ASSASSINS

In 2012, a young bartender named Desmond Miles is kidnapped by operatives working for Abstergo, a giant multinational corporation with its fingers in a wide array of industries. Confined to a laboratory with an adjoining cell, he's forced by Dr. Warren Vidic to use a device called the Animus to relive the genetic memories of his ancestor, Altair Ibn La'Ahad, an Assassin who lived in the Levant during the Third Crusade.

Desmond, it turns out, was raised by modern-day Assassins at a desert compound, in cultlike conditions, and was scooped up by Abstergo not long after he fled. As Vidic's assistant, Lucy Stillman, reveals, Abstergo is actually a modern front for the ancient nemeses of the Assassins, the Knights Templar, who want to find the mysterious "Apple of Eden" and use it to enslave humanity.



During Desmond's sessions, he forms an uneasy rapport with Lucy. Reading her emails and the veiled threats she receives reveals that she's almost as much a captive as Desmond is. He finds