"Good." That is what Lucy had called his progress with the Bleeding Effect, after seeing him climb boxes, block punches, and duel with plastic toys. Her tone was not reluctant, nor enthusiastic. It seemed his progress was inline with expectations.

Desmond finished drying his hair and hung the small towel up. He had, encouragingly, not had any more hallucinations. But it was early yet in this little...experiment.

That was really what this was, he had realized: an experiment. They had never tried to train an Assassin this way before. No one in history had ever been trained at anything this way before.

He began putting his clothes on.

He was a lab rat, even out of his captors' reach, though this time the extremity of the circumstances, humanity on the verge of enslavement, seemed to justify that treatment.

Desmond Miles took one last look in the mirror. Desmond Miles...bartender turned time traveling ninja with the weight of humanity on his shoulders. Relegated to the metaphorical shadows to hide from a deadly-minded all seeing eye.

He turned to the door and stepped out of the bathroom.

The whole crowd was still present. Shaun was going through some documents with a highlighter. The females were typing at their computers.

Desmond approached the bulletin board for another curious glance.

The most prominent new addition were drawings of eagles...in political iconography. The American Eagle with the spears and olive branch, another eagle persiding over the symbol of Nazi Germany, and two other majestic looking images with the bird he could not put a nation to.

Shaun sighed loudly. Desmond assuming that break in his concentration gave him an acceptable opening.

"Eagles..." Desmond said.

"Yes, Desmond. They seem to be a popular bird," Shaun replied lacklusterly.

"Didn't the Assassins...I mean didn't we...have the eagle as our mascot or something?" He could not remember where exactly the association had formed in his mind but-

"Yes we did," replied Shaun simply, without looking up. "And we clearly weren't the last."

Desmond also noticed pictures of...triangles...sort of: symbols much like Assassin emblem. The eye in the pyramid as seen on a dollar bill, the Abstergo logo...the symbol with the closest resemblance, technically a diamond with an acute angle on top and an obtuse on the bottom (like their insignia), bore a large "G" in the center.

"And those...diamonds. That's ours too, right? That's the Assassin symbol?"

"Not exclusively," Shaun replied, still not looking up. "The Templars and the Assassins share a lot of iconography."

"Really? Why?" That was highly counter-intuitive.

Shaun finally looked up, an expression baring a subtle hint of surprise. "I thought you knew, Desmond. Our orders used to be best pals. We were practically the Templar's talon until Al Muallim decided to go his own way."

"Wait...what?"

Lucy cut into the conversation "How did you interpret what you saw in the animus back at Abstergo, Desmond? Al Muallim was a Templar."

"Yeah but I-"

"We're nothing but an offshoot of the Templar Order. Have you ever noticed the similarities in our creed?"

"I..."

Shaun cut in again, the conversation going like a game of hot potato. "Hide in plain sight...Achieve peace between warring nations...Not a far cry from what we've been trying to achieve...or at least were trying to achieve before the Templars gave us a less abstract goal. We just didn't like the whole enslave humanity to worship a metal ball bit."

"Wow, I..." Desmond was going to say he had never thought about it that way before, but that would be wrong. In his memories Altiar and Al Muallim had discussed that very subject.

"So eitherway," Shaun finished. "Anywhere you see Assassin iconography, and we didn't put it there, that's a hint you may be looking at Templars."

An interesting insight.

Desmond was eager to ask more...but could not find any words to articulate his colorless and formless sense of wonder.

Shaun went back to this work, so Desmond decided to leave him alone.

There was another picture on the bulletin board that was new. A picture of the carribean, a red triangle drawn between Florida and two islands, and a few markers in the middle.

But he did not want to be bothersome. Shaun was clearly invested in his world. He looked to his bed instead.