"For such an ancient sect passed down for a thousand years, it would be disrespectful not to go in and see for myself, wouldn't it?"
Alice curled her lips into a playful smile and casually pulled her hood down, obscuring her dazzling blonde hair.
She began to head toward The Fraternity's textile factory.
To her surprise—or perhaps as she had expected—the entire perimeter of the factory area had absolutely no electronic surveillance equipment.
There were no infrared sensors, no motion-capture cameras, not even the most antiquated closed-circuit television.
"Is this the so-called Assassin's Creed? Because they are so confident that no one can leave here alive, they don't even bother locking the doors?"
Alice silently mocked in her heart.
The arrogance of The Fraternity was ingrained in their bones; they perhaps felt that in this place filled with the noise of the loom and millennia-old myths, technology was a desecration of their faith.
This was simply a playground tailor-made for her.
Alice swaggered past the loading dock on the side of the main entrance.
Two guards smoking there were less than three meters away from her; one of them even blew a smoke ring in her direction, but his eyes seemed to look right through the air, completely unfocused on her.
"The fog is really thick tonight," the guard muttered.
Alice brushed past him, even playfully blowing a breath of air that sent a chill down the back of his neck, causing him to shrink his shoulders.
Stepping inside the factory, the air instantly became thick and warm.
The loom of fate was emitting a tremendous roar.
Clack—clack—clack—
Thousands of warp and weft threads were frantically shuttling back and forth, driven by the machinery.
Alice climbed up the rusty spiral staircase like a ghost to the maintenance catwalk at the top of the factory.
It was covered in thick dust, clearly having not been visited by anyone for a long time.
She crouched on a massive I-beam, looking down through the grating at the hall below, which was filled with a sense of ritual.
A grand drama called "Awakening" was unfolding there.
Wesley Gibson, that unlucky accountant, was currently tied to a chair that looked like a torture device.
He looked miserable, his face swollen like a pig's head, dried blood still under his nose, his eyes filled with fear and confusion.
Standing in front of him was an elderly Black man.
If she wasn't mistaken, that had to be Sloan, the current leader of The Fraternity.
...
Wesley felt like he had been tossed into a tumble dryer for three days and nights, then dragged out and left to bake in the sun.
Every bone in his body was screaming, especially his cheek, which had been pressed into the ground and rubbed by Fox; it burned with pain.
"Welcome to the real World, Wesley."
An aged but authoritative voice echoed through the vast hall.
Wesley opened his eyes abruptly.
What met his eyes was an extremely retro, industrial-style dome, with a huge fan rotating slowly overhead.
The blades cut through the beams of light projecting from the ceiling, making the entire hall flicker between light and shadow, like a Gothic cathedral worshiping a mechanical Loki.
He discovered that he wasn't lying in a hospital bed, nor was he handcuffed in an interrogation room by the Police; instead, he was sitting in an antique velvet chair that looked worth a fortune.
Standing in front of him was a group of people.
The female assassin who had saved him at the pharmacy was leaning against a pillar, nonchalantly wiping a silver firearm.
And in the very center stood the elderly Black man.
"Who are you? Where is this? Why am I here?" Wesley shrank in the chair in terror; the heartbeat that had terrified him had calmed down slightly, but it was still abnormally fast.
"This is the location of the loom of fate, and it is the place where you truly belong, Wesley."
Sloan spread his hands, like a devout preacher.
Behind him, the complex and ancient loom was emitting a rhythmic roar.
Clack—clack—
The shuttles moved between the warp and weft, with thousands of white threads pulled taut and interlaced by the machinery.
The primitive art of 0s and 1s—this ancient method of mechanical encoding truly possessed a certain mathematical beauty, if one ignored the fact that they used this thing to kill people.
"This loom has been running for a thousand years; it is our faith, and it is our guide."
Below, Sloan began his performance.
He picked up a magnifying glass, pointed at a flaw in the fabric, and said to the bewildered Wesley.
"In the eyes of ordinary people, this is just a piece of ordinary cloth. But in our eyes, binary code is hidden within the interlacing of these warp and weft threads. Through this method, the loom tells us which people in this World not only disrupt the balance of the World but are also destined to bring disaster."
Sloan wore a look of compassion for the World.
"We erase them before they can cause disaster. Kill one, save thousands."
Wesley listened, dumbfounded, and then let out a neurotic laugh: "Hahaha, are you kidding me? Relying on a piece of cloth to decide who to kill? You bunch of lunatics, I want to go home, I want to go to the Police."
He struggled to stand up and turned to run.
Then, he was punched in the stomach by the burly man known as The Repairman, so hard he almost vomited his bile.
"A classic brainwashing process. First destroy his worldview, then use violence to make him submit, and finally give him a fake, lofty mission." Alice sneered in her heart, "If he wasn't in the assassin business, Sloan would definitely make the Forbes list if he went into multi-level marketing."
"Is this the Chosen One you were looking for?" The Repairman looked at Sloan with disdain, "He looks like a pile of freshly excreted, soft dog shit."
"He still needs time." Sloan waved his hand, signaling The Repairman to release Wesley.
"Wesley, you can go. Return to your apartment full of flies, keep listening to the roaring of your fat female boss, keep enduring your girlfriend who only knows how to cheat on you, and keep driving your Ferrari-like talent as if it were a garbage truck."
Sloan's voice was full of bewitchment.
Wesley froze in place.
In his mind flashed that fat female boss who humiliated him every day, the cashier who yelled at him in the supermarket, and the girlfriend who was screwing around with his "best friend" on the table behind his back.
Did he really want to go back to that life of living like a maggot?
"Wesley, stay, and become who you want to be. Like your father, become a wolf who controls fate."
Father?
The word was like a hammer, striking hard at his fragile nerves.
...
"Mr. Sloan is not only a hypocrite but also a screenwriter with an extreme desire for control. Once a character that he cannot control appears in the script, he wants to write that character out of existence."
"Unfortunately, I'm not the kind of NPC that sits around waiting to be deleted."
Alice watched Wesley, who was being pressed into the wax bath to heal his wounds; that unlucky guy was experiencing the pain of being reborn.
"Wesley will soon begin his training. When he learns how to curve bullets, that will be the time to sweep this thousand-year-old assassin organization into the dust of history."
But before that, she had to go and give a welcoming gift to Wesley's father, who had returned from the dead.
After all, the enemy of an enemy is a friend.
------------------------
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