Introductory note: Thanks to everyone who read and/or reviewed so far. The first four chapters were pretty much already written which is why the updates have been so fast. From now on I'll probably update every few days instead of every day, and there'll probably be about 15 chapters in total. On with the show...

"Shit!" Lucy cried out, and reached over to release the HUD. Vidic caught her by the wrist and yanked her hand away.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked, mockingly.

Lucy freed herself and rubbed her wrist. "You saw what happened! Sixteen just stabbed him in the goddamn throat! We need to terminate this..."

"Not backing out so soon, are we? You're the one who convinced me that this would build morale. It would be a waste not to see how it turns out."

Desmond sat up, feeling his throat for a wound that was no longer there.

"Have the headaches started yet?"

Desmond spun around in alarm. Malik was standing a few metres away, and it was strange to see him in this cool, blue, alien environment rather than the dusty interior of the Bureau. His dark eyes raked over Altaïr's face, and Desmond felt the very real sensation that Sixteen was somehow seeing through the mask of his ancestor. The thought put him on the defensive, and he remembered that he had good reason to be so.

"You ... stabbed me. You son of a bitch!"

"No point in speaking to you inside the program, with Vidic-" Sixteen spat the name out like it was bile in his mouth, "-listening in. I had to make sure we both desynched at the same time."

Desmond wanted to argue that there were better ways Sixteen could have done that, but then realised he couldn't think of any. "I didn't think it was possible for us to talk outside of the program."

"Two years ago I wouldn't have known how to do it. But now..." Malik's hard brown eyes lost some of Sixteen's shrewd focus and wandered away from Desmond's face to look at their surroundings. "Now ... I wear the Animus. She's like a second skin. I can feel her, feel the data, and I can make her do ... whatever I want." His voice dipped a few octaves and Desmond felt a strange, hot, curling sensation in the pit of his stomach. Not for the first time, he wondered if Sixteen was male or female, how old he (or she) was and what he (or she) looked like.

"What's your real name?" he asked, and Sixteen temporarily snapped out of his reverie and stared wildly at Desmond.

"What? It's ... Malik, no ... Guillaume, no, wait, I..." he reached up with his one remaining arm and dug his fingernails into his forehead, letting out a snarl of frustration. "I ... I'm not sure. Oh God. My head. You-" His head whipped up suddenly, his mood switching from pain to fury in a heartbeat. "Who the fuck are you? Do you work for them? Is this some kind of test?"

He darted forward suddenly, and Desmond reacted without thinking, grabbing him by the shoulders and holding him in place as he struggled.

This was not going well.

"What the hell is going on?" Vidic was demanding.

"Nothing!" Lucy insisted. "Desmond's in the loading screen. He's just standing there..."

"We don't have time for him to just stand around. Get him back into that memory strand!"

"Altaïr," Sixteen growled. "You will pay for my brother's death, you bastard!"

"Oh crap," Desmond sighed. Sixteen was writhing against him, but Malik's body was naturally disadvantaged by the missing arm and Desmond held him off easily. "Hey, snap out of it, you lunatic!"

Sixteen was cursing in Arabic, and the Animus' translation software wasn't offering any aid. Desmond took a deep breath, extricated his left hand and used it to punch Sixteen solidly on the cheekbone, sending him sprawling to the smoky blue surface of the loading screen. The man lay where he fell, lifeless save for the laboured rise and fall of his chest beneath the Assassin robes.

Desmond approached him cautiously, preparing for another attack, but the blow seemed to have knocked some sense back into Subject Sixteen. He sat up slowly, touching Malik's face where it had been struck.

"What did you mean? When you asked me about headaches?" Desmond inquired, finally picking up the conversation Sixteen had tried to start about five minutes ago. Hey, getting stabbed in the throat was distracting.

"Prolonged use of the Animus has a number of negative side effects," Sixteen replied dully, like he was reading from a manual. "Hallucinations, delusions, memory loss, headaches, insomnia, mood swings, impaired cognitive function, loss of appetite. Coma. Death." He laughed bitterly. "I bet they told you the other subjects finished their work and spent the rest of their lives in a comfortable holiday cottage by the sea, right?"

Desmond made a conscious effort to close his mouth. "They died?" he asked, his voice sounding strange to his own ears.

"Not all of them. But you wouldn't need both hands to count the ones who survived. Of those that are still around today, most of them are crazy." He finally looked up at Desmond. "I'm crazy," he added conversationally.

Desmond rolled his eyes. "You're not crazy. Trust me, I used to be a bartender in New York. I've seen so much crazy I could probably teach a class on crazy. And you're not it."

Sixteen frowned, gazing into Desmond's face as if searching for signs of subterfuge. "Then what am I?"

"I don't know. Tired. Scared. Confused. Angry. Lonely." It wasn't a difficult analysis; Desmond was simply going down the list of his own feelings and imagining how they might feel with two years' amplification. He remembered Lucy's dismissal of his concerns about the other subjects and suddenly felt very hot all over. "Betrayed."

There was a long silence before Sixteen spoke again.

"I remember my name now," he said at last. Then he vanished.

The HUD slid back and Desmond sat up, feeling troubled. "What happened?" he asked Lucy, without looking at her. "Did it overheat again?"

"I was just about to ask you that," she replied, and he could feel her gaze though he refused to meet it. "You desynchronised, but then you didn't go back into the memory strand. What were you waiting for?"

"That's precisely what I'd like to know," Vidic snapped. He was standing at the foot of the Animus, arms behind his back, staring at its occupant suspiciously. Desmond felt a thrill of spiteful satisfaction at having so successfully undermined Abstergo's Big Brother complex, a feeling that was magnified when he remembered Subject Sixteen's assertion that Vidic and Lucy had been eavesdropping on their previous conversations.

This situation called for a simple but convincing lie. Desmond shrugged, putting on his best village-simpleton expression. "It just froze up. Couldn't get in, couldn't get out."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lucy shake her head. "That doesn't make any sense, it's functioning just fine..."

"Well obviously it isn't," Desmond snapped harshly, turning to glare at her finally. She drew backwards a little, looking uneasy and hurt.

Suddenly Vidic's phone started ringing. He cursed and pulled it out of his pocket, hissing at Lucy, "You have five minutes to fix that machine and get him back in there, Miss Stillman. We are not finished." Then he stalked away to answer the call.

"Desmond?" Lucy said gently. "Are you alright?"

He looked away. "I'm fine. Just a little tense. Prisoner, remember?"

"You shouldn't think of it that way."

"Oh, really?" he jumped down from the Animus and began walking away from her, towards the door. "Great to hear, I'm just going out for a walk to clear my head."

"Desmond..."

"Oh, wait!" he spun back around just as he reached the locked door. "I don't need to go out for exercise, do I? I get plenty of exercise running around killing people in that thing."

Lucy took a step towards him, the sympathy in her face only making him angrier. "I know, it's difficult, but Altaïr..."

"Fuck Altaïr! He was an arrogant fucking murderer! Altaïr was everything my parents tried to turn me into, he..." Desmond stopped himself, breathing heavily and clenching his fists.

"Altaïr was a great man," Lucy said quietly.

"Pretty weird sentiment to hear from a Templar." He spat the word like a curse.

Lucy folded her arms defensively. "So just who exactly do you hate, Desmond? Assassins or Templars? Whose side are you on?"

"I'm on the side of you-can-all-go-fuck-yourselves." Not exactly biting wit, but it got his point across.

Vidic finished his call and returned to Lucy's side. "Lover's tiff, is it?" he called disdainfully. "Get back in the Animus, Mr Miles. You have work to do."

Desmond stayed where he was, defiant. Vidic raised an eyebrow.

"Shall I call the doctors and have them induce a coma?"

"No!" Lucy said quickly. "That won't be necessary. Desmond..." She looked at him pleadingly.

There was a split second where Desmond had to focus all of his energy into not confronting Lucy about what he had learnt from Sixteen. If he got back into the Animus, then some day there would be no need for the doctors to induce a coma. In Subject Sixteen he had seen himself as he would be if he didn't get out of here in time, and that was a thought that terrified him. His cooperation might save him now, but sooner or later it would be his downfall.

He had one crumpled card still up his sleeve. He had spoken to Sixteen, and Vidic hadn't been able to listen in. If he could keep the other man sane for long enough, then perhaps they could help each other escape from this mess. The chance was so slim that it verged on invisible, but it was all he had.

Desmond surrendered, and with every step he took towards the Animus he imagined he could feel gallows dirt between his toes.