2nd November 2012

'Your father is on his way.'

The words stirred Desmond from his sleep, but his brain was still operating too slowly to fully comprehend them. He blinked into the light pouring in from the open door, and rolled over in the hard bunk where he had been sleeping.

'Becca?' he said blearily. It had become habit to ask whenever he woke up.

'No change. She's still stable. The docs are sounding a little more optimistic, though.'

It was Clay who was speaking. Desmond had guessed that it would be. Shaun hadn't left Rebecca's side since they'd arrived at the hospital, which was situated in one of the northernmost neighbourhoods of the Bronx. Rebecca's doctor was - somewhat ironically - an Assassin, and the main reason that they'd been able to stay here without getting onto Abstergo's radar.

The journey over had been something that Desmond would rather not think about. Clay had sat in the passenger seat, occasionally reading directions while Desmond drove as much over the speed limit as the van would allow. The vehicle had been silent save for the sounds coming from the back: Rebecca groaning weakly in pain, and Shaun breathing harshly and occasionally sobbing in desperation as he tried to keep pressure on the wound without doing any further damage to Rebecca's insides. Desmond had never been much good at driving anything other than a motorcycle, and the added pressure of knowing that any failing on his part could mean Rebecca's death had made things ... a little tense.

Yeah. Better not to think about it.

Desmond sat up slowly, wincing at the pull in his back muscles. The room was usually reserved for use by doctors who needed sleep whilst on call, and the mattresses were bare slivers of things laid out over the metal and wire frames. 'How long was I asleep for this time?' he asked, trying to ignore the naggling thought that was just out of reach at the back of his head.

'About three hours.' Clay stepped into the room and sat down on the bottom bunk next to Desmond, holding out a polystyrene cup of strong, black coffee.

'Thanks.' Desmond took it and lifted it to his lips, blowing gently on it to cool it down. 'Three hours, huh? No wonder I feel so rested.'

'Sorry. I wanted to let you sleep longer.' There was a careful edge to Clay's voice, like he was waiting for Desmond to react to something.

Glancing into the murky brown liquid inside his cup, Desmond took a slow, thoughtful sip, feeling Clay's eyes on him. Then he realised what he was supposed to be reacting to and he swallowed in shock, burning his throat.

'My dad?' he gasped hoarsely. 'He's coming here?'

Clay smirked. 'That's what I said.'

'Shit. How long until he arrives?'

'An hour at most. I overheard Shaun talking on the phone to him.'

'Does he know...?'

'... About the Pieces of Eden?' Clay shrugged. 'I don't think so. It's not the sort of news you break over the phone, and I doubt Shaun wanted to be the one to tell him.'

Great. So Desmond had less than an hour to come up with a decent cover story for how they'd lost both Daniel and the Pieces of Eden. Telling the truth was out of the question; there was no way that Bill would understand. With a guilty start, Desmond realised that there was a much more important matter at hand. 'What about my mom? Did you hear if...'

'No idea. You'll have to ask him when he gets here.'

'If I can get a word in edgeways.'

Desmond scrubbed his free hand over his face, suddenly feeling more exhausted than he had before going to sleep. The door had swung shut slightly, so that the shaft of light fell onto Desmond's face but Clay was more or less obscured in darkness, his expression unreadable.

'How are you doing?' Desmond asked, making an effort to inject genuine concern into the question, and surprised to find it coming out naturally. In a strange way he had found himself both dependent upon Clay and feeling weirdly protective of him. He could hazard a guess at the reasons behind this; Rebecca and Shaun were fine to talk to and friendly enough (in Rebecca's case anyway), but to his knowledge neither of them had used the Animus and therefore they could not understand the odd relationship that you developed with it. Clay, though ... Clay had been where Desmond was and gone much, much further beyond. Their shared experience in the machine had made them brothers of a sort, and Clay's greater knowledge of it made Desmond subconsciously look to him for guidance.

'You taking your meds?' Desmond pressed on, when Clay did not respond to the initial inquiry.

'I wouldn't be able to hold up a conversation like this if I wasn't,' Clay replied, a little sharply.

'OK, just making sure.' When Clay continued to radiate defensiveness, Desmond pressed on hastily. 'Look, I just ... I need you to stay with it, OK? With Rebecca injured and my dad being, well, my dad. And Shaun...' He hesitated.

'You should tell Shaun what you did,' Clay said quietly.

Desmond shook his head helplessly. 'He hates me. He'd tell my dad, just to spite me.'

'I don't think he would. I think Shaun would be a lot more sympathetic than you might realise.

Hell, you've probably saved all our lives.'

'I guess.'

'Even if you've only saved us for slavery by the Templars.'

Desmond glared at Clay and opened his mouth to come back with an angry reminder of whose idea it had been to hand the Pieces of Eden to the Templars, but then he registered the teasing tone and decided not to rise. 'Alright, maybe Shaun would understand,' he conceded. 'But I'm not going to tell him. I'm going to have to lie to my father and I want Shaun to have plausible deniability. I can't ask him to lie for me as well.'

'What about me?'

Desmond smirked. 'Who's going to believe you anyway? You're crazy, remember?'

It was a risky comment but luckily Clay took it in the spirit it was intended and laughed, leaning back a little on the bed, propped up from where his hands were flat on the mattress. 'What is the official line we're going with?' he asked. 'Probably best to agree on something beforehand.'

The question wasn't so daunting now that Desmond had had time to think it over. 'OK, how about this...'

Rebecca woke up shortly before Bill returned to the hospital, and the three other men were already gathered around her bed. To celebrate, Desmond had used some of their spare cash to buy a bunch of flowers from the gift shop, causing Shaun to glare at him and accuse him of flirting.

'They're lovely, Desmond,' Rebecca assured him, her voice still blurry from the strong painkillers she was on. She squinted around and said, 'Shaun?'

'I'm here,' Shaun responded in a much gentler tone, leaning in.

'Shaun, I just want to say...'

He shook his head in a distressed manner and interrupted. 'There'll be plenty of time for that, the doctors said you're going to be fine, just fine...'

'I know, but I just really want to let you know...' She coughed weakly before continuing with a shade of her usual mischievous grin. 'I saved your ass again.'

Shaun gaped at her for a moment before twitching irritably like an owl reshuffling its feathers and fixing her with an unconvincing scowl. 'Oh yes, haha, how did I know that the first thing you'd do upon waking up would be to gloat.'

'Has she saved your ass before?' Clay inquired, deadpan.

'Multiple times,' Rebecca replied before Shaun could open his mouth.

'Not that many times,' Shaun insisted.

It was at this point that Bill rounded the corner. Desmond turned reluctantly to look at him and stopped to stare for a moment. 'Oh Jesus,' he blurted out unthinkingly.

'Sorry I didn't get here sooner,' Bill said, by way of a greeting. 'The doctors saw me on the way in and insisted on herding me into a room and cleaning me up.'

Desmond wasn't surprised. It was hard to tell the extent of the damage, since a lot of it was concealed, but Bill's right eye was covered by a pad of cotton wool wrapped in place with a bandage, and that side of his face was largely covered with thick gauze, the tail ends of long cuts and grazes visible at the edges of the white fabric. His beard had been shaven around a long, deep, vertical cut on his chin that was held together with stitches and he was moving stiffly, suggesting that there were further injuries hidden underneath his clothes.

He didn't look like he'd slept at all since leaving them five days ago.

There was a respite period of approximately two seconds before Bill fixed Desmond with an weary, accusatory stare and said, 'You're not in Turin.'

Desmond's heart sank, but before he had a chance to respond Shaun said tersely, 'They think Rebecca's going to be OK, Bill.'

'Hi, Bill,' Rebecca said dozily, waving a hand in a half-hearted fashion. She seemed to be on her way back to sleep already.

'Rebecca,' Bill said curtly, his expression softening for a moment as he looked over at her before fixing his son with a steely gaze once more. 'Desmond. You're not in Turin.'

'How's Mom?' Desmond demanded. He honestly wasn't just trying to put off the conversation - he needed to know.

'Alive.' There was no swaying Bill's attention. 'Why aren't you in Turin?'

Shaun was standing up now, his ears reddening in the way they usually did when he was working up a temper. 'In case you hadn't noticed, Bill, Rebecca's been shot. She nearly died.'

'And there's no point in going to Turin now. We lost the Pieces of Eden,' Clay said, quietly but clearly.

Bill's one visible eye widened. He looked at Clay as though hoping the statement was the result of some hallucination, before turning back to Desmond. 'Tell me that's not true,' he begged in a harsh voice.

'Daniel too,' Clay added. He was being obnoxiously blunt, but Desmond sent him a silent prayer of gratitude for being the one to break the news.

Bill maintained eye contact with Desmond just long enough to see the guilt there, and then lowered his gaze. He didn't look angry, not yet. He simply looked wrecked, as though he had spent five days climbing a mountain only to find himself at the foot of it once more, the aching distance returned and nothing accomplished. His balance rocked a little, and Desmond wondered in alarm if Bill was about to pass out.

'Dad, you should lie down. There's a bed-'

Bill cut him off with a single look, his eyes alert once more and blazing. Oh boy, Desmond thought. Now he's angry.

'Tell me how this happened,' he said. He wasn't shouting, but he wasn't far away from it.

Desmond swallowed hard, pulled together the threads of his virtually non-existent acting skills to form a passable poker face, and began. 'We were attacked. The Templars must have been waiting for you to leave-' (oh, that was a cruel thing to imply, but guilt was the only thing that might curb Bill's suspicion) '-and they hit us out of nowhere. They shot Rebecca, and by the time I got to the Animus room they'd already broken the safe and found the Pieces of Eden.'

Rebecca was asleep again, but out of the corner of his eye Desmond could see Shaun watching him pensively, trying to tally this version of events with his own recollections. Desmond silently sent a prayer that Shaun wouldn't start questioning the story.

'Then what happened?' Bill demanded heavily. 'Didn't you fight them?'

'There were too many of them.' It was not Desmond who had answered, but Clay. He sold the lie with enviable ease, looking his old mentor unflinchingly in the face. 'They all had guns and we only had one blade between us. We would have been slaughtered if we'd tried to take them on.'

'You didn't even try?' Bill echoed disbelievingly.

'Real life isn't like the Animus, Bill,' Clay retorted, a strange grin playing over his lips. 'You can't just desynchronise and try again until you work out the right approach. You get one try and if you do it wrong, you're dead. I didn't think you'd want to gamble your own son's life when the odds were that bad. Maybe I was wrong.'

'So you gambled the fate of the entire world instead?' Bill was apparently still too stunned or too exhausted to shout, but the vitriol in his voice made Desmond physically recoil - the movement unfortunately drawing his father's attention. 'Did I not impress on you the importance of getting to that Temple, Desmond?' he ranted. 'Was there something else I could have said or done to make you see that this was our one shot at saving everything.'

Desmond felt a sudden rush of rage surge up through him and explode from his mouth, and before he knew it he was yelling: 'That's pretty fucking rich! Where the hell were you? It got right done to the wire and you abandoned us. You could have waited another couple of days, at least until we made it to the temple, but you had your priorities and getting to Turin wasn't one of them!'

'Hospital,' Clay said mildly, as Bill stood temporarily stunned.

'What?' Desmond snapped, his voice only a little softer.

'We're in a hospital. Keep your voice down, people are trying to die here.'

Shaun looked up sharply.

'Oh, not her,' Clay clarified with a nod at Rebecca. 'She'll probably live. For a while, anyway.'

'You-'

'Forget it, Shaun,' Desmond interrupted, his voice calmer now, though his breathing was still a little rough. He could tell that Clay had spoken in order to head off the argument, and it had worked.

Bill was visibly struggling to stay upright now, but he managed nonetheless, his eyes flicking back and forth at nothing in particular as he ran over plans in his head. Finally his gaze stopped shifting and he winced, touching the bandages on his face gently with the fingertips of his left hand, before ghosting the palm over the rest of his face. 'I don't see how we'll be able to get them back,' he said quietly.

Desmond didn't either, but he decided to fake an interest in doing so. 'We still have over a month before...'

'You think they'll wait until December 21st to launch that satellite, Desmond?' Bill asked witheringly. 'Now that they know we know about it, Abstergo will have it in orbit as soon as it's functional. The Pieces of Eden will already be being held underneath fifty layers of security, and that's far more than we have the capacity to deal with. There aren't enough Assassins left, and we don't have enough time.'

A depressed silence followed his words, Bill and Shaun staring bleakly at nothing as Desmond and Clay exchanged a glance.

'Well,' Desmond began slowly, suddenly feeling horribly oppressed by the gloomy atmosphere and needing to brighten the outlook a little. He saw Clay widen his eyes and shake his head a little, but ignored the gesture. 'It's not all bad news. At least this means that the Shard will be sent up in the satellite as well. No one will die when the solar flares hit.'

For a moment, no one moved. Then Clay dropped his head silently in defeat, and pulled in a silent breath through his gritted teeth, and Desmond realised the mistake he had made as he reluctantly met his father's eye and spotted the slowly dawning realisation there.

'No,' Bill said, simply and with a slow horror and disgust. He was staring at Desmond as though he didn't even recognise him. 'You didn't.'

Too late, Desmond tried to backtrack. 'Didn't what? What are you talking about?' he asked, but his voice cracked a little as he spoke, and he could feel himself shifting uncomfortably.

'Oh my God,' Shaun breathed, eyebrows shooting upwards. He suddenly dropped into the hospital chair, the legs squeaking on the floor as it skidded a little with the impact. 'You ... you...'

'Idiot,' Clay muttered without much heat, turning away.

'You let them,' Bill stated, sounding almost robotic now. 'You let them take the Pieces of Eden. You let them take Cross.'

'No, he's not that bloody stupid,' Shaun interjected doubtfully, as though he was trying to reassure himself.

Desmond found himself incapable of speaking, and realised that his treacherous face was already betraying his guilt. He turned his head away and tensed his jaw as though waiting for a physical blow.

'Oh, God,' Shaun said. Desmond was glad that he couldn't see him. 'Right. Forgot who I was talking about for a moment. Of course he's that bloody stupid.'

There was no point in responding. The time to explain about Juno and her plans would have been before the debacle at the Westchester safe house, before Desmond handed over the Pieces of Eden. He could try explaining about it now, but the only thing that Bill would care about was the fact that his own son had gone behind his back and betrayed them all to the Templars. If Desmond explained why he had done it, he would have to reveal that it had been on Clay's advice, and Clay would be implicated in the treachery.

Perhaps it was too late to save him anyway. 'You knew about this,' Bill declared suddenly, taking an unsteady step towards Clay.

Desmond blocked his path. 'It was my decision,' he stated firmly.

'Since when do you make decisions?' Bill snapped. 'All I've ever seen you do is run away from responsibility.'

Desmond gritted his teeth, but didn't bother with a defence. He could more or less take any insult that his father decided to throw at him, especially now. 'Look, you can yell at me for a few more hours or we can start to make a plan. If we can't get the Pieces of Eden back in time then we should find a way to disrupt Eye Abstergo, so that after the solar flares are finished we can...'

'Who exactly do you mean by "we", Desmond,' Shaun demanded, standing up and walking over to join them so that Desmond could see the disgust on his face. 'Once that satellite goes up, the Assassins will be the first target. They're going to convert or kill us all, and they certainly won't leave us with enough free will to mount a rebellion.'

'They won't take all of us,' Clay reminded him evenly. 'Some of us-' there was a distinctively patronising tone in his voice '-have enough First Civ DNA that we won't be affected by the Pieces of Eden. There's me, and Desmond...'

'Oh, fantastic!' Shaun spat sarcastically. 'So our fates are going to be left in the hands of a complete nutter and the guy who sold us out in the first place? Quite a wonder team you two are going to make. You should design matching uniforms.'

'It's not just us!' Desmond protested, turning to his father. 'There are others, right? Other Assassins like me and Clay...'

But it was clear that Bill wasn't listening. He was shaking his head as though trying to chase away the distraction of Desmond's words. 'I need to ... I need to call the other leaders,' he said heavily. 'They should know about this.'

He left the room without so much as a backwards glance. Desmond stared after him helplessly, but didn't bother to follow. He had a feeling that any small chance he'd had at finding resolution with his father had now vanished, and tried not to think about the kind of reception Bill would get when he revealed that the Assassins' only chance at survival had been handed over to the Templars by William Miles' own son, while William himself had abandoned the most important post in the Assassin order just so that he could save his wife.

Meanwhile, Rebecca was still unconscious, and Shaun was turning away in disgust. Desmond felt the ache of loneliness in his chest and looked over at Clay.

'Guess we're on our own, huh?' Desmond said.

Clay looked through Desmond with an expression of alarm and said, 'Chi sei?'

Time limped on, slow and agonising.

After two weeks, Rebecca was able to move again and they left the hospital. Bill's bandage came off to reveal his right eye sitting blind and milky amid a mass of scar tissue. He took the loss of half his eyesight with the same blank, numb expression that he seemed to react to everything else these days.

Their scouts kept close tabs on Abstergo, watching hawk-like for any news of the satellite. Entire Assassin teams worked desperately around the clock to find the Pieces of Eden, and managed to narrow their location down to three equally impenetrable sites. Purchase records hinted that Abstergo were indeed planning to launch the satellite much earlier than December 21st - as soon as possible, in fact - but they were having to make adjustments to it. Desmond learned this by eavesdropping, and realised with a deadened flicker of relief that Daniel had convinced Rikkin to send the Shard up along with the Apple.

They were relocated to a safe house in Colorado, one which had an infirmary and a doctor so that Rebecca could get follow-up treatment. Desmond checked on her, but avoided speaking to her if he could manage it. He was poison among the Assassins now - no one wanted to associate with him, and to be seen with him was to be mentally tagged as a traitor by the rest of the sullen, weary Assassins who were living in the safe house.

The only person who didn't seem to care about Desmond's pollutent reputation was Clay, though perhaps it was because lack of space dictated that they share a room in the safe house. Rebecca's doctor had spent five minutes with an unmedicated Clay before signing off a large supply of drugs to help him manage the visions, muttering something about "Animus fever" and shaking his head disapprovingly. A few days after this, Desmond discovered the pills lying unopened under Clay's bed, and confronted him about it the next time he found him lucid.

'What is your problem, huh?' he yelled, shaking the bottle at Clay for emphasis. Desmond realised that he was taking his frustration out on the wrong person, but couldn't help himself.

'I thought you hated the headaches and the craziness, but you won't even take a stupid pill to stop them?'

Clay looked quietly at the floor for a moment, and then took the bottle gently from Desmond's hand. 'I'll take the pills,' he said calmly, tipping one out onto his hand and dropping it onto his tongue, swallowing it dry.

His blood was high, but Desmond also felt a small rush of guilt. 'Look, I'm sorry, Clay, but I really need you to...'

'I know,' Clay said, in the same unreadable tone. 'I know. I'll take the pills.'

The next day he brought a pile of dusty old books back to their room, and explained that they were journals written by past Assassins, ones which might contain clues as to how they might help the others to resist the influence of Eye Abstergo. Their access to the Assassins' central computers had been restricted for obvious reasons, but nonetheless Clay began attempting to hack in, and to find records of the few Assassins who had hybrid DNA.

Perhaps with a little more time he might have been successful. But in the early hours of the morning of November 21st 2012, Desmond found himself being shaken into reluctant wakefulness. He groaned and pushed clumsily at the hand on his shoulder.

'Go away,' he mumbled when his assailant refused to be dissuaded.

'No can do. We gotta move, Desmond. We have to get out of here.'

Desmond opened one eye blearily. 'How come?'

All he could see in the darkness was the gleam of Clay's teeth and eyes, like some kind of sinister Cheshire cat, as he said: 'They've launched Eye Abstergo.'