Author's Note: So, after what feels like a literally eternity, here's the epilogue. You have my sincere apologies over how long it took to get this out. My only explanation is that this has been sitting around forever because it is meant to lead into a sequel that I have yet to plot out, but I've found myself recently with a lot of time on my hands so I'm going to get working on that. On another, slightly disappointing note, I had some extras for this that I was going to post but they seem to have disappeared. If I ever find them, they'll get posted here.

Her stiletto heels clicked sharply on the expensive tile floor as she marched down the long, glass windowed breezeway between Abstergo's two main office buildings, the motion sensing lights flaring to full brightness above her head. Most of the buildings outside had gone dark hours ago, but the streets lights were still letting out a warm, flickering light on the sidewalk below. Melanie Lemay was not focused on the world below her though. Her gaze was focused resolutely ahead, her shoulders tensed and her jaw set. The Templar leaders could stay locked away in one of the big, fancy conference rooms, wringing their hands and fretting about what was to come, but she was going to do something about the problem.

The Templar Order had not needed to seriously contend with the Brotherhood of Assassins for over a decade. William Miles had proved to be an overly cautious and largely incompetent leader, all his renown in the field as a regular assassin crumbling away to nothing when he had taken up the mantle of Mentor. The Assassins had become isolationists, hiding away from the world and its problems long enough for the Templar Order to have a real foothold. They had been confident that, with the help of the animus, they would be able to recover the Pieces of Eden and eliminate the Assassins once and for all. Instead, Desmond Miles, the Mentor's shrinking violet of a son, had somehow turned Daniel Cross and ensured that the vast majority of the discovered Pieces of Eden had fallen in the hands of the Brotherhood.

They had managed to get their hands on a few, after all Cross was only one man, but most of what they had snatched had turned out to be weak and largely ineffectual compared to the veritable horde of treasures the Brotherhood had amassed. There were exceptions to that of course, and one of those exceptions was what Melanie was heading for. It was perhaps the most powerful Piece of Eden that they'd successfully collected and tentative tests on it had revealed that it had some kind of influence over time. The scientists had shown a startling lack of imagination over what the artifact could do, suggesting only that it might be able to reverse incredibly short periods of time if it was in the hands of the right user. Considering what the Masyaf Apple had done in their recordings of Altair, Melanie thought that it was not at all unreasonable to assume that this particular artifact could do so much more than reverse short spurts of time.

The automatic doors at the far edge of the breezeway swished silently open and Melanie was ensconced in shadows as she stepped through them. This particular building didn't have the high tech motion sensing lights that the breezeway did. Instead, pale blue lights sunk into the walls near the floor gave the halls a ghostly glow after dark. There were, of course, switches to florescent lights, but Melanie didn't bother with them. She knew where she was going, and she could navigate the halls in relative darkness.

Melanie turned a corner, her heels snapping out a war beat on the floor, and found herself face to face with Juhani Otso Berg. The Finnish Templar was a wall of solid muscle with cold empty eyes that seemed to gaze into her very soul. Melanie felt herself falter almost involuntarily at the sight of him. Berg was the only man who'd managed to defeat Daniel Cross, and from the video footage she'd seen from the event, he'd done it easily. Both he and Cross always had a sense of inhumanity around them, but while Cross had paced and snapped and snarled like a caged beast, Berg always seemed like a cool and aloof machine. He reminded Melanie of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator, relentlessly pressing forward to complete his goal, no matter how much damage he took. If Berg opposed her now, Melanie knew that her plan was finished.

"It's awfully late for you to still be here, Ms. Lemay," Berg commented, his voice low and rough.

Melanie considered her options for a moment before squaring her shoulders and meeting his eyes. "Our leaders can continue to cower like frightened puppies at the thought of what Desmond Miles might accomplish with his Pieces of Eden, but I have no desire to complacently wait for death to find me."

"And what, exactly, do you intend to do?"

"We have our own Pieces of Eden," Melanie replied, lifting her chin slightly. "I'm simply going to make use of one of them to solve our little problem." Berg studied her for a moment, as if he was looking straight into her soul, and then stepped aside without a word. Melanie turned to watch him stride down the hall, vanishing from view as if he couldn't care less about what she was planning on doing. She didn't pause to question her good fortune. Instead Melanie marched to the end of the hall and keyed in the correct code to the vault which currently housed their Pieces of Eden.

The door swung open silently beneath her fingertips, revealing the few Pieces of Eden that they had managed to collect, each sitting on their own small pedestal. The higher ups of the Templar Order may have believed that they were entirely practical, but they possessed a flair for the dramatic that Melanie wholly appreciated. The particular Piece of Eden that she was looking for was on a pedestal close to the back of the vault. Her footsteps echoed loudly in the small room as she marched across the floor and paused in front of the display, carefully removing the glass dome over top of it and placing it carefully on the floor. The Piece of Eden gleamed unassumingly from its position on the pedestal, looking no more distinctive or powerful than any of the other artifacts gathered around the vault. There was no outward sign that it would be able to accomplish something world altering when in the right hands.

If Melanie were a more cautious person, she would hesitate and perhaps consider what she was about to attempt. Instead she reached forward and snatched the Piece of Eden from its resting place. It felt cold under her palm, growing colder even as it blazed with light under its chill burned her skin. She cried out as the world seemed to unfold in front of her, figures rushing to and fro at highly improbable speeds, rushing about as if someone had hit rewind on a VHS tape. It was overwhelming, everything moving too quickly for her brain to process as the painful chill raced up her arm. Melanie gritted her teeth and struggled to focus on her goal.

She caught sight of images in the light, flashes of what looked like a younger William Miles and a young child. Occasionally there were flashed of other people too. A little blonde girl who could only be Lucy Stillman, the looming form of Daniel Cross, an ethereal young woman with lavender colored eyes, each one flickering in and out of view like Melanie was getting a bad signal on her TV. The icy feeling had reached her throat now, making each breath a struggle, but she clung stubbornly to consciousness, focusing on Desmond Miles' young, frightened face. All she needed to do was turn back the clock for him, make the younger Miles, and maybe his co-conspirators, nothing more than a helpless child and their problems would be solved. Melanie clung to that thought as the cold overtook and her world became nothing more than blazing light.