(( ... Glycoproteins on the surface of the envelope serve to identify and bind to receptor sites on the host's membrane. The viral envelope then fuses with the host's membrane, allowing the capsid and viral genome to enter and infect the host.)) - Wikipedia, Viral Envelope

It was a regular ol' day when everything went to hell.

Or maybe went further to hell, to be honest. After all, Desmond was currently being held captive by some power-mad asshole of a corporation, kept high in their tower-dungeon with enough windows to make himself sick with yearning to be free. He even had some illusion of freedom, sometimes, which just made the whole situation rankle even harder. Allowed to go so far, but only to there, and the rest of the world cut off with impassible locks and maybe guns.

Yeah, it wasn't entirely unlike the Farm, really. It might have grated on his nerves less if Desmond hadn't been free from the compound for a handful of years. He'd gotten a taste of it, even while running and hiding. What idiot thought he'd ever be happy with less than absolute freedom?

So anyway: the regular, relatively normal day when everything went to hell. Lucy had talked Vidic into giving him a break from the Animus, for which Desmond was very thankful. She was pretty concerned about the whole 'Bleeding Effect' thing, and to be honest, so was Desmond. Actually experiencing it was bad enough, overhearing the connotations, what the Bleeding Effect meant, hadn't helped at all.

So wonder of wonders, they hadn't locked him into his room, giving him freedom to move about the main hall of the Animus. See, good behavior paid off. Desmond was relatively polite, amiable, and didn't attack anyone or show much rebellious attitude, and they gave him open access to the hall where he'd be able to wreck all the chilled servers that made the Animus' operation possible!

Not that Desmond had plans to, at the moment. That wouldn't serve any good, logical purpose. But hey, he had the opportunity, now. A first instance would probably lead to further instances.

And then the huge windows of Abstergo's prison-with-a-view shattered inward, almost explosively, in a shower of glass and metal framing.

Desmond hit the deck, covering his head and neck with his arms and thankful for the thick material of his hoodie. It wouldn't stop shrapnel with any force behind it, but it was enough to stop the glass. It almost sounded pretty, the shards hitting the polished floor.

The glass crunched. Desmond peeked.

In the middle of the floor, on glass and covered in glass, was a violently twisting mass of black and red. It looked perfectly awful, slightly stomach churning, something that resembled flesh just enough that the fact that it obviously wasn't seemed even worse somehow. The churning began to tighten into something smaller and vaguely humanoid, bent over on hands and knees.

It took all of three seconds for his initial, mindless revulsion to give way into recognition. And like being recognized had given it power, the twisting mass coalesced into human form; the old, unmistakable face of Alex Mercer that had been painted all over the news: bioterrorist and monster.

Zeus straightened to its full height. Its hooded head turned this way and that, observing the mostly empty room, attention lingering on the Animus and the chilled servers in the corner; Desmond felt remarkably like Frodo, hiding under the roots of the tree while a Nazgûl hunted for the Ring right above his head. Its attention dropped to its shoulder and the broken glass there. Desmond could see its face from this angle, blank, as it dusted the shards off with a bare and human hand.

It suddenly looked up, and Desmond froze. He'd been in the process of lowering his arms, an unconscious move as they had started to ache from hanging there in the air. He felt a lot like a raw steak being dangled in front of a wolf that wasn't sure if it was hungry or not.

Zeus' heavy, inhuman attention slid slowly away, glancing over its shoulder toward the window it had broken in through. It didn't move for a second, but then finally turned back toward the window, glass crunching under its shoes as it headed for the opening.

Desmond's tired arms nearly went rubbery in relief, but his stupid brain felt anything but. It'd been some five years since the initial Outbreak that had utterly destroyed so much of New York; Desmond had been twenty at the time, and still half-mad in love with this whole wide world in front of him; he'd been devouring everything he could get his hands on. Especially this, the Outbreak in New York that couldn't be silenced, even with the efforts of the entire American Military and all it's secret sectors. Hell, something like that especially appealed to Desmond. Here was a real enemy he could understand, not half-stories of old societies and hidden symbols.

An Enemy, he'd thought, but then the Outbreak faded, and there had never been a body, and in five years there had been scattered sightings but never anything concrete - until this moment, crashing into his glass prison.

Zeus took all of three steps before Desmond blurted "wait." And before reason could catch up, his mouth said "take me with you."

Zeus said "what."

It turned back to him, staring at him from under the pale gray hood that covered its head. Its eyes were cold, inhuman, like a glacier a thousand or a million years old given human form (an inevitable and unstoppable force grinding a scar into the earth). Whatever insanity that had seized Desmond didn't flinch under the gaze, desperate and hopeful. Zeus was a monster, but it hadn't killed him, hadn't even seemed all that interested, and maybe -

Desmond didn't think he'd been misunderstood; Zeus had shown human intelligence, for all it's inhumanity otherwise. He wasn't sure what it was doing here, breaking into Abstergo on what appeared to be accident, after five years of inactivity, but there wouldn't be another chance like this. Vidic already made it clear that he was going to be sacrificed to the Animus, lost to the Bleeding Effect and insane or worse (maybe the Animus would glitch and devour him whole, maybe he'd never wake up from Altaïr's memories).

"They're going to kill me," Desmond said, because he didn't have the time to explain it all in detail, and if Abstergo had it their way, he wasn't really lying, either.

A million billion cells of mutant virus cocked its facsimile of a head, its cold regard unflinching (like the one his own ancestor had turned on so many others). It looked away, taking another look at the room, the windows, the glossy floor, the locked doors.

"How do you know I won't," the virus asked, low and rasping and unconcerned as it looked back to Desmond.

"Better you than Abstergo," he said, and maybe he was lying; Zeus was a multicellular shape shifting mutant virus and Vidic and Abstergo were at least human, but it felt like claustrophobia was clawing at his throat and he'd make whatever deal with the devil that he must to escape.

The devil extended its hand, and Desmond got up and took it.

Needless to say, Desmond hadn't really thought this 'escape by way of Zeus' thing through. There was the not insignificant matter of Desmond being a fragile human being. He'd been abstractly aware that they were really high up, in the top of some kind of tower, that there were only a few ways of dealing with that when leaving through a window.

Momentum alone could have easily snapped Desmond's all-too-human neck.

Red and black cables of not-flesh and not-shadow had exploded from Zeus' body the moment Desmond's hand had touched its, and there had been no small amount of screaming as they had engulfed Desmond's body. That accomplished, Zeus had hopped from the window into wide-open air. There was more screaming. Desmond had nearly screamed his throat raw before he realized that he wasn't being killed and Zeus was casually negating his inertia as it leaped up and scaled buildings with no discernible effort.

Even Altaïr's body had strained around Desmond's mind; not struggled, but flexed with effort, no matter how familiar or small.

Desmond had shut his eyes tight after a while, his heart still hammering in his chest, clinging to the neither-warm-nor-cold bands of red and black that caged him in. Every pause Zeus made before changing direction or switching buildings forced a grunt from him, his organs mashing against his lungs, but it was never enough force to give him whiplash.

He still felt bruised all over when they came to a stop and he was nearly ejected from his horrific prison onto the unforgiving scrape of a rooftop. Desmond groaned pathetically, squirming a little bit before he managed to shove himself up onto his hands and knees. He kind of felt a little proud of himself, considering how bad his limbs were shaking, almost rubbery.

"You okay," Zeus asked flatly, the roof scraping under its shoes as it moved around Desmond.

He measured the distance from his mouth to its shoes, but Abstergo hadn't feed him well enough for his body to willingly eject what he had in his stomach. "Peachy," he grunted, trying to catch his breath.

Zeus wandered away from him, an easy, even stroll that was just on the wrong side of predatory. It perched on the ledge, so close to falling that Desmond's stomach clenched in sympathetic fear even though no fall could kill the thing.

He wondered, hysterically, if at some point the virus that made Zeus had been airborne, and wouldn't that have been horrific? If it spread through the air?

Zeus looked back at him. There was nothing curious or human about its face, although it turned back from the ledge and approached him. Desmond's palms and knees scraped on the rooftop, but he managed to keep from scrambling back more than that. "Now," it said, standing over him, "what exactly did I save you from?"

That old tale of A Thousand and One Nights suddenly came back to him, the woman doomed to execution regaling the sultan with stories until he forgot to kill her. Desmond didn't think that would work in this situation, cautiously shifting off his hands and knees until he was sitting. "A fate worse than death," he said, and it felt less like a lie than it had before.

Something almost human flickered across Zeus' expression, something like skepticism. "Something bad enough that I looked like the better option?"

Five years ago, maybe not. But now? "Well, yeah," Desmond said, "obviously."

It made some kind of noise, the sound of Zeus' body shifting. A dry, almost windy noise. Like dry grass or reeds. Its arm and hand a mess of black and red, not-shadow giving way to something more like bone or steel, inhuman structure with no support, no ligaments or muscle. Zeus moved the claw idly, glancing down at it and turning it like it was admiring it. "Really," it said flatly.

"Hey, Edward Scissorhands, calm down," Desmond said, voice cracking; 'claw' wasn't really the word for it, Zeus had just pasted swords onto the end of its arm, and thanks to Altaïr, he had some idea what it felt like to be stabbed. "You're like - still the scariest monster on the face of the earth, promise."

"So, experiments, then," Zeus said. That sound came again, maybe not wind through reeds but something moving through it. Black and red darted out from under the hem of its jeans, shooting across the space between them and snaking around Desmond's feet, winding up his legs. He couldn't hold back his strangled shout of alarm, muscles jerking as he instinctively tried to kick free. "What kind of experiments," Zeus asked, like asking after the weather.

Desmond held up his empty hands, a sign of surrender to something that didn't need it. "The kind only suitable for a handful of people," he said.

Zeus flexed its claw, and whatever they were made of, it sounded like the scrap of metal on metal. "Stop being cute," he said coldly. "I'm not a patient man, and I have faster and much less pleasant ways of getting information when I feel like it."

"You sure know how to sweet talk a guy," Desmond said, because he had a tendency to say stupid things under pressure and the fucking word 'cute' had just come out of the monster's mouth. The not-flesh tendrils around his legs tightened and he made a wordless noise of alarm, then managed "okay, okay, I'm talking! I'm talking."

He took a few deep breaths, trying to figure out where to begin.

"You know that weird table thing you saw, back there in Abstergo?"

"That thing that looked like a torture device? Yes."

"You're not far off. That thing's called an 'Animus'. Dunno why, I'm guessing it has ties back into psychology or Latin or something. That thing can make you relive memories - not your own memories, but dead people's memories. Even almost a thousand years in the past. Hell, maybe even more than that, I don't know. They weren't interested in going so far back."

"Sounds boring," Zeus said, and he sounded bored, too. "Hardly threatening."

"Yeah, you'd think that, except I didn't sign up for that kind of thing. Hell, I didn't sign up for anything at all, those bastards basically kidnapped me off the street."

"That's stupid," it said bluntly. Desmond wasn't prepared for Zeus to bend down, folding its long legs under it and settling across from him, cradling the massive claw in its lap. "Unless they know no one is looking for you?"

"Sort of?" Desmond cringed, making a wishy-washy gesture with his free hand. "I - I have people. A family, I mean. I just - well. Am a runaway."

Something flashed across its face. "Invisible victim," Zeus said knowingly. "Runaways and the homeless disappear all the time. No one cares."

Desmond supposed that was true. He'd certainly been targeted enough, more so when he was younger and his situation easier to suss out. He hadn't had a near brush with other Assassins or Templars until he was older.

He felt a little strange that Zeus was actually actively engaging with him on this, going so far as to sit down when Desmond hardly thought that it could get tired from standing. He'd had other people engage with him like this before, sitting on the other side of his counter and paying for him to share a drink with him. It had made him feel somewhat awful to lie to them, but it wasn't like he could tell them the truth, either.

"Yeah, well, it's not quite that, either," Desmond said reluctantly. "They need me for it. I got stupid and lead them straight to me. I don't really get how it works, but one of my ancestors knew something, had something that they want, and apparently no one else they'd gotten their hands on were able to access his memories."

"I'm guessing that this something isn't just a piece of rare pottery or lost biblical scrolls," Zeus said.

"Yeah, not by a long shot," he said, something going lax in his chest. "I don't really understand what it is, or why they want it. Wasn't really all that necessary to explain it to me, you know? I'm just a - a map, of sorts, for them to find it with."

"Yeah, yeah, woe is you," Zeus said. "Still doesn't explain why you needed to escape with me."

The laugh bubbled out, humorless and sharp. "No? Come on, Zeus," he said, "do you think I liked being trapped in that glass prison, cameras watching my every move? Come on. Do you really think that something like that - the Animus - this thing that reads my DNA and forces me to relive my ancestor's memories wouldn't have side effects? Alex Mercer was some kind of scientist, right? You know how things get. Maps get folded up and marked on and torn all the time."

Zeus said "this sounds like bullshit," but it came out incredibly neutral compared to its previous nearly snappish remarks.

Swallowing the thing in his throat that had made the words so raw and wobble so badly, he said "I know what it sounds like, I hardly believe it myself and this was my life up until a few hours ago!" Then, throwing his arms into the air in a wild gesture, he said "oh, come on. You're a sentient multicellular space-virus! How is my story any less likely?"

"Space-virus," Zeus echoed, squinting at him doubtfully.

"You'd rather hear 'hell-virus'? Face it, Zeus, shit like you should not exist on earth," he said. Then again, something like the Arc or Apple or whatever probably shouldn't either. And probably getting hostile with something like Zeus was a bad idea, because its shoulders tensed in an all-too-human gesture of offense.

"There's shit out there that makes me look angelic in comparison," Zeus said bitingly. The black and red cables wound around Desmond's legs tightened, creeping upwards.

"Oh," Desmond said, just to say something as he flapped his hands about for a distressed moment. He got over himself and grabbed at the not-flesh currently threatening him, trying to halt it's progress or pry it off him. He didn't think he was going to succeed, and was not disappointed. "Okay," he said frantically, "I'm sorry, alright! I take it back, you're only slightly terrifying -"

Zeus stood, sweeping up Desmond with it. He dangled upside down by his feet, swinging as he struggled. "You're not wrong," Zeus said as it moved to the side of the building - and then Desmond was hanging out over empty air, and they could have been a hundred miles in the sky for all it mattered. His stomach felt slightly more agreeable to ejecting its contents over this offense. "So tell me what use I have for you?"

The blood was rushing to Desmond's head, heart pounding and stomach twisting as he stared at Zeus upside down. And for the life of him, he couldn't think of an answer. He had nothing to offer Zeus; wasn't sure anyone would ever have anything to offer Zeus. He felt the not-flesh cables begin to peel back from his legs the way he'd so desperately wanted just seconds ago, and a flush of strength let him curl up and grasp at them frantically. "Come on," he said, plead, high pitched and squeaking. "There hadn't been any substantial Zeus sightings in years, and then today? Whatever that was? And you haven't kill me yet, Zeus - why change your mind? Come on, I'm not a threat to you, I'm on the run, too, coming forward would just get me caught -"

A human shaped hand knotted in the front of his hoodie, knuckles knocking his chin roughly even as the bands of steel around Desmond's legs released. A hoarse, frightened shout forced itself out of his throat as the world jerked upright and the hoodie caught him, seams sawing at his body. He instinctively grabbed at Zeus' wrist, staring down his arm at it.

Holding him aloft with no effort whatsoever, Zeus studied him dispassionately, tilting its head this way and that. Something alien crossed its face, something resembling recognition and contemplation, and then Zeus stepped back, pulling him back onto the roof and releasing him roughly to his feet.

Desmond wobbled wildly, nearly flailed out and touched Zeus to steady himself on his feet before flinching back. It might not have mattered, Zeus was looking off into the distance and didn't appear to remember that he existed for the moment. He could afford to, Desmond thought; even if he was a full fledged Assassin, even if he was Altaïr, he wouldn't have been able to cause any kind of damage to it.

"On the run, huh," Zeus said finally, and looked back at him. "I know someone who can help."

"What," Desmond said, because what.

Zeus had enough of high profile moving, the method it had used to transport Desmond earlier too conspicuous for approaching a safe house. Once it had hauled Desmond down the side of the building into a secluded alleyway, it had taken a slightly more discreet form, an older man with enough features in common with Desmond that it might be mistaken for his father.

Then it had disappeared shortly and returned with a cap and jean jacket and held them out to Desmond.

"Are you kidding me," Desmond said flatly, staring at the articles of clothing. "No way, I'll look like a total tool."

"You can look like a tool or be a tool," Zeus pointed out. "A map, if you want to be specific about it."

Well, the virus had a point, and Desmond had chosen worse disguises in the past after all. He stuck the cap over his head and pulled his hood half-up before shrugged on the jean jacket. "You didn't kill anyone for these, did you?"

Not-its-face gave him a perfectly inhuman stare. "Even if I had, there wouldn't be blood on it," it said.

"Yeah, okay, that's what I was worried about," he said under his breath.

Then there was a lot of walking and public transportation while Desmond became more and more thoroughly creeped out at the amiable act Zeus put up while pretending to be just some old man out wandering the city with his son. If Desmond's actions were stunted and awkward when he was forced to keep up his end of the charade, well, he looked like a tool anyway.

Desmond was a little surprised when they didn't end up on the bad side of town. It wasn't like junkies and muggers were really a big threat to Zeus, after all, so Desmond had naturally figured that would be the best place to go unnoticed. Instead, Zeus took him to a nice neighborhood without much trash on the streets. Hell, Desmond even saw cops on the streets, relaxed but watchful. Their eyes skimmed right over the two of them.

"Are you kidding me," Desmond complained quietly when Zeus strolled up to a fairly nice apartment building and wrapped its hand around the knob. There was a quiet noise of it transforming, and then the door swung open. Desmond almost expected the knob to be mangled when Zeus released it, but it was unmolested.

He shot a sideways stare at Zeus, only to realize that at some point in time, when he hadn't been looking directly at it, Zeus had changed form yet again. His stomach twisted, staring at the features that vaguely resembled Alex Mercer, but not in any way that would have mistaken the two. As there had been a third Mercer sibling somewhere (because, right, Alex Mercer had a sister, right? Whatever happened to her?).

He'd been standing right next to Zeus, and never noticed the change. And he'd just opened a locked door with no damage and no key. Zeus was worse than security's worse enemy; it was security's fevered night terror.

Zeus glanced at him sideways and smirked, and Desmond was pretty sure that was just more mimicry of some sort of cover story, but holy shit.

"It's all the way at the top," Zeus told him as he approached the stairwell.

"That's just perfect," Desmond said dryly, but he wondered if that wasn't some lingering habit from when Zeus was freely vaulting through New York and the height gave it special advantages. It would allow for a quick escape, anyway.

Zeus didn't let up on the pace and Desmond was thoroughly out of breath and his legs were burning by the time Zeus opened a door to a floor. "You know," he said between gasps,"this is probably the worst location for a hideout for people like me? This is not a quick get away and there's only one escape route."

"There's also a camera at the door," Zeus pointed out.

"Yeah, I noticed that one," he said, which he supposed was why Zeus had taken a third face before unlocking the door. Presumably its current face was the one the other inhabitants of the building expected to see. He didn't really want to ask why, if this was the safe house of 'someone who could help', Zeus' face was familiar enough to anyone that it could pretend to have a key.

No part of their route was particularly difficult, Desmond thought as Zeus finally came to a stop in front of a door. A life on the run and the Bleed over from Altaïr made committing their path from the building that Zeus had dangled him off of to this door to memory an easy feat.

Zeus rapped on the door, two sharp knocks, before opening it and stepping inside. Desmond ducked in after him, shutting the door behind them and feeling slightly more comfortable; he felt a little less like something was breathing down his neck and waiting to haul him off to Abstergo or the Farm.

There were a few quite thumps before a woman's head popped out of an empty doorway, her eyes sweeping over them. "Hey, you're home," she said, a flicker of warmth as she glanced at Zeus before narrowing her eyes at Desmond. "Didn't realize you were bringing company?" There was a funny little up-tilt to the word, like a quietly screamed 'what the hell'.

"Dana," Zeus said, then glanced at Desmond and said nothing else.

Desmond belatedly realized that he'd never introduced himself to Zeus. It hadn't exactly been the first thing he'd been thinking of at any point today. "Hey, Desmond Miles," he said, giving an awkward little wave. It felt weird and dangerous, giving his actual name out for the first time since he'd started running, but at this point, there wasn't any reason to lie. It would be awkward to explain later, if this woman was supposed to 'help' him.

Dana tried to give him a welcoming smile, but at that point, Zeus abruptly unraveled into the old face of Alex Mercer. It was about then that Desmond realized just who this woman was - she was older, older than him, with blond hair and gray-blue eyes, but the features - her features were the same. While he was gaping over the fact that Zeus had taken him to the home of Alex Mercer's sister, Dana just about flew off the handle.

"What were you thinking, Alex," she said, gesturing wildly at Desmond. "Four years, Alex! Four! I just got the apartment the way I like it!"

"There's no reason to run yet," Zeus said coolly, unperturbed by her outburst.

Dana gave him a bug-eyed look before it crumpled into exasperated dismay, like it had defied her expectations before she remembered why it might. "Really," she said doubtfully, shooting a sharp look at Desmond like her eyes might cut him open.

They just might, pale and maybe-gray-maybe-blue and sharp as any of his ancestor's knives. Desmond flinched back appropriately, holding up his hands to ward her off as he moved to avoid her wrath. He wasn't sure it wasn't justified, but in either case, he wasn't the deserved recipient.

But just like that, her wrath gave way to exasperation and something like horror. "Oh, no," she groaned, looking at Zeus reproachfully, "you know, when I suggested you get a puppy, this isn't what I meant!"

"Hey, whoa, I am not an animal" were Desmond's initial insulted words before "what, really? Aren't you an enemy to all living things?" This was directed at Zeus, rather than Dana Mercer (for all she'd dyed her hair). He belatedly realized that to someone not familiar with him, stepping back behind Zeus may have seemed like a duck for cover. Although what logical person would ever turn to Zeus for protection?

"He asked to come with me," Zeus said, shifting the blame just as easily as it shifted its weight, stepping out from between the two of them and moving to the window and pulling the curtains closed.

Dana looked at Desmond like he was something small and wiggly and she wasn't sure if she wanted to recoil or squish him.

"Yeah, well, you would have asked, too, if you were in my position," he said defensively.

"Are you out of your mind," she said, "just look at where that got you!"

"Yeah, I know, I know," he said, "but -" There was no way to make his decision sound rational. He really wasn't sure if it had been, only knowing that Abstergo was threatening his sanity and that Zeus might kill him in horrible ways, but at least then he'd be dead.

Something must have shown on his face, it felt way too open, because Dana groaned and slapped a hand to her forehead as she looked away. "Who was doing what to you?" She cut Zeus a caustic look that impacted it not at all, then turned back and looked at Desmond with a reluctantly soft expression.

Desmond flinched from it. It was a dangerous sort of look. People sometimes looked at him like that, more often when he'd been younger, equally as often as someone attacked him. It was the kind of look that preceded a warm meal and either a plea to find somewhere safe for the night or for god's sake, just call his parents, let them know, go home.

Reluctantly, he said, "what do you know about Abstergo?"

Dana glanced between Desmond and Zeus, then said "well, they're mostly into electronics, advancing the sciences. Huge R-and-D branch. They've even produced a pretty popular and nifty cell phone, and from what I understand, they've got a satellite in space. They've been talking about putting up more since their phone plans have started getting almost as popular as their phone."

Desmond waved all of that away, insignificant stuff that maybe he knew or maybe he didn't, but he certainly didn't care about now. "Yeah," he said, "about that R-and-D branch."

She looked at him doubtfully. "Are you trying to tell me you're some kind of tech savant or something, that Abstergo signed you on with a nasty contract and you went crying into my brother's arms?"

Did she even know what Zeus was like? He had to wonder, looking for some sign of deception or sarcasm in her face or hands and getting nothing. Zeus had threatened him and dangled him off the roof of a building, for crying out loud.

"They were running experiments on him, Dana," Zeus said, speaking up from its place by the window. "He's a runaway they abducted off the streets."

Desmond groaned at the blunt explanation, but his shoulders loosened slightly with relief; as little as he liked its blunt ways, at least now Desmond wouldn't have to explain that he'd made a stupid mistake that got himself caught. That he'd had no other choice but to assist Abstergo in their treasure hunt, hoping for some opportunity for escape to present itself. That reality was getting a little shaky beneath his feet, his mind muddled at times; that sometimes he looked at things he should know the function of and couldn't fathom it for a second, staring with deep and silent suspicion.

Dana looked at Zeus skeptically. "He tell you this? That's a little convenient, isn't it?"

"Not lying as far as I could tell," Zeus said without concern. "I intend to find out more." Its blank face finally stirred, eyes uncommonly cold even as something strange and uncertain crossed its features. "I didn't have anywhere else to take him. I thought you could help."

Dana looked incredibly cross about everything, but not like she was going to kick Desmond to the door or anything like that. "Four years," she said mournfully, looking Desmond up and down. Sighing, she glanced at Zeus. "And if he's crackerjacks crazy and attacks me?"

Zeus gave her a look that was all older brother, that said in no fancy words that of course it wouldn't put her in danger. "A ninety year old woman could kick his ass right now," it said.

"Excuse you," Desmond said, offended.

"You keep hitching up your pants," Zeus told him bluntly. "You've lost a lot of weight recently; I'm guessing around the same time Abstergo yanked you off the street?"

"The hell are you, Sherlock," he said testily, feeling his cheeks burn.

"After today's walk, he couldn't wrestle a kitten," it said to Dana.

Dana was looking at the two of them with a sort of underwhelmed look. "You know," she said to Zeus, "sometimes I really hate you. Most of the time, actually. I really, really hate you, Alex. Worst brother ever." Clapping her hands together, she fixed a falsely bright look on Desmond. "Alright! Com'n, Dez, let's go see if we can crack open a conspiracy!"

"A conspiracy," he echoed in confusion.

"Well, yeah," she said, "that's what it usually is when some corporation is experimenting on people against their will? Unless you agreed before they moved you somewhere. Moving someone against their will is automatically kidnapping, according to the law, you know, so that's at least one thing they broke. Come on, it'll be fun!"

"Fun," he said, looking at her doubtfully.

"Yeah! You know, we'll be doing our own version of breaking and entering. Only without being caught."

Desmond wasn't stupid enough to think that Dana had accepted him that easily, her sudden change of heart and enthusiasm just a little too over-played to be honest. He glanced over at Zeus, who hadn't moved from the window, standing there with its hands in its pockets and watching him with cold blue eyes. It made him feel like he was in a documentary or something. Grimacing at it, he turned and followed Dana over to the desk she had in a corner.

"Do you really have two computers over here," he asked, taking note of her set up.

"All the better to see things with," she said dryly, mouth curling into a self-satisfied grin. It didn't seem to be an unlikely resemblance, Desmond thought. Although maybe his hood should be red and not white.

Watching someone try to crack into the Abstergo servers was a lot less exciting than Desmond thought it would be. It mainly involved a lot of Dana getting on the phone and kidding around with people and service representatives in India and researching people that he supposed must be people who worked at Abstergo. When he'd caught on, he'd more than willingly gave up both Lucy and Vidic, which had gotten her into the systems but not into anything interesting.

For his part, Desmond was getting really tired. He'd made it so far on adrenaline alone, but he'd already taken note of the fact that Zeus had left the apartment while they were distracted, and it was getting harder to stay awake. After all, today had been rather hectic and it wasn't like he'd been sleeping well at Abstergo's hands either.

He only meant to rest his burning eyes for a moment.

The air was hot and dry in his nose, his breaths slow but deep, chest moving against cloth and leather straps. There were little pockets of heat inside his clothes, but the wind moved through the cut of his robes, keeping him just on the right side of sweating. Calloused fingertips shifted against their brothers, just aware of those as he was of the stranger sitting inches away beside him, and the guards at the entrances to this cross-way, and the man standing across it, preaching lies to those who stood before him.

Five, he counted. Five ways he could approach his prey for the same end result, his blade sunk down through the bare places around the neck where there was no bone to armor vitals from him. Two ways to end the man's life from where he stood, with perhaps only the man beside him any wiser.

Better to approach with the hidden blade, he decided, if only because he was sore from being stared at by dark, accusing eyes and lashed with words that had once been light and joking. They cut now, like blades, and there was nothing firm enough for him to stand on to deflect them.

Letting his senses stretch out to track those many threats, tracking target after target, he stood to move, ready to hunt his prey. The chair clattered beneath him.

Desmond blinked hard, plunged into darkness for a moment before his eyes adjusted and Dana's apartment came into view. He looked around in bewilderment for a moment, one computer whirling quietly, but both monitors blank. There was just enough light from the computers' buttons that he could see a bit around them clearly. Dana had left him sleeping at her desk.

Grimacing, he supposed he couldn't blame her. After another moment, he glanced down at his hand and the pen that was grasped in his fist so tightly that his knuckles ached with it. His stomach lurched a bit and he hastily dropped it back onto the desk. What exactly had he been planning to do with that?

Or rather, Desmond had a good idea of just what he'd been planning to do with that. Or. Not him.

Dana had a digital clock on her wall, the numbers large and deep blue. It seemed like the kind of thing that someone who was prone to pulling all-nighters would have, especially if those all-nighters started during the day and said person forgot to turn some lights on for it. It was almost four in the morning, and Desmond grimaced as he held his aching stomach. From past experiences, he knew that drinking some water and sleeping was probably the best way to handle passing the time until his next 'meal' was delivered.

He moved carefully in the dark, going slowly so his eyes could adjust to facing away from the faint source of light. The kitchen was only half walled off, the sink and fridge in clear view of the living room, the stove and cabinets tucked away. Desmond wondered if that was supposed to help keep the smell of cooking food or grease smoke down. It didn't, really. He'd had enough apartments to know.

Thankfully, the sink was quiet when it turned on, and Desmond drank until the pangs in his stomach lessened. He went back to the living room and glanced at the chair he'd been left to sleep in. It wasn't comfortable by any stretch of the imagination. Even the hard bed at Abstergo had been better than that. But there was a couch.

Toeing off his shoes and kicking them under the coffee table in front of it, Desmond pulled his hood back up and laid down. It was a lot louder in Dana's apartment. The sound of her computers wasn't all that bad, almost familiar and comforting, but her fridge was pretty loud, and he could hear the city even from the floor they were on.

He thought it'd be difficult to sleep, but then he was waking up to a pain cutting him in half. It was just his stomach, trying to eat itself, because he smelled warm butter and something yeasty and maple. Forcing himself to his feet, he wandered toward the kitchen hopefully. The microwave beeped, and Dana smiled at him thinly. "They're frozen, but there you go," she said, gesturing toward it.

"Smells like manna from heaven," he said.

Dana interrogated him over breakfast, comparing what he knew against what she'd gleaned from hacking into Abstergo's servers. She seemed to know more than he did, but if his ignorance was annoying, she didn't indicate it.

"If you were wondering why Abstergo didn't react to Alex busting in like that," she said after he was finished, "that's because about the same time, someone was hacking their systems. It was probably just a distraction, I think something else happened around that time, too. They were brute-forcing it, which is probably the only reason why I managed to sneak in."

"Why would someone be hacking Abstergo," he asked, frowning.

"If you're telling the truth," she said, "that kind of thing makes people enemies, you know. Alex said they were hunting through - your ancestor's memories?" Her face scrunched up, making clear just what she thought of Desmond's story.

"Hey," he said, "you and me, both. I wouldn't have believed if it I hadn't lived it. Somehow they're able to access his memories through my DNA. Don't ask me how that's supposed to work."

"Yeah, well, maybe you have friends," she suggested, shrugging it off.

"Something like that," he agreed dryly, thinking of things that he'd been taught growing up.

Dana looked at him skeptically. "You think you know who it might have been?"

"I have no clue," he said defensively. Hesitated. Said "but."

"But what," she said flatly.

Desmond fiddled with his fork, long since licked clean of syrup. It really wasn't his favorite thing to think about, let alone discuss. He'd spent so many years pretending his past didn't exist, coming up with cover identities and always on the run - but Abstergo had already snatched him out of concealment and brought it all back and even justified everything that he'd been taught as a kid.

"This is some real conspiracy theory bullshit," he admitted reluctantly. "What did it - Alex, tell you about me?"

"Well, he told me about the whole memory thing," she said. Her face had gone kind of cold at how he'd mentioned the virus and he thought about the fact that it wore her brother's face and then tried not to.

"Right, well, they want those memories for a reason," he said, and started there, telling her what he'd managed to piece together himself through things that Altaïr had seen, and what Lucy and Vidic said and things that he'd read over Lucy's shoulder while pretending to hit on her.

He told her what he understood of Templars and Assassins and Abstergo, about some fantastical item Altaïr had first known as the Arc, that Desmond knew as the Apple, or maybe part of an Apple? He wasn't entirely clear on that one. He mentioned the Farm in passing, only, that he'd run away because it had all come to sound as insane to him as it must to her.

Dana drummed her fingertips on the kitchen table, eyes lowered as she thought about it. Finally, she sighed, looking up with a wry expression. "I don't know who belongs to what crazy cult," she said bluntly. "Alex came back with similar information, most of which collaborates yours."

Desmond frowned briefly, but that only made sense that she'd test his truthfulness. "Great," he said, not arguing about the 'crazy cult' thing.

"But you know," she said, "this means that you probably have friends. If this is really a war between your ex-cult and Abstergo, then that might have been them, looking for you."

"How do you figure," he asked skeptically.

"Well," she said slowly, rolling her eyes, "Abstergo wants you because your ancestor knows the location of something they want. Some kind of Assassin thing, probably. It just follows that the Assassins would want you out of their hands. It's that simple: you have value to Abstergo, and so you have value to the Assassins, too."

"You're kidding," he said flatly. "I have absolutely no value to the Assassins. I ran away when I was sixteen and I wasn't even the most talented guy there. If they wanted me, they should have been able to find me."

"And do what, hold you prisoner?" Dana shook her head. "I bet as long as you were out of Abstergo hands, then it was probably good enough. But you didn't stay that way. Abstergo caught you, and they were getting information from you. The Assassins would have been forced to move."

It made sense. He felt his stomach clench at the thought that his father might have sent someone after him, to rescue him like he was some kind of damsel (but then again, wasn't he? He'd been biding his time to escape, but his time schedule was much longer than the Assassins'. Abstergo had been close to getting what they wanted and he had been no closer to escape than before).

"Right," Dana said, scooting her chair back and standing. "Alex is out investigating your friends. There's no telling when he'll be back, but probably not until he's satisfied, whatever that means. In the mean time, I'm going to see what else I can find on Abstergo."

"Okay," Desmond said doubtfully. Then "what should I do?"

Dana looked at him for a second, then smiled brightly. "How about the dishes?" She left the kitchen, ignoring his stunned gape.

"That's not what I meant!"

Desmond washed the dishes.

Dana didn't have any attention to spare him and Desmond nearly went spare for lack of things to do for a while. Watching the news ended up upsetting his unsteady stomach (it at not appreciated the pancakes as much as he thought it would have). Abstergo made a press release about the attacks, and he wasn't really all that surprised to have his name mentioned in conjunction with the attacks.

Abstergo might not want to risk him being taken into police custody where they might have to disappear him and leave a paper trail, but they weren't going to pass up getting police help to track him.

Desmond sat on the couch in silence, bent over his lap with his elbows on his thighs and thinking. He wasn't sure where he was supposed to go from here. A new life on the run? Abstergo already knew what he looked like, his habits and poise and how he dreamed and how he thought. If the Templars had hunted Assassins all the way to America, then there was no place far enough for him to run.

At the moment, the only thing he had even vaguely approaching allies were Dana and Zeus. And like it had been provoked by the thought, Desmond's eyes burned like he'd been without sleep for three days, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dana's shape, bathed in blue.

His head ached as the Vision persisted, so he shut his eyes tightly and sighed, rubbing at them harshly until he felt the burning ease. He wasn't sure how much he could really trust the Eagle Vision that the Bleeding had gifted him with. Vidic and Lucy had dismissed it as the Animus' way of translating Altaïr's attention to detail and intuition, but he'd been seeing it in waking hours and worse things than just who was friendly and who was not.

Was Eagle Vision real, or the results of a map becoming so creased it bent equally both ways?

A sudden, loud buzz interrupted his thoughts, and Desmond nearly tripped over the coffee table before he realized just what he'd heard and how he'd responded, staggering with a stubbed toe. He looked around wildly for Dana to see her staring at him askance from the computer.

"That's lunch," she said flatly, like he was being crazy.

"Oh," he said, "lunch is a loud buzzer like the kind from a prison courtyard, cool."

Dana narrowed her eyes as him as she stood. "Experience or movies?"

Desmond sputtered "movies" because seriously, if he'd gotten incarcerated, his situation would probably be a bit different. Abstergo certainly would have found him faster.

He made himself scarce when the food delivery arrived at their door. There wasn't any point to flashing his face around, and the unfamiliar voice set his nerves on edge. Dana paid for the food - the pizza - and sent the delivery boy away.

"Well, come on," she called after a second, and Desmond realized he was still hiding. Dana said nothing, didn't even look at him as she opened the box and set it on the coffee table, snagging a slice before she headed to the kitchen. She came back with a small shaker of red pepper flakes and cheap parmesan cheese, looked at him askance again and told him to dig in.

"So, Desmond, tell me," she said after they'd both eaten a few slices, "what have you been doing since you ran away from home?"

"This and that," he said. "Got my mixology license a couple of years ago, so I bartend now. You? What have you and - Alex been up to these last five years, or so?"

Dana smiled at him, plastic and sharp as a blade. "This and that," she agreed. "I mostly write freelance under a pseudonym, and Alex helps me investigate."

"Huh."

She tilted her head, fluttered her lashes, and said "'huh', what?"

Wary, but disbelieving the threat she was promising him with every scrap of body language she could simply because there was no weapon at hand and her hands didn't look strong enough (sure enough) for anything dangerous, Desmond said "nothing. Just - isn't that kind of boring after everything?"

"No," she said flatly. "Boring is good. Don't you want boring now that you're out of Abstergo's hands, instead of sitting him in my apartment, maybe bringing down them and the Assassins onto my head?"

Desmond grimaced. "I don't know that my life was ever actually boring," he said. "I grew up in a compound, being raised on conspiracy theory bullshit legends. Which turned out to be true, by the way, but being on the run from a 'cult' wasn't exactly a Hawaiian vacation you know." He reached up, scrubbing his fingertips over his scalp. "And sorry. I guess I should probably leave pretty quick, huh?"

"Only if you want to piss off Alex," Dana said, arching a brow. "Just going out on a limb here, but he hates it when he doesn't know where I'm at and if I'm okay. Until he's done with you, he's not going to take well to you wandering off somewhere."

"Oh well, wouldn't want to piss off the controlling, mutant virus brother, now would I?" He shrugged his hands into the air, rolling his eyes.

"You actually really don't," she said, frowning, for once not responding to his less than flattering description. "I don't know what Alex was doing in that building or why he decided to take you with him. He's smart - genius even. Or -" Dana hesitated, licking her lips. Her lashes fluttered, a sharp glance to the side. "Or,"she said, "he was. I don't know what to call him now."

Everything was not roses between Beauty and the Beast, it seemed. "Yeah, well," he hedged, grabbing another pizza slice he didn't really want. He thought about the uncomfortable prickling sensation of that alien regard, and Alex actually engaging him about his past, and the offense he'd paid when saying the words 'hell-virus'. "Call 'em brother," he said, stuffing the pizza into his mouth, and remembered in the back of his mind a dozen brothers in robes with their hoods drawn forward saying safety, and peace.

"Really," she said skeptically, "because just this morning you were singing a different tune about him."

He shrugged uncomfortably, chewing. He swallowed with some difficulty, shrugging again as he studiously stared at the pizza, saying "nothing is an absolute reality."

Dana said "what is that, Arabic?"

A cold chill went down his spine. Desmond wasn't strictly a stranger to the heart of the Creed, although he hadn't thought much of it because it hadn't made much sense - until Altaïr - but he certainly had never learned it in its original language.

Scratching distractedly at the one-day old stubble on his jaw, he said, "just something my Dad used to say. I'm always prepared to be wrong about things." He risked a glance at her, measuring her temper, and continued. "You go into a situation and you make the best judgment call you can, but if you find out you're misinformed or wrong, then you should change your judgment and behave accordingly."

"So you're saying you were wrong about Alex," she said doubtfully.

Not wrong, but maybe not fully informed. Nothing he'd learned since making that rash decision back in Abstergo really changed anything. "I've learned more," he said noncommittally.

"Uh huh," Dana said, obviously not believing him at all. But she was willing to drop it, saying "alright, Dez, to the shower with you. Stubble does not look good. I'll get you a razor; hope you don't mind pink."

"Hey, I could totally rock the hobo look," he said, but Dana shot him a look that said he really couldn't.

Dana had tried to feed him one more time that day, but Desmond's stomach had rebelled and he'd been forced to admit that frozen pancakes and pizza hadn't gone over well with it in the first place. He hadn't thought that Abstergo had him all that long, but there hadn't been clocks and he was pretty sure they'd been drugging him and inside the Animus, time had no meaning. Not his time, or Altaïr's. It could have been hours or days or weeks, and Abstergo only fed him occasionally, mashed potatoes and dinner rolls or oatmeal, usually cold.

She'd ordered enough Chinese takeout to feed a dozen men, and Desmond oscillated between thinking that it probably tasted delicious and the pain he was in from his protesting gut. Dana had forced Pepto Bismuth on him, much to his regret, but it hadn't done much to help.

It was dark when Desmond woke suddenly, the glare of the blue numbers informing him that it was just after two in the morning. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and there was something in it, eating.

Desmond didn't so much as twitch, breathing slow and shallow and listening to it as he peered into the darkness from under the hood he'd drawn up over his head. It was thinner than the hoodies he was used to, and it made him feel bare and vulnerable, an unfamiliar feel and weight around his shoulders.

He finally made out movement, and then the shadows took shape. It was Alex, sitting in the chair catercorner to the couch, devouring the take-out. He didn't chew, or even pause for breath. Desmond thought he didn't actually need to even put it in his facsimile of a mouth or use a fork to consume it.

It felt a little odd, then, Desmond sprawled on a couch in Dana's apartment, wearing Alex's clothes ("not that he really uses them anymore, but I made him keep some around just in case" and Desmond had choked on all of nothing, thinking somewhat hysterically: was Alex always naked then). It could have been worse, he rationalized. Dana had tried to offer him Alex's bedroom since Alex didn't sleep and only rarely even entered the place, but he didn't think he'd be able to relax enough to sleep.

In record time, Alex had wolfed down enough food to feed a man for a week or two, even. He'd stacked the empty boxes as he'd eaten, and now put them back into the plastic bag that they'd arrived in, tying it shut at the top.

"They could be like you," Alex said suddenly, answering the question that Desmond hadn't dared to think: did Alex know he was awake? He wondered what gave him away. "I wouldn't know for sure unless I -" He cut himself off. Desmond really wish he hadn't, wondering if what he'd fill in would be worse than what Alex had been about to say. "Your name got thrown around a bit," he said. "They have their own Animus."

The relentless rays of an unforgiving sun and hot dry winds touched the back of Desmond's mind with the lonely shriek of a falcon or eagle. He couldn't wrangle back the shudder that came, soul deep (or maybe brain deep, eyes burning and the darkness bleaching and some alien monster in human shape washed a cool, impersonal blue, both warmer and colder than its gaze).

"It's that simple," a whisper of Dana said, a flash of white, of letters and code, "you have value to Abstergo, and so you have value to the Assassins, too."

"No friends of yours," Alex drawled knowingly, but he should, the Animus was why Desmond went with him in the first place, a fate worse than death and more frightening to Desmond than him.

"No," he agreed slowly. "No friends of mine."

Alex said nothing, a hulking, waiting shape perched on the edge of the chair, hood turned toward him but the shadows too deep to see more than that. Not that it would really matter, Alex didn't seem to waste time with facial expressions very often.

Desmond swallowed, nerves and unhappiness. "Dana said that being here is endangering the two of you," he said, sitting up.

Alex said "yes."

"Leaving would probably be a good idea," he said.

"Maybe," he said flatly, and there was a faint rustle and whisper, but the light of Dana's computers was too faint to see anything but the vague shape of Alex's human form, bent over his knees.

Desmond felt for a moment like he was sitting beside some very large, very patient predator, like a lion or wolf, sitting politely and shifting weight from one paw to another, blinking very large, very hungry golden eyes at him. He could almost hear it open its mouth and lick its teeth, just waiting for him to run so it could give chase and end his life in a flash of claw and fang.

If Desmond had planned on leaving, he felt like maybe he should have started running a long time before Alex had focused his attention on him. He said "you're kind of 'big bad wolf'ing at me right now," and his voice cracked just slightly over the last two words.

"Am I," Alex didn't ask, and made no effort to stop. Then "leave or don't. Neither the Assassins nor Abstergo are any kind of threat."

"What are you going to do," he asked, mouth dry, "kill them all?"

"Wouldn't need to," he said, "not even the military is dumb enough commit all their resources to failing to stomp me out. Whatever they think you have can't be worth all of their lives."

His skin prickled under Alex's invisible regard, and he didn't feel any safer. Out of the frying pan and into the fire, he thought, because he had some kind of mutated space-virus idly talking about crushing his enemies to dust. "You might be surprised," he said. The madness that had taken Al Mualim might not have wavered even in the face of something like Alex Mercer.

The sensation of a hot tongue swiping over razor sharp fangs came again, a quiet rustle like something hungry in the grass having caught scent of something delicious to eat. It didn't look like Alex moved, Desmond's eyes straining as he searched the darkness for a threat, but he seemed to settle in and slowly expand through the shadow, less human, more nightmare.

Dana might not have missed the events of New York, but the things pretending to be Alex Mercer clearly did.

Desmond decided it was better not to run. He liked his throat intact, thanks anyway.

But there was only so much he and Dana could stand each other, and Desmond rarely tolerated the boredom of sitting around anyway. As poorly as he had often performed in his training back at the Farm, it had played into his natural energy and most of the skills appealed to his sense of curiosity, enabling him to go further and learn more than he might have standing in plain view of someone.

It took some bickering on his part, but he convinced Dana to let him leave the apartment. Condition was that he had to be accompanied by Alex.

Alex didn't indicate a preference either way; the silent predator was out of sight under the light of day, and he spent most of his time slumped on the couch, pretending sleep. At least, Desmond was pretty sure Alex was pretending sleep. He didn't think viruses really had a concept of sleeping, nor needed it, but Alex did a pretty good job of making it look like he did.

Alex looked first like the nonexistent (as far as Desmond knew) third Mercer sibling when they left the apartment, but by the time they'd traveled a mile, Desmond had a short blond woman at his side. She also shared a few features with Dana, but not so many that they'd be mistake as sisters.

Desmond wondered if the similarities made it easier for Alex to shift and that's why he chose them, or if it was some subconscious preference. (Did sentient viruses have subconscious? Maybe Alex was favoring disguises that Dana had expressed a preference for, maybe subconsciously herself.)

For all of the woman's bored expression, her eyes darted to other people on the street with purpose, although with no discernible pattern. Desmond remembered sitting on rough hewn benches, his own eyes (not his own, Altaïr's) darting from one to another, measuring, reading, dismissing in equal turn. Before he thought better of it, he asked "what are you looking at?"

The woman's eyes flickered toward him, dissecting him in the same fashion before focusing with less predatory intent. "Information," she said flatly, looking away.

"Yeah," he said, "obviously, but what kind? Making observations about who is hitching their pants up again?"

It seemed to annoy Alex somewhat, though she didn't said anything about it, watching the crowd but not analyzing it as she had earlier. The hand that reached up and tucked blond hair back behind an ear would have looked nervous if she'd been human. "My sense don't work like that," she said.

Desmond looked away, glancing up toward the sky with muted exasperation, not quite an eye roll. His senses don't work like that. What did that even mean? Frowning down at Alex, he asked just that.

If any real woman looked at him the way Alex was, Desmond would have been properly cowed and backed off. It was a pretty venomous look, but it was hard to take seriously when his own skin wasn't prickling with instinctual alarm. "I mean," she said sharply, "I don't see the world like you or Dana do."

That was said low, under her breath, and Desmond looked curiously around them. This city was more than big enough that the other people on the street were hardly paying them any attention - or, okay, Alex was getting stared at, but that's what he got for choosing an attractive woman to be. At least they weren't getting hassled, if only because Desmond was - wow, they were walking pretty close, he realized suddenly.

"Okay," he said slowly, shaking off the distraction and pursuing the topic whether Alex wanted to or not. "How do you see it, then? I mean, how do you know?"

In Desmond's experience, intelligent people usually didn't mind explaining for the less informed people present as long as the less informed people were actually interested. Desmond was actually interested, weirdly enough. Alex seemed to mind the question a whole lot, though, bored of the conversation and looking increasingly hostile. Her big brown eyes were sharp as broken beer bottles as she said "I don't know, how do you see it? Explain eye-sight to me."

Desmond sputtered. He barely understood how Eagle Vision worked, wasn't sure if what he was seeing was real, had the vague impression that how his mind saw it - gold and red and blue - wasn't exactly what his eyes were seeing. Explaining regular vision should have been easy compared to that, but -

"Alright," he said in defeat, "you got me. So what kind of information do you see?"

Rolling her eyes, she tucked her fingers into her pockets and looked away, the hostility fading to complete boredom. The set of her shoulders and the angle of her elbows was strikingly Mercer, despite her looks. There was a thought, a whisper in the back of his head that it might be possible for him to recognize Alex no matter what form he took so long as he was Alex and not whoever's shape it'd been.

Finally she said, "if they're anemic. If they're incubating the flu, or already suppressed it a week ago. Asthma. Other defects."

A predator scenting out the old and the weak, culling the herd.

Like she'd heard the thought, Alex said "from what I can tell, it's almost like a smell. I can always tell who has what I need if I get close enough."

"Like a sixth sense," Desmond said, his eyes twinging but not burning, remembering gold-red-blue. Remembering Dana and Alex, both awash in colors that made Altaïr turn willingly turn his back to men without fear of some knife seeking his flesh.

"A sixth sense," Alex said scornfully, then frowned. "But maybe. Not any kind of ESP but something that most don't have. Dana doesn't trust the information I get, but I haven't been wrong. What is smell, anyway? Chemicals and pheromones."

"That's not the most unbelievable part of this," Desmond said dryly. Dana accepted the existence of something like Alex Mercer, even called it brother, but then distrusted the parts of it that made it what it was? Alex wasn't human, no matter what face he took, why expect him to have the same characteristics of one? But maybe, he reflected, Alex was less prone to showing his true nature to her.

Either way, Alex had dismissed him as a threat, citing him too weak to even overpower Dana, who though older was shorter and slighter than Desmond. And before that, made the decision to spare his life. And thinking that, impulsively he said "huh, then what do I smell like?"

Alex looked at him, and there was nothing human there, nothing even sideways recognizable as a wolf or lion. He'd forgotten briefly what it had been like to be pinned by that look that seemed to go through skin, to peel it back and study what lay within, coded onto his DNA - (And he wondered if Altaïr was there, hidden somewhere in a double-helix, pretending harmlessness among the other genes like they were scholars -)

"Not like anything good to eat," Alex said bluntly, looking away.

Desmond barked out a laugh that was too tight, too high pitched to even approach humor. "Aw," he said, his attempt at a smile baring too many teeth, "you mean I don't smell like strawberries and creme?"

"I hate strawberries and creme," Alex said randomly, frowning slightly. She seemed puzzled by her own declaration for a moment before visibly discarding it. "I'm not talking about food."

"Well, what else do you eat," Desmond said, then felt his stomach drop. He wasn't sure he really wanted the answer, dreaded the chance that Alex might turn that regard on him again, didn't know if he could handle it a second time, palms damp and heart still thundering in his chest: fight or flight.

But she didn't. With a bored expression on her face, she continued to survey the other walkers around them like someone picking over sandwich meat.

After their very enlightening talk, Desmond got extremely claustrophobic about Dana's apartment. It was less Alex and more Dana, if that wasn't odd enough. A scream kept fighting at the back of his throat when he looked at her, because she was so normal, and generally good natured, and Desmond thought he liked her for all of her making him wash the dishes and her sharp looks if he didn't talk to or about Alex without the proper respect.

That scream wanted to come out, loud and in no uncertain terms: your brother is Hannibal Lector!

The fight to keep it down drove him from the apartment most days, in various other disguises that he was provided with. And Alex always came with him, paced him, never falling behind or deviating no matter how long or far Desmond walked; untiring and bored, but with the single-minded focus of any predator. Desmond wondered hysterically if the walks were like taking a woman on a diet to an all-you-can-eat buffet. Still, he couldn't talk himself out of leaving the apartment behind.

It was probably his own state of emotional upset that caused his eyes to burn so often with maybe-Eagle-Vision. Desmond was aware that he was stressed and in a nearly constant state of fight-or-flight. He wasn't ashamed of this; he was sharing living space with a monster that ate people. Even if it wasn't interested in eating him or Dana, it still thought humans were something like Twinkies!

Not that being on the street was honestly any better, every time his eyes burned and his heart began to pound in his ears. He wasn't likely to relax when he could see just how many people on the street were painted red to his Eagle Vision. Not necessarily his enemies, he thought; not out of intention or spite, but simply those who would give the alarm if he was recognized. And again and again and again, the only splash of blue for what felt like miles around walked beside him. That didn't really surprise him since he hadn't really made any friends and probably would be able to, at least not with Abstergo and the Assassins after him.

And while thinking that, his eyes and attention unfocused to ease the way the Eagle Vision made his head ache, Desmond caught a glimmer of gold in the corner of his eye.

Desmond was aware of his pace faltering, attention zeroing in on the man (and it seemed doubled for a moment, like he was recalling something he'd watch someone else do, and hadn't he? Wasn't this the way Altaïr reacted when he'd happened upon someone giving themselves away as a source of information?)

This man was a source of information. Desmond thought he looked like Abstergo - ah, there. A cuff link clipped to the sleeve of his cheap suit. Really, a cuff link? Right there in the open, declaring his allegiance for all to see? (Something deeper, older and less kind, sneered.)

"You recognize him?"

Desmond startled, his Eagle Vision flickering out. Alex had chosen a different disguise, as he'd done every time, this one tall enough that he saw easily over the crowd; he must have followed Desmond's line of sight. He reflected dryly that the two of them looked like suburban 'gangstas'. Desmond just felt, again, like a massive tool. He liked hoodies for allowing him to blend in when needed, and hiding his face. That was the opposite of what they were doing.

"Not really," he said, looking back to where the man was. He hadn't completely realized that his trajectory had changed, following the man and gently shouldering through the crowd, palming them aside as necessary. "I need him."

"Do you," Alex said flatly, from right on his heels, so close that he could have gone unheard by any other. "For what?"

"He knows something I need," Desmond said, such an obvious truth that he couldn't see what was wrong with stating it. It was like saying the sky was blue.

He was suddenly hauled back by his hoodie, knuckles knocking into his spine before he was pressed to a building with one hand to his chest. Alex was bigger than him in his current form, the serious look in dark eyes much more suited to his current disposition. Tilting his head, Alex said, "and how do you think you're going to get it?"

Desmond was briefly shaken out of the quasi-trance that he'd fallen into. He couldn't ride in the back of his own mind, the way he'd ridden in the back of Altaïr's, but the way he'd unfocused his mind wasn't unlike that. Letting the colors and crowd wash over him without really analyzing the information (much as Altaïr would, although he'd forgotten; in his dreams, the Animus put him under again). But it also meant that he acted on instinct (or habit, Altaïr pacing prey that wouldn't escape).

"Probably the old fashioned way," he suggested, flexing his hand as his ancestor once had.

Alex's eyes dropped to it and then he looked bored again. "People lie under torture," he said flatly. "How do you know he has information you need?"

Desmond darted a glance past Alex, down the street. If the man had taken note of their confrontation, he thought nothing of it, but he was getting further and further away. "What does it matter," he demanded, narrowing his eyes until the glimpses of the man turned to gold. "Look," he said, "you smell things - I see things. Okay? Now let me go."

Alex didn't, considering him for a long moment. The thread of desperation grew in Desmond's chest: he needed to get that information from that man, whatever it was. He wanted to say that if he had to go through Alex to do it, then so be it - but he knew that it wouldn't be him walking away from that fight.

Then Alex's gaze turned back down the street, and it was like the Nazgûl all over again. He said "people lie under torture, but I know how to get the truth out of them." Desmond wanted to say 'what, really' and 'how' and so he did, and Alex answered "he smells like Christmas cookies."

And Christmas cookies were good to eat.

The thing pretending to be Alex Mercer was insatiable.

That was the conclusion Desmond came to, drumming his fingers restlessly on the coffee table, watching Alex mark areas of the city map as 'hostile territory'. They'd been working on the map for a couple of weeks now, and it was becoming worn and marked over and over with thick strokes of red ink (and if he felt a kinship with it, he didn't mention it, all too aware that his words had not been forgotten). It had been a couple of weeks, but Alex chewed through Abstergo employees at an alarming rate, never hesitating no matter how many people Desmond saw lit with gold (two, three, four at a time).

Alex was something of a sociopath. Desmond wondered if he wasn't pretty much the same, because he knew, he had figured it out (he wasn't dumb) what happened when Alex moved away to complete the hunt. What went on when Alex either forced or coerced targets into secluded alleyways and came out some minutes later with a certain satisfied curve to his back and a content look on his face. He knew, or had some idea at least, but he didn't feel bad for it at all.

("At least I don't leave bodies," Alex had said after the second time, "other than that, what's the difference between what I do and you?"

There was some kind of argument that Desmond was supposed to make, but the horror of being eaten or not, one death was much equivalent to the next. To the dead person, anyway.

The wolf-or-lion watched him with golden eyes and licked its teeth.)

"I don't get it," he said pensively, staring at the map. Despite the fact that he still hadn't been made by anyone, at least no one that had come forward, he felt harried and hunted, staring at the unexpectedly thick marks. "Where are all these guys coming from? The Farm was tiny. There weren't that many people there. And Abstergo -"

"Know that your last known location was this city," Alex interrupted, looking up from the map to stare at him with his cold, alien eyes. "And that you left with me. If anything, the continued disappearance of their employees indicates I'm still in the area."

"Yeah, okay," Desmond said reluctantly, "but why assume I'm still with you? Why think you wouldn't kill me way back when we first met?"

"I didn't kill you then," he pointed out. "And why else would I be attacking Abstergo?"

He groaned, leaning back to rest his head against the seat of the chair. There wasn't any particular reason he'd chosen to sit on the floor in front of it, except maybe to save his back from being bent over it while they watched Abstergo's presence take shape.

Although Alex had professed that this wasn't much more exciting than the usual task Dana set before him, despite the gratuitous amounts of food, this whole being hunted thing was tiring Desmond out. He was used to being on the run, sure, but trying to sit around one place all day, every day, for weeks now and maybe for weeks to come? It was enough to give him cabin fever.

Too bad he couldn't take refuge with the Assassins - but they had their own Animus, and Desmond didn't think the Bleeding Effect had gotten any better since his escape from Abstergo. It actually seemed worse, although maybe hunting people with Alex wasn't exactly helping (it was what Altaïr wold have done). Going back in would only compound it, he thought. Like he was a breaker panel and it was flipping switches, sending power and lighting up things inside him that had no business being turned on. And maybe it was, only it wasn't a breaker panel, but DNA.

"Hey," he said, staring at the ceiling, "you don't have DNA, right?"

There was an audible pause, and then Alex said, flatly, "of course I do."

Desmond's head snapped up and he looked over in surprise. Alex looked somewhere between bored and pissed off, but that wasn't uncommon when Desmond opened his mouth and said something Alex thought was stupid. "What, really?" He frowned, trying to remember what little he'd learned of biology. "That's weird? I mean, I thought viruses didn't have DNA."

"Did you even graduate high school," he said flatly, unimpressed.

"I actually didn't," Desmond said; once a point of shame, it was now an interesting fact to throw out at people when they condescended to him. It was interesting how they'd react, what reasons they would assume whether they knew his past or not.

Alex didn't look taken aback, he just looked even less impressed than before, like Desmond had managed to lower his expectations even further.

"Oh, come on," he said, feeling his ego bruise. "How was I supposed to do that? I was home schooled, and then enrolling anywhere would have gotten me caught."

"You could have educated yourself," Alex said flatly. "Libraries don't require birth certificates."

"Ha ha, Alex, ha ha," he said sharply, glaring. He had, as a matter of fact, shown enough curiosity to learn some standard stuff. When relevant things came up. Take, for instance, his current research of old Syrian culture and the Arabic language.

Alex ignored his reproach, which wasn't uncommon. Desmond wasn't sure why he kept trying to interact with him as if he were a human being. Dana did, and Dana seemed to provoke Alex to make an effort. Desmond got blank stares and short temper and the receiving end of the hungry attention of something that ate people, Jesus Christ.

"Desmond," Alex said suddenly, startling him, and Alex was so absolutely still, not breathing and not blinking. He said "do you really want to know what would happen if the Blacklight virus got put in the Animus?"

The words drained the blood from his face. It wasn't exactly what Alex was saying, because of course he had considered it, that was the point. But no, Alex was calling him out on it, his transparency in saying so bluntly: you don't have DNA.

And now Alex met his eyes, his own cold and alien and so still, not predatory and not irritated, flat and inhuman and unmoved as he said "I said you didn't smell like something to eat. I never said you were safe otherwise."

In a moment, the tension started a ringing in Desmond's ears, and he had to look away, swallowing. It wasn't the first time he had thought it, the words circulating his head like a falcon out to hunt: if what they wanted from him was in his DNA - then maybe he could destroy it. But maybe he'd ventured too soon, unprepared for the reality of it, and for now he ignored the thoughts and stared sightlessly at the map.

But if it meant escaping the Animus (he'd think of it again).

(He thought of it and -)

High school biology comes back to him, visuals of viruses attaching themselves to cells, injecting instructions imprinted in chemicals and the cell replicating those instructions until the cells are full of the virus, stuffed until bursting, and

bursting the strain spreads, black and pulsing through red and

he's hot and struggling, stifled, held tight and down by living steel bands of red and black and

hot against the side of his face, Alex says I'm going to breed myself into you as red and black burrow under his skin (it should hurt but it doesn't) bursting black across red

and Desmond tumbled off the couch, shaking and sweaty and hot and cold. The blanket was tangled so tightly around him that it felt too much like not-shadow and not-flesh and he struggled with it desperately. His breath shook in his chest as he finally flung the blanket off, lifting himself up slightly by the coffee table.

His skin felt tight and itchy, his blood too hot. He struggled to catch his breath, glancing about the living room and finding it empty. A light flickered on down the short hallway, pouring light under a door before it opened. Dana's sleep-rumpled face was slightly concerned, slightly pissed off. "You okay, Desmond? I thought I heard a noise," she said, rubbing at her face.

Desmond wondered if she could even see him, laying on the floor in the dark room, and was kind of thankful for the possibility she couldn't, cheeks burning. "Yeah," he said, "sorry. I fell off the couch."

Dana squinted in the direction of his voice for a moment longer, then said, "jeez, I thought for sure you were getting murdered. Nightmares." Making a self-disgusted noise, she retreated back into her bedroom, and a moment later the light flicked off.

"Something like that," he said, alone in the darkness.

Desmond only understood a few things that he read when he went looking up things like infectious vectors and host ranges and horizontal gene transfer, but he thought it might be safer not to ask any questions. Alex Mercer used to be a scientist, likely in the field of virology; he probably could have looked that up, too, in the old news articles about the Outbreak, but it might have raised some kind of flag.

He asked Alex nothing about the life of the human Alex Mercer, and definitely nothing about how viruses reproduced and spread. Alex pretended sleep when there was nothing else to do, sometimes stirred around the apartment, sometimes coughed. The things that Desmond read would come back to him, then, and he thought that the thing that Alex was, the Blacklight virus (or some variant of it, anyway) was almost certainly airborne before it became him.

(There was no other cause for coughing when Alex didn't even breathe.)

(He read that some viruses were linked to cancer and wondered if that was Alex, as well.)

The loud shush of water in the sink was almost relaxing, even with something like Alex in the living room, pouring over the map and marking new locations and altering old ones. Desmond didn't really mind washing the dishes; Dana ordered an obscene amount of carry-out and all of them tended to eat from the boxes it came in, so it was mostly utensils.

It wasn't like he was unfamiliar with cleaning or washing dishes. He'd had to keep his own apartments relatively clean and free of damage or lose his deposits on them, and bars still had to pass health inspection. He didn't like washing dishes, but sometimes the chance to shut his mind off and do some mindless task didn't go unappreciated.

Sometimes, Desmond was a danger to himself and those around him, but usually to himself. His hand stung suddenly, and he looked down and -

Momentarily, it wasn't his hands, but darker ones stained by the sun and now red, deep and wet and the same temperature of his skin. There was a knife clutched in the other, and he shoved gently to set the man back, dust and sun and a startled groan. The man reeled back from him, shoes scraping over dirty stone, and slowly the sounds of the crowd swam back to him, watching fingers clamp over a neck where so much red spilled, and someone screamed and he needed to conceal himself -

But no, he didn't. It was his own hand, skin paler but also angry red with hot water, and his own blood spilling rapidly from a wide open cut. The soapy knife in his other hand was clean of it, the injury happening too fast to even dirty the blade.

Desmond stared at it, and it spattered over the sink, and he thought biohazard and his heart began to pound. Dropping the soapy knife and sponge both, he gripped uselessly at his wrist and looked around frantically, reluctant to get blood all over the only towel available.

"Oh, gross," he said, watching blood spread over the dishes still in the sink. Even though it was his blood, that didn't mean he liked the look of it on things he intended to eat off of. He pulled back, even though it meant the rapidly flowing blood got on the floor, and wow that was a lot of blood, seriously, had he hit an artery or something (stupid, there weren't any in the hand)?

He froze suddenly, feeling his skin prickle even as the blood on his hand dribbled to the floor in a quiet patter, like a leaky faucet. Desmond didn't have to wonder at the weight of the gaze fixed upon him, not when he'd felt it often enough before.

Turning cautiously, he looked to see Alex still sitting at the coffee table, marker uncapped in hand and the map before him, but his cold blue eyes were on Desmond.

No, not Desmond. They were on the blood.

Alex had said that he didn't smell like something to eat, but Desmond thought this was probably pushing it, that unless Alex meant there was some poison in his veins, that all the free running blood was too much of a red flag. It spilled through his fingers, a drop at a time, a thick and wet 'plop' as it puddled.

"There's a first aid kit in the bathroom," Alex said flatly, no emotion to the words but they cut through the air like knives.

"Okay," Desmond said, his voice sounding strange to his own ears, slightly strangled. "Thanks." He didn't move for a moment, thinking again about not running because he liked his throat intact. Then he thought maybe movement would be less tempting than him standing there until his wound clotted up at last, bleeding all over the floor.

He cupped his hand beneath the injury to catch most of the blood and keep it from trailing everywhere. The bleeding had slowed but he still made a mess of it, finding the kit and then washing his hands in the sink. At least the kit seemed well used and well stocked, though he had to wonder what Dana got up to that required it, since Alex certainly didn't.

Desmond tended to the wound as he'd been taught as a child, wrapping it once in gauze to save the bandage from the difficult location it was in, and then (remembering the stare) he wrapped it again and secured it. He flexed his hand to ensure he'd done a passable job, but the wound wasn't deep even if it had started hurting as he calmed down.

The sink looked like a murder scene, though, and looking down proved that he hadn't done a very good job of keeping the blood off the floor either. Desmond groaned, realizing he'd have a bit of a mess to clean up. For lack of anything better, he got the roll of toilet paper and started mopping up the scattered drops, not looking forward to the mess that would be on the kitchen floor.

But when he got there, what he found was possibly worse. The floor was bare of blood, and the living room was empty.

Desmond wasn't really the confrontational sort. He could fight meanly when cornered and forced into it, but for the most part, he preferred to deflect with words and nurse his grievances in silence until they either healed or festered into something ugly.

Alex hadn't shown back up after the incident in the kitchen for the rest of that day, or the next, and Desmond was not unthankful for that. Dana herself thought little of it when she noticed. Her mouth had pursed slightly, and she'd arched a brow at Desmond but demanded no answers. Which was nice of her, really, because Desmond might just end up spilling everything about her brother, Hannibal Lector, and his missing blood if she did.

The memory festered much faster than Desmond anticipated.

"Look," he said, "I just have to go out."

"And get caught by Abstergo or the Assassins? Are you stupid," Dana asked. "At least wait until Alex comes back."

"Whenever that'll be," he said dryly. That was half of the reason he intended to go out in the first place. Somehow he didn't think Alex had gone far, not with a fugitive still living under the same roof as his sister. Going on a walk might draw the man out, from habit if nothing else. Maybe he'd think he'd get to eat. As if Alex were a stubborn, hiding cat that needed to be drawn out by opening a can of tuna.

As for himself, Desmond was pretty confident of his ability to remain out of enemy hands even if Alex wasn't around. After all, he knew the danger zones, and he'd been on the run for years, not to mention how thin Abstergo's ranks had gotten in the last few weeks. But all the same, he unfocused his mind and let his eyes burn like sleepless nights and wash the world monochrome.

He was barely two blocks from Dana's apartment when his skin prickled, the heavy weight of a monster's attention. It took another ten blocks before Desmond caught a flash of blue out of the corner of his eye, and eight blocks later, he resorted to climbing onto the bus.

Alex was really going to have to forgo putting his hands in his pockets; his stance and everything else gave him away - to an Assassin, at least. Desmond suspected that the young man he was currently wearing had once been military, judging by his hair cut. He sat down next to Desmond because Alex wouldn't know the first thing about discretion if it bit him on the ass; he might have the whole 'stealing people's faces' thing down pat, but that honestly seemed to be the end of it.

"Wow, so," Desmond greeted him, "what are you, a vampire?"

The man's face was casual as ever, but there was something distinctly unimpressed in his face as he looked at Desmond, then past him and out the window.

"Because that was kind of creepy," he continued, growing slightly frustrated by the lack of response. Finally, trying to speak evenly (but the words trembled with strain) he asked "you find out anything interesting?"

Alex looked like he was pretending to be some kind of tourist, though Desmond thought at least some of it was keeping an eye on anyone seeming too interested. He'd already looked around, was keeping his body carefully relaxed and neutral (don't look at me), and as long as he could keep his voice even -

"Enough," Alex admitted bluntly.

Tension sang up his back, threatening to straighten it and tighten his shoulders, but he couldn't risk the attention. "You ate my blood," he said flatly, almost reaching Alex's levels of monotone. "You actually -" Desmond shut his mouth with a click, glancing out the window and breathing slow and deep and trying again not to scream.

Desmond was accustomed to feeling chased, but this was a whole different sensation completely. This was being hunted, almost, but not quite that either. He'd learned how both of those things felt. When he had been a kid back on the Farm, he had been taught how to play both cat and mouse. Since then, he'd learned that the mouse's role fit him better - at least until he'd gotten stupid and overconfident.

He didn't really want to play cat and mouse with Alex, though. Alex's claws were just too big.

When he felt a little less like leaping over the seat and dashing to the front of the bus to fling himself from it, still moving or not, Desmond looked back at Alex, who was still sitting there, a study of nonchalance. It was still startling how there was something intrinsically Alex about the bend of his elbows, the way his lids hung over his eyes. "I thought you said you didn't want to," he said mildly, and was proud that there was no trace of the anxiety he felt in the words, despite his damp palms.

Alex arched his brow briefly before it smoothed, and said "I don't."

"You -" He shut his mouth again, forced himself to lower his voice, glancing around the noisy bus. No one was paying attention, still. His fingers shifted against his own pockets, a tremble in his extremities, heart beating loudly. "Your actions are speaking slightly louder than your words, Alex," he said tightly. Assassins were hunting him, Abstergo was hunting him, if Alex started hunting him too - "What do you want from me?"

Alex looked at him with a stranger's face, some poor military boy that had gotten devoured five years ago or more, but the expression on it was the Alex that Desmond and Dana knew: sharp and watchful (and alien and predatory). "I told you," he said, and his sharp, alien eyes slowly hooded, "you don't smell like something to eat."

Then what, Desmond wondered frantically, staring at him. What did something like Alex want if not something to eat? He felt hunted and pinned and practically torn open and studied, like Alex was reading secrets coded into his DNA that even the Animus couldn't decipher. And it had to be that, from day number one, he thought. When Alex had listen to his request, and engaged him on his story -

("I'm going to breed myself into you")

The expression on Alex's stranger's face finally clicked, the same one turned on him over too many empty glasses from people too drunk to remember better. Or maybe it would have been if Alex were human, if there was anything human left in him, because that wasn't quite right. The look on Alex's face was only sideways akin to a leer, and whatever he was feeling wasn't lust, but it still made heat burst across Desmond's chest and sweep up his neck and into his cheeks, blushing like a thirteen year old.

"Oh," he said stupidly, and for the first time considered that it might not have been an accident that Alex Mercer had broken through windows in the exact tower on the exact level that held Desmond Miles.

Desmond did a lot of thinking, even though there really wasn't much left to think about.

He looked over the map, studying how the different patches of enemy territory had changed over the last few weeks, compared to the new information they'd gotten earlier that day. It didn't look good at all. They seemed to be closing in, and Desmond thought they'd need to visit other neighborhoods and cull higher numbers.

Was he a serial killer or just a mass murderer? Calmly talking about killing people to draw off attention. The Creed said no innocents, and Desmond would be hard pressed to defend the men as such, but - Altaïr would have done the same, wouldn't he? They were Templars.

That defense seemed weak even to him, but was that his failure as an Assassin, and if so, which way? Was he too sympathetic to his enemies, or was this a violation of the Creed? (And that was a strange concern, because he'd rejected the Creed years ago when it had been made clear to him he would never be Assassin material. But the dry sun touched skin that wasn't his, and there was a shrieking bird of prey-)

Dana came home bearing coffee and Desmond was thankful for both it and the distraction, wrapping his hands around the styrofoam cup. How was this even his life? How was this Dana's life? Questionable attachment to a brother-shaped monster aside, Dana was decently nice and should probably be out getting married to someone she loved, not living half-on-the-run, or something like it.

That was what he was thinking, but somehow what he said was "how come Alex isn't contagious?"

Dana shot a look at him like he'd just asked for a recipe for baby back ribs made from actual babies, and Desmond winced because had he really just blurted that out? "What the fuck kind of question is that," she demanded harshly.

"I don't know," he said, shrugging. "And don't get me wrong, I'm glad Alex isn't highly contagious, but how in the hell did he catch it to begin with if it's not really, really contagious?"

Narrowing her eyes, she said "shouldn't you be asking Alex these kinds of questions?"

Much to his alarm, he felt heat sweeping up his neck, threatening his cheeks, and wow he was not going to blush in front of Dana, especially not discussing this, that would be transparent. Even he could be a better Assassin than that. Shrugging as nonchalantly as he could, he looked away. "I don't really have a great track record when it comes to that? Tact isn't really a strong point with me. And Alex gets really annoyed when he thinks I'm being dumb, so -"

Dana unexpectedly made a sympathetic noise. "That sounds like Alex," she said, reluctantly warm and amused. She came over and sat down on the chair, watching him over the rim of the styrofoam cup. "Well," she said, "I know the basics. You've noticed that Alex isn't really the talking sort, unless he's doing a villain's monologue."

"What is he, Disney," Desmond asked, arching a brow - though he wasn't unfamiliar with the concept. Dying men's last, taunting words weren't exactly the same as a villain's monologue, and he hadn't been important enough in Vidic's eyes (a tool, a map, a means to an end), but he knew about gloating.

"Hey," Dana said with a reserved sort of fond humor, "villains have style."

"Villains are also bad guys, and often want to take over the world or destroy it," he said, both brows up.

Rolling her eyes, she said "there's some gold foil in Alex's shriveled little black heart. If you kind of squint at it. Sideways. With a concussion."

Alex was a giant colony of sentient, shape shifting virus pretending pretty poorly at being human, and whose idea of seduction (if it could even be called that) entailed the consumption of enemies (okay, not exactly surprising, that, considering just what Alex was). Desmond sometimes wondered if Dana was just in a lot of denial or if she had permanent brain damage.

"Sure," he said. "So, how'd it happen?"

Just like that, the levity vanished and Dana's shoulders stiffened. She shrugged, maybe trying to shake them loose, but she couldn't just get rid of the tension, the discomfort of thinking about it. "Well, that was Alex's job," she said. "He was studying it. The Blacklight virus."

"Yeah," he agreed, "he said that's what it was."

"Blacklight is actually more of an umbrella term," she clarified, waving it off like it reminded her of something unpleasant. "They had Alex working on adapting a strain of it. You can probably see where this is going."

He kind of could, but honestly, "there's a couple of different places something like this could go," he pointed out.

She shrugged with a bitter smile. "Can you say 'government cover up'?"

Well, he'd watched enough movies to be familiar with that, although in his experience, the government wasn't all-knowing or all-powerful and certainly not the only one doing stupid shit and trying to hide it. "So they tried to terminate Alex's project?"

"Yeah, Alex wasn't going to stand by and let that happen," she said, and her tone said that behavior was expected of Alex, that he was stubborn and had his own ideas and didn't like being shoved around. That kind of behavior didn't sound like the kind that lasted long in things that earned 'government cover ups'. "And that's how I got involved, of course. Alex really isn't the kind of person who goes 'quietly into the night', but they -" Dana paused, looking down at her coffee. Her knuckles around it were white, her face a little blank. She licked her lips and swallowed with a clicking noise. "They kind of shot him dead."

Staring, he said "how do you kind of shoot someone dead?"

She shot him a wild-eyed exasperated look, something of a frantic denial, and Desmond thought that some part of her realized just as much as he did that Alex Mercer was dead. "The Blacklight virus, of course," she said. "My stupid brother was carrying around a vial of highly mutagenic, extremely adaptive retrovirus. They shot him dead. He got better."

"Well, that's wonderful," he said, because the other option was to start screaming. He wasn't any more level headed than any other person, he was just better at pretending. "Still doesn't explain how you two have been running around, hiding from the government and the military and whatever weird ass, super secret, classified, bullshit branch of whatever special agency that was doing studies on horrific mutant virus strains - I mean, how hasn't there been another Outbreak?"

Dana sat her coffee down and tossed her hands into the air. "There almost was," she said. "Do you have any idea how nihilistic my stupid brother can get? He's still figuring out this 'being human' thing, and it's not exactly helpful when people keep trying to kill you or run away screaming. Most days he mopes around nursing a raging case of misanthropy - and trust me, you do not want Alex to give up on the human race. He's got really weird ideas about the entire thing."

She sighed, running her hand back through her hair carelessly, then fixed him with a rueful look. "Then he comes hauling you home, and I still don't get why. I mean, you're a nice enough kid, Desmond, but this is Alex we're talking about."

He waved his hands, trying to fend off any suggestion of a question. "Don't ask me, I have no idea either." But that was a lie, wasn't it? Alex told him to his face just a few days ago, then spoke nothing more about it and continued on as if it didn't mean anything. "So," he said, "he could infect other people? He just doesn't."

"Chooses not to," she agreed, bit her lip, and amended "so far" Picking up her coffee again, she held it close as if any heat at all escaped the cup to warm her up. "He has infected other people. Once or twice. It didn't really work out."

Thinking about the death tolls, he said "they didn't survive?"

"Oh," she said, "the strain Alex has isn't actually fatal. I'm not sure what the actual percentage of survival is, but both of them survived. They just didn't - take to the infection well."

"What do you mean," he asked.

Dana looked at him, her pale eyes cutting like Alex's, sharp and old. "Both times, they tried to start an Outbreak again. Make more of themselves." She looked away, taking a sip from her cup. "Alex has stopped an Outbreak three times, just in the first year since this all started. Since then, he hasn't tried saving a dying person's life again."

Maybe not, but Alex clearly hadn't given up on making more like himself the way Dana thought he had.

It started with a single joke: you're living with your baby sister.

Desmond thought Alex might have something like pride, although not in any shape that Desmond recognized; certainly not any he'd seen before. But he'd gotten the idea that Alex Mercer had been some kind of genius from what Dana had said, and geniuses of their fields tended to be at least a little prideful, and so he'd tried to poke it. It didn't exactly play out the way Desmond had expected; apparently, Alex had a second apartment all of his own.

"What do you even need it for," Desmond asked dryly. "You're a couch potato. Do you even sleep?"

Alex didn't look impressed with his defamation of his character. "No," he said flatly, pausing in front of a door and fishing a key out of his pocket. Desmond remembered Dana saying that Alex didn't even use clothes most of the time, and decided against contemplating that further. "But I need someplace to think."

"Is that what you do when you throw your legs in the middle of the room and pretend that you're a piece of furniture," he asked dryly, following Alex into the apartment. He stopped right inside the door, feeling his brows go up as he blinked. "Wow," he said flatly. "Nice place."

Alex glanced around before he shut the door behind them, as if he needed to check if something had changed without his notice.

"That was sarcasm, by the way," Desmond clarified, seeing the look. The place was basically empty, not even a chair or table in the living area, the walls a blank but somewhat soothing shade of blue.

"I know what sarcasm sounds like," Alex said testily. "There was no reason to furnish the place when I don't experience comfort the way you do. And I don't throw my legs anywhere."

"No, you really do," Desmond argued, because the living room was basically his bedroom, and when Alex commandeered the couch, he took up as much space as his lanky frame could without unraveling into a tangled mess of viral abomination.

Also maybe Desmond was half into flight-or-fight mode again, his heart pattering in his chest (rapid and afraid, like any prey would be, mouse or rabbit or poor pathetic human next to the weaponized alien something that was Alex-Mercer-become-Zeus).

"It's called resting," Alex shot back, "something you should try sometime."

"I'm pretty sure that's sleeping," he said.

Alex rolled his eyes just about the same way Dana did, and that was really creepy. Actually more creepy than the way his hood slid back off his head of its own accord (and why wouldn't it? It wasn't cloth, more akin to skin and a part of him). "I don't sleep," he repeated, flatly. "But periods of low activity are beneficial when I can't consume large amounts of mass."

Large amounts of mass ... like people, perhaps? "Yeah," he said, the word sticking slightly in his dry throat, "somehow I don't think you've been going without large amounts of mass recently."

Alex made a noise that could have been agreement or amusement either or both, but his face didn't suggest anything at all. His icy blue eyes were making Desmond's skin crawl, although he wasn't being unusually intent at the moment.

"So," Desmond said, anxious and bright as he rocked gently on his feet.

Alex looked away, glancing around the apartment again and moving away at a slow meander. "Don't expect a tour," he said flatly. "The rest of it is as empty as this. There's a bed, if something happens and I need to hide Dana, but that's it."

"What, really, not even any food?" He glanced toward the kitchen where he heard the hum of a fridge.

"No point in food," he said. "Its not a safe house. If we're compromised, it won't be hard to find this place."

"Not even for yourself?" He arched his brows at Alex's back, who had paused at a random point near the wall and seemed to be studying it like it was fascinating. "I mean - isn't mass, mass?"

"Raw is better," Alex admitted clinically, "living is best. Volume outweighs cost, though, so I don't bother keeping a stocked fridge. It's too high maintenance for as often as I come here."

Wow, so - a vegan monster, huh. Wait - what the hell was he eating, then? Strays? He narrowed his eyes at Alex, half trying to envision that, half trying not to. In cases like this, didn't animals know to stay away? Maybe he ate homeless people. Alex was handsome enough to pull off some real Ted Bundy stuff. No, that was possibly more horrifying than the strays.

"Awesome. So. Question," he said lightly, looking around the room himself to avoid looking directly at Alex. "About how much blood would it take to get a good firm grasp on someone's memories?"

He saw Alex turn out of the corner of his eye, watching him. "Blood isn't the place for that," he said dispassionately. "Gray matter is. Preferably still functioning when consumed." Desmond swallowed, throat clicking, and Alex shifted forward, approaching with that same casual stroll. "If I'm looking specifically for memories," he said, "I pin the person down, rupture the bone casing around the brain, and consume that first. The rest of the body follows."

Desmond flinched, feeling the blood drain from his face. The imagery invoked by those words was graphic and unpleasant, and Desmond thought about thin tendrils of red and black, puncturing skulls neatly and consuming everything within and leaving an otherwise unmarked body behind. His ancestors would appreciate the neatness, he thought.

"Well, that's just - sunshine and bubbles," he said, the words crackling in his parched throat. It worked hard, and he swallowed again. He scrubbed his damp palms on his shirt, glancing back at Alex, who watched him with that same alien calm as always. "That really doesn't - wasn't the answer that I was looking for."

"I'm not your Animus," Alex said bluntly. "I can't read memories from DNA. I got some information from your blood, but nothing personal - not thoughts, or feelings, or directions. It was enough to know that whatever your sixth sense is, however you pick people out by sight, I won't be able to do that. Even if I consumed everything about you."

"Oh, well, awesome," Desmond said uselessly, swallowing again, his breath too shallow. Alex had finally come to a stop barely two feet from him. "It - it's probably a genetic trait?"

Alex shrugged, the human mannerism fitting him as well as a suit would a walrus. "Yes," he agreed. "You've got a high concentration of nucleic acids in sequences that Blacklight doesn't couple with well and wouldn't be able to put back together."

It didn't entirely surprise him to hear it confirmed, that Desmond's DNA was special, that it set him apart. He couldn't have been the only descendant of Altaïr, but he had been the only one to successfully synchronize with him. "So, what," he said, "I can't get infected?"

It was like a switch got thrown somewhere, and Alex didn't flinch, didn't twitch, didn't even shift his weight; he simply became other, nonchalance shredded by claw and fang. Whatever small movements he made in imitation of a normal person came to a sudden halt. His chest was still, eyes no longer shifting the way a real person's would.

"I didn't say that," he said, the words barely given shape by teeth or tongue and rasping like something metal (a drawn blade, the hidden blade of Desmond's ancestors shooting forward, free, into someone's neck or chest and grating against bone). "I said Blacklight couldn't reconstruct your DNA. Hosting it is another matter completely."

Desmond was only too aware of the way his own chest heaved, his heart thundering, his pulse jumping just beneath the skin, the unsteady shift of his feet and his gaze though he tried to stand similarly still. (He'd known this was a bad idea, he'd known, Alex's claws were just too big for a mouse like him). Licking his chapped lips, he said "what about my memories?"

"What about them," Alex said, didn't ask.

"You lost all of your memories when you were infected," Desmond said.

"I didn't have memories," Alex said, "I was dead. My host's brain had ceased to function by the time I took his body from him. You don't have to die to become Blacklight."

The dream of black and red had continued to haunt him, worse in the wake of Alex saying it to his face, and it came back to him again. A virus consumes. A virus replicates. That was what a virus does. "And you want me to become Blacklight," Desmond said. "You want to make me like you."

Alex didn't move, but the edges of his form frayed, black and red and insubstantial, the faint whispers of something hunting through dead grass, fast and excited because it was closing in. Whether or not Alex truly remembered the man that he'd once been, he was as much animal as monster (maybe, because most couldn't even agree if a virus even counted as being alive). "Yes," he said, "I do."

And Desmond said "me, too."

Desmond had half expected to be attacked in that instant of agreeing to infection. Torn apart or consumed or something, ripped limb from limb. Never had Alex given the impression of being out of control, except for then, and Desmond had tossed the dice.

They'd come up double sixes, because Alex had flipped another switch somewhere inside his head and turned away without visible hesitation or effort. Although they'd established that his blood wouldn't help, Alex had expressed that having an uncontaminated sample might be of some use. He'd left the apartment briefly to acquire the tools and arrived back and indicated that they'd better retire to the bedroom.

"The bedroom," Desmond had said, voice tight and giving Alex something of a wild look.

"It doesn't really matter, but it's the only furniture available," he said bluntly, then cast the floor a speculative look. "It would be easier to clean up the floor."

"Bed it is!"

The syringe that Alex got to draw his blood was so big and thick that Desmond had to look away or lose his lunch. He focused on Alex instead, could almost pretend that he was a real person like this, taking his blood with a little wrinkle of concentration between his brows. "You know," he said, voice tight, "you could at least light a few candles in here, get a mood going."

Alex glanced up, meeting his eyes with an expression that informed him he was in no uncertain terms an idiot and possibly delusional and Alex was going to be kind enough not to actually say it.

"Oh, no," Desmond said, feeling cold chills and all kinds of other things dance across his skin. He wasn't traditionally scared of needles, but he was under a lot of stress at the moment. "I remember that look you gave me on the bus, don't try to get around it."

"I'm about to give you the worst night of your life," Alex informed him blandly.

"Very charming, I'm sure the hosts fall all over themselves for you," he shot back.

Alex didn't reply, pulling the needle free of his arm and capping it. Desmond stared with sick fascination at the dark red cylinder, filled with his blood, his blood cells and DNA. It was basically filled with him: essence of Desmond. What the hell was he doing again? He felt lightheaded.

"What are you even going to do with that," he demanded weakly.

"For now, store it in the fridge," Alex said. "It'll hold there for a while at least. Long enough for this. You never know when it could come in handy." He stood, leaving Desmond on the bed to take the syringe to the kitchen.

His arm ached slightly, and Desmond rubbed at it. He felt flushed and uncomfortable and awkward, and wow was this a revisitation of the night he'd intentionally lost his virginity? He must have a thing for older people, although in this case he certainly wasn't going to get 'lucky'. He rubbed his hands together briskly, breathing on them just for something to do.

He heard Alex's footsteps coming back down the hall and said "so, uh." Alex's hands were in his jacket pockets and he paused in the doorway, staring blandly at him. "Uh, well, how should we - you know." Desmond churned his hand in the air descriptively, looking at Alex somewhat desperately. "You know! Proceed?"

Narrowing his eyes slightly, Alex said, "I usually proceed with traumatic penetration."

Desmond squawked in shock and alarm, utterly incapable of telling if this was some kind of odd one-off joke or what. "No! No way, there will be no - no penetration, traumatic or otherwise!"

"Have it your way," Alex said with a shrug, moving away from the door. "It wouldn't be necessary in this case. Give me your injured hand." He held his own out, loose and casually bent.

It was a little late to be treating Alex like a leper, but he stared at it and looked up desperately. "Can't you just - you know. Inject me with infected blood?"

For a brief moment, Alex seemed to consider it, but he arched a brow and said "I don't have blood anymore, but the strain does need to be introduced to your circulatory system. So give me your injured hand, Desmond."

Desmond scowled at him, uncertain if he was feeling inclined to be agreeable. But in the end, he'd decided on this (almost from the day Alex had first come crashing through the Abstergo window, and if anything, his brother Assassins being in possession of an Animus only cemented it). He reached up and set the hand on Alex's.

The not-shadow and not-flesh that slid out from under the sleeves of Alex's jacket were much smaller than Desmond had seen before, all those weeks ago in Abstergo and shortly thereafter. The whisper of them, like dry grass or maybe feathers (and the scales of the feathers that collected liquids like rain or more specifically blood), was slightly louder this close, and they crossed over onto Desmond's hand and slipped under the gauze he'd wrapped around his bandaged wound so tight. Desmond's arm tightened and he barely managed not to yank his hand back, heart hammering with unmistakable fear.

Thousands and thousands of years of evolution made it a little hard for Desmond to react otherwise, both to the threat and the knowledge of what was about to happen to him. Humans didn't want to get infected by anything (although high school biology said mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell and evidence suggest it might be a symbiotic invader). There were odd prickles of pressure under his bandages, near the wound itself. The tendrils themselves felt like nothing in particular, neither hot nor cold, like he was stroking his own palm with a fingertip.

Prickles of pain, just the lightest touches of it, lit up along the healing wound and Desmond said "Jesus Christ" and looked away, stomach clenching.

"Too painful?" Alex's tone was technical, analytical.

"Not really," Desmond said unsteadily, swallowing. "Just freaking out about your freaky little - things burrowing into my hand like -" His stomach pitched and heaved like a ship in a tsunami. "Sorry," he added tightly, "just gotta distract myself here."

He thought desperately of the hot equatorial sun, bright and dry and the rustle of the wind. Even smoke, and the cry of a falcon or an eagle, the flow of a foreign tongue more familiar than it should be, and this was really not working. It felt like there were hot needles digging at his hand, and Desmond wondered just how green he was turning.

Alex shifted on his feet, and desperate for any distraction at all, Desmond looked up at him. He was frowning, which in general wasn't a good thing, but then he caught Desmond's eye and seemed to come to a decision and that seemed like an even worse thing.

Taking a half step forward that placed him between Desmond's anxiously bouncing knees, Alex shifted into a crouch that no human would have been able to manage comfortably. Then Desmond had a face full of Alex, or more correctly, he had Alex on his mouth.

What, echoed blankly in Desmond's suddenly very silent brain.

It considered the preceding and ongoing events, then lit up brightly with neon lights because hey, that was kissing, and didn't he like that? It seemed to remember he did, despite his frantic thoughts that holy shit a multicellular sentient virus that ate people was kissing him.

It was time for Desmond's higher thoughts to have a nap.

Yes, kissing. He liked that, making an appropriate noise to indicate this and reaching up with his free hand to grip at Alex's jacket (or the facsimile of a jacket, anyway, cool and cloth-like under his fingernails). He opened his mouth and Alex was hot against his lips, against his tongue, maybe too hot? Hotter than human temperature and that probably should have bothered him but it wasn't unpleasant. Someone Alex had eaten had known how to kiss (heavy on the lip pressure, light on the teeth, just wet enough to smack; just enough hot breath, enough of a nibble and pull to draw him in, to provoke a bitten, appreciative sound) and that was all that really mattered at this point.

His hand, grasped in Alex's, was itching like mad, sparks of pain like insect bites. He was vaguely aware of the jacket under his other hand losing cohesion, squirming under his fingers as they plunged through insubstantial pockets, resembling warm chain link fence more than solid cloth.

The grip was necessary as he suddenly lost his balance, breaking his mouth free as he almost fell backwards onto the bed. Alex was half on his lap, the sound of not-flesh coming in surround as his jacket struggled with cohesion, feeling almost like vibrating under his hand. Desmond let himself fall back, trying to get some distance and think clearly, but this only seemed to invite Alex to follow. The bed sunk as he got his other knee up and he leaned over Desmond, staring down with a face that wasn't flushed and pupils that weren't blown and didn't even bother to breathe. There were imperfect folds and creases at his jacket shoulder, not far from where Desmond had a handful of warm cables, where more were twisting up and curling around his hand, even while not-shadow continued to flake off Alex like solar flares off a dark sun.

Desmond's face felt like it was twisted up into some kind of delirious, delighted expression, even as he said "wow, I am sexually attracted mutant viruses, did you know?"

And Alex, because he was an asshole, said "I've known for weeks," like Desmond was suggesting the sky was blue and the sun was bright and pretending this was new and interesting.

"What, really," he said, because apparently he had been slow on the uptake since this was the first he'd known of it, and then more importantly: "we could have been doing this for weeks?"

Alex replied with his mouth, which was just fine with him because Desmond felt that he was going to say (or may have already said) something that would embarrass him when he had enough blood back in his brain to think about it clearly.

Some corner of his mind was still aware of his hand and the writhing mass of red and black, not-shadow and not-flesh, that enveloped it. Still aware of it itching, like burning just shy of actual fire, and insect bites and the sting of needles. He'd lost Alex's hand at some point, or maybe Alex had, because the only thing he could grasp was slick masses of red-and-black (and his skin prickled like a dozen microscopic blades of broken glass cut tiny little microscopic wounds into his skin).

Under his other hand, the imperfect folds and cabled holes of Alex's jacket twisted and smoothed into a flat expanse of bare skin, silky and hot over sharp corners like shoulder blades and spine and bone, and the appreciative noise that bubbled up from his chest stuck in his throat as Alex pressed him into the bed.

"Fuck," said Alex, quiet and annoyed, into Desmond's mouth.

"That seems to be the plan," Desmond agreed, trying to catch his breath; Alex wasn't very considerate of this basic human necessity.

"No, I mean-" He shifted, dragging Desmond's itching hand up over his head and pressing it down onto the bed, grip tight. He should have looked more human than ever, but there was nothing to hide the junction of where Alex's human shape gave way to red and black cables, or how nothing like human arousal was on his face. But he was hot like a dying sun and the kiss he pressed to Desmond's mouth was messy with something like urgency, and he wasn't human so why should he look that way, and there were cables of not-shadow and not-flesh sliding under his clothes.

Desmond stilled and stiffened in silent alarm and against his mouth, Alex said "safe word is peanut butter."

His breath escaped in a startled huff, and he shifted slightly against Alex but he wasn't being held down. "Oh, well, when you put it that way," he said.

Alex had said something about his 'worst night ever', but it was turning out pretty good.

It turned out that Alex hadn't been lying in the least. Before long, Desmond had developed a high fever and then staggered off to vomit what seemed like everything he'd ate for weeks. The last thing that Desmond really remembered was suddenly listing sideways to the floor as his body suddenly yanked control out from under him.

Alex must have moved him back to the bedroom, because that was where Desmond was now, staring at the ceiling. It was a smear of red and orange in strange, changing patterns. He wondered where he'd gone, blinking rapidly and carefully stretching his face. He stirred and heard sawing that suddenly dialed down to a whisper, and he winced reflexively.

There was something he wasn't smelling (but he could see why Alex might describe it that way) in the air, that told him Alex had been here but had left some hours ago. It was all half-metal and sour-spicy and familiar like cold washes of blue, and something of salt and what must have been the last remnants of human Desmond.

Heat pressed to his cheeks and apparently mutant space-viruses could be embarrassed as long as they weren't Alex post-Mercer.

And with that thought came the sudden flicker-fire of memories, his father and the Farm and running away (and his mother, calling out for him; something he'd taken to thinking of the same kind of thing as that shrieking bird of prey in Masyaf without realizing it) and the years of being a runaway and Abstergo. They were red and hot and cut through with odd lights and Desmond clasped a hand to his face, disoriented and slightly sick.

It didn't last long, and after a careful breath, he rolled over and sat up. He still didn't remember anything after the collapse in the bathroom, but he thought that Alex had stuck around until the worst of the sickness had passed. Desmond rubbed briskly at his face, then paused before rubbing his hands together, staring at them. It hadn't really registered how muted things had been until that moment.

Desmond stood, then wobbled violently for a moment, feeling weirdly heavy and lighter than air and very, very hollow, like the fever had burnt out the core of him. He inhaled slowly, wondered for a hysterical moment whether or not he had been breathing at all. After a moment, he calmed again, his body steady as it adjusted, learned. He wondered if Alex had felt something like this, or if in losing his memories the adjustment hadn't been as rough.

He certainly didn't feel like he was going to be sprinting up the sides of buildings or scaling them in rapid bounds, either. Desmond lifted a hand and flexed it, staring at it, but it continued to look harmless, flesh and skin and bone. He kept staring at it, imagining red-and-black and carefully flexing his fingers and -

The illusion unraveled, the sleeve of his hoodie bulging from elbow to wrist where it spilled out from under the cuff and his flesh-and-bone hand rippled into otherness, not-shadow and not-flesh flexing before collapsing back and looking harmless as ever.

"Oh, shit," he said, breathlessly (and that was literal, he realized; he hadn't been breathing for the last few minutes). Desmond swallowed, but he knew there was a grin on his face, the same stupid delighted expression he'd worn just hours before. He'd done it. He'd escaped the Animus, and now there was something more dangerous lurking in his DNA than just Altaïr. He flexed his hand again but didn't test it's integrity, satisfied. He could finally control his own destiny.

He was finally free.