Edward Crichton - To Crown a Caesar

Helena was the first to recover. She moved to sit next to me, wrapping her left arm around my back, holding me well below my wound. She rested her head against my shoulder and placed her other hand against my chest. She immediately pulled it back and moved her head to look at me.

“Your heart’s racing.”

I turned to look at her. Very slowly. My face must have been completely white.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life.”

She felt the seriousness in my voice and moved her head back to my shoulder. She started rubbing my chest around my heart, as if that would help. I didn’t know if it would slow my pulsing blood pressure, but it felt good all the same.

Vincent still stood where he had talked Bordeaux down. He waited there for another second before dropping his head and turning to face me.

“How did you know to reset the timer?” He asked without hesitation, his only hand on his hip.

He didn’t look angry but to deny him an answer was completely out of the question.

I panned the room, noticing everyone besides Wang had their attention on me. Bordeaux Especially. Even Titus, who moaned every now and then from the pain, was groggily glancing in my direction.

I sighed, shrugging. “Agrippina was right. I’ve been here before. This is the second time I watched this fight go down. I figured out how to use the orb in the previous timeline and did so…” I trailed off, expecting someone to cut me off, but everyone only waited patiently. I continued. “The first time, things didn’t turn out so good. You two,” I said pointing at the former Roman Praetorians, “were taken out back and crucified immediately. And you,” I pointed at Bordeaux, “well, Agrippina killed you before the bomb even went off. She shot you in the head with Wang’s pistol.”

The large Frenchmen held my look for another heartbeat. He tore his eyes away soon after and closed them. Everything must have been falling into place for him.

“And that slab didn’t just break your leg last time,” I told Titus directly. “It killed you.”

The young Roman blinked, still half out of it.

“As for you,” I said, shrugging Helena off my shoulders to look at her. “I had to watch you die in…” I looked into Helena’s eyes, unable to finish the thought, and her face said it all. She was just as ill as I was at the thought of the both of us going through that again, and I wondered if she was angry at me too for getting us into yet another life or death situation. At my own words, I felt my heart sink into my stomach as my adrenaline left my system and the horrific memories returned.

“What about me?” Santino asked.

I snorted in amusement, thankful that Santino would always be there to pull me from the brink, just as Helena could. “Honestly, I don’t know. You were probably fine. I’m pretty sure you can’t even die, just so you’ll always be around to annoy someone.”

Santino crossed his arms and beamed with pride. He looked amongst our friends hoping someone would give him the benefit of making eye contact with him, but no one did. Each was too preoccupied with his thoughts.

“I even thought I died,” I continued, my shoulders suddenly very heavy. “I was hit in three different places and was losing a lot of blood. I didn’t even know I activated the orb when I did. That’s why I thought I was dead back in the treasure vault.”

“What did you do to make the orb work?” Vincent asked.

“I’m really not sure,” I explained.

But before I had the opportunity to explain, if I even could, another large slab of concrete fell from the roof and landed between Santino and Vincent, and the building began to shake.

Violently.

More slabs of the building and other debris started to fall all around us. Bordeaux moved to cover Madrina, while Wang protected Titus.

Santino managed to look up in time to see a column from one of the floors above him break apart and head straight for him through a hole in the ceiling. He dove out of the way, dropping the orb when he hit the ground. I watched as it shed its cloth and rolled away from him, tracking it as it started moving to my left before shifting directions sharply, making its way directly towards me. I tried to justify it by convincing myself that it had met an impediment in its travel that knocked it towards me, but I hadn’t seen anything.

It rolled possessed, seemingly of its own volition.

I looked down at it while I remained nonchalantly seated on my concrete slab, Helena trying to protect us both. But the only thing I could focus on was the orb, the collapsing building not even on the backburner. It rolled up against my boot, bounced off, and hit it again, settling against my toe. The compulsion was there again, but it seemed controllable, like craving a food that I knew I could resist, albeit with some trouble.

Clouds swirled within, just as they always seemed to when it had something to say, but something was different this time. The clouds settled, revealing something I’d never see within the orb before, but something familiar.

I looked closer.

Revealed within was a room with a white ceiling and floor that almost seemed to glow. Two walls on the sides were also white, but the third wall was nothing but glass. The fourth was out of view. Behind the glass wall stood men in white lab coats, complete with pocket protectors and black rimmed glasses.

How odd.

But within the room was by far the oddest part of the scene. Dark forms stood patiently, while others sat on rectangular boxes. Men from the looks of it.

My hand moved on its own, reaching ever so slowly for the orb. I didn’t even try to fight it. Something about this one felt right. My bare fingers spread across the smooth surface, now as soft as a stress ball, but it did nothing. As I brought it closer to my face, I saw one of the figures, the smallest of them, holding the orb as well in a gloved hand. The figure spun the other, bare, hand in a circle, a motion that suggested someone should do something.

All I could think about at the moment was how much I wanted to go home but even so, nothing happened. I remained in the blown out building with Helena still wrapped around me. When the building finally stopped shaking seconds later, she slowly lifted her head. She saw I was holding the orb in my open hand and she looked between it and me.

“Jacob, what are you do…”

With her words came a flash of bright blue light and the hiss of a thick cloud of mist winking into existence. I felt an electricity discharge, like a static bubble building up all around me followed by the wash of cool air against my face and a gentle blast of pressure as it burst.

Thankfully, the building remained still, unless of course we weren’t in the building anymore.

The orb dimmed and went inert, still glowing its dull blue, but seemingly inactive.

Helena snatched it from my fingers and threw it back to Santino.

Nothing had happened. I hadn’t thought so. The figure within hadn’t been me.

Then I saw movement. Something clawing its way out of the mist. Figures. Dark ones. Six of them.

In that moment, I knew exactly how the Roman augers must have felt five years ago. The ones who’d intended to find nothing but treasure but instead found us.

As the mist cleared, the figures looked more and more familiar.

They were dressed in black clothing, simple BDUs from the look of it. They wore harness type rigs over their chests, somewhat akin to the ALICE webbing worn by grunts in the 20th century. They also carried weapons.

Rifles.

Most appeared to be M16s, even if certain details seemed… different.

I was speechless. Helena rose off my shoulder like a sloth trying to climb a tree. Her mouth was open and staring at them as well. The rest of our team was arrayed around them in a circle. Those who had found their weapons trained them on these new visitors, even me, despite the fact Penelope was empty. All we needed were Romans to show up before the standoff turned into a Mexican style one, but the lead figure in the group finally stepped forward, raising his rifle over his head.