pionero | [ movie spoilers ]

NOVEL HEADCANONS

↠ note from the mun;
Below are quotations from the Assassin's Creed: The Novelization written by Christie Golden. The novel does not add any extra plot elements, but instead gives more background and a look into the thoughts of the characters around them. Until Ubisoft speaks from their almighty high point, the mun considers all of this as canon as the novels that follow the release of the games. As usual expect [SPOILERS] in this section if you haven't seen the movie. Which in that case go see the movie.

He, too, was going to fly.
He'd been wanting to do this... well, forever, since his parents had first moved here a few months ago. They moved a lot; it was something Cal simply took for granted about his family. Dad and Mom got jobs wherever they could, they stayed awhile, and then they moved on.
― Chapter 1 (Baja, California, 1988)

"Is there anything I could say that might bring you comfort?"
Father Raymond was not expecting an answer, but to his surprise, Cal said, "There's a poem my mother used to read to me. 'After Apple-Picking.'"
The priest was pleased that his prior career now enabled him to accomodate a man's last request. God was good. Nodding, he said, "I know it. Robert Frost," and began to speak.
― Chapter 2 (Thirty Years Later, Huntsville Department of Criminal Justice, Texas, USA)

"Be it known that Callum Lynch has been found guilty of captical murder and is sentenced to die on this day, October 21st, 2016. Does the prisoner wish to make a final statement?"
Happy goddamned birthday.
For a beautiful, perfect moment, hatred and anger chased away the fear of the coming darkness, leaving defiant, if illusionary, courage in its wake.
"Tell my father I'll see him in hell."
Perhaps then, he could get some answers.
― Chapter 2 (Thirty Years Later, Huntsville Department of Criminal Justice, Texas, USA)

There were pathways and grass, benches and small trees, and birdsong. Slitting his eyes , Cal slowed, looking around. He was not alone in this strange garden . There were orderlies, and… patients? Prisoners? He did not know what to call them. They wore matching gray pullover tunics, white shirts, and pants. A uniform.
Cal did not like uniforms.
― Chapter 3

The idea of jumping was tempting. To end his life on his own terms, to never again be anyone’s prisoner. But then Cal remembered the sudden revelation he had experienced as the clear, liquid death had flowed into his veins at his execution: that despite everything, he did not want to die.
― Chapter 3

"With your help, Cal, we can pioneer new ways to eradicate violence."
Eradicate violence.
His mirth faded. Violence had been as much a part of his life as breathing. It was effective, casual, off-handed, and came so easily. It always had.
Except that wasn't true. It hadn't been that way when he was a child. He'd been a handful, he knew that; a daredevil, brimming with too much energy, but never cruel, never abusive, never...violent. Like an unwelcome houseguest that refused to leave, violence had come into his life the day his mother's had been ended by it, and not before.
What if she could really do it? And what if he could help her?
What if some kid somewhere never had to worry about waking up one day to discover his mother had bled out in the kitchen on a perfectly ordinary afternoon? To discover his father standing there, with a strange knife dripping blood?
― Chapter 3

Total abject terror surged through him. His bowels clenched, threatening to let loose, but somehow he overruled the crippling fear long enough to gasp , scared but also furious, “What is this?”
She looked at him with that angel’s face, and then lowered her gaze, unable to meet his eyes. She said with what sounded like genuine regret, “I’m sorry, Cal. This is not how I like to do things.”
“Then don’t do it!”
Something inside him, something deep and primal, told him if she was able to do what she intended to, he would never be the same.
― Chapter 4

Ten tiny points of metal settled down on Cal's neck, like the legs of some mechanical insect. But before he could jerk away, something sharp, long, and blindingly painful jabbed into the base of his skull.
He screamed.
Cal had fought. He had killed. He had almost been killed several time. He had run from police, been shot, stabbed, beaten within an inch of his life.
But never had he felt anything as painful as this.
Not a hospital. Not a lab.
A torture chamber.
And then, as swiftly as it had descended, the pain receded, not entirely, but enough for Cal to gulp in air and gasp, uncomprehending and furious, "What do you want from me?"
Sofia gazed at him, calm, in control. "Your past."
"My past...?"
Bizarrely, he thought of the song that had been playing on the beat-up old radio on that afternoon thirty years ago: Patsy Cline's "Crazy."
I'm going insane, he thought. Crazy.
― Chapter 4

“Listen to me carefully, Cal. You are about to enter the Animus.”
The word jolted him in a way she could not have anticipated. As a teenager, he’d known about expensive software put out by the company that would later be known as Abstergo Entertainment. He’d heard the rumors about how they were developing games based on memories of someone’s ancestors, gleaned from lucky Abstergo employees, presumably sitting comfortably in ritzy offices, who spent time in a semi-legendary apparatus called the Animus that looked like a whiz-bang recliner.
When Cal had been in and out of juvie halls and foster homes, he’d mastered the art of stealing the software right out from under the noses of store employees and selling them to kids with too much money and too few real threats in their lives, who got to experience knife fights and violence vicariously rather that getting their own hands and noses bloody.
― Chapter 4

Since that awful day when he had walked in on his mother’s still-warm corpse, had watched his father , blood dripping from the blade which had slain her, approach him with the intent of killing him as well, Cal had been determined to never, ever, let anyone have control over him. He had even managed to retain some sense of autonomy, a sense of self, in prison.
― Chapter 4