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“Alright… I got her stabilized.”

“Thank God… Is she going to be okay?”

“I can keep her like this for a few weeks.”

“Rubes... Is she going to be okay?”

“I don't know, Ben. Okay? I don't know…”

“This is all my fault…”

“No, don't start that bull.”

“I pushed her too hard.”

“No Ben, she pushed herself. Look, we'll keep her like this for as long as we can. Unfortunately, the most we can do right now is wait and hope she wakes up. Until then, nothing is going to get better with you freaking out.”

“...Sorry.”

“It's fine. Did you call Chels?”

“Yeah, she's on her way with Carter.”

“Good. We're gonna need everyone together to cope with this…”

“I just hope she comes back to us…”

“So do I…”

------------

ANIMUS 3.67

LOADING FIRMWARE

***WARNING: MEMORY SYSTEMS CRITICAL***
***WARNING: ANCESTOR PARTITIONS CRITICAL***

MONITORING SYSTEMS: OFFLINE
WHITEROOM: OFFLINE
ANCESTOR SYNC: OFFLINE

LOADING SAFE MODE…

------------

May 22, 2016; Animus Island

At first she saw blackness, an endless dark void that offered no comforts. She couldn't move. She tried, but her body refused to listen. She could hardly even feel her body. It was as if she was simply a mind, fluttering in the ether.

She heard a mechanical whir assault her ears. Suddenly, the sensation of feeling finally returned to her being. Not comfort or softness or anything else pleasant, nor anything rough or terrible. Just feeling. But that was enough for her. She suddenly felt a ground beneath her back. She felt dirt and grass pressing against her jacket.

Ava slowly began opening her eyes. The sky pierced her lenses as the visual came in, through blurry slits at first, and slowly starting to take form. She rubbed her aching head. It felt like her brain had slammed into her skull like a crash test dummy.

“Oh God…” she mumbled groggily to herself as she slowly stood up at last. “My head… what happened?”

She looked up and around at last to maybe try and help her get her bearings a bit.

It did the exact opposite.

Ava nearly fell right back to the ground when she jumped at the sights around her.

“W… what?! Huh?” she stuttered as she looked with wide, panicked eyes.

She seemed to be… nowhere. She was on a tiny little island surrounded by ocean that stretched far beyond the horizon in all directions. The sky was an odd blue-green hue, with a mist of fog and strange glowing lines popping in and out of existence as they zipped across the atmosphere in a grid far above her. Even more bizarre were the giant stone blocks that littered the scene. Some formed little monuments and stairways in random jumbles across the island, while others seemed to miraculously float in the sky like balloons. Ava looked around the island and saw two big structures on each side. One was a row of parallel stone blocks that seemed to stretch infinitely high into the atmosphere. Every set of two had an odd sort of portal effect to them, like a doorway leading to one scene even though the world behind them was just island. On the other side was a sort of gateway formed out of a jumble of the giant blocks. The gate had the same portal effect to it, except the scene it showed was just a dark, ominous void filled with a grid of black lines zipping around. Ava started hyperventilating.

Her body was shaking. She started panicking. Where was she? Was she alone? Oh God, what was she going to do!? What even was this place? How would she-?

“Hey kiddo, you okay?”

Ava yelped and jumped a good distance. She spun around on her heels to face the voice, flexing her fingers on instinct before suddenly realizing she didn't have her hidden blades on.

The man she saw in front of her held his hands up. “Woah! Woah! Easy there!” he said. “Deep breaths, Ava!”

“Don't you tell me to take deep breaths!” she snapped. “Where the hell am I? Who the hell are you? What the fu-?”

“Ava! Please! Look, I can answer any questions you've got, but I need you to calm down before I do anything. Please.”

She looked at him, into his golden, pleading eyes. Her body was still shaking, but she tried to calm her breathing. After about a minute, she had herself… relatively under control. She took a few cautious steps towards the man, her facial expression all too telling of how desperate she was for answers.

The man looked at her, the lighting of the place highlighting the scar going across the left side of his lips a bit.

“Alright. You done?” he asked, not unkindly.

Ava nodded slowly.

“Cool,” said the man. “So, shoot.”

He leaned back against the stone he was sitting on, looking far too casual for the situation they seemed to be in. Ava looked him over as she thought of where to even start. He had short hair and a light beard. His outfit just consisted of a black hoodie, a white t-shirt with an eagle pattern on it, some jeans, and some old sneakers. He looked no different from any random stranger you'd see on the streets. Just an average guy. But given the fact that he seemingly just appeared out of nowhere, on an island that seemed to give the finger to physics, Ava assumed that he was far from normal.

And so she decided to start with that.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice still trembling a small bit.

The man smiled and stood up. He shook her hand. “Desmond Miles,” he said. “Nice to meet you”.

The gears in Ava's head came to a screeching halt as the name clicked in her brain.

“Desmond Miles?” she said, shocked. “As in… the Desmond Miles? The Mayan Apocalypse guy?”

Desmond nodded. “Yep. That's me.”

Ava didn't know how to react. “B… b… but… they said… they said you were dead!” she stammered. Her body started shaking again.

“I am,” Desmond said casually.

“B… bu… but… but… if you're dead, then… how can you be… Oh God… Am I dead?!”

“What?”

“Oh God I'm dead aren't I?!” She started freaking out. She stumbled backwards. “Oh God… Oh God! I am dead! Is this Hell or something? Oh God I'm in Hell aren't I?!”

“Ava! Calm down!” Desmond pleaded, putting hands on her shaking shoulders. “Listen! You're not dead, and this isn't Hell.”

“But you said-!”

“I'm not the Desmond who died, Ava.”

“I… wah…?”

“The Desmond who was made of meat and bones died in 2012, sacrificed himself to save all humanity. I'm not that Desmond. I'm his mind. His thoughts and consciousness given form in a digital space.”

“Digital space? So… wait… does that mean…?”

“You're still in the Animus, Ava. Alive, albeit barely.”

She looked all around her. This hardly looked like any Animus simulation she'd been in before, but it was certainly a much more comforting explanation than being dead in Hell.

“Crap…” she said to herself. “Okay… okay… this is an easy fix then…”

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called up towards the sky.

“Ben! Ruby! Pull me out guys! Please!”

Silence.

“Guys?”

“They can't hear you, Ava. I'm sorry.”

She spun back around to face Desmond.

“Why not? What's going on?”

“I said you were alive, but you're not awake.”

“What?”

“You're in a coma, Ava, and a bad one at that. It's… honestly a miracle you survived at all.”

“...Survived what?”

“What do you remember?”

Ava paused as she thought. What… did happen? “Well…” she said, “I remember… I remember this blinding light and spasming out during a fight with Carter's friend. Then… then there were the visions and… and they wouldn't stop…” She felt her lip trembling as she began to remember all the traumatic details of the past few weeks. She was on the edge of crying. “I couldn't tell who I was anymore… I… I… it hurt too much… and I got so mad… I went to my friends and…” She felt her blood start boiling and her fists clenching. “I told them I'd finish Apsarini’s genetic memories and then I was done. I couldn't take this crap anymore. I didn't want to. I just wanted to go home and get all these voices out of my head…”

She grit her teeth and let out a noise like a wounded dog. Her cheeks were soaked with tears. She dropped to her knees and cried, face in her hands. For a moment she just sat there in pain, sobbing while Desmond gave her a look of pure sympathy and apologies. He bent down and put a hand on her shoulder. She yanked away.

“Ava… I'm sorry. I know it's hard but-”

“Shut up! You don't know!”

“Ava, please…”

“No! I never wanted any of this! I never wanted to become some pawn in some ancient angel war that can just be sacrificed on the board!”

“You're not a pawn Ava, you're a great gal, an Assassin.”

“No I'm not!” she screamed. Her voice echoed across the island, a noise of pure pain and regret. She took heavy breaths. “I'm not one of you! I'm not an Assassin! I'm just some college kid who wanted to earn a little money for my education. I'm some random girl from Minneapolis who got caught up in some crap that I have no desire to keep going through.” She started getting very quiet. Her face softened back into tired sadness. She looked up at Desmond. “I just want to go home…”

Desmond put another hand on her shaking shoulder. She didn't pull away this time. “Look Ava, I really do understand what you're going through, and I'm here to help you. But the first step is to get you out of here, back to the real world. We have to fix your mind, but we can only do that if you stay as calm as possible. I need you to help me help you. Can you do that for me?”

She looked at him through blurred tears. She stared for what seemed like ages before she finally wiped her eyes and nodded. “Okay…” she said. “As long as I can go home…”

“We'll get you out of here, I promise.” He gave her a friendly smile, and she couldn't help but feel comforted by it.

“Thank you…” she sniffled.

He nodded and helped her back to her feet.

“So… where even is here?” she asked. “You said this is an Animus simulation?”

“Yep,” he said, motioning for her to follow as he walked towards the end of the island. “This here is Animus Island, though most techies would call it the Black Room.”

“Black Room?”

“Yeah. You know that blank digital void you're in when you first get in the Animus and when your ancestor kills a major target? That's called the White Room or the Memory Corridor. A sort of loading screen/hub world for memory sessions. This place isn't between anything though. This is the space beyond all other programming in the machine, the base code. Basic physics, weather simulations, just the pure, raw functions. Probably the only place your mind could've been stabilized while you're out cold.”

Ava absorbed it in. It was so bizarre to think. She was in a coma, yet here she was walking beside Desmond, like she was fully awake and aware. A ghost trapped in her own mind.

“Stabilized… from the visions?” she asked.

Desmond nodded. “The Bleeding Effect really took its toll on you, kid. All those voices, all those memories, all of them were fighting to take control. Your mind couldn't take it, and it snapped. Luckily your friends kept you in the machine. The Animus was able to pick you out and drop you in here for the time being.”

“So… how are you here? You said you weren't the Desmond that died? What are you, like, an AI?”

“Eh kinda. See, long time ago the real me was in the exact same situation as you, trapped in a coma trying to get the ghosts out of my head.” He paused. A look of sadness and loss overtook his face. “I had a friend here… His name was Clay. He was unlucky enough to go completely mad from the Bleeding Effect. He made an AI avatar of himself for me to find here before he killed himself…”

“I'm so sorry…” Ava said.

He gave her a weak smile. “It's fine. I kinda learned how to come to terms with the past during my last few months.” He paused and gathered himself a bit. “Anyways, Clay managed to help me escape in time, but he passed on some special things to me, the first being a lost archive of his memories, and the other being a program to bring back a copy of my avatar to freeroam. Guess he knew someone else was going to need help getting out of here.”

“Dang… well… how do I get out of here?”

“That's a bit more complicated.”

The two of them stopped in front of the big gate at the end of the island. Ava gazed up at it in awe.

“Like I said, your brain is shattered,” Desmond continued. “All those memories are tangled in a big mess. Now what I did was I clawed my way back into stored data and finished the memories of my ancestors, Altaïr and Ezio. Relived their lives until the gene pool cut off so that the Animus had a complete guide as to who did what and when and was able to separate all those people from one another.”

“Okay. Sounds reasonable. So all I have to do is finish up the memories of Kahente, Aveza, and Apsarini.”

Desmond gave her an apologetic look. “See that's the thing… you don't have time to do all that.”

“...what?”

“Doing all three would take way too much time and way too many strings to pull. The only reason I was able to finish mine in a speedy manner is because Ezio happened to do a little memory exploration himself with some Pieces of Eden.”

Ava stared in wide-eyed terror. “Th… then how the hell am I gonna get out of here?! What am I gonna do?”

“Calm down, kiddo. It's not the end. The main problem to solve is getting the Animus a way to separate all of you out. I was hoping I could avoid this route, I even pushed you into those ancestor servers to help get you some synchronization.”

“That was you?” She suddenly remembered how confused Ruby was about this foreign program that was scanning her simulations after the initial server attack from Abstergo. Desmond did all that?

“Yeah,” he responded. “It didn't work though, unfortunately.” He sat down on a rock. “Now we gotta do this the hard way.”

“Which is?”

“You keep up with genetics?”

“Uuuh…”

Desmond laughed. “Fair enough. Have you at least heard of the Mitochondrial Eve?”

“Uuuuuh…”

He laughed again. “Well it's kinda complicated but the oversimplified version is this: Your mitochondria has it's own special DNA and it always comes from your mother. Now a bunch of people that are way smarter than me did the research and discovered through this DNA that we all have a single common female ancestor from tens of thousands of years ago, that we call the Mitochondrial Eve. There were hundreds of other humans alive at the same time of course, but only her DNA survived through the generations while the others all died out.”

“Okay… that makes me kinda uncomfortable thinking that I'm distant cousins with everyone, but okay.”

Desmond laughed. She couldn't help but giggle a bit too. “Anyway, what does this… Mitochondrial Eve have to do with getting me out?”

“Well think of it. The Animus switches ancestors once the child leading to you is conceived. It's programmed to switch over to the next generations once the previous information stops coming in. So if you can reach the switching point of everyone's ancestor…”

“Then the Animus will have the ultimate template for separating every branch on the tree,” Ava finished, the realization dawning on her.

“Exactly!”

“Well shoot, that's easy! I'll just hop into her memories, keep going until she has her kid, and then I can head right back home!”

“Well…”

“Oh come on!” She was annoyed again. There's always something…

“The Animus isn't built to handle people that far back. The genetic information just gets way to dispersed and faded out for the program to run properly.”

“Great…”

“But that's why we use a stepping stone.”

Ava looked at him. She gave him a questioning face.

“I picked out another ancestor of yours, Ava, one that had plenty of interactions with some special Pieces of Eden that let her relive the memories of the Mitochondrial Eve. If you relive her memories, you'll get the Eve’s as well.”

Ava nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that. One last treasure hunt through time before I'm done for good.”

Desmond gave her a smile, but it seemed more like he knew something rather than he was sympathetic to her goal. She didn't think about it though. She was prepared to just hop in and get it done.

“So, how do I start?” she asked.

Desmond pointed to the gate behind her. She turned to look at the massive arch, the portal to the dark void beyond. “By stepping through that,” said Desmond. “Fair warning, it's going to feel a bit weird since it isn't the conventional memory programs, but you're still in control and it's up to you to find your way out.”

Ava stared at the gate, listened to its deep, rumbling, mechanical hum, almost like the wail of a blizzard. She nodded in determination. “Okay… okay,” she said, trying to shake off her nervousness and pump herself up. “I can do this.”

“Good luck, Ava,” Desmond said. He suddenly started glowing blue and fading away. “I'll be here in the software if you ever need my help. You can do it, kiddo!”

And then he was gone, like magic. Ava stared in awe at the stone he used to be sitting on.

“Well… I guess it's nice to have a friend in this situation,” she said to herself. “God knows I need the kindness…”

She turned back to the gate and started walking up to it. She took a deep breath and reached her hand out slowly. She touched the side of the portal. It glowed bright blue where she made contact, and the parts of her arm that went in disappeared into the void beyond, reappearing when she pulled it out. “Alright… let's do this…” she said to herself.

She put one foot forward and took her first step into the portal. She closed her eyes and stood straight as she pushed herself all the way in. She immediately felt the change wash over her. In the darkness she felt everything from Animus Island, the sights, the sounds, the feelings, wash away. She felt herself, her “body” fade away, and something entirely different took the place of it all. She felt a new body take form, new sights and sounds forming all around her. She opened her eyes and looked down at fireplace. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, looking around and smiling. Today was a big day. Today was the day they set out. Arktalaki grinned and sprung off of her sleeping mat. Today was the day they leave to find the Land Beyond the Sun.

Description
“Alright… I got her stabilized.”

“Thank God… Is she going to be okay?”

“I can keep her like this for a few weeks.”

“Rubes... Is she going to be okay?”

“I don't know, Ben. Okay? I don't know…”

“This is all my fault…”

“No, don't start that bull.”

“I pushed her too hard.”

“No Ben, she pushed herself. Look, we'll keep her like this for as long as we can. Unfortunately, the most we can do right now is wait and hope she wakes up. Until then, nothing is going to get better with you freaking out.”

“...Sorry.”

“It's fine. Did you call Chels?”

“Yeah, she's on her way with Carter.”

“Good. We're gonna need everyone together to cope with this…”

“I just hope she comes back to us…”

“So do I…”

------------

ANIMUS 3.67

LOADING FIRMWARE

***WARNING: MEMORY SYSTEMS CRITICAL***
***WARNING: ANCESTOR PARTITIONS CRITICAL***

MONITORING SYSTEMS: OFFLINE
WHITEROOM: OFFLINE
ANCESTOR SYNC: OFFLINE

LOADING SAFE MODE…

------------

May 22, 2016; Animus Island

At first she saw blackness, an endless dark void that offered no comforts. She couldn't move. She tried, but her body refused to listen. She could hardly even feel her body. It was as if she was simply a mind, fluttering in the ether.

She heard a mechanical whir assault her ears. Suddenly, the sensation of feeling finally returned to her being. Not comfort or softness or anything else pleasant, nor anything rough or terrible. Just feeling. But that was enough for her. She suddenly felt a ground beneath her back. She felt dirt and grass pressing against her jacket.

Ava slowly began opening her eyes. The sky pierced her lenses as the visual came in, through blurry slits at first, and slowly starting to take form. She rubbed her aching head. It felt like her brain had slammed into her skull like a crash test dummy.

“Oh God…” she mumbled groggily to herself as she slowly stood up at last. “My head… what happened?”

She looked up and around at last to maybe try and help her get her bearings a bit.

It did the exact opposite.

Ava nearly fell right back to the ground when she jumped at the sights around her.

“W… what?! Huh?” she stuttered as she looked with wide, panicked eyes.

She seemed to be… nowhere. She was on a tiny little island surrounded by ocean that stretched far beyond the horizon in all directions. The sky was an odd blue-green hue, with a mist of fog and strange glowing lines popping in and out of existence as they zipped across the atmosphere in a grid far above her. Even more bizarre were the giant stone blocks that littered the scene. Some formed little monuments and stairways in random jumbles across the island, while others seemed to miraculously float in the sky like balloons. Ava looked around the island and saw two big structures on each side. One was a row of parallel stone blocks that seemed to stretch infinitely high into the atmosphere. Every set of two had an odd sort of portal effect to them, like a doorway leading to one scene even though the world behind them was just island. On the other side was a sort of gateway formed out of a jumble of the giant blocks. The gate had the same portal effect to it, except the scene it showed was just a dark, ominous void filled with a grid of black lines zipping around. Ava started hyperventilating.

Her body was shaking. She started panicking. Where was she? Was she alone? Oh God, what was she going to do!? What even was this place? How would she-?

“Hey kiddo, you okay?”

Ava yelped and jumped a good distance. She spun around on her heels to face the voice, flexing her fingers on instinct before suddenly realizing she didn't have her hidden blades on.

The man she saw in front of her held his hands up. “Woah! Woah! Easy there!” he said. “Deep breaths, Ava!”

“Don't you tell me to take deep breaths!” she snapped. “Where the hell am I? Who the hell are you? What the fu-?”

“Ava! Please! Look, I can answer any questions you've got, but I need you to calm down before I do anything. Please.”

She looked at him, into his golden, pleading eyes. Her body was still shaking, but she tried to calm her breathing. After about a minute, she had herself… relatively under control. She took a few cautious steps towards the man, her facial expression all too telling of how desperate she was for answers.

The man looked at her, the lighting of the place highlighting the scar going across the left side of his lips a bit.

“Alright. You done?” he asked, not unkindly.

Ava nodded slowly.

“Cool,” said the man. “So, shoot.”

He leaned back against the stone he was sitting on, looking far too casual for the situation they seemed to be in. Ava looked him over as she thought of where to even start. He had short hair and a light beard. His outfit just consisted of a black hoodie, a white t-shirt with an eagle pattern on it, some jeans, and some old sneakers. He looked no different from any random stranger you'd see on the streets. Just an average guy. But given the fact that he seemingly just appeared out of nowhere, on an island that seemed to give the finger to physics, Ava assumed that he was far from normal.

And so she decided to start with that.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice still trembling a small bit.

The man smiled and stood up. He shook her hand. “Desmond Miles,” he said. “Nice to meet you”.

The gears in Ava's head came to a screeching halt as the name clicked in her brain.

“Desmond Miles?” she said, shocked. “As in… the Desmond Miles? The Mayan Apocalypse guy?”

Desmond nodded. “Yep. That's me.”

Ava didn't know how to react. “B… b… but… they said… they said you were dead!” she stammered. Her body started shaking again.

“I am,” Desmond said casually.

“B… bu… but… but… if you're dead, then… how can you be… Oh God… Am I dead?!”

“What?”

“Oh God I'm dead aren't I?!” She started freaking out. She stumbled backwards. “Oh God… Oh God! I am dead! Is this Hell or something? Oh God I'm in Hell aren't I?!”

“Ava! Calm down!” Desmond pleaded, putting hands on her shaking shoulders. “Listen! You're not dead, and this isn't Hell.”

“But you said-!”

“I'm not the Desmond who died, Ava.”

“I… wah…?”

“The Desmond who was made of meat and bones died in 2012, sacrificed himself to save all humanity. I'm not that Desmond. I'm his mind. His thoughts and consciousness given form in a digital space.”

“Digital space? So… wait… does that mean…?”

“You're still in the Animus, Ava. Alive, albeit barely.”

She looked all around her. This hardly looked like any Animus simulation she'd been in before, but it was certainly a much more comforting explanation than being dead in Hell.

“Crap…” she said to herself. “Okay… okay… this is an easy fix then…”

She cupped her hands around her mouth and called up towards the sky.

“Ben! Ruby! Pull me out guys! Please!”

Silence.

“Guys?”

“They can't hear you, Ava. I'm sorry.”

She spun back around to face Desmond.

“Why not? What's going on?”

“I said you were alive, but you're not awake.”

“What?”

“You're in a coma, Ava, and a bad one at that. It's… honestly a miracle you survived at all.”

“...Survived what?”

“What do you remember?”

Ava paused as she thought. What… did happen? “Well…” she said, “I remember… I remember this blinding light and spasming out during a fight with Carter's friend. Then… then there were the visions and… and they wouldn't stop…” She felt her lip trembling as she began to remember all the traumatic details of the past few weeks. She was on the edge of crying. “I couldn't tell who I was anymore… I… I… it hurt too much… and I got so mad… I went to my friends and…” She felt her blood start boiling and her fists clenching. “I told them I'd finish Apsarini’s genetic memories and then I was done. I couldn't take this crap anymore. I didn't want to. I just wanted to go home and get all these voices out of my head…”

She grit her teeth and let out a noise like a wounded dog. Her cheeks were soaked with tears. She dropped to her knees and cried, face in her hands. For a moment she just sat there in pain, sobbing while Desmond gave her a look of pure sympathy and apologies. He bent down and put a hand on her shoulder. She yanked away.

“Ava… I'm sorry. I know it's hard but-”

“Shut up! You don't know!”

“Ava, please…”

“No! I never wanted any of this! I never wanted to become some pawn in some ancient angel war that can just be sacrificed on the board!”

“You're not a pawn Ava, you're a great gal, an Assassin.”

“No I'm not!” she screamed. Her voice echoed across the island, a noise of pure pain and regret. She took heavy breaths. “I'm not one of you! I'm not an Assassin! I'm just some college kid who wanted to earn a little money for my education. I'm some random girl from Minneapolis who got caught up in some crap that I have no desire to keep going through.” She started getting very quiet. Her face softened back into tired sadness. She looked up at Desmond. “I just want to go home…”

Desmond put another hand on her shaking shoulder. She didn't pull away this time. “Look Ava, I really do understand what you're going through, and I'm here to help you. But the first step is to get you out of here, back to the real world. We have to fix your mind, but we can only do that if you stay as calm as possible. I need you to help me help you. Can you do that for me?”

She looked at him through blurred tears. She stared for what seemed like ages before she finally wiped her eyes and nodded. “Okay…” she said. “As long as I can go home…”

“We'll get you out of here, I promise.” He gave her a friendly smile, and she couldn't help but feel comforted by it.

“Thank you…” she sniffled.

He nodded and helped her back to her feet.

“So… where even is here?” she asked. “You said this is an Animus simulation?”

“Yep,” he said, motioning for her to follow as he walked towards the end of the island. “This here is Animus Island, though most techies would call it the Black Room.”

“Black Room?”

“Yeah. You know that blank digital void you're in when you first get in the Animus and when your ancestor kills a major target? That's called the White Room or the Memory Corridor. A sort of loading screen/hub world for memory sessions. This place isn't between anything though. This is the space beyond all other programming in the machine, the base code. Basic physics, weather simulations, just the pure, raw functions. Probably the only place your mind could've been stabilized while you're out cold.”

Ava absorbed it in. It was so bizarre to think. She was in a coma, yet here she was walking beside Desmond, like she was fully awake and aware. A ghost trapped in her own mind.

“Stabilized… from the visions?” she asked.

Desmond nodded. “The Bleeding Effect really took its toll on you, kid. All those voices, all those memories, all of them were fighting to take control. Your mind couldn't take it, and it snapped. Luckily your friends kept you in the machine. The Animus was able to pick you out and drop you in here for the time being.”

“So… how are you here? You said you weren't the Desmond that died? What are you, like, an AI?”

“Eh kinda. See, long time ago the real me was in the exact same situation as you, trapped in a coma trying to get the ghosts out of my head.” He paused. A look of sadness and loss overtook his face. “I had a friend here… His name was Clay. He was unlucky enough to go completely mad from the Bleeding Effect. He made an AI avatar of himself for me to find here before he killed himself…”

“I'm so sorry…” Ava said.

He gave her a weak smile. “It's fine. I kinda learned how to come to terms with the past during my last few months.” He paused and gathered himself a bit. “Anyways, Clay managed to help me escape in time, but he passed on some special things to me, the first being a lost archive of his memories, and the other being a program to bring back a copy of my avatar to freeroam. Guess he knew someone else was going to need help getting out of here.”

“Dang… well… how do I get out of here?”

“That's a bit more complicated.”

The two of them stopped in front of the big gate at the end of the island. Ava gazed up at it in awe.

“Like I said, your brain is shattered,” Desmond continued. “All those memories are tangled in a big mess. Now what I did was I clawed my way back into stored data and finished the memories of my ancestors, Altaïr and Ezio. Relived their lives until the gene pool cut off so that the Animus had a complete guide as to who did what and when and was able to separate all those people from one another.”

“Okay. Sounds reasonable. So all I have to do is finish up the memories of Kahente, Aveza, and Apsarini.”

Desmond gave her an apologetic look. “See that's the thing… you don't have time to do all that.”

“...what?”

“Doing all three would take way too much time and way too many strings to pull. The only reason I was able to finish mine in a speedy manner is because Ezio happened to do a little memory exploration himself with some Pieces of Eden.”

Ava stared in wide-eyed terror. “Th… then how the hell am I gonna get out of here?! What am I gonna do?”

“Calm down, kiddo. It's not the end. The main problem to solve is getting the Animus a way to separate all of you out. I was hoping I could avoid this route, I even pushed you into those ancestor servers to help get you some synchronization.”

“That was you?” She suddenly remembered how confused Ruby was about this foreign program that was scanning her simulations after the initial server attack from Abstergo. Desmond did all that?

“Yeah,” he responded. “It didn't work though, unfortunately.” He sat down on a rock. “Now we gotta do this the hard way.”

“Which is?”

“You keep up with genetics?”

“Uuuh…”

Desmond laughed. “Fair enough. Have you at least heard of the Mitochondrial Eve?”

“Uuuuuh…”

He laughed again. “Well it's kinda complicated but the oversimplified version is this: Your mitochondria has it's own special DNA and it always comes from your mother. Now a bunch of people that are way smarter than me did the research and discovered through this DNA that we all have a single common female ancestor from tens of thousands of years ago, that we call the Mitochondrial Eve. There were hundreds of other humans alive at the same time of course, but only her DNA survived through the generations while the others all died out.”

“Okay… that makes me kinda uncomfortable thinking that I'm distant cousins with everyone, but okay.”

Desmond laughed. She couldn't help but giggle a bit too. “Anyway, what does this… Mitochondrial Eve have to do with getting me out?”

“Well think of it. The Animus switches ancestors once the child leading to you is conceived. It's programmed to switch over to the next generations once the previous information stops coming in. So if you can reach the switching point of everyone's ancestor…”

“Then the Animus will have the ultimate template for separating every branch on the tree,” Ava finished, the realization dawning on her.

“Exactly!”

“Well shoot, that's easy! I'll just hop into her memories, keep going until she has her kid, and then I can head right back home!”

“Well…”

“Oh come on!” She was annoyed again. There's always something…

“The Animus isn't built to handle people that far back. The genetic information just gets way to dispersed and faded out for the program to run properly.”

“Great…”

“But that's why we use a stepping stone.”

Ava looked at him. She gave him a questioning face.

“I picked out another ancestor of yours, Ava, one that had plenty of interactions with some special Pieces of Eden that let her relive the memories of the Mitochondrial Eve. If you relive her memories, you'll get the Eve’s as well.”

Ava nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I can do that. One last treasure hunt through time before I'm done for good.”

Desmond gave her a smile, but it seemed more like he knew something rather than he was sympathetic to her goal. She didn't think about it though. She was prepared to just hop in and get it done.

“So, how do I start?” she asked.

Desmond pointed to the gate behind her. She turned to look at the massive arch, the portal to the dark void beyond. “By stepping through that,” said Desmond. “Fair warning, it's going to feel a bit weird since it isn't the conventional memory programs, but you're still in control and it's up to you to find your way out.”

Ava stared at the gate, listened to its deep, rumbling, mechanical hum, almost like the wail of a blizzard. She nodded in determination. “Okay… okay,” she said, trying to shake off her nervousness and pump herself up. “I can do this.”

“Good luck, Ava,” Desmond said. He suddenly started glowing blue and fading away. “I'll be here in the software if you ever need my help. You can do it, kiddo!”

And then he was gone, like magic. Ava stared in awe at the stone he used to be sitting on.

“Well… I guess it's nice to have a friend in this situation,” she said to herself. “God knows I need the kindness…”

She turned back to the gate and started walking up to it. She took a deep breath and reached her hand out slowly. She touched the side of the portal. It glowed bright blue where she made contact, and the parts of her arm that went in disappeared into the void beyond, reappearing when she pulled it out. “Alright… let's do this…” she said to herself.

She put one foot forward and took her first step into the portal. She closed her eyes and stood straight as she pushed herself all the way in. She immediately felt the change wash over her. In the darkness she felt everything from Animus Island, the sights, the sounds, the feelings, wash away. She felt herself, her “body” fade away, and something entirely different took the place of it all. She felt a new body take form, new sights and sounds forming all around her. She opened her eyes and looked down at fireplace. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, looking around and smiling. Today was a big day. Today was the day they set out. Arktalaki grinned and sprung off of her sleeping mat. Today was the day they leave to find the Land Beyond the Sun.