Chapter Text
Pete's always had an uncanny ability to sense when the shit is about to hit the fan. He calls it vibes—these people call it Eagle Sense.
First of all, that's a stupid name.
Secondly, "I'm Secret Service. This mumbo jumbo is so out of my area it's not even funny."
Artie just looks at him. "Yeah, I'm Secret Service too." The look on Pete's face makes Artie narrow his eyes, but excuse Pete if Artie doesn't really look like Secret Service—starting with the straw hat and the battered coat.
"You're Secret Service?" Artie doesn't respond immediately, and Pete doesn't really wait before continuing, "I mean, forget it; it doesn't matter, but you gotta admit all this spidey-senses and magical Pieces of Eden or whatever talk in South Dakota is pretty sketchy, if you catch my drift." Pete's "oooh scary" hand gestures, pop culture references, and charmingly sarcastic inflections don't seem to have much of their intended effect on Artie.
"It's Eagle Sense."
Seriously. What the fuck.
* * *
There was the creepy lady who had been waiting for Pete in his apartment but she doesn't show, and there's Artie who seems to be the head honcho around here but not really a great conversationalist, so apparently the only other person here who remotely knows how to talk like a normal person is Myka Bering.
"It's not that bad once you get used to it," Myka says and opens the door to what has been designated Pete's room—not that Pete got any say in the matter. It's a nice room, for what that's worth, soft browns and reds with furniture that speaks of history. Pete thinks about his tiny apartment in D.C., Ikea-white and not nearly enough hot water in the morning. That doesn't make this feel any more right.
"How long does it take to get used to it?"
"A while," Myka concedes with a small smile and awkward shrug. "But once you see the work we're doing here—I mean, we're staring down the boundaries of human capabilities every day. Endless wonder." The warm conviction in her voice makes Pete feel better in spite of everything.
There's still that nag in the pit of his stomach, but when Myka tells Pete to come knocking next door if he needs anything, wishes him good night, and shuts the door behind her so softly he doesn't even hear it, it's hard to imagine this Warehouse deal is as ominous as it might feel.
* * *
On Pete's second day at the Warehouse, Myka basically tells Pete that the Warehouse has some sort of time machine and they want him to use it.
In real life, this is much less cool than Pete might have imagined.
Pete looks down at the contraption's dull brass rivets and faded leather—distinctly steampunk, and therefore probably either unspeakably old or the product of a really nerdy hobby—and looks back up with extreme misgiving.
"You want me to lie down and put that thing on my head."
There's a helmet with a braid of wires connecting into a shrink's chair, and the chair has another, even thicker braid running out into a computer with one of those bulging CRT screens that Pete hasn't seen in at least ten years. He didn't even know people still make those. Then again, the keyboard was apparently repurposed from a typewriter, and he didn't know people still make those either.
"It's perfectly safe," Myka assures him as she flips a metal switch up, and the machine starts humming—it at least sounds like electricity, not a steam engine. "Trust me, we know from experience."
That means other people have come out of that thing alive. Pete really hopes that's what Myka means.
"It does what again?"
"It's an Animus. It's basically a huge virtual reality machine that lets you tap into your genetic memories." Myka's explanation seems a little absent-minded; her voice punctuated with the loud, fast click-clacking of her typing, although whatever is filling the screen looks like gibberish when Pete squints over her shoulder.
"So... genetic memories as in the memories of my ancestors that are stored in my DNA. Am I saying this right?"
Myka looks up, clearly distracted but smiling. "Yeah, it sounds crazy, I know." She rolls her eyes and waves her hand at the Animus. "I mean, look at that thing. When Artie told me what it was the first time, I told him to go to hell."
Pete laughs in response, although it comes out higher and more nervous than he intended. "Okay, so... at least you came around, right? Right." Pete wipes his sweaty hands off on the butt of his jeans and picks up the helmet to peer at it more closely.
"It'll be just like going to sleep. I'll be here monitoring everything going on in there, and we can still communicate while you're under, so if you're tired or feeling uncomfortable or anything, I can bring you out just like that. I know you have every right to be wary, but you really don't have to be."
Pete takes a deep breath and sits down in the chair, muttering, "Okay. Okay," more to himself than Myka. Myka comes closer and helps him with the helmet, setting it on his head gently and adjusting the metal leads on the inside to rest on his temples. It's only once she tells him he's good to go and smiles at him that he remembers to ask what was bothering him.
"Why me?"
"Because you have the Eagle Sense. It means your ancestors had it too—and they were pretty likely to have been in the thick of some interesting history. It's a great way to learn more about possible artifacts." Myka doesn't look at Pete's eyes as she's saying it, and he knows that's not the whole story, but then Myka tells him to close his eyes and he's out like a light.
* * *
["Pete? Can you hear me?"
"Yeah, loud and clear. Whoa. What is this place?"
"This is the loading screen. Before we get to any actual memories, I wanted to make sure you're settling in okay. Do you feel like you can move and see normally?"
"All I see is white... stuff. Like digital artifacts, all glowy and stuff. I think I feel all ten fingers and toes though..."
"Good, that's normal. We're good to go. Now I'm going to enter some coordinates and try to get you into a specific memory, all right? Hang tight."]
* * *
She had never felt this way before—obviously, it's feels so obvious now, since her husband had never touched her like this. He didn't understand like the woman in front of her did. This woman knew that her breasts ached, feverish and begging to be stroked, squeezed, some sort of direct link to where she burned between her thighs –
* * *
["Holy shit!"
"Um! Wrong DNA cluster. Sorry!"
"Holy shit!"
"I am so, so sorry, Pete. Just give me a se –"
"This is what girls feel when they're having sex?"
"Uh..."
"Wait, wait, don't stop just yet, I want to see –"]
* * *
London, 1899
William blinked and stopped in his tracks, swaying precariously. Disorientation washed over him, and he couldn't remember what he had been about to say. His brow furrowed as he looked down at his own hands, then his clothes and shoes.
["This is not as fun as the other memory, Myka."]
"Wooly?" His companion, several steps ahead of him now, turned to him with head cocked in askance. "What's the matter?"
"I –" And then pieces began falling back into place, Helena's gaze bringing him to the present. "I'm sorry, I was just—someone walking over my grave, I suppose." William attempted a smile and adjusted his hat as he trotted forward to catch up.
"Well, come on, we haven't time to dally."
Helena's hands disappeared into her coat pockets as she drew it close around her, setting a brisk pace in the cold night, and William did the same, turning to observe his companion as discreetly as he could. The gas lamps lining the street cast alternating lines of shadow obscuring her face, but the darkness could not hide the beauty in her features or their grim determination.
"As you were saying, Wooly."
Helena's voice startled William out of his thoughts, and he blushed lightly and looked away. "Forgive me for being so scatterbrained, but I –" Then William stopped dead, again, the strangest feeling of his consciousness being ripped out of his body causing him to fall to his knees with no regard for the grime of London's streets. He gasped, trying to fill lungs that seemed to be malfunctioning, and wrung out of his choking throat, "H.G., I – What –"
In alarm, Helena dropped down next to him, her grip on William's shoulders pulling him upright firmly. "Wolcott! What is it?" When William forced his eyes upward, he saw her face so close—so beautiful, but breaking up, distorted and flashing in white, and that was the last thing—
* * *
Pete's eyes slam open, and he's breathing hard like William was, totally and legitimately freaking out. The way it felt like his whole body was just shutting down, he thinks he's kind of justified.
"What, the fuck, was that?" he asks between gulps of air, fingers scrabbling uselessly at the straps of his helmet, and just like that Myka is standing beside him, pushing his hands away and pulling the helmet off his head. She lets it fall, dangling by its wires, and thrusts a towel at him. He doesn't understand why for a moment, but when he runs one hand over his face it comes back slick with sweat.
"Crap, I'm so sorry, Pete. I thought that would be early enough to—"
"You said this thing is safe!" Pete yells, stumbling to his feet and knocking into Myka in the process. The proffered towel falls to the ground, and Pete only avoids stepping on it by chance.
"It is!" Myka sounds frustrated too, and she combs through her curls with one hand, pulling and frowning as she rambles hurriedly. "It's just—you have to start at the right moment. I thought 1899 would be early enough, but you were desynchronizing—and I know that's a really uncomfortable experience but I promise it's not dangerous, just –"
"I was what?"
"It's called desynchronizing. Look, when you're accessing someone else's memories, you can't change them, right? Everything already happened a certain way, and that's the data that's stored in your DNA. But you have some freedom within the Animus because you're still conscious and you're more than a passive observer—you're experiencing the memory as your ancestor. When you do or say things that diverge too much from what your ancestor did, you desynchronize from the actual genetic memory, and the Animus basically freezes and tries to spit you out."
Despite the deep tension underlying Myka's voice as she walks herself through the explanation with hand gestures, it's actually the way Pete can see Myka struggling for control that calms him somehow. Myka's hands are shaking.
"I'm sorry. It was my fault," she says, after a pause.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly in a sigh.
"...you know, I signed up to take bullets for the president, not die in some weird virtual reality, strapped to a crazy chair." Pete stoops and picks the towel up off the floor, flicking it a few times before wiping his face roughly.
"You're not going to die," Myka says automatically.
Pete doesn't want to sit in the chair again, but his legs still feel rubbery so he moves to lean on the table with the computer instead. The monitor has images now, instead of just text, and there's a string of spirals (DNA, he assumes) as well as a corner of the screen showing white static, like that lady's face when it was disintegrating before his eyes.
"Look, I'm really sorry. I should have warned you. I just didn't—it won't happen again. We can work through this." Myka is quiet, her hands motionless now, clasped together tightly in her lap.
Pete looks up and just says, "...one of my ancestors was a gay chick." He means for Myka to laugh but she just stares at him, a distinctly deer-caught-in-headlights look on her face. "My life has gotten way weird."
Myka smiles then, shyly. "That's why I had you pull you out of that one so quick too. If you'd done something to desynchronize in the middle of that..."
Pete's eyes go wide. "...oh, man."