"You really screwed things up, didn't you?"
Desmond wakes to a pounding headache and a stranger's voice. He sits up slowly, cradling his head and trying to figure out where he is- it looks like an island, but the colors are all wrong, and nothing around him looks quite real. It all feels too... built. Like someone's placed every stone on the ground instead of letting them fall naturally.
The only other person Desmond can see is a man in a brown jacket, who sits on a rock only a few feet away, looking at him with an expression of awed disbelief on his face. "I mean, I've been waiting for you to show up for ages," the man goes on. Desmond gets the distinct impression that he doesn't really care if Desmond's listening, and that he'd go on talking even if Desmond wasn't there at all. "I thought- everyone goes crazy if they spend enough time in the animus. It's pretty much guaranteed. But I thought you'd just be seeing things and hearing voices."
"Who are you?" Desmond asks.
"Aw." The man's voice takes on an exaggerated tone of disappointment. "Didn't they tell you about me?" he asks. "Didn't mention what happened to the last guy to get stuck in an animus?"
The pounding in Desmond's head is starting to fade, and the stranger's voice actually does sound a little familiar. "Sixteen?" he guesses.
"Close," Sixteen says. He stands up from his rock and offers Desmond a hand up. "My name's Clay."
Desmond takes the hand, and when he's on his feet again, asks, "What did you mean? You said I really screwed something up-"
"Not something," Clay interrupts. "Everything." He's beaming, as though everything falling to pieces is the best thing he can imagine happening. "I don't know what you and your ancestors are actually doing with the apples, but I know it's bad." He throws out his hands, gesturing to the island around them. "Do you know where we are?"
"No idea," Desmond says. He takes a few steps away from Clay when the other man isn't looking, because this is getting weird.
"Inside the animus," says Clay. "Right in the middle, inside the very first test program. You can get to all sorts of memories from here, if you know what you're doing."
"And you do?" Desmond asks.
"Oh yea," says Clay. "Out there, I'm dead. In case they hadn't mentioned that to you."
Lucy- oh god, Lucy, the traitor, with his blade in her stomach- had once mentioned Clay killing himself, when he asked about the blood on the walls in his cell at Abstergo.
"But I saved a backup in the animus," Clay goes on. "So, yea. I think I know what I'm doing. And I've spent a lot of time in all sorts of memories since then. It helps me to clean out the crazy and get my brain back in line. I've seen a lot of pieces of Eden in the last few months. Or centuries. Time doesn't really move right when you're in the animus, does it?"
"No," Desmond says, because it's clear he's waiting for an answer.
"And what you three have done- you, and Altair, and Ezio- is completely screwing everything up. Do you even know what you've done?" he asks. Somehow, he's right up in Desmond's face, eyes wild, breathing hard.
"Are you sure you've cleaned out all the crazy?" Desmond asks, after a pause that goes on a few seconds too long.
Clay steps back a little, and shrugs. "Maybe," he says. "Maybe I just can't tell anymore. Or maybe it's more fun this way. It's not like anyone's usually around to say anything." He says this last bit with a pointed look. "Besides, you have more important things than my head to worry about."
"Right," Desmond sighs. "The apple. You keep saying."
"You've manged to rewrite time," Clay says, almost laughing. "You know your ancestors shouldn't even know it when you're in their memories. Mine never do. Or maybe they're just ignoring me." He pauses, thinking this over. Then he shakes his head. "No, that would be rude. Besides, you have something the rest of us subjects never had."
"The apple," Desmond says.
"Exactly," says Clay. "Did you know the animus was originally based on first civilization technology?"
"No," says Desmond.
"It is,' says Clay. "The same as the apple. Sort of. They never got it quite right. But the technology in the animus was never meant to mix with the apples. And then you three come along, and suddenly everything goes crazy, time's inside out and upside down, and- here's the best bit. You know how the bleeding effect is supposed to work, right? You get the memories and the skills of your ancestors, but you get hallucinations and voices in your head, too. You lose track of who you are and who they are."
"That never happened to me," Desmond says. He's got languages and skills from Altair and Ezio, but he knows he's not crazy. Well, he's starting to wonder about right now. But he definitely wasn't crazy before.
"I know," says Clay. "That's the whole point! You get all the good stuff, but none of the bad. Don't you want to know why?"
"Why?" Desmond asks.
"Because there is no difference between you and your ancestors anymore," Clay says. "You're all the same, three heads and three bodies and three centuries but all the same on the inside, in all the places where it counts. You're not going to go crazy and start thinking you're Ezio, because he's already there, inside your head. You're not going to start seeing visions of Altair, because he's actually there." He laughs. "It's kind of funny, actually."
"There's no way that's right," Desmond says. It can't be, because it's too insane, too big to wrap his head around. "If that were true, Altair and Ezio would be in each other's head. Not just mine."
"Oh, I'm pretty sure that's going to start happening soon," Clay says. His voice is annoyingly cheerful. "So far you've been the wall between them. But now that you're comatose- you can thank the apple for that too, by the way- I'm pretty sure that wall's going to start breaking down. And not just the wall between them, but any other ancestors you ever see in the animus."
"They're the only ones," says Desmond.
"The only ones so far," Clay corrects. "Trust me. There will be more. There's always more."
"What?" Desmond shakes his head. No way he's going into any more ancestors. Not after this. "Never mind. How do you even know all this?"
"I told you," Clay says. "The animus is based on first civ technology. I've been stuck in here for ages with not much else to do. I'm not saying I'm totally right. But I think I'm pretty close."
"Shit," Desmond says, and then again- "Shit," because this the situation deserves it. And there's Clay, still standing there, grinning ear to ear like he's absolutely delighted to see Desmond's head falling apart and time getting ripped to shreds. "Fine," he snaps. "Fine. You seem to have all the answers. You said I'm in a coma. But you also said I'm in the animus."
"They think you're bleeding, out there," Clay says. "So they stuck you in to try and keep you alive. I guess that's probably a good thing for you, though. Right now you've got Ezio and Altair running around somewhere, all awake and not in comas. And you're completely out of it. You'd probably be stuck somewhere in the back of your own head if they hadn't put you in the animus. From here..." he shrugs. "I don't know how well it'll work, but if you keep going through your ancestors' memories, it could help your mind get its strength back, enough that you can take control of your own body again. Or one of theirs, maybe."
"I don't want to be in one of their bodies," Desmond argues. "I want to be back in mine."
"That's kind of selfish," Clay says. "Poor Altair's been hanging out in the back of your head for weeks. Shouldn't it be your turn now?"
"Hang on," Desmond says. "Let's- let's just pretend that you're right and I believe you. But if it is true, couldn't one of them end up in my body, and wake up-"
"So that you get pulled out of the animus?" Clay asks. "Yea. Could happen ten seconds from now, or ten years from now, or never. I don't know."
"And what happens then?" Desmond asks.
"Then you better hope they have the brains to stick themselves back in the animus," Altair says. "Or you're not ever going back to the real world." He smiles again.
"You could be a little less excited about this," Desmond complains.
"I can't help it," says Clay. "You're the most exciting thing that's happened here in- ever, probably."
"Well I'm glad my misery's making someone happy," Desmond mutters under his breath. Clay hears him anyway and laughs.
"Hey," he says. "I'm helping, aren't I? Good guy Clay."
"Yea," says Desmond. "Sure." If Clay's even right. If he's not crazy. Desmond can't decide if the worst part is that he's barely even skeptical anymore, thanks to all the other weird stuff that's happened lately, or that he suddenly has a very real worry that he'll never get back to the real world. He sighs, and asks, "How do I access memories from in here?" And how do I know when I've found the right ones?"
"I can help you with the first part," Clay says. "You've got people out there that help you, right? People that watch you when you're in the animus, and line up memories for you to live, and write you little notes to explain the history. As if you even need them, when you've got your ancestors' minds to pick through. I'll be doing all that while you're in here. Memories and memories and memories, until you wake up in your own body. Or one of them does."
"Why are you helping?" Desmond asks.
"I told you," Clay says. "I'm bored stiff in here. I'm just hoping none of you wakes up for a good long time. I could use some entertainment."
"Alright," Desmond says. He's not sure how much faith he can put in Clay to help out, but then again, he also doesn't have a choice. "Where do I start?"
-/-
This chapter was even more fun to write than the last one. :) I've kind of been working toward this point for a while, but the details didn't quite fall into place until just now. Also, I wanted to say something about Clay, because I think it might seem a little weird that he knows all this stuff. So I'm just going to say that-
(a) I don't actually know how much interaction his ancestors had with pieces of Eden, but I'm going to guess it was a lot, because there's not a lot of other reasons for Abstergo to be interested. Plus he's basically part of the animus at this point, and the animus is just a weird kind of computer, which means Clay has a whole computer 's worth of processing power to help him find patterns and figure out what they mean, and-
(b) I needed some exposition.
Oh, and on a slightly unrelated note-
(c) I really apologize if Clay seemed sort of out of character. I've been watching a lot of Sherlock lately and I think there was probably some Moriarty leaking into Clay. Whoops, my bad.
TL;DR: Clay is good at exposition and Sherlock is a fun show.