Assassin's Creed: Outlaw - Book One

The Bleeding Effect

I was aware that there was something hot pressed against my temples, the electrode feeds of the Compact Animus. The light from the visor was too bright. Even as I closed my eyes the light made the world a fleshy pink nightmare enveloped in the heat and smell of smoking circuitry.

"What the fuck!" protested Helen's voice, then the swoosh of a fire extinguisher. I tore the visor from my eyes and sat up straight. There was a sudden tightness in my head and chest, as I realised I wasn't breathing.

I gulped in a couple of lungfuls of air, the first was fine, clean, relieved all the pressure. The second made me double up choking. The smoke levels weren't lethal but they were enough to rouse prickles of pain in my chest.

"Something happened in the synchronization matrix!" Paul said. "It started to read a confusion between Sam's pattern and Yughi's, then the disc speed ramped up, like the Animus was trying to access too much data all at once. It's okay, everything's under control now."

This was followed by a second loud whoosh of air as Paul blew a thick coating of yellow dust off the blocky shape of the Compact Animus.

"It needs some time to cool down before we can boot it again," Paul said. "Sorry about that people."

"Well I've been pushing it pretty hard," Helen said. "I guess this means it's break time."

I took a shower, made myself some noodles and then asked if I could go out for a walk. Helen told me it was too dangerous, which is how I ended up on the roof terrace, clutching a fresh cup of tea.

Dusk was falling in London, the safe house in Crouch End was on a hill looking down towards the city, where office building lights twinkled in the early evening. I breathed in some smoke-free, smog-filled London air and took a minute to review.

One of the really weird things about spending time in the animus was coming back to reality and being able to tell it apart from the simulation. There was, as far as I could discern, no qualitative difference between feelings in and out of the animus.

But you could still tell what was real and what was a historical replay, somehow.

What made that difference?

The most obvious thing was a level of abstraction when in the animus. In reality, I was me, inside I still felt like me but I was watching reality pass by through Yughi's eyes. There were times when I controlled Yughi, the animus filled in by highlighting waypoints through an augmented reality overlay. Whenever I got into the guts of a memory Yughi spoke, Yughi acted and I was just along for the ride.

Resisting Yughi made me feel giddy and nauseous like I had before I achieved synchronization. That was the most distancing part of the whole experience, the feeling like you were experiencing an incredibly bizarre and vivid flashback to a part of your life that never existed.

As I sat, sipping at my tea, revelling in reality, I began to feel that my time in the animus had changed me at a fundamental level. It was just small things, the way I picked up my cup, the way I held my body as I sat. I had felt fine before going into the animus, now I felt out of shape, I felt like my own body didn't fit, somehow.

I swallowed the rest of the tea and, somewhat out of character, I began to work out. It was a mish-mash of exercise moves I'd learned over my life, squat thrusts, star jumps, stomach crunches, lifts, bounces. Before now getting out of breath, heart thudding, sweat prickling my skin, had felt unpleasant. Now, however, it felt like I had, in some strange way, come home.

While I was doing press-ups Helen came out on the balcony.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to disturb you."