It was that time of year when the sun had started rising later than Daniel did. It was still dark when he went for his morning run, circumnavigating Fairmount Park, his breath just visible in air that was becoming prematurely frosty. If he made good time - and he usually did - he'd be back at his apartment by around 8 and would lift weights before his muscles had time to cool down. Then he would stand beneath the powerful shower and let the near-scalding water pound the sweat from his skin, and finally he would get dressed and head downstairs again to check his post.

Discipline. It had become Daniel's new drug of choice years ago, something to replace the ecstasy and cocaine and heroin and crystal meth and LSD and PCP and mescaline and ketamine and chlorpromazine that he had stuffed into his body when he was younger. Looking back, Daniel was sometimes amazed that he'd ever made it out of his teens.

Not that it mattered how hard he worked out. His body might be in the best shape it could possibly be, but Daniel knew that somewhere someone must have stamped the words "unfit for active duty" on his record, probably around the same time that he'd completely fucked up a mission due to an ill-timed bout of the Bleeding Effect. Up until that mission - earlier this year - he'd been leading some of the most risky and exciting operations that Abstergo had. Nowadays it seemed that all they wanted him to do was talk.

'You're more useful to us on a podium than you are in the field,' was how Alan Rikkin had phrased it when Daniel had come to him, wearing a sullen expression, and asking as respectfully as he could manage why he had done nothing but give speeches to wide-eyed new recruits for months on end. 'Brawn isn't everything, Daniel. We need you as a symbol more than we need you as a soldier.'

'Why can't I be both?'

He'd never been given a decent answer, but he hadn't really needed one. Daniel had hoped - once, a long time ago - that with age the Bleeding Effect would stop affecting him, but the attacks remained frequent and powerful. Only last week, one of his neighbours had reported Daniel to the super after he stayed up until the early hours of the morning knocking over furniture and screaming obscenities in Russian. Since Abstergo owned the building the complaint had come to nothing, but would undoubtedly have been reported back to HQ as further evidence of Daniel's unreliability.

His mood blackened by the memory of the incident, Daniel jogged down the stairs to his mailbox and retrieved a small handful of envelopes, which he opened on the way back up. No bills, of course. Abstergo took care of all that. There was a postcard from Dr. Sung, currently spending a week visiting her family in Detroit, which included a pointed comment about how she hoped he was "treating himself well". Junk mail, junk mail, a DVD of Battleship Potemkin that he had ordered, a takeout menu ... and, on the bottom of the stack, a long white envelope with the Abstergo symbol neatly marked in the top right corner.

Daniel reached this last piece of mail when he was on his doorstep. He paused before opening it to let himself into the apartment, knowing that it was unwise to read official correspondence in public.

Inside was about 2000 euros in cash, and a first class plane ticket from Philadelphia to Rome, scheduled to leave in five hours.

Daniel's cell phone rang before he even had a chance to finish counting out the money. He flipped it open on the way out of his pocket and tilted his head to pin it between his left ear and his shoulder.

'Warren. You spying on me?'

'I just know your routine, Daniel.'

'I take it this little parcel is from you. Company holiday?'

'Not exactly.'

'Let me guess. You need me to make a speech.'

'You guess incorrectly, Daniel. Actually, I have a task for you.'

Daniel paused for a moment, taking note of the emphasis that Vidic had put on the words. There was an unspoken code in their exchanges where anything mundane or safe was described as a "job" and anything dangerous or interesting was always referred to as a "task". Daniel reached up to the phone and held it to his ear properly. 'I'm listening.'

'Glad to hear it,' Vidic replied sarcastically. Technically they were equals now - both being Masters in the Order - but Vidic had never quite got past his habit of treating Daniel like a wayward child. 'Ordinarily we'd have our agents in Rome take care of this, but the operation requires a degree of discretion, and we'd prefer to send in someone with your array of skills.'

'Much as I love to hear you beat around the bush, Warren, I've got a plane to catch in a few hours and I haven't had a chance to pack. Could we move this along?'

Warren gave a barely-audible huff of indignation before speaking again. 'You recall that we organised Desmond Miles' removal from the Rome facility a few weeks ago? Lucy Stillman shammed an escape, in the hope that he would be more cooperative among the Assassins.'

Daniel frowned in annoyance at the memory. 'Yeah, I remember. You know, I put a lot of work into finding that kid and snatching him, Warren. If I'd known you were just planning to release him again after about a week, I might not have gone to so much trouble.' He hadn't been present for the actual abduction, which had been simple enough that the regular guards could take care of it, but tracking Miles down had been a bitch.

'Apparently it wasn't the right move,' Warren replied, a rare concession. 'Stillman is dead.'

'Damn,' Daniel breathed. 'They caught her out?'

'I have no idea. What I do know is that she's being shipped back to her parents with a stab wound from an Assassin blade. This leaves us with the problem of how to recapture Desmond Miles.'

Daniel gave a short, derisive laugh. 'And you've decided that I'm the man for the job? Again? Is every mission I go on going to involve running around after Desmond Miles with a net like a cartoon dogcatcher?'

'You won't need to run around after him this time. He's going to run right towards you. Our IT specialists detected a local hack into our surveillance on L'Abate Psychiatric Hospital. It seems as though Miles and his team are planning an attempt to recover Clay Kaczmarek from the facility. I have no idea what they want with him, but I want you to intercept and bring Kaczmarek and Miles back to our headquarters in Rome. I need you to do it discreetly, and I'd prefer for the rest of the team to not realise they're missing until it's too late.'

Daniel turned this over in his head, piecing together a plan even as he walked towards his bedroom to pack everything he would need. 'I'll take care of it.'

October 14th 2012

Bill was driving and Rebecca navigating, which left Shaun and Desmond alone in the back of the van. Once they'd climbed inside, Shaun had immediately opened up his laptop and set about dedicating himself wholly to the task of pretending that Desmond didn't exist.

Desmond looked over at him sadly. Admittedly Shaun had never exactly been friendly towards him, but his insults and impatience had never been particularly vitriolic before now. Shaun had a naturally acerbic attitude and it was part of something that, for lack of a better term, might be called his charm. All that had changed now. He had avoided properly engaging with Desmond since the temple, and whenever they had spoken it had been made very clear that Shaun's insults and dismissals were now coming from a much darker, angrier place.

'What kind of security will they have once we get in there?' Desmond asked, more as an excuse to break the silence than out of curiosity.

'Provided the Templars haven't seen us coming, you shouldn't encounter too much,' Shaun replied coldly. 'Most of the security is designed to prevent people from breaking out. People aren't exactly clamouring to get inside the mental institution.'

Desmond picked up on the pronoun that Shaun had used. 'I'm going in alone?'

Shaun finally lifted his gaze from his laptop and peered at Desmond in the near-darkness. 'Well, you are the most spry team member out of all of us. Besides, one man is a lot less noticeable than four people.' He paused for a moment. 'If you're thinking of using this as an opportunity to abandon us, Desmond, I'd like to remind you of what I said in the temple.'

'You'd shoot me in the back, Shaun?'

By way of response, Shaun reached into his pocket and pulled out a device identical to the one that Rebecca had offered Desmond yesterday. 'I wouldn't use a gun, and I wouldn't kill you, but believe me when I say that I am eagerly waiting for any opportunity to use this thing.'

'Shaun, I didn't mean to kill Lucy, it wasn't me, you have to believe me...'

'Oh, am I hurting your feelings?' Shaun hissed back viciously. 'In case you hadn't realised this yet, Desmond, your little crisis of responsibility isn't going to make any difference to Lucy. She's dead and it was your blade that ended up in her gut, so you'll forgive me if I don't drop my guard around you. I've seen where that leads.'

Desmond realised that it was pointless to argue this any further. Shame and anger were bubbling hot in his stomach and as Shaun looked back down at his laptop screen, Desmond felt a sudden urge to snatch the damn thing up and break it over his knee. Then he saw Shaun's face lit up by the soft, blue glow of the screen and realised that he didn't look cool, or arrogant, or dismissive. He didn't even seem to be doing any work. He was taking slow, deep breaths in an audible effort to calm himself and he was flexing his shaking fingers over the keyboard, his eyes bright.

Feeling strangely voyeuristic, Desmond forced himself to look away from Shaun. They spent the rest of the journey in silence.

The sun was setting as they parked up in a side road next to the hospital. There was a high fence and thick trees around it, probably to prevent passers-by from ogling the patients, or vice versa. Desmond could see the hospital rising up above the treeline. He was no expert in architecture, aside from what he had picked up from Shaun's descriptions in the Animus database, but he guessed that this place would have been built some time in the seventies. It was red-brick: modern in its design and ugly in its modernity.

They spilled out of the van and Bill moved to Desmond's side. ' You'll have to go over the fence; they make visitors sign in at the gate. It's still visiting hours so provided you don't draw too much attention to yourself, you should be able to blend in. From what I understand about the layout of the wards, you'll find Sixteen somewhere on the second floor. His door may or may not be unlocked, depending on how well he's behaved himself while he's been in there. If it is locked, find an orderly...'

'Dad, it's not my first time,' Desmond interrupted, knowing that it was irrational to turn down advice but frankly sick of being told what to do.

'Alright, hotshot,' Rebecca said, possibly just to head off an argument. 'If you feel up to the challenge, it would be really great if you could find Sixteen's psych notes while you're in there. If we're going to get him sane again then we'll need any help we can get.'

'It would help if I knew his name.'

'Oh, right, of course. It's Kaczmarek. Clay Kaczmarek.'

Desmond stared at her blankly for a moment. 'I'm ... going to need you to write that down for me.'

Scaling the fence was the easy part. The paint on the vertical metal railings was flaking and their surface was rough enough that Desmond was able to grip them easily and haul himself up. There was a risky moment when he reached the top and nearly impaled himself on a spike in a way that would have permanently prevented him from leaving any descendants, but he grabbed on overhead branch on pulled himself back up just in time. He huffed out a breath and shook his head at the close call before dropping down the other side of the fence into the cover of the shrubbery.

Desmond crept towards the lawn with his heels slightly stinging from the landing and a collection of small leaves in his hair. Staying as low as possible, he glanced out over the modest garden area, first looking to the left and towards the side door where he would make his entrance, then to his right where...

... Where a slightly overweight, heavily stubbled man in pyjamas was staring at him, temporarily distracted from the child's doll that he had been playing with, with very wide eyes and an open mouth, as though Desmond was an alien who had just landed in his spaceship.

Crap. Very slowly, Desmond raised a finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture. He was about to back away from the patient when a thought struck him and he turned back.

'Clay?' he asked hopefully.

The patient shook his head slowly, eyes still popping.

'Worth a shot,' Desmond muttered. Of course it wouldn't be that easy.

He made his way over the grass, walking upright and trying to look as though he belonged. He spotted a few more patients out and enjoying the last of the day's sunshine, but none of them seemed to pay much attention to him. The side door was down a small set of steps and led into a basement that, according to the blueprints, comprised the laundry room and staff locker rooms. To Desmond's surprise it was already slightly ajar, but he didn't overthink this. Probably just a cleaner had slipped out for a smoke and forgotten to shut the door behind them.

Once inside he took a moment to collect himself and go over the plan again. Copies of the patient files would be kept in the office on the ground floor, and Desmond planned to grab Sixteen's notes while he was here. Failing to do so would only give the others yet another excuse to complain about how useless he was. Then he had to get up to the second floor and either convince Sixteen to walk out by himself, throw him out of a window and jump down after him, or carry him all the way back down and out of the building again.

'Simple,' he muttered to himself sarcastically, beginning his journey down the hallway.

'You lost, kid?'

Desmond started at the voice, surprised for the second time in five minutes by someone he hadn't even noticed until he was right next to them. An orderly in blue scrubs was leaning in the doorway of the staff locker room, arms folded and eyebrows raised.

Frantically reaching for a decent lie, Desmond replied, 'Yeah, uh, I was visiting my mom and I must have...'

The orderly shook his head and chuckled. 'Relax, Desmond.'

'Who the hell are-?'

'Don't worry, I'm on your side,' the orderly interrupted, raising a hand placatingly. He then turned the hand over and Desmond saw a design tattooed on the inside of his forearm. It had been slightly embellished, but recognisable within it was the symbol of the Assassin Brotherhood.

Desmond relaxed fractionally, though he was no less confused. 'My dad didn't say anything about backup.'

'He didn't?' the orderly frowned. 'Damn, message must not have gone through. Your father filed a report to the other Master Assassins about what you guys were planning, and Paul Bellamy sent me here to provide support. Name's Daniel.' He rotated his arm again, this time in an obvious request for a handshake, and Desmond accepted relucantly. Daniel was a couple of inches taller than he, powerfully built, and had to be at least a decade older judging by the lines in his complexion. His hair hadn't been affected by his age, however, and was a healthy corn-coloured blonde cropped just long enough to make a drill sergeant scowl. He had narrow features and a slightly pointed chin that ended in a scruff of yellow goatee.

'Well, at least I'm not doing this on my own,' Desmond said with genuine relief, following Daniel into the locker room and deftly catching the spare set of scrubs that were thrown to him.

'I'm guessing Bill and the others are sitting outside in the van?' Daniel probed with a sly grin as Desmond stripped off his street clothes and began pulling on the scrubs.

'Apparently that's the easiest way of doing this.'

'Easiest for them, maybe. But two heads are better than one, and it might take both of us to subdue Sixteen and drag him out of here.'

'Subdue him?' Desmond repeated, stuffing his jeans and hoodie into a nearby locker. 'He's not catatonic, then?'

Daniel shook his head and picked up a brown folder from one of the benches, flipping it open. 'The head-shrinkers...' he said the term with a surprising amount of disdain. '... Have diagnosed him with hebephrenic schizophrenia. Delusions, hallucinations, disorganised speech and thought patterns...'

'The Bleeding Effect?'

The other Assassin's eyes flicked up from the notes temporarily. 'You got it.'

'That's Sixteen's file,' Desmond realised. 'You found it already?'

'I got here about an hour ago,' Daniel confirmed, raising an eyebrow in a somewhat cocky gesture. 'Figured I'd get a head start while I waited for you. Took out their CCTV as well, which should make things easier for us.'

'Wow,' was all Desmond could think to say, feeling somewhat clumsy and novitiate as he followed Daniel out of the locker room and up the corridor towards a set of elevator doors. 'I guess you do this sort of thing a lot?'

Daniel smiled strangely. 'Not as much as I'd like.'

He pushed the call button for the elevator and, while they were waiting, walked a little way down the hall to where a wheelchair was neatly folded up against the wall. Rather than opening it up, Daniel simply lifted it with one hand and carried it back to the elevator just in time to catch the opening doors. Another good idea, one that Desmond himself might not have thought of until much later, if at all. He wondered why Daniel had not been assigned to Lucy's team in the first place, given how experienced he seemed to be.

'You armed?' Daniel asked as the doors slid closed and the grinding climb to the second floor began.

Desmond shook his head, and realised as he did so that he hadn't seen his wrist-blade since Shaun had confiscated it back at the temple. A small amount of resentment surged within him, for he had grown somewhat attached to it...

Then there was a sudden swooping sensation in his stomach as he recalled Lucy throwing it to him casually, just before they escaped the first hideout. If she'd known that she was handing him the very weapon that he would later use to take her life, perhaps she would have thought twice.

Whilst taking stock of the missing weight on his left arm, Desmond came to realise that there was something else missing as well. He reached up to his ear with alarm.

'Shit! I thought things were a bit too quiet.'

'What do you mean?'

'My headset is gone.' The small, lighter-sized device that was usually clipped over his ear to allow for two-way communication had vanished, and Desmond couldn't recall where he might have lost it.

'You weren't wearing one when I first saw you. Must have fallen off outside.'

'I guess.'

Desmond had hoped the second floor ward would be fairly deserted, but it was about time for the evening meal and the corridor was bustling with patients. He glanced at them discreetly as he passed, trying to get a feel for the extremity of the conditions which warranted a second floor stay. Quite a few of them stared shamelessly at he and Daniel as they passed, while others shuffled along, staring at the ground and mumbling into their hands. One woman with very tangled hair seemed to be speaking a language all of her own, while a very old man was taking an eternity to move due to his fierce concentration on stepping only in the dead centre of each floor tile. Desmond realised that he had no idea who he was supposed to be looking for.

'Let me take a look at his file,' he muttered to Daniel, reaching out a hand for it.

'Haven't spotted him yet,' the other Assassin assured him before handing it over.

Desmond flipped the cover open and found a picture of Subject Sixteen - Clay Kaczmarek - on the first page. It must have been taken after he arrived. He was facing the camera but his eyes were not looking into the lens but just left of it, as though distracted by something. He was unsmiling, light stubble covering his cheeks and chin and dark shadows under his eyes, standing out in a very pale complexion. Was that what the Bleeding Effect did to a person after they'd been in the Animus long enough? Blonde hair, about thirty years old ... Desmond memorised his face quickly before handing the file back to Daniel.

A doctor in a white coat walked past them and gave a fractional frown before shaking whatever passing suspicion he might have had away. In a place as big as this there must be a large body of staff and a reasonable turnover rate, and though they received a few odd looks as they traversed the second floor, no one stopped to question them.

'Here,' Daniel said at last, as they came to one of the few closed doors on the ward. There was a small square window set into it at about head height, and Desmond watched as Daniel peered through it and raised his eyebrows fractionally. He whistled between his teeth and set the wheelchair down. 'Nice decor,' he commented as he pushed his way into the room, Desmond following closely behind.

The meaning behind the words was obvious as soon as they stepped inside. Practically every inch of the walls, floor, and ceiling had been scribbled over with symbols, numbers, patterns, and words in a dozen different languages, all written in thick, black permanent marker ink if the collection of dried-up pens scattered over the floor was anything to go by. Desmond peered at it all, fascinated, but couldn't make sense of it beyond a few fragments of sentences. If there was a system here then he couldn't spot it.

'Desmond,' Daniel said, and Desmond realised that in the great mess of the room he had somehow managed to completely miss Subject Sixteen. In his white hospital clothes he was practically camouflaged where he lay on the sheets of his bed. He had a hand curled up and over his head with a greyish layer of residual ink apparently ingrained into his very skin, and he seemed to be sleeping. Desmond approached him cautiously and dropped to one knee by the bed, one arm hovering hesitantly over Sixteen's shoulder.

'Clay?' he ventured.

The man twisted in the bed and sat up so suddenly that Desmond barely saw the transition. One minute Sixteen was curled up with his face turned towards the wall, and the next he was sitted bolt upright, his feet planted firmly on the floor, holding Desmond's wrist in an iron grip and staring wildly into his face.

'It's OK, it's OK!" Desmond babbled hastily, fighting down the urge to strike the madman with his free hand. 'I'm an Assassin, I'm Bill Miles' son. Desmond. My name's Desmond Miles, I'm a friend.'

His wrist was starting to ache from the pressure and Sixteen's gaze was incredibly uncomfortable to look into, his red-rimmed blue eyes fierce and flickering suspiciously over Desmond's face. He opened his mouth and began to speak French very rapidly, before swearing, squeezing his eyes shut, and continuing in Italian.

'OK, so he's still nuts,' Desmond said in a faux-conversational tone, turning his head to look at Daniel, who had been watching the exchange from afar with a hard expression.

'We should knock him out and get him in the wheelchair.'

It might have been the smartest course of action, but the idea of breaking into this guy's room and beating him into unconsciousness didn't sit well with Desmond at all. 'Wait, give me a chance to talk him round.'

Subject Sixteen said: 'Cross.'

Desmond turned back to him in surprise. 'Well, that's more like it,' he said optimistically. 'That sounded like English, at least. Listen, Clay, we...'

'No no no,' Sixteen interrupted, shaking his head frantically but somehow keeping his eyes fixed on Desmond. 'You have to ... Cross, the cross...'

Like an unpleasant dream, Juno's words returned, pulled to the forefront of Desmond's mind. 'The cross? "Guard against the cross"?' he quoted. 'What does that mean, Clay?'

Sixteen didn't reply, but Desmond realised that he wasn't the focus of Sixteen's attention any more. The man was no longer looking into his eyes, but rather seemed to be gazing over his shoulder, just like in the photograph Desmond had found in his file. Desmond was in the midst of wondering if the Bleeding Effect had kicked in again and Sixteen was staring at some kind of ancestral memory, when a whole group of puzzle pieces finally slotted together in his mind and he froze.

Subject Sixteen wasn't staring into space. He was staring at Daniel.

Desmond knew what "guard against the cross" meant. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it referred to the Templars.

Desmond had admired Daniel's smooth infiltration of the hospital, but it seemed somewhat strange that he had been able to break in unnoticed, steal confidential papers, take out the CCTV, and obtain two sets of scrubs in under an hour. Then there was the fact that they hadn't been stopped once on their way to Sixteen's room.

And really, how likely was it that another Assassin leader would be capable of sending aid, but incapable of letting Bill Miles know that he had done so? Desmond's father kept a charged cell phone on his person at all times.

There was also the mysterious case of Desmond's vanishing headset.

Whether it was because he had caught the expression of sudden clarity on Desmond's face, or simply because he had run out of his daily ration of coherence, Sixteen had stopped babbling and was staring desperately at Desmond, his face close enough that all the ravaging signs of madness were very visibly. Desmond swallowed hard and tried to speak in as normal a voice as he could muster.

'He's calmed down a bit. We might be able to walk him out of here.'

There was a stretch of silence in which none of them moved. Then Daniel said, 'In case you were wondering, Desmond, your acting hasn't improved at all in the last fifteen minutes.'

Desmond closed his eyes in resignation as he heard a rustle of clothing behind him, followed by a soft click. Lifting his lids once more he said to Sixteen, 'He's got a gun, hasn't he?'

Sixteen didn't reply, but for the first time something resembling a smile ghosted over his lips.

Raising his hands in a gesture of surrender, Desmond stood up slowly and turned to face Daniel, who had an automatic pistol aimed at the dead centre of Desmond's torso and adjusted his aim smoothly to keep the mark consistent as Desmond got to his feet.

'Can I just say one thing?' Desmond pleaded.

Daniel tilted his head to one side, as though considering the request. 'Make it quick.'

'I am a friggin' idiot.'

Daniel gave a short, loud bark of laughter, taken off guard by Desmond's words. 'No argument from me, but it's never too late to start playing things smart, Miles. Come with me quietly and I'll make sure they find a comfy Animus for you when we get back to Abstergo.'

'Yeah...' Desmond said, frantically trying to think of a way to stall the Templar. 'Thing is, there's more at stake here than you know.'

'Oh really? Tell you what, Desmond, why don't we hang out in this room for half an hour or so while you tell me all the things that are really at stake? That should be long enough for your friends to figure out that something's gone wrong and come to your rescue.'

So stalling wasn't going to work. Time for Plan B. Drawing a deep, meditative breath, Desmond allowed every memory of combat that he had ever lifted from his days as Ezio rise to the top level of his brain. He pictured his next few moves in his brain: whipping an arm up to knock the gun aside, moving in close to deliver a suffocating punch to Daniel's solar plexus before driving the heel of his hand up into his opponent's nose to break it, dazing him enough to get the gun off him. The plan flashed through his mind in under a second and he moved with sudden and lethal precision.

At least, it should have been lethal. But somehow Daniel managed to reach each step in advance, so that the butt of the pistol was brought down with agonising impact on Desmond's shoulder, and the fist that whipped towards Daniel's solar plexus was caught before it ever arrived and squeezed in a punishing grip that Daniel used to pull Desmond towards him for a brutal headbutt.

Desmond staggered backwards with blood dripping out of his nose and bright lights popping in his vision. Daniel didn't follow him, but instead stood with the gun held loosely at his side, smiling dangerously. Hoping to catch him off guard, Desmond rushed in again and managed to get one good, solid punch in on Daniel's cheek before he was slapped down to the ground with terrifying ease.

Daniel followed him down and planted a hand firmly on Desmond's throat, the muscles in his arms flexing visibly as he held him down, applying just enough pressure to restrict the oxygen that Desmond desperately needed after the struggle.

'Done with the formalities?' Daniel taunted softly, a smile playing over his lips. 'Come on, kid, you've put up a fight, no one can say you didn't try, but it's time to start behaving yourself now.'

Desmond was never quite clear on exactly what happened next - his vision was just starting to go black when it happened - but suddenly there was a moment of sharp impact followed by a yell, and Daniel's hand was gone from his throat. In fact, Daniel was on the other side of the room, slumped against the wall, eyes closed and body limp.

Sitting up slowly, Desmond saw Subject Sixteen still on the bed, his wild eyes and heavy breathing the only indication that he had moved at all.

'Thanks,' was all Desmond could think to say. He got shakily to his feet and wiped his bloody nose on the sleeve of his scrubs.

Sixteen - Clay - screwed up his face as though in deep concentration before speaking. 'Desmond. Miles. You're Desmond Miles. You're welcome, Desmond, Miles, you're...' He shook his head in frustration. 'Merde, je suis ... It's difficult. I'm trying to stay focused now, I didn't before, before I was trying to lose myself, unspool...'

'Maybe focus on getting out of here before you tackle the talking thing, huh?' Desmond suggested, taking pity on the guy. He may have just one-hit floored a combat-trained Templar who had effortlessly managed to pin Desmond to the ground, but it was hard to feel threatened by a man who was wearing PJ's in the middle of the day.

'Verrai ... you'll need to guide me, I don't always know what's real.' Clay wrung his hands in discomfort and Desmond saw, with a great chill, two deep and ragged scars splitting the inside of each of his forearms, starting from the base of his hands and stretching halfway to his elbows. The one on his left arm looked slightly worse than the one on his right, though neither was particularly pretty, and the scar tissue was still red and fresh.

Wanting to look at anything other than Clay's arms for a moment, Desmond stooped to pick up the gun that Daniel had dropped and turned to look down at his would-be kidnapper.

'What should we do with him?'

Clay didn't reply.

'You think I should shoot him?'

A glance back at Clay showed him wearing an expression that very clearly said, you're asking the crazy guy? Desmond cursed under his breath and turned his attention back to Daniel, but he already knew it was pointless.

'Fuck. Can't do it. Not while he's just lying there.' Resignedly, he tucked the pistol into the pocket of his scrubs.

'You probably won't get another opportunity like this,' Clay said quietly, his voice now eerily calm in comparison to the ramblings of before.

Desmond thought this over. 'You're right.' Then he grinned. 'You got a permanent marker I could borrow?'