Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

Back On The Road

This time I slipped out of the animus far more easily, but the atmosphere in the room when I exited was no less tense.

"They've found us," were the first words Helen said. "We received a message from an associate who has an information source at Abstergo."

"So, what?" I said, my jaw felt stiff, the words sounded odd coming out of my mouth. "I mean, what are we going to do?"

Paul's putting our things in the van. We'll have to make a run for it, there's another safe house in Soho, hopefully, that will buy us a few hours.

"What about Nottingham?" I said.

"What about it?" Helen asked. "You can go back once we're in the new safe house."

"Well, I know the lay of the forest pretty well. I also have all this weird knowledge in my head about tunnels in the limestone. I'm sure it's probably changed a bit since the 12th century but maybe not... you know, totally."

"I don't know," Helen said.

"Come on," I pressed. "Whatever it is I find poking about in Yughi's head is likely to lead us up there anyway. We may as well take advantage of my new information if it can help us out."

"Let's take the animus down," Helen said. "We can discuss it in the car."

I think she was totally expecting Paul to side with her on driving twenty minutes over to Soho instead of five hours out to Nottinghamshire. As it happens she had made an error in judgement as Paul sided with me.

"If there's one thing for certain," he said. "Abstergo will have no way of following us there."

"How do you figure that?" Helen asked, peevishly.

"Because they've never hooked our boy up to a full animus, nor have they got one of his relative's DNA sequences in the cloud. The only person who's ever followed the adventures of Yughi Gal is Sam. The disc only shows the incidents surrounding the death of Miles Godfrey and nothing of the outlaws, the compact and the disc are allowing Sam to view the full story."

"Um, excuse me," I said. "What's the disc?"

"Oh, it's really cool," Paul said. "The precursor civilisation used to record experiences on these weird black and gold disc devices. One of the ones discovered under Alamut with the centuries dead corpse of Altair ibn L'Ahad was the basis of all the animus technology.

"So the compact animus just tries to allow access to an individual's full genetic history through the use of a disc from an individual's ancestor. It's not as powerful as Abstergo's cloud and it means you need one disc for the ancestors of each user.

"That sounds like a big limitation but it's really not because, get this, the discs can be overwritten. That means that if you don't need the data on the disc for anything you record a memory of you going to the zoo when you were twelve, slip the disc into the compact animus and blammo! You have access to your entire genetic history."

"So inside that weird box you have me hooked up to," I said. "Is a disc on which are recorded actual memories of my ancestor, of Yughi."

"Yes," Paul confirmed. "Specifically the two times that Yughi met Miles Godfrey. Those memories could be experienced by anyone we hook the compact animus up to. Only you can go further because the animus picks up the sympathetic genome and allows the disc to power the simulation whilst your genes provide the raw data."

"That's crazy," I said. "So why did one of these discs carry the assassination of Miles Godfrey?"

"They were discovered in a mass grave unearthed in Lincolnshire," Paul said. "There were a number of discs but most of them had been smashed or broken, they were useless. Only the Godfrey one was actually usable."

"So, had the discs been hidden, or disposed of in that grave?" I asked.

"No one knows," Paul shrugged. "No one even knows who it was who was buried down there, genetic screens haven't come up with anything more than that it was a man about five seven in height. Tallish for the time see, it's contemporary to the time of the Third Crusade."

"So is it Yughi?" I asked.

"Don't know, if it is none of the genetics harvested are good enough because if Abstergo had a good DNA sequence they wouldn't need you."

"I think we're being followed," Helen said. "I'm going to need you both to concentrate, so I can try to lose them."

The atmosphere in the car instantly became tense and awkward. Paul and I sat still like we'd been told, I counted in my head, I think we managed about a minute and a half.

"So, where are we going," Paul asked, his voice modulated to communicate that he was aware that he shouldn't really be speaking.

"The safe house," Helen replied, ferociously terse.

"If someone's following us isn't it a fair bet to guess that our next location is already compromised," Paul said.

"So what do you suggest I do?" Helen asked through her teeth.

"Nottingham, Derby," Paul said. "We don't even know what's there ourselves. How is anyone going to see that coming?"

"That's insane," Helen said.

"Just trying to keep us alive," Paul responded.

"Fine," Helen said, something in her voice breaking, I could tell, at that moment, that she was really scared. "If we're going to die might as well take a trip right off the reservation."

"Yeah," Paul said. "Might as well."

I settled in for what would no doubt be an interesting car journey, one way or another.