Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization

by Christie Golden

  He began to put names to faces. The black man urging him to jump, it seemed, was Moussa. He only vaguely remembered seeing an Asian woman, Lin, and a young, pale, earnest kid who was named Nathan. Another one, Emir, was a man about Cal’s age.

  Cal’s voice was hard and flat. “And the others in here? Are they lab rats, too?”

  “They’re Assassins. Murderers, like their ancestors.” Sofia paused, then added. “Like you, Cal. All born with a predisposition to violence. Your DNA, like theirs, allows us to journey through your subconscious. To the root of your very being. All those hidden impulses that have driven you your whole life.”

  The realization and all its implications was an ugly one. Cal walked away a few steps, keeping a tight rein on his emotions, then turned to face her.

  “Murderer,” he said. “So that’s what you think of me.”

  “You killed a man.” She said it without judgment of any sort. It was, to her, a simple fact.

  “A pimp,” Cal clarified.

  The image of the scene rose up again in his mind: the sneering, ugly face of the man who sold women’s bodies. The bruises on the prostitutes’ faces, imperfectly concealed by heavy makeup. Their forced laughter. The stench of too much perfume and sweat and above all, fear.

  And that moment when the pimp grabbed the throat of a girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen and slammed her face into the bar. The moment that could not be reclaimed when Cal Lynch had decided that the human stain would never, ever hurt a terrified girl again.

  And if Sofia knew his history as well as she had to, given what he’d just seen here, then she should damn well know that, too.

  “I didn’t like the way he treated women,” was all he said, though.

  Sofia stepped closer to him, her words expressing both curiosity and a challenge.

  “Would you kill again?”

  Cal did not answer. As he looked down, his gaze fell on a photograph. Unlike his, it was framed, with care and respect. He picked it up and examined it.

  It was an older one, though it had been taken within the realm of memory. It looked a bit like the pictures of himself he had just seen, with the colors fading but the images still clear.

  There were two people in the picture. One was an attractive, laughing woman with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing a crisp white blouse and jean overalls. Her arm was protectively around the second subject of the photo—a toddler with wide blue eyes seated atop an old-fashioned rope swing. There was something about the little girl’s expression of focus as she gazed at something other than the photographer that he recognized.

  “Nice,” he said. Then, archly, “Happy families. Apple of your mother’s eye. She must be very proud.”

  Sofia’s expression had gone from lively and curious to soft and a little sad, even as a wistful smile curved the corners of her lips.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. “She was killed by an Assassin. Like your mother.” She let the words linger there, letting him absorb what she had just said.

  “Sorry,” he said. And to his surprise, he realized he meant it.

  Cal let the silence stretch on for a long moment before he said, “My old man killed my mother.” Which, doubtless, Sofia knew too.

  “And how does that make you feel?” The girl mourning her mother had retreated into the shadow of the scientist.

  “Like killing him,” Cal said bluntly. He turned and continued his perusal of the room.

  Sofia followed. “Either we let this affect us for the rest of our lives, or we do something about it. You turned to violence; I turned to science.”

  Cal’s attention was drawn to a row of metallic spheres arranged on clear plastic stands. They were all of the same size, smaller than a baseball, a little larger than a tennis ball. Each was subtly different in its design, however, and he idly reached to pick one up. It was heavy.

  “The Templars call it the Artifact; the Assassins, the Apple,” Sofia said. Cal examined the orb, glancing at the various pieces of parchment that had sketches or commentary about the item as she spoke. “The Bible tells us it contains the seed of man’s first disobedience.”

  Cal was fascinated by the decorated sphere in a way he couldn’t understand, absently pulling up a chair and sitting as if he belonged in the room, rolling the thing around in his fingers. Sofia perched on the desk area in front of him, reaching around for a mouse and calling up something on the monitor.

  As she spoke, she clicked the mouse, and myriad blueprints of the Apple appeared on the monitor. They appeared to be similar to those Cal had seen of the Animus, and he wondered if it was based on the same technology.

  “But there are those of us who believe it has its basis in science. That within its genetic code, God—or some ancient civilization—has left us a roadmap to understand why people are violent.”

  They locked gazes for a moment, then Sofia’s blue eyes traveled back to Cal’s board.

  “Aguilar was the last person known to have had it in his possession.” And then Cal understood, even before her eyes traveled back to his.

  “We need you to find out where he hid it.”

  He was oddly disappointed, though he knew he shouldn’t be. Everyone had an angle, it seemed. Even angels. He kept his voice light as he said, “I thought I was here to be cured.”

  “Violence is a disease, like cancer. And like cancer, we hope to control it one day. We’re searching for the root cause of what makes you sick. And we’re seeking to control it. We’re after the evolution of humankind.” She swallowed. “So that what happened to your mother… and mine… will never happen again.”

  Quietly, Cal said, “Violence is what kept me alive.”

  She cocked her head and regarded him. Her black hair fell across her forehead. He wanted to reach and brush it back. “Well,” she said, “technically… you’re dead.”

  She had a point. Cal’s brain hurt, and his body, which was definitely not dead, reasserted itself.

  He tossed the gray orb back to Sofia, who caught it deftly.

  “I’m hungry,” he said.

  CHAPTER 10

  “What’s in it for me?” Cal asked as they strode down the corridor. They passed orderlies in white, gray stone arches, and tree trunks that may or may not have been actual wood. He was growing used to the strange juxtapositions of the corporate with the creative, the historical with the antiseptic cleanliness of the present.

  Still, he was growing weary of the cool blue, gray and white palette of the place. Something in him yearned for the blazing sun, explosive and urgent yellows, the taste of dust in his mouth. And he wasn’t sure if this was a longing for the Baja California life he knew as a child, or if it was Aguilar’s sun-baked Spain that was bleeding into his consciousness.

  As they rounded a corridor, he caught a glimpse of a large screen. It was a talking head on some kind of news show, and there was something oddly familiar about the neatly styled gray hair, the sincere expression, and the piercing brown eyes. His eyes dropped to the name scrolling under the face: Alan Rikkin, CEO, Abstergo Industries.

  Ah, he thought. No wonder you have a seemingly unlimited budget, Dr. Sofia Rikkin.

  “There are legal ramifications, obviously,” Sofia was saying, “but once my research is complete, there’s no reason to keep you here.”

  Cal slowed, stopped. Sofia turned to face him.

  “I get my life back?” he asked, uncertain that he had understood her correctly.

  Sofia smiled at him, hands primly clasped behind her back, her eyes bright, as if she were giving him a present on Christmas morning.

  “Better,” she said. “A new one.”

  Given what he had seen here, Cal had no question that Abstergo was capable of it. A new life. A fresh start. With, perhaps, none of the hot, irresistible yearning for violence to plague it.

  She gestured toward the door where they had stopped. “You’re hungry,” she said. She made no move to follow him. Keeping his eyes on her, he moved to the do
or, and then stepped inside.

  What Cal assumed was the common room was similar to everything else he had seen thus far in the Abstergo facility. Orderlies wore white; the patients wore the same white T-shirts, gray pants, and gray V-necked top as Cal did. It was hard to believe that they were all murderers—Assassins, as their ancestors had been.

  The walls were slate gray, and Cal immediately spotted the mirrored glass, behind which he knew security was observing everything. There were a couple of guards in the room as well, keeping to the sides, trying—and failing—to be unobtrusive. The room definitely had similarities to the prisons in which Cal had spent far too much time.

  Still, it was a somewhat more pleasant sort of environment. There was exercise equipment, and two men were taking turns shooting hoops. Cal heard the distinctive ka-pok, ka-pok of ping-pong. Over it, he could hear birds chirping. A variety of foliage, from trees to shrubbery to fruits and vegetables, appeared to be thriving.

  The thought of food made Cal’s stomach rumble. But he couldn’t settle down into this environment despite his very real hunger, and found himself facing the mirrored walls, trying to peer within.

  As he was staring at the guards he couldn’t see, someone approached him. It was the black man with the neat white beard Cal had “met” on his first day. The one who had encouraged him to jump.

  Now, he was smiling. He stood exaggeratedly straight, one arm held stiffly behind him. He stepped back a pace or two, sweeping his other arm out grandly toward one of the group tables.

  “How about here, sir?” he said, as if he were the maître d’ of the place. Cal looked at the two tables as the man patted an empty spot on the bench. “It’s an open menu, but we do recommend the chicken.”

  Keeping his eyes on the man, Cal slid onto the seat. Across from him was an older Asian man, his long gray hair falling in a tight braid halfway down his back. He paid Cal no attention.

  A young orderly approached, her voice and manner pleasant, her hair in a tidy, professional bun.

  “What can I get you, Mr. Lynch?” she said, smiling. “It’s an open menu, but we do recommend the chicken.”

  The man’s eyes danced, but his face remained solemn.

  “I’ll have steak,” Cal said, never taking his eyes from his odd companion.

  “Steak for the Pioneer!” the man exclaimed, as if instructing the orderly in her duty. “And how would sir like that cooked?”

  Cal turned to the orderly. “Walk it through a warm kitchen.”

  The orderly left. The man, uninvited, immediately sat down beside Cal. He brought up three small cups from seemingly nowhere and placed them on the table, lip side down, in a tidy row.

  “Who are you?” Cal asked. He remembered noticing his companion’s picture in Sofia’s research lab, but the name escaped him.

  The man picked up the middle cup with deft fingers. “They call me Moussa,” he said, using the cup to point toward the mirrored glass. He leaned in conspiratorially to Cal. “But my name is Baptiste.”

  His dark face took on a strange, serious expression. “I’m dead two hundred years, now,” he said. Then he added, his voice lowering, “Voodoo poisoner.”

  He held Cal’s gaze for a long moment. Cal tensed, ready to defend himself. Then Moussa’s face dissolved into an impish grin. “I’m harmless,” he laughed, giving Cal a wink.

  No, you’re not, Cal thought. You’re a killer, just like me.

  And you told me to jump.

  Cal felt eyes on him, and his gaze wandered to meet that of a tall, gangly young man with tousled brown hair. The kid didn’t flinch or look away, instead staring intently at Cal with a hard look on his face. Nathan, Cal remembered; he had also been in the garden when Cal had stumbled in, still fighting the drug in his system.

  “Ah,” Moussa said slyly, “they’re watching you.” He looked past Cal in the other direction. Cal turned to see that someone else was staring at them: the Asian woman, Lin, her long, sleek black hair tied back in a ponytail. She, too, stared at Cal with open suspicion for a long moment.

  “Have you met him yet?”

  Moussa’s question brought Cal’s attention back to him. Cal did not reply. Moussa repeated the question, his expression hardening, his words deliberate.

  “Have you met him yet?”

  There was nothing of a playful, “harmless” trickster about him now. When Cal still did not answer, Moussa wordlessly rose, plunking down his three small cups that, Cal now realized, were designed to perform the old “find the missing ball” trick.

  “We are the last to protect the Apple, my friend,” Moussa warned as he walked away. “All the rest… most of them are on their way to… infinity.” And he made a waving motion with his hands, grinning one last time.

  Another man, bearded and heavyset, walked up to him. Cal recognized him as Emir. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and his expression appeared to be genuinely pleasant. Smiling, he said, “‘So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.’ This belongs to you.”

  And he held out an apple. It was smallish, a little green, a little red; clearly a product of the on-site garden rather than a big-box grocery store. Cal’s mouth watered at the scent of the apple, and his mind flashed back to that golden moment, lying in his mother’s arms as she quoted Robert Frost.

  And another voice, also female, also kind: The Templars call it the Artifact; the Assassins, the Apple.

  And then there was that bizarre comment of Moussa’s about “protecting the Apple.”

  He took the apple. Emir’s dark eyes searched his, looking for something, then he nodded and wandered off.

  Cal watched him go, baffled, and shook his head.

  First this place was a lab, then a torture chamber; now an insane asylum.

  He sensed someone coming up on his other side. Fingers closed on the piece of fruit. Without removing his eyes from Emir, Cal’s hand shot out and closed on the would-be thief’s wrist. Casually, Cal turned to see Nathan, quivering with intensity.

  “You’re going to lead them right to it,” Nathan said. His voice suggested not just outrage, but personal affront.

  “No,” Cal replied in an exaggeratedly calm voice, “I’m going to eat it.”

  An appetizing smell announced the orderly approaching with Cal’s steak. She set it down in front of him, a look of concern on her face, but did not intervene in the standoff. Nathan released his grip on the apple and walked away, but not without an angry backward glance.

  The orderly melted into the background. Cal stared for a moment, then shook his head.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he muttered, laughing a little at the craziness.

  He shrugged and cut into the meat. In the midst of all the madness, it was a comfort to see that at least the kitchen in this place understood how to prepare a steak. It was rare, cool in the center, and smelled like heaven. Red juice poured onto the place. Cal’s mouth flooded with saliva as he popped the first bite into his mouth and chewed. The wonderful, slightly iron flavor of the juicy—

  —bloody—

  —a face, hidden in a hood, turning slowly toward him, grief and regret in his face even as the blade dripped—

  Agony knifed through Cal’s temple and he dropped the fork, pressing his left palm into his eye as if to physically force the pain back. He was trembling, his breath coming in quick gasps, but he didn’t want anyone to notice.

  Moussa and Nathan had made it plain that they considered him hostile. He’d spent enough time in prison to understand those dynamics. He couldn’t afford to appear weak, not now, not in this pit of vipers, or they would destroy him.

  Cal forced his breathing to slow, and brought the pain down from unendurable to merely excruciating. Better.

  Slowly, he lowered his hand and looked around.

  A figure glad in leather and thick cloth stood near the mirrored observation wall. His clothing appeared gray in the light, but Cal knew it was dark red. The man’s hoo
ded head was bowed and arms were out to his sides, a blade protruding from each wrist.

  Slowly, he turned, fixing his piercing gaze on Cal.

  No. It’s the hallucinations—the, what did Sofia call them, the Bleeding Effect.

  Cal gritted his teeth, willing the figure to disappear—

  —and suddenly he was in his room, his tiny gray cell, and they were there. All of them. Cal knew their names: Aguilar.

  Benedicto.

  Maria, with her kohl-rimmed eyes.

  “Our own lives are nothing,” Maria whispered as she brushed around him, her face with its blue, beautiful tattoos only a few inches from Cal’s.

  “We defend mankind against the tyranny of the Templars,” Aguilar said, his voice so familiar and yet so alien. Cal’s own blue eyes blazed in Aguilar’s bearded, sun-dark face.

  “Do you swear?” demanded Benedicto, the Mentor.

  Their blades were no longer hidden, and they circled him, whispering words he did not understand, watching his fear—

  Cal blinked.

  He was indeed in his room, with no memory of how he had gotten there. But the Assassins weren’t here.

  He was alone, except for the silent, watchful eyes that were always present behind the glass.

  CHAPTER 11

  The new kid—Mr. Lynch, the orderly had called him—was having a rough time of it, Moussa thought as he watched the convulsing form being dragged away. He had some empathy for the man, having had his own experiences with the horrorfest that was the Bleeding Effect.

  He hadn’t caught Lynch’s first name, but someone else would know it. Each of them was like a part of a whole; one would hear something, another something else. That’s what a Brotherhood was.

  Moussa grinned as one of the guards approached, trying to act all casual. He’d been watching the interplay between the two inmates—they were supposed to think of themselves as “patients,” but that was bullshit—and was suspicious of it.

  “Want to sit down and play a game with me, big man?” Moussa asked genially, placing his cups on the table.