Assassin's Creed: Underworld (25 page)

She had anticipated a laboratory. According to
George Westhouse’s plans – the selfsame plans that she had pored over at home in
Crawley – where she stood now,
at this very point
– should have been the
laboratory.

But it wasn’t. Instead she was in a
roundhouse, some kind of antechamber, and there was no sign of laboratory equipment. There were
no hostiles. There were no points of vulnerability.

There was nothing at all.

No, what was that? There came a shout from a door
opposite and, with a quick glance back to the yard outside, where rain was falling hard now and
the men still shouted and cursed one another, Evie closed the door to the outside and crossed
the floor to the second door, this one ajar.

There she stood, controlling her breathing as she
peered cautiously through it. The scene that greeted her was just what Brewster had ordered: an
interrogation. The Templar men had bound their dandily dressed captor to a chair and the
questioning had begun.

Perhaps the man had expected to be brought before
a gentleman of high social standing, who would apologize profusely for the rough treatment he
had received at the hands of the guards and offer him brandy and cigars in the back office prior
to a round of punitive sackings. No
such luck. He’d been tossed in a
chair and trussed up for burly security to fire questions at him.

‘I ask you, m’lord,’ he was
saying, ‘can’t a gentleman wander the tracks?’

‘How did you break into the laboratory? The
entrance is hidden,’ growled one of the men. He had his back to Evie but she could see he
was pulling on a pair of black leather gloves. The prisoner’s eyes went from the gloves to
the face of his inquisitor, but if he was looking for signs of mercy or compassion then he was
looking in the wrong place.

‘What do you wish me to elaborate upon,
m’lord?’

There was a wheedling tone to his voice now, an
unmistakable note of foreboding.

‘Who sent you?’ demanded the
inquisitor. He flexed his fingers in the gloves. Evie heard another unseen man chortle with
anticipation of the great show to come.

‘Why, I did, m’lord. I came on my own
two feet.’

Now the second thug moved into view, the two of
them crowding the man from Evie’s view. ‘Let me put his fingers through the mangle
–’

‘Not yet.’ The first man stopped his
mate. ‘Not yet.’ He turned his attention back to the prisoner. ‘Was it
Green?’

‘Neither green, nor black nor brown,’
said the man in the chair.

‘Henry Green,’ said a man Evie
couldn’t see.

‘Ah, Henry Green … who’s
he?’

Threatening now, the unseen man said, ‘Your
very soul hangs in the balance … Confess or my sharp friend here will have his way. You
shall return empty-handed.’

Evie heard the distinctive
sound of a knife being drawn from its sheath.

And, of course, she couldn’t allow it to be
used. She flexed the fingers of her gauntlet, engaged her blade and then moved into the room to
confront the men.

There were three of them. This mission was
turning into quite a test of her skills. This time? Multiple opponents.

She weighed up, she assessed and then struck,
dancing in towards a grinning thug on the right but at the last second unexpectedly ducking and
swiping her blade up and across the chest of a man in the middle. She rolled and came up with
the blade foremost, jamming it through the breastplate of a Templar goon on the right. The
remaining inquisitor, the slowest, had barely drawn his sword when Evie drew back her knee and
delivered a high kick with the reinforced edge of her boot.

Damn
, she thought, watching as her
opponent staggered back. The coat had impeded the height of her strike, and instead of finishing
him off she’d merely unbalanced him. At the same time he’d recovered enough presence
of mind to draw his weapon and even as she steadied herself to meet his attack he was coming
forward, demonstrating a little more guile and cunning then she had originally given him credit
for.

Stupid. Stupid amateur.
Evie turned her
head in time to avoid the steel making contact with her face. She checked back quickly and at
the same time tapped her left hand on the forearm of her right to retract the blade. Next she
turned into his outstretched arm, a movement that was half dance step, half embrace but wholly
deadly as she
ended it with a jab to the face from her gauntlet and then
engaged her blade into his eye socket.

Blood, brain and eye-fluid sluiced down his
slackening cheek as he slumped to the floor. She shook blood from the blade and sheathed it, and
then turned to the man in the chair, who was giving her a bemused but otherwise good-humoured
look.

‘Ah, thank you kindly,’ he said.
‘I was in ever such a squeaky fix, when – what do you know? – you rescue
me.’

‘Where’s the hidden
laboratory?’ she asked him. The men she’d just fought were taking their time to die.
Gurgles, death rattles and the sound of boots scrabbling at the brick in a final feeble burst of
life were the background to their conversation.

‘Untie me, and then we can parlay, my
lady,’ bargained the trussed-up prisoner.

Evie climbed astride the man and pulled her fist
back. His face twisted into a mixture of fear and indecision. He had seen the blade in action.
He had seen Evie in action. He had no desire to be on the receiving end of either. This was a
man who had been lulled into a false sense of security by a pretty face many times before and
wasn’t about to let it happen again.

‘I’m pressed for time,’ she
said, just in case her intentions weren’t already clear. ‘Tell me now.’

‘It’s underground,’ he
swallowed, inclining his chin towards what looked like a panel of some kind in the wall of the
roundhouse. ‘It requires a key. One of the guards nicked mine, cheeky sod.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and stood,
about to leave.

‘Now untie
me.’

She shook her head. ‘You got yourself in. I
trust you can get yourself out.’

He was still calling out after her as she left.
‘Not to worry, my lady, I can still recall a couple of tricks from my carnival
days.’

Good luck to you then
, she thought, as
she departed by a different door, now looking for another guard who might have the key.

Thank God for the flapping mouths of Templar
guards. She pressed herself into the shadows of a passageway, overhearing two of them discussing
the very key she sought.

‘What are you doing? Keep that key in your
pocket, or else Miss Thorne will have your guts for garters.’

‘Let’s have a butcher’s
downstairs then. I want to see that artefact.’

So do I
, thought Evie Frye, as she
claimed another victim and recovered the key.

She returned to the roundhouse, deciding to
release the prisoner if and when the key worked on the panel, but too late – he was
absent, chair overturned and ropes discarded on the floor. She tensed in case he was planning to
leap out at her but, no, he was gone. Instead she turned her attention to the panels and was at
last able to let herself into the building’s inner sanctum.

Inside, the walls were dark and wet. They muffled
the sound of the storm and yet somehow, here, it felt as though the elements were at their
fiercest.

How could that be? She remembered the lightning
rod
and thought of power being directed down here. Power needed for an
underground laboratory, perhaps?

And then she came upon it. And she knew she was
right – that she stood at the very epicentre of the storm’s channelled energy.

And that the artefact was close.

The flagstones stretched away from where she stood
at the door, opening out to a large vaulted underground space where scientific apparatus on
tables lay between Tesla coils and upright lightning conductors – all throbbing with a
steadily intensifying energy.

Too much? In the roof of the laboratory hung a
series of harnesses and platforms. Lightning particles seemed to crack all around them, sparking
and flashing, painting the room a sudden glare of phosphorescent white.

At the other end of the laboratory was what
looked like a large inspection tube and in there, she could see, was the artefact. Standing
nearby was Sir David Brewster with an assistant, both poring over what lay on the other side of
the toughened glass, the orb-like golden Apple. Even from so far away, Evie found herself
transfixed by it. Years and years of research into the Pieces of Eden and now here before her
was a real one.

Evie stood close by the doorway, but even though
she was lit by the sudden lightning flashes, the men were too absorbed in their work to see her.
She crept forward, still hypnotized by the sight of the Apple but able to eavesdrop on Brewster
and his assistant now.

‘By Jove, under blue light it goes
completely transparent!’ exclaimed the scientist.

Brewster was nothing like
the man he had been before: weak and small within the dark shadow of Lucy Thorne. Now he was a
man in his own domain, in command once again, and feeling confident enough to throw a few jibes
Thorne’s way. ‘The cheek of that woman,’ he shouted over the buzzing of the
lightning conductors, the hissing of the Tesla coils, the rhythmic huffing of automated bellows.
‘I say, I ought to seize the blasted artefact for Edinburgh.’

‘If you don’t mind me saying, that
would be an exceptionally bad idea,’ retorted his companion.

‘Why? It’s God’s apple, not
hers. I’d display it in public. Darwin would be vanquished. Banished in shame to the
blasted Galapagos to roost with his beloved finches.’

‘Miss Thorne would have your head, and Mr
Starrick the rest,’ said his colleague.

‘You know, Reynolds, it might just be worth
the risk!’ exclaimed Brewster.

‘Sir David, you cannot be
serious.’

‘Just a wee joke, Reynolds. Once we unlock
the artefact’s secret the Templars’ grip on London will be fixed. The Assassins will
fall, and Darwin will be little more than a bearded memory.’

As she drew closer, coming out into the open now
where the two men could easily see her, she could see the Apple glowing. Brighter now. Lit by an
increasingly heavy shower of sparks.

It was time to make it hers.

She engaged her blade and struck, and saw the
assistant slide off her blood-streaked steel before Brewster was
even
alerted to her presence. His eyes went to his dead companion and then back to Evie Frye, looking
at her agog, his brain trying to make sense of this sudden unexplained appearance.

And then, Evie leapt and killed him.

‘It is time to lay down your head, Sir
David Brewster,’ she said, letting him to the floor.

‘But I have so much more to
discover.’

His eyelids flickered. His breathing ragged
now.

‘Do not be afraid,’ she told him.

‘I am not. God will protect me.’

‘I will continue your experiments,’
she said, and saw it clearly, the path that lay before her. She would carry on with the learning
that had begun in her father’s library at Crawley. She would make it her mission to locate
the artefacts, to harness their power and use them for the benefit of mankind. A wind of good
fortune, not ill.

‘You cannot stop Starrick,’ said
Brewster, his head on her knees as she knelt with him. ‘Miss Thorne has already found
another Piece of Eden, more powerful than the last.’

‘I will take that one too,’ said
Evie, never more sure of anything in her whole life.

‘We fight to gain what we cannot take with
us,’ said Brewster. ‘It is in our nature.’

And then he died. Evie took out her handkerchief
and, in a ritual passed down by her father – one he said was a homage to
Altaïr’s own feather ceremony – touched it to Brewster’s wound, soaking
it with his blood. She folded the handkerchief and secreted it inside her jacket.

In the same moment
everything seemed to happen at once: guards, three of them, came rushing into the laboratory.

Evie stood, already engaging her blade and ready
for battle, just as there came a sudden increase in electrical intensity, and the artefact
seemed to bulge with a fresh influx of power – and then exploded.

Evie was immediately below the inspection glass
and protected by the plinth on which it stood. The guards, however, were not so lucky. They were
peppered with flying fragments and seemed to disappear in a fog of blood-mist and debris as
beams, harnesses and platforms came tumbling down upon them from above. Evie scrambled to her
feet and ran for the door, just as the chain reaction began, lightning conductors bursting into
flame, machinery exploding with a flat
whump
.

And then she was outside, grateful to be joining
those who were sprinting away from the factory as a series of explosions tore it apart.

‘What was that explosion?’

She had met Jacob back at the rail yard as
arranged. He too looked as though he had seen plenty of action in the meantime. Both were
blooded now.

‘The Piece of Eden detonated and took the
lab with it,’ explained Evie, finishing her tale.

Jacob curled a lip. ‘That magic lump of
hyperbolic metal? I’m shocked.’

She rolled her eyes. All those nights reading to
him. Imparting that knowledge to him. They really, truly had been for absolutely nothing.

‘Simply because you have never valued the
Pieces does not –’

An old argument was about to resurface until the
appearance of George Westhouse. ‘All went according to plan?’ said the elder
Assassin sardonically.

‘There was a slight …
complication,’ replied Evie, shamefaced.

‘The lab exploded,’ said Jacob with
an eyebrow arched at his twin sister.
You want somebody to blame; there she is.

‘You derailed a train,’ George
Westhouse reminded him.

‘Oh he did, did he?’ said Evie.

Jacob shrugged. ‘Well, the train derailed
and I happened to be on it. I killed my target.’

So, Rupert Ferris, of Ferris
Ironworks, an organization that as well as being in Templar hands employed child labour, was
dead.

‘Brewster is also no more,’ said
Evie.

‘Then, all in all, a successful mission, in
spite of you two,’ said George.

‘What about London?’ said Jacob. Evie
glanced at her brother. For her the events of the evening had been an epiphany, a signpost for
the way forward. Was the same true of Jacob?

‘What about it?’ asked George
cautiously.

‘We are wasting time out here,’ said
Jacob, indicating the rail yard around them and the suburbs. The city of London was close
– yet so far out of reach.

‘You know as well as I do that London has
been the domain of the Templars for the last hundred years. They are far too strong yet.
Patience.’

Ethan thought differently
, remembered
George, seeing his friend’s belief alive and well and living on with the twins.

‘But the Templars have found a new Piece of
Eden,’ said Evie.

George shrugged. ‘Sir David is dead; they
do not know how to use it. The Council shall guide us; sound advice that your father would have
seconded. I shall see you back in Crawley.’

The twins watched George leave with sinking and
somewhat resentful hearts. Fires that burned bright had been comprehensively doused by George
and his invocation of the Council. What they both knew, of course, was that their father would
certainly not have agreed with the
remote Assassin elders. And what they
both also knew was that they had no intention of abiding by either George Westhouse or the
blamed Council.

A train clattered slowly past and blew its
whistle.

‘What’s stopping us?’ said
Jacob, nodding at it. ‘London is waiting to be liberated. Forget Crawley.’

‘Father would have wanted us to listen
…’

‘Oh,
Father
. You could continue
his legacy in London.’

‘Freeing future generations from a city
ruled by Templars. You know, Jacob Frye, you might just be right.’

‘Then, shall we?’

‘Yes, let’s.’

With that, the two of them ran and boarded the
train bound for London.

There, they would meet Henry Green, ‘the
Assassin watching over London.’

They knew nothing of his true history.