Nothing is true, Everything is permitted.
I am an assassin.
Albireo Grayson was not your ordinary man; he was slightly more paranoid than the average person. He did not know it yet but he had been on the run for the past twenty-four years of his twenty-seven years on the planet known as Earth. He remembered very little of his childhood years before the age of four. And even less of his parents, his biological ones at least. All he remembered of them was that they always smelt of blood and metals. He had no knowledge of the extensive training that was to begin when he was to turn five. All he knew was his name and that he was three years old.
If he had remembered, it would have been a tragic scene to say the least. What seemed to be an ordinary car ride on what was a nearly empty highway two adults sat in the front seat of the car, they were tense and the young woman had tears silently falling from her face. One hand on her swollen belly and her eyes on the child in the backseat sleeping with a stuffed animal clutched in his hands.
“We can’t keep running Mirabelle; they’ll catch up to us sooner or later. We already know they are tailing us and we can’t lose them. We’ll never make it to the others before they catch us and kill us. We can’t bargain on them losing track of us. And what about Albireo? Do we want him to be used in whatever sick plans they have for people like us? You know he’s picked up the vision, you’ve seen him staring off into space.” The man spoke in nearly a whisper in order to keep his voice calm and not wake the person they were in fact speaking about. “They’ve got us on file thanks to that b*****d rat Jericho. The elder should have let me kill him before he could get away. I knew there was something wrong with him when I saw him the first time. He was never doing what he should have done and we know why now. He was feeding our information to Abstergo!”
“I know believe me I know. But what can we do? They’ve found us and we can’t return home. We have no choice. I know it seem wrong but Albireo is strong enough and hopefully someone will pass by and see him. I don’t see our tail at the moment so pull over please Lanius.”
The man pulled to the side of the road while watching for cars that might be stopping in the same area as them. “Mira, what are you doing?” He spoke softly as he watched his wife unlatch their son’s car seat. He climbed out of the car as she put the seat on the road and kissed the young boy’s forehead. “Io ti amerò per sempre il mio bel bambino. Mamma sarà sempre qui nel tuo cuore.”(I will always love you my beautiful baby. Momma will always be here in your heart.) She tucked the young boy’s blanket around his body to keep him warm in the cold morning air. Lanius knelt next to his son and ran his thumb over the boy’s forehead. “Crescere per essere forte e mi rendono orgoglioso.” (Grow to be strong and make me proud.)
“Come on we’ve got to hurry, they weren’t that far behind me last I checked. Mira, let’s go!” The two returned to the car after making sure their son’s car seat wouldn’t suddenly roll into the road. With sad eyes they watched in their rear view mirror as the seat holding their son became smaller and smaller as they drove farther away.
Albireo would not learn for many years what happened to his parents and the sibling he should have had. He remembered very little of that day other than waking up in a car with two people who were not his parents. He grew to love the two as his own parents and lived with them for many years before leaving college. He had no idea what the childless couple did and the many laws they broke to keep the young child in their own care. They had seen something different about this young man and didn’t want to give it to anyone else. The Grayson’s had gone above and beyond what other people would have done if they had found a three year old child on the side of the road. They raised him and loved him as they would a biological child. And he return loved them as only he could.
In his twenty-sixth year of life everything Albireo knew to be true had been shattered by a mysterious entity on the web known to him only as “The Seeker of the Truth” who encouraged the man to research his history and even helped the man along with pictures, locations and fragments of memories locked deep within Albireo’s own mind. He at first didn’t know how to take all of this information in and had begun to doubt The Seeker’s words, but little by little the truth was indeed being revealed to him. He learned that he was never registered as being born in 1983, due to his parents involvement in what they did. With this information he realized that he had been living on borrowed time and should have been dead at three years old all because some people on the planet saw him as a possible threat.
It was then that he learned about Abstergo from The Seeker. He learned that it was no ordinary company and that they controlled a bulk of the world’s resources and inventions. The Seeker gave him the information he needed to continue to avoid Abstergo for the next year and a half. He had been to college, M.I.T, where he earned his degree in the science field. And he made use of one of The Seeker’s messages one night to develop something that the Abstergo scientists would have loved to get their hands on. He had been sent data of a machine called an ‘Animus’ and in attempts to build his own succeeded.
It is this device that is secured in a backpack currently on the young man as he runs his way through a crowded Paris streets. He had come to the city on suggestion by The Seeker. But Paris was not his final destination, his destination was not too far off of that of other assassins.
He knew now he was born to be an assassin, his parents were assassins and his ancestors assassins.
He was tired, he was wounded and surprised that he was even let on the plane in the condition that he was. He had changed from his bloody clothes but they were again returning to that metallic scented state. He had been shot and taken care of in some backwater burb in the Americas. He had spent the last six months in residence with a small group of assassins who were researching critical items Abstergo wanted to get their hands on. “Pieces of Eden” is what the assassins called them. Artifacts through out history that either could break the world and man or help it. Albireo was a newcomer to it all, since the assassins had been dong this work for an incredibly long time now, before even his great, great something grandfather had been born.
But two nights ago, two nights ago had changed everything. Abstergo found them, then all hell broke loose. Albireo was caught in the cross fire between agent and assassin and while was no slouch in the fighting department he had been injured. A bullet had ripped through his stomach, and he had been told by the man that patched him up he had been lucky that no organs had been hit. He has had little sleep since then becoming paranoid they were going to find him thanks to the blood trail he had left escaping the compound.
He was right; they did find him and tailed him to the airport and onto his plane. After all Abstergo controlled a great many companies, it would be peanuts for them to switch things around and get some of their own agents on the flight. They wanted all the assassins they could get their hands on, especially after the failure of losing both Subjects 16 and 17. And Albireo did not want to be a number in a book to be killed when they were done using him. He had his own agenda and thanks to The Seeker, he now had a weapon of his own in the fight against the Templar. One that he planned to keep hidden for a while longer.
On the brief flight between Paris, France and Venice, Italy Albireo got very little sleep, no more than ten minutes or so before he sat up and remarked on the lights from the night sky. He rushed to make sure that his backpack was still on his lap and that it had not been opened or touched. Paranoia was his new lot in life and he wanted to stay alive and there was no way in hell he wanted his new system to fall into their hands. Thinking of them mass producing the system and handing it out to every agent on the field had him shuddering. The last thing he wanted was to make the company more powerful than it actually was.
Grabbing his bag he waited until there was nearly no one left on the plane. He knew there were agents, The Seeker had told him that much in his last email, and while Albireo trusted the mysterious informant he wondered how much trust he should actually put in the person he had never met. But so far the informant had helped keep the man alive. And it was enough for him to keep trusting him. His cell phone trilled with a new message and he made a point to look at the phone and smile as though it was a message from a loved one.
You are not alone. There are three agents on the plane and another ten in the airport itself, be careful. ~TS
He smiled again and placed the phone back in his pocket and he exited the craft. Seeker was right so far, there were three other people off the plane after him and they weren’t employees. “Hmm, I wonder just how far they will try to follow me.” He stepped into the main airport itself and watched as the three behind him slunk off to the baggage claim as though they needed to be there. He didn’t, he had only one bag and it was with him the whole time. Albireo kept on the lookout for the other ten mentioned by Seeker and spotted a few of them wandering over to the three that had been on the plane with him. He smirked slightly and let the chase begin. He stepped into the bathroom and they shifted position. He walked into the food court and they were in line behind him. Walking in one larger circle he managed to pinpoint all thirteen of them watching and waiting for him to slip up.
So he waited like he knew they were doing to him. He knew that out in the open like this they wouldn’t be able to do much to him and they couldn’t take him with out witnesses. So he sat waiting and reading a newspaper. Finally his way out appeared, he knew there was a reason he took a seat at the food court of all things. Americans were fat asses and they liked to eat, and so when a large group of them passed by the young man he took the opportunity to slip into the group and blend in. After all he was American just like them and he could blend quite well. He managed to duck behind a rather large man named Alfred who seemed to be sucking down a soda like it was the end of the world. Once outside with the large tourist group he disappeared into the shadows of the night, even Abstergo unable to follow him.
And so this is where the man’s story begins and how he picked up an unlikely companion to travel with him.
