Vaguely, he knows there was a time when he was someone else.

He can almost remember, if he strains his mind and makes an effort. He remembers strange people and stranger places- words and ideas that don't mean anything. He feels them in his mind- computers and televisions and cars and a hundred other words that somehow trigger feelings in him without his understanding what they mean.

The feelings aren't his, though. They belong to… someone else. Someone he used to be, could be, might be…. The possibilities swirl around him like a flakes of snow in a blizzard, biting and burning where they touch his mind. Connor growls in frustration- a completely pointless act, since there's no one around to hear, but it makes him feel better. The things his mind is telling him don't make sense, but somehow he knows that if he can just wake up it will all come together. Or maybe he's just telling himself that because it hurts too much to stay here, in this dark nothingness, any longer.

So he strains against the chains of darkness keeping him unconscious, binding him to this world of sleep and impossible dreams, and eventually- piece by piece- he feels them start to break apart. With renewed determination, Connor lunges toward the light that suddenly appears far off in the distance, and-

And that's when he feels the pain, and starts to scream.

-/-

He was wrong- waking is so much worse than being asleep, and Connor can't keep himself from yelling in pain as the hurt of a hundred cuts and bruises and burns hit him all at once- he never knew it was possible for a human body to be hurt this badly and still survive.

"Are you- Oh no." He hears a woman's voice, but can't see anything through the fog of pain that covers his vision. Desperate for sight of any kind, Connor switches to eagle vision- or tries to, at least. He can feel the ability sitting there in a corner of his mind, but unused and out of practice, and it doesn't make sense because he uses it all the time, but suddenly it's like his mind has forgotten how, like trying to use a muscle that hasn't been exercised in too long.

He feels a needle stab into the side of his arm, and a moment later the pain dulls to an almost bearable level. Connor takes a deep, shuddering breath, trying to collect himself.

"Are you alright?" Someone asks. The voice is the same as the woman he heard earlier, strangely accented (not British or French or Spanish, nothing he's heard before).

"No," Connor growls. "What did you do to me?"

"I just-" vision comes back slowly, and Connor squints at the woman in front of him. She's smaller than he is, blond and dressed in clothes that Connor doesn't even know how to describe. "It's a painkiller," she says. "That's it. You're not supposed to be awake-"

Connor gives her a look so angry that she stops talking immediately, and he asks, "Where am I?"

"Hospial," Lucy says. "They told me you were in an… accident." Her eyes drift over Connor's badly beaten body, and he's sure the same thought is going through both their minds- whatever's happened to him was definitely not an accident.

Connor makes a quick examination of his injuries. Ignoring the strange clothing he's for some reason wearing (everything around him is strange- the clothes and the furniture and the room itself), the first thing Connor notices is that his injuries aren't random. There are neat lines of burn marks running up and down his arms, across his torso, then down to his legs. Crisscrossing these in a sort of grid pattern are long scratches, some shallow and others deep, covering nearly all of his body. There are other injuries too, bruises and broken bones and he feels like he's going to throw up.

"I don't understand," Connor says, because it's the only thought in his mind right now- besides all the injuries, there's something else wrong with his body. It's young, decades younger than it should be, and smaller and paler and just wrong. It doesn't make sense. And more than anything- Connor frowns at the unfamiliar marking on his left wrist, the only part of his body not covered in injuries. It's shaped like a compass, and actually moves slightly as he watches. "What is this?" he whispers.

"I-" the woman looks nervous, and moves to the door. "I should go."

"No, wait!" Connor says, and he's ashamed of the way his voice breaks. "Who are you?" He doesn't know why it's important to know, but he's alone in a place that doesn't make sense, in a body that shouldn't be his, and he just wants to know that he's not alone, no matter how illusionary the knowledge might turn out to be.

"My name's Lucy," she says, and flees the room as quickly as she can.

-/-

Haytham is in Vidic's office when a woman in her late twenties comes running along the hall to meet the pair. "He's awake," she says, her voice breathless, and Haytham doesn't have to ask who she's talking about.

"That's not possible," Vidic says dismissively. "He's on enough drugs to keep him knocked out for weeks-"

"I'm telling you," the woman says. "He's awake and he's in pain and-"

Haytham turns on Vidic, ignoring whatever else the woman was about to say. "You told me he wouldn't be awake to feel any of this," he growls, shoving Vidic up against the closest wall.

Vidic glares at Haytham, and hisses in a voice so low that no one other than Haytham can hear him- "You're the one that agreed to have your own son tortured," he says. "Don't pretend like this is my fault."

Haytham pushes the doctor away, because it's the truth and he knows and he hates himself for it. "We needed to know if it was possible," he says. "Connor was our strongest candidate." The words sound hollow to his own ears, but they're all he has to justify to himself what he's done.

Vidic gives Haytham what he probably imagines is a comforting pat on the shoulder. In reality, it comes off as mostly condescending, and it takes all of Haytham's self-control to keep himself from punching the doctor in response. Vidic turns back to the woman, who is watching them with wide eyes. "How did he seem, Miss Stillman?"

"Confused," Stillman says. "Like he didn't know where he was. Or- or who he was."

"Excellent," Vidic says, and turns dismissively. "That will be all."

Haytham follows Vidic down a maze of halls until they get to a section of the hospital that is much quieter than the places they've passed through on the way there. The doctors and nurses here lack the urgency Haytham's seen elsewhere, and the few visitors keep quiet and spend a lot of time staring at the floor. Haytham doesn't need to ask to know that this is the ward where people come to die.

Connor has a room of his own at the end of a long hall. There's a sturdy lock on the door, and no windows. The industrial light bulb that hangs from the ceiling paints the room into a patchwork of crisp white light and dark shadow.

Connor's lying on the room's only bed, wired up to a dozen or more machines, breathing with obvious effort, hands clenched into fists at his side. Haytham stops in the doorway, unwilling or unable to get any closer. When Vidic came to him to propose Connor be used as one of his subjects, Haytham had agreed on two conditions- that Connor would be kept comatose for the worst of it, and that he would never have to see what they did to him.

He knows that he's sentenced his son to death, but he never wanted Connor to suffer, and he never wanted to see it for himself.

Connor's eyes are closed when they enter the room, but he opens them as Vidic draws near to the bed. He stares at the man for a second, then turns his gaze on Haytham. His eyes flicker unnervingly between their normal color and an almost golden shade that seem to glow. But it's not the color of his eyes that frightens Haytham.

The person looking out at him through Connor's eyes is not his son. Haytham shudders and stares back at this boy he doesn't know, because he can't bring himself to look away. Connor- or whoever it is- narrows his eyes and a moment later Haytham's on his back, fighting for his life as the sound of medical monitors screaming warnings echoes around the tiny room- Connor must have disconnected himself from the machines when he moved. Haytham barely notices this though, because even as injured and obviously disoriented as Connor is, he's still winning.

Later, Haytham will realize that he has Connor's injuries to thank for his own survival, because when Connor stumbles and passes out, it's due to exertion and blood loss more than any action on Haytham's part.

"You're out of practice," Vidic says as he and Haytham manhandle Connor back onto the bed.

Haytham only grunts in response- years ago he had operated as a field agent for the templars, but after Connor came to live with him, Haytham switched to operating more on the business side of the organization. It was a move that was supposed to keep both of them safe, but that was before the Phoenix Project.

"I'll see about getting him restrained before he wakes up again," Vidic says, and when Haytham turns to look at him, he sees the man is smiling. "But I think his reaction is a good sign."

"Do you?" Haytham asks. A thin trickle of blood from a fresh cut on his forehead drips slowly down his face, and Haytham wipes it impatiently away.

"Well, not for you, obviously." Vidic waves away Connor's attack on Haytham as though it were nothing. "But in a more general sense, it is a very good thing." He moves in closer to Connor, starts reconnecting him to the machinery. "I never met your son before we brought him in as a subject, but I assume this wasn't normal behavior for him?"

"No," says Haytham. Connor had never been a violent kid- he'd been in a few fights when he was younger, right after his mother died, but he'd grown out of it quickly. Since then, he'd had no trouble staying away from violence because he had no need to be violent.

"Regretting your decision?" Vidic asks, and Haytham realizes he's been staring at Connor in silence for several seconds.

Of course he is, but Haytham's not fool enough to admit that to Vidic. Instead, he says, "So tell me how my son attacking me is good news for your experiment."

"He never would have reacted like that before the procedure," Vidic says. Haytham assumes that by 'procedure', he means 'torture'. "He would have neither the inclination nor the skillset. I realize you haven't been active in the field in over a decade, but you should have been able to fight off an untrained boy."

"That's true." Haytham frowns. At the time, he'd been too surprised to note the way Connor moved when he attacked, but now that he thinks over it again, it's obvious that Connor had moved as though he knew what he was doing, as though he'd been trained at some point, and had put that training into practice. Many times, if Haytham was to hazard a guess.

"We may have achieved full personality transfer," Vidic says, and his eyes are alight with excitement. "I hadn't expected this to happen so soon, to be honest- I thought we might get a few tendencies and maybe some memories but-" he shakes his head, as though in awe over his own skills. "It's very likely that when Connor wakes up, there will be a complete person living in his head- it won't be Connor, but whoever he was in a past life."

"And why would he attack me?" Haytham asks.

"Clearly he was upset to wake up and find himself injured, in a strange place, and surrounded by strangers," Vidic says. "Perhaps he was a violent man."

Haytham starts to argue the term man (Connor is sixteen, and therefore still a boy), but then remembers the Phoenix Project was designed to implant the entire life of a person into their modern day incarnation- most likely, whoever is now inhabiting Connor's body is a fully grown man.

He presses his earlier point instead. "But why me?" he asks. "He saw both you and that Stillman woman first."

Vidic only shrugs. "Possibly you remind him of someone from his first life," he says. "Apparently someone he did not like very much."

After that, Haytham leaves Vidic alone with his subject. He can't take much more of this, at least not today. Maybe not ever.