Author's Note. To those of you who read my other stories and are waiting oh so patiently for me to update them: do not worry, I am working on them, but sometimes a Quest after a plot-rabbit finds me distracted. To those of you who will feel compelled to tell me that the text I quoted at the end is translated incorrectly: 'I know.' I just like the cadence of the phrase that was used in AC2. And to all of you who will read this: if you enjoy it, I would appreciate hearing that in a review. If you have a problem with something in it (grammatical or otherwise), I would also appreciate hearing that.
-ArturiusRex8
I was having a nightmare.
That was the only logical explanation for what had just happened. I had picked up the Apple of Eden, my friends had instantly frozen, and I had been forced to stab Lucy. I also vaguely remembered passing out. The random voices drifting to me seemed to confirm this. I only wished I could open my eyes to look at them.
"Shit! He's gone into shock."
I didn't recognize that voice at all.
"Put him back in the machine. It's the only way to fix this."
That one sounded vaguely like my dad. I couldn't be sure it was him. I hadn't seen him in years... How many had it been again?
"But the Animus did this to him!"
I wanted to warn them, "No! Idiots! It's the Apple that caused this!" but then I pondered it for a second. What if the Animus did do this to me? Not entirely, but made me more susceptible to whatever mind-controlling aspect of the Apple Juno chose to employ?
"Am I the expert or not? Do it!"
Dad would be the expert on this... He spent enough of my childhood working on his projects, and if it wasn't that, it was training, always training, me, the other kids, the other adults on The Farm...
"No."
I would give the other voice this: he had guts. Not many people could argue with my dad when he spoke like that...
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"If you hurry, you might make it back in time for Lucy's funeral."
I could totally understand why Sixteen's suicide wasn't as grieved as I once thought it should be. The guy was an asshole.
"Ah... I thought you knew."
As if that makes it better, douche-bag.
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"It's Shaun. Shaun, what's going on?"
Yes, Shaun, kindly tell me what the fuck is going on up there, out in the real world. Becca was nice enough to ask.
"Let me talk to him."
Only Dad...
"Did you...hold on, I'm putting you on speaker."
Double points for Becca! She did what both Dad and I wanted.
"Shaun, it's William. Is everything taken care of?"
A bit cold there, Dad. I know, it's 'how one deals with these situations in order to cope with the various stresses presented to the human psyche,' or some other shit like that, but still.
"Oh, well, hello to you, too. For Christ's sake man, have some class!"
Maybe Shaun gets a few points in the guts department, too...
"All right, calm down."
Please, Shaun. Calm down enough so that you can tell me all about what I've done to the woman I...the woman I love.
"Oh, that's rich. Yeah, Lucy's dead, and you want me to pretend like it's Easter Sunday, do you? How's Desmond anyway, kipping in?"
Points for sarcasm, Shaun, but doesn't handle that well...
"That's enough, Shaun."
Always thinking about the job, Dad...
"What if he's a Templar, Bill? What if he's been programmed? It's happened before."
It's MUCH worse than programming...
"No. Not Desmond."
Nice to know you have so much faith in me, Dad. Would have been somewhat nice to know growing up.
"Right. You would say that."
Apparently Shaun dislikes me more than when Lucy (I cringed mentally thinking her name) rescued me.
"Shaun."
Back to work, then...
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"This Apple. It is a remarkable piece of work. Feel the material. Hard as steel, but very light."
It is. They are. Whatever.
"You really want to be fooling with that thing?"
Yes he does, Becca. It's one of the few things he talked about.
"I do. I absolutely do. I have been waiting a long time to get my hands on one of these."
Most people who know of them have, Dad...
"Okay, you're making me nervous, Bill."
He makes most of those who know him nervous, Becca.
"Don't be... I don't think I have the right genes to properly wield it."
Wonder what that's about...
"Oh! But Desmond... You think he does."
I'm never touching one of those again, if I can help it!
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"I'm seeing very strange activity in the Animus."
I imagined raising my hand with an expression on my face like a third-grader caught chewing gum in class. That would be me!
"Oh?"
The question in his voice was obvious: is it something to worry about?
"The CPU should be fairly idle, but the system monitor is spiking regularly. Sometimes as high as eighty-five percent."
Way to lose my interest with a bunch of techno mumbo-jumbo, Becca.
"Is it serious?"
Is it? I'm sure you want to know, Dad...
"I'm not sure... Desmond's signs are stable."
Well, that's a relief...
"Well, if there isn't a problem let's not try to fix anything."
Words to live by from William Miles.
"Fair enough. God, I need a drink."
We all do, Becca... I need more than one, myself...
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"Were they close? Desmond and Lucy, I mean. Closer than friends?"
Not really, Dad, no matter how much I wish we were...
"Uh, well there was the occasional misty-eyed moment, but...ah..."
And you didn't tell me, Becca? I'm hurt...
"She liked him, Bill. That's what she told me."
When did she possibly have time for that, Shaun? I heard everything you said around me while I was in the Animus, and you wouldn't walk off while I was in a session... Maybe it was during one of my pitiful attempts at sleeping...
"Wow...interesting."
What the fuck does THAT mean, Dad? 'Interesting'... It's like saying, 'Hmm...'
"That's it? Just...'interesting?'"
Thank you, Becca!
"I spent a lot of time training each of them when they were younger. She was a remarkable woman. I just find this whole situation...quite sad."
He did? I don't remember her... Wait, there was that one Lucy that I had a crush on back then. Her hair was different, and she was a bit uncoordinated, but the eyes are the same. I remember feeling I shouldn't just leave her there, but something came over me, and I didn't think we could both make it out...
"Sad? Are you finally getting soft on us, Bill?"
And to think you got mad at him earlier, Shaun...
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"You know something, don't you? You know what's out there."
No one knows what's out there, Shaun. That's the problem.
"I have a hunch, yes."
You always did...
"Come on, Bill, you never do anything halfway. What do you think we'll find?"
Knowing Those Who Came Before? Nothing good...
"If we're lucky, another prize. If we're very lucky, something that will end this miserable war."
It's as Altair said. The war will never end. Their philosophy can't be extinguished, nor can ours...
"You're talking over my head, mate."
Information, idiot. Even I know that's what he means, and we've been out of contact for, what, a decade?
"Listen, Shaun, I have no idea what we're going to find. But I do know that whatever it is, the Templars can't have it."
Very true.
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"Shaun, you feeling okay?"
Never, Becca. Thought you knew that by now.
"Sure, yeah, yeah. Fine. We're Assassins, aren't we? Why should we be surprised if one of us dies every now and again?"
Because we hope for the best.
"Every death is a tragedy, to somebody, somewhere."
I suppose that makes sense, Becca.
"What I want to know, is Desmond worth all this trouble? You know, is he 'The Chosen One?' Is he special, some bollocks like that?"
Not a chance, Shaun. Pin your hopes on some other wizard. This one doesn't even have a curtain to hide behind.
"I'm afraid not, but what he has is rare. His genes contain high concentrations of First Civilization DNA. Only about one in 10,000,000 are so lucky."
And so they want to use me for a breeding program to bring themselves back, Dad. Also, I wouldn't call it lucky...
"Ahh, the Bleeding Effect. Is that part of it?"
Maybe, Becca.
"I believe so. I wish we could say we knew about his gift earlier, but it was the Templars who realized this, and they found him first."
You had me first. Didn't even need to find me. If it were that important, you wouldn't have let me escape.
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"Bill! Good to see you! We have a customs officer waiting to talk to everyone."
Damn it! More unknown voices...
"I hope you have something for us."
He wouldn't have told you otherwise, would he, Dad?
"Absolutely. Passports and papers for everyone."
"Ahh, brilliant. So I'm a what, a neurosurgeon, now am I?"
No one with brains would believe that, Shaun.
"You're a medical team from SUNI upstate. Just back from Rome with your patient. Experimental gene therapy."
"Good work. Let's get this over with."
Yay! Insert sarcasm here, Dad!
"Wait! Look! This is crazy!"
Need more to go on, Becca.
"What's wrong?"
Everything. Nothing. Who gives a shit, Dad?
"I'm not sure, but Desmond's brain is lighting up like a string of firecrackers!"
Only you, Becca. Only you...
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"Wait! Look! His vitals are stabilizing... Something's happening. He's... He's moving!"
Becca, are you saying what I think you're saying? I can finally get out of this goddamn chair?
"Desmond? Can you hear me?"
Sure I can, Dad.
"Son?"
My response was terse. He likes terse. "I know what we need to do." We need to get into the Temple, where I don't know what is waiting for us exactly, but it will be an overview of how to save the world. Also, I need to find some random woman and impregnate her to revive a dead race. But no big-gee.
I wasn't prepared for what happened next. As I stepped out of the van (getting my first rays of sunlight in I don't know how many days or weeks), a smaller figure ran around the corner and hugged me tight. My first thought was that I really had been affected by the Animus, for there was no possible way the woman in front of me was alive.
"Lucy? What are you doing here?"
"We work in groups of four, Desmond. I thought you knew that. Your dad is only here because this is important enough to warrant an extra set of eyes and-if something goes wrong-arms."
"But... You... I... Apple..."
She sighed. "Are we finally going to find out what put you in a coma for the past few days?"
I looked around, but none of the others seemed to find anything that was going on strange. I took a moment to ponder this. There were few options for what was happening: the Apple had planted a vision in my head at the Temple, made me think I killed Lucy, and supported that with various words the others had said, the Apple was planting a vision in my head now, this was a doppelganger the others had hired to ease my guilt, or I was crazy.
"I picked up the Apple in the Temple."
"I remember. It was just after I had noticed that there were the symbols of the Phyrgian Cap and Masonic Eye, which only come together in one place-"
"America. Specifically, New York. Which is why you followed the Pythagoreans' latitude and longitude."
"Yes. Anyway, as soon as you picked it up, you fell over. We thought that you were having one of your episodes, but we weren't sure..."
I cut across Becca to question, "My episodes? What do you mean?"
"Desmond," the Lucy figure (I still wasn't convinced it was her) began, "you've been suffering much more adverse reactions to the Bleeding Effect than I led you to believe."
"How so?"
Becca chuckled at something. "Oh, just whenever Shaun did something to anger you right after a session, you would start cussing him out in Arabic."
"Hurt my feelings, you did, mate."
Ignoring him, Becca continued, "Whenever you tried flirting with Lucy (which was quite often), you would be speaking in somewhat dated Italian. Luckily, I knew enough to tell what you were saying."
"How is that lucky, Becca?" asked the thing I took to be Lucy.
"I learned what worked 500 years ago, compared it to what guys use now, and determined that today's women have much lower standards."
'Lucy' interrupted again. "Anyway, we all agreed to pretend you weren't doing any of it, and after you did it, you didn't remember, so it didn't matter. Or so I thought. I kept your dad informed, but maybe that wasn't enough... Enough about that. What happened?"
"As soon as I picked up the Apple, all of you froze. I lost control of my body. Juno spoke to me about something, can't really remember what... And then she made me stab Lucy in the stomach."
"That didn't really happen, Des," said 'Lucy.'
"It seems like it, now, but while I was in the Animus I heard you guys saying all kinds of things that supported the idea of Lucy being dead. And Sixteen was no help at all..."
"Sixteen? What does he have to do with this?" asked Shaun.
"He's in there. Or, rather, he was. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but his personality and consciousness were trapped in there. The Animus eventually 'decoded' and deleted him." I looked at each of them in turn. 'Lucy' had tears in her eyes, but she wasn't actually crying. That's the Lucy I knew... Maybe it is her.
Dad's face lit up with excitement. "You're saying the Animus can be used to store who we are? Fascinating... From the beginning of the program, I never thought that would be possible... But Vidic was so sure it would wo-"
That took my already strained emotions and stretched them past the breaking point. "Vidic! You helped that slimeball! Really, Dad, I thought that even you would have reservations about something like that!"
Lucy-I had pretty much accepted by now that if it wasn't her, I would just pretend it was-put her hand on my arm, and I instantly felt myself calming down. How did she do that? "Des, this was decades ago, before any of the four of us were born, before your parents had even met. Your dad was sent to Harvard Med by the Assassins (under a false identity, of course) to see if the techniques and knowledge of a student there could be used in conjunction with our knowledge in the seventies to create a machine that would access the genetic material of a 'subject,' play that back to him, and allow him to gain the experiences of his ancestors."
I snorted. "So the Animus is, what, a training program?"
Shaun took over. "In its initial concept form, yes. This was the motivation behind what we did with you at the safehouse. Months, or even years, of learning, compressed into days or weeks. It would have given us an extraordinary edge over the Templars, who have to spend so much more time teaching their followers self-defense and assault tactics."
Dad continued while I looked from one to the other, attempting to find any hint of deception, or even simply lying by omission, anything. "Back to Harvard. The student I was trying to 'turn' was named Warren Vidic. He was brilliant, there is no denying that. He also didn't scoff at my ideas out of hand, as most of the scientific community would. He believed we could do it. The two of us... We laughed about it, in our room full of chalkboards and notebooks. We would guide the world to a brighter future... I remember thinking at the time that his words were remarkably like the Templar philosophy I had been warned of so many times before I undertook my mission, but Warren was so charismatic, I had trouble believing he could be one of them.
"Finally, there came a point where we had a prototype design, ready for assembly. We had no idea where we would find the computing power to run the program, but Warren assured me not to worry about it. The next day, I was on the run for my life, because Warren had gotten what he needed from me, called his superiors, and brought in a 'cleaning crew' from Abstergo's offices in New York. I managed to find one of the safehouses arranged for me before the operation and report to The Mentor... He was...disappointed...that the Templars now had access to the Animus (even then, that was its name) technology, but agreed with my assessment that we wouldn't have gotten where we were in our program without Warren. You see, I had memorized every single thing Vidic and I had ever written in that room, on the off chance something like this might happen. It took me a solid month of sixteen hour days writing it up again, but we had our own copy of the work. We began planning our project. Who would be the first subject?"
My mind was reeling from all of this, but Becca kept it coming at me. "My uncle volunteered for the test. My family's bloodlines were best documented by the Order, except for yours, Desmond, and there was no way they would let William risk something like this... It was supposed to be a short session, just fifteen minutes or so... He would be going back to the 1860's, Civil War America. His great-great-grandfather had served on a Union ship as part of the cannon crew..." Becca chuckled darkly. "You complain about our setup now, but back then, he was strapped down to a stainless steel table, given an injection to induce a sleep-state, fitted with earplugs and a mask to block outside stimuli, and 'plugged in.' Mission start was recorded at one minute past midnight, January first, 1971. Five minutes were spent locating the beginning sequence of memory. His body temperature had dropped to ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit and his feet were shaking. It took another five minutes to bring up the memory they hoped to access, March second, 1863, his great-great-grandfather's first day training for the war aboard an actual ship. By now his entire lower body was trembling... And at twelve fourteen in the morning, Richard Crane went into cardiac arrest." Becca's tone became mocking and full of sarcasm, as if quoting something unpleasant, "'Subject was unable to be resuscitated, despite numerous attempts by medical personnel. Time: twelve twenty a.m. Date: January first, nineteen seventy-one.'"
Lucy pulled Becca into a hug and whispered in her ear, but I couldn't tell what she said. Then she continued the story, "The Mentor decided that the Animus project would be put on hold, until such time as the safety of the subject could be guaranteed. Meanwhile, plans for the next subject were already being written. The personnel in the project felt that if we had better knowledge of the subject's ancestry, the location and retrieval of memory would be more efficient. The next decade was spent researching the parentage of every current member of the Assassins, and the parentage of those people, until the database extended back from the seventeenth century for the worst documented to the sixth for the best, such as you and your dad."
I started looking around the area nervously. We had been out in the open for far too long. Someone might be coming towards us by now. "As interesting as all of this is, guys, we need to get moving before we're spotted. The Temple is just over here." I started leading the way towards the hidden door, led by my Eagle Vision. They followed behind me cautiously, as if they didn't believe what I was saying.
When we were finally in the cave that protected it, Shaun questioned, "And how exactly do we get it open, genius?"
My words were instinctual, a response that I had not intended bubbling out of my throat, "Laa shay'a waqi'un mutlaq bale kouloun mumkin."
All of them responded, probably out of habit, "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."