Tomb of the Khan

by Matthew J. Kirby

  “I am not a part of this,” he said, shaking his head, wheeling back into his room. “And I will not go down with you guys.” With that, he shut his door.

  Natalya and David had stopped a few feet away and turned around.

  “Are you coming, Grace?” David asked.

  She didn’t want to. But unlike Sean, she had heard the alarm, and now with the power out, she knew something was definitely going on, and a moment later, she made up her mind that she didn’t want to face whatever it was by herself.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as she joined the other two.

  “Not far,” Natalya said. “I just want to see what’s going on in the other buildings. If the power’s out in them, too.”

  That made some sense. So they crept along, tiptoeing, whispering, until they reached the first walkway, which was dark, and it seemed the main building on the other end of it was dark, too.

  “Let’s check the other one,” David said.

  They returned the way they had come, and then took another hallway toward the far side of the building. Grace had her ears and eyes so open they started making stuff up, convincing her that she could hear people shouting outside in the woods. Or maybe that was real, which felt even more disconcerting. She couldn’t see anything out there.

  When they reached the second walkway, its door was closed, and unlike the locks on the doors to their rooms, this one had remained secure, but Grace could see through the windows that the lights were out in the next building over.

  “What is going on?” David asked. “Where is everybody?”

  “Maybe it was a fire,” Natalya said. “That’s why the siren went off, and it caused the power outage.”

  “Maybe,” Grace said. “But—”

  The door to the walkway clunked, and then it flew open. Before Grace could run, a flashlight shone in her face, and then the bright spot jumped to Natalya and David. The three of them froze as a figure stepped through the opening.

  “There you are,” he said.

  Grace knew that voice. Its deep resonance had strummed the inside of her mind.

  “Monroe?” David said.

  The spotlight went to the ground, lighting the hallway indirectly, and they saw that it was him. He wore the same paramilitary gear as the Abstergo agents, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, his goatee a bit longer, his face a bit more gaunt than it had been the last time they’d seen him.

  “You kids okay?” he asked.

  “We’re fine,” Grace said. “What—”

  “Was this you?” David asked, gesturing wide around them.

  “The power? Yeah, that was me. And now I’m going to get you guys out of here. Where are the others?”

  “Sean’s in his room,” David said.

  “Owen and Javier?” Monroe asked.

  “We don’t know,” Natalya said. “They got away back when you did, weeks ago.”

  Monroe cocked his head and frowned for a moment. “Okay, it’s just you guys then, after we get Sean—”

  “He won’t come,” Grace said.

  “What do you mean?” Monroe asked.

  “He wants to stay here. I know he does.”

  “You sure about that?” he asked.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  Monroe paused, then nodded, once. “He has to make his own decision.”

  As for Grace, she didn’t know what to think of Monroe anymore, not after what Isaiah had said about him. Monroe was unstable. He’d gone rogue. Grace didn’t know whether she should trust him or turn him in, and she didn’t like being in this position. “You shouldn’t have come here,” she said.

  David turned to her. “Why is that?”

  “It’s okay,” Monroe said. “I figured this might happen. Isaiah can be extremely convincing. He knows exactly what you want to hear, and he gives it to you exactly when you need to hear it.”

  “He told us about you,” Grace said.

  “I’m sure he told you something about me,” Monroe said, anger stalking into his voice. “There’s a lot more to the story. But there’s no time to explain it right now. It seems each of you has a choice to make. Come with me, or stay here.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Natalya said.

  Her statement surprised Grace. She’d thought Natalya was working willingly with the Templars, toward the same goal as the rest of them, and right now, she was closer than any of them to achieving it.

  “I’m coming, too,” David said.

  “What?” Grace spun on him. “No, you are not!”

  “Yes, I am,” he said. “I know you don’t believe me, but it’s only a matter of time before Isaiah turns on you. He’s already locking you up at night. You need to come with us.”

  “She makes her own choice,” Monroe said. “And we have to accept it. I’m not going to force anyone to do anything. But if you’re coming with me, we have to go now.”

  “Where?” Natalya asked.

  “I have a vehicle waiting,” he said. “This way.”

  He turned around and crept back along the walkway through which he’d come. Natalya followed after him, and David took a few steps past the open door into the tunnel before he turned.

  “Are you coming?” he asked.

  Grace didn’t know. She felt cemented to the ground. She didn’t know if she could trust Monroe, but David was actually right, too. She did have misgivings about Isaiah. And yet, how could she walk away from everything Abstergo and the Templars offered her? And what about her brother?

  “Grace?” David said.

  “I don’t—”

  The lights flashed back on, clicking and popping. Grace and David both looked up, then at each other, but then the walkway door buzzed and began to swing shut.

  “No!” David said, diving for it.

  Grace did, too, but it slammed closed before either of them could reach it, and the lock engaged. She was separated from him. Grace tried the handle, but it wouldn’t open, and the security touch screen was working now.

  “David, can you get it from your side?” she called through the door.

  “No!” came the muffled reply. “It won’t open!”

  “Damn,” she heard Monroe say. “I’m sorry. But we have to move, now.”

  “Grace!” David said. “Break the glass!”

  “She can’t,” Monroe said. “It’s bulletproof. Almost unbreakable.”

  There wasn’t any way around this door, and if those on the other side of it, including her brother, didn’t move now, they would be caught. And if David and Natalya were caught with Monroe, Grace feared what would happen to them. She didn’t want to believe that Isaiah would harm them, but now that her little brother was on the other side of this door, she couldn’t take the risk that he was actually right.

  “Go,” she said.

  “What?” David asked.

  “Go. Get out of here while you can.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Yes, you are,” she said. “I’ve always kept you out of trouble, and I’m not going to stop now. Now, go!”

  “But—”

  “David,” she heard Monroe say, “it’s now or never.”

  An endless second of silence.

  “Go,” Grace said.

  “We’ll come back and get you out, too,” David said. “I promise.”

  Grace still didn’t even know if that’s what she wanted. If this door were open, she still couldn’t say whether she would have walked through it. Maybe she and her brother were on different paths. Abstergo and the Animus had changed everything. She only knew she had to get David away from danger. After that, she would be free to take care of herself.

  “Good-bye,” she said. “Get going.”

  Another pause.

  “Bye, Grace.”

  She heard footsteps racing away from the door. Then silence, and he was gone.

  Owen and Javier scouted around the outside of the Aerie building, avoiding the cameras and sentries, hoping Griffin would cat
ch up with them soon. Owen still didn’t understand what had happened with the alarm, but the Templars were on alert now. Abstergo agents patrolled everywhere, but fortunately, not all of them wore the Assassin-hunting gear.

  “Why didn’t that EMP grenade work back there?” Owen asked.

  “Shielding on the electronic components,” Javier said. “Copper would do it. They must have upgraded.”

  “Well, that sucks.”

  “So what’s the plan here?” Javier looked around. “I say we go in.”

  Owen agreed. Griffin would probably freak out, but he wasn’t there, and they still had a mission.

  “There’s a door on that building over there.” Javier pointed, and Owen nodded.

  They pressed toward it, evading the surveillance and security, and when they reached the door, Owen noted the electronic lock. It looked as though they would need a fingerprint or other biometric, as well as a code. Owen pulled out another EMP grenade.

  “Again?” Javier said. “Is that the only song you know?”

  “It’s worth a shot.” Owen armed the grenade and smacked it against the security console, but just like with the agents, nothing happened.

  “Shielded,” Javier said.

  “I gotta find a new song,” Owen said.

  “We have to find a way in.”

  “How about we just break the glass?”

  “Too noisy.”

  “The roof?”

  “Worth a shot.”

  But it was hard to find a place to climb an entirely glass building, and Owen actually wondered if that was the Templar intent in its design. This place seemed built to be Assassin-proof. Eventually, they found a tree growing fairly close to one corner, and they scaled it to the height of a balcony on the building’s second story, but the gap between their tree and the balcony was pretty wide.

  “Got another zip line?” Javier asked.

  “I think I can jump it.”

  “Really?”

  Owen hoped so. In the Animus simulations, as Varius and Zhi, he’d made jumps that far, but those were the memories of fully trained Assassins, and he hadn’t tested this particular Bleeding Effect yet. But they were running out of time and options. He braced himself, preparing to make the leap.

  “Owen,” Javier said. “That’s a long fall if you miss.”

  “Got any other—”

  “Shh.” Javier held up his hand, and then pointed downward.

  Owen looked, and saw a single Abstergo agent approaching their tree. A smile crossed Javier’s face, and Owen could tell he’d just come up with another plan, and he thought he knew what it was. Javier motioned for them to climb down, which they did, silently, and when they were in position, Javier pulled out his crossbow pistol. Owen did the same, and when the agent walked right beneath them, they both dropped on her.

  She went down with a grunt, and before she could get to her feet or pull her weapon, Owen and Javier pointed their pistols at her.

  “Hands up,” Owen said.

  She complied, and Javier pulled off her helmet. She was fairly young, with straight blond hair, full lips, and a sharp chin. The badge on her chest read COLE.

  “I’ve been looking for you two,” she said.

  Javier pulled out the pain grenade he’d taken. “You know what this is, Cole?”

  She let out a little breath that wasn’t quite a gasp, and nodded.

  Owen smiled. “Do what we say, and maybe we won’t microwave you.”

  “What’s your plan?” she asked.

  Owen pressed his crossbow pistol into her back. “Just move.”

  She nodded, hands still up, and Owen marched her forward. Her steps were slow and grudging, but eventually they reached the door.

  “Open it,” Javier said.

  She resisted, and Owen jammed the pistol between her shoulder blades. “Open it.”

  Cole shook her head, her jaw muscles twitching. Then she placed her thumb on the door scanner, and entered a code. The lock clicked, and the door opened.

  “What do you think you’re going to do in there?” she asked.

  “You’ll find out what we did when you wake up,” Javier said, and he shot her with a sleep dart.

  She winced, and then two seconds later, her eyes rolled back and she slumped to the ground. Owen tapped her limp body with the toe of his boot. She was out.

  He opened the door, and Javier followed him through. The building, brightly lit, was as made of glass on the inside as it was on the outside. They proceeded down a hallway, offices and rooms to either side, weapons at the ready, and Owen kept his Eagle Vision dialed in. The glass panes scattered their reflections, making it seem as if they weren’t alone.

  At the end of the hallway, they entered an enormous atrium. Owen looked up at the ceiling several stories above them, escalators and staircases climbing up from floor to floor, each level looking down on the open space below. While the Assassins hid in decrepit houses and storage units, the Templars worked toward their goals here, or in places like this one. The power and wealth disparity made the Assassin mission seem almost futile.

  “Which way?” Javier asked.

  “I don’t know,” Owen said. “Let’s scout around a bit.”

  But after they’d taken three or four steps across the glossy atrium floor, the lights went out, all of them, and the building seemed to give an electrical sigh.

  “Someone cut the power,” Javier said.

  Owen’s eyes hadn’t adjusted to the sudden darkness yet, but his Eagle Vision revealed his friend standing a few feet away from him. “Maybe it was Griffin.”

  “Let’s hope,” Javier said.

  They decided to keep moving, and Owen actually felt a bit safer doing so without all the light falling around them, and eventually, his eyes did grow accustomed to the darkness. On the ground floor, they found only conference rooms and a large lounge area. They climbed a staircase to the second floor, but before they’d gone very far, they concluded it held only offices.

  “This doesn’t seem like the kind of place they’d hold Grace and the others,” Owen said.

  “Maybe one of the other buildings?” Javier asked. “I thought I saw one of those walkways down there.”

  “Let’s go check it out.”

  So they descended to the ground floor and crossed the atrium to the walkway. This one had no lock, and the door opened. Javier looked at Owen, and Owen nodded. They entered the tunnel, encased in glass on all sides, and hurried through it to the other end, emerging into a new, smaller building.

  The exterior walls here were still made of glass, but the interior walls were not. They passed down a few corridors, and Owen tried one of the doors. Inside, he found another, smaller lounge. But in the next hallway over, they found something that looked as though it might be an Animus, but a much more physical model. It had a harness suspended from a waist-high ring, with some kind of metal skeleton and all kinds of connections, including a helmet.

  “I think we’re on the right track,” Owen said.

  The next several doors revealed additional Animus machines, if that’s what they were, each in its own room. The place was like some of kind of simulation factory.

  “There are six of them,” Javier said.

  “There are six of us,” Owen said, “if the Templars had caught us all.”

  They kept moving, and eventually found a kind of dorm room, but it was empty, the bed messed as if someone had left in a hurry, a pair of girl’s pajama pants hanging over the footboard.

  “This is them,” Owen said.

  “Then where are they?”

  Before Owen could offer a possible answer to that, the lights switched back on. That meant anyone outside the building—and there were lots of agents out there in the woods—would be able to easily see them.

  “We try the next building,” Owen said.

  Javier agreed, and they proceeded forward, keeping to the side corridors, searching for another passageway. Eventually they reached one, but this door h
ad an electronic lock on it similar to the one Cole had opened for them. Only she was still outside, unconscious, and they had no way to open it.

  “I hear someone coming,” Javier said.

  Owen did, too. Lots of heavy boots on the other side of the door. They ducked around a corner just as it opened, and a tall man in a charcoal suit walked through with several uniformed agents.

  “Make sure they’re still secured in their rooms,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And find Cole!” he shouted as they marched down the hallway.

  Owen didn’t know who this man was, but it was obvious that he was in charge, and it seemed that he didn’t know where Grace and the others were, either. In a few moments, he would also discover that they weren’t in their rooms.

  Javier tapped Owen and pointed at the door. It was open, but swinging shut, and they wouldn’t reach it in time.

  Owen whipped out his crossbow pistol and fired. The bolt lodged in the door’s rubber seal, preventing it from closing all the way.

  “It worked,” Owen whispered, actually surprised.

  They raced over to it, and Owen yanked his bolt free on the way through, then shut the door behind them. They hurried down the passageway, which proved longer than the first, and actually turned a corner that plunged down the mountain. They followed the stairway down, until the walkway leveled and led them to another door, this one set into the hillside.

  “We going in?” Javier asked.

  “We keep looking until we find them,” Owen said.

  “I wonder if Griffin got to them first.”

  Owen didn’t know, but he opened the door and peered through. The hallway was empty, so they stepped inside. Down the corridor, two double doors opened into a kind of garage, with cars and vans parked in rows. Owen and Javier stalked toward it, wary of the side hallways they passed. Owen listened and sensed, letting his Eagle Vision warn him of threats. When they reached the doorway to the garage, they paused, and Owen scanned the room.

  Over a dozen agents stood around the room in groups of three and four. But they weren’t alone. Owen sensed others in the garage, and he searched until he found them by their sounds, and the almost imperceptible motion of the van in which they were hiding.