Chapter 1:Another Day on the Road

"Desmond! Hey Desmond wake up!" Lucy shouted into Desmond's tent. "It's time to pack up and head out, let's go!". Desmond finally drug himself out of his sleeping bag and threw his blue jeans and white hoodie back on. It wasn't usually that hard for him to get out of bed. But they'd been working a lot of late nights since Shaun started downloading the map to the Pieces of Eden from the Abstergo database. They only had three months to find them and the temples of Those Who Came Before before the Sun barbequed the Earth after all. The Bleeding Effect and his ancestor's memories taking hold in his dreams hadn't helped either.

After rolling up his sleeping bag, Desmond stepped outside and helped Lucy take down the tents. They'd been camping out in this rural, snowy part of Montreal for a couple days now and they had to keep moving. They still had a ways to go before they reached the cabin safe house Lucy had ready. After they had everything packed I'd be another day on the road in that crowded 18-wheeler. Lucy driving while Shaun, Rebecca, and Desmond worked in the back with the Animus, tirelessly trying to find something in Desmond's DNA memories that could help them.

Rebecca had just come back with their very modest breakfast of coffee and donuts from the Dunkin' Donuts in the nearby town when they all finally headed back on the road. After breakfast they all sat at their places, ready for work. "So Shaun, how's the map coming?" asked Rebecca."

"Slowly as usual." Shaun replied in his usual dry, British tone. "I've been having to copy this map, practically pixel by pixel to avoid detection. It's been a week since we got driven out of that last safe house and I only have 5% of the North American continent downloaded so far."

Shaun then paused a minute and pushed his glasses up. "Wait a minute," he exclaimed, "If I just work my way around this and input this code here...". A few minutes went by as he typed away at his computer occasionally muttering to himself as he did so until eventually Shaun threw up his hands and yelled "YES!".

"What?" Desmond and Rebecca said in unison.

"Jinx, you owe me a Coke!" she snickered at Desmond. He laughed back at Rebecca's childishness which he found refreshing and Shaun found annoying (something he also liked to see) and then went serious again.

"What did you find?" he asked.

"I was able to find a work-around and downloaded almost all of the Western Hemisphere!" Shaun replied with an enthusiasm seldom seen by any of them.

"How's that possible?" asked an equally glad, though visibly confused Rebecca, "Abstergo's added more safeguards to that thing than the rest of the main hard drive combined."

"Well it turns out that the map was recently edited, and in a hurry. Listen to this footnote: 'PE6 heavily protected. Lost all of Squads Alpha and Beta to booby traps. Send backup soon.' And then a reference to something called the '1915 Blackwater Incident'. The Piece of Eden itself seems to be in an old mine underneath Austin, Texas of all places."

"Guess Lucy wasn't kidding when she told Vidic the Pieces of Eden would be protected.", said Desmond. He always though she just told him that to buy them the time they needed to escape.

"Excellent work, Shaun!", said Lucy from the walkie talkie on Shaun's desk, "This is the best lead we've had in weeks! Rebecca, get Desmond into the Animus. Shaun, cross reference Desmond's ancestry to the Assassins in the Austin area during the 1910s and with this Blackwater Incident."

"Will do boss!", Rebecca said enthusiastically.

"Right away.", confirmed Shaun.