Chapter Two
Move, Lucy thought. You have to move. Now.
She lurched her body out of bed and swiped her lab coat from a hanger in her small closet, which mostly contained more lab coats. Pulling it over her gray camisole and flannel pants, she rushed for the door of her dorm.
"I'm coming, Dr. Kaputska," she called as she slipped into her Abstergo-issued pair of white heels.
She swung the door open and couldn't help but squint as her eyes readjusted to the fluorescents, radiating out their false, course light. When she first joined the company, she always assumed she would someday get used to rarely seeing the sunlight. Not true.
Dr. Kaputska was waiting for her a few feet from her door. Her eyes widened when she saw that his lab coat had been slashed and a puddle of blood had formed at her doorstep.
"Doctor, should you seek medical attention?"
"Ms. Stillman," he said as he turned away from her and threw open the door to the stairwell. "Wouldn't it make more sense to first restrain the subject to prevent further mishaps?"
"Yes, sir," she said. The pair moved out of the hallway and into the stairwell. More gray walls, gray floors and fluorescent lights. While earning her English minor, she had read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and about the hippies and their Day-Glo paints. Back then, she didn't understand why they felt the need to muck everything up with those hideous colors. Just high, she always assumed.
But no, she thought as her heels clicked their way down the stairs, a few feet behind Dr. Kaputska. Color creates emotion. Color creates anger, passion, sadness, joy. And there was no room for emotion at Abstergo. If ever this place was brought down on its knees, she would come into the stairwells, the hallways, the offices, the labs, everywhere, actually, and throw that Day-Glo paint from one corner to the other.
Shit, she might just try some acid with Desmond while she was at it, she thought with a smirk.
Her thoughts were everywhere. She knew this. Anything to distract her from what was waiting for her in the labs. If she couldn't process what was happening, she always retreated back to books. The technique hadn't failed her before.
They reached their floor. Dr. Kaputska held open the door for her, and she rushed past him. In her mind, she was still thinking about Ken Kinsey and his hippy army and the Day-Glo paints. But her body was really running now, running toward the labs and the disaster she had no small part in creating.
She punched in her security code, and the double doors to the Animus labs slid open.
Desks had been turned over. One of the doctors she didn't recognize lay dead in the middle of the floor, a chunk of glass lodged in his throat. There were various trails and drops of blood all around the main area surrounding the Animus. The device itself was the only thing that appeared untouched.
And near the door to his quarters was Desmond, all four of his limbs sprawled out.
Another man in a white lab coat stood up, holding an empty syringe.
Her heart exploded in her chest. They've killed him, she realized.
"Dr. Contarini, no," she gasped.
He raised an eyebrow at her as he tossed the syringe in a trash can. "Ms. Stillman," he said slowly. "Surely even though you are still pursuing your doctorate, you can tell the difference between a dead man and one who has been sedated?" His voice was thick with condescension and amusement.
"Of course, sir," Lucy said. She pretended to straighten her lab coat as she struggled to regain her typical level gaze. "Yes, of course, Dr. Contarini. I only meant that we had much to accomplish with the subject today, and it is unfortunate that he had to be sedated. This will throw off the entire day's schedule."
"Yes, well," he said as he gestured to his surroundings, "I doubt there will be any opportunities for any work in this lab for some time."
Lucy caught the meaning behind those words. It would only take an hour, maybe two, for Abstergo employees to rush in and destroy all evidence of the incident. There was another reason that they wouldn't be continuing research with Desmond. One she wasn't ready to face. Not at 5 a.m. and with no sleep.
A stream of workers came through the door behind her, all in white suits and armed with various supplies to mop up the mess. Buckets, plastic bags, fingerprinting supplies, rubber gloves. All of the items white and free of any label or other marking. Some rolled Desmond onto a gurney and toward the elevator. Others zipped the dead doctor's body into a bag. A few more began scrubbing up the blood.
I wonder if any of the Day-Glo paints looked like blood, she wondered. And did it look like fresh blood? Dried blood?
"Ms. Stillman," Dr. Contarini said. "I request your presence at a meeting in Conference Room G in thirty minutes. It is regarding the subject. You must be debriefed on this morning's events. And I'm sure you can provide us with further insight. Since you work so closely with the subject."
She had been to one meeting like this before. At the last one, she had convinced the panel to spare Desmond's life. Vidic had been instrumental, since she had been successful in leading him to believe that Desmond had valuable information still locked away. If it hadn't been for him, her voice would have been drowned out, and Desmond would be nothing but ashes by now.
"Perhaps it best we wait until Dr. Vidic arrives," she suggested. "He is, after all, the leading researcher on this project. Although I have more direct contact with the subject, Dr. Vidic will be able to further explain the research that has been completed as well as the research in which we are currently engaged."
Dr. Contarini was giving orders to the harried workers, but he still managed to hear her. "Naturally, Ms. Stillman. Your direct supervisor has been informed and is preparing to depart his residence as we speak." He gestured to her flannel pajama pants with his pen. "Perhaps you should do the same, Ms. Stillman?"
"Yes, of course, sir," she said. "Right away, sir."
"And do try to be more observant, Ms. Stillman."
"Of course, Dr. Contarini, of course. A hectic morning, sir. But I won't let it happen again." She unintentionally lowered her head as she spoke, almost in the position of a Japanese bow of respect, as she began to shuffle toward the back of the lab. But humiliating herself was an old habit by now. In her mind, she was on a bus with about ten high beatniks, the sun filtering through the gaps in the paint to fall on her hands and face.
As she wrapped her hand around the gray handrail, the dream became more vivid. Desmond was across from her, his legs hoisted over the chair of the seat in front of him, a lazy smile and a joint on his lips.
Her card slipped through the security check of the residence floor, and she numbly unlocked the door to her quarters. Desmond grinned more widely at her as she slid in the seat next to him, slipping a flower behind his ear and wrapping her arms around his midsection.
What if that was the reality, and all of this -- Abstergo, the Animus, the Pieces of Eden -- was the fiction? she asked herself as she threw her clothes in a pile on the white tiles and walked into the shower. Which would be more believable to an outside observer? That a couple of college grads could try to resurrect the love child culture of the 1970s? Or that a couple of college grads were being kept in a corporate prison that sought world domination by obtaining information from the past by peering into people's minds -- no, their very souls?
And that she, Lucy Stillman, was in an equally secretive organization, attempting to bring that corporation to its knees?
She turned the water up hotter. Yes, the hippies seemed more feasible. She was living a story that wouldn't be believable to any normal person. Any person not living this.
Unconsciously, her fingers slipped into the sign of the Assassins.
Her dead brothers. Sisters. Her father, her mother. Desmond's parents. All of them, dead. The last of them, killed in their rescue attempt. That was the reality.
A thick, crushing misery began to congeal deep in her stomach. She could feel it growing in power and force, threatening to rise up and bend her over and cripple her with sobs.
But she wouldn't have it. This wasn't the reality. That is what she told herself. There was no way all of this could be happening to her. She forced her mind back on the bus, back in Desmond's sweaty arms as he passed the joint from his lips. After she took a hit, he finished it and then cupped her face in his hands. As he leaned into kiss her, Lucy ran his hand up his shirt to touch the flesh of his chest.
The water beating over her head, Lucy slipped her hand downward as the fantasy became more vivid.
I see him.
Desmond's fists clenched as the hooded figure materialized in his vision.
You've done this to me, he thought as he struggled to free himself from the gray chains that were binding him in place. He wanted to rush to this man, to pin him, to punch him, to watch his haughty features turn to blood and puss and broken bones and teeth underneath his fists.
What do you want with me?
But the figure, as always, gave no answer, just regarded him with a cool gaze, as if measuring the worth of his life.
Desmond knew, despite all of his anger, that the man could take him over again. He need only walk closer, and Desmond would be powerless. That was the strength of this man. That was the pull of his ancestor.
But he wouldn't go quietly. He thrashed and tugged at his binds, his face twisting in rage and his muscles straining.
From somewhere, well beyond the space, he heard voices.
"The sedative is wearing off. We must administer more."
"Dr. Vidic would not be pleased."
Hands were holding him down. The binds were made tighter as he continued to struggle.
"Yes, I concur," a disconnected, male voice said. "This is my subject, Dr. Hackbarth, and I will not have you making decisions that directly influence my work. Especially without my input."
"Dr. Vidic, I did not see you enter."
"Yes, well, I'm here now. And I would ask you to please move away from my patient."
"Yes, of course, sir. I only was acting as I thought best, sir. We fear for your subject's safety, as well as the safety of our orderlies and nurses. In this state, he is virtually uncontrollable."
"Dr. Hackbarth, leave my labs at once."
"Yes, sir."
Footsteps echoed above Desmond as his ancestor walked closer to him, his lips curling ever so slightly at the corners.
You've fucked her, haven't you? That's why you're so smug. She thinks you're the better lover. You can never let me just have her, can you? Always when I'm close, when I think at last that she is mine, you take me over.
"Desmond," he heard, as his ancestor approached touching distance. "Desmond.
"I know you can hear me."
Vidic, Desmond pleaded in his mind, save me from this man. I hate you, fuck, I hate you, but save me from this man.
"You're lodged in a state of semi-consciousness, similar to the transfer state induced before the Animus can complete its alignment to your DNA. However, we have no off switches this time, do we?
"Luckily for you, I have a stimulant drug that might do the trick."
The ancestor's breath was cold as death on Desmond's neck. Hurry.
The needle slipped in the skin of Desmond's neck, and he immediately felt a hot wash take over his body. His teeth chattered, but he felt himself being pulled out of the space, away from his ancestor.
He felt the glare of the fluorescents above him just momentarily before exhaustion forced him into a deep slumber.
Author's Note: My apologies for the ridiculously long break in between updates. I'm a first-year high school English teacher, and I spent most of my summer in a teacher "boot camp." Don't ask. At any rate, I'm back now and settling into a routine.