Bleeding Effect

"Prolonged exposure to the Animus caused a 'Bleeding Effect' within Subject Sixteen's genetic structure. The result was a blending of genetic and real-time memory."

―Lucy Stillman's e-mail to Warren Vidic.

Desmond's Eagle Vision, a symptom of the Bleeding Effect

The Bleeding Effect refers to a disorder wherein the genetic memories of one's ancestors begin to blend with the sufferer's own, real-time memories, often leading to difficulties in distinguishing between the two. In severe cases, this eventually resulted in mental breakdown.

The most common source of the condition tended to be overexposure to the Animus virtual machine, which deliberately sought to view an ancestor's genetic memories in a controlled fashion. The disorder was suggested, by Lucy Stillman, to be similar to "certain forms of multiple personality and delusional disorders."

Manifestations

Daniel Cross

"Though the specific symptoms may vary from subject to subject, the end result is the same: they lose their minds."

―Lucy Stillman's e-mail.

Daniel suffering from the Bleeding Effect

Subject 4, Daniel Cross, manifested the Bleeding Effect in the form of images of people and objects from the past, as well as unknown symbols. Additionally, he sporadically experienced the memories of his ancestors Nikolai and Innokenti Orelov.

Around 1998, it was believed that the Bleeding Effect occurred naturally in Daniel, without prior exposure to an Animus. However, it was later discovered that he had in fact been placed in an older version of the Animus around 1985.

By taking new medication and having weekly appointments with Dr. Sung, Daniel began to cope with the Bleeding Effect, although close proximity to a Piece of Eden could still cause a sudden relapse.

Clay Kaczmarek

Clay's blood messages

In her analysis of Subject 16, Clay Kaczmarek, Lucy Stillman e-mailed her overseer, Warren Vidic, to describe Clay's reaction to the Animus in detail. After having remained in the Animus for days at a time, Clay gradually became unable to control the Bleeding Effect, and was apparently driven to insanity by the genetic memories he experienced outside the Animus.

Clay showed difficulty in remembering who he was and what year it was, going so far as seeming unable to recall his own name. However, he thought clearly enough to keep the goal of revealing the Truth in mind, and to leave the messages and clues necessary to do so. He became increasingly obsessed to this end, leading him to write warnings to future subjects in his own blood, around the laboratory he was held in, which resulted in his apparent suicide.

Desmond Miles

"What we're saying, Desmond, is if you're not careful, you may not need the Animus to visit with your ancestors. Which wouldn't be a bad thing assuming you could control it. Up until now, though, no one has."

―Shaun Hastings.

Desmond experiencing the Bleeding Effect for the first time

Subject 17, Desmond Miles, gained the combat and freerunning abilities of his ancestors, as well as the ability to use Eagle Vision, through prolonged exposure to the Animus. This was followed by several hallucinations of his ancestors' memories outside the Animus; however, Desmond was told that as long as the visions lasted less than thirty seconds, he was not in any danger. To begin with, the visions started out phantom-like and indistinct, but became longer and more vivid, at one point causing Desmond to black out.

Over time, Desmond's symptoms began to grow worse, and he despaired to Lucy Stillman that if he could not stop the slowly lengthening visions, it would not be much longer before he started "painting symbols on the walls," as Clay had.

Additionally, Desmond began confusing his ancestors' memories with his own; notably when he told Lucy about "the last time [he had been] here" while they were exploring the tunnels beneath Monteriggioni, prompting Lucy to correct him that it had been Ezio Auditore da Firenze who had experienced those events.

Despite his concerns, the hallucinations proved quite useful, with Desmond being able to navigate through the tunnels under the Villa Auditore, and later the Colosseo and Santa Maria in Aracoeli, by following his visions of Ezio. Desmond even performed his first Leap of Faith at Monteriggioni by doing so.

Desmond seeing Ezio in the Sanctuary, as a result of the Bleeding Effect

However, Rebecca Crane also once e-mailed Lucy that Desmond had started screaming in his sleep since they had arrived at the Sanctuary. This concern was expressed in turn by Lucy to Warren Vidic, who was using the name of William Miles. Vidic responded saying he sympathized with Desmond's well-being, but reminded her that they needed him in order to locate the Apple of Eden.

Later, Desmond's condition worsened to the point where he fell into a coma, fragmenting his mind within the Animus. To revert the damage done to his psyche, Desmond finished the remaining memories from Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad and Ezio Auditore to create a Synch Nexus, and ultimately regained his own consciousness.

Callum Lynch

"I'm crazy. I'm crazy for feeling so lonely..."

―Callum Lynch to several Abstergo agents, 2016.

Callum experiencing a hallucination of Aguilar

Overexposure to the Animus caused Callum Lynch to suffer from the Bleeding Effect as well. Not only did he relive past memories in his mind, but he even hallucinated that his ancestor Aguilar was a phantom that was attacking him in his cell. This caused Lynch to attack the Abstergo security personnel. When they subdued him, he kept declaring himself insane to McGowen and began singing "Crazy" by Patsy Cline – the song which was playing on the radio when he'd discovered his mother's dead body as a child – to all the Abstergo agents as they dragged him to the Animus 4.3 in order to stabilize his condition.

Templar Order

"Once you enter the machines and the transfer is complete, you will have the skills necessary to crush the remnants of Assassin Order, ending this war once and for all."

―Warren Vidic to several Abstergo agents.

Similarly to the Assassins' attempts to train Desmond more quickly through use of the Bleeding Effect, Abstergo Industries also began to instruct potential Templars in a similar manner, in a large-scale project known as the Animi Training Program. Using multiple Animi, the trainees were exposed to the memories of previous Templars and non-Assassins, in order to incorporate their skills.

However, this was not the case in all their projects. For Project Legacy, which was open to a wider variety of candidates, messages of the DDS would constantly monitor whether their participants were beginning to show signs of the Bleeding Effect. In one such poll, the participants were requested to report if they were having difficulty recalling their name, or the present year.

Likewise, participants of Abstergo Entertainment's Sample 17 Project in 2013 were limited to a few hours inside the Animus each day, so as to limit the risk of any side effects, although this rule could be easily ignored if the researcher so wished. As much as six hours in the Animus at any one time could trigger the Bleeding Effect.

Owen Meyers and Grace Collins

When Owen Meyers and Grace Collins were captured by the Templar Isaiah, they felt a strong Bleeding Effect in each other's presence, allowing them to use the skills of their Assassin ancestors, Varius and Eliza, to incapacitate several Templar agents.

Sean Molloy

Sean Molloy suffered strong episodes of the Bleeding Effect as a result of Isaiah placing him in the Animus for prolonged periods of time in a fruitless search for the faith prong of the Trident of Eden. When Isaiah left him alone, Sean experienced hallucinations of his ancestor, Styrbjörn the Strong, who encouraged him to free himself. Following Isaiah's death and the destruction of the Trident of Eden, Sean made regular visits to Dr. Victoria Bibeau for counseling to manage the Bleeding Effect.

Layla Hassan

In 2017, Layla Hassan was sent to Qattara Depression, Egypt, in order to track down an artifact. After finding a mummy, Hassan used her own portable Animus to relive the memories of the Medjay Bayek of Siwa, from around the year 48 BCE. After some time, she exited the Animus and experienced the Bleeding Effect, leading her to another mummy, that of Bayek's wife, Aya of Alexandria.

However, Layla's refusal to check in with Abstergo led to the company deploying a Sigma Team to find her and her helper, Deanna Geary. While Deanna was assaulted in her hotel, Layla made use of the skills she'd obtained through the Bleeding Effect to dispatch her attackers.

In 2018, after reliving the memories of Deimos, the half-brother of Kassandra, Layla's emotional state became dissociative and sporadic. On another occasion after being suddenly pulled out of the Animus by her doctor Victoria Bibeau, Layla still under the effects of Kassandra's hysteria, killed Bibeau in a moment of madness.

Trivia

• One of Lucy's emails in Assassin's Creed posited that some phenomena (such as past life regression) and mental illnesses (such as multiple personality disorder) could stem from a rare, naturally occurring Bleeding Effect.
• When Desmond relived the memories of Ezio's pilgrimage to Masyaf, and Altaïr's return from exile to Masyaf, ghostly images from Altaïr's past could be perceived. Whether this was a side effect of Eagle Sense's ability to track where targets have been, or merely the Bleeding Effect causing the memories to overlap, is unconfirmed.
• In Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Rebecca asked if the Bleeding Effect was due to Desmond's high concentration of First Civilization genes, and William Miles replied that he believed so.
• The Lost Archive downloadable content for Revelations contained a mission titled "Bleeding Effect".