Gates sat frozen for several seconds.
He'd been chasing this supposed Templar Order since childhood. His grandfather had solemnly inducted him as a knight with all the ceremony the old man could muster—and Gates had carried a kind of fond, mythologized feeling for the organization ever since. It had always been the grand conspiracy he'd romanticized since he was small.
But now that it was sitting in front of him, it looked nothing like the thing he'd imagined.
This was the universal truth about cherished obsessions. Devout believers could spend their entire lives praising God, and if the Almighty actually showed up in their living room, they'd fall completely apart. The idea and the reality were two different animals.
Gates told himself this man was probably lying. He refused to speak without a lawyer and said nothing further.
The agent didn't press. He left with a cold smile.
Over the next two days, the story broke into the open. Most Americans probably hadn't read the Declaration in full and had only a vague idea of what it actually said—but the symbolic weight of the thing was enormous. The White House, every major news outlet, and half the academic community issued statements within the hour.
Gates hadn't been convicted of anything, which meant he was still presumed innocent, which meant every journalist in the country descended on Washington to get his version. He played it intelligently, casting himself as an obsessive scholar rather than a thief, and maintained his innocence throughout.
He went on the offensive about the Archives' security failures. The National Archives pushed back. Gates countered: if a historian with no special training could walk out with the original Declaration of Independence, in what sense was its security adequate? The argument gained traction.
American institutions take their scholars and scientists seriously. Gates had no criminal record, carried some academic credibility, had turned himself in voluntarily, and hadn't caused any permanent damage to the document. The D.C. police accepted his bail payment, scheduled a hearing, ordered him to stay in Washington, and sent him home.
Gates was temporarily free—but the discovery that the back of the Declaration contained nothing had gutted him. He walked home feeling hollowed out.
He stepped inside and found the elderly Templar FBI agent already waiting in his living room.
"Please leave. I'm not in a good mood."
The agent didn't move. "Do you think the Templar Order actually cares about the treasure, Dr. Gates? An organization built from nobility and old money? Do you think they need it?" He let that sit. "Only the Assassin Brotherhood gets excited about things like this. Desperate people chasing crumbs."
Gates had encountered references to the Brotherhood in various ancient texts—though he had no way of knowing whether the organization still existed.
The agent continued, utterly self-assured. "The Brotherhood took a severe blow from us three years ago. We've heard they recently appointed a new Mentor. Quite sad, really—they were once our equals. Now look at them."
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"Because we believe you've met the Brotherhood's new Mentor." The agent dropped a stack of photographs on the table. "Can you identify this person? Do you know their name?"
The photos were grainy. Gates could make out himself in conversation with a middle-aged man, the man's back turned to the camera, nothing but a silhouette.
He recognized it immediately—that posture, that build. It was Ian—the British investor who had funded the Charlotte expedition.
Gates made his choice.
Ian had funded the search without conditions, no questions asked. Even after things had gone sour between them, there had been no confrontation—no ultimatums, no weapons drawn, nothing like the blow-ups Gates had imagined. And Gates felt responsible. Ian had poured over thirty million dollars into this on Gates's word, and Gates had cost him everything and delivered nothing. The guilt had been sitting in his chest since the Arctic.
"Never seen them," Gates said flatly. "Don't know who that is."
The agent smiled. It was a smile designed for a villain in a film. Before Gates could react, two men in his peripheral vision moved—they had him by both arms.
"This is illegal—you can't —"
The man on his right pressed a syringe into his neck. His legs stopped working almost immediately.
As the darkness closed in, he heard the agent's voice: "Take him. Tell Abstergo he's the new Subject 17. His bloodline is interesting—they think it could help the Templar Order unlock some very powerful magic."
Magic?
Ben Gates's last conscious thought dissolved into nothing.
In New York, they waited two days before Shaun Hastings returned from Philadelphia.
He had cracked the coded message hidden on the back of the Declaration, gone to the Liberty Bell, and—in the shadows beneath the bell tower—found a loose brick concealing an extraordinarily crafted pair of spectacles. It had three layers of lenses and worked a bit like 3D glasses at a movie theater.
Bella put them on and adjusted the lenses over the back of the Declaration.
The final clue appeared.
She read it quietly twice: "Here at the wall… beneath Whitington Lane?"
She passed the glasses to Shaun, then 006, letting each of them look.
"'The wall' — does that mean the original Dutch colonial wall?"
"No—it means Wall Street. Wall Street was a wall. That's where the name comes from."
"De Heere—that's Dutch for 'street.' It must be a street name. Broadway! The Mentor's earlier estimate was right. However we read this, the treasure is definitely in New York."
Several of the Brotherhood's analysts were talking over each other, each building on the last. 006 looked from face to face, nodding along, privately convinced that every single one of them was at least partially correct.
Bella didn't engage with the debate. For her, this was no longer a reasoning problem. All the necessary clues were already in place. Every piece was on the board.
Divination only worked when you understood what you were reading. When you knew nothing about a world, the reading came back meaningless. But when all the conditions had been met, the accuracy became almost absolute. Even anti-detection wards couldn't help at this stage. She already had the last clue. The ward wasn't blocking her from finding anything; she was simply following a path she already knew to its end.
She sat in her chair. A fine, dense veil of psionic energy gathered around her. The room fell quiet on its own, with every Brotherhood member reading the shift in the air and falling silent without being told. This was the final confirmation.
006 and Shaun watched without speaking.
Something changed in the light.
A red cross materialized in the air. Faint, but unmistakable.
"The blood-red cross is the Templar Order's mark," Shaun murmured to 006.