Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (30 page)

***

Perhaps the man had been right.

That is, if he was referring to whether or not this particular visit to the land of unconsciousness would count or not.  It seemed like a rational assumption, because unlike all the other times I’d been violently thrust into cognitive oblivion, it didn’t, quite simply, hurt this time.  I’d developed a rather nasty habit of finding myself rendered unconscious recently, usually through my own lack of preparation or delusions of grandeur, and it was really time to stop.

But for now, I was thrilled by the fact that nothing hurt, although I was still in the dark concerning what was happening to me – quite literally as my eyes were still closed.  I
was
able to discern, however, that I had been placed upright on a none too comfortable chair and that there was even a cool breeze blowing across my face, a welcome feeling after all that time spent in the unbearable heat surrounding the volcano.  The air also smelt…

“You think too much, Jacob Hunter,” a voice said from in front of me.  “You always have and, most likely, you always will.  I certainly will not miss your endless musings once all has been completed, and I do not believe I will be the only one.  Now, open your eyes and let’s get on with this.”

For a moment I considered keeping them closed, just to thwart this anonymous jackass and his tasteless sense of humor, but his comment felt familiar somehow.  His tone, the manner in which he spoke, and most tellingly, the awareness and predictive nature behind his comment reminded me of Merlin and the nature of our interchange in his cottage.

In fact, I now realized that the man’s voice itself reminded me of Merlin’s.

So before he could comment on how there was no need to challenge him, as I was sure he was about to do, I opened my eyes.  I expected there would be a few seconds of fuzzy vision, time that my eyes would need to adjust to my new surroundings, but no such time was required.  My eyes opened and I could see, and like the lack of pain from my earlier bout with “unconsciousness”, neither too did I feel groggy or unfocused.

I could see.

I could see more than I ever thought possible.

For the fourth time today.

I was in a room, but not like any room I’d been in since arriving in Ancient Rome.  Nor, thank God, was it my old restaurant, the one that Merlin had had such a fun time torturing me in.  I’d never been in a place like this, but I’d seen reasonable equivalents back home countless times.  It appeared very much like a NASA control center, the same kind that had been burned into the minds of many an American through a once great cultural fixation with space travel, and later through countless movies, television programs, and the occasional news segment when something interesting happened in space.

Except, despite the numerous consoles and work stations, displays on the walls and even the ceiling – each of which displayed relevant information that was altogether irrelevant to me as I couldn’t understand any of it – the control room was also completely foreign in appearance.  It was
enormous
,
and none of it appeared manmade – not that it appeared non-human, but that it was unlike anything I’d seen back home.  The technology seemed familiar: computers, digital screens, buttons, lights, toggles, switches, joysticks, and the like, but everything here also looked so… different.  I couldn’t quite tell how exactly, at first, but then I realized that it all seemed just a bit beyond the reach of what my society had been capable of, like something out of the weirdest science fiction from Japan or something.  It all looked about a hundred years too advanced, and designed by someone with an odd affixation with melding technology with organics, as much of the technology around me looked almost lifelike instead of inert, artificial machines.  The console beside me, in fact, was covered in a thick, slimy mucus that…

“That’s enough,” the same voice, now somehow behind me, said.

I spun out of my chair, my danger sense finally kicking in, and ducked behind it.  I looked up and peeked over the rim of the basic, four legged chair, not the rolling, swiveling kind I expected in this place, and caught sight of an old man with a gray beard that seemed to come down to his knees.  My first thought was that it was Merlin, but someth…

“Enough, Mr. Hunter,” he said, his voice far stronger than I expected from his frail appearance.  I squinted at him, trying to discern whatever features I could, but besides his beard and dirty robes, he was a mystery.  I couldn’t see his face as he shook his head and dropped it toward the floor in annoyance.  “I can already see that this will be most taxing.”

I risked a simple question, ducking behind my chair again.  “What will be?”

He picked up his head.  “This dialogue, Mr. Hunter.  You cannot comprehend how tiring it is to read the thoughts of a man whose inner monologues goes on and on as yours do.  Were there a way to avoid this form of communication, I would be most eager to utilize it, but as you cannot peer into my mind as I can yours, it seems we must settle for… talking.”

His latest words brought on another thought.  “In English, apparently…”

He nodded, almost respectfully.  “Your deductive abilities are beyond astounding, Mr. Hunter.”

“Don’t call me…”

He threw his head back in annoyance as he spoke.  “Yes, yes, I apologize.  The only ‘Mister’ Hunter in your life was your father.  Tell me, what were you going to do when it was time for you to teach children?  Scold them every time they wished to gain your attention?”

I worked my jaw in annoyance, beginning to wonder if this wasn’t actually Merlin again.  “I would have gotten used to it.”

The old man gripped the back of a nearby chair and leaned in toward me.  “I’m sure.”  He leaned in closer.  “And allow me to assure you that I am not, in fact, Merlin.”

I rose to my feet and brushed myself off, still amazed at how good I felt.  It felt as though I’d been given a new body, one that hadn’t come with all the aches and pains and discomforts I’d picked up in thirty odd years.  Nor could I feel the emotional pull of the blue orb.  The red orb must have been nearby, but I figured I’d learn more about that soon enough.

“A safe assumption, Mr. Hunter.”

I cracked my neck to the side, reigning my frustration in to a nominal level, not having enjoyed Merlin’s little parlor trick of reading my mind either.  “If you’re not Merlin, then who are you.”

“Oh, Jacob…” he said, his voice almost jovial.  “You have the whole world as your stage, and all its individuals as your audience, and yet you will bore them with more of your roundabout, oblique thoughts that take forever to arrive at a conclusion.  For all our sakes, do not do that now.  Why the need to question?  You already know who I am, as do many of them, I am sure.  So out with it, Mr. Hunter.  Let’s keep this chapter short.”

I folded my arms across my chest and waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

“You try my patience,” the old man said.  “Clever that you will not waste their time with pointless thoughts, but still manage to waste my own.  I never said you weren’t sharp, but, please, let us not stall any longer.”

So I didn’t…

VIII

Remus

Date:  Unknown

Place:  Unknown

Jacob Hunter

“Excellent,” the man claiming to be Remus said. “Although, I never claimed any such thing.  You deduced my identity on your own, a rather simple deduction were one to be honest, as who else would be here?”

I shrugged.  “I almost expected some alternate version of Merlin, honestly.”

“A fair expectation, but, alas, our old wizard friend is far from here, if he even still exists at all.”

I didn’t bother with that one, but raised a questioning hand anyway.  “How is it that
you
exist at all?  You should be seven hundred years old.”

He almost smiled.  “Or about.”

I shook my head, my inability to grasp anything about these people continuing to frustrate the hell out of me.  “Just who the hell are you people?  Twins suckled by a wolf?  A raving lunatic of a wizard?  The… ‘Old God’?  I mean, who the hell was that?  Who?!”

Remus didn’t respond, his emaciated face reverting to its original deadpan.  Instead, he turned and left my view.  He’d been a few dozen levels above me in the control room, so I quickly bounded up the stairs to follow, almost slipping on the last, slime-covered step.  Reaching the main level, I found it empty, but there weren’t many places he could go.  The room may have been cavernous, but it was open and its tiered design allowed me to see its entirety.  The only place he could have gone was through a set of large double doors, ones that had a literal and contemporary “EXIT” sign above them.  I shuffled toward it and glanced at the sign before pushing through the doors.  While it was positioned and colored exactly like every other sign of similar design, the letters were different.  Written in a font I certainly didn’t recognize, I simply accepted it as the font of the future and pushed open the doors, finding myself in a long hallway.  It was no different than any other monotonous, gray hallway found in any office building, just a long, dull corridor with doors scattered sporadically along either side.  I moved to the first such door and went for the doorknob.  It was locked, more than that, the knob didn’t even jiggle in my grasp.  The entire door felt as though it were decorative only, not serving any actual function, just an extension of the hallway itself.

I looked back down the hall, noticing this time that there was a light at the end of it.  Cautiously, I stepped toward it, finally realizing that while my combat shirt had inexplicably returned to my body, I had lost all of my gear and weaponry.  When I reached an intersection that was illuminated more brightly than the rest of the hallway, I turned left solely because it too had better lighting than the hall to the right.  So bright, in fact, that I had to throw up a hand to shield my eyes from the blinding white light that came from its far end.  It was intense, slamming into me with an almost physical effect, and I had to take a step backward in response

My eyes adjusted slowly but I pushed on, even with my vision impaired.  Although my attention was directed forward, I couldn’t help but notice that the walls, floor, and ceiling were slowly dissolving as I walked.  Like a transition in a dream, where one physical scene was replaced with another through a completely illogical sequence of events belying geography, physics, and common sense, with my next few steps, the hallway completely vanished, replaced instead with the outside world.  I had been deposited onto a large terrace shaped like a semicircle that was attached to the side of the volcano and was situated high along its steep slope.  Remus was standing at the apex of the semicircle, maybe thirty steps from where I stood now.

I whirled around, searching for an exit, but found only a closed door that appeared like something out of a Shakespearean stage play in terms of function and style.  It was opulent in presentation, as was the entire wall behind me, appearing much like the façade of a Venetian waterway palace in its prime.  But like the door I’d attempted to enter earlier, this door failed to fulfill its primary function when I tried to open it as well.

I turned back to Remus, who seemed completely oblivious to my presence, and crept toward him silently.  I’d only taken a handful of steps before his head rotated to the left, just enough for me to see the tip of his nose and lips.

“No need for skullduggery, Mr. Hunter.  Your presence has never left my awareness.  Please, step beside me.”

I straightened and snarled at no one in particular, but did as I was told and approached the waist-high railing that surrounded the terrace overlooking the desolate landscape I had just crossed with Boudicca.  I stepped up to it and placed my hands upon its alabaster rails – how I knew it was supposed to be alabaster, I didn’t know, but still I knew.

Remus turned to me.  “You know, because in this world, you know everything.”

I gritted my teeth angrily at his words, and I felt saliva pooling in my cheeks.  I swallowed it down, and used that anger to speak.  “Who…”  I barely managed even that, but I forced myself to focus.  “Who.  The hell.  Are you?”

He never answered.

That was it.  That was enough.  I wasn’t going to be patronized or belittled or confused any longer by this man, or any other man like him, again.  I balled up my fist and felt it tremble with anger, rocket fuel for the right hook that flew straight for his head.  I put everything I had behind the punch, one that should have connected with enough force to pitch Remus over the edge of the terrace, but when it reached his jaw, my fist simply passed through his head as though it wasn’t even there at all.

I stumbled, off balance, but managed to catch myself before I threw myself over the railing.

“Figures…” I mumbled as I straightened.

“Come now, you didn’t actually expect that to work.”

“Expected?”  I asked, frowning.  “Not exactly.  But I’d hoped.”

“Hope is not a sentiment you hold in much supply, Jacob.”

“Yeah, I got that,” I mumbled.

“Good,” Remus replied before turning his frail frame so that he faced me, leaning his hip against the railing.  “Now, your questions, please.  Merlin gave you the same opportunity; so too shall I.”

“Who are you?”

“Answered.”

“
What
are you?”

“Ah, a better question, but one better answered later.”

Either Remus was actually worse than Merlin or he was acting this way to purposefully annoy me.  The smile he showed me as I formulated this thought confirmed my suspicions.

I glanced around before asking my next question.  “Where’s Boudicca?”

“She has been dealt with.  Do not concern yourself with her.”

I frowned.  “Dead?”

“
Dealt
with
, Mr. Hunter.  Move on before I grow impatient.”

Thinking, I looked to the sky, seeing again the black holes and the odd pricks of light scattered among them that appeared bigger than simple, distant stars.  To my right was the volcano, and I took a second to admire the flow of lava down its steep side not a few dozen meters away.

“Where are we?”  I asked.  “Exactly.”

Remus smiled his first legitimate smile since I’d arrived.  “The Source.”

I narrowed my eyes.  “Of what?”

“Of everything, Mr. Hunter.  Everything!  It is not simply
a
source of something.  It is, in name, The Source.  This entire world, this entire solar system, was engineered to be The Source.”

I rubbed my jaw with a hand.  “I don’t follow.”

Remus frowned.  “No, it is clear that you do not.”

“Then explain it to me.”

He nodded.  “Very well, but only because you will have a larger part to play in all this soon enough.  The Source, an artificially created star system used to power the Old God’s inventions, was developed by towing…”

I was riveted, more than riveted, in fact, so much so that I was unable to find the word meant to describe just how indescribably riveted I actually felt.  With very little prompting, and only a little unwarranted torture – for once – I was about to be rewarded with knowledge no one else in recorded history had ever been privy to.  Things were about to be explained to me that would finally answer all the questions I’d ever wanted answered, and while I still wasn’t certain who this Remus character was, I settled in for what I knew would be another drawn-out explanation of things no one knew anything about – only there were sure to be fewer visual aids this time.

But then a blur of motion out of the corner of my eye interrupted my interest, because I knew it was destined to interrupt the entire party.

Like a ninja striking from the darkest, most hidden away rooftop, Boudicca suddenly emerged from apparent nothingness, appearing just behind Remus.  Her eyes moved to mine, and she flicked her eyebrows up in rapid succession, an imitation of one of Santino’s notorious and patented looks of cocky bravado.  And like Santino, she wasted no time before putting her twin blades to use.  Cocking them back to either side of her body, she then thrust both forward and upward.

During their millisecond of flight-time, awareness seemed to dawn on Remus’ face.  He closed his mouth and even allowed a slight look of surprise to form in his eyes, but he had little time for anything else before the pointy ends of Boudicca’s swords pierced his flesh, stabbing on either side of his shoulder blades and emerging through his chest.  Remus arched back violently in pain or surprise, maybe both, and Boudicca sidestepped around him to grab my arm, yanking me away from the balcony’s railing.

“Come, Jacob!”  She shouted.

She pulled me after her, but I fought against it.

“What have you done?!”  I shouted, barely managing to tear my arm out of her grasp.  “That man had answers!  All the answers!  He was about to explain the black holes, the…”

Boudicca leapt at me, grabbing me again to once again pull me away.  “You do not understand, Jacob!  This place is not…”

She was interrupted by Remus, who was apparently not dead, as he had taken the miniscule amount of time I’d delayed Boudicca to step forward and grab her himself.  With a strength I couldn’t believe, and with only one hand, he picked up the woman, spun and twisted like a shot putter, and threw Boudicca clean off her feet… and through the air and well over the balcony, leaving maybe miles of empty space between her and the ground below.  I couldn’t believe that Remus had so easily and nonchalantly flung the woman to her certain death, a horrible end that would allow Boudicca a long time to contemplate her demise as she…

But she never fell.  When she cleared the railing, she suddenly stopped, stuck in midair, arrested incomprehensibly by some newfound and magical ability to fly.  Except she wasn’t flying either.  She’d crashed into something – an invisible something, and a something that shouldn’t have existed in the middle of empty air.  Accompanying the crash was a shower of sparks and wisps of smoke, and my confusion grew, although I didn’t have long to think on what divine intervention had occurred to save Boudicca’s life, because an intense jolt of pain pierced my skull at the very same moment.

It wasn’t a physical pain, at least not the kind dealt by an outside blow to the head, but the internal kind, the migraine kind, the worst migraine in my life kind, the kind… that usually followed my entrance into worlds unknown, like the time I’d entered Merlin’s cottage or every time I’d used the damn orb improperly.

I doubled over in pain and felt my stomach turn over itself, but my hands moved to my head, not my midsection, moving on autopilot to soothe what they felt needed the most attention.  My hands made contact gently, as though they knew the delicateness of my mind in its current state, and my outstretched fingers caressed my temples and forehead in a circular pattern, doing little to quell the pain.

I fell back, wanting to die, when suddenly the tenuous link between my mind and my hands noticed something odd.  As my fingertips brushed against my scalp, I felt something on my head, something attached to and wrapped around its circumference like a sweatband.  It seemed barely there at the moment, as though it was little more than a figment of my imagination, but the more I probed, the more it felt like an actual physical object.

“Fight it, Jacob!”  I heard Boudicca yell from off to my left and out in the open air.  I strained to look at her, and through blurry eyes and a mind that barely worked, found her still suspended using her arms to push off of some invisible object.  “This is not real!”

Not real?

What was ever real anymore?

My life in recent years had descended into a realm of uncertainty, mired in a miasma of ever-increasing delusion, turning my mind into an illusory thing filled with confusion, psychotic breaks from reality, hallucinations, and possible encounters with… aliens?  It was no longer unreasonable for me to question whether anything I’d experienced since arriving in Ancient Rome was in fact real or not.  For all I knew, the past seven years of my life existed only in my subconscious, a dream induced from a coma I had perhaps put myself in all those years ago when I’d flipped the truck during our botched operation in Syria, the last moment in my life that had seemed absolutely real.  Or perhaps I was still stuck in Merlin’s cottage, going through more of my inane vision quest to prepare me for some future, unknown endeavor.