The choice, it seemed, was entirely hers. Bella weighed it from every angle.
In the end, curiosity won out over caution. She crouched down and tapped the blond man on the shoulder. "Hey. Hey. You need help?"
"I want to go home..."
The words came out in Russian, and it caught Bella off guard.
Russian. And somehow, strangely familiar.
She pinched the bridge of her nose. "What's your name?"
"I want to go home..."
Still Russian.
Two for two. Is this a pattern now?
She grabbed him by the collar and hauled him into the shadows of the alley. "You won't mind if I take a look at your memories, right? If you're a decent person, I'll pull you out of whatever mess you're in. If you're not, I'll put you in the ground."
"I want to go home..."
"I'll take that as a yes."
She reached out with her psionic ability, carefully threading past the Apple of Eden residue, and slipped into his mind.
The moment she did, she pulled back slightly in surprise.
What she'd assumed was genuine Apple conditioning was a facade. The energy structure looked right on the surface, but once she was actually inside it, she could feel the difference immediately — it was an imitation. A technological simulation of an Apple's influence, not the real thing.
The Templars have gotten this far? They can replicate an Apple of Eden now?
That was worrying. If Abstergo had cracked that kind of reverse engineering, they might have noticed something unusual about Weyland's biotech operations too — the clone and synthetic human research was the more sensitive concern. Fortunately, right now 006 was still running interference on that front, so it wouldn't blow back on her directly. At least not yet.
She pressed deeper into the man's memories.
A name surfaced from the sediment of his mind: Nikolai Orelov.
A very Russian name. Very Assassin-Brotherhood-adjacent.
She shifted her perspective and watched — not as the man himself, but as an outside observer viewing fragments of his recollections. Nikolai Orelov had been a member of the Russian Assassin Brotherhood. He'd left the order in 1918 and died in the United States a decade later, still pursued by the Brotherhood he'd abandoned.
The blond man's own memories were tangled up with Orelov's like two threads wound too tightly together. Bella had to work carefully to separate them — if her psychic reach had been any less refined, she might never have managed it.
With some effort, she extracted what she needed.
The blond man's name was Daniel Cross. He was a Templar knight.
His great-grandfather was Nikolai Orelov himself. From childhood, Daniel had been abducted by Abstergo Industries — the Templars' corporate face — and subjected to experiments in a program called the Animus Project. His experimental designation: Subject Four.
...Well. That's significant.
Bella sat back on her heels, reassessing. Daniel Cross wasn't just a Templar agent. He was one of the most pivotal individuals in this entire sequence of events.
It had been his betrayal that handed the Templars their window of opportunity. The mechanism was straightforward and brutal: a subconscious assassination command had been embedded in Daniel through the Apple, and then he was sent to infiltrate the Brotherhood. He'd joined the Brotherhood, performed brilliantly, risen through the ranks on the strength of his genuine Assassin heritage — and eventually earned a personal audience with the Mentor.
At which point the submerged command had activated. He'd killed the Mentor without knowing why, and handed over every safe house, every contact, every operational detail he'd accumulated.
The Great Purge. That was what the records called it.
Under that single strike, the Assassin Brotherhood had been nearly annihilated.
Bella withdrew her hands and sat quietly for a moment, sorting through everything she'd pulled.
The picture was clear now. Daniel Cross had been weaponized — a man turned into a precision instrument without his knowledge or consent. His mind had accepted the Brotherhood's philosophy while he was embedded with them, which left his sense of identity fragmented and lurching between two opposing frameworks. The Templars had been suppressing his psychological deterioration with pharmaceuticals.
His current mission: travel from Spain through the United States, then through Japan, with this elaborate circuitous route designed to obscure his trail. Final destination — Russia. Target — the Prophet's notebook written by Ezio Auditore, the Renaissance-era Assassin Mentor.
The long way around through Japan was to shake any surveillance before slipping into Russia.
He'd been spotted by Brotherhood operatives before he could get clear.
This situation is significantly more complicated than I needed it to be tonight.
Bella shifted her gaze to the far end of the alley. Figures in the darkness — the people who'd been pursuing Daniel Cross.
"Working late, Mr. Banks?" She kept her voice light. "Should I be budgeting overtime pay?"
A middle-aged man stepped out of the shadows. Gavin Banks — the man she'd hired to serve as president of Yutani Corporation. In that role, he was measured and contained. Here, his posture carried something else. A hunter's economy of movement.
"Miss Swan. I'm not your enemy."
He didn't meet her eyes directly, but he activated his own Eagle Vision, holding it open — a professional's way of showing their credentials in this particular world.
"Ah." Bella drew the syllable out, thoughts running ahead of her voice.
She kept her tone deliberately casual. "You're here to take care of this guy? Fine by me. I didn't see anything."
Gavin Banks shook his head, firm and immediate. "I need to tell you something. Your current situation is extremely dangerous."
Bella smiled — a genuinely bright, almost cheerful expression. "Dangerous? Dangerous how? Dangerous because of your people, or dangerous because of his?"
She nudged the unconscious Daniel Cross with the toe of her shoe.
Gavin Banks' expression settled into something grave. "Your bloodline concentration is completely unmasked. To anyone with Eagle Vision, you shine like the sun. Do you genuinely not see the problem with that?"
Bella paused.
She... hadn't actually thought about that. The Apple had never flagged it as an issue, either.
She turned his words over, extracting the implication with care: "Completely unmasked" means masking is possible. He knows this. And he's telling me.
"So there's a way to mask it," she said. "We're practically colleagues at this point, Mr. Banks. Walk me through it."
He shook his head. "I can't. My own concentration is too low — masking isn't something I need. I don't know the technique personally. But the Brotherhood's archives contain detailed instructions. The method was developed by Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad. In his later years, his own bloodline concentration became dangerously high. Without concealment, the Templars would have located him with almost no effort."
Bella studied him. "You want me to join the Assassin Brotherhood. And this masking technique is your recruitment pitch. I have to be honest with you, Mr. Banks — that's not a compelling enough offer. Give me enough time and I'd develop a comparable method myself. It's a problem I could solve on my own."
Gavin Banks nodded first, then shook his head. "I believe you. Developing an equivalent technique is well within your abilities. And you must have some exceptional advantage I can't account for — there's no ordinary path by which a human being reaches your level of genetic concentration."
He paused.
"I should also mention — many of our most valuable techniques and historical documents are restricted to Mentor-level access alone. They would all be at your disposal." He paused. "What I want isn't a transaction. It's a request. I want you to join the Assassin Brotherhood — and I want you to accept the position of Mentor. To lead the Brotherhood through this crisis."
He said it in the same tone most people used to discuss dinner plans.
Bella stared at him.
She kept staring for a full ten seconds.
At one point she seriously wondered if she'd misheard. Join the Assassin Brotherhood. And then take charge of it as Mentor.