Chapter 1: sync
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It’s a strange feeling, the world building itself anew.
Glitching and sparking around me as the pieces of an artificial puzzle slot into place.
Each slash I—he—makes, the world feels a little more real.
Each step in this digital world feels a little more than the ones I take in my waking moments.
They tell me I need to sync the memories of a dead man to my own—make them my own.
But I’m not sure if I want to.
Chapter 2: eagle
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Out of the machine I see them—those precious few moments when I’m outside when it’s still bright outside.
It’s a brightness that feels unnatural now.
The animus has become my natural habit now—my nest—my home.
Out of the machine I see the silhouettes of eagles flying higher and higher into the sky, their dark wings against a light sky.
His name means eagle, but I don’t think he is as free as one
Chapter 3: engine
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The heart of the machine lies deep underground.
Under mountains of rock and steel.
The cables are like veins and arteries pumping blood—energy—from the engine below to the Animus network above.
Before they transferred me to the Animus Program, I was one of the few people in charge of keeping the engine running.
But now—now the lights are flickering a little too much and it won’t be long before it starts breaking beyond repair.
I can only hope they fix it before then.
Chapter 4: outfit
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It is standard issue.
Grey dive suit with the tri-pronged emblem emblazoned on the chest and sleeves.
All operators wear them.
It’s our uniform.
An identifiable outfit so that the other employees know who we are and excuse our glazed expression—a side effect of the long stretches of time spent inside the Animus.
Chapter 5: mirage
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For months now I’ve had a shimmering distortion in the corner of my vision.
It creeps at my peripheral when I’m out of the Animus.
I know what it is. It’s a symptom of the machine—of being exposed to someone else’s memories for too long.
This effect; a ghost, a mirage, it haunts my waking moments.
Sometimes it’s a person, other times a landscape but most times it’s an unidentifiable entity lurking just out of reach.
Chapter 6: power
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I feel it in there—more than I feel it outside in the real world.
Outside I’m not much.
Employee number 43177.
I’m a number, not a name, not a face.
But there I’m something more.
I’m not 43177—not Sargent, not my own face.
I’m someone else, someone with power.
It’s a power I feel humming through my body long after I awaken from the reconstructed memories.
I need to find a way to hold onto that power.
It’s my only way out.
Chapter 7: chaos
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All it takes is a split second.
One wrong move and everything can go wrong.
A misplaced jump; an over confident strike or a skipped step.
One wrong move and the world falls apart.
It hurts.
Really hurts as the world folds in on itself while I’m still inside it.
Desynchronisation.
Utter chaos in the machine and in my mind.
I can’t stop it, all I can do is wait for the machine to pull me out of the crumbling mess of ones and zeros.
Chapter 8: grief
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The first time it happened they made me take a week off.
Made me talk to the Doctor about what I saw and what I felt.
I tried not to think about it—pushed it down alongside the other emotions that the company had told me to suppress.
The second time it happened—I didn't even get a second to catch my breath.
They needed bodies and minds to keep the project ticking over; keep the data streaming and the memories sequencing.
Instead of a week off and a doctor's appointment, they give me a mood stabiliser.
I have no time to process the grief given to me by a man long dead.
Chapter 9: honour
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I should feel proud of myself.
I’ve done good work.
I fulfilled the expectations of my superiors and then some.
I’m good at my job, good at filling in the blanks and unfurling tangled lines of code.
But any feeling of pride—of honour—is dulled by the constant ache deep in my chest.
I used to think I was doing good work; bettering society and uncovering history.
But now I’m not sure.
I’m not sure what I’m doing is honourable.
Chapter 10: creed
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In our training, we are taught how to resist the pull of their creed.
It’s a hard thing to do.
Resisting the pull of a fanatic believer.
Nothing is true, everything is permitted.
It sounds tempting–and it is.
His belief in the ideas of the brotherhood is intoxicating and the more memories of his I sort through I feel myself believing in their tenets a little more than our own.
Chapter 11: mentor
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I wish she was still here to guide me.
Still here to tell me what to do and how to get myself out of the hole that I dug myself into.
But she’s not.
I don’t know where she went or what happened to her.
One day she was there and the next she wasn’t.
I am becoming more and more like the man in the machine as each day passes.
Just like him, I am a killer without a mentor.
Chapter 12: isu
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I’ve almost filled an entire notebook with scribbles of the nonsensical images that burn themselves into the space behind my eyes.
They are echoes of what he sees–remnants of a society long dead. I
n the machine I hear a faint whisper of their name from a cloaked woman in an old crumbling bureau.
The Isu.
Gods amongst gods.
Makers of relics that drive men mad.
Chapter 13: time
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A lot of things feel different in the machine.
Time is one of them.
In there the hands of the clock mean nothing.
You can spend a week there and experience a decade of memories.
I experienced a woman's life from her childhood to her death in the span of a month.
I’m always late to meetings because of it.
The hours of the day mean nothing to me now that I'm so used to living without them.
Chapter 14: shadows
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Before I started this job, I was scared of the dark.
I didn’t like to think about what could lurk beyond where the light could reach.
Now I see opportunity in the shadows.
Their way of looking at the world is brushing off on me.
If it means I have less fear, I have no issue with their influence.
Chapter 15: wisdom
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The Abstergo archives are not accessible for the vast majority of employees.
The wisdom and knowledge contained within is locked away from everyone who doesn’t have the highest clearance.
I'm allowed in there—a benefit of my dedication to the project.
But the pages and pages of information have started to leave me with more questions than answers.
Chapter 16: control
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I don’t feel like a person anymore–at least not one with my own name.
The woman that looks at me in the mirror knows this.
Every memory of his I relive, a little bit more of me dies.
I am a ghost trapped inside a machine.
My physical body is alive but my mind–my sense of self–it's slowly becoming someone else.
Chapter 17: ghost
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I don’t feel like a person anymore–at least not one with my own name.
The woman that looks at me in the mirror knows this.
Every memory of his I relive, a little bit more of me dies.
I am a ghost trapped inside a machine.
My physical body is alive but my mind–my sense of self–it's slowly becoming someone else.
Chapter 18: ancient
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The ground is soft under my feet and the smell of petrichor hangs in the humid air.
I am dwarfed by the structure before me.
Stones stacked upon stones that lay crumbling under the weight of centuries.
I’ve been here before.
In a dream made of ones and zeros I've walked through these ruins.
I know what lurks below them.
Something ancient and far more dangerous than any weapon.
I push those thoughts from my mind.
I don’t want to think about him when I’m awake.
Chapter 19: revenge
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I can feel the white hot anger coursing through my veins.
His anger rolls into mine and I can feel it taking over.
I’m not a vengeful person. But with his memories leaching into mine, I can feel his thirst for vengeance in my waking moments.
Every time I see her standing there in her freshly pressed suits and cold eyes, my desire for revenge for what she did to me grows stronger and stronger.
Chapter 20: blade
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At first it was just a ghostly sensation clawing at my wrist.
Like something was there but not.
A phantom weight wrapping around my forearm and tugging me down on one side.
I find myself shifting my hand out of habit—a practised movement of flicking a blade out and then in again.
Another trait of his that’s rubbing off on me.
Chapter 21: history
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Our job is to uncover the stories that time forgot.
To dig through memory after memory to find the moments that history has left behind.
I relive the life of a young soldier—I see the war through his eyes and see how it changes him.
Our job is to hold onto the memories of those who are no longer alive.
No matter how painful they are.
Chapter 22: golden
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I’m starting to see the world like he does.
The colour fades from reality without me trying.
My coworkers appear as outlines of blue and red—same with people walking past on the greyed out streets.
On occasion I’ll pass someone on the street who is bathed in golden light.
I don’t know why, and I don’t want to know. Seeing the world this way makes my head hurt.
Chapter 23: landmark
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It stands as an unwavering fixture on the horizon.
Unadorned concrete illuminated by the tri-pronged emblem of the company.
I’ve seen it every day of my life.
Even when I lived in the old city I could see it from my cramped apartment.
It’s a landmark in the city skyline.
A testament to the strength of the Abstergo Corporation.
Chapter 24: district
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He walks through the streets with practised ease.
He knows this district like the back of his hand.
Because he does—I do too.
Even though countless centuries have passed, I can navigate through the winding paths and alleyways of this city with ease and grace.
I see the places where I—he—eliminated targets.
It’s all so familiar yet so very alien.
Chapter 25: empire
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There are many ways to kill an empire.
Revolution and bloodshed tipping the scales towards the oppressed rather than the oppressor.
You can tear it down from the outside—brick by brick and stone by stone.
Or you can tear it down from the inside.
A line of code carefully placed where no one will find it.
Enough dirty code and the sun will set on this empire.
Chapter 26: symbol
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I needed something permanent to remind me of my reality.
A thin black line curls around my ring finger—a permanent symbol etched into my skin.
A patchwork of emblems makes its way up my arm—all recreations of the makings inside the machine.
They used to mark my eyes—now they mark my skin.
Chapter 27: modern
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The ground is hard beneath my feet and the smell of exhaust hangs heavy in the air.
To say I feel small when walking through this city is an understatement.
Modern monuments of steel and glass reach high into the sky–all built with the financial backing of Abstergo and their lucrative subsidiaries.
I wonder how he would feel about what his city has become.
Chapter 28: parkour
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I don't have the luxury of thinking before I make the jump.
I can hear shouting behind me growing louder and louder–footsteps growing closer.
I–he–makes the jump.
My movements become those of a man trained since youth to scale walls and leap across buildings.
I know the name for these movements.
Parkour.
From the french word parcours–the way through.
It has a proper name, but for me?
It’s just another means of survival.
Chapter 29: eden
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It’s more enticing than any drug or creed.
I can feel its pull no matter if I’m asleep or awake.
It feels like a ghostly energy pricking at my skin and flowing in my veins.
He touched the artefact—so I touched it.
Now I crave the strange ancient power that courses through it.
I will not see heaven after what I’ve done, but I will see eden.
Chapter 30: story
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My story won’t have a happy ending.
I’ve known this fact for a while now.
There is only so much heartbreak someone can take before their story becomes unpleasant to tell.
They will tell parts of it—the nice parts.
The parts where I’m myself—not a mosaic of other people’s memories and on the verge of madness at any given moment.
Just because my story is one of misery, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be told.
Chapter 31: family
Notes:
ty for reading these lil snippets! pls ignore the fact it took so long to post all these i have been going through it as the kids would say.
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There is a reason why I can sync with his memories with such ease.
I thought it was just that I was good at my job.
We are connected through the centuries by a thin red line.
A spiral of four letters makes up our shared genetic memory.
He is my family. Rebellion is in my DNA.