It's early, and Jacob really shouldn't be in the pub already, but sometimes he just gets tired of being on the train all the time. It's a brilliant idea, obviously, a mobile headquarters that he and Evie can use for however long they're in the city, but solid ground is still a nice change once in a while.

"Jacob?"

And usually, he can at least count on a few hours away from Evie. Not that he doesn't love his sister, but he'd never realized how hard it is to avoid someone on the tight space of a train, until he started living on one with Evie.

"Jacob, I know you can hear me."

He sighs and pushes a chair away from his table with his foot, giving Evie room to sit down. "And what do I have to thank for this early morning visit, sister dear?"

"I heard about a lecture tonight," Evie says, settling into the offered chair and sliding a sheet of paper across the table to him. "I thought you might want to come with me."

"To a lecture?" Jacob grins and pushes the piece of paper back toward Evie. "Sorry, but I think you have me confused with your other brother. The one that actually likes going to these things."

"Mmm." Evie gives him a tight smile. "Yea, my other brother who can sit still and listen for more than fifteen minutes at a time."

"Well, you can go find him and get him to go to your lecture with you," Jacob says. "I'd rather go find a fight club somewhere, but I hear he likes all this learning stuff."

Evie laughs. "I think I like this fictional other brother," she says. "But seriously, Jacob, since you're the only brother I actually have, you're the one I need tonight."

"Come on, Evie," Jacob sighs. "Get Greenie to go with you."

"He's coming too," Evie says. "But—"

"Bored," Jacob announces.

"Jacob!"

"Bored!"

"Look, Jacob." She shoves the paper back at him, and Jacob makes the mistake of looking down at it. Oh. Oh. "Okay," he says, trying not to sound too impressed. "I'm… interested." He waves the paper back in her direction.

"A mummy unwrapping," Evie says.

Jacob makes a strangled, frustrated noise and slides down in his chair with his hands over his face. "Evie," he complains. "Why did you have to go and make it sound cool?" Mummy unwrappings are something he's heard of, of course. They've been happening in London for at least the last fifteen years, scientists finding mysteriously preserved bodies in ancient Egyptian tombs, and pulling off the wrappings to reveal the bodies inside. Jacob's heard some of them are thousands of years old.

Evie kicks at his ankles until he's sitting up again. "It's not just a lecture, Jacob," she says. "Take another look at the picture." The paper comes back his way.

So Jacob looks down at the paper—now crumpled from all their shoving it back and forth—and after almost a full minute, he spots it and lets out a low whistle. "That's an Assassin's symbol," he says looking up at Evie.

"It is," she agreed.

"But… that… Evie, the mummy's ancient. It has to be older than the Assassins, we don't go back that far." He slides the paper so it's sitting in the middle of the table, and both of them lean over to look at it more closely. The hand drawn picture shows a sarcophagus, sides covered in hieroglyphics. And hidden in the middle of all those unreadable symbols is the Assassin symbol.

"I guess we do," Evie says.

"You didn't know that?" Jacob says. "Thought you knew everything." He's sort of teasing her, but it doesn't come out quite right. He's too impressed. "So… why are we going to see this Assassin mummy unwrapped? He wasn't buried with some piece of Eden, was he?" Evie hasn't shut up about those artifacts since they got to London, and Jacob's really getting sick of it.

"Because he's an Assassin," Evie says. "We work in the dark to serve the light," Evie says. "This man, whoever he was, he was one of us. They've already taken him from wherever he was buried, and now they're going to expose him for everyone to see."

There's something in her voice that makes Jacob pause, and look up at her. "Evie," he says. "You don't just want to go so you can hear the lecture, do you?"

Evie looks up too, and grins. It's an expression that's usually more at home on Jacob's face than hers, but Jacob likes the look of it there. Whatever's going to happen tonight, it's going to be fun. "Jacob," Evie says. "We're going to steal a mummy."

He leans back and laughs, so loudly that the bartender on the other end of the pub shouts at him to be quiet. Jacob, of course, doesn't listen. "Evie!" he says, now beaming. "You could have led with that!"

"My way is more fun," Evie says. "And would you really have taken me seriously if I'd walked in here and said 'let's steal a mummy'?"

"Yes!"

Evie laughs too—not as loudly as Jacob—and stands up. "Meet me outside the lecture hall tonight," she tells him.

"I will be there," Jacob promises. "Can't wait to meet your mummy."

-/-

Evie spends the day split between studying the location where the lecture and unwrapping are set to take place, and reading what's already been released about the mummy itself. Himself. There's not much, but Evie reads it all, drinks it in, tries to learn everything she can about this man who was a part of the Brotherhood millennia before she'd even been born.

Their best guess on the man's name is Bayek. Evie studies the hieroglyphics that spell out his name, trying to see something in them. They don't mean anything to her, so her eyes drift back to the drawing of the sarcophagus, and the Assassin's symbol there. That she understands. He's one of them, and no matter how long it's been since he strapped a hidden blade to his arm (if they even had them in his time). He is an Assassin. And Evie is not going to let him be stripped and put on display like this.

Halfway through her studying, Henry comes to join Evie. He sits across the table from her, pulls over some of the papers she's been looking at, and starts reading through them himself.

"He lived in the first century BC," Evie says, after they've been reading for a while in silence. "Almost nineteen hundred years ago, and then they just… find him, in some tiny, buried tomb in the desert."

"Incredible," Henry says. They look up at each other, and Evie flushes red when she sees his smile.

-/-

Evie would attract attention if she attended the lecture—she'd be one of the only women there. Henry spends about an hour agonizing over how to point this out, before she announces that she'll be infiltrating the lecture hall from above. She says it'll just be easier that way, and she's right, so Henry doesn't argue.

The plan is for himself and Jacob to walk in the front door with all the other lecture attendees. Evie will come in more… quietly, from above, and when they're all in place, Jacob will cause a distraction. He'd volunteered very enthusiastically for that role, and he'll do the best job of it anyway, so no one argues. Then, when everyone's panicking, they're going to… they're going to have to steal the mummy.

None of them has any idea how that's going to work. Henry's never had to steal a body before.

The lecture starts at half past seven. Henry is in his seat by 6:45 (Jacob arrives at 7:20). The mummy rests on a table at the front of the room, and Henry studies it as he waits for the lecture to begin.

It finally does start, right on time, and Jacob lets it go for exactly six minutes before his distraction. Henry's not exactly sure what that distraction's going to be, not until he sees Jacob bend down in his seat at the far side of the room, right at the back, and roll something down the aisle in front of him. Then he jumps to his feet and shouts, "Fire!" right as the smoke bomb goes off.

Instant chaos. The smoke leaks out as it rolls down the floor, covering a solid half of the room in a thick, billowing cloud. Henry stands with the crowd, but ducks away as they stampede toward the doors.

The scientist that was supposed to give the lecture and handle the unwrapping is still up front, the only person left in the room. Henry watches him trying to bundle the mummy off the table, and has to give him at least a little bit of credit for trying to protect it from the supposed fire. Unfortunately, he's getting in the way. Henry's about to intervene when Evie drops from the ceiling like some kind of avenging angel—and Henry will never be able to admit this out loud, but she's beautiful—landing just behind the man and rolling with the momentum. Henry sees her move in to knock him unconscious, but before she can get close, the man turns around. He sees her through the smoke, hidden by her hood, stalking toward him, and he just runs away, screaming about tomb curses.

"Well done," Henry says quietly. Under her hood, Evie cracks a smile. "He's not out of here yet," she says. "Where's—"

"Are we stealing the mummy yet?" Jacob asks, charging toward the two of them.

"There he is," Evie says. "Yes, Jacob, it's time to steal the mummy."

"Cool." All three of them turn to look at the resting mummy on the table.

"What if it comes back to life?" Jacob asks.

"He's been dead for almost two thousand years," Evie says. "I don't think that's going to happen."

"It'd be cool," Jacob says.

"Let's just get him out of here," Henry says.

"How?"

"There's three of us," Evie says. "It shouldn't be that hard."

And, honestly, it isn't. The mummy is so light it only takes two of them to carry, and the only reason they can't do it with one is because it… he's so stiff and awkward to hold. They get him out of the building through the backdoor, and it's so easy Henry almost doesn't even believe it. And then they get outside, and Jacob says, "So… are we just going to carry him all the way back to the train?"

"We came in a carriage," Henry points out.

"So…" Evie is the one not holding the mummy. "We're just going to put him in the carriage and… drive away with him?"

Jacob laughs. "Guess so."

He's the only one laughing then, but when they have him propped up in the carriage so he'll fit, all of them are smiling a little. Even Evie can't quite keep up her disapproving frown. "Poor man," she sighs, but there's a smile tugging at her mouth. "Come on, let's get him out of here."

-/-

A week later finds Evie and Jacob seated around a table in an upscale home in the heart of London. It's dark, because they're not supposed to be there, although Jacob has managed to convince Evie to let him light a lamp, and—eventually—to start up a game of cards in the dim light. They're sitting there, playing but only half paying attention, when the door opens and the house's owner steps inside. He stops dead in the doorway, wide eyes taking in the twins at his table, and the pointedly visible weaponry both are wearing.

He turns to go back out the door, but Henry's waiting right there in front of it. He steps smartly in front of the entrance, arms crossed across his chest, and almost as an afterthought, nudges the door closed.

The man turns back to the table, eyes darting between the twins, clearly unsure which would be more sympathetic. "What are you doing here?" he demands. "What do you want from me?"

"Nothing too strenuous," Evie assures him, laying down her cards and turning to face him. Jacob immediately leans over the table, scans her cards, and scowls.

"Knew you were bluffing," he mumbles.

"Hush, Jacob." She doesn't take her eyes off their unwilling host. "We know you've made your fortune off raiding tombs in Egypt and bringing their treasures back here to sell."

"Preposterous," he splutters, and she gives him an entirely unemotional smile in response.

"We're not interested in stopping you," Henry says, and the man spins around again to face him. "We just want you to take something back."

"Back? To Egypt?" The man stares at Henry, then turns back to the twins, relaxing ever so slightly.

"A mummy," Evie says. "Recently stolen from it's rightful resting place." She stands, and walks over to the man, holding out a folded piece of paper for him. "We've been doing some investigating. This is where he was taken from, and this is where you're going to take him back to."

"And just in case you were thinking about dumping him down any old hole," Jacob says. "Or selling him off when our backs are turned…" He stands up too, and swaggers after his sister. He's very clearly enjoying the effect that all his clinking weapons are having on this man. His smile is all teeth. "Don't."

The man looks at him, then Evie, then all the way back around to Henry. He's sweating, and nervous, and his eyes seem almost magnetically drawn away from their faces, down to their blades. He nods frantically, and babbles out a promise to do exactly as he's told.

"Good," Evie says, and steers him out the door. "We left him in our carriage."

She enjoys the look on his face, as he sighs and shakes his head. "Right," he mutters. "I guess I better bring the cart around. Got a boat leaving in the morning, we'll have to get him to the docks."

-/-

So Bayek makes the trip back to Egypt, packed up in an odd corner of a ship otherwise filled with much less interesting cargo. He's brought back to his tomb, and laid to rest for a second time in the tomb he'd been buried in almost two millennium earlier. And for another century and a half, he rests in peace, until someone goes digging him up all over again.

-/-

Mummy unwrappings were, apparently, a fairly popular thing in Victorian London. And of course as soon as I heard that, my brain went oh great, I can connect Bayek and the Fryes! And so here we are. I only did a couple hours of research for this, so I'm sure I got some stuff wrong, so many apologies for that.

I usually hate writing anything with new characters before their game is released, so hopefully there won't be anything in the game that contradicts Bayek being mummified. xD

Edit 10/29/17: So of course the game went and contradicted the original ending to this fic (Bayek is buried in an Assassin cemetery near London), so here is an updated version that accounts for him still being in Egypt in 2017.