"Can I put some pants on first?"
Desmond's hands trembled and heart pounded as adrenaline coursed through him, every breath bringing a quick, sharp pain to his lungs. His eyes darted in every direction, peering out into the darkness, scanning his surroundings and waiting for the next attack. A small breeze sent a shiver through his entire body and drew his attention to the blood caking his hands and arms.
Hearing whispers echoing through the darkness, he clenched the knife in his hand tighter. He paused a moment, just long enough to wipe his dripping brow with the back of his hand and draw a swath of blood across his forehead.
He stepped over the pile of bodies at his feet and readied himself for another attack while his eyes adjusted to the light overhead. He tensed when one of the whispering voices drew closer.
"It can't be…"
Desmond raised his knife and took a step back. He heard footsteps splash through water, hesitant at first, but picking up speed as they approached. A second set of footsteps dashed past the first and Desmond had only a fraction of a second to react as two familiar faces emerged from the darkness. He lowered his knife and relaxed just as the first person barreled into him, throwing their arms around him and squeezing as hard as they could. So much for breathing again.
"Hey, Shaun," Desmond said, his voice cracking when he spoke again for the first time.
Shaun seemed determined to wring the life back out of him and buried his face in Desmond's bare shoulder, shaking against him while he mumbled incoherently.
"Are you… crying?"
Shaun sniffled, and Desmond barely made out a small, squeaky "no." He looked around awkwardly as he wrapped his arm around Shaun's shoulders and gave him a reassuring pat on the back.
"Hey, Shaun? Not that I'm not happy to see you, too. I really am, but can I put some pants on first?"
He'd been a bit preoccupied defending himself and adrenaline and self-preservation had pushed it from his mind earlier, but as another small breeze blew past and feeling continued to return to his body he became starkly aware of his own nakedness. Now that he wasn't fighting for his life, his priority shifted back to finding clothes to wear. Whether his own or someone else's, he wasn't too picky at the moment.
"Hm? Oh, right…" As the words started to sink in, Shaun loosened his grip and stepped back. His eyes wandered a bit too low for Desmond's comfort and both of their faces flushed with embarrassment. Rebecca ambushed them, latching onto both of them and squeezing, if possible, harder than Shaun had.
"Rebecca, I'm na—"
"I don't care. This is the best thing that could've happened today," she said, refusing to let go. She looked up at Shaun. "I told you he had a soft side."
"Need I remind you about the dead bodies surrounding us right now?"
Rebecca just shrugged and for a few moments they just stood there together, embracing one another. None of them moved out of fear that it would break the illusion and they'd all realize it was just some fever dream. But when they finally did break apart, Desmond was still standing there, alive and well, and each of them had to take a moment to wipe the tears from their eyes.
"Okay but what? Why? How?" Rebecca asked.
Desmond shrugged. "I have no idea. I…"
He trailed off and glanced down to see what Rebecca was now staring at: a large scar in the shape of a Y now adorning his chest. Embarrassed to be caught staring, Rebecca looked away.
Desmond felt eyes on him as stragglers emerged from the darkness on his right and made their way into the dim lobby.
"Come on, this way," he said, leading them past the pile of bodies and down the hallway he'd emerged from.
"We aren't leaving?" Rebecca asked from behind him, struggling to keep up with his quick pace.
"Well I'm not walking outside like this," he said, gesturing to himself. "My stuff is still downstairs. I just want to grab it and get out."
"If you insist…" Shaun said dubiously.
Like the atrium, the maze of hallways they navigated were only lit by a few emergency lights. Desmond's head swiveled with each step as he strained to hear if any more guards were approaching. The halls were silent, save for his companions' echoing footsteps and the occasional buzz of electricity coming from somewhere overhead.
"I see you haven't lost your touch," Shaun noted as they followed Desmond's trail of corpses.
A tiny flicker of a smile crossed Desmond's face while he held open a metal door at the end of one of the hallways for Shaun and Rebecca. They both turned on the flashlights on their phones when Desmond shut and jammed the door behind them, illuminating an otherwise pitch-black stairwell leading to the basement. "All the way to the bottom," he instructed.
As they began their descent, a thick tension hung in the air as Shaun and Rebecca cast furtive glances to each other, each wanting the other to ask all the questions clearly burning in both their minds.
"So where are we exactly?" Desmond asked, changing the subject before one of them inevitably caved.
"The belly of the beast: Abstergo," Shaun said.
"Yeah, I got that much from the logo plastered on everything out there. We're not in Rome though, right?"
"Nope. Montréal."
"Huh, I didn't know they had a facility here."
"They didn't until about six months ago. They expanded after their, uh, data acquisition," Rebecca informed him, giving Shaun an uneasy look.
Desmond hummed in acknowledgement, wondering what she meant but not wanting to press the issue further at the moment. He took the lead when they reached the bottom of the stairs, ushering them through a door and down another long corridor where blue fluorescent lights cast an eerie glow the length of the hallway. Unlike the main floor and stairwell, most of the lights still worked down here, and Shaun and Rebecca flicked their flashlights off as they trailed behind Desmond.
"Must be on a different circuit or something," Rebecca noted.
"Must be."
They moved quickly and, for the most part, quietly down the hall…
"Stop staring," Rebecca whispered behind him when they were almost to the end.
"I'm not staring!" Shaun hissed back.
"I can see you checking him out."
"I—what—no! I am not checking him out! He—he's walking in front of us. I'm walking behind him. That's all!"
"Uh huh…"
Desmond's cheeks flushed but he didn't acknowledge that he'd heard them. He wasn't sure either he or Shaun could endure the embarrassment of making eye contact at that moment. Instead he pretended to focus on the knife he twirled between his fingers until they reached the end of the hallway.
"Remind me again to never piss you off," Shaun said when he stepped over yet another body, this one holding the last door open. As with the hallway they just came from, the lights in here were mostly functioning, save for the few that had fallen to the ground during the earthquake. "Woah."
Shaun stopped in his tracks and stared when they entered a sort of art vault. Hundreds of paintings hung on sliding panels that reached floor to ceiling and he, Rebecca, and Desmond had a difficult time maneuvering around the dozens of statues that were spread across the floor. Crates full of even more art were crammed into whatever space was left in the corners.
"Oh my god, is this the original?" Shaun whispered when he approached one painting in particular. Its subject was a man in blue robes, looking off to the side. It looked strangely familiar to Desmond. Shaun's nose was almost pressed into it like he was studying every brushstroke as if trying to determine its authenticity.
"Didn't you have a copy of this at your desk?"
"Jesus!" Shaun jumped when Desmond seemingly appeared out of nowhere behind him, moving noiselessly without shoes. "Don't scare me like that. And yes, I did." Shaun stood up straight and narrowed his eyes. "I'm surprised you remember, well, frankly anything. I thought…nevermind."
"Just… bits and pieces."
Shaun and Rebecca both studied him for a moment now.
"Well in case you've forgotten, this is Portrait of a Gentleman, thought to be one of the most famous depictions of Cesare Borgia. And that one over there is Rodrigo." Shaun pointed to another painting that Desmond recognized. "Though I thought both of these were on display somewhere?"
"Guess not." Rebecca shrugged, staring at a statue across the room.
"I wouldn't be surprised if they still were," Desmond said. "Or, if everybody thought they were."
"Art thievery, what level of depravity will Abstergo stoop to next?"
Desmond chuckled as he made his way through a large round vault opening on the far end of the room. Shaun dragged himself away from the paintings at Rebecca's behest and followed him.
Shaun and Rebecca both gasped when they entered the next room, an enormous, circular, six-story vault full of glass-walled chambers that surrounded them on all sides, accessible by the industrial metal grated walkways in front. The same blue light that lit the hallway outside filled the room, casting an ominous hue over everything.
"Guess we found out why they needed the separate circuit down here," Shaun said.
"What the hell is this place?" Rebecca whispered, her mouth hanging open in awe. While Desmond went to one chamber in particular across the room, she and Shaun inspected the ones closest to them, where some sort of vapor was pouring out from a small crack in the front panel.
"Oh my god," she whispered, wiping condensation from the glass. "It's…a woman. They're all…all…people." She darted from case to case, scrubbing the fog from each one. Men and women, all dead, stayed motionless behind cracked glass. Only one chamber, the one Desmond now stood in front of, was completely shattered, shards of glass spilling across the ground in front of it from when its prior occupant had to fight his way out.
As he reached forward to grab his clothes and bag from the locker next to the chamber, he felt a tightness in his right arm. In the dim light, he was able to make out a mottled scar that covered almost his entire forearm. He ran his fingers along it, feeling the uneven texture of his skin. Strange… he didn't remember having that before.
"This isn't a vault," Shaun whispered, now standing in front of the cryogenic chamber next to Desmond's. Like the dead woman, and like all the others he'd seen, the subjects of each chamber weren't lying flat. Instead they were strapped upright to a board where they could easily be seen. "It's a trophy room."
Desmond shuddered and tried not to think about it too hard as he cinched the belt of his pants. He stepped back as Rebecca got closer, inspecting the chamber that had held him only thirty minutes earlier.
"You were down here the whole time?" Rebecca whispered, more to herself than anyone else.
"I guess so?" Desmond answered anyway. "I don't really know."
"Oh. Right."
"How long was I, uh, gone?"
"One year," Shaun said "To the day, in fact."
Desmond paused, then gave a noncommittal hum as he pulled his shirt over his head.
"That's it? Just, hm?"
He pulled his jacket and shoes on, groaning at the now-singed right sleeve of his once-favorite hoodie. He'd have to find a new one. "What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know. You just seem to be taking this all… rather well."
Desmond only answered with a shrug and began rummaging through his bag.
"Wait a second," Rebecca said suddenly. "I thought we checked down here a long time ago? Wasn't the basement one of the first places we looked? How come we didn't find this place?"
"John was supposed to check all the basements since we didn't have access yet, though I'd wager he knew all along and never said anything. Not surprising all things considered. And it looks like he ended up down here anyways," Shaun added, pointing to a now-empty chamber marked J. Standish.
"He didn't get up and walk out of here too, did he?" Rebecca asked apprehensively.
"I don't think so. The glass is still in one piece. Looks like Des here is our only zombie."
Desmond threw him a reproachful look while Rebecca rolled her eyes.
"Do either of you know where my blade is?" Desmond asked, shaking his bag upside down to empty the contents onto a workbench.
Rebecca shook her head mournfully. "Abstergo got to the Temple before we did and took everything." She paused for a moment. When she spoke again, her tone was quiet. "There was nothing left when we got back."
Frustrated by the news, Desmond sighed and repacked his bag.
"I'm sorry," she whispered just barely loud enough for him to hear.
He zipped up his bag and slung it over his shoulder. "It's okay, Rebecca. Come here," he said when he saw the downcast look on her face. He opened his arms wide as she came in for a hug. "You too, Shaun."
Shaun rolled his eyes but couldn't help but smile as the three of them embraced once more.
"I know you guys did everything you could," Desmond whispered, squeezing them both just a little tighter. "Now let's get out of here," he said as he started to let go.
They nodded and followed him without question, glad to leave such a sinister place. As they made their way out of the vault and back out the way they came, Desmond grabbed a handgun from one of the dead guards. They were silent as they climbed the stairs back to the main floor, where the door remained jammed shut.
When they reached the second-to-last landing, Desmond held up a hand and put a finger to his lips. Shaun and Rebecca waited as he noiselessly crept up the last flight of stairs. As he drew closer to the door he began to make out voices on the other side. He pressed his ear up against the cold steel and listened.
"Search everywhere! He couldn't have gotten far," one of the voices said.
"He has to be around here somewhere."
"Let's split up. You check the main hall, I'll check these back rooms," a third, gruffer voice ordered.
Desmond lingered on the top landing until he could no longer hear guards patrolling outside then tiptoed back down to where Shaun and Rebecca waited anxiously.
"What's the plan?" Rebecca whispered.
"You two wait here while I draw them away from the door. When the coast is clear, get out of here. I'll come find you when I can."
Rebecca shook her head. "No way."
"That's a horrible plan, mate."
"Do either of you have a better suggestion? Right now they don't know you're here. If I draw them away, they'll never see you."
Shaun and Rebecca looked at each other then sighed in defeat.
"How did you get here?"
"I drove," Shaun said.
"Perfect. Go and wait for me in the car. I'll find you when I can. If you're caught, leave without me and I'll find you guys later."
"We're not leaving you again." Rebecca stared at him, her hardened face letting him know he wouldn't be getting away so easily.
"It's not forever this time, I swear."
"It wasn't exactly forever last time though, was it?" Shaun said with a coy smile.
Desmond matched his expression. "Disappointed?"
"Hardly."
He turned back to an unconvinced Rebecca. "I promise I'll be okay."
Without warning, she pulled him into another tight squeeze. "Promise you'll be careful?" she mumbled into his chest.
"I promise," he murmured. "Stay down here until I've drawn them all away. As soon as you get your chance, run."
They nodded, and Desmond tiptoed back to the top of the stairs and pressed his ear against the door once more. He waited a moment, listening intently for any footsteps or movement. It was silent. He gave one last look down to find Shaun and Rebecca hidden around the bend in the stairwell, concealed from open view. If any guards looked down the stairs while they chased Desmond, they'd be hard pressed to see either of them, especially in the dark.
He adjusted his grip on the gun, drew in a sharp breath and burst through the door. He sprinted down the hallway, shooting at the floor to draw any guards to his position. It didn't take long before a crowd of Abstergo agents started chasing him down.
Desmond led them as far away from Shaun and Rebecca as he could, giving them time to escape. He struggled to remember the way back while he twisted and turned through the maze of hallways and cubicles and eventually found himself completely turned around. Still, as long as the guards were behind him somewhere, that's all that mattered at the moment, and while the darkness did him no favors in gathering his bearings, it brought him a significant advantage in their game of cat-and-mouse.
Eventually he turned down a hallway which led him directly back out to the main hall where he'd first met up with Shaun and Rebecca. In the dark, the room looked completely empty, with all the guards now running circles through the back offices trying to find him. He drew closer to the other end where he'd hoped to find a way out, but his hopes were dashed when he saw a line of guards blocking the doors. Too bad I don't have the Apple, he thought to himself. This would be so much easier. He debated cutting his way through, but that would take time and would only result in them calling the rest of the guards to their aid. He'd have to find another way.
He slunk back into the shadows and used what precious time he had to find an alternate way out. The longer he delayed the more likely he'd be caught. Just when the thought passed through his mind, voices echoed from down a nearby hallway. He ran back the length of the atrium, hoping the splashes from his shoes on the wet floor were quiet enough not to be heard. Just ahead, he found his way out: a barren tree with a thick branch that extended towards the second floor walkway. He scaled it quickly and silently and landed cat-like on the walkway that overlooked a pond. Below, he could make out vague shadows of the guards as they emerged like beetles from an upturned log.
He crept along the walkway, holding his breath while glass from a broken office window crunched beneath his feet. He breathed a small sigh of relief when he found an opening and ducked through a set of vertical blinds, out of sight from the guards below. He was in a large conference room which, much like the rest of the building, had sustained quite a bit of damage from the earthquake. Desmond had to traverse through piles of books and papers and even more glass from the shattered table to get to the open door on the opposite side.
A bowl of fruit sitting on a bar counter caught his attention, and his stomach growled when he eyed a particularly delicious-looking apple. He grabbed it on his way out of the conference room and munched on it while he traversed through a series of the most confusingly laid out rooms ever imagined. And he had thought the hallways downstairs had been bad. The dim light of dawn coming through windows on the far side of the current room caught his attention. He hurried over and stuck the apple in his mouth while he examined them. He groaned. Of course they'd use reinforced glass. He had half a mind to shoot his way through them, but that was more likely to call attention to himself than provide an escape.
He peeled himself away from the window and took another bite of his apple while he wandered into what looked like the main work area on this floor. Desmond suppressed a small shiver when he recognized the computer stations to be Abstergo's version of Animi. With the power out, there was no way to snoop around on the computers, even if he'd had the time. He'd have to ask Shaun and Rebecca if they knew what Abstergo was working on. After all, they clearly weren't here for him; they'd seemed just as surprised to see him as he was to see them.
He made his way around to the front of the room to an elevator shaft, now just a hollow mess of glass, steel and concrete.
"What is it with them and glass elevators?" Desmond muttered quietly to himself. The hairs on his arms stood on end when he thought he'd been heard as voices echoed up the shaft from the atrium. He paused for a moment, waiting to see if they'd heard him. They hadn't, and instead talked quietly amongst themselves.
He relaxed a bit and sat down in one of the booths along the far wall, eating his apple while he contemplated his next move. The guards were still swarming the first floor, and the only door he knew of in or out was heavily guarded. As far as he could tell there was no way to lure them into a trap or confront them head on without them calling for backup. The second floor had no windows he could climb through or even break, and it was likely that the windows on every floor were reinforced the same way. Now matter how he sliced it, he was stuck. Maybe Shaun and Rebecca were right, this was a poor decision. Too late now, he thought. It was his decision and he had to stand by it.
He got up from the booth and chucked the leftover apple core in a nearby trash can, so wrapped up in his own thoughts that he almost didn't hear voices approaching from the front of the room. He ducked below the closest cover and listened while three guards spoke quietly amongst each other in French. It was still dark enough that he could chance a look over the counter he'd hidden behind without being seen. They were at the far end of the room and, for the moment, facing away from him. It was now or never.
He crouched down low and sidled over to a nearby office. He silently cursed himself when a piece of glass from the broken sliding doors cracked beneath his shoe, and he scrambled beneath the office desk and listened with bated breath as three sets of boots stomped over to investigate.
They stopped in the doorway and, for a moment, everything was completely silent. A few very long seconds later, two pairs of boots left, one in each direction. The third guard stepped closer to the desk where Desmond was hiding, his boots betraying his movements. It would only be a matter of seconds before the guard would spot him.
Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Desmond slipped the dagger out of his waistband. Clunk. Clunk. The boots stopped just on the other side of the desk. Desmond closed his eyes and listened. The man's heavy breathing gave away his position, a small, almost imperceptible thump when the guard placed a fist on the desk, leaning over to see what was on the other side…
With viper-like reflexes, Desmond sprang from beneath the desk, dragged the man across the top, and stabbed him straight through the heart in one fluid motion. He held a hand over the man's mouth while he bled out across Desmond's lap, his life slipping away every second and with one last jerk, the man lay motionless.
Desmond listened intently for the other two to come, but it was a clean kill and they were none the wiser. He wiped the blood from his knife and hands on the guard's uniform and tucked the knife away again. As he shoved the body away, a folder that had slipped off the desk when Desmond had struck grabbed his attention.
"Sample 17," he mouthed silently to himself, reading the title emblazoned across the front. Curious, opened it to find a picture of himself, his eyes closed and looking paler than usual. His eyes went wide when he realized it was from his own autopsy file.
Not my best picture, I'll admit, he thought to himself as he began rifling through the pages, using a mini flashlight he took off the corpse to see better.
He couldn't decide if he was surprised at how much information Abstergo had on him. The first few pages were his own history: his childhood, running away, his time in New York City. They had it all, it seemed. How they got it was a mystery to him. Not like his father or mother or anyone else from the Farm would share that information.
But then the file delved into his DNA and his ancestry, and as he flipped through the pages quickly, caught glimpses of various moments in each Assassin's life: Altaïr's rise, fall, and eventual restoration as Mentor; Ezio's back-and-forth struggle against the Byzantine Templars in Constantinople, Connor's interactions with his fellow homesteaders and the encyclopedia that Achilles had entrusted to him to fill out.
As he glanced through the dossier, it became clear: Abstergo knew everything. Pages upon pages of information, down to the smallest of details.
So this was what Rebecca had meant by "data acquisition."
He would've stayed for hours reading more, but a pair of boots wandering past the office pulled his attention away. He clicked off the flashlight and started to draw his knife out once more, but returned it when the footsteps moved on.
Still, it wouldn't be long before they returned and found the body. He internally debated trying to take the file with him, but it was thick and bulky and would only slow him down. Besides, there was nothing in it he didn't already know, save for information on another one of his ancestors, one Edward Kenway. He'd have to go on without knowing more, he decided, leaving the file on the floor next to the body.
Refocusing his attention on finding a way out, Desmond crouched down low and crept along the floor until he reached the nearest planter. He stole a quick glance through the greenery and watched as one of the guards lurked between desks on the far end, his head swiveling back and forth.
Desmond dropped back below and silently scuttled along the floor to the backside of another workstation near the corner of the room. He groaned internally at his dallying, which only made his escape that much harder and, knowing Shaun and Rebecca, they were probably in a mild state of panic by now. He needed to make his move, and he needed to make it soon.
As fate would have it, he watched through a gap in the desks as one of the guards walked into the office with the first body. He called for his comrade, who joined him in examining it. Desmond took the opportunity to dart towards the front of the room, and the elevator shaft. He thought about jumping down to the first floor and making a run for it, but many voices still echoed from the atrium.
"Stop right there!" one of the guards behind him yelled with a thick accent.
Desmond froze for a moment, then spun around and whipped out his gun.
"We've got him!"
"Second floor, he's—"
Two shots rang out and both of the guards fell to the floor dead. But it was too late. They'd said enough and soon the rest of the Abstergo agents would be swarming the second floor. He couldn't stay where he was and he couldn't go down. There was only one place left to go: up.
He tucked the gun into his belt and took a running start towards the elevator shaft. He leapt across, grabbing on to one of the steel beams by just his fingertips. He felt himself slipping and managed to regrab the bar with his right hand. It was stiff and sore, but nevertheless he held on.
Hand over hand, foot over foot he rose higher and higher, climbing up what remained of the steel frame that once supported the rest of the glass elevator shaft. Below, he heard the swarm of angry, confused voices searching for him, but it wasn't until he was several floors up that someone finally realized—
"He's climbing up the elevator shaft!"
"Let's go!"
His muscles ached and begged for release as he continued his ascent, but he didn't dare slow down or stop. So far he'd been unsuccessful in finding an opening in the shaft and mild panic began to set in when he looked up and realized he might climb the entire length only to find there were no open doorways. Still, it wasn't like he had much of a choice.
And so he climbed ever higher, until eventually he saw light coming through an opening only a few floors above him. He increased his efforts the closer he got until he finally reached it and, with one last push, he launched himself across the elevator shaft. His feet caught on the ledge when his still-screaming muscles gave out. His momentum drove him off balance and he somersaulted across the floor, laying flat on his back for a moment while he caught his breath. He didn't remember this being quite so exhausting before. At least he was high enough up that it would take a while for anyone to find him.
Desmond stood up and brushed himself off. Now standing in the reception area of some sort of executive suite, he shivered when an icy wind swept through the open doors of the main office in front of him. The bright morning sky lured him out onto the balcony overlooking the city below, the day's first rays of sunshine peeking through the clouds as the sun emerged over the horizon. He thought he'd never see it again, and so for a few minutes he stared, despite his better judgment, and swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat. It rose higher and higher into the sky, its radiance more mesmerizing than he'd even remembered, and he struggled to pull himself away even though he knew his time grew shorter by the minute.
He sighed and looked down, trying to push intrusive thoughts from his mind. Now wasn't the time to linger on the past. He needed to find a way down now. He thought about scaling the building, but the flat exterior had almost no footholds and his muscles still ached from the long climb up.
He looked down to see if there was something at the bottom that could soften a landing if he fell, but the entire ground was covered in snow and ice. The only thing that didn't look completely frozen over was a large fountain pond that separated the building from the parking lot. Either way, it wasn't a jump he was looking to make.
As he shook his head in frustration, a scaffolding rig to his right caught his attention. He hurried back inside to find a way over and, as he passed through the main conference room, a shiny glint off a piece of metal caught his eye. Displayed on a shelf, broken into several pieces, sat his hidden blade. He marched over to the case it was sitting in and, letting out some of his pent-up rage, thrust his elbow through the glass to retrieve it.
He held the pieces in his hand. The blade itself was unusable, and while he wanted that familiar feeling on his arm, there was no point in wearing it at the moment. He sighed and carefully put the pieces in his bag. It may not be usable, but at least Abstergo wouldn't have it, or him, as a trophy anymore.
His weariness now turned to disgust, he stormed out of the conference room in search of a way to the rigging. As he passed by on his way towards a side hallway, voices echoed up the elevator shaft, sounding far too close for comfort.
He ran down the dark, winding hallway, nearly tripping down some stairs, and eventually found his way to the construction zone. With no wall on the outside, wind whipped through this area like it had upstairs, and the rig itself rhythmically banged against the exterior of the building. He hesitantly took a step out onto the wobbly rigging and tried to maneuver it lower, but it was either frozen or jammed in place. Either way, he wasn't getting down this way.
As he hopped from the rigging, he heard a small series of pops. He turned just in time to see the rigging finally give way, scraping along the side of the building as it hurtled downward below, hitting the ground with a thunderous crash.
He darted back up stairs and along the winding hallway, stopping at a door that he hadn't noticed on his way down. He opened it, elated to find a stairwell leading down. But as he took his first step, his stomach fell when he heard shouts echo from below.
"There he is!"
"I see him!"
Bullets whizzed by and he nearly tripped over his own feet when he spun around to duck out of the way. He scrambled back to the receptionist area, desperately trying to think of a way out. He tried the elevator shaft, but when he looked over the edge, wondering if he could descend fast enough to get out before he was discovered, he was showered in another hail of bullets from a few floors down. As far as he could tell, they had all his exits covered. All except one.
He fired off several of his own shots when the guards rounded the corner, forcing the few who didn't get hit to retreat. Bang. Bang. Click.
"Fuck," he spat when the gun jammed. The others had heard it, too and were now coming back around the corner. He chucked it in their direction, hoping the distraction would buy him just enough time to get out.
He held his arms around his face and raced through the office, the sounds of glass shattering in every direction only drowned out by the deafening sounds of gunshots coming from behind him.
Get there, he thought, vaulting the conference table with ease. He sprinted towards the edge of the balcony and in one swift, fluid motion leapt up onto the railing, and jumped.
He's baaaaack ;)
Hope y'all enjoyed chapter 2! This was actually the first chapter that I ever named and was the inspiration behind using quotes from each chapter as the chapter titles, so hope that gives everyone a little bit to look forward to right from the get-go.
I always hated how Ubi made Desmond into such a badass right before killing him off, so I thought it only fair to bring him back and let him be the badass that he was always meant to be. And don't worry, Shaun and Rebecca will get their moments of badassness soon enough!
Thanks for reading and I'll be back in two weeks with chapter 3!