"So, yeah, that's when I told him, 'make like a tree, and get outta here!'"

"Um, dude? It's make like a tree and leave."

"Whatever man, it doesn't matter anyway, it's just a metaphor."

Desmond and Rebecca were peeking around the corner, watching two guards talk as they tried to think of a way past them.

"Well, at least they aren't patrolling or anything, right?" Rebecca said.

"Yeah, I guess that's something good, at least."

Naturally, the guards then started walking away from their post, one walking further down the hallway, the other in Desmond and Rebecca's direction. Desmond and Rebecca ducked back behind the corner just in time to avoid being seen by the one walking their way.

"Of course. Of course this had to happen. You just had to say that, didn't you?" Desmond said to Rebecca, visually irritated with her.

"Sorry! It's not my fault"

"It's cool, I've got a plan, anyway." Desmond said, hijacking a camera to keep the hallway in his sights without alerting the guards to their presence. He watched as the guard at the other end of the hallway turned a corner, then stepped out from behind his corner.

"Hey! What are you doing here?!" The guard shouted at him, raising his gun.

"Whoa! Sorry! I'm just a bit lost, could you help me find the bathroom?" Desmond said, doing his best to act surprised.

Great, Rebecca thought, how original, the guard will totally fall for that…

"Uh, yeah, sure, I guess." The guard said, lowering his gun.

You have got to be kidding me, she thought as she shook her head.

"It's right down that hallway, take a right and it's the third door on your le-" The guard was cut short as Desmond stabbed him with his hidden blade.

"Alright Rebecca, c'mon, before that other guard comes back." Desmond said, dragging the dead guard into the hallway they just came from.

"I gotta admit, Des, I didn't think that would work, but that guard must be pretty stupid to have fallen for it. That's, like, the first trick in the book."

"To be honest, I didn't think it would work, either. But hey, I'm not complaining."

"Okay, so that problem is out of the way, but now where do we go…?" She asked, looking around.

He punched Aiden again, much harder this time, and this time in the gut. Aiden coughed up some blood this time.

"One more time, Aiden. Where is your family?"

"I. Will. Never. Tell you scum where they are." Aiden coughed out, spitting in his face as he did.

"I'm very sorry to hear that, Aiden." The man said, walking over to his table of instruments.

"What do you want with them, anyway? Besides, what are you going to do to me that you haven't already done, huh? I think you can tell by now that I'm not going to break, asshat." Aiden spat at him, adding emphasis on the last word.

The man picked up a special blade off of the table. It was a very faint blue, almost grey, and it radiated power.

"We believe they have a certain gene that can activate First Civilization artifacts. Although, powering artifacts is an entirely different matter… Aiden, do you know where we've been getting all the power for our… Project, from?"

"What are you talking about…? No, I don't even know what your project is… And if they have the gene, why don't I?"

"Because, Aiden, this particular First Civ gene is more dominant in females, which is why we want your sister. And of course you don't know what our project is, we don't keep those files on our server, of course. It's data that's too sensitive to be stored here, as secure as it is. Anyway, back to our power. We're pulling a Matrix, you see, and harnessing energy from creatures, living beings."

"What? You sick fucks! You're using humans as a power source?! What the hell is wrong with you!?" Aiden said, disgusted with DedSec more than he had ever been since learning of their corruption.

"Humans?" The man chuckled. "No, humans are too frail to withstand the bio-energy extraction process, and besides, they burn out too quickly. We captured a being far more powerful than a human, using the Apple's power. It seems to have a near-infinite amount of power contained inside of it, and we plan to fully utilize it once the device is done charging."

"A being that's not human? What is it, an alien? Why are you telling me all this? And what's your endgame for all of this, anyway?

"No, it's not an alien. And I'm telling you this so you'll know, before you die, why we do what we do. So that you know we aren't as bad as you think we are. As for our endgame, well, I'm sure you're thinking we want world domination. We do, naturally, but we won't stop there. There are other realms to be conquered, too… Now, I'm sure you're wondering, if we want the location of your sister, why don't we just hack your phone? We aren't stupid, of course. We did x-ray it, and we can see you've lined it with explosives. One wrong password, and, well, boom. So, Aiden, I will ask you again, one last time."

Aiden gulped.

"Where is your family?"

"Did you hear that? It sounded like a scream!" Desmond said, crouching as he peered around a corner.

"Yeah, I heard it, and it sounded like it was Aiden who was screaming!" Rebecca said, peering the other way.

"I think it came from this way, follow me." Desmond said, going down the hallway. They could hear shouting from behind one of the doors.

"Aiden, am I going to have start cutting off your fingers?" They heard from inside the room.

"Oh, shit, what the hell is going on in there?!" Desmond said, looking at Rebecca before kicking the door in. Inside, they saw a man holding what looked like a dimly glowing knife, about to cut off Aiden's thumb.

"Hey, asshat, hands up! Drop the knife!" Rebecca said, pointing her SMG at the man.

"Well, isn't this a surprise." The man said, lowering his blade and taking a few steps back from Aiden.

"Hey, hold still and hands up! You aren't going anywhere, buddy!" Desmond said, approaching him, assault rifle in hand.

"And who's going to stop me? You two? Please, don't make me laugh." He said, stabbing the blade into a groove on the wall. It lit up, tendrils of energy shooting across the walls, floor, and ceiling. Rebecca shot at him, but he vanished in a flash of light.

"Shit! What the hell was that?" Rebecca shouted, looking all around at the energy nodes across the entire room.

"I think it has something to do with their endgame plan. They're using some sort of organic power source." Aiden said as Desmond untied him.

"Organic power, what, like in the Matrix?" Desmond as Aiden as he picked the lock holding one of Aiden's hands down.

"Yeah, sort of, but he said it wasn't human, all he said it was an incredibly powerful being." Aiden said.

"Wait, what? Like an alien?"

"No, he specifically said it wasn't an alien. But he didn't elaborate any further, he said I would have to tell him where my family was first. Apparently my sister has First Civilization genes, and they need her to power whatever their device is."

"It better not be a nuke…" Rebecca muttered to herself.

"Alright, well let's go stop whatever this thing is before they have a chance to use it. And maybe rescue whatever thing they've got locked up and are using for a power source. God, that's so messed up. I knew they had gone corrupt, but this…" Desmond said, finishing unlocking Aiden's shackles.

"Another thing, Desmond. He told me their endgame. He said it was the standard thing, world domination, but he said they wouldn't stop there. He said there were other realms to be conquered, too."

Desmond just looked Aiden in the eyes for a few moments.

"Honestly, Aiden. It wouldn't surprise me, at this point. They've all gone insane, the Apple has corrupted them far beyond anyone I've ever seen before. World domination, nothing new there, the Templars have been trying that for years. Only thing is, DedSec seems to be taking far more risks than the Templars ever did, so they pose a much larger threat than I could have imagined."

"Uh, Des, reinforcements are coming. Their guns are much larger than ours…" Rebecca said, looking out the small window on the door at the back of the lab.

"Shit, alright, let's get out of here. Aiden, take this." Desmond said, tossing Aiden his submachine gun.

"You a decent shot?" He asked Aiden. He chuckled.

"The best." Aiden said.

"Great, now let's go find this device and shut it down before they can use it." Desmond said, walking towards the door and motioning for them to follow him.

"Let's disconnect whatever creature they're using to power it, first. The guy said it wasn't fully operational yet." Aiden said, following Desmond out the door.

"Sounds good. Time to end this." Desmond said, stepping outside.

As the trio ran down the halls, checking every room for anything of importance, they got the feeling that there was something that they were missing, as they had been checking every room for anything important, but had yet to find anything, as well as the fact that Desmond could have sworn that they had run down this corridor already.

"Okay, guys, wait, stop." The other two stopped.

"I think there's something we're missing here, these corridors just seem to go on forever, but I think we've run down this one already, at least once."

"How is that possible? We haven't even made enough turns to have gone in a circle." Aiden said.

"When Pieces of Eden are involved, you learn that reality isn't always what it seems…" Desmond said, activating Eagle Vision.

"Oh, shit, that's the problem."

"What? Did you activate your Eagle Vision?"

"Yeah. It seems that everything around us is artificial, like we're in some sort of holodeck. Except made by the Apple. Oh, hey, nothing is true, eh?"

"Really?" Rebecca asked him.

"Yeah, sorry..."

"Whatever, just how do we get out of it?" Aiden irritatingly asked both of them.

"Oh, right. Welllll, it looks like there's an actual door through this wall here." Desmond said, looking at golden-glowing door through a solid wall. And with that, he walked through the wall, and through the door.

As he walked through the door, he found himself in a room that didn't look anything like the ones he had been in while looking for the power source with Aiden and Rebecca. Firstly, it had multiple control-devices. Secondly, it had actual people in it. All of whom vanished after looking up and seeing Desmond.

"Right, that's not normal. I suppose that means I'm on the right path…"

"Um, Desmond? We can't pass through this wall, I think the Apple or whatever made it so only people with Eagle Vision can pass through or something."

Desmond put his hand against the wall, but this time he couldn't walk through it. He activated Eagle Vision, but nothing.

"Weird, I can't go back through it. I guess you guys should just wait there or something, then. I'll keep going on, on my own. It should deactivate once I get the Apple."
"Yeah, sure. You do that. We'll just wait here."

"I'll be back in a bit, in the meantime, try to find a way out, maybe through the vents or something, okay?"

"Sure, fine, see you in a bit…"

With the wall between him, Aiden, and Rebecca now, Desmond realized there was only one other way out of the room. He went out, and into a large circular room, and realized where he was.

He was in the power core.

Desmond could tell that the room he was in was the power core because of the cables all running across the floor out from other rooms, leading up to a massive device attached to the ceiling. The device looked like something out of a horror movie, there were what looked like large drums all pointed towards a massive pillar sticking out of the ceiling in the center of the room.

The pillar was shaped similarly to a very steep pyramid, except it had six sides, all of which pointed to the drum-shaped devices around the room. The entire setup reminded Desmond vaguely of Bioshock Infinite, surprisingly. Perhaps DedSec were fans of the game? Whatever, none of that mattered in the slightest, Desmond thought, clearing his head.

He noticed chains coming out of the walls every few feet, all leading to directly underneath the device. The chains were all attached to what could only have been the being that the man torturing Aiden was talking about. It didn't look to be in any kind of pain, but that didn't mean it wasn't.

And Desmond had to free it if he was going to stop DedSec.

As the man walked into the room, the first thing he noticed wasn't the figure underneath the device, nor the chains holding him in place. He noticed the cables coming and going through all the doors to the room, attached to the device, which he would learn was called the siphon. Then he noticed the drums placed along the walls, facing the siphon. He didn't know what anything did, specifically, just that it was taking power out of some sort of creature, a being with more power than him. I didn't know his name was Desmond Miles at the time, nor did I know he was here to help, but nonetheless, he was determined to stop DedSec, and to do that, he knew he would have to free me.