Ezio was glad to finally fall back into one of the rickety bunks that night. Even the uneven swaying of the Jackdaw wasn't enough to keep him awake for long and soon he found himself drifting to sleep.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the floor of a cavernous room. He recognized the intricate design of the domed ceiling immediately, though the damage it seemed to have sustained was new. Large sections of stone were missing, and when he turned his head to the side he noticed that they now lay strewn across the floor of the Sanctuary. Other strange artifacts now filled the Sanctuary as well: tables and chairs that looked as though they were from another world, black crates made from a material like nothing he'd ever seen. Up close they had the rough texture of leather but the hardness of steel. Metal strips covered the edges, though even this metal seemed foreign to Ezio. Long, colorful tubes wound across the floor, leading to various devices that Ezio wouldn't have dreamt up in his wildest imagination. Tiny lights flickered on these devices, though even in the darkness Ezio could tell these were no ordinary flames. Ezio had seen similar things in only one place before: the Apple.
He supposed this must be some distant future, long after he was gone from the world.
"... well enough to go back into the Animus. There's still a lot that Ezio can tell us, I'm sure of it." A tall, grey haired man entered the sanctuary first. He was even older than Ezio by the looks of it and had the demeanor of a man in charge. A young woman with black hair and a strange headpiece that covered her ears followed close behind. Upon entering the Sanctuary she immediately made towards a strange red and white chair that sat in the very center of the room. Ezio watched as she tapped her fingers on a device (this one also connected to the rest by colorful tubes) and examined the changes made to the strange window in front of her. Ezio thought he could make out letters and numbers, but how they appeared before her was like magic.
Three more people entered the Sanctuary: a woman with sharp features and fair hair pulled taut, a man with cropped hair and glasses, and a third man, tall and lean with even shorter dark hair and unconscious by the look of it, who was being half-carried by the other two.
The fair-haired woman and man with glasses dragged this third man to the same red and white chair the dark-haired woman sat near. Ezio couldn't explain why, but he felt some strange connection with the unconscious man, as though they'd met before. But where? Ezio didn't know.
"Buonasera," Ezio called out to the group. None of them answered and in fact, none of them even turned his direction. "Can any of you hear me?"
"Lucy," the older man faced the light-haired woman, "why don't you and I get to packing everything up?" He turned to the other two that had walked in behind him. "Rebecca can keep an eye on Desmond while Shaun grabs the van. I have a bad feeling about staying here after this debacle and think we should move on."
Without a moment's hesitation, each of them did as asked and hurried to complete their tasks.
"Desmond," Ezio whispered to himself. He'd heard the name once before, when Minerva appeared beneath the Vatican. She'd turned and spoken to a phantom, or so Ezio thought. Had Desmond really been there? Had he been listening in, an invisible ghost, just as Ezio was now? Watching but unable to interact?
And yet, the connection he felt between himself and the unconscious man in the center of the room went deeper than that. A sense of kinship, as though they'd met before. But that was impossible. It was obvious that he came from a distant future, one that Ezio would never see except through a Piece of Eden.
And so Ezio watched like some guardian angel over Desmond and the others as they made preparations to leave the Sanctuary. Strange, Ezio thought. There was a time when he, too, had to flee from the Sanctuary. Was it really a sanctuary at all?
He'd contemplated that for a minute when Rebecca's voice cut through the disarray everyone's packing caused.
"Hey guys, he's waking up! Desmond, can you hear us?"
As Desmond began to open his eyes, Ezio felt a strange phenomenon, as though his very essence was slowly drifting away. Was Desmond's awakening killing him? When he looked down at himself he realized with horror his own body vanishing before his very eyes.
He looked around, hoping to find something to stop it from happening and locked eyes with Desmond.
No that was silly, Ezio thought. None of them could see him. He just happened to be standing right in front of Desmond, that's all. Standing in front of his natural line of sight.
And yet when their eyes met there was no mistaking Desmond's eyebrows pulling together in visible confusion. To be sure, Ezio stretched out his fading arm, reaching towards Desmond.
Desmond mirrored the motion, looking even more baffled than before. Ezio tried calling out to him but nothing came out, and as Desmond's eyes seemed to refocus on his companions, Ezio felt himself drift away….