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June 11, 2016; Synch Nexus

Ava opened her eyes as she stepped out of the golden light. She looked around in awe. She seemed to be floating in space, though her feet still felt the ground that wasn't there. Lines of golden light and glowing patches of floating ones and zeroes zipped around her in brilliant patterns. And in front of her, there stood Gabriel, wings and all. She caught her breath as he walked up to her and smiled.

“Good to finally talk to you in person,” he said to her.

“I… Same to you,” she said. Not knowing what else to do, she extended her hand to be shook. That made Gabriel laugh. He politely shook her hand and put a hand on her shoulder.

“You're almost there, kiddo,” he told her. “Final stretch.”

“Where are we?”

“Well technically this is still the Animus. But it's a special part of the Animus. The Synch Nexus. It's when your mind is in it's final state of harmony with all your ancestors.”

“So… I did it?! I escaped?!”

“Just about. You'll be pushed back into the real world any time now.”

Ava’s face lit up with joy. She could barely keep herself from bouncing up and down like a schoolgirl. “Oh my god, yes! Yes! I did it! I'm going home!”

Gabriel chuckled lightly. “Yeah,” he said. “But before the machine kicks you out, there's one last message I've got to give you. There was something that Eve wanted me to show you while you had the chance.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. One of her memories. The end of the War against the Isu. The ‘Toba Catastrophe’ as you guys call it nowadays.”

“That doesn't sound too pleasant.”

“It wasn't… but Eve thought it would be important to show you. She wanted to make sure you knew exactly what you're up against.”

“I'm up against Lucifer, right? But… you guys killed him?”

“We killed his physical body. Little did we know, he had an ace up his sleeve. The jerk. You'll see in just a moment. I'm gonna load it up now. Don't worry, you'll get a front row seat this time.”

Ava looked at him, and then nodded. She watched as the Synch Nexus around them was replaced by a new scene, one with skies that were choked with smoke and cities that were reduced to rubble. People were coughing and bleeding as, in the center of it all, walked Eve. She looked bruised and beaten, her face full of despair and no trace of hope. Ava watched as she walked amongst the ruins with a large sack over her shoulder, and both of them tried desperately not to look at the bodies littered everywhere.

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December 21, 75000 BCE; Mount Toba

“No more…”

That was the only two words that would escape Eve's mouth as she walked across the bridge that led toward the volcano temple. “No more…”

It was all she could think. This war had been going on for 10 long, brutal years. So many people had gotten hurt all across the globe. So many families and friends had been ripped apart, literally and metaphorically. Cities, human and Isu alike, were being demolished and reduced to rubble as both sides just fired away at each other. It was miserable. It was hopeless. The planet was perpetually at war with no signs of slowing down. The planet would be wiped out before the war would end.

Unless Eve went through with what she was about to do.

“Are you sure about this?” Adam had asked her as they stood on the other side of the bridge. She had looked at him with tear-filled eyes. All she did was nod. He hugged her in a vain attempt to comfort her, before finally she set out across the bridge, alone, ashamed of what she knew she had to do.

The sun was in flux. It had been ever since the Capitoline Triad picked up that it was acting funny. They predicted a solar flare was about to slam into the planet. They set up different ways to protect the planet from the utter destruction it would bring. Many of them failed miserably. The first thing they tried was to build four towers, which combined would be able to draw in the energy of the solar flare and contain it safely. But it would've taken too long. The first tower wasn't even completed. The resources were too much, the labor too high, the time not enough. They abandoned the project.

Next they tried to deflect the sun's flare instead of contain it. They planned to create an electromagnetic shield across the planet that would be strong enough to rebuke the sun's wrath. But they couldn't do it. It was too much. They didn't even have the time or the resources to make a shield that could protect a single city. So again, they moved on.

The next strategy was much more complicated, much more… poetic. The Apples of Eden would be the main tool here. It was discovered that if enough minds were directed towards a single Apple, then those thoughts could be made into reality. Out of thin air, a dozen people could make a tree spawn. So the scientists figured, what could this effect do on the scale of a world? They sent a dozen Apples into space, hoping they could direct the energy across the planet and have every single person, human and isu alike, utter a single phrase: “make us safe”. And the sun's wrath would cease to be. But even this proved to be too ambitious. They had no means of directing the Apples’ energy, no way to reach across the world. One of the Apples even got stuck on the moon. It was an embarrassing screw up.

Their next instinct was to find a way to go back in time, to scavenge what remained of Lucifer's and the Doctor's research in dimensional shifts to bring them back to a safer time. But they couldn't do it, so instead they decided to look towards the future. They crafted devices that could see the different timelines that would result from different actions. They tried to find one that would result in the world being saved, but none seemed to exist. Many gave up hope, save for Minerva. Minerva kept looking, and eventually started preparing future generations for another solar flare that would hit millennia later. She hid messages for a man named Desmond, a man who would be able to access Isu technology years later in the human year of 2012. He would stop the flair and die doing so, or he would at least lead the survivors out of the shadows of the destruction. Eve honestly hoped he could make the right choice when the time came.

Those with less hope than Minerva moved on to a different tactic. They focused on trying to survive the poisoned planet that would arise from the destruction. Even the Isu had to admit how badly built they were for survival. Their bodies were more fragile than humans. They lived for centuries longer, and their reproductive cycles were thus slower. They knew they wouldn't survive in such an apocalyptic world. But the humans would. So the Isu sought to transfer their consciousnesses into human bodies, hoping that they'd be able to tough out the storm. But they still couldn't do it. Juno's husband, Aita, volunteered to be the guinea pig. The process ripped his mind to shreds. Juno was forced to end his suffering, and it drove her mad. She became bitter and power hungry. She tried to sabotage the project and use the technology for her own selfish goals. Minerva and Jupiter overpowered her, however, and they trapped her in a digital space so that she could do no harm. And then they got back to work.

The final thing they tried was a branch off of the last strategy. They sought to download their consciousnesses into machines, to digitalize their minds so that they could reemerge when the dust settled and the world lived again. But they found that getting out of the digital space required… a sacrifice of sorts. A very very bad sacrifice, one so morally twisted that they all turned away. Many went back to trying to find ways of defending the planet from the solar flare. And not long ago, they claimed to have found a solution. Not many cared though. Many were too focused on the War or trying to avoid it. There was only death at the wheel it seemed. Even if the world would be saved, it would only be delaying the inevitable.

And so Eve stood here, at the entrance of this old abandoned temple in Mount Toba, with her final solution to everything in the sack that she had slung over her shoulder. She took a deep breath, and forced herself to walk inside, to enter the breach.

She walked along the dark hallways of the temple until she finally reached the main control center at the heart of the volcano. She walked up the the huge main control terminal, which had a little gap in between it's two halves, one that was the perfect shape to fit the device that she had in her bag. She unslung it from her shoulder and took it out. It wasn't much. Just a small little box with some wire ports and a big button on the top. The outside was hardly as impressive as the software within. This little chunk of machinery housed the key to ending this gruesome war once and for all.

She walked over and clicked her device into place. She gave it a moment to boot up and connect with the rest of the equipment around her. She saw the lights flick on in the chamber outside the room, which was blocked only by the massive window in front of her. It gave her a view of the massive magma chamber that bubbled and sloshed around in the volcano. In the center of the pool sat an enormous pillar, one that pointed directly towards what little sunlight was able to peek down through the smoky sky. Eve let out a sigh and put her hand down on the button.

“I just hope this will do what I hope it'll do…” she mumbled sadly to herself.

“Wow Eve, I didn't think you had it in you!”

Eve jumped in surprise upon hearing the voice. She thought she was alone. But worse than that, it was a voice that she recognized. One that she thought she'd never have to hear again. One that she thought she had silenced for good five years ago.

She spun around on her heels and her jaw dropped when she spotted him. There he was, hovering in the center of the room.

Lucifer.

Or at least, a hologram of him. But she could tell by the way he glared into her soul that it definitely wasn't a recording.

“Miss me, sweetheart?” he asked sarcastically. “I missed you.”

“H… how?!” she asked.

“Oh come on, did you really think stabbing me in the heart was all it would take to get rid of me? You didn't think I'd plan for my death?”

“How are you here?”

“I knew there was a chance I wouldn't come out on top. I'm not that arrogant. I prepared for everything. I downloaded a copy of my consciousness into the digital space, linked to dozens of temples like this across the world. So even though you killed my body, my mind lives on.”

Eve scowled at him. “It… It doesn't matter,” she spat. “You can't do anything as a hologram. You're nothing but data in a void!”

He mockingly put his finger on his chin and went, “Hmph! You're right! I can't do anything like this.” He gave a fake gasp. “Oh but hey! What if, now hear me out, I got a new body? Huh? What do you think? I get my ass out of here, gather up new supplies to destroy the universe and bam! No more existence! What do you think?”

“That's never going to happen! I'll make sure you stay stuck in there forever!”

“Oh Eve Eve Eve, come on! You're tearing me apart here! Can't you lend a hand to your old buddy, Lucifer?”

“Go to hell.”

“What's the difference between what I want to do and what you're about to do, huh? What gives you the right to do this and not me?”

“I'm doing what I need to do to end the War. I'm doing it out of hope that it'll bring people together at last. You do it out of some fetishy love for chaos and destruction! You'd destroy any chance of hope along with the universe!”

“Because this universe sucks, Eve! How the hell do you not see that! You came here with that device because you're done with the bullshit that this world is throwing at itself! Why not just finish the job?”

“Because my Brotherhood was built on hope. A hope that no matter how bad things get, things can always get better. It was built on never giving up, on sticking to what we believe in and fighting to ensure that all the world's people can one day live in harmony. That, Lucifer, is why. Unlike you, I'm not a lazy coward who just quits when the going gets rough.”

Lucifer scowled at her. “You Assassins and your hope,” he grimaced. “It's repulsive, you know that?”

“I don't care.” She put her hand back on the button. “When all else gets stripped away, hope is the only thing we have…”

“I will rise again. I've seen it. I've seen the timeline where I come back. New body and all. I will succeed, even if it takes thousands of years.”

Eve managed to stretch her mouth into a smile as she cried. “And the Assassins will still be there to prove you wrong,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Goodbye Lucifer. I'll see you in hell.”

She pressed the button.

The pillar in the magma chamber suddenly lit up with bright lights. From the top, an enormous beam of light blasted upwards, into the sky, through the clouds, up towards the sun. Then it stopped. Eve knew she'd have a sixteen minute break to escape and get as far away as possible. But even so, she simply stood there for a while, crying with her head hung low. By the time she worked up the energy to start running, She knew she only had a few minutes left. She ran past the hologram of Lucifer, who shouted taunts and threats at her as she sprinted, and she darted back down the hallways of the temple. She heard an enormous bang from behind her as her time ran out. She could feel the heat of the flames erupting behind her as the walls began to collapse and crumble in a terrible cacophony of destructive sounds. She sprinted until she couldn’t even feel her feet. Even as the ground started cracking beneath her, she still kept running and climbing until she finally flew out of the temple exit and she ran across the bridge towards Adam. She could see the flames arching across the sky, along with a malicious sea of neon-colored auroras that strangled the sky and rained down to the ground and split it open, opening canyons of lava that pulled the mountains into them. Smoke and ash erupted into the atmosphere, clashing and swirling with the flames in some sort of evil dance. The world was at it's end, it seemed, and Eve cried the entire way she ran.

It was all her fault.

She ran until she smacked into Adam on the other side of the bridge. He hugged her tight and pulled her away from the collapsing Mount Toba. They ran and ran and ran, trying to avoid the earthquakes and the flames and the ash and the entire apocalypse as a whole. They ran until the screams of the people falling into the cracks in the earth were long behind them. They ran until they found a small little shelter building, where they sat and waited, praying that they'd be safe.

They waited.

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December 28, 75000 BCE; Purgatory

Once the dust had settled, they returned to the Assassin hideout, or at least what was left of it. A good chunk of it had fallen into a massive crack in the ground.

Eve and Adam sat at their meeting table with Gabriel. All of them had somber faces.

“Well, it worked…” Gabriel said. “The scientists are baffled as to how their new defense failed…” He paused. “The world's been bottlenecked. Only a few thousand humans are left alive now. And only a few hundred isu…”

“What have I done?” Eve asked, more to herself than to them.

“You did what you had to do, Eve,” Adam assured her as he hugged her.

“The Isu will have no other options now,” Gabriel said. “Every single sentient being on this planet will have to work together in harmony if any of us want to survive.”

“We ended the world to bring it peace…” Eve said, her eyes misty.

“Look on the bright side: no other way but up from here.”

That made Eve smile, albeit barely.

“What about Lucifer?” she asked. “He said he saw the future. He said he'd rise again.”

“He said he saw a future, Eve. A single possibility out of infinite timelines.”

“But what if-?”

“If he's right, and he will really come back to try again someday, then we'll prepare. We can search the timelines too and find out what we need to do to stop him from coming back, or at least from succeeding.”

Eve said nothing for a bit, then nodded, and leaned up against Adam again. “I just want this to be over… like really really over,” she said.

“It will be, Eve. One day, it will. I promise.”

And then they all went silent, the only sound remaining being the roar of the magma river and the gentle weeping of Eve. What else is there to say when the world has ended?

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June 11, 2016; Synch Nexus

Ava stared as the scene faded away, leaving her in the void of the Animus Synch Nexus, alone with only Gabriel. She looked up at him, saw his somber face. He sighed.

“I guess in a sense, it never truly ended,” he told Ava. “I mean… it was only a couple decades later that the Templars were created, and they destroyed the world peace that we helped build after the Catastrophe.”

“Where the hell did they even come from?” Ava asked.

“Would you feel uncomfortable if I told you it was Eve's own son?”

“I… what, you mean Cain? Like in the Bible story?”

Gabriel nodded. “He was selfish. He stole the Apple of Eden after taking it from his brother's hands. It branded him for his betrayal.”

“The Mark of Cain?”

“Yes. The Mark of Cain. A little cross symbol on his arm. Sound familiar?”

“The Templars…”

Gabriel nodded again. “He ran off, corrupted more and more people to his tyrannical ways, and then he just… disappeared. All that was left was the organization he founded, and they've been screwing us Assassins over ever since.”

He took a deep breath. “But that's in the past, a whole different problem to deal with. Right now we need to focus on the big bad.”

“Lucifer,” Ava said.

“Eeyup. It's up to you to get my Armor and stop him, Ava. You've got the knowledge, and Carter has the Key. All that's left to do is get inside my temple.”

“But… but how am I supposed to fight Lucifer? I don't even know where he is. Or who he is, for that matter. Last I saw him, he was making Krakatoa erupt.”

“Ava, I think you know who he is. You've faced him since the very beginning. The one guy that's been responsible for all the crap you've been going through.”

Ava thought it over for a moment, and it clicked in her head. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, as the realization hit her.

“Morgenster…” she gasped. “Morgenster has been Lucifer's host this entire time! Oh my god!”

“Ding ding ding,” Gabriel joked.

“All this time… I've been fighting the Devil himself. My dad… my dad was up against the Devil himself.”

“Like father like daughter.”

“I have to stop him! My friends and I will make sure he never succeeds! I'm gonna get my ass back out there and save the world!”

Gabriel gave a hearty laugh. “That's my girl! Knew you could do it!”

Ava smiled brighter than she ever had in the past few months. She knew her place in the world now.

Suddenly, her hands felt tingly. She looked down at them, and saw that they were glowing bright gold. The light started creeping up her arms and legs, slowly consuming her body. She looked up at Gabriel, who smiled.

“Time to go home, Ava,” he told her. “Time to kick some ass and save the world.”

She smiled back at him, and just as the glow fully overtook her body and carried her mind back to the real world, she uttered her last words to him:

“Thank you.”

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June 11, 2016; Indianapolis, Indiana

Ruby sat in the same spot she had been sitting in for weeks, watching and waiting and making sure Ava's vitals were stable. She looked down at her girlfriend as she fiddled with a few wires and machine settings. She gave a sad look and closed her eyes. She sighed. She wished there was more she could do. She wished she could just-

Movement.

Ruby went stone still. Her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. Was it just her mind playing tricks on her?

No… No, Ava's eyes were starting to flutter! Her head started rolling in place on her pillow. Ruby gasped and sprinted to the doorway.

“Guys!” she screamed. “Kiki! Ben! Carter! Chelsea! Get in here now! She's waking up!”

There was an immediate stampede of footsteps from all around the hideout as her friends came sprinting into the room and rushed to Ava's bedside. They all watched wide-eyed in anticipation as Ava's eyes slowly opened up and looked up at them.

Ava squinted in the light, trying to get her eyes to adjust and her vision to unblur. She saw the figures of her friends take form, and to her surprise, her mom as well. They all looked like they were about to cry.

“R… Ruby?” she softly asked as she slowly sat up in bed, lifting the Animus headset off of her head.

“Oh my god, Ava!” Ruby wailed. Ava suddenly found herself getting hugged viciously tight. “Oh my god you're alive!”

“I missed you too, Rubes,” Ava laughed.

“Don't you ever scare me like that again! You hear? Oh my god I love you so much!”

“I love you too.”

She looked over at her friends, who were all clearly thrilled as they each gave their own little welcome back spiel to her.

Suddenly she found herself getting another tight hug, this time from her mother.

“Oh god sweetie! I was so worried about you!”

“Mom?” Ava said, still rather surprised.

“I came as soon as I got the call from Ben! Oh god I should've never let you go off to Abstergo! What was I thinking?”

“It's okay, Mom. It isn't your fault.”

Kiki wiped the tears from her own eyes and smiled faintly at her daughter. “Don't worry, honey. Once you're fully back on your feet, I'm driving you straight back home to Minnesota. All this will be just a bad dream.”

Ava gently pushed her mother off of her, and she gave her a sincere look. “I appreciate it, mom, I really do. But I'm not going home.”

Ava looked over at the little nightstand that sat by her bed. Sitting next to the lamp, as if it had been waiting for her this whole time, was Kahente's necklace, beads repaired and all. Ava grinned ear to ear, and she picked it up and gently tied it back around her own neck. It felt so right to have back on. She looked up at all of her friends.

“We've got a job to do.”

Description
June 11, 2016; Synch Nexus

Ava opened her eyes as she stepped out of the golden light. She looked around in awe. She seemed to be floating in space, though her feet still felt the ground that wasn't there. Lines of golden light and glowing patches of floating ones and zeroes zipped around her in brilliant patterns. And in front of her, there stood Gabriel, wings and all. She caught her breath as he walked up to her and smiled.

“Good to finally talk to you in person,” he said to her.

“I… Same to you,” she said. Not knowing what else to do, she extended her hand to be shook. That made Gabriel laugh. He politely shook her hand and put a hand on her shoulder.

“You're almost there, kiddo,” he told her. “Final stretch.”

“Where are we?”

“Well technically this is still the Animus. But it's a special part of the Animus. The Synch Nexus. It's when your mind is in it's final state of harmony with all your ancestors.”

“So… I did it?! I escaped?!”

“Just about. You'll be pushed back into the real world any time now.”

Ava’s face lit up with joy. She could barely keep herself from bouncing up and down like a schoolgirl. “Oh my god, yes! Yes! I did it! I'm going home!”

Gabriel chuckled lightly. “Yeah,” he said. “But before the machine kicks you out, there's one last message I've got to give you. There was something that Eve wanted me to show you while you had the chance.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. One of her memories. The end of the War against the Isu. The ‘Toba Catastrophe’ as you guys call it nowadays.”

“That doesn't sound too pleasant.”

“It wasn't… but Eve thought it would be important to show you. She wanted to make sure you knew exactly what you're up against.”

“I'm up against Lucifer, right? But… you guys killed him?”

“We killed his physical body. Little did we know, he had an ace up his sleeve. The jerk. You'll see in just a moment. I'm gonna load it up now. Don't worry, you'll get a front row seat this time.”

Ava looked at him, and then nodded. She watched as the Synch Nexus around them was replaced by a new scene, one with skies that were choked with smoke and cities that were reduced to rubble. People were coughing and bleeding as, in the center of it all, walked Eve. She looked bruised and beaten, her face full of despair and no trace of hope. Ava watched as she walked amongst the ruins with a large sack over her shoulder, and both of them tried desperately not to look at the bodies littered everywhere.

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December 21, 75000 BCE; Mount Toba

“No more…”

That was the only two words that would escape Eve's mouth as she walked across the bridge that led toward the volcano temple. “No more…”

It was all she could think. This war had been going on for 10 long, brutal years. So many people had gotten hurt all across the globe. So many families and friends had been ripped apart, literally and metaphorically. Cities, human and Isu alike, were being demolished and reduced to rubble as both sides just fired away at each other. It was miserable. It was hopeless. The planet was perpetually at war with no signs of slowing down. The planet would be wiped out before the war would end.

Unless Eve went through with what she was about to do.

“Are you sure about this?” Adam had asked her as they stood on the other side of the bridge. She had looked at him with tear-filled eyes. All she did was nod. He hugged her in a vain attempt to comfort her, before finally she set out across the bridge, alone, ashamed of what she knew she had to do.

The sun was in flux. It had been ever since the Capitoline Triad picked up that it was acting funny. They predicted a solar flare was about to slam into the planet. They set up different ways to protect the planet from the utter destruction it would bring. Many of them failed miserably. The first thing they tried was to build four towers, which combined would be able to draw in the energy of the solar flare and contain it safely. But it would've taken too long. The first tower wasn't even completed. The resources were too much, the labor too high, the time not enough. They abandoned the project.

Next they tried to deflect the sun's flare instead of contain it. They planned to create an electromagnetic shield across the planet that would be strong enough to rebuke the sun's wrath. But they couldn't do it. It was too much. They didn't even have the time or the resources to make a shield that could protect a single city. So again, they moved on.

The next strategy was much more complicated, much more… poetic. The Apples of Eden would be the main tool here. It was discovered that if enough minds were directed towards a single Apple, then those thoughts could be made into reality. Out of thin air, a dozen people could make a tree spawn. So the scientists figured, what could this effect do on the scale of a world? They sent a dozen Apples into space, hoping they could direct the energy across the planet and have every single person, human and isu alike, utter a single phrase: “make us safe”. And the sun's wrath would cease to be. But even this proved to be too ambitious. They had no means of directing the Apples’ energy, no way to reach across the world. One of the Apples even got stuck on the moon. It was an embarrassing screw up.

Their next instinct was to find a way to go back in time, to scavenge what remained of Lucifer's and the Doctor's research in dimensional shifts to bring them back to a safer time. But they couldn't do it, so instead they decided to look towards the future. They crafted devices that could see the different timelines that would result from different actions. They tried to find one that would result in the world being saved, but none seemed to exist. Many gave up hope, save for Minerva. Minerva kept looking, and eventually started preparing future generations for another solar flare that would hit millennia later. She hid messages for a man named Desmond, a man who would be able to access Isu technology years later in the human year of 2012. He would stop the flair and die doing so, or he would at least lead the survivors out of the shadows of the destruction. Eve honestly hoped he could make the right choice when the time came.

Those with less hope than Minerva moved on to a different tactic. They focused on trying to survive the poisoned planet that would arise from the destruction. Even the Isu had to admit how badly built they were for survival. Their bodies were more fragile than humans. They lived for centuries longer, and their reproductive cycles were thus slower. They knew they wouldn't survive in such an apocalyptic world. But the humans would. So the Isu sought to transfer their consciousnesses into human bodies, hoping that they'd be able to tough out the storm. But they still couldn't do it. Juno's husband, Aita, volunteered to be the guinea pig. The process ripped his mind to shreds. Juno was forced to end his suffering, and it drove her mad. She became bitter and power hungry. She tried to sabotage the project and use the technology for her own selfish goals. Minerva and Jupiter overpowered her, however, and they trapped her in a digital space so that she could do no harm. And then they got back to work.

The final thing they tried was a branch off of the last strategy. They sought to download their consciousnesses into machines, to digitalize their minds so that they could reemerge when the dust settled and the world lived again. But they found that getting out of the digital space required… a sacrifice of sorts. A very very bad sacrifice, one so morally twisted that they all turned away. Many went back to trying to find ways of defending the planet from the solar flare. And not long ago, they claimed to have found a solution. Not many cared though. Many were too focused on the War or trying to avoid it. There was only death at the wheel it seemed. Even if the world would be saved, it would only be delaying the inevitable.

And so Eve stood here, at the entrance of this old abandoned temple in Mount Toba, with her final solution to everything in the sack that she had slung over her shoulder. She took a deep breath, and forced herself to walk inside, to enter the breach.

She walked along the dark hallways of the temple until she finally reached the main control center at the heart of the volcano. She walked up the the huge main control terminal, which had a little gap in between it's two halves, one that was the perfect shape to fit the device that she had in her bag. She unslung it from her shoulder and took it out. It wasn't much. Just a small little box with some wire ports and a big button on the top. The outside was hardly as impressive as the software within. This little chunk of machinery housed the key to ending this gruesome war once and for all.

She walked over and clicked her device into place. She gave it a moment to boot up and connect with the rest of the equipment around her. She saw the lights flick on in the chamber outside the room, which was blocked only by the massive window in front of her. It gave her a view of the massive magma chamber that bubbled and sloshed around in the volcano. In the center of the pool sat an enormous pillar, one that pointed directly towards what little sunlight was able to peek down through the smoky sky. Eve let out a sigh and put her hand down on the button.

“I just hope this will do what I hope it'll do…” she mumbled sadly to herself.

“Wow Eve, I didn't think you had it in you!”

Eve jumped in surprise upon hearing the voice. She thought she was alone. But worse than that, it was a voice that she recognized. One that she thought she'd never have to hear again. One that she thought she had silenced for good five years ago.

She spun around on her heels and her jaw dropped when she spotted him. There he was, hovering in the center of the room.

Lucifer.

Or at least, a hologram of him. But she could tell by the way he glared into her soul that it definitely wasn't a recording.

“Miss me, sweetheart?” he asked sarcastically. “I missed you.”

“H… how?!” she asked.

“Oh come on, did you really think stabbing me in the heart was all it would take to get rid of me? You didn't think I'd plan for my death?”

“How are you here?”

“I knew there was a chance I wouldn't come out on top. I'm not that arrogant. I prepared for everything. I downloaded a copy of my consciousness into the digital space, linked to dozens of temples like this across the world. So even though you killed my body, my mind lives on.”

Eve scowled at him. “It… It doesn't matter,” she spat. “You can't do anything as a hologram. You're nothing but data in a void!”

He mockingly put his finger on his chin and went, “Hmph! You're right! I can't do anything like this.” He gave a fake gasp. “Oh but hey! What if, now hear me out, I got a new body? Huh? What do you think? I get my ass out of here, gather up new supplies to destroy the universe and bam! No more existence! What do you think?”

“That's never going to happen! I'll make sure you stay stuck in there forever!”

“Oh Eve Eve Eve, come on! You're tearing me apart here! Can't you lend a hand to your old buddy, Lucifer?”

“Go to hell.”

“What's the difference between what I want to do and what you're about to do, huh? What gives you the right to do this and not me?”

“I'm doing what I need to do to end the War. I'm doing it out of hope that it'll bring people together at last. You do it out of some fetishy love for chaos and destruction! You'd destroy any chance of hope along with the universe!”

“Because this universe sucks, Eve! How the hell do you not see that! You came here with that device because you're done with the bullshit that this world is throwing at itself! Why not just finish the job?”

“Because my Brotherhood was built on hope. A hope that no matter how bad things get, things can always get better. It was built on never giving up, on sticking to what we believe in and fighting to ensure that all the world's people can one day live in harmony. That, Lucifer, is why. Unlike you, I'm not a lazy coward who just quits when the going gets rough.”

Lucifer scowled at her. “You Assassins and your hope,” he grimaced. “It's repulsive, you know that?”

“I don't care.” She put her hand back on the button. “When all else gets stripped away, hope is the only thing we have…”

“I will rise again. I've seen it. I've seen the timeline where I come back. New body and all. I will succeed, even if it takes thousands of years.”

Eve managed to stretch her mouth into a smile as she cried. “And the Assassins will still be there to prove you wrong,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “Goodbye Lucifer. I'll see you in hell.”

She pressed the button.

The pillar in the magma chamber suddenly lit up with bright lights. From the top, an enormous beam of light blasted upwards, into the sky, through the clouds, up towards the sun. Then it stopped. Eve knew she'd have a sixteen minute break to escape and get as far away as possible. But even so, she simply stood there for a while, crying with her head hung low. By the time she worked up the energy to start running, She knew she only had a few minutes left. She ran past the hologram of Lucifer, who shouted taunts and threats at her as she sprinted, and she darted back down the hallways of the temple. She heard an enormous bang from behind her as her time ran out. She could feel the heat of the flames erupting behind her as the walls began to collapse and crumble in a terrible cacophony of destructive sounds. She sprinted until she couldn’t even feel her feet. Even as the ground started cracking beneath her, she still kept running and climbing until she finally flew out of the temple exit and she ran across the bridge towards Adam. She could see the flames arching across the sky, along with a malicious sea of neon-colored auroras that strangled the sky and rained down to the ground and split it open, opening canyons of lava that pulled the mountains into them. Smoke and ash erupted into the atmosphere, clashing and swirling with the flames in some sort of evil dance. The world was at it's end, it seemed, and Eve cried the entire way she ran.

It was all her fault.

She ran until she smacked into Adam on the other side of the bridge. He hugged her tight and pulled her away from the collapsing Mount Toba. They ran and ran and ran, trying to avoid the earthquakes and the flames and the ash and the entire apocalypse as a whole. They ran until the screams of the people falling into the cracks in the earth were long behind them. They ran until they found a small little shelter building, where they sat and waited, praying that they'd be safe.

They waited.

------------

December 28, 75000 BCE; Purgatory

Once the dust had settled, they returned to the Assassin hideout, or at least what was left of it. A good chunk of it had fallen into a massive crack in the ground.

Eve and Adam sat at their meeting table with Gabriel. All of them had somber faces.

“Well, it worked…” Gabriel said. “The scientists are baffled as to how their new defense failed…” He paused. “The world's been bottlenecked. Only a few thousand humans are left alive now. And only a few hundred isu…”

“What have I done?” Eve asked, more to herself than to them.

“You did what you had to do, Eve,” Adam assured her as he hugged her.

“The Isu will have no other options now,” Gabriel said. “Every single sentient being on this planet will have to work together in harmony if any of us want to survive.”

“We ended the world to bring it peace…” Eve said, her eyes misty.

“Look on the bright side: no other way but up from here.”

That made Eve smile, albeit barely.

“What about Lucifer?” she asked. “He said he saw the future. He said he'd rise again.”

“He said he saw a future, Eve. A single possibility out of infinite timelines.”

“But what if-?”

“If he's right, and he will really come back to try again someday, then we'll prepare. We can search the timelines too and find out what we need to do to stop him from coming back, or at least from succeeding.”

Eve said nothing for a bit, then nodded, and leaned up against Adam again. “I just want this to be over… like really really over,” she said.

“It will be, Eve. One day, it will. I promise.”

And then they all went silent, the only sound remaining being the roar of the magma river and the gentle weeping of Eve. What else is there to say when the world has ended?

------------

June 11, 2016; Synch Nexus

Ava stared as the scene faded away, leaving her in the void of the Animus Synch Nexus, alone with only Gabriel. She looked up at him, saw his somber face. He sighed.

“I guess in a sense, it never truly ended,” he told Ava. “I mean… it was only a couple decades later that the Templars were created, and they destroyed the world peace that we helped build after the Catastrophe.”

“Where the hell did they even come from?” Ava asked.

“Would you feel uncomfortable if I told you it was Eve's own son?”

“I… what, you mean Cain? Like in the Bible story?”

Gabriel nodded. “He was selfish. He stole the Apple of Eden after taking it from his brother's hands. It branded him for his betrayal.”

“The Mark of Cain?”

“Yes. The Mark of Cain. A little cross symbol on his arm. Sound familiar?”

“The Templars…”

Gabriel nodded again. “He ran off, corrupted more and more people to his tyrannical ways, and then he just… disappeared. All that was left was the organization he founded, and they've been screwing us Assassins over ever since.”

He took a deep breath. “But that's in the past, a whole different problem to deal with. Right now we need to focus on the big bad.”

“Lucifer,” Ava said.

“Eeyup. It's up to you to get my Armor and stop him, Ava. You've got the knowledge, and Carter has the Key. All that's left to do is get inside my temple.”

“But… but how am I supposed to fight Lucifer? I don't even know where he is. Or who he is, for that matter. Last I saw him, he was making Krakatoa erupt.”

“Ava, I think you know who he is. You've faced him since the very beginning. The one guy that's been responsible for all the crap you've been going through.”

Ava thought it over for a moment, and it clicked in her head. Her eyes widened, her jaw dropped, as the realization hit her.

“Morgenster…” she gasped. “Morgenster has been Lucifer's host this entire time! Oh my god!”

“Ding ding ding,” Gabriel joked.

“All this time… I've been fighting the Devil himself. My dad… my dad was up against the Devil himself.”

“Like father like daughter.”

“I have to stop him! My friends and I will make sure he never succeeds! I'm gonna get my ass back out there and save the world!”

Gabriel gave a hearty laugh. “That's my girl! Knew you could do it!”

Ava smiled brighter than she ever had in the past few months. She knew her place in the world now.

Suddenly, her hands felt tingly. She looked down at them, and saw that they were glowing bright gold. The light started creeping up her arms and legs, slowly consuming her body. She looked up at Gabriel, who smiled.

“Time to go home, Ava,” he told her. “Time to kick some ass and save the world.”

She smiled back at him, and just as the glow fully overtook her body and carried her mind back to the real world, she uttered her last words to him:

“Thank you.”

------------

June 11, 2016; Indianapolis, Indiana

Ruby sat in the same spot she had been sitting in for weeks, watching and waiting and making sure Ava's vitals were stable. She looked down at her girlfriend as she fiddled with a few wires and machine settings. She gave a sad look and closed her eyes. She sighed. She wished there was more she could do. She wished she could just-

Movement.

Ruby went stone still. Her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. Was it just her mind playing tricks on her?

No… No, Ava's eyes were starting to flutter! Her head started rolling in place on her pillow. Ruby gasped and sprinted to the doorway.

“Guys!” she screamed. “Kiki! Ben! Carter! Chelsea! Get in here now! She's waking up!”

There was an immediate stampede of footsteps from all around the hideout as her friends came sprinting into the room and rushed to Ava's bedside. They all watched wide-eyed in anticipation as Ava's eyes slowly opened up and looked up at them.

Ava squinted in the light, trying to get her eyes to adjust and her vision to unblur. She saw the figures of her friends take form, and to her surprise, her mom as well. They all looked like they were about to cry.

“R… Ruby?” she softly asked as she slowly sat up in bed, lifting the Animus headset off of her head.

“Oh my god, Ava!” Ruby wailed. Ava suddenly found herself getting hugged viciously tight. “Oh my god you're alive!”

“I missed you too, Rubes,” Ava laughed.

“Don't you ever scare me like that again! You hear? Oh my god I love you so much!”

“I love you too.”

She looked over at her friends, who were all clearly thrilled as they each gave their own little welcome back spiel to her.

Suddenly she found herself getting another tight hug, this time from her mother.

“Oh god sweetie! I was so worried about you!”

“Mom?” Ava said, still rather surprised.

“I came as soon as I got the call from Ben! Oh god I should've never let you go off to Abstergo! What was I thinking?”

“It's okay, Mom. It isn't your fault.”

Kiki wiped the tears from her own eyes and smiled faintly at her daughter. “Don't worry, honey. Once you're fully back on your feet, I'm driving you straight back home to Minnesota. All this will be just a bad dream.”

Ava gently pushed her mother off of her, and she gave her a sincere look. “I appreciate it, mom, I really do. But I'm not going home.”

Ava looked over at the little nightstand that sat by her bed. Sitting next to the lamp, as if it had been waiting for her this whole time, was Kahente's necklace, beads repaired and all. Ava grinned ear to ear, and she picked it up and gently tied it back around her own neck. It felt so right to have back on. She looked up at all of her friends.

“We've got a job to do.”