AC2 Novelization Part 21
Part Twenty-One: The Truth
Eventually, the pair got up for a silent dinner, and both retired, the soft glow of Rebecca's computer screen and her soft curses and mouse clicks keeping Desmond up a long time before exhaustion finally took him.
The next morning Desmond, Lucy, and Shaun all crowded around Rebecca.
The contralto sighed. "Okay," she said, rubbing her forehead. Her eyes looked terrible. "The corruption doesn't have to do with the Animus, or the memory core, or the hardware or the software. Near as I can tell, the corruption is in specific places in the Animus that it's constructed - and if it's in specific places, that means one thing: Glyphs."
The other three took a collected intake of breath.
"Subject Sixteen...?"
"Insofar as I can tell," Rebecca said, tugging off her headphones and rubbing her ears loose, "He wants us to find all of his bits of truth before we hit a particular memory. He hacked the Animus real good, too, I've never seen code like that - and I can't even see all of it, it's as schizo as he was."
Lucy stiffened, and Desmond quickly put a hand on the small of her back, quiet reassurance.
"So, in short," Shaun said, "Sixteen's hijacked our priorities and forcing us to find the other breadcrumbs he's set out and lead us around by the nose." He sighed. "And I thought the London Olympics were diverting. Right, I'll just go dust off my knowledge of current events, then; ta for now, have fun running around looking for glyphs. Do try not to crash your brain in the meantime."
"Looks like we don't have a choice," Lucy said, running a hand through her blond bangs. "I'll send word out."
And soon Desmond was plugged back into the Animus, the white loading screen appearing only briefly before he spawned in Monteriggioni.
"Where to?" he asked up to the sky, looking around and startling to see Monteriggioni looking freaking gorgeous.
"Venice," Rebecca said. "You'd have to travel a lot of country for that, let me see if I can respawn you."
Desmond didn't have time to really examine Ezio's home, the white loading room had returned, and he suddenly wished he'd spent more time in Monteriggioni. The nostalgia there... could he trigger the memory of Ezio's arrival after so many years in Venice? What would his face look like? Desmond tried to hold the picture of the villa in his mind, but it slipped away as he heard the lapping of water.
He was on the Rialto Bridge, the massive wooden construction with buildings on it, and he knew immediately he was in the construct and not in a memory; the air wasn't thick with humidity, and the rotten smell of the water was greatly reduced, as was the sense of saturation everywhere. Desmond looked up expectantly, waiting for someone to tell him where his first glyph of the day was.
"Before you even ask, you're standing on it: Rialto Bridge."
And so Desmond spent the next two hours searching every nook and cranny of the bridge, every building, every stall, every stand, until a weird schmuck in a cape shoved him over the edge and into the water before running away, "Keep away filth! Assassino, help!"
"Who that hell was that guy?" Desmond demanded, sputtering as he tried to float his way to the support beams of the bridge.
"Borgia courier."
Like that explained anything... Still coughing and cursing, Desmond started to lift himself up (and good God he was finally able to swim! Hallelujah!) before he spied a distinct glow underneath the shade of the bridge. Holding his breath in disgust, he swam through the filthy water and made his way to it, activating his Eagle Vision and finding some kind of spider design. The Animus scanned it quickly, and he saw the title, "I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds" flash before displaying a locked file. Photos displayed before him, with another rotary lock. He studied the pictures, a face of a man he didn't know, what looked like an oil tower, some kind of industry, or a factory. Corporate mal-intentions, again? Desmond decided he shouldn't be surprised. It took a minute to figure out the lock and the symbols, but when he did the file opened:
Abstergo Corporation
SUBJECT: Test Authorization
"There comes a time in the life of every experiment when we must test our results outside, in the world. I do not relish a successful outcome, but one is essential if we are to begin the foundations of a new world order.
"Global security and prosperity depend on a steady hand guiding the populace, a hand that will not falter under the weight of a conscience. Give O. the authorization.
"I believe history will vindicate us, in the end."
"Still no help, Sixteen," Desmond muttered, finding a button behind the letter and pressing it.
The he watched a video clip of a nuclear mushroom.
"Whoa..."
"I suppose that should surprise no one," Shaun muttered. "If they engineered World War II like Sixteen suggests, that includes nuclear testing."
Back in the water, Desmond had to work quickly to keep himself from drowning, and shakily got to his feet.
"N-next?" he asked.
"San Giacomo di Rialto," Rebecca answered.
Short walk. Desmond went to the nearby church, climbing its roofs until he found the glyph and scanned it, reading the title of Apollo as he heard the distorted voice of Sixteen:
"Something was up there. Something abandoned long ago."
And the latest puzzle opened with a color photo of the earth, the moon in the distance, zooming in slowly before it faded to a closer photo of the curve of the moon. Find the eagle, the caption said, and Desmond slowly made his way through the picture before finding, of course, the "eagle", as in the famous quote, "The Eagle has landed," the Lunar-Lander. The photo zoomed in to the contraption, and a wheel lock of a kind was opened up, with a quote underneath:
"With these formidable weapons, the adversaries of freedom plan to consolidate their territory, to exploit, to control, and finally to destroy. - JFK"
"Does that mean anything?" Desmond asked as he fiddled with the wheel lock. "I mean, JFK was killed by the Templars, but what does that, the nukes, and the moon have to do with each other?"
Before anyone could answer, the puzzle unlocked, revealing another photo, this time of an astronaut on the moon, a plain white flag by his side and the Lunar-Lander behind him. The caption read: Apollo 11 photograph released to the public. Frowning, Desmond scanned the picture slowly before he realized the flag had Templar crosses interwoven in the fabric, and in its shadow was...
An Apple.
"With Jack deep under ground," Sixteen said, despondent, "it was easy."
ID: Piece of Eden 5 - Apple.
"God, another one?" Desmond said, Venice spawning around him. "And the Templars just shot up to space to take it, how'd they even know it was up there? Or did they plant it there for safekeeping?"
"I'm sorry, Desmond. I don't know."
He sighed. "Where to next?"
"Thieves Guild," Rebecca said. "Not the palazzo, the one by the docks."
And Desmond stomped his feet as he made his way west, following a well traveled road that Ezio took many, many times, seeing several afterimages of his ancestor before reaching the secluded docks and the ruined building that used to be the home of Antonio de Magianis. The glyph was on the roofs, three triangles, perhaps pyramids, glowing before Desmond scanned them.
Sixteen seemed talkative for these puzzles, because he once more heard the distorted voice.
"The end," he said. "Almost the end." Desmond could hear soft, slightly labored breathing, and then a confused thought: "It happened before... The Pieces were once part of a whole." The Fourth Day title appeared, and a series of pictures were shown to choose from. The clue read: Once worshipped, now ignored, from a distance it watches and waits.
"So. Not. Helpful." Desmond muttered. "Suggestions?"
"Most of these pictures are references to older, polytheistic religions. I see Roman gods, Buddha, Aztec... rather diverse, actually."
"But what do they have in common?"
"We were just in space," Rebecca said. "Would that make any difference?"
That sparked a debate between her and Shaun, but Desmond would take help when he could get it and studied the pictures, picking ones that vaguely looked like they had some connection to the sun. It worked, it seemed, because a circle in a circle appeared, some symbol that meant nothing to Desmond, and the pictures fell away to a picture of the sun, close up, red, and fiery. Desmond scanned it carefully because of its glow, finding bits of sentences and quotes.
They died in the fire from the heavens.
Near the day of our purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky. -Hopi-
Toba 75 ka was not a volcano.
A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky which could burn the land and boil the oceans. -Hopi-
"And now we're talking about the Hopi? And what's Toba seventy-five?"
"... Do you think he means Lake Toba?" Rebecca asked.
"Lake Toba?"
"Yeah, in Indonesia. Great mountains there, I wanted to climb some of them. Lake Toba, there was this epic level eight volcanic eruption there, like sixty-five thousand years ago or something."
"So?"
"So, I remember when I was in school and looking up mountains to climb and stuff, some scientists said that the super-eruption created atmospheric cooling, and caused one of the last glacial periods of the earth. They also said that the volcanic winter probably caused this enormous population fallout. See, everything in a several thousand mile radius was covered in like fifteen centimeters of ash, lots of food and crop probably died, and the human population, or our very distant relatives, nearly died out with them."
"Wait," Lucy interrupted. "You're talking about the genetic bottleneck theory."
"The what?"
"Genetic bottleneck theory. Abstergo flagged them a few years ago and refuted it. The theory suggested only three thousand people survived the Toba super-eruption. And it has been genetically proven that homo sapiens came from a very small genetic stock. Warren did a lot of research on it when he was creating the Animus."
"... And Sixteen is saying it wasn't a volcanic eruption?"
"Then what the bloody hell was it?" Shaun demanded, impatient.
Desmond stared at the picture of the sun, wondering what this was all leading to.
ID: Earth
He gasped as he respawned on the rooftops of Venice, and rubbed his head. "This is turning into one giant fucking headache," he muttered. He felt much like he had before when he first learned about the Pieces of Eden, when Vidic rambled about Those Who Came Before. There were only so many steps outside of established reality his mind was willing to go beyond, and he mentally shut down. Rebecca told him to go down to San Marco, specifically to the Torre dell'Orologio, and he numbly followed, bumping his way through mindless constructs and climbing the impressive clock tower, admiring the Venetian lion only for a little bit before ascending to the roof and finding an innocuous Venn diagram. He scanned it with his Eagle Vision and hoped Sixteen was done warping his brain.
Alas, Sixteen was still feeling chatty.
"They were mostly heroes," he was saying, disjointed and distorted. Desmond had no idea what he was talking about. "But see, how the lineage was disrupted. The web of history traps the good, and the evil take what's not theirs!" Brothers appeared as the title of the glyph, and Desmond slowly unlocked a series of paintings. Each painting depicted two men fighting each other, and as Desmond unlocked them, whatever one or both were reaching for revealed itself to be an Apple; and each paired with a quote.
And Satan said unto Cain, Swear unto me by thy throat, and if thou tell it, thou shalt die.
And all these things were done in secret.
And Cain said, Truly, I am Mahan, Master of the great secret.
Wherefore Cain was called Master Mahan, and he gloried in his wickedness.
"Behold, the mark of Cain!" Sixteen shouted.
"Riiiiiight," Desmond muttered, returning to Venice. "Because playing with human evolution isn't random enough, now we're going back to the Bible. What is he getting at here?" he asked.
"I'm sure it will make sense when we reach the last glyph," Rebecca offered.
"Because we've seen a lot of evidence of that, haven't we?" Shaun muttered.
"Regardless, we still have to move forward," Lucy said. "We can't go to the next memory until we've scanned all the glyphs. Next one's in... Campanile di San Marco, near where you are, Desmond."
And Desmond looked at the tall tower, and hopped over a rail and began making his way there.
The climb wasn't that easy, as the handholds were all broken brick that blended easily in with all the other bricks of the campanile and Desmond took his time climbing to make sure he had his hand holds. This was also a test of seeing how well he'd learned Rosa's leaping technique through Ezio as he hadn't really used it yet. Thankfully he didn't fall all the way down to the piazza, and Ezio's muscle memory of the jump and grab were still with Desmond, even if he needed to refine it to his own body.
Once atop, he stared at the pentagram in a circle and scanned it with his Eagle Vision.
Guardians appeared in the black screen and a scrambled picture showed up. Desmond spun the rings around until it created the image of a man dead in another's arms with the Assassin symbol next to them.
The death of all tyrants will set the people free.
A map of the world came up and with his Assassin cursor; Desmond selected all the spots, reading out the list of names. "Francisco Pizarro; Francois Duvalier; John Wilkes Booth, at least I recognize that name; Tomas de Torquemada; Mary the First of England; Cleopatra, another name I recognize; Joseph Stalin, we went over him with World War II; and Rasputin."
Desmond returned to the campanile and looked out to the sky. "So all of those guys were killed by Assassins?"
"Rather safe assumption there," Shaun replied.
"But Booth killed President Lincoln? Assassinated him. Would that..." Desmond trailed off, Ezio's memories of the Spaniard killing his family and killing Jacopo de' Pazzi filtering up. The Templars could assassinate as well. It wasn't just Assassins, though they bore the proper name. "So who are all these people?"
"Right," Shaun grumbled. "A quick rundown for our uneducated Baby Assassin. Marquees Francisco Pizzaro Gonzales was a Spanish conquistador born around the time Ezio started down his journey to become an Assassin, who conquered the Incan empire of South America, though he took three tries to do it. Eventually founding the city of Lima he was a wealthy governor when, on June 26, 1541, armed supporters of the Almagro family stormed in and assassinated him, effectively being responsible for young Almagro becoming the new governor."
"And of course Western conquerors were always so good to the people," Desmond muttered, his time with the History Channel reminding him that the Incans hadn't gone down without a fight and that this Pizzaro was likely quite the little dictator. Plus, if Assassins really killed him, he was probably a Templar as well.
"Then we move on to Francois Duvalier," Shaun continued, "President of Haiti from 1957 till his death in 1971, it looks like he might have rigged the election in his favor as he was completely trouncing his largest opponent and the only other candidate was conveniently exiled, though I don't have proof of that. Let's see, that's interesting, he was supported initially by the military and then he made them a powerbase, and would you look at that, he liked to repress any who opposed him, what a surprise. Political murder, expulsion, he created such a significant brain drain from his repression and restrictions on the country that theorists don't think Haiti's been able to regroup from it since. He claimed he was the physical representation of the country and had a little cult following. Pleasant guy."
"I can see why the Assassin's would want to take him out," Rebecca said.
"You think?" Desmond muttered.
"And for our American members of the team, we get to John Wilkes Booth, famous assassin of dear old Abe Lincoln. Of course, history doesn't get into his plot to kidnap Lincoln before the assassination, but I'm just going to assume you Americans know the story. Lincoln went to relax at a theatre with his wife. Lincoln was shot. Booth got away. Booth was hunted down and killed."
"By Assassins."
"So it seems," Shaun said. "You know, this would be much easier, if you paid attention in whatever classes you had. You'd know this already."
"Whatever," Desmond groused. "You think we kept records of anything? Records that could be stolen or found? No, it was all destroyed or if it was kept, it was easily destroyed in case of some random phantom coming in to kill us. There weren't history classes, it was all phys ed, all day, every day."
There was a moment of silence.
"Next guy?" Desmond didn't want to talk about his childhood. The generators, the fields, the training. The only real classes were those of strategy. Learning to play chess or go, learning to think ahead. Classes on hacking computers, how to stay invisible. There was no history for Assassins, because Assassin's didn't exist.
"Tomas de Torquemada, a Spanish Dominican friar, he was best known for his fanatical following of Rodrigo Borgia and being the first Grand Inquisitor for the Spanish Inquisition that began in 1483. He eventually died in a monastery in September 1498. Interestingly, his tomb was ransacked and bones burned to ashes."
"Again, seems like a no-brainer for the Assassin's to kill him."
"And that brings us to dear old Mary I of England, also known as, drum roll please-" Rebecca provided said drum roll, "Bloody Mary. Queen of England and Ireland from 1553 till 1558. In her short five-year reign, she had nearly three hundred Protestants put to death so that Catholicism was in place for the country again. She died of influenza and possibly ovarian cancer. Now, do you really want me to get into the Tudors?"
"Not unless you're putting on the show from the BBC," Rebecca replied lightly.
"Work? Please?" Lucy interrupted.
"Alright, alright!" Shaun groused. "Cleopatra, the last effective pharaoh of Egypt, she married her brothers, made a son with Caesar, had twins with Mark Anthony, and presented herself as the Egyptian god Isis, reincarnated. She was a heavy hitter of her time, solidifying power by sleeping with either Caesar to solidify her rule or Mark Anthony after Caesar's assassination. After losing in battle to Caesar's successor, Mark Anthony committed suicide and Cleopatra, as per tradition, did so was well via the poisonous asp."
"Except," Desmond interjected, "we know from the Sanctuary under Monteriggioni that Amunet assassinated her."
"Right," Shaun continued. "Next is Stalin, part of that lovely little conspiracy with dear old Churchill, Roosevelt and Hitler, and then went to do Great Purges of his citizenry to ensure a one-party system. We'll ignore Cold War politics, there's a damned good reason I don't study recent history. However, it's interesting to note that Stalin, according to a 2003 joint Russian-American study showed Stalin had ingested warfarin, rat poison, that made him susceptible to the stroke he suffered that paralyzed the right half of his body and lead to his death days later. Who ordered or carried it out are up to debate. And that brings us to Rasputin."
"And he's placed over Tunguska, conveniently," Rebecca added, addressing the map.
"Right. Well this guy was a mystic and faith-healer, and was made famous for it by supposedly healing Czar Nikolas II's son, Alexei, gaining him access and trust to the royal family. Known at the time to be controversial, including rumors of him raping a nun and domination of the royal family. Depends on whose memoirs you're reading. The first assassination attempt was in 1914, by a former hooker who split open his guts and watched his intestines fall out. Surprisingly he survived till December of 1916 when he was finally killed via, and get this list: poison, shot four times, badly beaten, and drowned. All sorts of stories about how he died, but his remains were eventually burned to ash in the woods a few months later and even that has legends of Rasputin getting up in the fire."
Desmond frowned. "And his picture is over Tunguska?"
"Yeah," Rebecca said. "Kinda makes you wonder, doesn't it?"
"Indeed," Shaun replied.
"Wondering won't help now, though," Lucy interrupted. "Our next glyph is at San Pietro di Castello."
"Gotcha," Desmond said, getting out to climb down the tower. "On my way."
That had been quite the information dump and each piece seemed to be just the tip of the iceberg. Maybe, after they were done, Desmond might start digging through some history sites online. It might help piece together some of what Subject Sixteen was trying to say.
For now, however, he was entering the military district of L'Arsenale, and making his way along the southern edge to reach the church. He switched to Eagle Vision and walked around the church, looking for where the glow of the glyph might be, before he found it along the eastern side and started to climb. It was a Mandelbrot Set and Desmond watched the black miasma engulf him and waited for the title.
But the title didn't come.
Subject Sixteen was talking, his voice off-kilter. Not staticy, but echoing and sounding distinctly unhinged.
"I don't know what's happening to me! I've been in the machine, they keep putting me back in," Sixteen sobbed. "And I am losing control. It's all blurring together." Sixteen paused and Desmond just couldn't help but feel pity. And pray he didn't end up like this.
"I'm holding a rifle," Sixteen continued, still sounding like he was trying not to sob. "Gettysburg is in the distance... I just stabbed a man!" Sixteen wailed, "and there's blood on my waistcoat!" Sixteen gave a small series of gaspy sobs before saying in a calmer voice, "I'm at the opera, the soprano is so beautiful," he said lovingly through his hitched breath. "I'm in bed with her," his tone went darker, "she cries as I fuck her. I'm speaking at the Forum, no one listens!"
Sixteen's voice turned tentative, "I'm in the forest, hunting. The moon..." Sixteen said in awe. "I can see the moon..." he whispered.
Desmond ignored the pity in his chest, waiting for Sixteen to finish what he had to say.
"I'm here. I have to stay here until you understand!" There was desperation in Sixteen's voice. "Listen, why do we have these gifts? These abilities? Because! It's in our blood!"
At last, the title appeared, Bloodlines, and Desmond just let out a sorrowful sigh. "You can't help but feel for the guy," he said quietly.
The seeds were planted as the two worlds became one. Behold, the Assassins, the children of two worlds!
Desmond looked at the set of pictures before him, wondering what was the common theme he was looking for. Shaun was already spouting off about each picture, but Desmond wasn't thinking of who had painted what and when. The words about becoming one stuck with him, and he noticed that two of them had very, very clear sexual references with otherworldly beings, and one of the titles talked about a rape of some kind. So Desmond selected them and started looking through the titles, seeing if any of the other paintings had to do with a god and some normal person becoming "one". Once the he'd selected his pictures, the pass code was found.
From there he worked his way north, via Rebecca's directions to the Scuola Grande di San Marco, finding Nasca lines of a bird along the roofline. Sixteen remained calm this time, and sullen.
"It's getting harder. All the pain across time... it hurts too much. She sees me raise the knife... Only a little bit longer now."
Synapses appeared along with another wheel lock and the pictures needed to find the combination. Sixteen whispered in Desmond's ear, "In the beginning. Genesis... Genesis..."
"And we're back to the Bible," he muttered, lining up the wheel lock.
"Alright, this is a hard one, this is a hard one..." Shaun said, "It's fine. Those numbers on the screen, they got to be there for a reason. I don't know if this helps, but I know the symbols on the wheel, they're Sumerian numerals. Those tree shapes-"
"You mean the martini glasses?"
"The tree shapes, represent ones. And the sideways Vs are tens. Maybe the numbers and the Sumerian numerals connect somehow."
"Yeah, but how is the question."
So looking at the Sumerian numbers, Desmond did some mental math to translate them to the number system he was more familiar with. One, three, nine, eleven, twelve, was there any rhyme or reason to this combo? But Desmond's eyes kept drifting to the set of numbers at the side of the screen, 1 + 2 + 6 + 2 + 1 + 5 + 3 + 5 + 6 + 4. He stared at it, something was there, he just wasn't sure what. Lucy, Rebecca, and Shaun were all debating what the possible code could be, discussing numerical theories Desmond had never heard of, but he doubted it was that complicated.
Hmmmmm, 1 + 2 was 3.
Three and six was nine.
Wait a minute...
Nine plus two was eleven!
"Got it!" The next number was eleven and one, which was twelve, so the blank was twelve and add five which was seventeen, and in Sumerian... Desmond worked his way around the wheel, figuring out what the blanks were and inputting the combination. The file unlocked and Sixteen spoke out, frustrated.
"The Organization wanted the pieces. They'd tasted their power. But what were the pieces? Why did they work so well? It's as if our minds were made for them. Manufactured to obey."
A magazine article came up.
Biological Frontier
ISSUE 1, JANUARY, 2012
"The scientific community is abuzz as the results of a new neurological study were made public today. What seemed to be big news in itself - that Dr. Yijie Wu and Dr. P. J. Traunero had discovered a new neurotransmitter - turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg.
"To quote Dr. Wu, 'Using a prototype dMRI machine, we've been able to examine the contents of an actual neuron in living tissue. We've found a substance that appears to be an undiscovered neurotransmitter.
" '(Here's) where it gets crazy. To test our findings, we subjected the neuron to all kinds of stimuli, but we couldn't get it to release the transmitter. So, we've discovered an entire mechanism: these are vesicles filled with neurotransmitter lying dormant and corresponding on channels, all for no discernable purpose.'
"Expressing bafflement that natural selection would create an unnecessary neurotransmitter, Wu and Traunero searched for a predecessor in other species, with no luck.
" 'Whatever this bugger is used for, it evolved in humans,' Traunero told the press."
"Wait a second, is Sixteen saying that there's some sort of neurotransmitter in all of our brains, that... what? Is designed to make us obey the Pieces of Eden?"
"I remember reading the article," Lucy said quietly. "Vidic saw it and just laughed."
Desmond frowned, remembering the bastard talking about Those Who Came Before. If the people before man were "gods" and Assassins were descendents of both gods and humans... what? Did that explain the Eagle Vision? And if the various Pieces of Eden were designed to affect that dormant neurotransmitter, then were humans engineered to obey them? But that didn't make sense. None of this made sense, not without more information. Where the hell was Sixteen getting all this information? Sure he made a good case, but this was all circumstantial at best, right?
Still, he headed off to the last glyph. Maybe then he could make sense of what Sixteen was trying to say.
The Origin of the Species
Sixteen spoke again, calm and dejected. "A few still know the truth," he said solemnly. "It's around us in signs, and paintings, faces, documents, but... but we don't see it. See, we are... we are blind to our own creation."
Desmond looked at the scrambled picture, turning the pieces back to where they needed to be. It has been hidden, altered. The picture expanded to reveal more detail. Desmond scanned it, noting how the Shroud, Sword, and Staff were all highlighted when he moved his cursor over them. But the eye looking down on all, that revealed da Vinci's man in a circle and a square, and when he highlighted it, a new combination lock came up.
"I can't do it!" Sixteen shouted. "Can I do it? Will it set me free from this endless ring of time?" Sixteen grunted. "I feel the guillotine cut my throat, the bullet hit my chest, the water fill my lungs. The blood spills out thick and red. It's time to get out."
The screen was filled with numbers all sorts of different set numbers, which was worth shit given that the wheel lock was blanked out completely.
"What the hell?" Shaun demanded. "What are we supposed to do with that!"
Desmond started fingering through the possible answers, looking at all the symbols he'd had to look at in Eagle Vision to even unlock the puzzle, the butterfly wings, the Nasca lines, etc.
"We don't even have a reference!" Rebecca grumbled loudly. "What are we supposed to look up and compare?"
"Maybe it's about the previous glyphs," Lucy thought out loud. "Let's take a look at those."
But Desmond ignored, them, looking down at a small faded line that was so very familiar.
"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."
Desmond looked at the blank wheel and decided, what the hell. He put in random symbols and input it.
The file unlocked.
"Nicely done, Desmond," Lucy complimented him.
The file was another Abstergo file.
Abstergo Corporation
January 3, 1997
"I'm writing in response to your concerns about the rising alarm in the press and the scientific community. The lack of a transitional ancestor from archaic hominids to modern kind (homo sapiens) is no longer safe. As you wrote, we have to act.
"We can't let the truth get out, they'll find out about the artifacts. It will cause too much disruption, to much chaos. Bury our constructed skeletons near Tim White's expedition in Ethopia. We'll give them their missing link.
"The birth of humanity. The truth makes me sick."
"They faked the connection to modern man?" Rebecca was appalled.
But a non-human skeleton was in front of Desmond, and with a Piece of Eden curser, he selected them, making the human skeleton.
Sixteen whispered, "Ah, the moon. I can see the stars... My mind is gone. Lucy, I can't wait any longer. I'm ready to go." There was a small pause and Desmond heard Lucy sniffle, before Sixteen's last words rambled in another of his hallucinations. "She sees me raise the knife..."
The last video clip unlocked and Desmond opened his eyes to see the ceiling of the loft.
"Rebecca?" he asked, wondering why he'd been pulled out.
"The little video files are starting to stitch together. Who knows how long it'll take," she sighed. "Besides, I'm starving. Lunch sounds good. We won't be able to do anything in my Baby until the file's done restructuring itself. It's really eating up all my processor speed."
Desmond shrugged. "Guess we have the afternoon off then."
"Maybe you do," Shaun grunted across the room, "but the rest of us have duties that don't revolve around you."
Desmond ignored him and headed to their kitchenette. If they were all going to be busy, he could at least cook them a decent lunch.
He dug around the cabinets and pulled out various ingredients and started cooking. Slowly, the others started to filter in from the smells of the food he was making and they all settled down to eat a hearty lunch.
"I don't know how Sixteen did it," Rebecca said, "but watching those fragments join one another is damn beautiful. Wonder where he learned to code like that?"
Lucy shook her head. "I don't know. But I don't know how much is what he knew before and how much had to do with what he was seeing in the Animus. Towards the end, as you heard, he was..."
"Unhinged?" Desmond offered. "He was clearly holding on with everything he could."
"But at what cost to himself," Shaun asked, sipping his tea. "A cycle of pain seemed to be all he was aware of, like all his ancestors suffered, never had a happy moment, and that was all he could live through."
Desmond shook his head. "Clearly part of his ancestry was Ezio, and I'll be the first to say Ezio has a shitty life, but he does have happy moments."
Like joining the Brotherhood in Venice.
"Face it," Shaun grumbled, "life is easier to focus on pain and bad things than happy moments."
"Well aren't you the optimist," Rebecca scoffed with a smile.
After lunch Desmond spent the afternoon running in the warehouse, pushing himself as much as he could. He could feel the agility and the instincts of Ezio as he ran around the beams high above the floor, but he still didn't have the muscle for what he always wanted to do, so he focused on endurance. Pushing himself as much as he could for as long as he could. The information dump of all those glyphs filtered in the back of his mind, but there weren't enough pieces to really know anything for sure.
In a way, he wished Shaun's assumption had been correct, that there had been some sort of history class on how to be an Assassin. A look at how far they'd gotten and what was lost over the years. But since Assassin's weren't supposed to exist, they never kept records. Not in the usual sense. The various compounds were spread out and didn't have the best communication with one another, not when Desmond had been growing up. Things might be different now with the internet, which had been it its infancy (particularly compared to today) when Desmond had last been... home.
Desmond leapt from the catwalk down to the crates and then down to the floor, tucking and rolling, and completely out of breath. Now that his muscles were burning, it was time for a shower. Finally feeling clean and in a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, he returned to the kitchenette to cook dinner.
Dinner seemed more of a work-while-eating, as the others came in, grateful for a meal, but taking their plates and returning to the loft to continue whatever they'd been working on.
Desmond joined them, sitting on the orange recliner of the Animus with his plate balanced on his lap. Rebecca was at a separate computer from her Baby, working by the servers and mumbling to herself about .mpgs versus .mp4 versus .avi or some such computer lingo on videos that Desmond couldn't follow. Shaun was buried in his books, taking copious notes, by hand no less, before turning to his computer for something or other, and Lucy was just at her station, sipping her coffee and reading files.
"Scintillating conversation," Desmond mumbled.
Lucy actually looked up and offered him a smile. "Sorry, Desmond. It's easy to get sucked into work. You must be bored."
Desmond sighed. "Don't worry, I'll find a way to keep myself busy."
Which he did. By starting to read through Shaun's books.
"What the heck?!" Shaun growled. "Get out of my things!"
Desmond could only shrug. "Sixteen left a lot of pieces but no true evidence. I thought I'd look a few things up."
"In my books?"
"It's not like there's a computer for me to look online at. Besides, it keeps me busy and out of everyone's hair."
Shaun scoffed. "No it doesn't, it puts you in my hair! Go back to being the jock downstairs!"
Desmond merely chuckled. "Nope."
"Argh, look, just put them back where you found them, I have an order to my books and by God! Don't just put your dirty hands all over the pages! Do you have any idea how old those books are?"
"Old," was Desmond's reply, flipping through one particular text and reading the ancient Latin and the Italian translations. "And their translations are off."
That caused silence around the room.
Lucy stood up. "How do you know their translations are off?"
Desmond paused, realizing what that meant. Because he didn't know Latin or Italian. Or rather, he wasn't supposed to. He just sat there, reeling at the changes in him that he hadn't even noticed, before frowning.
"... I'm going to bed," he said at last.
Going to sleep wasn't easy as he could still hear everyone in the loft, but they stayed at a whisper level for him. Eventually, he drowned it all out and got some sleep, but it didn't seem to last long before Rebecca was shaking his shoulder, swearing a storm under her breath.
"Come on, Desmond, wake up!'
"What..." he grumbled.
Rebecca actually tugged at his arm. "Up!" she grunted.
"Geez, I'm up, I'm up, what is it?"
"Just get up." Rebecca was almost bouncing in pent up energy. "God, gotta get the others up."
"Rebecca," Desmond grabbed her wrist before she bounded out to wake everyone else, "what is it?"
The technician took a deep breath. "Sixteen's file is complete."
"And?"
Rebecca sighed. "You have to see it."
Desmond nodded. "Should I make coffee?"
To that, Rebecca gave a soft smile. "Nope, the file will wake them up, no doubt about that."
"Okay."
Rebecca disappeared and Desmond took a moment to yawn and stretch. It was still dark out, and he guessed it had to be somewhere around four in the morning.
Lucy came in first, yawning, hair disheveled, in a tank top and pajama pants, and slumped onto the couch and rubbing her eyes.
"Hey," Desmond said quietly, sitting next to her.
"Hey," she said back, "did Rebecca even go to bed yet?"
"Don't know," Desmond replied. "She's still dressed, I don't think so."
"Ergh," Lucy grunted, seeming to come awake quickly. "Wonder what has her so disturbed..."
"That file of Sixteen's."
Lucy stilled. "Oh."
Desmond put his arm around her and gave a small squeeze.
Rebecca came in and was bustling around the Animus, checking wires and getting a flash drive to attach to their huge-screen TV when Shaun came in, hair all over the place and looking very much like an English gentleman in full pajama's and robe. Shaun only grunted as he sat in the overstuffed chair and slouched.
Rebecca finished setting up everything and turned to her sleepy audience.
"Okay, Sixteen's file finished recompiling and... well..." she hesitated. "See for yourself."
SUBJECT SIXTEEN SESSION 12 DATE [CLASSIFIED] B. C. E.
A man and woman were running. That much would have been dull except for everything about it. They looked naked at first glance, but as lighting changed from shadows to sun dappled to sunny, it was clear they were wearing some sort of... plastic? with faintly glowing lines in a pattern that reminded Desmond of the lines on the Apple. The setting was some sort of futuristic curves of glass stone and trees leading to a skyscraper. They ran in through a circular door glancing back, and Desmond noted that the woman had some sort of red armband. Once inside whatever that building was, they hopped up ledges and catwalks with skill that Ezio would be jealous of before breaking a window and starting their climb outside.
There was a flash into one of the windows they jumped by, showing a Piece of Eden glowing while other men in the same plastic clothes with glowing lines were constructing something before returning to the climbing man and woman, who had ascended to the top of the skyscraper. They were atop some sort of city with a massive mountain in the distance.
The woman turned back, "Adam," she panted, holding up an Apple, "I have it."
But she glanced back, frightened.
"Eve!" He turned back as well.
And the video glitched out.
They all sat there in silence.
"So," Rebecca said, "I'm not crazy? That was-"
"I think it was," Shaun whispered.
"Damn," was all Desmond could offer. Adam and Eve. From the Bible. That was supposed to be Adam and Eve from the freakin' Bible! He brain threatened to shut down again, unable to handle the radical shifting of reality. Again.
Lucy stood, already pulling her hair back, "We need to send the video in for analysis." Her voice had a tinge of something at the end and Desmond stood as well, lightly touching her arm.
"You okay?"
Lucy gave a sad smile. "He'd be able to explain the whole thing to us," she said, gesturing to the TV. "If only we could ask him..."
"Don't dwell on it," Desmond replied. He turned. "Well I don't know about the rest of you, but I think I'm up for the day."
"Really, oh what a terrible surprise that is," Shaun grumbled.
"Right," Lucy said, stalking back across the loft. "We're all awake and not going back to sleep, we might as well get some work done. Rebecca, send the file and then set up the Animus. Shaun, write up a preliminary analysis and send it with Rebecca's file. Let's get to work."
They all nodded and Desmond grabbed some fresh clothes and went to the bathroom to change. He'd spied a black t-shirt with an eagle design he liked, thinking of his ancestors and his unusual sight, and a white hoodie with a red underlining that just seemed to remind him of Ezio.
Lucy made breakfast, and had an extra strong pot of coffee ready for everyone. Rebecca was told she needed to get some sleep once Desmond was set up, disturbed or not, since she hadn't gotten any yet and she heartily agreed. Shaun just sort of growled at anyone and everyone, clearly not enjoying being up so early.
Desmond got into the Animus and offered another supportive smile to Lucy before leaning back and closing his eyes. Ezio had finally escaped Venice...
Author's Notes: Le Gasp! The Truth!
Er, yeah. This chapter was boring because even with some heavy-handed editing, it's just regurgitating the glyphs and explaining the little historical bits and then finding the truth. We tried. We really did. Some of the tidbits are interesting, to be sure, and Ubisoft certainly did a good job leading the player up to the Truth, but trying to novelize it... Meeeh.
And as if that isn't painful enough. Now we have a Ten year timeskip to wade our way through. More on that later.
Next chapter: Fever dreams. :D
Extra Note: Take the time tonight to hug your family extra tight. Especially those of you who are students. Today's events in our home state (which are all over the news, alas) reminds everyone that the holiday season is the time to be close to family and thankful for having them at all.