December 21st 1918

Casmir Kaczmarkiewicz stomped his booted feet in the snow in an attempt to revive his frozen toes, and scowled sulkily at his mother. She was deep in conversation with a stranger, both of them wearing thick hoods pulled up over their heads, and she had not paid any attention to him since they had left the train. Casmir had been carried from the station but once they reached the big palace she had set him down in the snow and told him to wait while she spoke to her friends.

'Look at the palace,' she'd urged him. 'That is where the Tsars used to live. Isn't it beautiful?'

It was beautiful, but beauty was of no use to Casmir or to his freezing feet. He was six years old and a bad-tempered child, who still resented his father for going away to war and dying. Ever since then, Casmir had been taken with his mother on trips that were not holidays, and she seemed angry and worried all the time. At night he could sometimes hear her crying very quietly, and it made him feel hot inside his chest. He would curl up and press the heels of his hands against his ears, trying to sleep through it.

Now, though, he was deliberately trying to listen in on his mother's conversation, mainly because he knew that she did not want him to.

'He is late,' she was saying to her friend, who had a thick, bushy beard. 'We cannot stay here long, the Bolsheviks...'

'Don't worry, he will be here. Nikolai has never ... ah, you see? He approaches now.'

Casmir's mother turned her head and Casmir looked in the same direction, at a dark, growing blotch in the curtain of heavily falling snow. The man had managed to get very close before they spotted him, and he walked past Casmir before he reached the other two, glancing down at the small child disinterestedly before continuing on. He was a wearing a furry hat which covered all of the hair on his head, but Casmir could see the thick, grey moustache which rested on his upper lip.

'Konstancja,' the man said to Casmir's mother, sounding disapproving. 'You did not need to come, it is dangerous here.'

'It is dangerous everywhere,' Konstancja replied firmly. 'My husband is dead and my home is gone. The Assassins have saved my life and the life of my child, and I intend to repay that debt.'

'Very well.' The Russian man with the moustache looked about them before reaching inside his travelling cloak and pulling out a strange pendant that was attached to a chain around his neck. 'I need you both to keep a watch for the Templars. It is too risky for me to carry this any longer, and I hope that I will not have need of it again. There is a place, a temple of sorts, hidden deep underneath the Palace. I will hide the Shard there, out of reach to all but the most worthy.'

Konstancja's eyes widened as she looked at the golden fragment. 'But Nikolai, surely it would be better to keep it with us. Any kind of protection...'

'The Shard does not offer protection,' Nikolai interrupted harshly. 'It may deflect bullets, but it attracts them also. Everywhere I have carried it, the Templars have chased me. They will not give up until it it out of my hands, do you see? I have a family now, my wife and children. If I do not rid myself of the Shard, they will be the ones to suffer.'

The bushy-bearded man was staring as the Shard as though hypnotised. 'Nikolai, if you wish to relieve yourself of the artefact then I could...'

'No,' Nikolai cut in again, and the other man's face clouded temporarily with anger. 'It is better if no one has it.'

With that he headed towards the palace, and disappeared quickly in the falling snow. Konstancja worried at her lower lip, and then saw her son staring at her and forced a smile onto her face. She knelt down and opened her arms, and after a pause Casmir walked forward and allowed her to pick him up, balancing him on her hip.

'How are you, mój drogi?' she asked him tenderly. 'Not too cold, I hope.'

Casmir opened his mouth to answer her, probably with a complaint or a demand. Before he was able to speak, however, he saw her lips part in a strange gasp. He gaped at her, bewildered, as blood whispered from her mouth and dribbled down her front. Then she jerked and fell to the ground, and Casmir went down with her.

He was dazed by the fall, and when he came back to himself he found that his legs were trapped beneath her torso and the two of them were half-buried in the freezing snow. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the bushy-bearded man's boots tramping away from the indifferently. Casmir shut his eyes in fear and tried to pull himself away from the snow, deeper into his mother's rapidly receding warmth.

'Matka, I am,' he whined. 'I am cold.'

October 18th 2012

The Dvortsoviy Most - Palace Bridge - was light of foot traffic at this time of day. Daniel stopped in the centre of it and leaned out a little, staring over the waters of the Neva. The river was very wide here, where two forks of it met briefly before dividing once more as it wound separate paths through the city. To the North he could see the Petropavlovskaya Krepost and the spire which rose up above it, and with a shiver he recalled Nikolai's memory of scaling the spire at night in order to scout out the surrounding area and get a decent view of the Winter Palace. The Palace itself sat across the water: blocky and opulent, with a thousand windows for its thousand rooms.

A truck rattled by on the road. Daniel had seen this bridge being built, seen it covered in scaffolding and shouting workers, inside a memory that was now almost a century old. Coming back to St. Petersburg was dangerous, he knew. There was a greater likelihood of the Bleeding Effect taking hold when he explored places that his ancestors had visited, the ghosts and voices rising up in a kind of hyper-aggressive nostalgia.

Daniel checked his watch, and then pulled a pill bottle out of his pocket and tipped a blue capsule into his palm. He swallowed it dry, grimacing but knowing that it was necessary. He'd been at the airport when he'd received the call from Alan Rikkin.

'Daniel. Have you picked up your ticket yet?'

'Checking up on me, Alan?'

'Have you?'

'No, not yet. I'm in the line.'

'Good. Change of plans. You're not going back to the States. You're going to Russia.'

'Exile, is it?'

'Stow the fucking comedy, Daniel. I've just had to listen to Warren's report on how you fucked up in Rome and the man is not happy. Luckily for you, I've decided to give you one more chance, especially since this latest operation is within your area of expertise.'

Daniel had pressed the cell phone a little closer to his ear. Rikkin continued.

'We have a report that Bill Miles and his team have chartered a flight to St. Petersburg. That's a hell of a risk to take when the Assassin presence is as weak as it is over there. I want you to follow them first to find out what they want, and then I want you to bring me Desmond Miles, Clay Kaczmarek, and the Apple. We'll launch that satellite in December if it's the last thing I do.'

He had not bothered waiting for them at the airport; doing so would risk derailing whatever mission the Assassin team were on. Besides, Daniel did not need to chase them down. He smiled as he heard a whisper in his ear. It was not the Bleeding Effect.

The voice was staticky at first, and so Daniel lifted a hand to his ear and pressed Desmond Miles' lost and forgotten headset a little closer to his head, waiting for the words to become clear.

They had flown here using a private plane belonging to the Assassins, enabling them to bring the Animus with them. Upon landing in St Petersburg there had been a rented van waiting for them and they piled all of their equipment into it before climbing in themselves.

Clay had to be half-carried into the vehicle. Returning to a place that had been previously visited in the Animus carried increased risks of Bleeding Effect attacks, and in preparation for their arrival he'd been given a large dose of anti-psychotics. He seemed to be aware of who he was, but as a side effect of the drugs was incredibly restless, twitching almost constantly, and his hands were shaking too much to get a proper grip on anything. When at their highest altitude during the flight he had gasped and clutched at his chest, complaining of chest pain and tachycardia. Once they were on the road to the city centre, Shaun dug into the medical bag they'd brought with them and found some anticholinergics to help control the shakes and twitching.

Clay gave the historian a small, exhausted smile as he saw the pills being tipped out into the bottle cap. 'Drugs to control the side effects of the drugs to control the side effects of the Animus,' he commented. 'Man, takes me back. I think this is how Abstergo got so good at producing pharmaceuticals.

Shaun hesitated. 'If you don't want them...'

'No, anything's better than feeling like my bones are trying to crawl out of my skin. You're going to have to spoon-feed me, though. If I try to take them myself I'll only drop them.'

Clay opened his mouth and Shaun obligingly dropped the two pills onto his tongue, then held a bottle of water to Clay's lips. Once he'd swallowed the drugs, Clay held his hand out for the remainder of the water.

'I'd better keep that with me. The anticholinergics will dry my mouth out. Among other things.'

'Jesus,' said Desmond, who had been watching the exchange. 'Is this what I've got to look forward to?'

'You've got a way to go still,' Clay replied, turning his head away from Shaun to look Desmond in the eye. It was hard to tell if he was still shaking as badly, or whether it was simply the motion of the van on the bumpy road. He'd washed and shaved since his liberation from the hospital, and whether it was due to the medication or simply to being amongst his Assassin comrades once more, he seemed marginally saner. 'Abstergo had me for two years, and I was inside an Animus for most of that.'

'No wonder you went nuts,' Desmond said without thinking, and immediately hated himself. 'Sorry, I...'

'No, it's fine.' Clay grinned. 'It's nice to hear someone call it what it is. My doctor kept using the word "confused". Ha! Confused is not being able to remember where you put your keys. Kicking the shit out of a wall because you're seeing ghosts, that's not confusion. Not being able to remember your own name is not confusion. Trying to fillet your arms with a ballpoint pen because you think it's the only way out, that's not confusion either. I'm crazy, Desmond. Don't be afraid to say it.'

An awkward silence followed. Shaun seemed to realise that he was staring and, when Clay looked back at him, cleared his throat and shuffled away to the other end of the van, pretending to look at some local maps.

Clay watched him go, the smile lingering on his face. 'I think I scared him off.' He glanced back at Desmond. 'You can pretend to be busy as well, if you like.'

'Hey, I used to work as a bartender. In New York. I have a high threshold for crazy,' Desmond said, though he couldn't deny that he still felt uncomfortable, and he doubted that he was doing a good job of covering it up. Clearing his throat, he asked, 'Are you going to be OK when we get to the Palace? You don't have to come with me, you know.'

'I want to. Besides, I know what the Shard looks like.' Clay's eyes suddenly became temporarily unfocused, flicking back and forth distantly as though watching a different scene playing out before him. Desmond hurriedly tried to bring him back to the present.

'What about Daniel? It was his ancestor who hid it here, after all. Won't he already have been by to pick it up?'

Clay shook his head, appearing to shake off his visions in the process. 'No, think about it,' he snapped impatiently. 'According to Casmir's memory, Nikolai didn't hide the Shard until both his kids were already born. You can only unlock the genetic memories of one ancestor up until the point that they conceive your next most recent one, that's why the last memory you see is always f-fucking.' He bared his teeth again, his mood switching back to one of amusement in the blink of an eye. 'God, I still remember Sofia. Did you ever get that far, with Ezio?'

'Uh, no...' Desmond was suddenly wondering if Shaun needed any help going through those maps.

Clay closed his eyes and hummed in satisfaction at the memory, the timbre of his voice very low when he spoke again. 'Sofia Sartor. Beautiful redhead. Ezio was a lucky old bastard. First time in a long while I felt privileged, reliving that particular memory. I still remember the way her skin smelt, the ink on her fingers, those tiny hairs on the insides of her thighs...'

The van came to a halt and Desmond jumped to his feet hurriedly, nearly falling over in the process. 'Hey, would you look at that, we're here.'

They were a couple of streets away from the palace. The air was cold but Desmond and Clay were dressed lightly, knowing that they would be unable to shed any layers once inside the Palace. Rebecca affixed a headset to Clay's left ear and tested it to make sure it was working. Finally satisfied, she patted Clay encouragingly on the shoulder and nodded at Bill as though giving him permission to speak.

The grey-haired leader stepped forward, looking from his son to Clay and back again as he spoke. 'The next guided tour of the Palace starts in twenty minutes. Take the tour, use your eagle vision, and try to spot the entrance to the temple. I warn you, it's now a museum with millions of dollars worth of antiques in it, so security is going to be high. When you give us the signal, Rebecca will shut down the cameras and set off an alarm in another part of the building to take most of the heat off your backs and give you a chance to slip away.'

'And what will you be doing?' Clay asked, an obvious challenge in his voice.

Bill squared his shoulders. 'I'll be back here...'

'Of course you will,' Clay interrupted before he could finish. 'You're the brains of the operation, huh? Come on, Desmond.'

They walked in silence for most of the way to the Palace. Desmond was armed this time, the wrist-blade covered with a temporary casing that would shield it from any metal detectors. Clay hadn't been given a weapon.

They soon passed a front of buildings on Nesky Prospekt and the Winter Palace came into view, rising in shining, symmetrical splendour over Palace Square. Desmond saw Clay shudder and begin taking deeper, faster breaths, and laid a hand between his shoulderblades to reassure him and keep him moving. They managed to make it halfway across the Square, moving between the groups of tourists, before Clay broke down completely.

It took Desmond a couple of seconds to realise what had happened. Clay had simply gone from walking forward to landing hard on his knees, and was staring down at an apparently nondescript patch of ground, about fifty metres from the Alexander Column. His mouth dropped open and he began speaking rapidly in Polish, tears filling his eyes.

'Matka! Jestem zimny! Chcę iść do domu, matka!'

'Oh crap, Clay, this is really bad timing,' Desmond muttered, showing his teeth to the staring tourists in something that he hoped resembled a smile as he leaned down to pull at Clay's arm.

'Obudź się, matka!'

'Yeah, it's really beautiful,' Desmond replied loudly. To an elderly Russian woman who was wrapped in scarves and surrounded by grandchildren, gaping at the pair of them, he explained, 'He's just overcome by the, uh, architecture.'

The old woman sucked on her gums disapprovingly and hurried the brood of children away. In desperation, Desmond wrapped his arm around Clay's head and covered the weeping man's eyes with the palm of his hand. Amazingly, this seemed to work. Clay shook and whimpered like a child but allowed himself to be guided to his feet. Desmond clumsily walked the other man away from the spot of ground that seemed to be troubling him, keeping one hand over Clay's eyes as they continued their approach towards the Palace. After about fifty paces, Clay reached up and pulled Desmond's fingers away.

'What the hell was that about?' Desmond demanded angrily, seeing that Clay appeared to be in his own mind again.

'Nothing,' Clay replied, though the haunted look remained behind in his eyes. 'Just ... bad memories.'

February 14th 1945

The winter had stretched on too long and the day was viciously cold as Casmir began the long walk home, his heels striking the frozen earth as though he had a personal vendetta against it. The coal mine was a good five mile walk from Casmir's home in Serene, Colorado, and he could not afford the bus, let alone an automobile of his own. The journey was made no easier by the knowledge that when he finally reached home he would be met by a weeping wife and a silent, staring child. When they had received the letter that morning, Sarah had begged him to stay home, and he'd responded by asking nastily if she would be happy to let them all go hungry because of the day's lost wages.

Casmir had grown into a broad-shouldered, low-browed man with a sullen demeanour and a quick and violent temper. His instinct upon meeting new people was to glower suspiciously at them, and this is what he did to the well-dressed man in the fancy winter hood who hurried across the street to join him.

'How do you do?' the man asked, extending a hand. He had slate-grey eyes and a well-trimmed grey beard to match. 'Rennison. William Rennison.'

Casmir kept his hands planted firmly in his pockets - he had no gloves - and huffed out a breath. 'Recruiter, are you? Piss off, I'm doing my part. Or do you want your boys to go without fuel this year?'

Rennison laughed. 'I'm not from the United States Army, Mr Kaczmarkiewicz. Though you might call me a recruiter of sorts.'

From the first mention of his old name, Casmir had tensed his shoulders and begun to walk a little faster. 'Name's Kaczmarek. I think you have the wrong man.'

'Casmir Kaczmarkiewicz?' Rennison persisted, easily speeding up to match Casmir's gait. 'Son of Mateusz and Konstancja Kaczmarkiewicz?'

'What do you want?' Casmir demanded abruptly, stopping in his tracks and turning to face his pursuer.

Rennison smiled at him. 'I have been looking for you. Our families have a lot of history.' At that, he slipped the glove from his left hand, discreetly showing Casmir the brand on his ring finger. His expression turned a little more serious as he went on. 'These are troubled times, Casmir. There is more to this war than you know, and the Assassins are falling to Templar attacks that are clouded and forgotten in the midst of larger battles. To be frank, we need all the help we can get.'

Casmir twisted his face into an ugly, bitter sneer. 'Don't you dare condescend to me about war, Mr Rennison. I know what war is. I lost my father and my son to war, my mother too, and not one of them knew what they were really fighting for.'

'For freedom!' Rennison exclaimed passionately. 'My God, is there any higher cause? I am sorry for your loss, Casmir - for your losses - but there is still so much to be gained.'

'Get away from me,' Casmir snarled. 'You stay away from me and you stay away from my family for good. I don't care what kind of legacy I've got in my blood. I don't care about it and I don't want it.' He turned with deliberate dismissiveness and continued the journey home, but Rennison pursued him still, eyeing Casmir's chattering teeth and the layer of coal dust on his face.

'Is this life so much better?' Rennison asked, his voice hard now. 'Is it better that you and your children and your children's children live out their lives as day labourers, scraping for pennies in the dirt?'

'Yes. That is better.'

Rennison took a deep breath through his nose, his eyes bright with anger now. 'You can make that choice for yourself, Casmir. But when the time comes I will have this same conversation with your youngest son, and I will give him the chance to join us, as is his birthr-'

He was cut off by the thick, heavy fist which landed on his jaw and send him sprawling into the snow, clutching at his face and coughing a tooth out onto the frost. Before he had a chance to recover, Casmir placed his boot firmly on Rennison's chest, kicking him over and holding him down.

'You listen up, and you listen well,' he growled. 'You will leave my family alone. The Kaczmareks are done with the Assassins for good, do you hear? You people and your petty fight have brought us nothing but pain and misery, and I'm putting a stop to it right now.' He leaned more of his substantial weight onto Rennison's chest until he heard a rib crack and the resultant cry of pain.

Satisfied, and feeling a lot better than he had upon setting out from the mine, Casmir walked away, leaving the Assassin curled up and broken upon the ground.