m here if you want to talk about it.”

  After that, they sat there together for a while longer, neither of them speaking, until an Abstergo agent came to the door and knocked.

  “Yes?” Sean said.

  “Isaiah would like to see you both in his office.”

  Grace stood, and stepped aside as Sean heaved himself into his wheelchair. Then the three of them made their way down the hallways, but not to the office where they normally met with the director. The agent guided them to the main building, and across the atrium to an elevator. He scanned his fingerprint and entered a code just to call it, and then again when they stepped into the elevator and he selected the fourth floor.

  Sean hadn’t even known there was a fourth floor. He looked up at Grace, and she raised both eyebrows and shook her head.

  When the elevator stopped, the agent got off and pointed to the right. “Isaiah is waiting.”

  Sean wheeled himself through the open doors into a circular hallway that wrapped around the rim of the atrium, glass ceiling above, the floor far below them. He turned to the right, and he and Grace made their way around the circle until they came to an open door. They heard Isaiah’s voice inside, and they entered.

  The long room felt almost like a modern church. Isaiah’s desk formed an altar at one end, a stained-glass window in the shape of a cross behind it, the floor made of a polished, rose-colored marble. Numerous chairs stood arranged in rows, almost like pews, and a figure sat in one of them before the desk.

  “Owen?” Grace said.

  Sean looked again, and found she was right. It was Owen, wearing a leather jacket and paramilitary-style pants, his hands bound in his lap.

  Isaiah stood before their friend, looking down at him. “Sean, Grace, thank you for joining us. Please, come closer.”

  Sean wheeled himself down the aisle between the seats, and Grace kept pace with him, until they reached Owen’s row. He looked up at them and smiled.

  “What are you guys doing here?” he asked.

  “I was about to ask you that,” Sean said.

  “Owen staged an assault on the Aerie,” Isaiah said. “Along with Javier and an Assassin named Griffin.”

  “What?” Sean said. Had Owen somehow become an Assassin?

  “Is this true?” Grace said.

  Owen nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Why?” Sean said, sounding angrier than he intended.

  “We were trying to rescue you,” Owen said. “Clearly, we shouldn’t have wasted our time.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Sean asked.

  “Gentlemen,” Isaiah said. “I did not bring you together to start a conflict. Quite the opposite. I was hoping that Sean and Grace might help Owen understand that we are not the enemy.”

  “Tell that to your boys downstairs who shot at us,” Owen said.

  “What else should they have done?” Isaiah said. “They didn’t know who you were. They reasonably assumed your intentions to be hostile and your weapons to be lethal. I cannot fault them for their response.”

  “Neither can I,” Sean said, even though he hadn’t been there. But Owen made him angry enough, he didn’t care. Who was he to think that Sean needed rescuing? Who was he to take that upon himself, as if Sean was helpless.

  Isaiah went around the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a file. “Perhaps now would be a good time to give Owen a bit of truth.”

  Owen laughed. “Truth? From you? Isn’t that what they call an oxymoron?”

  Isaiah ignored him and came back around from behind the desk, holding the open file. “Your father,” he said. “A terrible business.”

  That changed Owen’s demeanor drastically. The smile and laugh vanished, replaced by a stare that carried rage with it. “You’re gonna go there?”

  “Oh, yes.” Isaiah waved the file. “This is exactly where we are going to go.”

  “What is that?” Grace said.

  “Evidence,” Isaiah said. “The justice system found Owen’s father guilty of a terrible crime, and sent him to prison where he subsequently died. And Owen believes his father was innocent.”

  “He was innocent!” Owen shouted.

  Some of Sean’s anger dissipated at the thought of what Owen had been through.

  “Yes,” Isaiah said. “He was. Your father was framed for murder.”

  Those words seemed to stop time for a few moments. Even Sean could feel it. He held his breath and waited, watching Owen as it seemed his friend’s world turned on its side.

  “What did you say?” Owen whispered.

  “I have the evidence here,” Isaiah said. “It’s nothing that would have helped in court, but perhaps it will bring you some peace of mind.”

  “Show me,” Owen said.

  Isaiah closed the folder. “If I trust you and remove those restraints, will you trust me in return?”

  “Show me the evidence,” Owen said. “Then we’ll talk.”

  Isaiah hesitated, and then said, “It appea
rs I must take the first step.” He pulled a knife out of his pocket, and with a deft stroke cut the ties from Owen’s hands. Then he placed the folder in Owen’s lap.

  “What’s in there?” Sean asked.

  Owen’s eyes scanned the file’s contents frantically, and he said nothing.

  Sean turned to Isaiah. “What’s in there?”

  “Owen’s father was a puppet of the Assassins,” Isaiah said. “They set him up to rob a branch of the Malta Banking Corporation, which is owned by Abstergo’s financial holdings division.”

  “Why?” Grace asked.

  “Convenience,” Isaiah said. “To avoid drawing attention to their own activities. The Assassins will periodically target Abstergo’s assets in an attempt to weaken the Order. In this case, Owen’s father was meant to distract us from a much larger incursion. Similar to their strategy tonight.”

  “But how did they set him up?” Sean asked.

  “It seems Owen’s father had a gambling habit. The Assassins took advantage of that, and as soon as he owed them a large debt, they threatened his wife and son unless he paid. Of course, he didn’t have the money, so they suggested the bank robbery as a way to wipe the slate.”

  Owen closed the folder and shook his head. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Why not?” Isaiah said.

  “Because you lie. That’s what you do.”

  “Ask these two,” Isaiah said. “Sean, Grace, have I lied to you?”

  “No,” Sean said.

  Grace hesitated, but then said, “I don’t believe so.”

  “What does that prove?” Owen held up the file. “What does this prove?”

  “What kind of proof would you accept?” Isaiah said.

  Owen reached into his jacket, as if for a weapon, and Isaiah lunged forward with his knife, suddenly and menacingly, stopping but a foot away.

  “I’m trusting you, son. Don’t disappoint me.”

  “I’m not your son.” Owen pulled a ziplock bag out of his pocket.

  “What’s that?” Grace asked.

  “My father’s DNA. They took this sample after he was arrested.”

  Isaiah leaned away. “I see. You want something neither Monroe nor Griffin could give you. You want to use Helix.”