10th October 2012

'... An historical document from the French revolution entitled 'The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen', approved by the National Constituent Assembly in...'

'Shaun. Shaun!'

'Just hear me out, this might be relevant...'

'Shaun, Lucy's hurt!'

Their words were muffled, as though Rebecca and Shaun were speaking in another room. Desmond came back to himself, slowly, as though he too had been frozen in time. The ceiling of this place was very dark between the blue patterns, and the back of his right hand lay in a warm, thick puddle that was slowly creeping up his arm. He curled his fingers until the tips touched the end of his wrist blade, and found the metal slick and damp.

'Oh my God, Lucy! Talk to me, tell us what happened...'

'Don't move her, I'm going to put pressure on the wound.'

'Should we put her in the recovery position?'

'She's already in the recovery position, you idiot, she must have fallen like that.'

'What happened to her?'

'I ... I think she's been stabbed.'

'Stabbed? But who...?'

He let his head roll to one side and looked at Lucy. Her eyes were closed but one of her arms lay outstretched towards him, as though she saw his pain and wanted to comfort him.

'Desmond.'

'Fuck, I can't stop the bleeding.'

'Rebecca, are you listening to me? It was Desmond! Look at him, he's...'

'I know, Shaun, I see him. Make yourself useful and get that blade off him.'

Desmond felt a knee press into his chest and then his head was being lifted upwards, turned away from Lucy until he was staring into the face of Shaun Hastings. Shaun didn't even look angry yet. He looked bewildered.

'Was it really you? Why did you do it? Why?'

Desmond found himself unable to reply. His brain was still operating at half-speed, or perhaps it was double speed, but it was all wrong and he couldn't talk because he couldn't even think right. He felt fingers scrabbling at his wrist and clumsily undoing the buckles of his wrist-blade, and as the weapon was lifted away from his arm Desmond felt a sense of relief. He heard a soft thump-clack as the wrist-blade was tossed to one side, and then the press of Shaun's hand upon his forearm, pinning it to the puddle of blood that it lay in.

'How is she? Is it bad?'

His hand was too close to the Apple, close enough to feel its radiating power. Desmond twisted his fingers away from it in revulsion

'Rebecca, talk to me! Should I run back to the van and grab the first aid kit?'

'It won't do any good, Shaun. She's dead.'

Dead, dead, dead ... the temple echoed the words back mockingly.

'Dead? You mean she's stopped breathing? Can't you try CPR or...?'

'Wouldn't work. He must have hit a major artery or vital organ or something. She's bled out.' Rebecca's voice was dull with shock.

'But when did he have time to ... We were right there and then...'

'Shaun, I don't know.'

There followed a long silence which seem to stretch out, to expand and fill the air as Rebecca finally leaned back from where she had been crouched over Lucy's prone body, her corpse. Out of the corner of his eye, Desmond saw Rebecca raise a shaking hand to her mouth, and then balk as she realised that it was covered in Lucy's blood. They all were now; it had spread out in a wide puddle from where she lay and was dripping off the edge of the platform.

Desmond closed his eyes and wished to be anywhere but here.

'Open your eyes.' Shaun's voice was like the low rumble of distant thunder before a flash of lightning. He gripped the collar of Desmond's T-shirt and lifted him, shook him so that his head lolled forward and then smacked back onto the hard stone floor. 'Look at her, you bloody bastard, you traitor!'

Fuzziness vibrated through Desmond's brain from the point of impact on the back of his head. He waited and prayed for it to send him to sleep, for Shaun to punch him and send him the rest of the way into unconsciousness, but the pain dissipated and clarity made its unwelcome return.

'We need to get out of here,' Rebecca said quietly, wiping her forearm over her eyes and standing up shakily. On her way, she picked up the Apple of Eden and hastily slipped it into her bag, trying to limit the amount of contact between her skin and the heavy golden metal. 'We need to tell Bill what happened.'

'Yeah.' Shaun's voice was shaking. 'Yeah, you're right. You.' His fist was still tangled in Desmond's T-shirt and he stood up and dragged Desmond along with him. 'You can carry Lucy out of here.' Shaun's face usually went red when he was annoyed, but now it was very, very pale as he pulled Desmond in close and gritted out the next words. 'I'm taking your knife. If you make a wrong move, or if you drop her, I'll kill you myself.'

Desmond still didn't speak. He nodded, numbly, and staggered a little as Shaun released him. He looked briefly into Rebecca's eyes as he walked over to Lucy, and she flicked her gaze up to him, looking lost. Finally he knelt down by Lucy and dropped his hand to her face, stroking his thumb over her cheek. She looked so sad. He remembered the way that they had stared into each other's eyes, the moment at which his blade had roused her from the strange stasis that had gripped them all, and how she had stared at him in such sorrow. He swallowed hard and slipped one arm around her back, the other under her knees, and lifted her gently from the ground.

They walked in silence for most of the journey. Desmond concentrated hard on where he was putting his feet, fearful of jostling Lucy too much. She'd done the most of her bleeding as she lay on the raised platform, but his hoodie and shirt were soaked through to the skin before they even made it out of the temple. As they reached the Santa Maria Aracoeli, Rebecca slowed her pace and fell back to walk alongside Desmond.

'What happened?' she asked quietly.

'I touched the Apple,' Desmond replied, speaking automatically. 'I couldn't move. Then I heard Juno talking to me, and she said ... it didn't make much sense, but I think she was saying that Lucy needed to die. Then she pushed me, she made me walk, she made me...' His voice trailed away; he couldn't finish.

Rebecca closed her eyes and nodded. 'I figured it must have been something like that. Are you OK?'

Before Desmond had a chance to laugh at the question, he heard Shaun scoff bitterly behind him. 'Oh yes, let's all worry about the murderer's feelings. I hope you didn't graze your knuckles when you were stabbing Lucy to death, Desmond.'

Rebecca ignored him. 'Look, I believe you, Desmond. But the Assassin leaders aren't going to be happy about this. You're probably going to be in for a rough time when they find out.'

'Can't you turn your back for a couple of minutes?' Desmond asked, trying to speak low enough that Shaun wouldn't hear. 'Give me a chance to run?'

'That's not a good idea. If you really weren't in control when you killed her, you need to tell them that. If you try to run they'll assume that you're guilty. You'll be a fugitive, Desmond.'

'Actually, it's not a good idea because if you try to run I'll shoot you in the back myself,' Shaun added coldly.

Desmond stopped walking and waited as Rebecca pulled the doors of the church open. Lucy was heavy in his arms, the muscles in his shoulders starting to burn after the long walk, but he couldn't bring himself to look back down at her. He held her a little closer, even though it hurt. When the door was opened, he followed Rebecca out of the church.

October 12th 2012

Desmond had been in this room for two days now, with food delivered through a slot in the door. They were still in Italy, in an Assassin compound similar to the one he had been raised in, somewhere out in the countryside. The major difference was that the Farm he had lived on had been fairly bustling and densely populated, but this place had only a handful of Assassins, all of whom looked tired and overworked. There was a training ground, but it didn't seem to be getting any kind of regular use, and upon his arrival Desmond had seen signs of disrepair and neglect. It occurred to him that the Assassins no longer seemed nearly as impressive as they had when he was a child, and he recalled the others talking about teams going missing with a kind of resigned gloom. What had happened to the Brotherhood since Desmond's childhood to weaken it this much?

When he'd first arrived at the compound they had sat him down in front of a tape recorder, and an unsmiling Assassin leader had instructed him to narrate what had happened in the temple, as accurately as he could manage. Once he'd finished speaking, the man hadn't said a word, had given no indication of whether or not he'd found the story believable, and hadn't answered Desmond's questions of what would happen to him. He'd whisked the tape recorder off the table and nodded at the two younger Assassins present as an indication that Desmond should be returned to his room. His cell.

There wasn't so much as a window in the place. Just four walls, a bed, and a lightbulb which would click off like clockwork at precisely 9pm. With no external point of interest upon which to focus his thoughts, Desmond passed the time by endlessly reliving those brief few moments inside Juno's temple. He unbuckled his watch and used the sharp metal edge of the prong to scratch the mysterious Goddess' words into the wall so that he would not forget them. He would stare at those words while the light remained and attempt to decipher them, to find some explanation for why he had ended up with Lucy's blood running down his wrist.

Desmond wondered if they had buried her yet. Would her body have been returned to her parents? Were her parents Assassins as well? He'd never thought to ask her.

By the time the third day had rolled around, Desmond's guilt had begun to turn to anger. It seemed as though the Assassins were deliberately leaving him hanging, refusing to give him any information about how much trouble he was in and what his punishment might be, refusing even to let him explain his actions further. Didn't they care about what he had to say? Didn't they want to hear more about Juno's message? Didn't they have a fucking deadline to meet - the ultimate deadline? Was Desmond the only one who remembered that the entire goddamn world was going to be burnt down to ashes in less than three months?

By his watch, it was early afternoon when the door opened again. Assuming it would be a novice arriving with food, he refused to look up and stayed sitting on the bed, gripping the edges of it tightly, glaring down at his feet.

A lone figure stepped into the room and waited there. In his peripheral vision, Desmond saw the figure fold its arms, and a single sideways glance told him who it was.

'Hello Desmond,' said William Miles.

'Dad,' Desmond greeted shortly. His blood was high from a morning spent silently seething. 'I guess you found me again, huh?'

"Shame I didn't get here sooner. Trust me, it wasn't for lack of searching."

Desmond smiled mirthlessly and stood up from the bed, turning to face his father. 'So, what's the verdict? Gallows? Electric chair? Or are you going to be kind and make it a lethal injection?'

'Oh stop playing the victim, Desmond!' Bill snapped impatiently. 'We can't exactly afford to kill you, even if we wanted to.'

'So you don't want to? I murdered Lucy, Dad.'

'That's not what you said in your statement.'

'You believe me?'

'I believe that you believe it.'

'What the fuck is that supposed to mean?'

Bill's jaw tightened in anger. Many years ago, back when Desmond was still trapped on the Farm and beginning his rebellious teen phase, he had picked up swear-words by listening in to the older kids. The first time he had said the F-word to his dad's face he had received a sharp cuff round the ear for his trouble, had seen his cold and distant father lose control as a direct result of something that Desmond had done. It had felt glorious. After that, whenever Desmond had been in need of catharsis and in a daring enough mood, he would swear loudly and deliberately, sometimes merely in Bill's earshot and sometimes directly to his face. It hadn't always ended in a punch - though on one memorable occasion after Desmond had been pushed through his daily training despite being half-dead with exhaustion left over from a bout of the flu, he'd screamed in Bill's face that he was a worthless father and a cunt. Bill had backhanded him and accidentally triggered the mechanism on his wrist-blade at the same time, slicing a long vertical cut over Desmond's lips and leaving him scarred for life.

Desmond would never forget the way his father had looked at him as he stood there, eyes still bright and defiant, blood dripping down his chin and onto his shirt. It was a look of such shock and even regret. Whether he would have apologised or not, Desmond never found out. He'd fled the room and had just ... kept walking. Then running, when someone spotted him on the borders of the compound. He'd been running pretty much nonstop since then.

No blow came this time, though Bill folded his arms as though trying to control the tempation. 'Let's just say that it's not the first time we've seen something like this. About a decade ago, Abstergo sent a sleeper agent into our midst. He was very talented, very dedicated to the cause. Almost too good to be true. As it turned out, he was.' Bill kept his eyes fixed on Desmond's face. 'He was invited to meet the Mentor of the Brotherhood, and murdered him cold blood, just as Abstergo had programmed him to.'

Desmond stared at his father, confused. 'Wait, you think ... It wasn't Abstergo that made me kill Lucy, Dad, it was Juno, she...'

'I know, she spoke to you. The thing is, Desmond, no one else saw her or heard anything. Right now we only have your word as evidence that she appeared, and I'm sure you'll understand when I tell you that you're not the most trusted person in the Brotherhood right now.'

'So you think I'm lying?'

'Let just say that I can't be sure that your version of events is ... accurate. I'm not calling you a liar, son, but we need to be cautious.'

'What do you mean, "cautious"?'

October 13th 2012

The doctor had told him that he shouldn't be able to feel the implant, not unless he was touching the skin over the top of it anyway. There was a tiny puncture in the skin over the back of his neck where it had been inserted, and by the end of the day Desmond had rubbed a red mark over it, feeling the slight, unnatural bulge where the small piece of electronics was buried beneath his skin.

The humourless surgeon had explained its function as he swabbed the area with anaesthetic. 'The implant can be triggered by the remote device from a distance of up to one hundred miles. It will trigger automatically if you go beyond the range of the remote device. It will trigger automatically if you attempt to remove it. It won't kill you, but you will experience an extremely painful shock and you will be temporarily paralysed for up to 24 hours. It also acts as a tag so that we can track you on GPS if you go missing.'

Desmond had sat there with gritted teeth as it was inserted. His father had told him that after this he would be set free from his cell, free to explore the compound at his leisure, and able to take part in missions once more. He would be free, in the way that a leashed and muzzled dog is free.

Released from the infirmary, he stood in the centre of the compound, looking around him. Two Assassins that he did not recognise were talking on the path outside, and the heads turned to stare at him as he passed. They backed away from him a little, whispering amongst themselves. Desmond clenched his fists and forced himself to ignore them and carry on walking, though every instinct in his body was firing at him to snap at them, to ask them to speak up so that he could hear them.

He heard the soft pad of someone running up behind him in the grass and turned his head just in time to see Rebecca arrive at his side. He slowed his pace a little.

'Hey, Desmond,' she said tentatively. 'You doing OK?'

'Oh, just fine, I love getting bits of metal shoved into my body. I take it you're here to supervise me?'

Rebecca didn't even flinch. 'Yeah, I've been given first watch. Necessary precaution, Bill called it.'

'And do you think it is? Necessary, I mean.'

'I think that your Dad doesn't want you running off again and he's using Lucy's death as an excuse to do what he couldn't when you were a kid.' To Desmond's surprise, Rebecca sounded tense and a little angry. He looked sidelong at her.

'You don't agree with him, then?'

'No, I don't. The world is going to end in a couple of months if we don't stop it, and he decides the best course of action is to enslave you to the cause? It worries me, Desmond. The Assassins are supposed to stand for freedom. That was the reason I agreed to work for them in the first place, but look at what they've done to you. Sometimes I think ... Assassins, Templars - it seems like when the heat gets turned up we all boil down to the same thing.'

Desmond gazed at Rebecca's irritated expression and felt some of the rage inside him begin to dissipate. Maybe he wasn't completely alone after all. As he watched, she drew something out of her pocket that looked like a keychain and held it out to him. He stopped walking and turned his palm upwards.

'What's that?' he asked as the item was dropped into his hand.

'It's the remote for your implant. My one, anyway. Your father has one as well, and so does Shaun.'

Desmond shuddered at this revelation. Shaun had been given control of his implant? Jesus, the guy would probably trigger it if Desmond refused to pass him the salt at dinner.

'Why are you giving this to me?'

'Because the idea of being able to drop you to the ground with the push of a button, like you're some kind of malfunctioning robot, makes me sick to my stomach. I don't want it, Desmond. I even tried to find a way to hack the signal, to convert the thing into an off-switch. Nothing worked, nothing that wouldn't risk setting it off anyway.'

Desmond clenched his jaw and turned the remote over in his hand, thumbing the button on top. He swallowed hard before saying, 'Rebecca, you should take this back.'

'But...'

'If my father finds out that I have it, you'll get in huge trouble. He'll probably use it as an excuse to put me under even stricter control.' He handed the remote back to her, and she took it reluctantly. 'Look, I like this even less than you do, but we need to stop the solar flares and we don't have much time left to figure out how to do it. If we're still around at Christmas then I'll be more than happy to dedicate some time to getting this thing out of me.'

Rebecca shook her head sadly. 'This is such bullshit.'

'Tell me about it.'

'Try again.'

'I've tried five times already, it's not working!'

'God damn it, Desmond...'

'Bill, he's right. It must be a problem with the Animus, it's just not interacting with his brain any more.'

'Well that is strange. Perhaps it has a minimum IQ requirement.'

'Not helping, Shaun.'

Desmond sat up in the Animus, rubbing his forehead, his face scrunched up in pain. They had been here in the compound's Animus room for over twenty minutes as he unsuccessfully attempted to open up Ezio's memories once more. Each time he had made it as far as the loading screen before a horrible screeching static filled his mind and burst out of the speakers on the monitor, and his vision would feel with blood-red noise. The Animus would overheat and take several minutes to reboot.

'Try it again,' Bill repeated, rubbing a hand over the back of his head as he paced back and forth.

'No!' Desmond retorted angrily, standing up. 'My head is killing me and this is pointless.'

Bill turned to glare at his son. 'We are not giving up just because you are too lazy to try properly!'

'I have been fucking trying and it's not fucking working. What are you going to do, zap me until my brain starts working properly?'

'Don't tempt me.'

'Stop it, both of you!' Rebecca snapped, loud enough that they both turned their heads. 'This is getting us nowhere. Bill, I'm telling you, there's nothing that Desmond can do. The Animus is just ... rejecting his mind.'

Bill muttered something inaudible and walked away from his son, perching on the edge of a desk and losing himself in his own thoughts. Desmond turned away from him in disgust and spoke to Rebecca.

'You don't necessarily need me to use it, right? You just need Ezio's memories, so any one of his descendants would do.' He glanced over pointedly at his father.

Rebecca pulled a face. 'Technically, yes, but it's a time issue. If we put Bill in the Animus then he'd need to go through every single memory that you've already unlocked again, just to get caught up. It could take weeks, and we don't have all that many weeks to spare. What we really need is someone else who's already...' Her voice trailed away as she continued the rest of the thought inside her own head, eyes widening a little as she looked over at the Animus.

Bill caught her expression and seemed to pick up on the same idea, his expression clearing a little. 'Now, there's a thought.'

'Right?' Rebecca said eagerly. 'I mean, it'd be a bit of a risk, but surely it's been long enough now that they'll have relaxed their security.'

'I could organise a team and send them for him. He's not even far away from here. If we go to work right away then we could have him back here by tomorrow evening.'

'Oh yes,' Shaun breathed, looking as though he had finally caught on to what they were saying. 'Of course. That could work, though it's not without its problems...'

Desmond's temper finally snapped and he raised his hands to try and shut them all up. 'Woah, would anyone like to fill me in on what the hell you're talking about?'

Shaun rolled his eyes and Bill looked irritated at the interruption, but Rebecca turned to answer him. 'Subject Sixteen,' she said simply.

'Subject Sixteen? The crazy puzzle guy from the Animus?'

'That's the one. He relived Ezio's memories as well, remember? It seems like he actually got a lot further along Ezio's timeline than you did, and you said that in that executable file you found he spoke to you, dropped a bunch of hints about how to go about stopping the solar flares. He might already know what we need to do.'

Desmond stared at her for a few moments before speaking again. 'Uh, that's great Rebecca. I just have one question. How the hell are we supposed to get a dead guy to use the Animus again?'

In the silence that followed, it was Bill who spoke first, softly. 'Subject Sixteen isn't dead.'

The statement threw Desmond completely. It was like being told that Santa was real. Or Satan, perhaps. 'What are you talking about? I saw his blood...'

'He had a nervous breakdown and attempted suicide,' Bill continued. 'He survived - barely. After that, Vidic couldn't get him to use the Animus any more, no matter how hard he tried to coerce him. Subject Sixteen just ... shut down.'

'And you know this because...?'

'Lucy told us,' Shaun replied. He didn't sound angry this time, just a little sad.

'So where is he now? Do we have to break him out of Abstergo.'

'Thankfully, no.' Rebecca turned to her computer and began typing furiously. A quick look at her screen told Desmond that she was simultaneously booting up some kind of hacking program and searching through satellite map images. 'Once they realised that he was no longer functional, Abstergo shipped him off to a mental instution just outside Rome.'

'When was this?'

'Not too long ago. August, I think.'

'August? So he's been out of Abstergo for a couple of months, at least, and you haven't tried to rescue him?'

The other three people in the room exchanged hesitant, awkward glances. Not one of them seemed particularly eager to look Desmond in the eye.

'We've been a little bit preoccupied, Desmond,' Shaun said at last, with deliberate sardonicism. 'Besides, there's not much left to rescue. From what Lucy told us, it sounded like a mental institution was the best place for him.'

'So you just ... abandoned him?' Desmond was horrified at the thought. It wasn't like he knew Subject Sixteen all that well - hell, he didn't even know his real name - but he had heard how terrified and lost he had been when he'd recorded those messages in the Animus. The idea that this person was still alive and sitting wrapped in a straitjacket, at the mercy of Abstergo and locked away in an asylum with his Assassin brethren so close by, was revolting.

Bill seemed to sense his indignation, and spoke as gently as he was capable of. 'Shaun is right. As much as I hate to admit it, Abstergo are probably administering better care for him than we would have the resources for. And any of our secrets he might have had will already have been extracted by the Templars.'

'But now you've decided that you can use him again, you're going to get off your asses and actually bother breaking him out,' Desmond accused in a brittle voice.

'Yes,' Bill replied candidly, finally meeting his son's eye. 'Since you apparently can't use the Animus any more, we need his memories of Ezio.'

'Abstergo still have the place under watch,' Rebecca added, frowning at her computer screen. 'Not too strict, but we'll need in the best team we have available right now.' She looked up at Bill with a small grin.

Desmond looked from Rebecca to his father, then back again, before asking, 'Well, whose is the best team we have?'

Shaun cleared his throat. Desmond let the silence sink in for a few more seconds.

'Oh, you've got to be kidding me.'