Assassin's Creed: Underworld (24 page)

Cold and damp and gripped by melancholy, the
Assassin George Westhouse shivered in the sidings of Croydon rail yard. Was it that a tired pall
hung over all of England? Or did it hang over him? There was a storm brewing, he thought. Both
literally and metaphorically.

It was February 1868, five and a half years after
the wretched events at the Metropolitan line. After that, he, Ethan Frye and The Ghost had
retired in failure: The Ghost to his hidey-hole in the Thames Tunnel, a self-imposed prison of
regret and recrimination; George to batten down the hatches in Croydon; and Ethan to busy
himself with raising the next generation of Assassin resistance – one unencumbered by the
disappointment and failure that tainted their elders. A new generation with fresh ambition and
enthusiasm. A new way of doing things.

What a shame
, George thought,
that
Ethan will never see it in action
.

Ethan had been just forty-three years old when he
died a matter of weeks ago, but he had been ill with the pleurisy for some time before that.
During many hours spent at Ethan’s bedside, George had watched his old friend wither, like
fruit on a vine.

‘Find the artefact, George,’ Ethan
had insisted. ‘Send Evie and Jacob for it. The future of London lies in their
hands now. The twins; you and Henry – you’re the only ones left
now.’

‘Hush now, Ethan,’ George said, and
leaned back in his chair to hide the tears that pricked his eyes. ‘You will be here to
lead us. You’re indomitable, Ethan. As unbreakable as one of those infernal trains that
trundle through Croydon night and day.’

‘I hope so, George, I truly hope
so.’

‘Besides, the Council has not ratified any
operations in this area. They consider us too weak.’

‘I know when we’re ready better than
any Council, and we are ready. Henry will provide. Jacob and Evie will act.’

‘Well, then you had better hurry up and get
well and inform the Council yourself then, hadn’t you?’ chided George.

‘That I had, George, that I had
…’

But Ethan had dissolved into a coughing fit so
hard that the muslin cloth he held to his mouth came away speckled with blood.

‘We were so close, George,’ he said
another time. He was even weaker now, becoming more frail by the day. ‘The artefact was
just a few feet away from me, as far away as you are now. I almost had it.’

‘You did your best.’

‘Then my best was not enough, because the
operation did not succeed, George. I ran an unsuccessful operation.’

‘There were circumstances beyond your
control.’

‘I failed The Ghost.’

‘He himself made mistakes. Whether he
accepts that I have no idea; whether his mistakes contributed to the
failure of the operation I couldn’t say either. But the fact remains that it failed.
Now we must concentrate on regrouping.’

Ethan turned his head to look at George and it
was all George could do to stop himself recoiling afresh. It was true that Ethan’s
achievements as an Assassin would never be celebrated along with those of Altaïr, Ezio or
Edward Kenway, but for all that he had been a credit to the Brotherhood, and he was a man who
even when he was downhearted exuded a thirst for life. With Ethan you always had the sense that
inside was a personality at war with itself, pushing and pulling this way and that but never at
rest, always questing forward.

Now, though, the skin that once glowed with life
was pale and drawn, the eyes that had burned with passion sunken and dull. Ethan was no longer
questing for life; he was taking the long walk towards death.

First he had suffered with the flu; then, when
that seemed to have passed, came chest pains and a constant hacking cough. When he began hacking
up blood the physician was called, who diagnosed pleurisy. Benjamin Franklin had died of
pleurisy, said the physician phlegmatically. William Wordsworth too.

Even so, the physician assured the family that
pleurisy was an infection of the chest. And so long as the patient rested there was every
possibility it would clear up by itself. Plenty of patients recovered from pleurisy.

Just not Benjamin Franklin or William Wordsworth,
that was all.

And not the Assassin Ethan Frye, it turned out.
For
each passing day the pleurisy seemed to write its fate upon his skin
more emphatically than the last, and to hear him cough, a crunching rattle disgorged from deep
within a chest that was no longer functioning as it should, was dreadful to witness. The sound
of it tore through the house. Ethan had taken a room in the eaves – ‘I’m not
to be a burden to the twins while I’m ill,’ he had said – but his cough
carried down the stairways to the lower rooms, where the twins shared their concern in bitten
lips, downcast eyes and shared glances as they took strength from one another.

In many ways the terrible story of their
father’s illness could be measured in his children’s reactions: rolled eyes when he
first got ill, as though he was exaggerating his malady in order to enjoy the benefits of being
waited on hand and foot, and then a series of increasingly worried silent exchanges when it
became terribly apparent that he was not going to recover in a matter of days or even weeks.

After that came a period when the sound of his
coughing would make them flinch and their eyes filled with tears; latterly they looked as though
they wished for it all to be over, so their father’s suffering might be at an end.

He limited their trips to his bedchamber. They
would have liked to have been by his bedside night and day, just as he had once sat with his
beloved wife Cecily. Perhaps that experience had convinced him the sickbed of a loved one was no
place to spend your days.

Sometimes, though, if he was feeling well enough,
he would summon them to his room, tell them to wipe the worried looks off their faces (because
he wasn’t bloody
well dead yet), then issue instructions on how they
were to lead a new vanguard of resistance against the Templars. He informed them he had written
seeking the Council’s approval for when it was time to send the twins into action.

Ethan knew his time was short. He knew he was
leaving this world. He was like a chess player manoeuvring his pieces ready for a final attack
that he himself would not be around to superintend. But he wanted things in place.

Perhaps it was his way of making amends.

It infuriated him that the Council refused to
give him their blessing; indeed, the Council withheld any decision on the London situation until
such time as they had news of a situation worth acting upon. Stalemate.

One evening, George visited him. As usual they
conversed for some time and then, as usual, George was lulled into sleep in the cosy warmth of
the eaves. He awoke with a start, as though some sixth sense were prodding him back into
consciousness, to find Ethan lying on his side with both hands across his chest, his eyes closed
and mouth open, a thin trail of blood running from his mouth to the sweat-soaked sheets.

With the heaviest heart imaginable George went to
the body, arranging it on the bed, pulling a sheet to beneath Ethan’s chin, and using his
handkerchief to wipe the blood from his friend’s mouth. ‘I’m sorry,
Ethan,’ he said as he worked. ‘I’m sorry for slumbering when I should have
been here to help guide you into the next world.’

He had crept quietly downstairs to find the twins
in the kitchen. Evie and Jacob had taken to wearing their Assassins’ attire, as though to
acknowledge that it was they who
would carry the torch from now on, and
they had both been wearing them that night, their cowls raised as they sat either side of the
bare kitchen table, a candle slowly guttering on the wood between them, in the same wordless
dialogue of grief that had enveloped them for weeks.

They held hands, he noticed, and regarded one
another from under their cowls, and perhaps they already knew, perhaps they had felt the same
energy that had prompted George awake. For they had turned their gaze upon him in the kitchen
doorway and in their eyes was the terrible knowledge that their father was dead.

No words were said. George simply sat with them
and then, as dawn broke, left for home to attend to the task of notifying the Council that one
of the brothers had fallen.

Condolences arrived at the house, but in
accordance with Assassin tradition the burial was an unremarkable, quiet occasion, attended by
George, Evie and Jacob alone – just three mourners and a priest who consigned Ethan to the
grave. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

For some time they seemed to exist in a state of
limbo. Until news had reached George that the Metropolitan artefact was close. He had no time to
seek the Council’s approval for an operation to retrieve it; they probably would have
demanded more detailed information anyway. And he knew exactly what Ethan’s wishes were.
His friend had imparted them to him.

Evie and Jacob were ready. They would go into
action.

And so in the Croydon rail yard belonging to
Ferris Ironworks, a darkened world of smoke-belching locomotives, clanking carriages and
complaining brakes, George met the twins for the first time since their father’s funeral.

As ever, he was struck by their looks: Jacob had
his father’s charisma, the same eyes that appeared to dance with a mix of mischief and
resolve; Evie, on the other hand, was the mirror image of her mother. If anything even more
beautiful. She had a tilted, imperious chin, freckled cheeks, exquisite, questioning eyes and a
full mouth that all too rarely split into a wide smile.

Jacob wore a top hat. Evie’s cowl lay
across her shoulders. Their clothes were free-flowing and customized in the right places: long
three-quarter-length belted coats open over discreetly armoured waistcoats and boots with
noise-proofed soles and subtle steel toe-caps. On their forearms were the gauntlet-blades with
which they were both expert (Evie even more so than Jacob, according to Ethan), their fingers
snug in hinged steel protectors that doubled as knuckledusters.

As the air crackled with the threat of the
oncoming storm, George had watched them move through the rail yards to where he crouched behind
one of the train cars. Thanks to their looks and garb you could hardly hope to
see two more striking figures. Yet their father had taught them well. Just as he himself
was a master of hiding in plain sight, so too were his offspring.

They greeted one another, sharing something
unspoken of Ethan. George had notified them by letter of the job at hand, warning them what it
would entail. Before he died, Ethan had told the twins very little about the Piece of Eden that
had been the focus of his failed mission in 1862. After all, it was not exactly a glorious
episode in the history of the Brotherhood. They knew it was a uniquely powerful object and not
to be underestimated. Beyond that was scarcely anything to be said before the job began.

It was to be their blooding.

They hunkered down. Jacob, his top hat perched at
its usual rakish angle, was the more brash. His edges were rough, his patience short, and when
he talked it was with the growling voice of the streets. Evie was the more thoughtful and
cultured of the two. An outer softness belied a steel within.

‘The iron ships from here,’ said
George, indicating the works. ‘The Templar running things is Rupert Ferris, and our target
one. Target two is Sir David Brewster, who’s got his hands on the bauble. Think you can
handle it?’

The twins were young and keen and fearless, and
maybe, thought George, turning to find that they had both climbed to the top of a carriage, they
would also be cunning.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said with
a smile, ‘the unstoppable Frye twins. See them nightly at Covent Garden.’

Evie gave him a don’t-worry look.
‘George, honestly,
I’ve studied the plans of the laboratory and
have every route covered.’

‘And I’ve got all I need right
here,’ said Jacob, engaging his blade.

He turned at the sound of a train whistle.

‘Jacob …’ said George.

‘I’ll extend your regards to
Ferris,’ he replied. He and Evie were watching the train as it trundled through the siding
towards them. They crouched on the roof of their own rail car, ready to spring forth.

‘Evie …’ said George
warningly.

‘Chat later, George, we’ve a train to
catch,’ said Evie and then the two of them made their leap, landing with all the grace and
stealth of predatory wildcats on the roof of the passing train. A wave to George and the mission
had begun.

‘May the creed guide you, you
vagrants,’ George called to them, but didn’t think they’d heard. Instead he
watched them go with a strange mixture of emotions: envy for their youth, grace and balance. And
concern that Ethan was wrong – that the twins were not yet battle-ready. Not for an
operation of this magnitude.

But most of all, hope – hope the two
incredible young Assassins could turn the tide in their favour.

‘Poor man, more afraid than ever. The years
have not been kind,’ said Evie to Jacob, shouting above the roar of the locomotive.

‘Evie Frye,’ chided Jacob,
‘where do you get it from?’

‘Same place as you, Jacob,’ she said,
and they exchanged a glance, that preternatural meeting of eyes in which they both remembered
and honoured their mother and father. The knowledge that all they had now was each other.

‘Have fun,’ said Jacob. They were
nearing the ironworks on tracks that threaded through dark industrial buildings and chimney
stacks pouring out choking smoke, and Jacob rolled his top hat from his head, collapsed it and
secreted it within his robes in one well-practised move as he raised his hood. Evie pulled her
own cowl over her head. They were ready.

‘Don’t die,’ she told her
brother, and then watched, heart in mouth despite herself, as he crouched, hands either side of
him on the train roof, fingers splayed. As the train pulled level with the ironworks and the
forbidding dark brickwork rushed towards them as the carriage leaned and the train tilted on the
rails, Jacob leapt – another perfectly executed jump that took him to a sill on the first
floor of the ironworks. A second later and he’d be inside.

She watched him recede. The
next time she heard anything of him it would be via the thump of an explosion as he escaped the
ironworks spattered with the blood of Rupert Ferris. For the time being, however, she went to
one knee, gloved hands on the roof of the carriage, wind whipping her cowl as the train cut its
way through the outskirts of Croydon and on to the shipping yard further along the line. Here,
according to the plans sent to them by George, was the laboratory where the artefact was stored;
where, providing the information was correct, Sir David Brewster was working on it. What did she
know about it? There was information gleaned from ancient scrolls, of course, but scrolls tended
to be a little ambiguous. However, her father had actually seen it in action. He had talked of
how it would glow, seeming to feed off some inner energy of the user, transferring something
dark and primal into an actual destructive energy.

‘Take that look off your face, Evie,’
he had added a little crossly. ‘This is not an object to admire or covert. It is to be
treated with the utmost caution, as a weapon of war that cannot be allowed to remain in the
hands of the enemy.’

‘Yes, Father,’ she said obediently.
But if she was honest with herself the object’s attraction outweighed its possible danger.
Yes, it was something to be feared, to be treated with respect. But even so.

The shipping yard to which the train was heading
began to loom ever larger on the immediate horizon, so she turned and crabbed along the train
roof until she came to a hatch. Fingers prised it open and moments later Evie
dropped into the carriage below. She pulled back her cowl, blew hair away from her face and
took stock of her surroundings.

She was among crates, all of them marked
S
TARRICK
I
NDUSTRIES
.

Crawford Starrick. The mere utterance of his name
had sent her father into a painful reverie. He was the Templar Grand Master, the man she and
Jacob had pledged to topple. No matter what George said. No matter what the Council were to
approve or not, the twins had decided their father’s legacy was best observed by removing
Crawford Starrick from his position; recovering the artefact, taking out his lieutenants,
disrupting his business practices – all these were steps on a path that led to the death
and dishonour of Crawford Starrick.

Just then, the door to the carriage opened, and
Evie took cover. A man entered: just a shape in the darkness, framed unsteadily in the open
door. A burly man, she thought, and the impression was confirmed when there came the flare of
tinder and he lifted a lamp to see in the gloom.

‘Where is it?’ he said over his
shoulder, addressing some unseen comrades. ‘Where’s Brewster’s
supplies?’

Now there was a name she recognized. Brewster.
She crouched in the shadows, waiting. This man would be her first. Her first live kill, and she
flexed her wrist, feeling the reassuring weight of the gauntlet mechanism along her forearm, its
individual sections moving easily and silently. She reminded herself that she was trained for
this. At the same time she recalled what her father had
always told her
– that no amount of training could prepare you for taking a man’s life.
‘Taking from him everything he ever was and everything he ever will be, to leave his
family grieving, to begin a wave of sadness and sorrow and possible revenge and recrimination
that might ripple throughout the ages.’

Her father knew that there was ready and then
there was
ready
.

And Evie was ready, but was she really
ready
?

She had to be. She had no choice.

The man was cursing his mate for a coward. Behind
a crate Evie used two hands to raise her cowl, letting the fabric settle over her head, taking
strength and comfort from the symbolism of it, and then activated her blade.

Ready now, she gave a low whistle.

‘Who’s there?’ said the
visitor, raising his lantern a little and moving into the carriage two more steps. He drew level
with Evie’s position and she held her breath, awaiting her moment. Her eyes went from her
blade to the spot just behind the guard’s ear where it would penetrate, slicing up into
the skull cavity, into the brain. Instant painless death …

But death all the same. She was on the balls of
her feet now, the heels of her boots raised off the boards of the carriage, one hand steadying
herself on the floor and her blade hand brought to bear. He was her enemy, she reminded herself.
A man who stood alongside those who planned to persecute and tyrannize any who did not share
their aims.

And possibly he did not
deserve to die. But die he would, in service to a cause that was greater than them both.

And with that thought uppermost she struck from
her hiding place behind the crate and her blade found its mark and her victim made a tiny almost
imperceptible noise, a final croak, and then she was helping him to collapse silently to the
dirty floor of the carriage.

She held him as he died, this stranger.
You
were my first
, she thought, and silently honoured him, closing his eyes.

‘It’s never personal,’ was what
Father had said. But then he’d stopped himself. ‘It’s
rarely
personal.’

She laid the man down and left him there. It
wasn’t personal.

Now
, she thought, as the train pulled
into the laboratory facility,
what I need is a diversion
. If only she could uncouple
the carriages …

Outside the carriage stood the first
strongarm’s mate. He had been dozing and she took him out easily. Father had always said
it became easier and he was right; she barely gave her next target a second thought. She
didn’t bother closing his eyes and wishing him well; she left him where he fell and moved
on up towards the locomotive. In the next carriage she pressed herself into hiding to avoid a
pair of gossiping guards.

‘How’s Sir David and Miss Thorne
getting on?’ one of them was saying.

‘She’s turned up like a bad penny,
ain’t she?’ replied his mate. ‘I’ll put five bob on things not being to
her liking.’

‘Ain’t lookin’ too good for old
Sir David then.’

Lucy Thorne.
Evie
had heard the name of course. Was she with Brewster then?

She let the guards pass then moved quickly
through the final carriage and to the coupling between the locomotive and the carriage. She
didn’t have long now; they would discover the bodies of the men she had killed, and she
was glad of her gloves as she planted her feet apart and reached for the ring of the coupling
pin. As the wind rushed and the train tracks passed beneath her feet, she gave a grunt of effort
and wrenched it free.

Smartly she stepped on to the locomotive,
watching the carriages pull away. From around her came shouts as the men of the yard wondered
why the carriages had become detached and came running to investigate. Meanwhile, she clambered
to the roof of the locomotive, trying to take stock of her surroundings as the train ground to a
halt in the yard with a screech of brakes and complaining metal. To one side of her, the water
of the Thames inlet glittered darkly, to the other was the tumult of the shipyard, with its
cranes and railways sidings and row upon row of office buildings and …

Something very interesting indeed.

Flattening herself into almost invisibility, the
first thing she saw were two figures she recognized: Sir David Brewster and Lucy Thorne. The two
of them had been surveying the sudden chaos around them before turning to continue their
progress towards a carriage and coachman stationed close to the entrance gate.

Evie jumped from the locomotive, pleased her
diversion had been so diverting, not to mention glad of the
smoke that hung
like a permanent funeral shroud over the site.
Industrialization has its benefits
, she
thought, as she followed the pair, staying in the shadows of the perimeter, getting a good look
at her quarry.

Lucy Thorne wore black. A black hat, long black
gloves and a black crinoline and bustle gown buttoned high on the throat. She was young, with
attractive looks offset by a scowl that matched her dark ensemble, and as she walked, disturbing
layers of smoke that hung like a ship’s hammocks in the dimly lit yard, it was with the
quality of a shadow. As though she were darkness repelling light.

Scuttling beside her, Sir David Brewster was
maybe three times her age, with a fretful face and long side whiskers. Older than Lucy Thorne,
he nevertheless seemed cowed, subsumed by the darkness of her. This was a man who was recognized
as the inventor of the kaleidoscope and something Evie knew only as the ‘lenticular
stereoscope’, whatever one of those was. A nervous man, or nervous now at least, overawed
by the presence of Lucy Thorne, he struggled to keep up with her, and speaking in a whining
Scottish accent he said, ‘I need two more weeks with the device.’

Angry, Lucy Thorne retorted, ‘Your
questionable practices are beginning to draw unwanted attention. You have been given more than
enough time to achieve results, Sir David.’

‘I was unaware that you expected me to
perform like a cocker spaniel.’

‘Permit me to remind you of your
obligations to the Order.’

Brewster made an exasperated
noise. ‘Miss Thorne, you ride me like a racehorse.’

As they reached the carriage, the coachman doffed
a three-cornered hat, bowed low and opened the door for Lucy Thorne, who acknowledged him with
an imperious nod as she took her seat and arranged her skirts, before leaning from the open door
to address Brewster a final time. ‘Sir David, I will return tomorrow. If you have not
unlocked the device’s secret, forget your dogs and your horses. I will leave you to the
wolves. Good day.’

And with that the Templar cultist indicated to
the coachman, who closed the door, tipped Brewster an impertinent wink and resumed his place on
the board to drive the horses and remove Lucy Thorne from the chaos of the shipyard.

As it drove off, Evie watched Brewster let out a
flabbergasted noise before his attention was drawn to a group of men nearby. Evie’s gaze
went there too, and what she saw was several guards escorting a flamboyantly attired man across
the yard, the man in custody protesting loudly. ‘I was merely promised a tour of the
premises, m’lords.’

‘Who sent you?’ demanded one of the
Templar men.

Another chimed in. ‘He’s one of
Green’s spies.’

But Brewster was already calling over to them.
‘Get that man to interrogation. Then I want him brought to the lab.’

Evie watched him still. Then her gaze went to the
sky overhead. By now the canopy was black with gathering clouds, and the air had a crackle and
tension about it that made a storm more of a certainty than ever. She could see
that Brewster thought so too; he had spun on his heel and moved over to something she
hadn’t spotted before. A metal pole fixed into the dirt of the yard. Some kind of
lightning conductor, perhaps? With another look up to the gathering clouds, Brewster broke into
a sprightly run and disappeared into a door of the building, leaving the uproar of the facility
behind him. The first drops of rain were beginning to fall; the men were still attempting to
re-couple locomotives and carriages, while simultaneously conducting an inquest into how the two
had become detached.

Evie, the agent of chaos, merely smiled as she
slipped through the door behind Brewster, and just as she did so came the first crack of thunder
and the sky was lit in a flash of blinding white light.

Once inside, she clung to the wall, staying wide
of the lamps’ illumination and engaging her blade at the same time. Her eyes moved as she
had always been taught: section by section around any given space, identifying hostiles,
pinpointing areas of vulnerability, thinking like the fully fledged Assassin she was.

However, what greeted her wasn’t quite what
she expected.