Chapter Text
I ah… I don't know how to start this. But I figure I should, should make a record, keep track of – of what's happened and what I know. Nothing makes sense, so, I should try to, to… I don't know. I should probably be writing this down, it'd be a lot more orderly and stuff, but I've never been much of a writer. Blank page syndrome, all the way. Speaking's easier, I'm… good at that, at least. Or not. Well, I can do it, anyway. That's more than I can do with writing.
Shit, this is… already turning into a mess. Cut – cut this part out, I guess, if this ever ends up as a… whatever. I'm going to start over, I have a bunch of notes here, shit I should cover – shouldn't be swearing, probably, but it's kind of warranted here. Anyway, notes, I'll uh, I'll go through those. And start over. Uh, But here, whoever, whenever, this ends up as...
Okay. My name is Desmond Miles and as far as I know, as far as I remember, I am twenty five years old. Born March 13, 1987. Don't have a social security number or ID, I don't even have a birth certificate or anything, so I don't have anything to verify this, but that's what I was told, so that's what I'm going with. That's how it is when you're perpetually on the run from everyone. But that's the baseline, Desmond Miles, born March 13, 1987, twenty five years of age.
Except today it's 2018, so, uh, I should be thirty – thirty one. Shit, yeah, that's wild to think about. Except, I'm not, I'm not thirty, I don't…
I've already messed this up, I should start over again. Start with the date, with, "Today is date so and so, I am in place so and so," or something like that, make it an official log, or some such. That'd be clearer. Like I'm a fucking star ship captain.
(quiet laughter)
This is so fucking insane…
Okay, okay, fuck. Starting over again.
Today is the 13th of June, 2018, and I am in New York – staying at a hotel, under a false name, obviously. The people didn't ask too many questions, they just accepted my money. They're… shell shocked, I think they were just glad to have something to… to concentrate on. Work, giving people something else to think about than the… the thing, whatever it was. The Snap.
Fuck, there is just so much to cover, I don't know how to start this. I don't know how to even – shit…
I'm, I'm going to get a glass of something strong from the bar, have a think, and then, then I'm going to start again. Yeah, I'll just...
(click)
14th of June, 2018, in New York. Desmond Miles, recording.
That's, that's how I am going to start. Yeah. Well, maybe without the name part, I figure you can tell, whoever… is listening.
I'm going to start from the beginning – from what I know, from my perspective – what I knew, waking up. Which was now… four days ago. Okay, so.
The last thing I remember was… the Eye, the Grand Temple. Walking up to the pedestal, sending my dad away, my – I guess my teammates. Shaun and Rebecca. I told them all to leave, thinking – knowing, maybe, that it would be dangerous. I told them to leave, and they left and then I was alone and… I touch the Eye. I – there is no way to describe what it felt like, I can't – I've tried, but… shit. Anyway, I touched it and then, maybe – I don't know. I died? Ceased? Everything went black – or, just, stopped. Maybe I just went out, like, poof, blown away like a candle flame. Kind of felt like that. Anyway, I remember that, and that happened on the 21st of December, 2012.
And obviously what I did, it worked. I checked some sites online – the hotel has a computer in the lobby customers can use, it's handy, and so much faster than I remember stuff being. Anyway, I checked it out on… on fucking Wikipedia – the whole thing has a Wikipedia page. Shaun must be – anyway. The 2012 Solar Maximum, it's titled – all about the solar event that took place, how the northern lights were visible all over the globe, and how satellites were damaged. No one died, though, so that's… that's cool.
Since then a lot of shit has happened, which I missed out on, obviously, let's skip that, and start with… with what they're calling the Snap, on the news. The Snap, which was just… four days ago, apparently.
So, the last thing I remember is being blown away by the Eye and then I'm… back. At the Grand Temple. In almost complete pitch black. And it was empty – no computers, the Animus was gone, just some wires and the scaffolding dad and Shaun set up on the entryway, that was still there, but everything else was stripped away.
And, you have to see this from my point of view – to me it was like no time had passed, right? So I went about calling for dad and Shaun and Rebecca, but it was just me, no one else there, nothing else there. No cars in the front – some old signs of activity, but nothing much. It was… kind of scary, and disheartening. Like, if they'd just packed up and not even waited to see what would actually happen, like they just left, you know?
The track from the Grand Temple to Turin is two and a half hours, if you run half of it. I did, and, uh… I, there's no…
It's a small town, Turin. There were just a couple hundred citizens, nothing much going on. Just, fields and hills, quiet little town – we went undercover as hikers, when we passed through, on a road trip to hike to the most remote places. Shaun and Rebecca played hipsters, saying that they didn't want to go to places people put on instagram, stuff like that. The people thought we were nuts, but they didn't mind us much. Quiet place, all told.
Not so anymore. It was chaos. Everyone was running around, shouting, looking for people – it almost sounded like there'd been, I don't know, a mass kidnapping spree? Just, everywhere I looked people were shouting for other people, calling, "Have you seen my husband", or "Have you seen my daughter", stuff like that. It was…
I stopped one woman to ask her what happened, and she told me – she told me… her son had just… turned to dust and broken apart in front of her. She thought it was a trick, one of his silly youtube videos, but then other people started shouting, everyone was shouting, a lot of people were crying – there was a car which had crashed into the side of a building, stuff like that.
I – I tried to help, I mean, what else can you do, when so many people are crying? I did what I could, I looked for lost people with their loved ones, I shouted, called – eventually climbed a telephone pole for Eagle Vision. Didn't help much. I didn't get it, it looked like half of the people had just disappeared, and – I feared…
I mean, it's natural, isn't it? As far as I knew, I just used the Eye – so I thought, I did this. Or the Eye did it. Somehow, using the Eye used up people, wasted them away as fuel or something – Juno said something like that, before the end, she said… people's belief had power, which the Pieces of Eden could manifest. So maybe the Eye did something similar, and worse. Fuck, it was, it was a really, really scary thought, I was panicking, and there was no sign of dad or Rebecca or Shaun…
And then I saw a newspaper, then the news came on, and everyone gathered to listen and, and we heard…
A shaking voice, a young TV host who looked like she'd been crying, told us this. "We have reports from Wakanda – an… an alien named Thanos reportedly used some – some sort of alien artefact to disappear… fifty percent of the total life forms in the universe."
What…
What do you even…
How are you supposed to take that? Alien? Thanos? Alien artefact? Fifty percent of all life? What?
Then the news really started – they reported TV hosts having disappeared in front of their colleagues, and then there were actual videos, people captured on footage, as they ceased to be. First one or two videos, I almost didn't believe then – but then, then there were more, and more and more. More reports, more news, witness accounts, government officials being reported vanished, state of emergency being declared…
That's… that's when I started figuring out, things – that I wasn't… I wasn't where I left off.
Yeah.
(click)
14th of June, 2018, New York.
I had to take a break, get my thoughts in order. So much… there's just so much.
On a completely unrelated side note, I miss smoking – I miss the convenient pauses for thinking having a cigarette gives you. I mean, I stopped for a reason and didn't even do it for that long, but it was, like… a handy thing, excuse, to not talk for a moment, get your thoughts in order.
The hell am I even talking about? This has nothing to do with anything.
Anyway, back to the – the thing. The Snap and me realising I wasn't where I was. When I was.
The newspapers confirmed, the news reports, it's hard to misinterpret all the channels going, "On the 10th of June, approximately 3 billion people disappeared from the face of the Earth," and all that. And you'd think my life was already weird enough that it wouldn't be that hard of a sell – I mean, I've met gods, I've talked through times, I have 3 ancestors, 4 if you count Haytham, rattling around in my brain, I… You'd think I was full up on weird stuff. But this was still hard to buy, hard to…
It took beers with some of the guys in Turin. Like, what do you do when half of your population goes poof and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it? How do you even begin to mourn something like that? I have no idea, but for several people in Turin the answer was beer and other alcoholic beverages. I think I might've made drinks, I… it got fuzzy towards the end of the night. The news just kept on coming, this politician, this celebrity, this humanitarian personage, this Nobel prize laureate…
All that without even getting to the damn… superheroes. Hell, while I've been wherever, superheroes became a thing. I'm still half certain I've somehow stumbled into an alternate reality.
That was the first night I tried to get a hold of Assassins. Got my hands on a laptop, some young kid vanished and his parents brought it out, to have someone do internet research – I ended up being the guy, and… later, I used it to contact Erudito. Not, not very secure, but i couldn't think of anything else to do.
I got in touch with someone called the Bishop. They didn't believe me about who I was, but they told me they knew who I was pretending to be, all that – didn't confirm or deny anything. Told me to get to New York, that someone would meet me there when… when there was time. Which I get, so much stuff going on, and if what happened in Turin really happened everywhere, then the Assassins – there must've been some of them who got… got Vanished, I guess.
Shit.
So, that's what I'm doing right now, I'm waiting for someone to come to me. Bishop told me not to contact Hephaestus, not take any risks. So, I'm being a good boy. Research on actual world events only – everyone's doing it, so it's not so risky, right? The Snap already has millions of search results, and the Avengers is trending on twitter, so…
Fuck, I hope I see someone from the Brotherhood soon, I really… really need someone to put this all into context and tell me what's really been going on since I… yeah.
In better news, you can get really good, really expensive food at 50%, even 70% off. Half the amount of customers, you know, all perishables are going to be perishing whether people buy them or not. Kind of weird to be eating lobster in what's like half of an apocalypse, but damn. Need something good in the middle of all of this, you know? Also got some really good wine at a quarter of the usual cost. I'm dining like a king tonight, just because I can, just because… just because.
I'm not sure it's dawning on people that half the population doesn't only mean half the customers – but half the service industry too. Trucks aren't even running right now, factories all over the world are stalled – what happens to the economy when not only the demand but also the supply is messed up? It's going to be a… terrible year, if this sticks. And it looks like it's sticking.
Altaïr, Ezio and Connor didn't really prepare me for this, huh.
15th of June, 2018, New York.
So, superheroes. How about that.
I've been looking into them, and, damn, a lot can happen in six years. Iron Man, Captain America? That's a hefty title if I've ever heard one. Hulk, who's like… a science experiment gone wrong or something? Sounds like something Abstergo would be into. A god from another world? While I've been under, it was like the whole world got blown open, like suddenly… suddenly everything just…
I don't know how to put it. I look at all the stuff that's happened – the Invasion in New York, which was fucking wild to read about. The thing with, what was it, SHIELD? That Mandarin terrorist, whatever that was – Ultron? And superheroes fighting each other? It's like while I wasn't looking there was an explosion of stuff, or like, some door was opened and stuff just started spilling out.
I have a weird feeling about all of it. It's like… some barrier's been broken, I don't know. Still not sure if this is actually the same reality I left, either. I mean, sure, I read the Captain America comic books when I was younger too, my first sneaky stolen glimpse into the normal entertainment for kids, but… shit.
Gods from other worlds, that's kind of… that's what I keep getting hung up on the most. Thor, Loki, Odin? Norse mythological pantheon. According to their Wikipedia page, the Asgardians are another species who visited and maybe lived on Earth thousands of years ago. They live for thousands of years, have science indistinguishable from magic, and apparently Thor really controls lightning and can fly, assisted by, of all things, a magical hammer.
Sounds a bit familiar, is all. Sounds a bit worrisome. Thor's a good guy, according to his pages, he fought in the New York thing and everything, but still… big guy, supposedly God of Thunder and all… I don't know.
I'm eating pizza and watching the confirmed death count go up by the moment. 5 days in, and everything is still sort of stalled. Planes are grounded, half of the world governments have lost their respective leaders, it looks like there will be trouble in the Middle East over it – everyone is looking for someone to blame… Most are trying to blame the Avengers, but it's kind of tough. The few that are around – Steve Rogers, who is somehow problematic, Natasha Romanoff, who is… also a bit problematic apparently but okay, and James Rhodes, who is… I completely forgot. Another superhero. There's so many, I can't keep track of them.
Anyway, they've been holding quick press events in Wakanda to explain as much as they can. Hard to blame people who seem to have lost more than most. Wakanda had a war too, like a full on battle lines war, against aliens.
How the hell can people keep up with this crap. Six years ago, the biggest thing was the war between Templars and Assassins, and the Solar Flare, the First Civilisation doing their thing, and now, it's like… I don't know.
Damn, I forgot, I should… should probably check up on Abstergo, I completely forgot, what with the half-of-an-Apocalypse and all…
16th of June, 2018, New York
Still waiting. Still no word from Erudito or the Assassins. Getting a bit worried, maybe they forgot? Anyway.
Abstergo is still around, but… I don't know what happened, it's like they had a crash, in early 2013? I haven't been able to figure out why, precisely, but between 2012 and 2013, they suddenly landed into the huge money problems without any visible reason why – there were investigations for embezzling and everything, but no one could figure it out.
It was like billions just, poof, vanished into thin air. After that they made some really, really weird business decision – they started a branch to make… video games? Abstergo Entertainment, which judging by the ads I found used my genetic memories of Altaïr to try and make a video game? That bombed hard, millions of dollars down the drain, they couldn't finish the product, etc, the whole thing just folded like a house of cards.
Abstergo is still limping along, but the most news out of them now is them closing yet another branch, or selling some subsidiary, etc. Somehow they haven't declared bankruptcy, but the big bad scary company of my youth, it's… weakening. Dying out. The Big Bad Company that Rules Most Of The World now… is Stark Industries. Owned by Tony Stark, the superhero.
Still not sure this isn't a fever dream or something. Alternate reality is still a possibility. With Assassins, gods, magic powers and superheroes – and apparently portals across space and whatnot… it's not that big of a stretch.
Today, I am getting all the sushi I can eat – there's a sushi bar not far from the hotel which is closing down, so, everything's cheap. Wonder if they have some decent sake, it's been ages since –
Hold on, there's someone at the door.
...
It was just the room service. I guess I'm still waiting, then.
Okay, I'm heading out for sushi. Later.
(click)
17th of June, 2018, New York.
Still no beep from Erudito or anyone. I'm starting to get a bit antsy here, I think if this keeps like this I am going to have to try and get in touch again. I'm running out of money too, didn't have that much to begin with. Couple more days and I will have to leave the hotel. Shit.
I guess I could pickpocket around, accumulate funds the Assassin style, but that seems like a bit of a dick move, what with the near apocalypse going on.
Sorry, sorry, I'm just… yeah. Antsy.
Doing some more research, but it's starting to taste a bit wooden in my mouth, so I'm… going out, doing actual stuff instead. Not that there is much you can do for anyone in this situation, and it's been a week now, stuff is kind of… it's sinking in, people are getting used to the idea that this is how it is going to be. But like, there's always people taking advantage.
There are some assholes going around, robbing houses – stealing tech and valuables from people who aren't around. Like any of that even matters right now, dollar isn't even worth anything, and… yeah. I think I will go do the Assassin thing. Do what Ezio would do, you know? It's not much, but it's something, and I am going to go nuts, sitting around here. You can only spend so much time sitting around, drinking. Even if it's the good stuff.
And I do need some funds, so… yeah.
I'll tell you how it went.
18th of June, New York.
I think – I think there's something wrong with my hand. Seriously, seriously wrong – not like, possibly broken bones or burned skin, wrong, but… wrong. Like, this thing isn't normal, wrong. I don't know how -
And I think Erudito is here. Great timing.
(click)