Animus Subjects

The Subjects were people selected and acquired by Abstergo Industries for use in their experiments with genetic memory and the Animus. To date, their have been at least seventeen subjects, many of whom were eliminated by Abstergo Industries once their usefullness was finished.

Subject 4
Subject 4 was mentioned in a letter dated September, 1985, in which an individual signed only "W.V." reported on making a prototype Piece of Eden replica and its use on Subject 4 between their animus sessions.

Subject 12
Subject 12 was the direct descendant of an individual involved in (or subjected to) the Philadelphia Experiment; an event wherein the USS Eldridge manifested itself in a future state for approximately eighteen minutes.

Subject 15
Subject 15 was mentioned by Lucy Stillman to be female and pregnant. She suffered through the bleeding effect by seeing memories of her ancestors and other people from different time periods. She also experienced "memory-within-memory" patterns, due to being pregnant and the memories of the fetus's father conflicted with Subject 15's own ancestors' memories. After Lucy discovered some adverse effects of the Animus on the subject she e-mailed Warren Vidic warning him of said effects. Warren told Lucy that the experiments on Subject 15 would stop, and then sent a disposal unit and had James Morse file an accident report.

Subject 16
Subject Sixteen was, as his moniker suggests, the sixteenth individual to undergo Abstergo's experiments. 16 was the first subject to noticeably suffer from the bleeding effect, although this was not picked up on until after his death. As a result of the "Bleeding effect", Subject 16 went mad and wrote the cryptic messages throughout the Abstergo laboratory and his sleeping quarters, with his own blood.

Like his successor, Subject 16 was a direct descendant of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. During his time at Abstergo Industries, 16 managed to hack into the Animus and placed several hidden rifts throughout the Animus' projection of Ezio's genetic memories; these puzzles were later happened upon by Subject 17, who upon solving them was granted access to one of 16's own memories.

Subject 17
Subject 17, or Desmond Miles, is the only Abstergo Subject whose name is known.

Brought to Abstergo against his will, he was threatened with a coma and death if he did not participate in the Warren Vidic's experiments. Giving in to the threat, he entered the Animus and was forced to relive the memories of his ancestor: Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, in order to find the location of a number of Pieces of Eden. Like Subject 16 before him, Desmond quickly begun to experience the bleeding effect. Although at first he only suffered from relatively minor changes, after his escape from Abstergo Industries, Desmond willingly choose to relive the memories of another ancestor – Ezio Auditore da Firenze – in order to exploit the bleeding effect and learn the skills necessary to become a true assassin.

Unnumbered subject
This Subject was an individual worked on by an Abstergo doctor at some point during the late 20th Century. The doctor prevented his assitant, Miss Clarke, from administering an anaesthetic to dull the trauma of "initial insertion".