Ten days later finds nearly everyone assembled, and their project almost ready to start.
"All these people?" Desmond asks. "Really, all these people have been in an animus?"
He and Layla are in the large, open warehouse that they've decided to use for their animi headquarters, sitting on a folding table on one end of the room. Layla's checking her watch—probably wondering when Bayek will be back with even more people—but Desmond can't tear his eyes away from the awkwardly milling crowds. They've been working on setting this up for a week and a half now, but they'll need to have it ready soon.
The day Desmond's supposed to be kidnapped is rapidly approaching, and they want to have this place up and running before he goes. Layla will stay here, in charge of everyone else running through their ancestors' memories. Desmond will be in Abstergo's hold, but he knows he'll have access to a computer and Layla had shown him (she's maybe a little too familiar with how to do it?) how to get into parts of Abstergo's network he shouldn't be in, so he can get in contact if anything comes up. Bayek will be here with Layla until someone spots Juno in a memory, and from that point on he'll be in the past, checking in as often as he can.
"Yea," Layla says. "And I think we still have… three or four more of them we're waiting on."
Desmond nods. There's just… so many people. He sees Assassins and Templars, mostly staying out of each other's way. He hears people speaking a whole range of languages, some of which he knows and some of which he doesn't even recognize. There are people in a range of fashions, mostly modern clothes but some have obviously been pulled from a little farther in the past, maybe from earlier versions of the animus when they were just starting to learn how the technology works.
It's a crazy cross section of people, and Desmond even sees kids here, or teenagers, sticking together and mostly looking like they can't quite believe they've let themselves be dragged into all this. The only other animus user he recognizes is Clay, but since they'd obviously had to take him from a time before he died, he hadn't known Desmond when they met up here. It's probably for the best. Clay isn't insane yet, he's just starting to show the first twitchy signs of the bleeding effect beginning, and Desmond hopes that the updated animi they're using here will help him.
"Not all of them are animus users," Layla reminds him, and Desmond grins. That's right—some of them are the techs, helping Layla throw together as many animi as possible for the (too many) users that will need a way to see into the past. Just that morning, he'd had a tearful reunion with Rebecca (who's here because she's great with making animi run) and Shaun (who is… possibly there to make snarky comments about history? Or possibly just to stay with Rebecca). Desmond knows he won't be here with them, but just knowing they're around really helps.
"That's true," he says, more cheerful now. Even if it's only a little bit more.
Bayek appears out of nowhere, holding the elbow of a man that Desmond doesn't know. Another animus user or a techie, hard to tell, but Desmond recognizes the look of oh shit I thought he was kidding as he takes in the busy room around them. So far, it's the one thing that everyone Bayek's brought back has in common—that momentary expression of shock when they go from wherever they'd been in the future to the prep room here. It doesn't matter if they're Assassins or Templars or outside the fight altogether, they all have that moment of utter shock from traveling through that space between time, and then ending up here.
"Well go on," Layla says, a little bluntly, as he blinks around at everything. "Go and get your stuff set, we're trying to have a conversation here."
He moves off obligingly, leaving Desmond, Layla, and Bayek mostly alone. Bayek shifts a little closer to the table Desmond and Layla are sitting on, but doesn't join them. He starts in on a long explanation in his usual Egyptian, and Desmond lets his attention drift a little as he waits for Layla to explain whatever's happening. Maybe he looks a little bit too distracted, because Rebecca comes over, grinning so enthusiastically that Desmond grins back.
"Hey," she says.
"Hey," Desmond answers. She looks older than he remembers, which is stupid and obvious when he stops and thinks about it. They'd been close to the same age, just… well, just a few days ago, for him. But she's come from close to Layla's time (they'd agreed at the beginning not to take anyone from farther into the future than that), like most of the techs. There's no time for someone from 2012 or 2013 to be going to something from 2017 and saying wait, what did you just do to that animus, that hasn't even been invented yet in my time…
"So are you doing okay?" Rebecca asks, dropping her voice a little, so that it's almost hard to hear her over the dull roar of conversations around them.
"Yea," Desmond says, trying not to look at his hand. It's not usually painful, and it looks fine, it's just… every once in a while, it burns like there's a fire lighting him up from the inside. It never lasts long before it passes, but it always, always sucks. "Yea, I'm fine. Not looking forward to going back to Vidic and Lucy, but… I mean, I need to get back to December 21st if we want to do that day over and get rid of Juno for good, so…"
"Hmm," Rebecca says, and leaves it at that. Her expression, however, says it all, and Desmond grins.
"Hey," he says. "Don't you want to stop her?"
"I do," Rebecca assures him. "But you already died once, and I don't want you to have to go through it again."
"I mean… it's going to have to happen sometime," Desmond points out. He's trying to make a joke out of it, if only because Rebecca looks so upset, but it backfires when she frowns.
"You know I don't usually like to be too serious about things," she says. "But Juno did kill you, or… almost kill you. And it was in a pretty horrible way. I saw the autopsy results, and it was horrible. I'd rather not lose you to her a second time."
"Me too," Desmond says. "Look, Becca, I'm being serious too. I don't want to die. I'm terrified of dying, and that thing Juno needed me to touch—it hurt. I don't ever want to go anywhere near that kind of pain again, and I intend to have a really good plan when I get back to December 21st. I'm going to be ready, and she's not going to win." He looks her in the eye, and says, "Okay?"
Somehow, that seems to do the track—she seems reassured. "Yea. Okay."
"So is that what you came over here to talk to me about?" he asks.
"No, actually," Rebecca says, and she seems to rally a little bit. "I can't help noticing that… that Bayek can't really communicate with most of us." She stumbles over the name, and Desmond wonders if she'd already known who he is—only a couple of the Templars so far have seemed to recognize who he is, but the Assassins are about half and half. Some have no idea whatsoever who Bayek is, and some look absolutely awed at the sight of him. If Rebecca is one of the Assassins that knows who Bayek is, at least she's making an effort not to show it.
"Yea," Desmond says. "He can only talk to Layla because no one else speaks ancient Egyptian. I asked—" He jerks his head toward the crowded room. "Because I figured maybe someone had an ancestor in his era, but so far nobody does."
"Right," Rebecca says. "So, what I thought was maybe I could take the translation software we use in the animus and implement it in an earpiece." She reaches over and pulls out two Bluetooth earpieces that look like they've been taken apart and put back together. "I pulled the data from Layla's animus sessions, and I have one that will pick up English and translate it for him, and one that can pick up Egyptian and translate it for you."
"That's genius."
Desmond jumps as he realizes Layla is right behind him, inches behind his neck.
"Personal space," he mutters, and she ignores him.
"How were you able to isolate the linguistic programming without interference from—"
And off they go on an excited conversation that Desmond, unfortunately, cannot understand at all. Instead, he puts the first headset, the one Rebecca has scrawled English on, and hands the other one to Bayek. With Layla totally preoccupied talking tech with Rebecca, it takes a fair amount of miming and a couple brave stabs with Italian to get Bayek to put the Egyptian earpiece on, but eventually he manages it. Senu, who has come down to rest on Bayek's shoulder, seems to catch on before Bayek does. She nips carefully at his fingers, encouraging him.
Desmond grins as he watches the two of them. He's liked Senu since the beginning, and he likes watching the way she works with Bayek. She's easily as smart as most people he knows. "Okay," he says, when the earpieces are fully in place. "These are supposed to translate for us, is yours working?"
There's an ever so slight delay, and Desmond then Bayek looks at him and grins.
"Yes it is," he says, and Desmond grins back. Practically speaking, it's going to make things so much easier if Layla's not the only one that can understand Bayek. On a more emotional level, though, Desmond's gotten to feel close to Bayek over the past couple weeks, and he's so excited that they're going to get to talk now, too. "Then your friend has worked a miracle," Bayek says seriously, and Desmond makes a mental note to tell Rebecca later, and maybe to heap some of his own praise on top—he's known for a while now that the animus has a translation program, but because of the bleeding effect he's never really noticed it. Stuff like that is there more for people like Rebecca, who aren't actually in the animus but need to know what's going on. He's amazed at how quickly it works.
"Wait," Layla says, cutting off midsentence and turning to the two of them. "It works?"
"Yea," Desmond says.
"Yes," Rebecca mutters, breaking into a grin. "Right, then, I'm going to go see if I can piece together a few more. Just in case." And she rushes off.
"So we're going to all have a conversation," Layla says, looking between Desmond and Bayek. "This is great."
"Getting tired of translating?" Desmond asks.
"So tired," Layla says, rolling her eyes. "But anyway, Desmond, to get back to Bayek and I we were talking about before—"
"We're done," Bayek says, smiling. "That's it. All the children have come home."
"What's that?" Desmond asks, cocking his head a little to one side. "About the children?" He's not sure if that's a translation error or a metaphor he doesn't know about—a quick glance over at Layla shows that he doesn't have the answer either.
"Oh." Bayek shakes his head. "No. That's just… I always think of children. I miss mine." He says it so simply that Desmond almost misses the importance. The only sign that this really means something to him is the brief, pitying look Layla shoots in his direction. He stays quiet, waiting to see if Bayek will elaborate. It's so weird to sort of… know Bayek, from working together and from Layla's stories about Bayek's life, but they've never had a conversation before. It feels somehow familiar and uncomfortable at the same time.
Finally, Bayek does continue. "They just remind me a little like children meeting for the first time. Look at them." Desmond looks, obligingly, and he can sort of see what Bayek is trying to say. Instead of the open aggression he'd expect to see between Assassins and Templars, he sees people striking up tentative conversations, making careful and almost shy inroads to working together.
"I wanted a whole family," Bayek says quietly. "I got one son, and then I lost him. And I'll never have another chance."
He shakes his head, and walks off. Desmond stays with Layla, watching him until he joins up with some of the others to help out.
"Bayek of nowhere," Layla said quietly when they were alone. "Father of no one."
"What?" Desmond asks, looking over at her.
"It's how he thinks of himself," Layla says. "Alone."
"He has us," Desmond says, and he's almost surprised at the fierce surge of loyalty he feels for Bayek. "And he formed… I mean, he started the Brotherhood. He has two thousand years of legacy, doesn't he?"
"But I don't know if he thinks like that," Layla says.
"That's sad."
"Hmm." Layla looks at him sideways, and grins. "So what I propose, Desmond."
"What do you propose, Layla?"
"Well, I guess saving the world from Juno doesn't really seem challenging enough," she says, voice dripping with sarcasm. "So I'm thinking that in our copious free time, we find a way to prove to Bayek he has a family."
And Desmond agrees wholeheartedly.