The Imperfect Image

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Assassin's Creed/The Secret World
Summary: Desmond keeps trying to find more clues about the world he finds himself in.  Mostly, he just feels more confused.
Word Count: 1082
Rating: Teen

         Desmond doesn’t find a lead on the bee again. He ends up sort of hanging around his place, keeping an eye on it, because the possibility of someone barging in trying to kidnap him is the next best lead he has, which sounds kind of pathetic when he puts it into actual words. It helps that he knows how to blend into crowds, now, and lose tails, not that he’s seen any. The newspapers and the internet at the public library tell him Abstergo doesn’t exist, but there are a whole lot of rumors about the Illuminati owning all the corporations behind the scenes, even a few posts by one ‘Guy Fawkes’, and Desmond would know the way Shaun writes anywhere after so many database entries, so...maybe they’re just a little more secretive, a little less arrogant, in this world.
         Because, yeah. Unless Minerva had done something to screw up the entirety of history, some things just don’t exist in this world like they did in his. Or they do, which is even weirder. Like, movies, for one. Those still exist. It’s baffling. And he’d come into this world choking on a bee, so, like, maybe he should get used to it just being weird for seemingly no reason, but still. Movie theaters.
         It also happens to be 2017. He hadn’t believed it until he’d seen the evidence himself, like, five times, from five different sources. Gotten him some weird looks at the library, too, but he needed to be sure.
         That means his theory about this being the past is entirely wrong. He’d started to come to that conclusion given the things that were obviously not the same, but still. It’s been shocking.
         He’d looked for evidence of a solar flare, too, and there just...wasn’t any. Something about an outbreak and quarantine in Tokyo, and that had felt important, gold important, so he’s keeping an eye on news about it. There isn’t much, which is a little suspicious. Like, no one even posting on the internet? Even when they can’t leave the city, that’s not quite normal, and he didn’t even need Eagle Vision to tell that much. It feels like when Abstergo had been trying to keep information about what happened at DIA under wraps, but there’s not too much he can do from here, and while he can speculate about a Piece of Eden, or whatever, it’s out of reach for now, given that he doesn’t want to give himself away by trying to board a flight now.
         Lots of chatter online talked about the Mayans, how they’d believed the world would end in 2012. People even had ‘end of the world’ parties, which...kind of seemed in bad taste, but Desmond guessed he could understand. If they were going to die, maybe it was better to do so while having fun, and if the world did end you wouldn’t have to deal with the hangover or any other consequences. So, either nothing had happened, like everyone thinks, or maybe the Templars were covering it up for some reason rather than declaring themselves the Saviors of Humanity or whatever. Either way, the Earth was still turning, humanity wasn’t all but wiped out, and it didn’t need Desmond to die to do it. Which is a reassuring idea.
         Except he still hasn’t managed to figure out what’s going on with—like, the apartment had been rented for Desmond Miles, people have actually called him Desmond Miles, which is even weirder because he’s pretty sure he’d been going by a fake name. As far as Desmond knows there’s only one of him actually here, so there’s just...a big question he’s terrified of finding the answer to and carefully putting out of his mind because he doesn’t have the time for that kind of existential crisis either, as to what happened to the other Desmond.
         He finds a guy, hostile, terrified, more on edge than he’d ever been even with the Bleeding Effect, but all too willing to share his fears to a willing ear, in a laundromat of all places. It was Eagle Vision that led him there, and the gold didn’t lead him wrong, and he’s glad he doesn’t startle like most when the guy starts rambling about the ‘forbidden wisdom of Eden’.
         So. It lines up, the Illuminati and Abstergo, the sort of stuff about the medicine and media he’d thought was just cultist nonsense for far too long. He reads stuff in the magazine about Bingo! Cola, about how it’s somehow manipulating people, controlling their minds, and decides he’d definitely not touching the stuff. He’d had enough of that in his last life, thank you.
         He’s walking back from one of the food carts when the Eagle Vision turns on by itself and he sees red shapes, headed right for his apartment, only one’s stopped, head turned towards Desmond—
         Crap they can’t see me here—he thinks, Eagle Vision sliding away—
         And the guy’s eyes just kind of...slide over Desmond. Like there’s nothing interesting here. And then he keeps going.
         And there’s that golden glow again, Desmond realizes, and turns, and...his shoulder’s glowing. Not the one he’d used the Eye with. His tattooed arm. The edges of his tattoo from where it’s peeking out under his sleeve are glowing, too. That—okay, he’d probably done that, somehow, and it could be useful. He’s going to panic about this and get drunk, probably. Later.
         They send in the smug asshole with the sunglasses, who seems to be in charge, alone. Which would get him killed, really, but then, the Desmond of the past wouldn’t really be able to do anything. Or maybe this world’s Desmond, before he body-snatched him or whatever.
         “Gone—though he’d made less of a mess of his apartment than the others. Maybe a runt of a Bee-touched,” he sneers, trying to cover up the disappointment. Also excuse you what, Desmond has better control than that. The reference to a Bee makes some sense, and also none at all—apparently they had some sort of way of tracking where those sentient bee goes and apparently, because they have approximately zero imagination, they just call the people that the bee visits Bee-touched. So they were coming after him because of that. Not because he’s got some pretty impressive Assassin lineage, or whatever. This world is weird. “Templars or Dragon got here first. Let’s try the next one.”
         That...Templars aren’t Illuminati? There are three factions? What the absolute hell?