[Author's Note: Aaaand Chapter 3! Okay, so my buffer is currently at 2 chapters. I'm looking for something like five, but I also know it sucks when a fic you're reading updates once in a blue never. So my plan is to submit one chapter for every two I write until I'm at a buffer of five, then submit on a one-to-one basis. So the pace of updates I'm going for is slow but steady. Hopefully this will work!
CHAPTER WARNINGS: Brief mention of suicide.
Andiamo!]
Chapter 3: Desmond
He woke up with his head pounding like someone was actively hitting it with a hammer. Swallowing down the taste of bile in the back of his throat, he took deep breaths of the sea air to try to clear his head.
Sea air?
He jerked upright, opened his eyes. This was definitely not the Temple of Juno. This was…a coastline? He was sitting in the shallows of a sea, his butt planted in wet sand, more sand itching down his back where it had gotten into his shirt. He got to his feet, feeling as stiff and sore as if he'd just done a workout session back in the warehouse, and turned to face inland.
The island was covered in broken square pillars of black stone sticking out at all angles, some fallen entirely over…and some floating in the air, bobbing up and down and rotating slowly. "Mother. Fucker," he stated, running a hand through his hair to try to brush out some of the sand. There was nowhere he could be but back in the Animus.
There was a small hill that led up to several paired sets of intact pillars in a circle, extending straight up into the leaden grey sky until they faded from sight. At the bottom of the hill, in the middle of a huge cleared space that must have been at least as big as the Pantheon, stood a gate that looked like it had been constructed hastily, though how one could move giant blocks of stone with any haste was beyond him. In the space created by the crazily leaning stones was a sheet of flat blue light, glowing with a slight pulse.
He looked down at himself, trying to figure out which ancestor he'd gotten stuck as this time. He didn't recognize any physical cues, but he seemed to be unarmed, and his clothes were modern. He was even wearing sneakers like the ones he owned in the real world. "Hey, Shaun? What session are we on?" he called out. No one answered. "Shaun?" Silence.
"Rebecca, are you guys out there? Did you leave me in the chair again to go get coffee?"
Frowning, he closed his eyes, tried to bring up the Animus user menu. Nothing happened.
It was time to admit something was wrong. The Animus was having some kind of programming issue, a glitch, a malfunction. "Guys? Guys?" He called out, trying not to let fear creep into his voice. "What's going on? Someone talk to me! Hey! Lucy!"
Pain head hurts so much pain she's burning me up hollowing me out gotta drop this thing gotta get away god it's so hot can't take it what no no nononononoFIGHTNODON'TWHYPLEASENO
Blade
Blood
Black
Desmond dropped to his knees, stared at his hands. Of course there was no blood on them here in the Animus, but he could remember the feel of the hot liquid starting to run down his blade and onto his hand, the way it flowed into the ridges between his fingers and dripped from his palm. The look on Lucy's face. It was the last thing he remembered before everything went dark and there was somebody…somebody in his head? He brought his hands to his face like looking at them close-up would reveal the red stains he knew should be there. A drop of something clear fell onto his right palm. Rain? He looked up, but the sky remained unchanged. It wasn't until he looked back down, saw the dark spots on his jeans, that he realized he was crying.
Time passed.
Eventually, tired of feeling seawater soaking into his pants, Desmond moved from the beach to one of the fallen columns. He was entirely unsurprised when he dried off immediately. The sand down his shirt had disappeared too, he wasn't sure when. He'd forgotten it was supposed to be there, and the object permanence in the Animus wasn't the greatest when it was working properly, never mind when it was…doing whatever the hell it was doing now.
"Hey, Seventeen."
Desmond looked up. He knew that voice. "Hey, Sixteen." His own voice was rough around the edges, like he'd been screaming. Maybe he had. He wasn't sure.
"I saw what happened. Sorry about Stillman. She was pretty okay, for a soldier."
"She wasn't just a soldier."
The air in front of Desmond flickered. There was a sound like metal on glass, and a low buzzing. Some of the grass uprooted itself and swirled upward, defining an outline. Legs, a torso, arms. When it got to the top of the head, the buzzing escalated to a high pitched whine before suddenly cutting out, and there was a man standing there, as seemingly solid as anything else on the island. He didn't look at all familiar, but there was something about him, his build, his cheekbones, those Assassin's hands with their long, graceful fingers, that resembled Desmond. And Ezio, and Altair. Not as closely as they resembled one another, but it was there all the same. He stepped forward and crouched down to be at eye level with Desmond. "I know, man," he said. "It's okay. Apparently falling for women who're bad news can be genetically inherited."
"What?"
Sixteen shook his head. "Not important right now. I've had a lot of time down here, is all, and I've seen some stuff about our ancestors. But, listen, Seventeen, I know you're seriously hurting on a deep emotional level. Unfortunately all I've got for you is more bad news, and we don't have time to sneak up on it all gentle-like. Juno, who wins the award for world's least-helpful patron, by the way, has fucked you over right royal. Your brain just downloaded itself into the Animus to escape the fleshy meat computer meltdown going on in your skull. You're in shock right now, and up in the world your body's not doing so hot without you in it. The good news is, the fact that you're mostly coherent means they managed to shove you back into the machine before too much time passed, so we've got a chance to fix you up and send you on your merry way."
"Fix me…wait, no, back up. How are you even here?"
Sixteen grinned. "Computer genius, remember? I was on the fast track to becoming a Technician for the Order when Abstergo grabbed me. Brains are brains, be they in a skull or a computer modem. Course, no data storage medium's perfect. The Animus doesn't really appreciate visitors in this particular subroutine. The Island was the original loading room, back when they were first testing things out, but they found it was better psychologically to use the whiteroom protocol and menu screen…aaand that's not important. What is relevant is that you can get into the memories from here. Who were you last?"
"Uh…Ezio Auditore da Firenze." Desmond still didn't quite get what Sixteen was talking about.
"Great! So let me give you the two-second tour." Sixteen pointed up the hill at the infinitely tall doorways. "Those are important. They lead to your own memories. But you won't be able to get through them yet, because your memories haven't been sorted into the right files. I went through this already myself, so I know all about it."
"What do you mean, haven't been sorted? I remember everything just fine."
"Mmm-hm, sure you do. Where were you born?"
Firenze, popped into his head, then, no, stupid, that's Ezio. It was Masyaf…no, that's Altair. "I…can't remember."
"Yep. Your short-term memories seem to be ok, mine were too. But man, my long term memory was fucked when I got in here. I could remember everything about the other people I'd been, but my own damn name was about all I had that was really mine. I figured it'd be the same for you. Don't think about it too hard, it's not permanent." He held his hand out and in it was what looked like a computer glitch given physical form. It folded in on itself endlessly, never settling on one form for longer than a second.
"The hell?" Desmond couldn't look at it too long without feeling nauseated.
"Touch it."
"Um, no."
"Go ooonnn, you know you want to. What's the worst that could happen?"
Desmond raised an eyebrow and crossed his arms.
"Point. Okay. What if I promise it's nothing bad?"
"Fine. I guess things can't get much worse." Desmond reached out and poked at the…thing.
"Des? You still up?" It's three in the morning and he's supposed to be getting some sleep in Claudia's old office, which he and Shaun are using as their room. The girls are bunking in the armory. Lucy stands in the door that opens into the house's main hall, wearing flannel pants and a green sweatshirt with a parrot logo on it. Her hair is down and he thinks idly that it's longer than he'd imagined.
He sits up in his camp cot, blanket wrapped around his shoulders against the chilly October night. "Yeah. Can't sleep?"
"You either, looks like. Where's Shaun?"
"Preparing a bigass file for me on the Borgias, since it looks like we'll be seeing more of them. Er, Ezio will be, that is."
She walks into the room, stops by the table that used to hold the model of the town. He notices her feet are bare. "I heard you last night. Was it…was it the bleeding effect?" He knows what she really wants to ask, if it was bad, if it was the beginning of the end, if he's going down the same road as Sixteen.
He nods. She sighs, steps closer, hesitates. He slides over on the cot, motions to the space next to him. She takes him up on the offer, drawing her feet up off the cold floor and sitting cross-legged. One of her knees presses into the side of his leg through the blanket and he has to resist the urge to put an arm around her shoulders.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs, and before he can ask for what she leans into his side and rests her head on his shoulder and all the words fly out of his mind.
"Christ!" Desmond jerked his hand back like he'd put it on a hot stove. "Warn a guy before you pull shit like that!"
Sixteen was laughing. "Apologies, man. Gotta take my kicks where I can get 'em in here! But you get it now, right?"
Desmond nodded. "That…thing, that was a memory. One of mine."
"Exactly. You're gonna want to keep a lookout for those artifacts in the memories you access when you head through there," Sixteen pointed to the gate with the blue glow. "When you collect enough in a sequence, those doors up the hill will open up. They're physical representations of file folders, in case you care. Inside you'll find the raw data. You'll need to access all of it, in the right order, to reclaim your own long-term memories. Basically you're doing a hard reboot and reloading your operating system from an external hard drive backup. Only the computer is your brain."
"No pressure or anything."
"Nah, if you fuck it up you'll just end up like me. Nothing to worry about."
"Good to know."
Sixteen stood up and stretched, offered Desmond a hand up. "You should probably get going. We've spent too long in here. The Animus'll be sending through an antivirus program and you do not want to be here when it scans this file."
"What about you?" Desmond accepted the hand. Sixteen was almost exactly his same height, and they ended up eye-to-eye.
"Eh, I'll be fine. I've got lots of little hidey-holes scattered around this thing's hard drive. Since I don't have to worry about waking up anymore, it makes it easier. Oh, that reminds me," Sixteen let go of his hand and grabbed his shoulders. "This isn't normal operations, got that?"
"No, we've only spent the last half hour talking about that very thing. So of course I don't got it."
Sixteen shook his head. "I'm dead serious here, Desmond. You're not experiencing things through the memories anymore, you're experiencing them in the memories. As far as your brain's concerned, this shit's happening. Not like usual, when you've got the programming between you and whatever's going on in your ancestor's life. If you get hurt in here now – or I should say when, actually, given our lineage – the effects are gonna show up on your real body out there. Not exactly the same, obviously. But-"
Desmond cut him off, brushed away his hands, "I already know about that."
"Ah. You were getting the ghosts, huh? Guess they were working you pretty hard if it only took you a few months to see them."
"Yeah. I was wondering why they named it the bleeding effect. Seemed kind of sinister. Turns out it was pretty literal."
"Guess I don't have to tell you, you might not wake up in the best shape."
"Whatever. I'll take it over not waking up at all."
His predecessor looked him up and down with a thoughtful expression. "Yeah, I think you'll be able to handle it." The air around them, previously damp with sea mist, took on a strangely dry, metallic smell. Sixteen glanced at the sky. "Okay, we've officially outstayed our welcome. Get going, but don't stay in the memories too long either. Once you get in there you'll be able to access a kind of super-basic user menu, use it to get back out here a couple times every sequence. I'll meet you. Gotta keep moving around to stay ahead of the system. And hey, good luck!" With that, Sixteen's form froze in place. The color faded out of it, then it disappeared, starting in the middle and spreading outwards.
Desmond could see something coming over the horizon. It looked a lot like a giant wave. He definitely didn't want to stick around to find out what would happen when it reached the island. Giving himself no time to change his mind, he ran through the glowing blue gate.