((AN: First you let Clay in as a cameo, then before you know it you're scribbling cyphers on napkins.))
Nineteen steps from one end of the room to the other, along the glass wall, from one corner to the plant with thick plastic leaves placed to catch the sun. Seventeen steps to a turn and then back again, never enough to grasp the full significance of the ink eagle staring unblinking from the wide field of white. The paper that rested in his pocket and told him that, whatever he said, Clay was fighting. He was trying to tell him something important.
Desmond paced and found no answers. He ran his eyes over the spines of the books on the shelf and thought of nothing. He took a shower and watched the soapy water run down his arms.
In the kitchen, he unfolded the paper and turned on the burner of the stove. The risk was divided between the possibility of cameras watching him and the danger of holding the paper too close to the fire. In a moment of air that wavered with heat, the blank edges crawled with crabbed brown marks.
Numbers.
Across the top was written, 5 1 16 8 20 1 5 9 20 3 4 2 2 10 5 9 9
At the left edge: 3 12 9 18 1 20 3 4 20 17 18 9 16
"Shut up." Desmond gnawed on the end of the pen. "It's not my fault this doesn't make any sense. What am I even looking for?"
"Oh good," he heard Shaun say behind them. "You've found someone else to harass with those things."
"Your turn's next," said Clay.
Desmond kept the message in his pocket. He knew he should burn it, but not until he understood the secret. It waited there, folded slender as a stiletto, when Robert came to see him. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him not to gloat, but he knew he wouldn't.
"So Clay's considering your offer," Desmond said, finally. In his head, the phrase was turning traitor.
Robert only nodded solemnly, looking at him. He said, "Are you?"
Desmond looked away.
"I need to see more of it. More of the past." More of you.
Because if the Assassins weren't pure, Desmond was starting to think the Templar wasn't, either. He, like Desmond, was not what he was supposed to be. He could pass the boundaries that kept normal people safe.
In the darkness as the elevator dropped, Desmond thought of five, one, sixteen, eight, twenty.
"The simplest thing is just to give each letter a number. You know, a is one, b is two."
Desmond tried it. "Doesn't work."
"Of course not." Clay sounded insulted. "I wouldn't make it that simple."
"You're such an asshole."
"Keep trying!"
The Animus screen closed over Desmond like a new sky.
In the open square in front of the cathedral, fury clawed him when he thought he was too late to stop the murder. He forgot the name and the purpose and only saw the knives. Ezio saved Lorenzo de Medici. Desmond never knew that a person could have so much blood. His arm was heavy over his shoulder, and Ezio looked over frequently, certain that he was carrying a corpse. He heard the shout of guards and set down his burden to dispatch them. He buried his sword in a guard's stomach and wrenched it free as the man gasped the the eyes beneath his helmet faded from shock to blankness. It was not something he gave thought to anymore. When he picked up Lorenzo the man still breathed. Ezio lead him to safety, weapons at the ready, and felt warm wetness soak through the arm of his robe. Lorenzo lived, and Ezio felt a grim satisfaction as he gained more names.
The white horizon swept away. In the shock of the real world's close walls, Desmond sat up and found himself trembling.
This was something that could happen. You could push metal into someone's body, through the surreal gush of blood, until the damage was too much to handle, and they would die.
"He gets used to it so fast." His voice and his language sounded dissonant and unfamiliar. "Why can't I?"
"You aren't him." Robert's hand was on his shoulder. The weight and reality were frightening. "Enough for today."
Desmond shook his head, though it made the room move more than it should. "Put me back in. I'm not done."
He couldn't read Robert's eyes before the big Templar turned away and gave the techs the command.
First Ezio found another page of the Codex written by Altair, who Desmond had always half-thought was legend or invention, a story like Robin Hood, but here were his words and his doubts. Then, one by one, Ezio sought out the conspirators. Every time an archer shouted at him to get down from a roof, Desmond had to lean away from the urge to obey and toward Ezio's instinct to break the line of sight. From the distance of the present, Robert's voice told him who they had been, their goals and crimes, in words that were almost wry. Francesco de'Pazzi, father to follow son. Bernardo Baroncelli, hiding in the crowds and flinching at shadows until one found him. Stefano de Bagnone, torturer for the Templars, who Ezio followed as he spoke of the madness of faith, and who died with the comfort that he would then know if he was right. Francesco Salviati, who fought beside his soldiers. Antonio Maffei, shouting of demons, maddened by fear. Jacopo de'Pazzi, betrayed, and in the carnage of the attack that followed Ezio found an instant to end his suffering. As he ended the lives of each, his hatred morphed to something else. A cool, unyielding determination that shared flavors with the lingering grief and loss.
When Desmond came out Robert told him it had been hours, and nothing he said could get him back in again.
"I'll give you a hint. See, another kind of cypher is you take the alphabet and the corresponding numbers, right, and you put a code word in front, and take out the doubled letters. Say you have...OSTRICH, or something. Then O is one, S is two, and then A, B, D are eight, nine, ten."
"'Ostrich?'"
"Quiet Becca, I'm trying to teach him something."
"You'll need all the quiet in the world for that."
"You too, Shaun."
"How about you all shut up?" Desmond said as his pencil scratched around the numbers on the sheet.
It was better when he was back in what he thought of as his room, cell or not. He didn't like the way the techs stared at him as though he was a foreign and dangerous creature, like a tiger let out of its cage for a walk. The room was quiet, and the murmuring life of Renaissance Italy echoed in his ears. He almost felt as though he could still see it out of the corner of his eye, in the empty spaces.
He itched for the next day to come so he could go back into the Animus. More than the urgency in Clay's eyes when he talked about, more than the draw of a free, mad, bloody world, he wanted to see where Ezio's story took him. He could look it up, but he doubted he'd find much, let alone anything true. The databases and history books were theirs.
Desmond looked out the window, down at the canyons of the city he hadn't been to for weeks, and said, "Has anybody asked why I'm missing?"
"Your family has been told you're safe."
"That easy, huh." Called up politely, and that was that. A few weeks ago Desmond wouldn't have known why that was strange. People in the past world reconstructed by the machine were different. They asked questions. They made demands. "You could've said I was on vacation to Mars. They'd believe anything except the truth. Kidnapped by Templars, the ones who protect us and keep the world moving. The good guys. Is it even physically possible to believe?"
Desmond was pacing again. Ezio's righteous anger was in his blood.
Robert watched him calmly from the couch. "For most people, no."
"Did you see the way they schemed in Ezio's time? Just one city, and they must have been scheming to take it over for years. What's it like to keep the whole world under control and not even have to try?"
Robert intoned, "Boring as shit."
"So what's the code word?"
Clay's eyes lit up in the glow of the Coleman lantern, and he leaned forward. "Five assassinations and one death-"
"It's Rasputin," Shaun called over the edge of his book. Clay glared. "What? I don't want to listen to you being cryptic and him being dense all night."
"Thanks," Desmond said cheerfully, filling in the cypher.
Desmond turned to look at him and try to gauge what game he was playing.
"What you're thinking is right," said Robert, as normally and casually as if they were regular people, not parts of a war that had gone on in the shadows of thousands of years until his side won. "For the peacekeepers, there is nothing as dull as absolute peace. There's no resistance."
"Except us."
Robert inclined his head. "Except you."
"That's it." Desmond's wrist performed a twisting flick by his side. The realization was a relief, because it was good and right to be able to hate him. Venom poured into his voice, that anger that had never made sense in the real world until he'd found out what he was. "That's why you let us exist. It's a game and you need somebody to play against. But it's too easy to wipe us out, so you're keeping us alive to make us converts, for the fucking challenge. If you get us, are we trophies? Do you keep score?"
"There's more to it than that," said Robert, and there was a solemn intensity to his face that made Desmond afraid.
Robert took a device out of his pocket and touched a button. Desmond said, "What are you doing?"
"Turning the cameras off."
Desmond stared incredulously at the decrypted message.
"YOU SUCK AT THESE?"
Balling up the paper and flinging it at Clay only made him cackle harder.
"We need you."
Desmond set a hand on the hilt of a throwing knife that wasn't there. The sinking sun stole every color but burnt umber. "For what?"
Robert clasped his hands between his knees. He looked- what? Tired? Honest? "You've guessed that the means of control can't be directed. It is everyone or no one. People who are naturally immune like you and I, like Lucy and your friends, we are rare. One in thousands has the resistance, and that is only the beginning of what we need. Some are complacent and ignore their ability. The ones who try to fight back are those with courage, intelligence, and will. Like you."
His eyes were steady on Desmond.
"A brainwashed lackey is not what we want. We have those, and sheep need shepherds. We aren't asking you to join the conquered, Desmond; we need you to become one of the rulers."
Desmond could say nothing. It was as if the next word he said would shatter whatever frail sanity was left in the world.
He wet dry lips and managed, "You said ruling the world was boring as shit."
For a minute, Robert stared at him. Then there was a low, rumbling laugh.
"It can be, but it has its good points. Think about it," he said before he left.
At any other time Desmond wouldn't be able to do anything but obey, but now what he noticed was that, maybe in a sort of show of good faith, Robert hadn't turned the cameras back on. For safety's sake, still, he sat at an angle to cover the scrap of paper he took from his pocket and unfolded.
He tried the word EAGLE, removing the second E. The output was gibberish. He thought of the Codex, and for an instant the light changed to candles, and the constant faint cool chemical scent to wood and paint, and the silence to Leonardo's murmurs. He tried the word ALTAIR, removing the second A.
He worked more quickly than he ever had in the safety of the warehouse.
Desmond went to the kitchen. He turned on a burner on the stove, touched the edge of the note to the flame, and watched the line of orange advance. He wiped up the ashes and washed them down the sink. The image of the note was sealed in his head.
Across the top was written: R AND S ARE STILL FREE
At the left edge: THE PAST IS OPEN
And the right: ONE MONTH
At the bottom, below the eagle's talons: IF I DONT LEAVE THEN I NEVER WILL
Clear Skies 11/actually 13 or so i guess
Nineteen steps from one end of the room to the other, along the glass wall, from one corner to the plant with thick plastic leaves placed to catch the sun. Seventeen steps to a turn and then back again, never enough to grasp the full significance of the ink eagle staring unblinking from the wide field of white. The paper that rested in his pocket and told him that, whatever he said, Clay was fighting. He was trying to tell him something important.
Desmond paced and found no answers. He ran his eyes over the spines of the books on the shelf and thought of nothing. He took a shower and watched the soapy water run down his arms.
In the kitchen, he unfolded the paper and turned on the burner of the stove. The risk was divided between the possibility of cameras watching him and the danger of holding the paper too close to the fire. In a moment of air that wavered with heat, the blank edges crawled with crabbed brown marks.
Numbers.
Across the top was written,
5 1 16 8 20 1 5 9 20 3 4 2 2 10 5 9 9
At the left edge:
3 12 9 18 1 20 3 4 20 17 18 9 16
And the right:
17 16 9 15 17 16 3 12
At the bottom, below the eagle's talons:
4 10 4 8 17 16 3 2 9 1 22 9 3 12 9 16 4 16 9 22 9 5 23 4 2 2
"You suck at this," Clay said cheerfully.
"Shut up." Desmond gnawed on the end of the pen. "It's not my fault this doesn't make any sense. What am I even looking for?"
"Oh good," he heard Shaun say behind them. "You've found someone else to harass with those things."
"Your turn's next," said Clay.
Desmond kept the message in his pocket. He knew he should burn it, but not until he understood the secret. It waited there, folded slender as a stiletto, when Robert came to see him. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him not to gloat, but he knew he wouldn't.
"So Clay's considering your offer," Desmond said, finally. In his head, the phrase was turning traitor.
Robert only nodded solemnly, looking at him. He said, "Are you?"
Desmond looked away.
"I need to see more of it. More of the past." More of you.
Because if the Assassins weren't pure, Desmond was starting to think the Templar wasn't, either. He, like Desmond, was not what he was supposed to be. He could pass the boundaries that kept normal people safe.
In the darkness as the elevator dropped, Desmond thought of five, one, sixteen, eight, twenty.
"The simplest thing is just to give each letter a number. You know, a is one, b is two."
Desmond tried it. "Doesn't work."
"Of course not." Clay sounded insulted. "I wouldn't make it that simple."
"You're such an asshole."
"Keep trying!"
The Animus screen closed over Desmond like a new sky.
In the open square in front of the cathedral, fury clawed him when he thought he was too late to stop the murder. He forgot the name and the purpose and only saw the knives. Ezio saved Lorenzo de Medici. Desmond never knew that a person could have so much blood. His arm was heavy over his shoulder, and Ezio looked over frequently, certain that he was carrying a corpse. He heard the shout of guards and set down his burden to dispatch them. He buried his sword in a guard's stomach and wrenched it free as the man gasped the the eyes beneath his helmet faded from shock to blankness. It was not something he gave thought to anymore. When he picked up Lorenzo the man still breathed. Ezio lead him to safety, weapons at the ready, and felt warm wetness soak through the arm of his robe. Lorenzo lived, and Ezio felt a grim satisfaction as he gained more names.
The white horizon swept away. In the shock of the real world's close walls, Desmond sat up and found himself trembling.
This was something that could happen. You could push metal into someone's body, through the surreal gush of blood, until the damage was too much to handle, and they would die.
"He gets used to it so fast." His voice and his language sounded dissonant and unfamiliar. "Why can't I?"
"You aren't him." Robert's hand was on his shoulder. The weight and reality were frightening. "Enough for today."
Desmond shook his head, though it made the room move more than it should. "Put me back in. I'm not done."
He couldn't read Robert's eyes before the big Templar turned away and gave the techs the command.
First Ezio found another page of the Codex written by Altair, who Desmond had always half-thought was legend or invention, a story like Robin Hood, but here were his words and his doubts. Then, one by one, Ezio sought out the conspirators. Every time an archer shouted at him to get down from a roof, Desmond had to lean away from the urge to obey and toward Ezio's instinct to break the line of sight. From the distance of the present, Robert's voice told him who they had been, their goals and crimes, in words that were almost wry. Francesco de'Pazzi, father to follow son. Bernardo Baroncelli, hiding in the crowds and flinching at shadows until one found him. Stefano de Bagnone, torturer for the Templars, who Ezio followed as he spoke of the madness of faith, and who died with the comfort that he would then know if he was right. Francesco Salviati, who fought beside his soldiers. Antonio Maffei, shouting of demons, maddened by fear. Jacopo de'Pazzi, betrayed, and in the carnage of the attack that followed Ezio found an instant to end his suffering. As he ended the lives of each, his hatred morphed to something else. A cool, unyielding determination that shared flavors with the lingering grief and loss.
When Desmond came out Robert told him it had been hours, and nothing he said could get him back in again.
"I'll give you a hint. See, another kind of cypher is you take the alphabet and the corresponding numbers, right, and you put a code word in front, and take out the doubled letters. Say you have...OSTRICH, or something. Then O is one, S is two, and then A, B, D are eight, nine, ten."
"'Ostrich?'"
"Quiet Becca, I'm trying to teach him something."
"You'll need all the quiet in the world for that."
"You too, Shaun."
"How about you all shut up?" Desmond said as his pencil scratched around the numbers on the sheet.
It was better when he was back in what he thought of as his room, cell or not. He didn't like the way the techs stared at him as though he was a foreign and dangerous creature, like a tiger let out of its cage for a walk. The room was quiet, and the murmuring life of Renaissance Italy echoed in his ears. He almost felt as though he could still see it out of the corner of his eye, in the empty spaces.
He itched for the next day to come so he could go back into the Animus. More than the urgency in Clay's eyes when he talked about, more than the draw of a free, mad, bloody world, he wanted to see where Ezio's story took him. He could look it up, but he doubted he'd find much, let alone anything true. The databases and history books were theirs.
Desmond looked out the window, down at the canyons of the city he hadn't been to for weeks, and said, "Has anybody asked why I'm missing?"
"Your family has been told you're safe."
"That easy, huh." Called up politely, and that was that. A few weeks ago Desmond wouldn't have known why that was strange. People in the past world reconstructed by the machine were different. They asked questions. They made demands. "You could've said I was on vacation to Mars. They'd believe anything except the truth. Kidnapped by Templars, the ones who protect us and keep the world moving. The good guys. Is it even physically possible to believe?"
Desmond was pacing again. Ezio's righteous anger was in his blood.
Robert watched him calmly from the couch. "For most people, no."
"Did you see the way they schemed in Ezio's time? Just one city, and they must have been scheming to take it over for years. What's it like to keep the whole world under control and not even have to try?"
Robert intoned, "Boring as shit."
"So what's the code word?"
Clay's eyes lit up in the glow of the Coleman lantern, and he leaned forward. "Five assassinations and one death-"
"It's Rasputin," Shaun called over the edge of his book. Clay glared. "What? I don't want to listen to you being cryptic and him being dense all night."
"Thanks," Desmond said cheerfully, filling in the cypher.
Desmond turned to look at him and try to gauge what game he was playing.
"What you're thinking is right," said Robert, as normally and casually as if they were regular people, not parts of a war that had gone on in the shadows of thousands of years until his side won. "For the peacekeepers, there is nothing as dull as absolute peace. There's no resistance."
"Except us."
Robert inclined his head. "Except you."
"That's it." Desmond's wrist performed a twisting flick by his side. The realization was a relief, because it was good and right to be able to hate him. Venom poured into his voice, that anger that had never made sense in the real world until he'd found out what he was. "That's why you let us exist. It's a game and you need somebody to play against. But it's too easy to wipe us out, so you're keeping us alive to make us converts, for the fucking challenge. If you get us, are we trophies? Do you keep score?"
"There's more to it than that," said Robert, and there was a solemn intensity to his face that made Desmond afraid.
Robert took a device out of his pocket and touched a button. Desmond said, "What are you doing?"
"Turning the cameras off."
Desmond stared incredulously at the decrypted message.
"YOU SUCK AT THESE?"
Balling up the paper and flinging it at Clay only made him cackle harder.
"We need you."
Desmond set a hand on the hilt of a throwing knife that wasn't there. The sinking sun stole every color but burnt umber. "For what?"
Robert clasped his hands between his knees. He looked- what? Tired? Honest? "You've guessed that the means of control can't be directed. It is everyone or no one. People who are naturally immune like you and I, like Lucy and your friends, we are rare. One in thousands has the resistance, and that is only the beginning of what we need. Some are complacent and ignore their ability. The ones who try to fight back are those with courage, intelligence, and will. Like you."
His eyes were steady on Desmond.
"A brainwashed lackey is not what we want. We have those, and sheep need shepherds. We aren't asking you to join the conquered, Desmond; we need you to become one of the rulers."
Desmond could say nothing. It was as if the next word he said would shatter whatever frail sanity was left in the world.
He wet dry lips and managed, "You said ruling the world was boring as shit."
For a minute, Robert stared at him. Then there was a low, rumbling laugh.
"It can be, but it has its good points. Think about it," he said before he left.
At any other time Desmond wouldn't be able to do anything but obey, but now what he noticed was that, maybe in a sort of show of good faith, Robert hadn't turned the cameras back on. For safety's sake, still, he sat at an angle to cover the scrap of paper he took from his pocket and unfolded.
He tried the word EAGLE, removing the second E. The output was gibberish. He thought of the Codex, and for an instant the light changed to candles, and the constant faint cool chemical scent to wood and paint, and the silence to Leonardo's murmurs. He tried the word ALTAIR, removing the second A.
He worked more quickly than he ever had in the safety of the warehouse.
Desmond went to the kitchen. He turned on a burner on the stove, touched the edge of the note to the flame, and watched the line of orange advance. He wiped up the ashes and washed them down the sink. The image of the note was sealed in his head.
Across the top was written:
R AND S ARE STILL FREE
At the left edge:
THE PAST IS OPEN
And the right:
ONE MONTH
At the bottom, below the eagle's talons:
IF I DONT LEAVE THEN I NEVER WILL