Clay Kaczmarek

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Subject 16 (also referred to as Neumann) was an individual that Abstergo Industries kidnapped and forced in the Animus before Desmond Miles ("Subject 17") and another descendant of Ezio Auditore da Firenze. He is related to Desmond, as portions of their DNA matched in Assassin's Creed II, and it is also revealed that he had an ancestor at the Battle of Gettysburg, in the Roman forum and one connected with a Queen Isabella.

Assassin's Creed

Former Abstergo employee and researcher Lucy reveals in one of her e-mails to her supervisor, Warren Vidic, that Subject 16 has Far Eastern origins, as one of his ancestors was "involved in an important event" in said area. A different e-mail possibly indicates that his name is Neumann. The same e-mail also hints that a former employee of Abstergo Industries, Leila Marino, may have been romantically involved with Subject 16. This suggests a romantic involvement prior to his kidnapping or that Leila worked with Subject 16 in the same way as Lucy works with Desmond.

At Abstergo's orders, Subject 16 was kept connected to the Animus for dangerously long periods at a time, sometimes even for days. This lead to a severe and powerful "bleeding effect", as Subject 16 became more capable of revisiting these genetic memories without the use of the Animus. Due to his inability to actually control these phenomena, Subject 16 slowly spiraled into insanity, eventually culminating in suicide. In Assassin's Creed II, he describes many of his genetic memories in a glyph he had written,

At the end of Assassin's Creed, due to his own experience with the bleeding effect, Desmond is able to use Eagle Vision to view several cryptic messages that were drawn in blood. Subject 16 states in one message that he drained his own body to paint the figures on the floor and walls of the main room where the Animus is located. But if he had used his own blood to paint the wall mural in the sleeping room, he would have bled out — literally — before he finished his work. There are rumors that he used Leila Marino's blood but that would be impossible since she died five years before the start of the game and Subject 16 wrote the messages right before his death which was about a month or two before Desmond was found. The symbols that are written in blood at Abstergo show up in RED when you use Eagle Vision. And when they show up again in Assassin's Creed II they are BLUE when seen with the Eagle Vision. So Subject 16 theoretically used the blood of his enimies to write all over the walls; although there is still substanstial evidence that he used his own blood to leave his message.

The symbols painted on the walls and floors later reappear in Assassin's Creed II as glyphs, parts of encrypted files that Subject 16 added to genetic memories after he hacked the Animus.

Assassin's Creed II

Subject 16 makes his first vocal appearance in Assassin's Creed II, voicing-over 20 encrypted files that he hacked from Abstergo's mainframe. After all twenty files are decrypted, they combine to form a short video which contains what Subject 16 claims to be "The Truth" about the origins of humanity. In the video, a man and a woman who refer to one another as Adam and Eve, race through a modern complex, with Eve carrying "the apple" (which is, in fact, one of the Pieces of Eden). The short diatribes from these files, as well as commentary from Lucy, reveal a bit more about the extent of the madness which lead to Subject 16's death. In his final commentary in the twentieth file, Subject 16 only states, "Lucy, I can't wait any longer. I am ready to go now... She sees me raise the knife."

In the beginning of the game, Lucy searches for the closest genetic match between Subject 16 and Desmond, and the memory of Ezio's birth appears, suggesting that he is an ancestor of both.