A stroll through London

It felt like the shift would never end. Everyone was so fuckin' paranoid I couldn't sleep...always frantically whispering, "Was that a sniper?" "Are there Nazis in that building?" "What was that noise?" I won't lie. I get nervous some times, but I don't lose my cool like these idiots. It's never anything anyway. Guy killed a cat thinking it was a Nazi. Christ. Whatever. My team is asleep. No one will notice I'm gone.

Chris made sure he had a couple extra clips for his 1911 before heading out, throwing up his hood.

Rebecca jumped at the sound of an explosion nearby. Something was going on toward the Tower of London, but she wanted nothing to do with it. She picked up the briefcase after noticing that she had dropped it.

She needed to find Chris, and he was around here somewhere, but where was his base again? This whole ordeal was a mess. The war was screwing up everything. Why couldn't she just have a happy life?

Chris lit his cigarette and took a long draw. It was raining. Always fuckin raining. "This place can go to hell..." There were some German soldiers ahead of him a few blocks down, so he took a detour through a back alley. He didn't know where he was going. He could get home no problem. It would be as easy as climbing onto a ship. But the military kept strong tabs on deserters. He wouldn't be able to return to his family home. "I take it back, this place is hell."

Against her better instincts, Rebecca ran into the nearest alley. She saw some very intimidating looking men leaving to the direction of the Tower. Another man, this one wearing a white hood, was coming her way. Did he want the briefcase? Rebecca ran toward him and shoved him out of the way.

"Shit!" Chris shouted as he was knocked over, falling into a garbage can. The noise echoed off the walls, making the hair on his neck stand on end. Quickly, he jumped up and grabbed his assailant, pinning their hands behind their back and covering their mouth. "Don't move!" he whispered aggressivly. "I don't know whose side you're on, but I won't let those fuckin Nazis kill me over this!"

Rebecca's mind flashed. Suddenly, she felt like another person had taken her body like a puppet. He left hand came free. She spun to release her right hand open him for attack. Her left palm thrust unto his chest as if it were supposed to kill him. As suddenly as it flashed out, her body was her own again. The man fell to the ground, revealing the face under his hood.

"Chris!" Rebecca dropped her briefcase to embrace him, "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

"Rebecca?! The hell are you doing here?!" Chris took her in his arms despite the pain in his chest. "How did you get here? Why did you leave home?" So many questions wanted to fall out of his mouth, but silence was the only thing coming from his mouth. It had been so long.

Rebecca's eyes swelled with tears, "I needed to find you. I didn't know where to go. They're putting us in camps because of Pearl Harbor," she wiped her lids, "Chris, I need to know something," she withdrew a paper from her briefcase and pointed to the Assassin emblem stamped in the corner, "You've always carried this around. What does it mean? Why was it in my box?"

Chris's heart skipped a beat. The assassin's emblem. Why would she receive that? He heard voices coming towards the back alley. "I'll try to explain later, but for now, we need to get out of here."

Rebecca nodded silently before she returned the paper to the briefcase. Even though he was nine years her junior, she had always found a kind of solace in Chris' perpetual calmness.

"Aye, wha' are ya doin' 'ere, Assassin?" a thick British man yelled into the alley. He did not appear to be alone.

Rebecca reached for her gun.

Chris held Rebecca's arm still to keep her from drawing her weapon. "Ass ass in? Sorry, but I'm not a homo. We were just taking a stroll through this beautiful city hoping to find a place to consumate our undying love for each other. We thought this would be a good place, but apparently not." Hopefully these Brits were dumber than the average citizen.

Rebecca grabbed Chris' arm for fear of her life. Whoever this man was, he could not have wanted anything good. He didn't respond to Chris' statement. He only shot at them.

Again, her brain flashed into a puppet moment. Her arm wrested free from Chris to shoot the man. He went down, but his gang opened fire. Rebecca's mind returned to her body.

Henry jumped as he heard a gunshot. "What the hell...?" He thought, and quickly stashed away the folder and ran outside the back entrance of the makeshift US Army Base.

There he saw one of his own, Corporal Chris Phoenix, standing with a girl holding a briefcase. They stood face to face with a gang of men, one of whom was laying down on the ground bleeding.

"Hold your fire!" Henry yelled, at the gang members, began to shoot wildly. Phoenix and the girl seemed to not hear him, so he ran up into a hail of bullets..

"Hold your fire!" another man yelled.

He seemed to be unrelated to the other men. Rebecca and Chris dove behind a dumpster to dodge the storm of bullets.

Henry fell back behind the door and called into his radio, "This is Lt. Colonel Henry Priest requesting backup, internal non-war related incident. Shots fired."

He cocked his gun and turned out trying to pick off any of the opposing gang members, as he saw Phoenix and the girl dive behind a dumpster waiting for help.

Henry ran inside the his room and grabbed the nearest gun he could find. An M12 shotgun.

He ran back to the door and tossed his soldier the gun saying, "Phoenix, catch!"

The last time Stien Hansen tried to reunite with the brotherhood, it took half a day using the bar as a information hub and rendezvous point. However, the squads he had previously in contact with were dissolved, most likely because the majority of their members were dead. Starting from scratch, it took a lot of dead ends, 2 days of squatting in front of the radio, and going through an uncomfortably large amount of his coffee supply before he had even the foggiest idea of where the safe house would be located.

He was wandering around the area, looking for anything or anyone that would finally bring his search to a close. He found gunshots. Sprinting towards the sound, he was confronted by a wall of buildings. And the gunshots were coming from the other side.

"Of course you are on the other side," the Dane grumbled, taking the time to don a pair of fingerless gloves. Slinging the strap of his bag across his body, he used his now freed hands to start climbing the buildings. From behind him he heard indignant protests, "You'll hurt yourself, you idiot!" "What is he doing?" "He's going to break something." "Some ought to call the police." It never failed to make him snigger to himself, before he broke the line of sight from the spectators.

Stien could see it now, the gun fight taking place in an alley way adjacent to him a couple of streets away. At that point, he took the time to take out and load his sniper riffle, before navigating the rooftops, climbing down, and spying some very unfriendly Brits shooting into an alleyway, possibly gang members based on their dress. Some people on the other side were taking cover, and he could have sworn he saw a glimpse of that particular trade mark hood he had been hunting London for.

There wasn't a way to exactly communicate with anyone without risk of getting shot, so the Dane alternatively chose to traverse the walls once more, suppressing the urge to groan as his limbs protested to the strain of gravity. At the top, he crouched on the roof, taking aim at the unfriendlies, their backs turned to him. Carefully, he lined up a non lethal shot should disable one of the centrally located enemies, and squeezed the trigger.

Catching the M12, Chris smiled. "A shotgun, how did you know, colonel?" Giving the gun a pump, he turned on the Brits and started spraying lead. Every pull of the trigger, Chris laughed. "How do you like all that lead in your face?!" Innuendo aside, he began looking for a means to escape before a bullet found its way in his head. "Rebecca, find a way to get to the rooftops!"

Rebecca uncurled from safety. The Rooftops? What could possibly be there? It was an odd request, but something about it felt like it made sense. But why was Chris acting so. . . almost happy? She knew that he liked to fight, but she never thought he had the capacity to kill with a joke. Then again, she had no idea that she had the capacity to kill, but this last week had been full of surprises. She nodded and ran down the alley away from the gunmen.

"I found a ladder!"

"Get up there quick!" Chris shouted. "I'll keep them busy!" Out of ammo for the M12, he pulled out his 1911 and took aim carefully. One was pointing his gun towards Rebecca, he took a .45 calibur bullet in his left eye. Another flinched from the blood spray. He took two to the chest. Despite the dire situation, Chris was starting to feel alive again.

From atop the building, Rebecca spotted reinforcements coming pouring into the alley. However, she also saw someone else aiming a rifle into below. she drew her gun, "Who are you?"

The street was a bloodbath. "Churchill and his troops aren't going to be pleased." Henry thought, as he ducked behind cover, shooting blindly at the attackers.

There was a sniper sitting up top the roof that the girl was now climbing up of, but he wasn't American, that's for sure. Henry was just glad for any help that he could find.

"Where's the backup I ordered!" Henry yelled into his radio.

"On our way sir." said a soldier, as a Jeep cam rolling down the allyway, scattering the gangmembers. It was over.

As soon as the gang was dispersed, Chris quickly climbed up the building towards Rebecca. Looking up and around, he calculated the easiest route to the top using the window sills and railings he came across. Raising his hand to his chest with his ring finger tucked, he said, "Good evening, brother." to the sniper.

Rebecca shuddered, but did not lower her gun, "Chris? You know him?"

Chris put his hand on Rebecca's gun and slowly lowered it. "Not personally, but I know an Assassin when I see one." Chris extended his hand to shake. "I'm Chris Phoenix. What brings you to this shitty place?"

Henry observed at a distance. Phoenix was talking with the sniper up top the roof. What were they conspiring?

Could they be part of the Assassin/Templar conspiracy? Henry walked over to the ladder and listened closely.