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

The bleeding effect was a side-affect someone could suffer from prolonged exposure to an Animus or Animus 2.0, that resulted in an involuntary blending of genetic and real-time memories. Similar in fashion to a multiple personality or delusional disorder, believed by Lucy Stillman to be a naturally occuring bleeding effect, the end result was, in all cases, insanity. In 2012, after being forced to use the Animus by Abstergo Industries, Desmond Miles begun to suffer from the bleeding effect, adopting numerous skills from his ancestor Altaïr Ibn-La'Ahad, and later still from his ancestor Ezio Auditore da Firenze.

The bleeding effect was already known to Abstergo Industries even before Desmond's kidnapping, as the test subject before him had been driven mad by it, but not before had had hacked into the Animus and hidden away a genetic memory of his several thousand years old.