Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (34 page)

“How?”  I asked.

Remus almost smiled.  “Quite simply, the objects that you are holding contain nothing more and nothing less than a pair of black holes.”

***

The orbs fell from my hands almost immediately, as if getting rid of them would somehow protect me from the destructive force of a black hole.  It was a naïve reaction very much akin to how Boudicca had reacted earlier.  They clinked off the hard ground and bounced only once before rolling to a corner of the room off to my right.  I watched them roll, wonderment in my eyes at the idea of such a thing being possible, a surprising feeling on such a day of stupendous revelations that seemed to just keep on coming,

“But that’s not possible,” I whispered, my eyes unblinking.  “Black holes are nothing more than collapsed stars, so dense that they suck in everything around them, including shit like… I don’t know… light!”

“Is that so?”  Remus asked, grasping his hands behind his back again and straightening his posture.  “I take it you have visited one and are therefore quite knowledgeable about their nature, yes?”

Finally, I looked away and snarled in annoyance.  “No.”

“But these scientists… these talking heads on the Science Channel that you were so fond of`… they, surely, must have analyzed such objects in person themselves, no?”

I shook my head, annoyed and completely aware of where he was going with this.  “No.  We hadn’t t even traveled past our moon yet.  Pathetic, I know.”

“Then why treat this with skepticism?”

I shrugged.  “The scientific…
theory
… behind black holes seems pretty sound.  It all has to do with gravity, I think.  The idea that black holes do what we think they do fits into how we understand the universe.  I think what you’re trying to get at is that the orbs contain… wormholes?”

Remus’ lips tugged upwards and downwards basically at the same time, as though he didn’t know how to feel.  “It is just so
odd
to find a man who has time traveled into the past and has visited parallel worlds to be so disbelieving of such information.”

I held out my hands defensively.  “Hey, I’m on board with all this science fiction crap suddenly being turned into science
fact
, believe me.  I love some good technobabble.  I’m just a little skeptical.  Can you really blame me?”

“Black holes.  Wormholes.  Interchangeable and discordant,” Remus grumbled, his voice growing heavy with impatience.  “One and the same and completely different.  Need you question me any further, Jacob Hunter?  My patience wears thin.”

My eyes found the ground as I tried to think of anything else to ask him.  A million questions were swirling through my mind like matter around a black hole.  So many details were still left unanswered, and we had only just touched on the subject of the science behind the orbs.  We hadn’t even broached history or interpersonal relationships yet.  There was so much I needed to know about Merlin and his influence on history – continued influence – or why Remus was stranded and imprisoned here while Romulus avoided the same fate, what society had exactly been like in the age of Romulus and Remus, who exactly the Old God was, how a pair of shepherd boys had grown up to establish a…

The question hit me like a pair of those neutron stars from earlier smashing into one another, igniting a massive supernova – or worse.  I looked up, my eyes hard and full of suspicion, my mind no longer certain what to believe or
who
to believe.  My brow was furrowed so deeply that it almost hurt, but I managed to take a commanding step forward, surprising Remus and forcing him to step back.

“How the fuck does a shepherd boy turned co-founder of a primitive, ancient city know so much about
any
of this shit?”

No one moved as the last few words parted my lips, the severity of how I’d delivered my question freezing everyone, including Remus.  All he could do was stare down at me over his broad but distinguished nose, while Agrippina and Boudicca remained as statuesque as victims of the Greek mythological figure, Medusa.

Heartbeats passed into seconds, which seemed to almost stretch into minutes, until Remus finally closed the distance between us, placed his hands on my shoulders, and looked down at me like a father would his young son.  “To answer that,” he said, removing a hand so that he could orient me toward the door, “you must begin your training.”

I smacked his hand off of me with a swipe from my own.  “What? I’m not too old to begin my training?”

“Very clever,” he said, although he didn’t seem humored by the comment, “but, please, you must learn to reference new source material on occasion.  Now, come.”  He turned to Agrippina and lifted a hand toward the door.  “Come.  We may have all the time in the world, but with so much to accomplish, we don’t have a second to waste.

***

After retrieving the orbs, the four of us returned to the dusky, brown hallway to begin our march toward… wherever we were going.  Remus led our formation while Boudicca stalked behind us, her eyes never parting from the back of Agrippina’s head.  I would have told her to watch Remus instead, but I didn’t think I could whisper quietly enough so that he didn’t overhear.

Instead, I simply fell into step behind Agrippina, who seemed as serious as I’d ever seen her before, and used every last ounce of willpower I still had to keep myself from wringing her neck with both of my hands until she was nothing more than a lifeless, useless corpse that had done nothing but
lie
to me for years.  It was difficult, but I was able to successful rein in my desire to murder her on the spot, but I couldn’t help but bump my shoulder into her roughly as I came up next to her.  She looked at me angrily, but to my surprise, she smothered it and immediately looked sad.

I leaned in close and kept my voice low.  “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”  I whispered, snapping my head at her as we walked.  She flinched away, but her expression didn’t change and she didn’t answer, so I continued.  “You think I’m just going to trust you
now
?  We’ve been through too much shit, you and me!”

“Shh!”  Agrippina hissed back at me as she risked a glance at Remus.  “Be quiet!”

I too peeked at him, but he didn’t seem to react as we approached the makeshift control room.  As we entered, I couldn’t help but notice the mind control bands lying on the floor, their existence seeming much more real this time after my short conversation with Remus on the balcony.  I still couldn’t really believe everything he’d told me – I’d been lied to enough by just about everybody I’d encountered here in this world, Merlin and Agrippina included – but it was becoming harder and harder to deny that there was certainly more at work here than what I could possibly understand.  The very idea that Remus and Merlin, or Faustulus, or whatever his real name was, were from some kind of advanced early civilization that predated modern history wasn’t necessarily farfetched.  Scholars, or some would say “scholars”, had been writing and talking about precursor societies for decades.  It wasn’t necessarily original, but the scope of what I was dealing with certainly seemed beyond what anyone had been talking about.

Pyramid builders?  Boring…

Aliens?  Clichéd…

Atlantis?  Who cares…

Manipulators of our genetic makeup?  Child’s play…

We were talking about entities that could traverse time and travel between alternate dimensions, things that had been done to death in science fiction or for what passed as science fact on the H2 Channel, but not on this
scale
– although I’d purposefully tried to ignore most of that nonsense, preferring to stick to programs with more actual science in them.  Terraforming a planet to act as a power generator and towing around black holes and neutron stars to create wormholes was a concept that had
never
even entered my mind.

Before I could think on it anymore, Remus crossed the room in a few short strides and placed his hand against the opposite wall.  A concealed door cracked open and Remus had to squeeze his hand between the gap so that he could shove it open, a feat he performed with little effort.  He stepped into a dark hallway, and we followed.

I turned to Agrippina again.  “Let’s say you’re not lying through your teeth for once,” I said, and she looked at me with a question on her tongue but I held up a finger to silence her.  “Let’s say you have absolutely
no
ulterior motive here and that you really are just helping out your old granddaddy’s brother.  Then tell me.  What’s his story?”

There was silence for only a second or two.  “He wishes to go home.”

“And home is where?”

“When, actually,” she said knowingly.  “His home.  The moment in time when he was banished.”

I rolled my eyes.

Agrippina’s answer, like so many revelations today, seemed so obvious.  Of course he would want to go home.  But why?  To simply return home?  Or were his intentions more devious than that?  By Merlin’s account, Remus had simply been trapped in a realm he couldn’t escape from, but Remus’ tale suggested he’d been purposefully imprisoned here.  What’s more, Remus had made more sense and been more direct with me than anyone else.  Ever.  Maybe everything I thought I knew about his disappearance was just another lie among so many.  I
wanted
to believe Merlin, but the evidence seemed more clearly in Remus’ favor.

I wasn’t sure who to believe anymore.

Merlin had taken me on a roundabout vision quest that had provided many answers, but had delivered many more questions as well.  He’d been so vague about what I’d needed to do, where I’d needed to go, how I would operate the orbs should I ever find them, that I could no longer be sure what his intentions had ever truly been.  He’d built up my trust through cheap charades, theatrics, and sentimentality, using my own past as a means to manipulate me into trusting him.  Agrippina had always done the same, although she’d done it with sexy dresses and pouty lips.  Remus, however, was the outlier here.  I knew nothing about him, except the limited factoids remembered by history, but he seemed too deliberate to be lying to me, too direct.  He seemed the only one I could trust anymore.

I couldn’t make any sense of it.  Yet.  I needed to be careful.  My wits may have been shit lately, along with my critical thinking skills and moral compass, but they were all I had left.  I’d better start remembering what it was like to rely on them, and make sure I kept the blue orb from unleashing its influence again.

“From the way he makes it sound,” I said, thinking I could maybe trick Agrippina into saying something she shouldn’t, “he was imprisoned here.  Who are we to just… let him out?”

“I believe we no longer have a choice, Jacob,” she replied, her voice low and resigned. 

I jerked back from the utter defeat I heard in her voice, but Remus stole my opportunity to press her for more information.

“We have arrived.”  Remus said, but as I looked at him, I saw nothing of note.  I was about ready to question Remus on his sense of direction when a searing white light burst into reality in front of us, causing all of us besides Remus to throw up hands to block out its intensity.  It took seconds before my eyes adjusted, but when they did, I discovered that the bright light appeared exactly like the portal that had brought me here.

“The doorway to Rome,” Remus confirmed, holding up a hand.  “Now, let us go.”

“Go?”  I said, my eyes still adjusting as I took a step toward the light.  “Go where?  Rome?  Why?  Why not just use the orbs from here.”

“We cannot,” Remus answered.  “Or, perhaps, we
should
not.  This realm is locked away and hidden quite well.  Access to the Multiverse is barred here.  Should we attempt to use the orbs from this location, it is quite possible that we would end up out of sync with any reality.  Perhaps we would emerge into the void you saw from my balcony.  Neither life, nor death, simply eternal nothingness.  Would you like to try?”

“Hell no,” I said, stepping up to the portal despite the alarms blaring in the back of mind.  I’d said I couldn’t trust any of these people, but what choice did I have?  It was either help him now and work against him later, or be stuck here with him for all eternity.  “So how do we do this?  Just hold hands and go?”

“If you wish, although your arm will do just fine.” 

He punctuated his comment by placing a hand roughly on my arm, while Agrippina stepped up and wrapped a hand around my hand in a way that suggested she sought comfort and protection.  I ignored her and glanced back at Boudicca, who stood aloof from the rest of us, her face clearly nervous.  I didn’t know why, but as I peered at her, I couldn’t bring myself to accept the idea that she was nervous about going through the portal again.  Instead, the dread I saw there seemed far more real than that.  In a way, it was as though she was knowingly staring death in the face.

My face.

I flicked my head toward the portal, and held out my hand.  “Come on.  This will be over sooner than you think.”

Her expression didn’t change, but she stepped forward dutifully and gripped my hand.  Her grip was rough, calloused, and I couldn’t help but be reminded of Helena.  I forced a weak smile, which wasn’t returned, and took a step forward into the light.