I didn't care if I "died" saving Desmond. The real Clay had "died" already. I was just a copy (though I felt real enough, at times) and saving Desmond was the entire reason this copy had been made.
I fully expected the last thing I was ever conscious of (if an artificial mind can be truly called "conscious") to be the total breakdown of that Animus Island simulation.
But it wasn't.
There was nothingness, for a time. I'm not sure how long. Time is all relative, anyway. Especially when one is cut off from all real-world stimuli. And without my connection to the Animus CPU, I couldn't watch the clock in my usual fashion.
It was a strange feeling. If indeed it was a feeling. Was it tangible? Or was it just... mental? Ethereal. That's what it was.
Point is: I wasn't dead.
Well.
Not any deader than I'd been before.
The nothingness gave way, to... a different sort of nothingness. Still a void, lacking any landmarks, but a different mood of void.
Everything was white, soft white. (In retrospect, this may have been simply a projection from the expectations laid by my religious upbringing.)
Nothing was there. Except myself; I was there. Waiting (as if it were nothing more than another Animus loading screen). But I didn't wait for long. Or perhaps I did: again, time was difficult to judge.
-Hello,- someone said.
(It was some sort of greeting; I'm not completely sure they said "Hello". Not completely sure they were speaking English, even. Or "speaking" at all.)
-You have done well, child.-
I tried to turn and find what entity was addressing me. It was difficult to move. Like I was being held in stasis.
-Have done well, yet all is not done. You must still help Desmond Miles.-
To this, I expressed confusion. Help Desmond? Wasn't that what I'd just finished doing?
-Your world is still in peril. And your soul is bound to his, forevermore.-
Whoever or whatever this entity was, it didn't seem like Juno. I didn't much care for finding out their identity at the time, though. He reached the Nexus! He's out! I yelled (though I had no voice). What else can I do?
-Many things more. You must discover on your own.-
What in the hell is going on?
-Go now,- the entity bade me.
Then they expressed a benediction, a blessing; but this I couldn't put into words. It was only a feeling, like a rush of data, of power, like I was a conduit to the stars themselves.
(Well, not all the stars. Do you have any idea how many friggin' stars there are? Let's say I was just a conduit to... Alpha Centauri A and B. That seems fair enough.)
As the mystery power surged at me, I shut my eyes tight. (Yeah, seems all those human reflexes were still ingrained in me.)
When I opened them next, the room was dark. But it wasn't a room, I quickly ascertained. We were in a vehicle. A van.
Desmond was there. And Bill. Oh, what a rush of conflicted feelings I had about Bill. He'd entrusted me to Lucy's protection, and look how that turned out, huh? But then again, if I'd returned alive from Abstergo, there'd have been no-one to guide Desmond to the Synch Nexus. And truly, since Bill hadn't seen her in years, how could he have known she'd turned traitor on us? (But these were thoughts I'd been through hundreds of times during my stay in the Animus. I'd long since made my peace with the situation... for the most part.)
Shaun was there too, and Rebecca as well. She was talking animatedly, but I couldn't hear her; my head was ringing with noisy echoes.
How? How was it possible that I was back among these, my corporeal compatriots? Did I come with Desmond somehow? Am I back in... my own body? I raised my hands and stared at them as the noise around me resolved into voices.
"...vitals are stabilizing! Something's happening! He's moving!"
"Desmond? Can you hear me? Son?"
My hands, with nails heavily-chewed but no longer raw and bloody. My arms, with deep gashes that were healing before my eyes. My body, draped in a white shapeless tunic, not the outfit I'd fashioned for Animus Island.
I looked around at the others. "What in the fucking world?" (And yep, that was odd, the feeling of using vocal cords to speak again, after becoming so used to communicating with ones and zeroes.)
None of them paid me any attention. They were still completely focused on Desmond as he slowly crawled back to consciousness.
"Hello, guys! Not that I'm unhappy about it, but I seem to have returned from the dead here?" They still fucking ignored me, so I tried slamming a hand on the little plastic table next to Becca.
Key word there: "Tried."
Because when I moved my hand downward, it simply swam through.
"What?!" I yelped, and tried again, with the same result.
Well, not precisely the same, though. Because this second time, my fingertips brushed through the Apple that was laying there.
It shimmered, throwing golden rays through the air.
Bill, Desmond, Shaun, and Becca all turned towards the sudden light.
I waved at them. "Hello, I think that may have been me. Didn't know I had the genes to activate that, but-"
Desmond frowned and spoke over me (still acting for all the world like I wasn't even there). "I know what we need to do."
"Fuck's sake," I muttered to myself. "I'm back as a fucking ghost, apparently."
Then something fluttered behind me and I turned (Assassin senses hypervigilant to any possible threat, even in the safety of death).
The fluttering moved as I did, like a stalker trying to escape my notice. But it wasn't a stalker.
"What the..." By contorting my arm a little, I managed to grab hold of a handful of feathers. "Feathers," I said, trying to wrap my mind around the sheer oddity of that. "These are big, white, fluffy... feathers. Attached to... me. Oh... my god."
(In retrospect, I suppose the reason I didn't immediately realize I had wings, was because I didn't quite recall immediately what my old human body felt like, and thus didn't catch on to the difference.)
The other Assassins were deep in conversation at that point, I suppose, probably discussing the logistics of getting to Turin.
But I didn't hear a word they said because I was too busy processing that I'd been turned into a goddamn angel.