"...adrenaline is spiking, we need to pull him out!" Paul's voice. For a second I was disoriented. It was strange to be myself again.

"No need," Helen, voice flat but edgy. "The animus program disengaged by itself, he should be coming to."

"I'm fine," I said, although the syllables faltered from my lips. "No, really," I repeated, taking back control of my own vocal cords. "I'm okay."

"Sam, what happened?" Paul asked. "We've been recording raw data but it will have to be rendered in order for us to play it back."

"I was experiencing the memories of some guy called Yughi," I told them. "It was a long time in the past. I got the feeling kind of... I don't know, medieval."

Helen, sitting by her laptop, nodded. "That's corroborated by the source disc," she said. "What happened?"

"Well, Yughi was in some village and he came across a couple of young outlaws who wanted to kill a guy Miles Godfrey. He stopped them by knocking out Godfrey and putting him in a bale of hay on the back of a cart. Then he was following them back to their hideout. Yughi was attacked and knocked unconscious, then I was here again."

"So, the simulation went past the point where he put the body of Miles Godfrey in the hay cart?" Paul asked. The two assassins were looking at me, eyes narrowed, suddenly their questioning felt like an interrogation.

"Sure," I said. "Was it not supposed to?"

"I told you!" Helen cried out, triumphantly. "I said that if you combined some basic animus protocols with a memory disc and a host with a direct genetic connection to the subject on that disc it would allow a much fuller exploration of the subject's life."

"That's all very well," Paul replied. "But we don't know how far away the key memory in this Yughi guy's life is. I'm going to have to find out who he is and, even when I do that, there's no guarantee his exploits in medieval England will have a record."

"Well, we'd better get on with it then," Helen said. Although to be honest I got the feeling that she would have said that even if Paul had told her that if I were to spend any more time in their machine it would make my brain explode.

"You feeling okay?" Paul asked me.

"I'm fine," I replied, pulling the visor of the animus over my eyes. "We should probably get on with it," I said.

"Okay, attempting synchronisation in three, two, one-"