Assassin's Creed: The Official Movie Novelization

by Christie Golden

  She had known he despised the Assassins. They had taken her mother; she, too, had grown up abhorring their Brotherhood. She never wanted another family to suffer as her family had—or as Cal’s family had.

  It was strange, how the child of Templars and the child of Assassins had so much suffering in common.

  Perhaps more than Sofia had ever realized.

  Sofia had longed to end that suffering. Been desperate to end it. So desperate that she hadn’t seen—or had refused to see—what had been right in front of her for her entire life.

  “We… I… did this to save lives,” she whispered, so choked by the horror of the revelation she could barely speak.

  “Not everything deserves to live,” her father said. She flinched, thinking of the last Assassin face she had seen.

  He glanced at his watch and headed for the door. He paused and quirked an eyebrow when she didn’t follow.

  In a daze, she forced herself to move, forced herself to walk beside him as they went down the hall. Robed Templars, some with their hoods up, most with them down, brushed past her.

  She tried to work through it, unable to quite understand how twisted her dream had become.

  “So my program….”

  “Has brought order to society for the first time,” her father said, completing her sentence for her in a way she never would have done. “We are witnessing the birth of a golden era.”

  Bought with blood of untold millions. Nothing good can come of such a birth.

  The guilt was so profound Sofia almost stumbled. “I’m accountable for this.”

  “You’ve already been accounted for. Our work belongs to the Elders. This is their finest hour.”

  Sofia couldn’t believe it. Had he actually misunderstood her? Or was this yet another dismissal?

  I’ve been so stupid, she thought. So very blind.

  “You lied to me.” It wasn’t an angry retort, flung by a rebellious teenager against a controlling parent. It was the simple truth.

  He had lied—not just about how her decades of passionate research would be utilized, but about everything. About what it meant to be an Assassin. And what it meant to be a Templar.

  There was the faintest hint of softening in his patrician face as he gazed down at her. His voice was kinder than she had heard it in years, but the words were sharper than an Assassin’s hidden blades.

  “I’ve always known that in your heart, you were a scientist first, a Templar second.”

  And for him, that justified every single thing he had done to her since his wife and her mother had been taken from them both.

  Sofia stared up at him, sick. “Your recent work has impressed us much,” he said, “but it has confirmed our belief that mankind cannot be redeemed.”

  And there it was.

  “So.” Her voice was ice cold and steel hard. “You’ve thought of everything.”

  “Not quite. My speech… it could do with one of your elegant openings.”

  For a moment, she simply stared, aghast that he was occupied with something so trivial when they were discussing the absolute elimination of not just the Assassins, but of free will itself.

  Then she understood. He wanted her with him.

  Not just as an asset; he already had that, he could—and had—used her and her brilliance as it suited him. He didn’t need that. He didn’t need her editorial skills, her “elegant words.”

  The comment was an olive branch. Alan Rikkin wanted his little girl truly on his side. As an ally, a believer.

  She recalled his comment to her a few days ago. Do I look old to you? No one lived forever, not even Grand Masters, and he wanted his only child beside him to carry on his legacy with a willing heart.

  He had never been a demonstrative father, and whatever warmth and paternal affection had once existed had all but vanished when her mother gasped out her last breath.

  This was how he showed regard. This was how he showed love.

  But he had shown her something else tonight as well; had been showing her something else time after time after time. It had taken his endorsement of genocide for her to fully grasp the depths of Alan Rikkin’s inhumanity. He was now offering what he could, and she could see it in the slight look of wary hope on his face.

  But it was much too little, and far, far too late.

  She had the perfect eloquent opening, spoken by the perfect person. Sofia looked her father full in the face and quoted, “‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’”

  A muscle twitched in his cheek. That was all.

  “Not sure I could make that work.”

  A voice floated to them through the closed doors, interrupting the spell that held them captive in their dysfunctional, intimate connection. “It is with great pleasure tonight that I introduce the architect of our ancient Order’s future: Please welcome Grand Master Templar, and CEO of Abstergo Industries and Foundation—Doctor Alan Rikkin!”

  The doors swung open and light streamed into the dim corridor. Her father did not give her another glance, but turned and strode in, walking to the podium as if nothing, absolutely nothing, had occurred while he was waiting outside to be introduced.

  CHAPTER 26

  Thunderous applause and cheers filled the room, issuing from nearly two thousand Templar throats. The spotlights followed him as he strode to the podium as if he were a rock star. Sofia supposed he was.

  Her father’s pleasant voice flowed out as the crowd’s cheering died down and they leaned in, eager for his words.

  “For centuries,” Rikkin said, “we have been at war with an enemy who believes that individual needs are more important than the peace of mankind. With the recovery of the Apple, the time is upon us when we may eliminate the Assassin threat forever.”

  More applause. More excitement. Sofia had thought she could not feel more wretched, but now, she realized that what she despised in her father’s attitude was not the exception among the Templars. It was the rule.

  “We are now in possession of a genetic roadmap to humanity’s instincts….”

  Sofia squinted against the light, suddenly feeling nauseous. It was too harsh, too white; she felt exposed and vulnerable. Like a wounded animal, all she wanted was to seek darkness, stillness, and solitude. To lick her wounds and perhaps, some day, recover, if such a thing were even possible.

  “Any impulse towards independence, resistance, or rebellion, will be crushed. Any predisposition that might oppose our march of progress can now be eradicated,” Rikkin went on.

  Sofia went out into the main entrance area, the droning voice of her father and the click of her heels on the floor the only sounds. Up ahead, against the stained glass, movement caught her eye. Sofia thought it was another Templar in his traditional robes; perhaps a latecomer.

  Then she realized that the shape did not move like a Templar.

  Her father’s speech of hatred and genocide couched in comfortable platitudes fluttered to the floor.

  Sofia froze in her tracks as he approached her. She couldn’t see his face beneath the cowl of the hood, but she didn’t need to. She had watched him move, had learned to recognize the lithe, rhythmic flow of his limbs, like a big cat. She had seen it in the Animus Room. And she was seeing it here, now, in a place where it was the least likely—and those most dangerous—to be.

  She knew she ought to be terrified to see him. This was a man she had captured and imprisoned, to whom she had exposed all manner of torment. But all that was going through her mind was how unspeakably relieved she was that he had survived.

  He stopped three feet away. Now, she could see him; see the blonde-red growth of beard on his strong jaw, his unblinking eyes that, even as a prisoner helpless before her, always seemed to stare straight into her.

  Sofia was having trouble breathing. From fear, grief, or desire, or all of the emotions striking at once in a heart that had been guarded against them since earliest childhood; she wasn’t sure.

  There were a thousand things she
wanted to say to him. What came out was: “All I have to do is shout.”

  She could not tell if it was a threat or a warning. Once, everything had been so clear, so straightforward in her life. So orderly.

  And this man and all he had taught her—about himself, about the Assassins, about Sofia Rikkin—plunged everything into unknowable, beautiful, terrifying chaos.

  Still, she did not shout. And he knew she wouldn’t. He trusted her, despite everything.

  Cal’s eyes were full of what looked like sympathy. He should hate her, but he didn’t. He spoke, softly, as he always did.

  “I’m here to help you. And you’re here to help me.”

  Sofia flinched. Tears stung her eyes, but she refused to let them spill. Once, she had said those words to him. Once, she had meant them.

  “I can’t help you anymore.” Not him, not humanity… she couldn’t even help herself.

  “What about those great plans? Cure violence. Combat aggression.” Was he making fun of her? Tormenting her, trying to shame her? No. That was not Cal’s way. That was her father’s way.

  “That’s not going to happen.” Sofia’s voice and heart both broke at the truth and despair in the words.

  He continued to regard her steadily, almost sadly. Then, he stepped closer, closing the distance between them. Her heart leaped in her chest. Again, she could not name the emotion. She had been disconnected from them for too long. Was he going to kiss her—or kill her?

  And which did she want him to do?

  But he did nothing. He did not even touch her. “You started this, Sofie. You don’t get to walk away.”

  How did he know? How did he know that was the nickname her mother had given her? Wildly, she again thought of the woman who looked exactly like her, wearing an Assassin’s hood.

  What are we to each other, Cal?

  “We both know what happens next,” he whispered, adding, echoing her father’s words, “Not everything deserves to live.”

  And she did. She knew exactly what he would do, and why. He would be justified in it. The Assassins did not deserve the fate about which her father pontificated in the next room to a gleeful, unnaturally detached audience. Cal did not deserve to have been abandoned like an old shirt that no longer fit. She could not blame him for wanting revenge—but yet, his expression was not that of a man obsessed and hungering for vengeance.

  Callum Lynch wanted something quite different. He wanted justice—something that, somehow, the Assassins, thralls to their emotions in a way the Templars found so repugnant, understood better than their age-old enemy.

  Her father. His contempt, his casual dismissal of millions of lives. Alan Rikkin could die a thousand times, and it would still not be justice for that.

  She and Cal had been far too similar despite their differences not to have sensed a connection when had first arrived. Like her father, Cal wanted Sofia with him. But he wanted her for all the things her father and the Templar Order he represented would desire to see crushed in Sofia’s spirit. Her fire, her curiosity, her compassion.

  “I can’t do this,” she whispered. Something inside her shattered at the words. I have been broken all my life. I can live with being a little more broken.

  Cal’s gaze remained kind, as his eyes flickered down to her lips and then back up to her eyes.

  “Yes… you can.” Slowly, slowly, he leaned forward.

  Sofia closed her eyes.

  Cal did not smell of cologne and starch and fine wool suits, as her father did. He smelled of sweat, and leather, and the cleanliness of the evening’s rain. And for a moment, Sofia wanted nothing more than to run away from the Templars, and their Order, and their lies; from her father, who embodied the very worst of them. To find out who the woman was who had gazed at her, surrounded by images of Assassins, at the base of a broken Animus.

  But that gulf was too wide too cross. Not even an Assassin’s Leap could clear it. Her father was a monster; but he was her father, the only one Sofia had. Her Order was horrifyingly wrong; but it was all she had known.

  Cal sensed it, moving past her, silent but for a faint rustle of fabric, and she was left alone, shaking, and more lost than ever.

  Sofia tried to calm herself, to breathe deeply. Her father’s voice floated out to her.

  “It is not to ourselves but to the future that we must give glory. A future purged of the Assassin’s Creed.”

  Purged. The same word he had used when he had forsaken the Foundation facility, and instructed the guards there to kill the prisoners—the patients—in cold blood. Sofia blinked, feeling dazed, drugged, as if she were swimming toward wakefulness out of the drugged sleep of grief and disillusionment and shattered dreams almost too great to be borne. Still she could not move as the cheering continued.

  Her father had taught her chess when she was young. The game did not call to her with the same tug as did probing the mysteries of science, so she had not played in years. But a German term floated back to her now: Zugzwang. The direct translation was “compulsion to move.” It described a situation where a player was compelled to move, even though a move would put them at a disadvantage. Sofia now was compelled to move—to either warn her father, or choose to remain silent and let what would, unfold.

  Assassin… or Templar.

  The tears that had threatened all evening finally spilled down her flushed cheeks. As they slipped down, she made no effort to stop them, and was not even sure why—or for whom—she wept.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” her father said, and she had heard that tone in his voice before—the grandeur of it, the booming resonance tinged just so with excitement—“I give you… the Apple!”

  The crowd exploded. Sofia had never heard so reserved an audience give vent to so furious, so thrilled, an expression of approval.

  Still she stood as if she was carved of the same stone as the building. She couldn’t move to join Cal. She couldn’t move to stop him.

  And then the screaming started.

  Time slowed to a bizarre crawl, the sounds of panic about her muffled and distant. She did not scream; there was nothing to be gained by it. Templars shoved past her in their maddened crush to escape, their glee at the thought of killing Assassins in a craven fashion completely erased by the terror caused by a single Assassin boldly striking in their very midst.

  She moved, still dazed, into the auditorium, against the flood of fleeing, hooded Templars, their robes flapping as they stampeded toward safety, shoving past Sofia. She felt one of them brush her arm, smelled sweat and leather, and then he was gone.

  He could have killed indiscriminately, taken down several others of the ancient enemy, but he had come only for one man.

  And one thing.

  Sofia ascended the stage, now empty of everything save the corpse of her father. His killer was skilled, and had known exactly how to cut so that death would be as swift as possible. It was more mercy, more restraint, than Rikkin himself had ever displayed.

  Blood was still flowing, forming a puddle beneath her father’s cooling body. Sofia’s vision was blurred by tears, but her gaze traveled from his face to his right hand.

  The Apple was gone. In its place, her father’s dead hand cupped a small green apple.

  Zugzwang.

  Something snapped inside Sofia.

  “I did this,” she said. It was not brow-beating. It was the simple truth. She had been complicit, even willing, in every inexorable step that had led to this moment, with her father bleeding out on the blue carpet of the auditorium. She had burned to impress this man, to win his love with her intelligence and her discoveries. She had pushed to locate the Apple for him, and had succeeded. She had been too weak to defy her father when he had revealed his true nature to her.

  And she had failed to warn him when she knew an Assassin was coming for him.

  “I will retrieve the Apple for the Elders,” she heard herself saying as McGowen stepped beside her. She couldn’t tear her eyes from the sight before her; not her fa
ther’s dead face, or surprised eyes, but the apple he held.

  It had not been necessary. It had been a message to the Templars… one Cal had known Sofia would likely be the first to discover.

  Whatever Rikkin had done in the past, he was her father—the only parent she had. She was an orphan, now. Cal had taken not just the man as he was in that moment when he died, but all that Alan Rikkin might possibly ever become. He had taken away any chance Sofia might have for closeness, for understanding, for respect for the man whose DNA flowed through her. There would be no chance, either, for her to question her father about the Assassin who looked so very like his daughter.

  Callum Lynch had ended Rikkin’s present, and his future had disappeared along with it, vanishing like one of the holographic images in an Animus simulation.

  And that, his daughter could not forgive.

  “Lynch,” she said, “I want for me.”

  Sofia felt a prickle along her spine. Others were watching her. The tears presently flooding her eyes spilled over onto her ashen face, but no more were coming. Her grief was slowing, congealing, turning cold, like her father’s spilled blood. She turned slowly, knowing what—who—she would see.

  Ellen Kaye stood, gazing down at Sofia. With her stood several of the Elders. Kaye’s hands were clasped calmly in front of her. Sofia thought about the day when the older woman had stood beside her as they regarded Rikkin gazing down at the Apple.

  Your time will come, child.

  “It is not to ourselves, but to the future, that we must give glory,” Kaye said.

  ***

  No one stopped Sofia as she moved through the crowd, with McGowen glowering at anyone who might try.

  Outside, the world still went on as usual. It did not know, yet, how enormously it had changed. But it would. Soon.

  Sofia heard the wail of approaching sirens and steeled herself. There would be much to do, going forward. Everyone would be questioned, the incident examined. A plausible story would be fabricated and released to the press about the tragic demise of CEO Alan Rikkin.