MEMORY START

I. Jacob

London, 1868

The city never sleeps. It just mutters.

Every hour, every street, the same rhythm — hammers, hooves, and the wheeze of machines chewing through the air. You’d think the smoke would choke the life out of it all, but London doesn’t die. It just fights back.

And tonight, so do I.

“Blighters in Lambeth again,” said Roth’s runner, panting as he handed me the note. “Took one of your trains.”

I read it once. Burned it on the lamp.

“They can keep the coal,” I said, “but not the rails.”

The Rooks and I climbed onto the moving train outside Waterloo Station. The wheels shrieked, sparks flying like stars. The air smelled of oil and blood.

London’s a beast — and every borough a tooth. I just happen to be the man keeping it from biting itself in half.

II. Evie

When Jacob moves, the ground trembles.
When I move, it’s to clean the ruins he leaves behind.

Yardley had come to me in the evening — one of our watchers from Lambeth. His hand trembled.

“The Blighters mean to draw him out,” he said. “They’ve planted something on the train.”

Something. In Jacob’s world, that could mean anything from dynamite to a note with poor handwriting.

I gathered my weapons — cane, darts, pistol.
Bishop’s voice came through the telegraph, crisp and concerned:

“If Starrick’s men hold that rail, they’ll choke supply to half the boroughs. The twins must end this tonight.”

Twins. Always said like a prayer.
Or a curse.

III. Jacob

We hit them at the first bend — Rooks on the roofs, knives flashing. The Blighters fired blindly, bullets punching through the night.

I dropped onto the lead carriage, the wood shaking under me. Two Blighters lunged. I caught one’s arm, twisted, sent him flying into the wheels. The second drew a pistol — quick — but not quick enough. My blade found his throat before the trigger did.

London teaches you rhythm — fight to the beat, strike to the sound of progress.

And progress is always loud.

By the time we reached the river bridge, the last of them fell.
Then I heard it — a low ticking, like the heart of a devil.

A bomb.

“Evie’s going to kill me,” I muttered, and jumped.

IV. Evie

I found him by the river, soaked, grinning like a child who’d stolen a crown.

“You nearly got yourself blown to bits,” I said.

“Nearly,” he replied. “Which means I didn’t.”

“You are insufferable.”

He wrung the water from his coat. “You love me for it.”

I sighed. “Someone has to.”

We walked the embankment together. Behind us, the train burned quietly — a streak of orange on the horizon.

“It was Starrick’s doing,” Jacob said. “He’s uniting the Blighters again, promises them the world in exchange for their souls.”

“And you intend to take the world first?”

“I intend to take back London. One bloody rail at a time.”

He said it like a soldier who doesn’t yet know the war he’s in.

V. Jacob

The next morning brought fog thick enough to choke a man.
Evie was already gone — out gathering information, talking to our allies among the street urchins and the rebels.

I sat in the train’s cabin, watching the city crawl past.

Everywhere, people fought — for food, for work, for a breath of air not blackened by the mills.

Bishop once said we were fighting for the soul of humanity. I think we’re just trying to remember we have one.

My fingers brushed the brass handle of my revolver. My father’s old gun.
He’d called it “the last argument of kings.”

Fitting, then, that I use it to silence tyrants.

But I could still hear her voice — Evie’s, sharp as glass: “You fight too loudly, Jacob.”

She doesn’t understand. Sometimes, the city only listens when you shout.

VI. Evie

Jacob mistakes thunder for victory.
He forgets that noise fades, but influence endures.

I’d gone to meet Henry in Whitechapel — the heart of the industrial labyrinth. The air there is thick enough to drown in.

Henry led me to an old foundry the Templars had reclaimed.

“They’re making more than weapons,” he said. “They’re forging loyalty — feeding the poor, hiring the desperate. They’re building an army with coin instead of conviction.”

It was Starrick’s genius — to make the people love their chains.

As I watched the forges blaze, I thought of the Creed. Nothing is true, everything is permitted.

Yet truth mattered. Permission mattered.
Without them, what were we fighting for?

I left Henry to his work and wrote Jacob a note. Meet me at Southwark Bridge. Midnight. No theatrics.

I knew better than to hope.

VII. Jacob

She said no theatrics.
So I arrived with six Rooks, three pistols, and a grin.

The bridge was quiet — fog rolling off the river like ghosts of drowned kings.

Evie stood by the rail, arms folded.

“You brought company,” she said.

“They’re quiet.”

“They’re drunk.”

“Quietly drunk.”

She sighed. “Jacob, Starrick means to bleed the city dry through commerce, not conquest. You can’t just punch your way through industry.”

“Watch me.”

“This is the battle he wants — noise and distraction. While you fight on rooftops, he buys Parliament beneath your feet.”

I frowned. “So what, we sit and watch?”

“No. We think. We plan.”

“You mean we wait.”

Her eyes softened, but only slightly. “You’ve never learned patience.”

“And you’ve never learned to breathe.”

The wind cut between us. London hummed beneath our boots.

Two generals. One war. No peace.

VIII. Evie

We didn’t speak again for days.
But London has a cruel sense of humor — it soon forced us together.

News came from the Docks: Starrick’s men had seized the shipyards, turning them into foundries for armored carriages.
If he fortified transport, we’d lose the city’s spine.

So, together we went.

The battle began before dawn. Rooks clashed with Blighters along the Thames, blades flashing in the fog. The air filled with smoke and steam.

Jacob fought like a storm. I moved like its shadow.

He leapt onto a crane, kicking a Templar off the ledge.
I slipped beneath the gears, disarming charges before they blew.

We were two halves of one blade — sharp, unstoppable, inseparable.

Until I saw him falter.

A shot rang out. Jacob staggered. Blood bloomed against his sleeve.

I was at his side before the echo faded.

“You’re hit.”

“Just a scratch.”

“You’ll bleed out if you keep swinging like that.”

He grinned weakly. “Then I’ll make sure it’s worth it.”

I tore the cloth, wrapped the wound. “You’re impossible.”

“You love me for it.”

And damn him — I did.

IX. Jacob

They say every battle is a story told twice — once by the victor, once by the dead.

I’ve heard enough of both.

The Blighters were breaking, their red banners swallowed by fog. I could see Starrick’s mark burned into their coats, his order written in every movement. They fought like machines, soulless and silent.

I don’t want that for London.
The city should breathe, shout, curse — not march in step.

Evie once said I’m addicted to chaos. Maybe she’s right. But at least chaos is alive.

By the time the sun broke through, the docks were ours again.
The Rooks cheered. Evie watched the sunrise.

For a moment, the smoke looked like gold.

X. Evie

Victory tastes of ash.

Jacob drank with the Rooks until noon, but I walked the emptied streets — past the bodies, the blood soaking into the cobblestones.

I thought of our mother, who taught us mercy.
And our father, who taught us duty.
And wondered which lesson we’d kept.

The people cheered us as liberators.
But liberation built on corpses is still a kind of tyranny.

Perhaps that is the true battle — not against Starrick, nor his Templars, but against ourselves.

Can we save this city without becoming what we hate?

XI. Jacob

Evie doesn’t understand: I fight because I must.
London’s rot won’t burn out with words.
But maybe she’s right. Maybe I like the fight too much.

When I close my eyes, I see London as it could be — clean, free, breathing.
Then I open them, and it’s still choking.

That’s the battle.
Not fists. Not blades.
But hope.

And hope bleeds slow.

XII. Evie

That night, we sat atop the train as it rolled through the city. The stars were hidden, the air thick with soot, but the view was ours alone.

“Do you ever think we’re losing?” I asked.

Jacob leaned back, staring at the smoke. “Every day.”

“And still you fight.”

“What else is there?”

He smiled — tired, genuine. “The city’s a battlefield, Evie. Always has been. But if we stop fighting, it belongs to them.”

“And if we never stop, it destroys us.”

He nodded slowly. “Then we keep fighting until we find the middle.”

“The middle?”

“Between your books and my brawls.”

I laughed despite myself. “Impossible.”

“You love me for it.”

This time, I didn’t deny it.

XIII. Epilogue: The Battle That Remains

London never ends.
Neither do we.

The streets still groan under progress. The Templars still pull at the strings of empire. The Rooks still fight in the alleys.

And somewhere, two Assassins still argue about the best way to save a city that doesn’t know it needs saving.

The battle goes on — not for victory, but for balance.

Because peace without fight is surrender.
And fight without peace is madness.

So we walk between them —
Brother and sister.
Steel and shadow.
The heart of the Creed, still beating beneath the smoke.

Requiescat in pace.

MEMORY END