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“Kenway, Adams, get out of there, now!” Captain Otso barked over the radio. “The buildings coming down!”
Edward glanced at his partner, Freddy. Both men were clad head to toe in heavy canvas suits, a full respirator and an O2 tank. In each of their hands, a large red axe, tipped with a hardened steel hook. The two men came to a silent agreement. Edward clicked his radio. “There's one more floor, Boss. Then we’ll come back.”
“Damn it Kenway, you get your-” Edward turned his radio off.
“Come on. In and out.” The two firemen trounced through the wreckage of the still-burning building. The wooden floor beneath their feet creaked dangerously as heavy boot falls hit the crumbling boards over and over. Edward kicked down a doorway and moved into the last room of the top floor. In the bathtub, cowered two small children. A boy and a girl, no older than 7 and 9. The girl cowered in the arms of her older brother. “Adams. We’ve got two kids here!”
Freddy moved into the room and knelt by the kids. All four flinched as the roof creaked. Chunks of smouldering wood collapsed into the room and Freddy covered both children with his body. “We need to get out of here!” He called.
Edward jumped into the room as the roof over the door gave out. Thick support beams and rubble blocked the entrance, the air around them thickening with smog. The little girl coughed violently into Freddy's neck. The two Firemen exchanged a look. Freddy’s eyes were full of desperation; in Edwards: resignation.
Edward pulled his respirator off and moved up to the children. He pulled the tank off his back and placed the tank in the bathtub, and the respirator in the boy's hands. “You and your sister take turns, ok? We’ll get you out of here.” Edward tousled the boy's short black hair and turned his attention to his partner. “Get in the tub and hold on tight, Bud.”
Freddy nodded and complied, muttering words of encouragement to the children in his arms. The little girl clung desperately to his neck, the boy taking a deep breath of clean hair.
Edward’s lungs burned and his eyes watered. The pain was manageable. He bit the finger of his right glove and pulled his hand free. He slammed the now uncovered hand against the head of his axe. The metal burned against his skin as the sigil of a shattered diamond was etched into the steel. He muttered, “It won't be ideal, but it'll do,” under his breath and drew in the wellspring of power from Agartha that he cut off, long ago.
Earthen rubble hovered around the room, shattered remnants of concrete and roof tiles in a tornado of earth as the collapse surged. The axe’s sigil blazed with golden light as the debris solidified into a shell around the two firemen and their charges.
The building rumbled in despair. Its walls collapsed inwards. And the floor fell out from their feet.
When the dust cleared, the earthen shell crumbled away from all four survivors. Completely unharmed. Freddy pulled his mask off and gazed in amazement at his partner, the tip of his axe still ablaze in yellow light. “Edward, what was-”
Edward glanced back at his partner, then ran.
Edward kicked the door to his apartment down and ran to his room, slamming the door shut on his way through. On his way home, he had discarded his jacket and remaining equipment, save his axe. He reached under his bed and dislodged a backpack from its moorings to the bedframe. He double-checked its contents: A couple of changes of clothes, a few thousand dollars in non-sequential dollar bills, and a passport. Shaun Hastings would be his new face, Edward Kenway would die today.
There was a knock on the door. Edward froze. He hefted his axe but held it behind his back as he put the backpack on. “Who is it?” He called out. No response.
He moved towards the front door. A shadow showed itself behind the doorway. A few moments later, another knock.
Edward opened the door, the axe mostly hidden behind his body. Behind the door stood two strangely clad figures. Both were dressed in plain black and white suits. They were seemingly unarmed. Edward’s eyes were locked onto their masks. Fully concealing both their faces were black and yellow Wasp wasps, their insectoid eyes fully black and glistening glass.
“You are, Desmond Miles.” The leader’s voice, a woman, spoke through some digital interface, the voice a computer-synthesized approximation of human speech.
“Who wants to know?” Edward took a half step away from the masked visitors.
“We are the Swarm. We are many. And we know who you are.” The woman synthesized. She didn’t hold any devices that seemed to control the voice modulator. Nor did her throat move when she talked. “We have something to show you. We have somewhere you need to go.”
“Like hell I'm going anywhere with you.” Edward, or Desmond, hefted his axe in both hands and entered a stable stance. He barred his teeth. “Back off and no one will get hurt.”
“We are the Swarm. We know the truth. We will show you too.” She raised her hand and a cloud of pink gas enveloped Edward. His lungs burned harder than the ashen smog from before. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and Edward collapsed.
As the world darkened into oblivion, the lead Swarm looked down at him. “We are the Swarm. And we have always been watching you.”
Then, Edward's world was fully overtaken by darkness.