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Description
October 4, 1957; Area 51, Nevada

Bromden didn't dare make a move when the door shut him into the abyss of darkness. It was too risky. He needed to wait until his eyes adjusted, or for any lights to come on, whichever came first. Only then, when he had some sense of the scenery around him, would he dare to make a move.

His eyes started to adjust, but thankfully a row of dim light bulbs started flickering on in front of him. He looked in the direction they were lighting up. They revealed a short hallway, its walls lined with wires and other messes that looked like they came straight out of a construction site. Bromden carefully and quietly began to walk down the path, keeping an ear out for the door behind him. Eventually, the pathway brought him to a short but tall sort of chamber, housing only a rickety steel frame elevator surrounded by a spiraling metal stairwell. They were both empty, but Bromden knew that could change at any moment. He weighed his options, trying to think of the best route to take.

Then suddenly, there was a crashing noise that reverberated through the chamber. The lights on the elevator shaft blared to life as gears started whirring and the elevator cable started moving upwards. Bromden's eyes widened. Someone was coming up. His eyes darted all around the room, looking for hiding places. He spotted a vent, one that looked just wide enough for him to slip through. He heard muffled voices talking from the rising car, and decided to take his chances. He scurried up the wall, and opened up the vent as quickly but silently as he could. And just as the elevator car came to a chunking stop at the chamber floor, Bromden had already vanished inside.

“Boss seems pretty happy today,” he heard a Templar agent comment as he and his buddy walked back towards the exit.

“I don't blame him. You heard about Sputnik.” the other man said.

“I still say this seems like a lot of effort for one little Piece of Eden.”

“Every Piece counts, my friend. Especially when they're in our hands.”

“I guess you're right.”

Bromden heard their voices turn to muffles and then disappeared back to the outside world. He sighed in relief, and then got to work on getting out of the air duct.

He crawled around until he found the other side, ending in a vent sitting just above the elevator car. He opened it up and stopped out onto the roof of the car, crouching down and observing the best positions around the mechanics of the cable cranks and power junctions to hide around in case anyone started coming up or down the stairs. Then he waited, and he didn't have to wait long. The lights and the whirring flared up again after the elevator received a new set of passengers and started carrying them downwards, with Bromden in tow.

He kept crouched and quiet as he descended into the depths of whatever this place was, feeling the sinking sensation in his stomach the entire ride. About halfway through, Bromden had to duck into one of his hiding positions as they passed a group of three men walking down the stairs. It was the large man he had seen up top, Billings, and his bodyguards. The elevator descended past them, giving Bromden a little optimism as he realized he'd be able to get ahead of them and easily find them when they exited the stairwell.

Eventually, one of the walls gave way to an opening that revealed a whole new location past the steel frames. Bromden's jaw dropped a little. The room he saw was massive, like an entire base hidden beneath the earth. It reminded Bromden of all those mad scientist films that Wanbli made him watch with her, with rows of desks and giant machines and glowing lights all around the base. It was difficult to take in all at once, and the room just looked larger and larger as the elevator approached the floor and the ceiling ran away from them. The elevator finally came to a chunking stop at the bottom, and Bromden stood staring for a moment longer while the passengers stepped out and disappeared into the base.

Bromden shook his head, now determined as ever to find out what in God's name was being plotted here. He hopped up into another vent shaft that he spotted, and slowly crawled his way around until he finally found an exit leading out into the massive laboratory. He did a quick check to make sure no one would spot him, and then he hopped out onto the floor, getting into a crouch and ducking to a hiding spot as soon as possible. Infiltration complete, he thought.

Bromden kept where he was for a moment, waiting for Billings to arrive on the scene. He looked around, trying to decipher what all these machines and men were for. It almost seemed like some sort of construction facility, given all the different dismantled mechanics he saw littered all over the place. But then Bromden saw something specific that really caught his eye: a faint golden glow. He squinted his eyes, looking over at the workbench, and his suspicions were confirmed. That glow was coming from a small little golden rod, one laced with intricate designs. A Piece of Eden no doubt, and one identical to the one that Bromden had retrieved from Roswell all those years ago. The worker at the bench seemed to be attaching it to whatever massive hunk of machinery it was attached to, for purposes Bromden could only guess.

“What the hell…?” he whispered to himself.

He had a thousand questions swarming in his head, and it seemed he was about to get some soon. He heard a metal door creak open and shut, and turned his head to see Billings walk into the room with his bodyguards. He marched forwards into the base, tall and proud in the way only a decorated soldier could be. The workers that saw him enter stopped their work and saluted as he walked past. Bromden locked eyes on his target, and he started to follow, navigating the desks and machines like a ghost in the shadows.

“General Billings, sir!” one of the scientists greeted as the Templar approached.

“It's good to see you again, Doctor Validus,” Billings nodded, and motioned for the man to walk and talk. “How's the operation around here been going so far?”

“Very well, I'm glad to say. It has been a bit difficult with all of our resources spread so thin, though. This project won't fully get off the ground until we have a means to fully coordinate our findings into results.”

“Well hopefully now that Sputnik has been launched, President Eisenhower will be happy to lend us a hand with that.”

“Hopefully sir. We're all ready and able to start taking the next steps.”

“You've managed to create a functioning prototype?”

“Not quite, but we have all the means and knowledge to get there. We've managed to dissect the isu vehicular components that your men have been providing and the reverse engineering process has yielded invaluable success. If better resources are on their way as you say, we should be able to send our agents up there within the next 12 years or so.”

“Excellent news! I'll be sure to report this to the Inner Sanctum as soon as possible. You've done good work here, Doctor.”

“Thank you, sir. Have you selected pilots for the mission yet?”

“No, but I have a few candidates to choose from.”

“They'll have the most superb resumes of any human on Earth under their belts if they're selected for this mission.”

“Indeed.”

Bromden's head spun as he took this all in. What were they talking about? Sending agents up where? They were clearly after a Piece of Eden but… it almost sounded like they were talking about the heavens. At least Bromden understood what the purpose of this base was now. A facility designed to hold and experiment on Pieces of Eden, trying to make technology that resembled that of the gods of old. This was a very dangerous place, Bromden knew. He hoped that whatever they planned to unleash from this base, he'd be able to stop it. He kept following the Templars from the shadows, trying to glean as much information as he could.

“Have we received any new shipments today?” Billings asked.

That made the scientist pause and stagger for a minute, as if something jumped to the front of his attention. “I was hoping you'd ask, sir,” he said.

“You seem concerned.”

“Honestly, it's had us all on edge ever since it arrived from the Philadelphia facility.”

“Why's that?”

“We still have no idea what it is.”

Both men paused, and Bromden raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean, Doctor?” Billings asked.

The scientist simply responded by motioning for the Templar leader to follow him, and Bromden tailed them carefully as they were led to a different section of the base. The scientist punched a code into a panel on one of the walls, and the massive door that it was connected to suddenly started creaking open. Light peaked out from inside as a line of halogen bulbs came on, and everyone within a few yards of the door shielded their eyes as they adjusted. Bromden stared intensely to see what was on the other side, and he could've sworn he heard faint whispers emanating from within.

But all that was inside were a few men in lab coats fiddling with charts and clipboards until they realized they had guests who needed to be stood and saluted for. Billings seemed to pay them no mind. Instead, his eyes locked onto the large artifact sitting upright in the center of the room. Bromden got a good look at it. It didn't look like much, just a massive metal disk covered in carvings just like any generic Piece of Eden, but it had that same… allure that all Pieces of Eden had. That beckoning to come forward and stare. But even that feeling was somehow different than any other Piece of Eden that Bromden had encountered. He didn't know why, but something about this disk somehow felt even more otherworldly than the other artifacts.

Billings stepped forward, and carefully put a hand on the artifact, gently brushing it with his fingers. “What is it?” he asked.

“We don't know, sir,” the scientist replied. “The report says it simply… appeared during the Philadelphia Experiment back in ‘43.”

“Appeared?”

“Yes sir. During the Die Glocke accident on USS Eldridge, the ship manifested in a future state for about 18 minutes. The space-time continuum around the entire site was essentially a torn gumbled fabric the entire time, and once it was all reformed, our agents found this mysterious object that seemed to come from nowhere.”

“Fascinating… what does it do?”

“We don't know, sir. We haven't managed to get any activity out of it.”

“But it is a Piece of Eden yes?”

“Honestly sir, we don't know. It may just be an artifact from another time… or even another world. Anything is possible when you tear a hole in the universe itself.”

“Hmm… this is certainly an object worthy of our resources either way. Be sure to have it here until we can figure out its purpose.”

“Yes sir.”

“You're doing proud work here, Doctor. It won't be long before we have every last one of those Assassins bowing at our feet, and a New World Order is finally restored.”

“I hope so sir.”

The man closed up the chamber holding the mysterious disk, and then continued to walk away with Billings as they continued their inspection of the various feats of engineering around them. For a moment, Bromden wondered if he should go after Billings, try to stick a blade in his throat and cripple their project here. But no, he decided. Not here. It was too risky. Too tight a space with too many people and not enough escape routes. It would be better to sneak out, report back to his allies, and wait for a better opportunity. And so that's what he did, making his way back towards the vents that granted him access to the elevator. He decided not to waste time waiting for another passenger to give him a ride, and so he simply started climbing up the steel frame of the elevator shaft until he reached the top floor again. He made his way back towards the entrance, listening for voices on the other side before opening the door to the outside world. He continued to backtrack, keeping to the shadows until he finally made it out of the base and into the desert night. Once he was sure he was a fair distance away from any Templar eyes and ears, he started booking it back to his car, which was still thankfully right where he left it. He hopped in and revved the engines, and he sped off in the opposite direction, relieved to be out of such a perilous place, but worried about what the future had to hold.

The Templars were planning something big, that much was clear. Bigger than anything they had attempted before. Bromden just wished he knew what puzzle all these pieces fit together into. He pondered it over as he road through the night with nothing but the sound of his tires on the dirt and the slowly increasing digital humming in his ears. The world in front of the windshield started breaking apart, evaporating into the blank white void of the Animus. The desert vanished, the car vanished, and soon all Ava was left with was the headset on her face.

“Well I guess that solves one conspiracy theory,” Ava laughed when Ruby pulled the Animus off her head.

“I was honestly hoping there were actual aliens at Area 51,” Ruby said. She looked over at the Tennysons and Kevin. “Do you have actual aliens at Area 51?” she asked.

“Yeah, but it isn't exactly a pretty situation,” Gwen said, rubbing her neck awkwardly.

“That so?” Catherine asked.

“Detainment center build to hold and torture hundreds of innocent intergalactic visitors doesn't exactly reflect well in space court,” Kevin told them.

“You know that actually does make sense now that I think about it,” Jess said. “That… yeah that sounds like five levels of illegal.”

“Six actually,” Ben said, half joking.

Ava chuckled and stood to stretch her legs a bit. “I just hope this brings us closer to finding the Apple that Eon is after,” she said.

“Did you see any Apples in there?” Chelsea asked.

Ava shook her head. “No. There was a lot of isu junk getting carted around, but I didn't see any Apples. The most prominent thing was that weird time disk thingy.”

“Time disk?” Ben asked, his interest suddenly peaked.

“This thing,” Ruby said, spinning one of her computer monitors around for the gang to see. She pointed to the bizarre artifact that Bromden had gotten a look at while eavesdropping. And suddenly the Tennyson crew's faces went white.

“That's the Hands of Armageddon!” Gwen gasped.

“No way…” Kevin said. “I thought we destroyed that thing.”

“The Hands of what now?” Ruby asked.

“The Hands of Armageddon,” Ben repeated. “It's an old alien artifact that's basically a crosstime gateway.”

“So… it's a time machine?” Jess asked.

“Kind of…” Gwen said. “It let's the user go anywhere, anywhen, in any parallel timeline or universe.”

“Damn I could've used that in high school,” Chelsea said.

“But didn't we destroy that thing when we fought Eon last time?” Kevin pondered.

“Paradox once told us that it exists throughout all realities,” Ben considered. “I guess we just destroyed the one from our universe.”

“Lame…”

“That explains why Eon was able to cross over into this dimension,” Gwen said. “If the Hands of Armageddon still exist in this world, the gate was essentially just left open for him.”

“What do we do then?” Catherine asked.

“If we can get our hands on that hunk of junk… we might be able to kick Eon out the door before he can do anything!” Ava concluded cheerfully.

“Sounds like we need to take a trip to Area 51 then,” Ruby smirked. “You guys all up for a road trip to Nevada?”

“How the hell are we going to break into Area 51?” Chelsea said. “It's not gonna be the same construction site of a base it was 60 years ago. Abstergo would've upgraded everything to make it impenetrable.”

“Bruh, we've got three actual super powered alien people on our team,” Catherine pointed out.

“Knowing Abstergo, that probably won't be enough.”

“Well that's just negative thinking.”

“Squirt.”

“Dweeb.”

Ben and Gwen chuckled under their breath. “Reminds me of old times,” Ben jokingly whispered.

“I hear everything,” Chelsea said, fixing him with one of her burning glares.

“You know, we might not have to break in at all actually…” Jess suddenly said. The group all looked at her.

“What do you mean?” Ava asked.

“Well… Area 51 is a Templar base right? One designated for only top Templar agents?”

“Yeah?”

“Well… we do happen to know someone like that who could give us clearance.”

The Assassins’ eyes all widened in realization. A lot of them smiled, except for Chelsea, who immediately started protesting.

“Oh no,” she said. “No no no no we are not calling him.”

“Come on Chels, you know she's got a point,” Catherine smirked.

“There is no way I'm agreeing to that plan!”

“Sounds like you've got a bit of a history with your inside man,” Kevin laughed.

“They have a sort of sibling rivalry going on,” Ruby chuckled. “Cathy, can you phone him up and ask him to come down here?”

“Sure thing Rubes,” Catherine nodded, pulling out his phone and immediately calling a number.

“I hate you all,” Chelsea said, and she made her final declaration of irritation by crossing her arms and plopping down on the couch in pure pouty anger.

Description
October 4, 1957; Area 51, Nevada

Bromden didn't dare make a move when the door shut him into the abyss of darkness. It was too risky. He needed to wait until his eyes adjusted, or for any lights to come on, whichever came first. Only then, when he had some sense of the scenery around him, would he dare to make a move.

His eyes started to adjust, but thankfully a row of dim light bulbs started flickering on in front of him. He looked in the direction they were lighting up. They revealed a short hallway, its walls lined with wires and other messes that looked like they came straight out of a construction site. Bromden carefully and quietly began to walk down the path, keeping an ear out for the door behind him. Eventually, the pathway brought him to a short but tall sort of chamber, housing only a rickety steel frame elevator surrounded by a spiraling metal stairwell. They were both empty, but Bromden knew that could change at any moment. He weighed his options, trying to think of the best route to take.

Then suddenly, there was a crashing noise that reverberated through the chamber. The lights on the elevator shaft blared to life as gears started whirring and the elevator cable started moving upwards. Bromden's eyes widened. Someone was coming up. His eyes darted all around the room, looking for hiding places. He spotted a vent, one that looked just wide enough for him to slip through. He heard muffled voices talking from the rising car, and decided to take his chances. He scurried up the wall, and opened up the vent as quickly but silently as he could. And just as the elevator car came to a chunking stop at the chamber floor, Bromden had already vanished inside.

“Boss seems pretty happy today,” he heard a Templar agent comment as he and his buddy walked back towards the exit.

“I don't blame him. You heard about Sputnik.” the other man said.

“I still say this seems like a lot of effort for one little Piece of Eden.”

“Every Piece counts, my friend. Especially when they're in our hands.”

“I guess you're right.”

Bromden heard their voices turn to muffles and then disappeared back to the outside world. He sighed in relief, and then got to work on getting out of the air duct.

He crawled around until he found the other side, ending in a vent sitting just above the elevator car. He opened it up and stopped out onto the roof of the car, crouching down and observing the best positions around the mechanics of the cable cranks and power junctions to hide around in case anyone started coming up or down the stairs. Then he waited, and he didn't have to wait long. The lights and the whirring flared up again after the elevator received a new set of passengers and started carrying them downwards, with Bromden in tow.

He kept crouched and quiet as he descended into the depths of whatever this place was, feeling the sinking sensation in his stomach the entire ride. About halfway through, Bromden had to duck into one of his hiding positions as they passed a group of three men walking down the stairs. It was the large man he had seen up top, Billings, and his bodyguards. The elevator descended past them, giving Bromden a little optimism as he realized he'd be able to get ahead of them and easily find them when they exited the stairwell.

Eventually, one of the walls gave way to an opening that revealed a whole new location past the steel frames. Bromden's jaw dropped a little. The room he saw was massive, like an entire base hidden beneath the earth. It reminded Bromden of all those mad scientist films that Wanbli made him watch with her, with rows of desks and giant machines and glowing lights all around the base. It was difficult to take in all at once, and the room just looked larger and larger as the elevator approached the floor and the ceiling ran away from them. The elevator finally came to a chunking stop at the bottom, and Bromden stood staring for a moment longer while the passengers stepped out and disappeared into the base.

Bromden shook his head, now determined as ever to find out what in God's name was being plotted here. He hopped up into another vent shaft that he spotted, and slowly crawled his way around until he finally found an exit leading out into the massive laboratory. He did a quick check to make sure no one would spot him, and then he hopped out onto the floor, getting into a crouch and ducking to a hiding spot as soon as possible. Infiltration complete, he thought.

Bromden kept where he was for a moment, waiting for Billings to arrive on the scene. He looked around, trying to decipher what all these machines and men were for. It almost seemed like some sort of construction facility, given all the different dismantled mechanics he saw littered all over the place. But then Bromden saw something specific that really caught his eye: a faint golden glow. He squinted his eyes, looking over at the workbench, and his suspicions were confirmed. That glow was coming from a small little golden rod, one laced with intricate designs. A Piece of Eden no doubt, and one identical to the one that Bromden had retrieved from Roswell all those years ago. The worker at the bench seemed to be attaching it to whatever massive hunk of machinery it was attached to, for purposes Bromden could only guess.

“What the hell…?” he whispered to himself.

He had a thousand questions swarming in his head, and it seemed he was about to get some soon. He heard a metal door creak open and shut, and turned his head to see Billings walk into the room with his bodyguards. He marched forwards into the base, tall and proud in the way only a decorated soldier could be. The workers that saw him enter stopped their work and saluted as he walked past. Bromden locked eyes on his target, and he started to follow, navigating the desks and machines like a ghost in the shadows.

“General Billings, sir!” one of the scientists greeted as the Templar approached.

“It's good to see you again, Doctor Validus,” Billings nodded, and motioned for the man to walk and talk. “How's the operation around here been going so far?”

“Very well, I'm glad to say. It has been a bit difficult with all of our resources spread so thin, though. This project won't fully get off the ground until we have a means to fully coordinate our findings into results.”

“Well hopefully now that Sputnik has been launched, President Eisenhower will be happy to lend us a hand with that.”

“Hopefully sir. We're all ready and able to start taking the next steps.”

“You've managed to create a functioning prototype?”

“Not quite, but we have all the means and knowledge to get there. We've managed to dissect the isu vehicular components that your men have been providing and the reverse engineering process has yielded invaluable success. If better resources are on their way as you say, we should be able to send our agents up there within the next 12 years or so.”

“Excellent news! I'll be sure to report this to the Inner Sanctum as soon as possible. You've done good work here, Doctor.”

“Thank you, sir. Have you selected pilots for the mission yet?”

“No, but I have a few candidates to choose from.”

“They'll have the most superb resumes of any human on Earth under their belts if they're selected for this mission.”

“Indeed.”

Bromden's head spun as he took this all in. What were they talking about? Sending agents up where? They were clearly after a Piece of Eden but… it almost sounded like they were talking about the heavens. At least Bromden understood what the purpose of this base was now. A facility designed to hold and experiment on Pieces of Eden, trying to make technology that resembled that of the gods of old. This was a very dangerous place, Bromden knew. He hoped that whatever they planned to unleash from this base, he'd be able to stop it. He kept following the Templars from the shadows, trying to glean as much information as he could.

“Have we received any new shipments today?” Billings asked.

That made the scientist pause and stagger for a minute, as if something jumped to the front of his attention. “I was hoping you'd ask, sir,” he said.

“You seem concerned.”

“Honestly, it's had us all on edge ever since it arrived from the Philadelphia facility.”

“Why's that?”

“We still have no idea what it is.”

Both men paused, and Bromden raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean, Doctor?” Billings asked.

The scientist simply responded by motioning for the Templar leader to follow him, and Bromden tailed them carefully as they were led to a different section of the base. The scientist punched a code into a panel on one of the walls, and the massive door that it was connected to suddenly started creaking open. Light peaked out from inside as a line of halogen bulbs came on, and everyone within a few yards of the door shielded their eyes as they adjusted. Bromden stared intensely to see what was on the other side, and he could've sworn he heard faint whispers emanating from within.

But all that was inside were a few men in lab coats fiddling with charts and clipboards until they realized they had guests who needed to be stood and saluted for. Billings seemed to pay them no mind. Instead, his eyes locked onto the large artifact sitting upright in the center of the room. Bromden got a good look at it. It didn't look like much, just a massive metal disk covered in carvings just like any generic Piece of Eden, but it had that same… allure that all Pieces of Eden had. That beckoning to come forward and stare. But even that feeling was somehow different than any other Piece of Eden that Bromden had encountered. He didn't know why, but something about this disk somehow felt even more otherworldly than the other artifacts.

Billings stepped forward, and carefully put a hand on the artifact, gently brushing it with his fingers. “What is it?” he asked.

“We don't know, sir,” the scientist replied. “The report says it simply… appeared during the Philadelphia Experiment back in ‘43.”

“Appeared?”

“Yes sir. During the Die Glocke accident on USS Eldridge, the ship manifested in a future state for about 18 minutes. The space-time continuum around the entire site was essentially a torn gumbled fabric the entire time, and once it was all reformed, our agents found this mysterious object that seemed to come from nowhere.”

“Fascinating… what does it do?”

“We don't know, sir. We haven't managed to get any activity out of it.”

“But it is a Piece of Eden yes?”

“Honestly sir, we don't know. It may just be an artifact from another time… or even another world. Anything is possible when you tear a hole in the universe itself.”

“Hmm… this is certainly an object worthy of our resources either way. Be sure to have it here until we can figure out its purpose.”

“Yes sir.”

“You're doing proud work here, Doctor. It won't be long before we have every last one of those Assassins bowing at our feet, and a New World Order is finally restored.”

“I hope so sir.”

The man closed up the chamber holding the mysterious disk, and then continued to walk away with Billings as they continued their inspection of the various feats of engineering around them. For a moment, Bromden wondered if he should go after Billings, try to stick a blade in his throat and cripple their project here. But no, he decided. Not here. It was too risky. Too tight a space with too many people and not enough escape routes. It would be better to sneak out, report back to his allies, and wait for a better opportunity. And so that's what he did, making his way back towards the vents that granted him access to the elevator. He decided not to waste time waiting for another passenger to give him a ride, and so he simply started climbing up the steel frame of the elevator shaft until he reached the top floor again. He made his way back towards the entrance, listening for voices on the other side before opening the door to the outside world. He continued to backtrack, keeping to the shadows until he finally made it out of the base and into the desert night. Once he was sure he was a fair distance away from any Templar eyes and ears, he started booking it back to his car, which was still thankfully right where he left it. He hopped in and revved the engines, and he sped off in the opposite direction, relieved to be out of such a perilous place, but worried about what the future had to hold.

The Templars were planning something big, that much was clear. Bigger than anything they had attempted before. Bromden just wished he knew what puzzle all these pieces fit together into. He pondered it over as he road through the night with nothing but the sound of his tires on the dirt and the slowly increasing digital humming in his ears. The world in front of the windshield started breaking apart, evaporating into the blank white void of the Animus. The desert vanished, the car vanished, and soon all Ava was left with was the headset on her face.

“Well I guess that solves one conspiracy theory,” Ava laughed when Ruby pulled the Animus off her head.

“I was honestly hoping there were actual aliens at Area 51,” Ruby said. She looked over at the Tennysons and Kevin. “Do you have actual aliens at Area 51?” she asked.

“Yeah, but it isn't exactly a pretty situation,” Gwen said, rubbing her neck awkwardly.

“That so?” Catherine asked.

“Detainment center build to hold and torture hundreds of innocent intergalactic visitors doesn't exactly reflect well in space court,” Kevin told them.

“You know that actually does make sense now that I think about it,” Jess said. “That… yeah that sounds like five levels of illegal.”

“Six actually,” Ben said, half joking.

Ava chuckled and stood to stretch her legs a bit. “I just hope this brings us closer to finding the Apple that Eon is after,” she said.

“Did you see any Apples in there?” Chelsea asked.

Ava shook her head. “No. There was a lot of isu junk getting carted around, but I didn't see any Apples. The most prominent thing was that weird time disk thingy.”

“Time disk?” Ben asked, his interest suddenly peaked.

“This thing,” Ruby said, spinning one of her computer monitors around for the gang to see. She pointed to the bizarre artifact that Bromden had gotten a look at while eavesdropping. And suddenly the Tennyson crew's faces went white.

“That's the Hands of Armageddon!” Gwen gasped.

“No way…” Kevin said. “I thought we destroyed that thing.”

“The Hands of what now?” Ruby asked.

“The Hands of Armageddon,” Ben repeated. “It's an old alien artifact that's basically a crosstime gateway.”

“So… it's a time machine?” Jess asked.

“Kind of…” Gwen said. “It let's the user go anywhere, anywhen, in any parallel timeline or universe.”

“Damn I could've used that in high school,” Chelsea said.

“But didn't we destroy that thing when we fought Eon last time?” Kevin pondered.

“Paradox once told us that it exists throughout all realities,” Ben considered. “I guess we just destroyed the one from our universe.”

“Lame…”

“That explains why Eon was able to cross over into this dimension,” Gwen said. “If the Hands of Armageddon still exist in this world, the gate was essentially just left open for him.”

“What do we do then?” Catherine asked.

“If we can get our hands on that hunk of junk… we might be able to kick Eon out the door before he can do anything!” Ava concluded cheerfully.

“Sounds like we need to take a trip to Area 51 then,” Ruby smirked. “You guys all up for a road trip to Nevada?”

“How the hell are we going to break into Area 51?” Chelsea said. “It's not gonna be the same construction site of a base it was 60 years ago. Abstergo would've upgraded everything to make it impenetrable.”

“Bruh, we've got three actual super powered alien people on our team,” Catherine pointed out.

“Knowing Abstergo, that probably won't be enough.”

“Well that's just negative thinking.”

“Squirt.”

“Dweeb.”

Ben and Gwen chuckled under their breath. “Reminds me of old times,” Ben jokingly whispered.

“I hear everything,” Chelsea said, fixing him with one of her burning glares.

“You know, we might not have to break in at all actually…” Jess suddenly said. The group all looked at her.

“What do you mean?” Ava asked.

“Well… Area 51 is a Templar base right? One designated for only top Templar agents?”

“Yeah?”

“Well… we do happen to know someone like that who could give us clearance.”

The Assassins’ eyes all widened in realization. A lot of them smiled, except for Chelsea, who immediately started protesting.

“Oh no,” she said. “No no no no we are not calling him.”

“Come on Chels, you know she's got a point,” Catherine smirked.

“There is no way I'm agreeing to that plan!”

“Sounds like you've got a bit of a history with your inside man,” Kevin laughed.

“They have a sort of sibling rivalry going on,” Ruby chuckled. “Cathy, can you phone him up and ask him to come down here?”

“Sure thing Rubes,” Catherine nodded, pulling out his phone and immediately calling a number.

“I hate you all,” Chelsea said, and she made her final declaration of irritation by crossing her arms and plopping down on the couch in pure pouty anger.