Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (33 page)

She nodded.  “Remus and I?”

My eyes widened.  “You’ve already met?”

Her nods continued vigorously.  “Yes, we have.  It was an accident, a trick of fate.  I had no inkling of his existence prior to your arrival in Rome, but I later learned that, like you, I too am a descendent of one or Rome’s founders: Romulus, user of the red orb, which allowed me to accidently find this place.”

Now it was my turn to take a step back, my mind swirling at the implications of what she’d just said.  If I recalled my high school Latin correctly, back when we’d read
The Aeneid
, an epic poem written by Virgil, there was, theoretically, basis for truth to her admission. The whole story had been nothing more than a way to glorify Julius Caesar and prepare him for his apotheosis to godhood.  Virgil had done so by drawing a link from Julius Caesar, all the way back to Aeneas, another founder of Rome, who in turn was linked to Romulus and Remus.  It was similar to how Mathew tied Jesus’ lineage to David in his gospel.

If ever my education could come in handy, when I’d spent semesters studying the Julio-Claudian family tree specifically, this was the time.  I tried to think.  Agrippina the Younger had been the daughter of Germanicus, who had been Drusus the Elder’s son.  His wife had actually been the daughter of Mark Antony, interestingly enough, but Drusus had been the son of Livia, Augustus’ wife, but not Augustus’ child.  Drusus had been born to Livia through her first marriage to Tiberius Claudius Nero – a surprisingly easy name to remember.  It’s around here that the genealogy got messy, but I thought it was actually through Mark Antony, and a half dozen generations earlier, that biologically connected Agrippina to Julius Caesar’s great, great grandfather or… something…

But even if she
was
related to Julius Caesar, the Julian lineage that connected to Aeneas had all been made up.  Aeneas had been made up.  It had all just been a fairy tale to glorify a man on his way to becoming a god.

Julius Caesar was no more related to Romulus than I was to Mickey Mouse.

Or was he?

Merlin
had
told me that both twins had had children.

I looked back up at Agrippina.  “So all this was just some elaborate scheme to get me here, playing me like a fiddle, manipulating me since well before I met Merlin.  Where the hell did you even find the red orb and how long have you known Remus?”

She flicked her eyes at Remus again.  She was in no way downplaying how nervous she seemed around the man, and I wondered if she was trying to tell me something.  After everything she’d put me through, it was impossible to tell.  I’d never met anyone more difficult to read, even after I thought I’d figured her out last year.

“For quite some time,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper.  “I was not truthful with you when I said that I respected Caligula’s decree to seal the Temple of Lupercal.  How could I?  One does not simply stop looking for treasure when a single piece is discovered, and after two years of further excavation, the red orb was discovered, arbitrarily buried deep beneath the temple.  Unlike the blue orb, it was accompanied by nothing else and my historians were unable to determine why it seemed to have been simply left in the dirt to rot for all eternity.”

I shook my head.  “That’s impossible.  In Merlin’s vision, the orb was trapped with Remus.  Here, I guess.  You couldn’t have just… found it.”

Agrippina shrugged and frowned.  “Perhaps he hid the truth from you after all, as Remus suggested.”

“But why?”  I said, not wanting for a moment to think that the man who had offered me so much clarity and guidance had, for some unknown reason, lied to me.  Even though evidence was building and building against him, I didn’t want to believe it.

“I do not know, Jacob…” Agrippina offered, her voice trailing off as she looked away, “…but find it, I did.  However, like with the blue orb, I initially thought it useless as it did nothing for me.  It was not until I happened upon the gateway, months after I found the red orb, that I met Remus.  It was only then that I learned what the orbs were truly capable of, and I cannot even begin to explain how shocking it all was to me.”

Another thought hit me as her explanation unraveled.  She’d had both orbs.  Red and blue.  That explained why she hadn’t been corrupted by the blue orb.  Go figure.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her.  “And Varus?  Did he know?”

“Marcus Varus began to suspect,” she said with a nod, “but he never knew of the red orb.  After our encounter in Vindonissa, I sent him to Alexandria so that he could lay the foundation for the series of clues needed to send you to Britain.  And then here.”

“And then you had him killed…” I growled, remembering that even if everything she’d done had been at the behest of Remus, she’d still murdered an innocent scholar, husband, and father who had been stuck in the middle of all this.

“I had no choice, Jacob,” she said, almost apologetically, but I didn’t buy it.  I now realized she’d been playing me well before Britain, before the trap she’d laid for us in Syria, all the way back to the moment we’d met aboard her barge outside the legion camp at Vindonissa.  Everything we’d encountered along the way, from her ninja Praetorians corralling us east, to letting us live outside her hastily crafted villa in Syria had all been a part of her plan to get me here.

That didn’t explain why she’d tortured and left the Other Jacob, the one that had crafted Artie 2.0’s timeline, to rot and die in his cargo container for two millennia, but I’m sure an answer to that question was awaiting me as well.  Maybe she’d just been so furious in that timeline that she’d gone against Remus’ wishes.

I couldn’t think about it now.

There was far too many other things to focus on.

I shook my head.  “So you’re telling me you didn’t have a choice?”

“I didn’t,” she said emphatically.  “I had to ensure you arrived here, but knew I couldn’t just ask you to travel with…”

A spark of my earlier rage ignited in my chest again, as I yelled, “Goddamn it, Agrippina… why
am
I here?!”

“We’re all here, Jacob Hunter…” Remus said from behind me, causing me to jump at his unexpected voice, “…because we have the ability to
be
here.  That is, besides your friend.”

“Yeah,” I said, giving Agrippina a cold and hate filled look before I turned to face him.  “So what?”

“We three can control an orb.  I the blue, Agrippina the red, and you… both.”

“So?  What?”  I growled, about at the end of my patience, although I wasn’t sure what I could do to alleviate my frustration.

“You are aware of what the orbs can do together.  Of their great ability to manipulate time and transport individuals between worlds.  Magnanimous and empowering, but because of that power, they are also not without
certain
safeguards.”

“Such as?”

Remus released his hands clasped behind his back.  “The orbs were meant for Romulus and myself.  No two individuals besides the two of us can manipulate the orbs in tandem.  Our descendants may have the ability to use them, to varying degrees of potency, or simply be susceptible to their negative energies, but you are quite unique, Jacob Hunter, in that you can use both.  As my lost grandson removed by thousands of years, and a grandson to my brother as well, you are the only person known to us who can use the orbs together.  I had not known until meeting you in person that such an individual existed.”

My back went rigid and my eyes widened beyond my ability to rein them in, had I even the conscious ability to do so at the moment.  After all this time, all the information I’d gained, knowing that Remus, and now Romulus as well, were ancestors mine, I’d never come to really appreciate what that meant.  This man was one of my many grandfathers, only with a few hundred “greats” tacked onto the title.  Either one of my parents could have been linked to him, or both perhaps, as well as my grandparents and great grandparents and so on and so forth.

Remus nodded as he studied the shock that must have been plastered all over my face.  “I see a certain understanding is taking hold in your mind, Jacob.  Good.  When Agrippina brought me my brother’s orb, I was initially ecstatic, but then quickly dismayed as I knew it to be useless.  When she presented me with my own blue orb I was doubly saddened as I quickly discovered that I was still trapped in this realm.  I…”

“And where exactly is this realm of yours?”  I interrupted, amazed I could so easily interrupt a god.

Remus cocked his head to the side as he thought, but then quickly answered.  “I must admit that I am quite fortunate that you come from a time where science has so many answers, theoretical and incorrect as many may be.  At least you bring with you a certain lexicon for which I may better explain everything.  Poor Agrippina here was quite confused when I tried to explain using her language devoid of such terms.”

I glanced at Agrippina again, who could in no way understand what we were saying, but had a fearful look in her expression that suggested she understood more than I thought.

I looked back at Remus, and twirled a hand at him in an impatient gesture.

“This realm is my prison,” he said. “It is a pocket universe set aside for me, fabricated with enough basic physics and environmental controls to sustain me.  It is set apart from the Multiverse, as you would call it, created by Faustulus to contain me.”

I risked a look into the black void beyond the railing, but quickly looked away, all too familiar with what it felt like when something was attempting to drive you insane.

“This isn’t a planet,” I commented.

“A clever deduction,” Remus said, a hint of praise in his voice.  “You are correct.  My entire world could fit into a high school gymnasium, as you might suggest.”

I hooked a thumb into the darkness.  “And that shit is?”

He looked at it but didn’t seem to mind its boundless nothingness.  “It is nothing, Jacob.  Absolute nothing.  The absence of
anything
.  Your scientists might call it dark matter or perhaps negative mass or… perhaps it is simply the center of a black hole, I will most likely never know… nor wish to know.”

My eyes widened again.

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s never going to believe any of this…

I shook my head.  “And that world you showed me before.  The… Source?”

He nodded.  “It is real, but it is not built upon the same principals as this realm.  It is merely a world, a planet, but in a different reality, fabricated to generate the power needed to fuel and activate the orbs.”

“With black holes?”  I asked, still stupidly skeptical at this point.

“Along with quasars and neutron stars for balance and remediation,” Remus supplied as though he were discussing the building components of Lincoln Logs, “but these celestial bodies do not actually power the orbs, although they are what afford the orbs their purpose.  It is the planet itself that gives them the energy they need to operate.  The planet’s molten core itself is the power source

By now my eyes were permanently fixed to their widest open positions, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to blink them again.  Without thinking, I pulled my bag around my waist and reached in, taking out an orb with each hand.  I held them at shoulder level and peered into them, their individual patterns swirling as they always did, but far more calmly than I’d seen before, perhaps sensing each other’s presence and happy to be reunited with their long lost sibling.

I looked back up at Remus in frustration.  “How is that possible?  They’re just… balls.  Baubles!  They don’t even bounce for Christ’s sakes!  How could they contain such power?”

The look that crossed Remus’ face at my tirade reminded me so much of an old Classics professor’s.  Highbrowed and pompous, he’d been my favorite teacher, but he’d also been the kind of man who, when he proposed a question about something so esoteric that only he could answer it, was utterly stupefied and depressed when none of his students had any idea what he was talking about.  He’d simply stand there and stare at us in bewilderment at our stupidity – just as Remus did now.

“You think in such three dimensional terms,” Remus said, spreading his hands wide for effect.  “You’re whole society does.  You must think in such ways as so many of your fringe scientists do, ignorant though they really are from what I have garnered from your mind. Concepts like quantum physics, string theory, M-theory only brush against the true complexity of the universe.  Those spheres you’re holding…”  He brought his arms up and pointed at each orb with a hand.  “They are made from a material that you cannot even imagine, and yet their makeup is only but a fraction of what makes them so astounding.  It’s what they contain that make them truly special.”

I looked at them, trying to see what I’d failed to see for almost seven years.

Remus noticed and stepped forward.  He placed a hand on each orb and lowered them out of view, forcing me to return my eyes to his, eyes that were almost a dead match in color and shape as my own.

“That world I showed you, Jacob…” he said, nodding up into the air but at nothing in particular, “…the one filled with black holes and quasars and neutron stars… it is connected through the Multiverse specifically to these orbs.  That world is directly linked to what lies within each of your hands.”