Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome (31 page)

Who could tell what was real anymore?  Who was qualified to determine my reality from a dream anymore?  I certainly didn’t feel capable of understanding, especially not now when…

“I am capable, Jacob!”  I heard Boudicca shout, her voice clearly pained.  “I can tell you this is not real!  How else…”

“Silence, witch!”  Remus shouted.  “You will not ruin this!”

I struggled to look at him, seeing his elderly body leap onto the railing with the grace and speed a man his age simply could not achieve, Boudicca’s twin swords still implanted in his chest.  He then stepped forward, out into the open air, and found his footing as surely as he would on a paved sidewalk.  He strode forward, but with each step more unbelievable than the last, the object around my head became more and more physical.  It was now at the point where I thought I could almost slip my fingers beneath it and remove it, my mind telling me this was exactly what I needed to, but something was still holding me back.

That was when Remus and Boudicca met in open air, the latter falling into an unarmed combat stance, ready to fight.  Remus lunged for her, but Boudicca moved with the grace of a seasoned warrior, and slipped under the fist he’d thrown toward her head.  She moved around him and wrapped her arms around his midsection, and without pause, performed a textbook belly-to-back suplex that would have made any professional wrestler proud.  Remus flew backward over Boudicca’s body, who fell with him as the move required, but while she landed on her back, he landed on his neck, bending it so violently I almost gagged.  I hadn’t heard a crack but the move
had
to have broken Remus’ neck, killing him instantly.

But the man was soon rolling to his side and back to his feet.

That was enough.  That was a sight so impossible that I couldn’t accept this reality anymore.  Professional wrestling may have been fake, but the moves and pain were certainly real enough, and people had died from the exact maneuver Boudicca had just performed, even in situations where the move was merely meant to sell the pain, not actually kill the person.  But Boudicca had certainly seemed intent on doing just that, yet Remus had barely even flinched, just as he had barely even reacted to being stabbed through the chest with a pair or swords.

The object around my head had sure physical form now.  It was incapable of concealing its existence from a mind.  My fingers finally managed to slip beneath the band, allowing me to lift it up and off my head.  Its removal only intensified the pain, but while my discomfort disappeared almost immediately once it was off, my eyes suffered another trick.

The world disappeared and reappeared simultaneously, going black and then reforming at nearly the exact same time, merging together and then separating as the volcanic wasteland dissolved, replaced instead with the remnants of a small, rusty room filled with old, broken electronic equipment.  It all happened so fast that my mind could barely comprehend the transition, and I felt vertigo set in as I was jarred from one reality to the next.  I squeezed my eyes closed to focus my mind, and when I reopened them, I found in my hands an odd leather band with a number of diodes and colored lights dominating its outer surface and dozens of tiny cables wrapped around and extending forth from it, disappearing behind me and out of view.

I also noticed that I was seated in a plain, wooden chair, a chair that hadn’t been there seconds ago, not to mention the fact that I didn’t remember sitting down.  I looked up to analyze the room I was in, absorbing how old it seemed, decayed, with everything covered in a thick layer of dust, cobwebs scattered everywhere, and the metallic equipment having turned a rusty brown color.  It was like a cheap, made-for-TV movie set in a post-apocalyptic laboratory.  Only a few scattered lights and monitors even suggested that any of this stuff even worked, as did the sparks that still sputtered from a computer console off to my left, the one that I know realized must have been Boudicca’s impact zone when Remus had thrown her.

Beside the blown out console, and exactly where I had left them, were Boudicca and Remus, except Remus no longer had Boudicca’s twin blades imbedded in his chest.  In fact, there was no evidence that he’d sustained any wounds at all.  But I barely paid this obscure fact any attention, because my eyes were drawn to yet another impossibility.

The fifth, and hopefully last, of the day.

The man who claimed to be Remus wasn’t there at all.  The old man that I had encountered in… wherever the hell I’d just been… was no longer here, replaced instead with a young man with long, thick black hair, and a hard but youthful face whose side profile looked astoundingly familiar.

As though sensing my attention on him, Boudicca’s opponent turned to face me, his eyes filled with hate and rage and appearing a thousand years older than the rest of his face.  Recognition slammed into me like an asteroid impacting planet Earth.  Remus had barely aged a day since he’d appeared in Merlin’s vision, the day he had wrestled with his brother through time, space, and reality, seven hundred odd years ago.

I half expected Remus to interrupt me by saying,
or about
, but he didn’t.  All he did was peer at me with predatory eyes as he straightened his posture, revealing something else Merlin hadn’t shown me.

Remus stood over nine feet tall.

***

Remus dominated the room, his height matched by ample muscle mass, broad shoulders, and tree trunks for legs.  He would have dwarfed Bordeaux should the two ever stand beside one another.  He was a sight to behold, and even though I assumed this was reality – although such an assumption seemed ill advised these days – I still felt the same magnetic draw to him I’d felt back during my vision with Merlin.  Like then, I couldn’t understand why I was immediately enamored with the man or why when I looked upon him, all I wanted to do was grovel at his feet, call him master, and demand he assign me a task to be completed.

But I ignored the compulsion and rose to my feet, but nearly fell over at the endeavor, my legs weak and rubbery.  Strength returned awkwardly, but I managed to pull myself up to my full height, which didn’t help me feel any better next to Remus.  Beyond him, Boudicca stood poised to strike out at him, but she wisely kept her distance, perhaps knowing she couldn’t rely on her speed alone in any future scuffles with him.  They were both holding similar head bands that I had just tossed to the ground, their twinkling colored lights going off like a spastic Christmas tree.  Without prompting, Remus turned and strode toward me, throwing his headband to the ground, Boudicca remaining where she was – probably a wise life decision, even if it left me vulnerable as the impossibly large man bounded toward me, crossing the distance with only three strides of his long legs.

I winced, thinking he was about to break me in half, but instead, he pulled up short and stood over me, glowering.

“I suppose we must do this the hard way then,” he growled, his voice somehow managing to sound silky and charming despite his obvious annoyance.

“No, no,” I said, finally finding my voice as I moved the headband back to my head, not knowing what it would do, “the easy way was just fine.  I like visual aids. I do.  I do.  Even if I have to suffer through a few puppets, I like it, I do.”

The man smirked at me.  “You are such a fool, Jacob Hunter.  It is a wonder you made it this far at all.”

I looked at him, standing stupidly with the headband balancing uselessly atop my head, finally realizing that he was still speaking English.  I cocked my head to the side, waiting, knowing he was bound to interrupt my thoughts any second now.  But he didn’t, and I found myself cocking my head to the other side in curiosity.

Remus seemed to understand.  “I cannot read your thoughts here, Jacob.  You have your testosterone fueled wench to thank for that.”

I glanced at Boudicca, noticing again the electronic equipment that dominated the room, which was attached to the headband around my head by cables.  Slowly, I took it off and dropped it to the ground as I looked back to Remus.

“But you’re speaking English.”

He nodded.  “A simple enough language to master once I ripped its essence from your thoughts, along with all its ridiculous slang, parlance, and intonation.”

I pointed at the headband that now sat colorless on the floor.  “Through that?”

“Indeed.  A crude device, not as powerful or reliable as the one Merlin used on you, but all I could cobble together with…” he opened his arms wide, showcasing his unbelievable wingspan, “…this archaic technology.”

“Artificial…” I looked down at the headband again, “…reality?  Virtual reality?  Subconscious reality?”

He waved a massive hand at me, what I thought to be called a paw it was so big.  “Use what moniker who wish.  I know you already understand its basic function.”

“So that’s how he knew everything about me…” I whispered, amazed at the proof behind what I’d always only considered a possibility for what had happened to me in Merlin’s cottage, “…how he’d anticipated everything I’d said, known how I would react, and how he had built that impossible world around me.”

Remus shook his head, as though he too were amazed at something.  “A common enough thing as I understood it, although it has been so long that I am again reminded just how astounding such a thing is.”

I flung my head up at his words, my hands moving to pat down my body, feeling automatically for a weapon or some kind of equipment I could use to defend myself with, but there was nothing.  I was fully dressed, MOLLE vest included, but all my gear was gone.

Remus, even without the aid of his mindreading device, intuitively understood what I was doing.  “Your weapons and gear were confiscated upon your arrival through the gateway.  You are quite defenseless.”

My eyes flew to the area around Boudicca, searching for the twin blades she’d brought with her, but they were nowhere to be seen.  Boudicca was also unarmed, but was still clothed in what passed for clothing for her.

And again, Remus understood.  “She was disarmed as well, Jacob Hunter.  However, I did not anticipate how intently she would resist the… artificial reality, if you will.”

I looked back at Remus, taking step after step backward, edging away from him, waving for Boudicca to join me, which she did immediately.  She stepped to my side, and the two of us backed away from Remus.

“He hurt you?”  I asked her.

“No,” she responded, her voice even as we pulled away.  “But his visions were unsettling.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, glancing over my shoulder and finding a door there, just a simple door with a basic handle.  I turned back to her.  “We have to get out of here, find our weapons.  You have no idea how dangerous this guy is.”

She nodded, finding nothing wrong in anything I’d just said.

Remus simply watched us back away from him, his face filled with humor, like a predator watching his prey limp away, knowing it could only run so far.  Boudicca and I were almost to the door, shoulder to shoulder, huddled together like a pair of toddlers slinking backward into a closet to escape the demons under the bed.  I looked over my shoulder again, finding the door only a step or so away, and reached a hand out toward the handle, looking back again at Remus at the same time.

“You’re really Remus?  Brother of Romulus?  Co-founder of Rome?”

He took a small nonthreatening step forward, moving one arm behind his back, while he used his other arm to perform a bow.  “My given name is indeed Remus, and my brother was in fact Romulus, however, the knowledge of co-founding the grand, eternal city of Rome is altogether new to me.  Thank you for that, Jacob Hunter.”

My eyes widened in surprise, my fingers inches from the door handle.  If this really was Remus, a man trapped in some other universe or reality or whatever, then I’d just delivered to him over twenty five hundred years of history and information.

Suddenly terrified, I blindly reached for the handle and opened the door, my eyes never leaving Remus’.  We had to get out of here.  Regroup.  Find the portal and return to Rome so that I could tell Agrippina what we’d found and send an entire legion in here to incapacitate Remus.  I may have lost the orb, but…

The orb.

The orb was gone, but it couldn’t have been far.  And yet, I couldn’t feel its compulsive draw either.  Unless it was a mile away, I’d still be able to feel it, but there was nothing.  Nothing except the terror I felt at being in the presence of a man of god-like proportions.  Something was extremely wrong here.

“You are free to leave, Jacob,” Remus said, distracting me for a moment.  I looked up at him and saw him moving toward a battered cabinet.  He opened it and reached inside, but before removing his hand, he looked at me.  “But perhaps not without this…”

He pulled out his hand and revealed the orb.

I stiffened and jerked away, flinging myself into the door behind me.  I expected the orb to consume me again as it always did, but nothing seemed to change.

“That can’t be here,” I said, my teeth jittery.

“Why not?”  Remus asked.

“Because… it can’t be.  I’d feel it.  Without the red orb, I’d feel…”

Just then the door behind me opened, and I jumped forward on instinct while Boudicca stepped to the side.  I turned wildly, uncertain, afraid of what might possibly have opened the door, but was amazed that that individual standing within the door’s threshold was none other than Agrippina.