Desmond's on a rooftop three blocks away from the apartment when he sees Altair on the street below. He very briefly argues with himself over whether or not to go down and meet him. Nobody's ever come right out and said he shouldn't leave the apartment, but he doesn't need to be told that he's got no memories and no idea what to do with himself in public. On the other hand, he can't stand being stuck inside the almost empty apartment, and after meeting Rebecca and Shaun, he feels… better. It's like there's a wall cutting him off from his old life, everything he used to be before he died. And now, for the first time, he feels like that wall might come down someday.
Maybe that's why he's spent today wandering around the neighborhood. Ezio went out somewhere early (grumbling the entire time because, as Desmond is quickly learning, Ezio is not much of a morning person). And after that… well, the apartment walls are closing in.
He watches Altair until the man looks straight up at him, at which point he decides there's not much point in staying out of sight, and climbs down to the street. By the time he gets down there, he's noticed that Altair's not alone. It isn't obvious at first because the other two are keeping out of sight a block or two behind, but by the time Desmond's feet are back on solid ground, he's pretty sure the three of them are together.
"You look better than when I left." Altair offers Desmond a thin smile that doesn't manage to hide the stress on his face. He looks like he's barely slept since the morning he left the apartment.
"You don't, though," Desmond says. "What happened?"
But Altair only shakes his head and says, "Not here."
"But-"
"We're in public," Altair says, and starts to walk again.
"There's no one around."
"Which would matter if we were in a century that didn't have cameras and satellites and dozens of ways of spying on people that I don't even know about," Altair snaps.
Desmond looks at him, takes in the expression on his face, and decides not to press the issue. Clearly, Altair is not having a very good day, and he's pretty sure the story will come out eventually. "Right," he says. "Cameras." That's actually something he should have thought of.
"Just talk about something else," Altair says.
"Okay." Desmond glances over his shoulder. "Can I ask who they are?"
"You- oh. Right." Altair sighs and shakes his head. "Of course you don't remember them."
"I can't help it," Desmond mutters, more defensively than he meant to.
"I know," Altair says. "And to answer your question, no, you can't ask about them."
"Okay…" Desmond glances over his shoulder one last time, ignoring the look Altair shoots his way. Of the two men following behind them, the older seems more or less normal. Not really normal normal, because if he knows Altair than there's probably something messed up about the guy, but definitely normal compared to the other man.
That one's… strange. In his brief glance backwards, Desmond gets a confusing impression of something animal trapped in a human body, of legs and arms that don't quite work the way their owner expects them to, of eyes that glow an unnatural blue. Desmond can't stop himself from shivering a little, and he doesn't say anything else until they get back to the apartment.
At that point, things get a little chaotic. Desmond's never seen the apartment as crowded or as loud as it is now- Ezio is back by the time they get in, and at some point someone calls Rebecca and Shaun, so they show up too, and for a while everything's so busy and loud that Desmond has a hard time keeping track of it all, but it's pretty clear that they're gathering what forces they have, and that something big is about to happen.
Things are calming down a little when someone- it happens to be Rebecca- finally realizes that Desmond still has no idea who the two newcomers are, and bothers to introduce them. "Hey Desmond," she calls. "You don't remember Haytham or Connor, do you?"
"No," Desmond says, and looks past her at the two Kenways. "I-" he hesitates, because he's heard a lot about them, and he knows that at some point he actually did know them, and he should probably say something about that but he's not sure what. "Sorry," he blurts, before the silence can go on for too long. "I mean about sending you into another dimension and everything when I first woke up."
Haytham waves a dismissive hand. "These things happen," he says, and then appears to think about that. "To us, anyway."
"But-"
"In any case," Haytham says, speaking over him. "From what I hear, you're not doing so well yourselves these days."
Desmond shrugs. "I can't remember the first twenty five years of my life," he says. "But other than that I think I'm doing okay."
"It could be worse," Haytham agrees, and Desmond can't miss the way he suddenly glances over at Connor. He never gets a chance to ask what's wrong with him, though, because there's a sudden shift in the atmosphere of the room. Everyone's sort of been standing around talking to each other and getting caught up (or, in Desmond's case, meeting new people).
Now they come together into one large group as Altair starts to explain everything that's happened to him over the past couple of days. After that, Haytham gives a very concise version of a story that even by Desmond's increasingly generous standards sounds weird.
Then Shaun speaks for the first time. "Hold up," he says. "I understand that you guys have your own weird ways of figuring out who's inside whose head, or in the animus, or whatever, but it sounds like there's enough going on here that even the grunts at Abstergo are going to notice soon."
"Exactly," Altair says. "So there's two things we're going to do. We're going to cut them off from the animus, and then we're going after Juno."
"Right," Shaun says. "No big deal or anything."
"It needs to get done," Altair says. "So we're doing it."
Shaun settles for muttering to himself, and Rebecca speaks up. "The first part should actually be pretty easy," she says. "I know they have people at other facilities that can work an animus- I mean, they're the guys that invented the thing. But at this facility, they only ever had one guy. And if John's dead now-"
"He's dead," Haytham says quickly. "Very definitely dead." Connor nods from the back of the room.
"Then their machines are probably falling to pieces as we speak," Rebecca says. "They're extremely complicated, and working with them is sort of like- okay, you know when you really need to print something, that's exactly when everything goes wrong with the printer runs out of ink, and the paper jams, and-"
Shaun coughs pointedly.
"Right," Rebecca finishes. "Well, the animi are like that pretty much all the time. Honestly I'm not surprised John didn't have time to do his own hacking with a building full of them to do maintenance on all by himself."
"They won't all be going down at once, though," Haytham points out.
"No," Rebecca agrees. "But there's more good news."
"Wow," Desmond says. "I literally can't remember ever hearing that before. It's usually more bad news."
"Well, there's a first time for everything," says Rebecca. "But basically there's two ways to supply an animus with the DNA it needs to run. The easiest one is to use the DNA of the person actually sitting in the animus, but what Abstergo's been doing is taking bits of your DNA to run their machines with. But that means they need to refresh that DNA fairly regularly. That's why they kept your body around when you were, you know. Dead."
"Oh!" At least it explains something he's been wondering about, but if Abstergo was stealing bits of his DNA the whole time he was dead, it explains why he came back with six fingernails missing and a patchwork haircut. "But I haven't been there in a while."
"They're on a schedule," Rebecca says. "And their time ran out this morning."
"So what you're saying is that Abstergo can't see any of Edward's memories?" Altair asks.
"Not unless they get Desmond back," says Rebecca.
"Perfect," says Altair. "Then we're bringing Edward in on this too." He looks over at Shaun. "You had a point- this is going to be very difficult, and we need every ally we can get."
"You're going yourself?" Haytham says.
"I'd rather stay here and figure out what our plan is," Altair says, "But no one else can time travel with the kind of precision we need."
Haytham shrugs, acknowledging the point, but Desmond says, "I can do it." And he can. He knows he can. He knows the apples are supposed to be difficult to work with, but he's never had that problem. Maybe it's some weird side effect of his missing memories, or maybe just the ten months he spent with his mind trapped inside the apple. Whichever it is, he knows he can pull this off.
"Alright," Altair says, and Desmond only just manages to stop himself from grinning by remembering that this is a very serious situation. Just over an hour ago he was sneaking out on rooftops to get out of the apartment, and here he is with the promise of a whole new century to mess around with. He stands up, conscious of six pairs of eyes on him, and summons up the apple's power.
He vanishes in a blink or you'll miss it flash of gold, but just as the twenty first century gives way to the eighteenth, he hears what might be the beginning of a scream, abruptly cut off. He's not sure if it's because he switched time zones midscream, or because something's happened to stop the screamer from screaming.
He thinks about going back for just a second, but before he can act on the thought someone comes running at him with a sword, and suddenly he has more pressing issues. He smiles again, because this is going to be fun.