This Cursed Land

[madimpossibledreamer]

with every single conversation with Nicholas Desmond was like “okay all of this is nice and interesting could you please go back to safety” which isn’t a normal Bee reaction.
Also it turns out he sidestepped doing the Phoenician mission entirely, mostly because Chelsea & crew were returning and the Phoenicians sent the truce and are taking it seriously...which conversely means Chelsea’s going to have to fill him in on a few things because that’s kind of crucial info.
Also in-game Nicholas Winter says that he sought refuge in the highest location he could find. Which would be the Ferris Wheel. If he’d stepped foot in there, he wouldn’t have left.
Thinking about it it makes so much sense as to why there’s continual family tragedies associated with the park but the why is a bit spoilery. We’ll get there.

Main Points: Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond gets his first glimpse of the infamous Atlantic Island Park and meets a target of the Phoenicians.
Word Count: 1360
Rating: Teen

 

        Desmond had, he realizes, forgotten about the fog. He’d thought he couldn’t given how noticeable and omnipresent it is, but at some point it’d been there so long it’d faded into the background, like it was always meant to be here. He can’t forget it now. It’s even thicker and more cloying than before, as he crosses the desolated parking lot behind the Council house to the lone car. Lydia’s attempts at conversation trail into silence, and even Alice is staying closer than normal, though if asked she’d probably say something about observing more closely.
        The guy standing there is gold. Not a target, not for him, but important. It’s just Eagle Vision that lets him pick the figure out of the fog from a distance, but he’s weirdly, unnaturally, still. His suit’s oddly pristine, never mind all the dangers around, hat perfectly fine on his head, cane in hand—and he’s never used that for defense, either, even though it looks like it’d be a decent enough weapon. For some reason, he’s also older than Desmond would have expected, but it’s not like John Wolf had said the rich man was young, so—okay, yeah, the expectation probably had something to do with the Calculations, but, again, why.
        “Have you ever hated somewhere you’ve never seen?” he asks without even turning or looking, staring fixedly up at the old rides like he can’t even look away. That’s...no, not even Eden or whatever they’d called that city, because in a way, he’d seen that too. But he’s distracted from answering, because he sees a humanoid shape moving through. Not a zombie, or something else humanoid-but-not-human. They don’t move like that. It’s gone into the dark before he gets the chance to even call out.
        “Yes,” Alice responds simply, and Lydia shivers.
        “For me it was easy. Dad abandoned everything—his empire, my mother, me. He was obsessed with this place. It’s been decades now, so you might not have read the newspapers, but it was always bad news. He’d been warned the land was cursed, and then when the accidents started happening during construction, well. He said it was just sabotage. But then it didn’t stop after it opened. Kid got his eye stabbed out with an icepick by the park’s mascot. A bunch of children disappeared in the House of Horrors, and he just waved that away too, over phone calls to my mother. He never wanted to talk to me. And after the thing was built, he just...never left.” Yeah. Desmond would hate the place too.
        He swallows and shivers. “But I’m starting to wonder if he didn’t know he was lying. That what’s going on here isn’t just something you can just pretend nothing ever happened. ...I’m starting to wonder if it wasn’t on purpose.”
        He finally tears his gaze away to see Desmond, and he definitely looks haunted. “We could’ve declared him dead years ago. Nobody’s seen or heard from him since. But mother didn’t want to admit it. It wasn’t until a few years ago that she finally gave in, and do you want to know what Nathaniel Winter wrote in his goddamn will? The only thing he cared about was this park. ‘Restore Atlantic Island Park according to my original plans.’ Not a word about the rest of his real estate, not a provision to make sure me or my mother were cared for—just to spend the rest of his fortune to try to bring back...this.” He waves his cane at it, grip white on the handle.
        It’s...probably not safe for him to just be standing here. Shapes are moving in the fog, and sure, he’s been lucky enough up until this point, but that’s not going to last. “Why don’t we talk about this back in town? It’s safer there.”
        The man smiles, apologetic and somewhat distant. “Oh, I know. You haven’t met Wahid.” He gestures at the car, and—there’s a dead body in the driver’s seat. Blood spattered all over the seats, but none on the glass. “We had to drive. The airport shut down last minute. And then, like the Winter family really is cursed, the fog rolled in after. He stayed with the car. I went to go ask for help, but no one answered their doors, and by the time I got back...”
        Lydia looks spooked, but Desmond’s actually pretty sure this Winter guy is in shock.
        “He’s always been more of a father to me than, well. Family butler actually bothered to look after me, actually seemed to give a damn. I never asked if it was just the money. Guess I was too scared to know the answer.”
        He turns back to look at the park again. “I was going to sell it, but figured I couldn’t do that sight unseen. I always hated this place. Anybody else would do a better job, I thought, but now that I’ve seen it, I…” he shrugs helplessly. “I can’t walk away. It’s like there’s gravity, like I don’t have a choice.”
        Okay, Desmond hasn’t seen this exactly, but it feels, standing on the other side of it, exactly like when the Apple’s being used. Not like the siren’s song. Something deeper. More primal. “You always have a choice,” he corrects softly.
        He becomes aware of Alice taking a step closer. Probably still not blinking.
        Winter shakes his head, blinking, like he’s waking up from a dream—or a nightmare. “I—you’re right. Could you help me with Wahid? He deserves better than—than to be here, in the shadow of...this place.”
        “Sure,” Desmond agrees, walking around to help him and—okay that’s weird. At this point, it’s not weird to see dead bodies every two feet or whatever. That’s just what Solomon Island is like, at the moment. It’s a little weird to see them killed by normal human things, in this case, a bullet, though—huh. Trajectories don’t make sense. Was he actually right? Are teleporting bullets actually a thing?? It went straight through the heart, and given the way the body is now, that had to have gone through the windshield, except there’s no crack in the glass, nothing to indicate that a human with a gun had killed the butler.
        “Are you all right?” Winter’s looking at him funny.
        “Yeah, sorry.” Moving again. Maybe the Phoenicians? If they’re trying to kidnap him or learn about the plans, or—what would they want? It’s probably not Javier, or he’d probably have killed them both, even if Winter had said it happened while he’d been gone. And he still doesn’t strike Desmond as a firearms guy.
        “Desmond!” Oh hey, it’s Chelsea and Nate (who just waves silently, grinning), but...they’re not alone. They’ve found an older teenage woman with glasses and a cap.
        “Nuala Magorian,” she introduces herself, which gets a hastily stifled “oh shit” from Lydia. Nuala grins. “I’ve met your grandmother, but I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting you, Lydia. We can speak later. For now, we should regroup out of sight of this cursed place.”
        It’s as they’re turning away, Desmond helping Winter move the only man that loved him like a son, that the ground seems to shift beneath his feet. The ground is swimming in blood. He actually hears the squelch as he moves slightly, startled. Nate quickly moves in to take his place. And as Chelsea comes over to support him, elation turning to concern, he hears a voice whisper in his ear, something about “wasting time”.
        “Did you...say something?” he asks, and just like that, the image is gone and he doesn’t feel that oppressive weight anymore.
        “No. Was it a vision again?” Somehow, that should help, the idea that it’s his newly amped-up Eagle Vision, but...all he feels, right now, is the urge to leave now as quickly as he can. Run like he’d run before. Never mind the shape he’d seen in there, in the fog, assuming they could find and save another civilian lost in this nightmare, because that—he should’ve known not to even ask that question, because it wasn’t Chelsea’s voice.
        It was William’s.