Nikolia.

That was the one word Desmond heard in the world of dreams before he woke up. In the modern world, he could hear Rebecca pattering away at her keyboard. He stared briefly at the back of the sanctuary. He knew as soon as he sat up, that would set her off. He wanted to enjoy a few moments of peace.

More had happened in the past three weeks than the entire rest of his life combined. From his veins the Templars had plucked sacred knowledge that could enslave all of mankind. From his distant ancestors he had been trained in ancient arts of killing. And just days ago, he had killed.

For three weeks, he had been at war. How much longer would it go on? If it ended soon, it could only be in defeat. There were so many pieces of Eden, and so few of them. Was it a fool's crusade?

Yet they had no choice but to try, to proceed forward even if they were sleep walking through delusion.

With that grim thought and fatalistic determination, Desmond sat up.

"Desmond!" Rebecca said excitedly. His prediction had been on the nose. "I looked at your memories again, I think you actually viewed The Connector!"

He turned towards the front end of the sanctuary, where Rebecca was.

"That's that what Élise and that Russian dude were looking at?"

"The Russian? No. I'm talking about one of the drawings exclusive to Élise's memory. It was titled 'Der Stecker.' That's German for the same thing! That means we know what it looks like!"

"Is that...helpful?"

"It's...no. Maybe. I don't know. But you're doing good work, Dez! I'm going to get right on translating the rest of what we saw in your memories! That reminds me, Lucy wants you back in the machine. She says that little 'flash forward' incident is nothing to worry about."

"Great."

He rose. He went to get his breakfast, heading for the boxes of cereal lined up with the pile of plastic utensils and paper blows. Dining while trying to keep a low profile sucked. He grabbed a bowl, opened a box of granola and poured.

He turned to the mini-refrigerator to get milk, but as Rebecca caught his eye he thought to ask:

"So how's the search going? For the Apple I mean. The one in Andorra or whatever."

"It's...going."

"That doesn't sound good," Desmond said simply.

"We don't have much to go on, Desmond. That map in Altiar's memory wasn't terribly specific."

"And the Templars have like a whole fucking army to search for those other Apples! And we've got...what? Just us!?"

Her face bore a slight shock at the outburst. But surely she too knew they were fighting impossible odds. He recalled the e-mails back at the warehouse apartment: they were not the only Assassin survivors, but -

"That's why The Connector is so important, Desmond. If we can find and destroy that, we can sabotage their plans."

"And what makes you think my memories from that Élise chick will tell you anything?"

"We can't know for sure."

Desmond could not think of anything to say. The silence was thick.

The hard truth was they were almost certainly marching towards doom, but they had no choice but to keep marching. There was no point in embittering himself with protest.

Rebecca turned back to her screen.

Both beating the Templars to all the Apples, and finding 'The Connector' were the flimsiest of hopes, but the latter was still starkly more substantial.

He wondered if somewhere out there his mother or father were still alive, among the Assassin stragglers displaced by the Templar holocaust. He wondered if he would ever see them again.

Then he remembered he had his breakfast in his hand.