It is not long after that when the simulation falls apart around them, and Desmond is thrown back into the familiar space of his own head. For a moment he is disoriented, still not used to the look and feel of the Helix after so long in the animus. He's about to pull the headpiece off when the black screen in front of him flickers and suddenly he's looking at a dim image of a room he's never seen before. It looks like a two way webcam- some kind of glorified Skype connection.
"What's that?" Arno asks.
"No idea. Someone hacked Helix, maybe?"
"Hacked..?" Arno's confusion is nearly tangible, but Desmond's mind is so full of people at the moment that he barely notices. They've all followed him out of Arno's mind, apparently.
"Shh," Haytham says. "Someone's coming."
"Why do I have to shh?" Arno asks. "We're not saying anything out loud, it's not like anyone's going to hear us."
"Because I want to pay attention," Desmond says, and luckily the others fall silent in time for him to hear the woman calling herself Bishop starts talking about assassins (which seems humorously basic to Desmond), and the triple helix structure of precursor DNA (which seems overly scientific). He watches in bemused silence until he hears a voice he recognizes.
"Hang on," he blurts. "Shaun?"
"Who?"
"Christ," Edward grumbles, and Desmond winces a little as the older man starts filling in all the little details that Arno hasn't managed to pick up on yet. He makes an effort and focuses on the conversation.
"Wait a second-" There's the sound of a sliding chair, then hurried footsteps, and Shaun appears in front of the camera. "Desmond? What are you doing using a Helix?"
"Um-" he doesn't know or trust Bishop. Certainly not enough to know if it's okay to talk about his particular experiences in the animus, or why he'd felt it necessary to use the Helix to help Arno. "Just trying to help."
"Right," Shaun says. "Very helpful. And- ah, anyone else around?"
"Oh, you know-"
"Dad!" Haytham protests, in response to some story Desmond hasn't been listening to. "That's not how it happened!"
"Eh. Close enough."
"You're just going to confuse Arno."
"I'm sure he's fine. Right, Arno?"
"…I am so confused."
"It's a little crowded in here," Desmond says, and Shaun snorts in apparent understanding, rolling his eyes a little. Desmond decides it's time to change the subject. "So this is what you've been up to lately?"
"Recruitment," Shaun says. "Contacting people from the Initiates database and getting them more involved."
"Are we that desperate for numbers?"
"Pretty much, yea. Abstergo's sort of… causing problems for most of our field teams."
"There's a surprise."
"Yea…" Desmond is expecting some kind of snarky comment about how generally naïve he is about what's going on in the order, but to his surprise it seems that thought hasn't even occurred to Shaun. "So how's Rebecca doing?"
"Fine. Why?"
Shaun's face goes suddenly red and Desmond watches in confusion as he goes through a couple of false starts before managing to get through a full sentence. "I've just been working with her for a long time," he says. "So it's normal to ask after her, isn't it? This is a totally normal question."
"…what?"
Shaun mutters a half-hearted insult and walks off. "What's his problem?" he asks, addressing the peanut gallery.
"He likes her," Edward explains, as if this is the most obvious conclusion in the world.
"I'm not sure Shaun's capable of emotions like that," Desmond says, only half joking.
"You're underestimating him."
"What about Rebecca? She would have said something if she-" he stops, thinks this over, does a double take as all the disconnected pieces come together. "Okay. Maybe this is a thing."
"Hey." He refocuses on the world outside his head in time to see Bishop sit down in front of the camera and lean forward. "So you're an assassin too?"
"Yea."
"I've never seen you before." Her tone is reproachful, almost disbelieving.
"I was gone for a while."
"But I still should have-"
"And then I was sort of dead."
"Wait, what?"
He smiles at her, the picture of naïve innocence.
"Right," she says, visibly deciding to let this comment go. "Listen- Desmond, right? We really need this information from Arno's life. He ran into a sage at some point, and if Abstergo gets their hands on his bones, they'll be able to do some pretty nasty research into precursor DNA."
"How nasty?"
"Depends what they do with it. I mean, look what they did with animus tech."
"Yea" Desmond mutters. "Nothing good."
"So the point is, we need that information before they get their hands on it. Shaun and I have been recruiting as many Initiates as we can track down, but it would be really great to have someone that's already an assassin on our team as well."
"I was planning to see this through to the end anyway."
"Great," she says. "Thank you. Do you have any experience with Helix, or the animus?"
He very nearly laughs in her face. "Yea," he says. "Yea, I guess you could say I have a little."
"Perfect!" she grins, and pulls away from the camera a little. "Finally, something's going right. What a change of pace."
"Is it, though?" Desmond sighs. "Because from my end, it seems pretty typically complicated."
"What?"
"Nothing." He cuts the Helix connection and pulls the headset off his face. Rebecca is there, looking like she's trying much too hard to keep from seeming interested.
"So you spoke with Shaun?" she asks.
"Yea. Have you two talked at all? Since he left, I mean?"
"No. Too much risk of interception." She frowns, playing with her fingers. "Why?"
"Because he asked after you, too."
"Did he?" she smiles a little, looking slightly happier. "That's… that's good."
"He'll be back soon, I'm sure," Desmond says. "As soon as this mission is over, and we know what happened with Arno."
"He better," she says. "He just better come back."
