Abruptly he whirled, kicked out—and nothing was there. Cal paused, barely winded, and looked around the room. Was Aguilar gone? Then he felt a prickle at the back of his neck and turned around.
He was no longer alone. Others were coming into the room now. They were his enemies, too, but unlike the angry Assassins who had descended upon him earlier, they wore crisp white uniforms instead of hoods. This was not a hallucination. They were coming to put him back into the Animus, but he would not go quietly.
Two orderlies approached him. Adrenaline shot through Cal. He couldn’t go back there. Not again. Even the hallucinations were better than being grasped by the arm and being plunged back into a dead man’s memories. Cal darted forward, seizing the first orderly, and slammed his face into the wall. He whirled, head-butting the second, then blocked a blow from the first one, seizing his arm and flipping him over to land on his back.
Three guards now raced forward, carrying batons instead of hidden blades. Cal took down the one on his left first. He shoved his arm into the guard’s elbow and the black-clad man stumbled. Cal immediately went for the one on his right, landing a solid punch to her jaw and sending her reeling backward.
A fourth guard had entered the room, and he and the middle one managed to seize Cal’s arms, attempting to immobilize him. He would have none of it, using their grip on him as leverage to lift his legs and land a brutal kick into the midsection of the newcomer.
But the guard he’d punched had recovered, and she smiled with grim pleasure as she struck him across the face with her stick. It almost, but not quite, knocked him out. His body succumbed even as his spirit raged, and he sagged in their grasp, his world blurry as they dragged him out of the room.
They paused at the door. His head throbbing, Cal blinked, steeling himself against the pain as he raised his head to look up into a large man in a guard uniform with heavy-lidded, expressionless eyes.
“You’re up, slugger,” the man said.
No. He couldn’t do it. Abruptly Cal seized on his greatest fear, and weaponized it.
“I’m crazy,” he said through the blood that was pouring out of his mouth.
They ignored him, and began dragging him down the corridor. As fear spurted through him at the thought of again entering the body and mind of Aguilar de Nerha, an image from that long-ago day flashed into his mind: the old, battered radio, playing the Patsy Cline song “Crazy”.
Cal started to sing—or, more accurately, scream, the song.
He sang, wildly off-key, desperate to prolong the inevitable.
***
It was a simple game of poker, and it was anything but.
Nathan’s turn to deal was up, and he passed out cards with seeming calm. Ordinarily the guards were kept out of sight, behind the two-way mirrored wall. A few had come out when Lynch had appeared earlier. Now, the place was crawling with them.
Emir glanced up, then back down at his cards. “They’re putting him back in again,” he said. No one said anything. They all knew.
Moussa picked up his cards without looking at them, his eyes on the orderlies. “They’re rushing him. He ain’t ready to go back in again, not with a breakdown like the one we saw. Pioneer couldn’t even stay steady long enough to eat that nice juicy steak he ordered. That man doesn’t even know who he is yet, much less which side he’s on.”
“Then,” Nathan said, fanning his cards out, “we should stop him before he betrays us.”
The others were calmer than he was. Nathan had been brought in spoiling for a fight, ready to take a swing at anyone for looking at him wrong. He had gradually learned to exert better self-control, but not completely. Moussa had chided Nathan for his words to Lynch earlier, but the boy wasn’t sorry. Everything in Nathan screamed that the man Moussa was fond of calling the Pioneer was a threat. And sometimes it was better to be wrong and safe than right and dead.
Every night, Nathan awoke covered in sweat and absolutely terrified. Intellectually, he understood what was going on. Dr. Rikkin called it the Bleeding Effect, and suggested that, since Nathan was younger than most of the patients at the center, the effects might manifest more intensely with him.
“A man who is fifty has lived with himself for more than twice as long as you have,” she had told him in her calm, gentle voice. “He has more memories that are his own. Therefore, he has more to draw upon to remind himself of his own identity when the lines begin to blur.”
And she’d smiled, that sweet smile that always made Nathan wonder if maybe he was wrong, maybe she wasn’t entirely on the Templar side of things. And even if she was, maybe the Templars weren’t so bad.
Of course, that wasn’t really him. That was bloody Duncan Walpole, traitor, sticking his nose in where it didn’t belong.
Second cousin to Robert Walpole, Britain’s first prime minister; Duncan Walpole, born 1679, died 1715. It sickened Nathan to think that any part of that man lived on in him. Duncan Walpole was a turncoat, just like Baptiste had been. But at least the voodoo poisoner had a right to his anger. He had been born a slave, and later had felt betrayed by the Brotherhood.
By contrast, Duncan had lived an easy life. He had followed the path of a naval officer, but was an arrogant, self-centered prick who balked at taking orders. Unhappy with the navy, he had been seduced by the ideals of the Assassins. It had appealed to his better angels. But even in a Brotherhood where “everything is permitted,” the spoiled Walpole eventually grew discontent. He again challenged the older members of the Brotherhood, and nursed grievances, most of which were imaginary.
Given an assignment in the West Indies, Duncan learned everything he could about the local Assassin guild while he was there. Then, once he had obtained enough information to be valuable to them, Walpole contacted the Templars, who knew exactly how to flatter him… and pay him.
Nathan had been in and out of school because he was always picking fights. An almost stereotypical East Ender, he’d fallen in with a gang and dealt drugs for a while. The gang leaders sent him to peddle drugs near the local schools because he looked so sweet and harmless. Harmless until he lost his temper; he’d beaten one member nearly to a pulp with his bare hands.
“You’d know about such things, wouldn’t you, Nathan?” Emir said now. Once, it would have been an insult. Once, Nathan would have taken it as a challenge. Now, he knew it was an acknowledgement of what—or who—Nathan had to live with every single day.
And night.
Nathan forced himself not to shiver.
He didn’t want to be like Duncan. He wanted to be better. He wanted to be more like Moussa, or, when he was feeling particularly hopeful, like Lin or Emir. The two of them—as far as he knew—had no skeletons in their closets.
Knowing how despicable his ancestor had been was why Nathan was always so suspicious of any newcomer. Guilty until proven innocent, he’d been known to say, and let’s face it, we’re all guilty.
Nathan trusted Moussa’s judgment. More than any of them, even the level-headed Emir, he seemed in harmony with his two sets of memories. He acted like a buffoon for the benefit of the guards, but in reality, he was the sane one.
“I do know about such things,” Nathan replied calmly. His gaze flickered to one of the guards. They’re watching us like hawks. “Moussa’s right. They shouldn’t be putting him back in the Animus yet. If they’re pushing him that hard, that’s because he knows something very important. And he might decide to pick the wrong side.”
They couldn’t afford to give this newcomer the benefit of a doubt—not if, as Moussa suspected, he was going to be either the one to get them out of here, or the one to get them all killed.
Moussa met his gaze; two Assassins who had turned Templar, and who understood one another well. Moussa looked back down at his cards and grunted.
“Well, will you look at that,” he said, and placed down four cards. There were two black aces and two black eights. “Dead man’s hand.”
Four cards. Four guardians of the Apple.<
br />
“What about the fifth card?” asked Nathan.
“Fifth card was a bullet to the brain,” Moussa said.
They were all in agreement.
***
Cal’s broken howling of song lyrics reached Sofia’s ears before the man himself did, and she had to force herself not to wince in empathy. It was too soon—far too soon—to put him back in.
She had heard that tone of despair and terror in the voices of previous subjects. Sometimes, the essence of who that person truly was vanished shortly after Sofia heard that tone… and that person never returned.
Dammit.
“Set the date for the sixth,” Sofia told Alex.
Cal’s voice, high-pitched and desperate, continued to shriek ghoulishly appropriate lyrics.
Sofia’s hands clenched. “If his condition deteriorates…” She took a deep breath. “… pull him out.”
Alex turned to her, his high brow furrowing. “But your father—” he began. Sofia cut him off.
“I don’t care what my father said,” she murmured, acutely aware that the man under discussion was watching everything from his office window. She strode out onto the floor, and looked as the arm, gripping Cal firmly about his waist, raised him over her head.
Cal all but sobbed now, his face a rictus of a smile, as he wondered along with Patsy Cline what he had done.
He looked terrible. He was bloody from being “subdued” in his room. His eyes were wild, he was sweating, and his chest heaved as he hyperventilated. Sofia’s own chest ached in sympathy. Damn her father, anyway; this should not be happening.
Once, as a little girl, she had sat for hours outside her childhood home, patient as the hills, sunflower seeds cupped in her tiny hand, waiting for squirrels or chipmunks to accept her offering. Her body grew stiff from sitting, and one of her feet fell asleep. It didn’t matter.
It was all worth it when one small, bright-eyed creature poked its nose out from around a tree. With jerky movements, ready to flee, the chipmunk made an indirect approach. It had just placed its tiny, clawed forepaws on her thumb, staring up at her with big eyes, its heart pounding so fast she could see the motion through the fur on its white chest, when her father had emerged, shouting at the chipmunk to go away. It had vanished in a brown blur. The next day, and the next, despite her father’s orders, she had sat outside. Waiting.
It had never returned.
Cal bore more resemblance to a wolf than a chipmunk, but he, too, was wary. And he, too, had started to trust her, she believed. But instead of simply chasing him away, her father had issued instructions that Cal be beaten into submission, hauled forth, and shoved into a machine he barely understood and was obviously terrified of.
It was cruel, it was wrong, and in a bitter irony she knew it was going to, in the end, set them back, perhaps irrecoverably, while her father was so keen on getting results instantly.
Sofia had one shot at protecting Cal from damage, right here, right now, and she had to make it count.
“Cal,” she said, her voice strong and commanding. “Listen to me.”
He only sang… shouted… louder, trying to drown her out. Trying to put up some kind—any kind—of barrier to protect who he was before experiencing what he was going to be forced to endure. The irony, the danger, was that the only way for his mind to be safe was if he completely embraced what was going to happen. If he did not try to hold it at arm’s length, or drown it out by screaming louder than the memory.
“Listen to me!” she shouted. “You have to concentrate! You have to focus on the memories.” Was she getting through? Sofia couldn’t tell. She pressed on. “You have to stay with Aguilar.”
The name caught his attention, and Cal looked down, blinking, trying to focus, still madly singing. Except it wasn’t madness—it was a fierce bid to keep a grip on sanity.
Sofia had studied this man intently. She did, as she had told him openly, know everything about him. And the man suspended above her, panting and struggling not to shatter, reminded her of the little boy in the old Polaroids so strongly it hurt.
What was the line from Shakespeare? she thought distractedly. “I must be cruel, only to be kind.”
She had to drum it into him. He would listen, do as she said—or he would become like so many others before him, a body with a shattered brain, caught eternally between the past and the present.
Sofia would not let that happen.
Not to Cal.
She repeated the command. “Cal… you have to stay with Aguilar.”
There was nothing in this world that he wanted less, she could tell. But she could also tell that he heard her.
And then—he was in.
CHAPTER 13
The belowground holding area was hot and stifling. Dust wafted in air that reeked of sweat, blood, urine, and feces. Aguilar, Maria, and Benedicto were not alone in their captivity; over a dozen other prisoners joined them. There had been more, a few hours ago. Guards had come for them, a few at a time, marching them out and then locking the metal gate behind them. No one, of course, ever returned.
Aguilar knew what the Assassins’ crime had been. He neither knew nor cared what the other poor wretches had done to earn a fate such as that which awaited them. Some wept quietly, others sobbed, rackingly and loudly, begging for mercy. Still others sat with blank expressions, as if completely unaware of their present circumstances.
All were in various states of agony and exhaustion, and were securely chained with their backs to the cold stone walls, their arms cuffed at the waist and linked to rings a few feet over their heads. Movement was limited, but possible, and while the pose was extremely uncomfortable, it was not in itself an extra torment.
The three Assassins had been the last ones brought in a few days ago. They were the only ones left of their Brotherhood; all the others had been killed in the attempted rescue of Prince Ahmed.
Maria and Aguilar had been shackled beside one another. Their proximity offered them no comfort. Aguilar was furious with himself. He and Maria had come so close to escaping with the boy. But Ojeda had hauled him up by his own grappling rope, and Aguilar had been forced to watch the boy be handed right back to his captors.
What was a thousand times worse was discovering that Maria had not been able to elude the Templars. He was resigned to his own fate, as he had been ever since his family had perished at the hands of the massive, implacable Ojeda, and he had joined the Brotherhood to avenge them.
If only Maria had escaped.
They had fallen silent hours ago, and now she stared ahead, her eyes focusing on nothing. Then, she spoke.
“Soon they will march on Granada.”
“Sultan Muhammad is weak,” Aguilar replied. His mouth was as dry as the sun-baked earth and his voice was a raspy croak. The ever-compassionate Templars had reasoned that their prisoners would be dead soon, and what did a corpse need with water?
“He’ll surrender the Apple and betray the Creed for the prince’s life. He loves his son.”
She had turned to look at him while he spoke, her chains clanking soft. Now, she gazed him with that blazing intensity that was as much a part of her as her hands or her voice.
“Love makes us weak,” she said, her voice shaking ever so slightly.
Aguilar couldn’t tear his gaze from her. He had not been able to, really, since the first time they had met. He shifted position so that his whole body turned to hers, and ignored the pain his battered frame expressed at the moment. There was so much he wanted to say that had remained unsaid. But in the end, the words were not needed. She knew—and so did he.
Instead, he found different words coming to his lips. There was only one thing to say, at this moment. Maria knew it, too. The Templars had taken everything from them. There was only one thing left that they couldn’t take, no matter what they did to their bodies.
She spoke at the same time, together with him in this as they had been in so many things before the sun had dawned on their final day.
In unison, they repeated the vows each had made, separately, upon their initiation.
“I would gladly sacrifice myself and everyone I care for, so that the Creed lived on.”
Her eyes were wide, unblinking, and he could see the pulse in her throat even in the dim light that filtered through holes above. Aguilar’s own heart leaped even now to see the passion in her eyes; she lived every moment, every breath, with that passion, and now savored it more than ever.
Aguilar leaned forward, straining against the chains to reach her one last time. She did the same, but the Templars, it seemed, had been unkind unintentionally, for once. The chains were but an inch too short. Maria and Aguilar would not even be allowed a final kiss, before they tasted that of the heretic’s fire.
They heard the metal door open, the tramp of boots. The red-cloaks were unlocking the prisoners’ chains. It would not be long, now.
Bound at throat, wrists, and feet, they were hauled up. Aguilar bit back against the hiss of pain as his body was forced into movement after being obliged to be still for so long. Side by side, as they ever had been, Aguilar and Maria faced the door.
“When I die today,” she said, her voice taut but strong, “do not waste your tears.”
He wouldn’t. Simple tears would never do this remarkable woman even a shadow of justice. The only drops that he could shed that would properly mourn her would be those of his own blood.
They were marched upward along a slanting corridor, up to the sunlight and the heat and the dust, straight into a carnival of insanity.
Aguilar’s head was laid bare for the sun’s harsh rays to beat upon, as was Maria’s, revealing rows of braids. All three of the Assassins’ hoods had been pulled down, robbing them of any mystery or hint of anonymity. The only hoods worn were those of the executioners, who stepped to either side of them—two muscular men, whose faces were hidden by black cloth.
***
Cal blinked. He could see both the crowd clustered around him, and the lab assistants at their stations. And, of course, the angel’s face, a pale oval of both aloofness and concern. Superimposed on both these images was a memory, short and sharp, of sitting on the floor in his cell, sketching, sketching like a man possessed; the crude charcoal drawing of a large, broad-chested man with a black hood—
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