The desert smelled of burnt plastic and cooked meat.
Dawn broke over the Syrian waste, painting the dunes in shades of blood orange. The silence was absolute.
The Behemoth—the Land Battleship that had terrified an empire—was a skeleton. Its massive timber frame was charred black. The iron wheels were twisted. It looked like the carcass of a whale washed up on a beach of glass.
Marcus stood in the shadow of the wreck. His face was streaked with soot. His arm, wrapped in a dirty bandage, throbbed with a dull, heavy rhythm.
He felt hollow.
Liang was dead. The "Player" was gone. This should have been a victory.
It didn't feel like one.
"Caesar," Galen called out.
The physician was waist-deep in the wreckage of the upper deck. He was scavenging like a vulture, tossing aside blackened metal to find the prize beneath.
Marcus climbed up the debris pile.
"What is it?" Marcus asked.
Galen held up a book.
It wasn't a scroll. It wasn't parchment. It was a book. Perfect, rectangular, bound in a strange, glossy material.
Marcus took it. The cover was smooth plastic. It felt alien in his hand.
The title was printed in bold, block English letters: METALLURGY: LEVEL 3 – BLAST FURNACE BASICS.
Marcus opened it. The pages were white paper. Diagrams. Chemical formulas. Instructions on how to mix coke and iron ore to produce high-carbon steel.
"It wasn't magic," Marcus whispered.
"It is a manual," Galen said, his voice trembling with a mix of awe and horror. "There are dozens of them. Steam pressure. Crop rotation. Gunpowder mixtures."
Marcus looked at the pile of books Galen had stacked on a piece of slate.
This was the enemy's true weapon. Not the gliders. Not the exosuit.
Knowledge.
Liang hadn't just brought weapons; he had brought a curriculum. He had been teaching the Parthians. He had been uplifting a civilization to fight a war for him.
"Burn them," Marcus said.
Galen clutched the book to his chest. "Caesar! This is... this is the secrets of the gods! We could use this! We could build—"
"Burn them!" Marcus roared.
He grabbed the book from Galen's hands and threw it back into the smoldering fire. The plastic cover curled and melted, releasing a acrid black smoke.
"You can kill a man," Marcus said, staring at the flames. "But you can't kill an idea once it spreads. If this gets out... if the Parthians learn to mass-produce steel..."
"They already have," a voice grunted from below.
Narcissus sat on a piece of twisted iron. His leg was heavily bandaged. His face was gray with pain. He was refusing the poppy milk because he didn't trust the silence.
"The prisoner," Narcissus said, pointing his chin toward a group of legionaries guarding a huddled figure. "He talks."
The prisoner was Juba. The one-eyed slave who had started the riot in the engine room.
He sat in the sand, shivering. He wasn't Parthian. He was Numidian.
Marcus knelt in front of him. He offered the man a waterskin.
Juba took it with shaking hands. He drank greedily.
"You fought well," Marcus said. "You killed your masters."
Juba lowered the skin. His single eye studied Marcus. "I killed them because they were weak. Not for you, Roman."
"Where did they find you?" Marcus asked. "Where were you captured?"
"I was a dock worker," Juba said. His voice was raspy. "I loaded grain."
"In Carthage?"
"No," Juba said. He leaned forward. "Ostia."
Marcus froze.
Ostia. The port of Rome. The throat of the Empire.
"You were taken in Italy?" Marcus asked softly.
"At night," Juba whispered. "Black ships. No sails. They hummed like bees. They docked at Pier 9. The guards... the Roman guards... they looked away. They loaded crates. They took men."
Marcus stood up. The desert heat suddenly felt very cold.
"Black ships," Marcus repeated. "In my port. Under my Senate's nose."
"Not under," Juba said. He spat into the sand. "They paid. I saw the gold. It had a new face on it."
Marcus looked at Narcissus. The giant's face was grim.
"Corruption," Narcissus rumbled. "It rots from the head."
"It's worse than corruption," Marcus said. "It's logistics. If they are shipping tech into Rome... if they have a foothold in the capital..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to.
The sound of hooves cut through the air.
A rider was galloping across the salt pan. A Roman courier. The horse was foaming, its eyes wide with exhaustion.
The rider slid from the saddle before the horse even stopped. He stumbled, falling to his knees in front of Marcus.
"Caesar!" the courier gasped. He fumbled with a scroll case sealed with red wax. "From the West. Urgent."
Marcus took the case. He recognized the seal. It wasn't the Senate's. It was a flower.
Marcia.
He broke the wax. He unrolled the parchment.
The handwriting was hurried. Ink blotches stained the page.
Marcus,
The grain shipments have stopped. The mob is rioting in the Subura. The Senate has locked the doors.
But that is not the worst.
A new priestess is speaking in the Forum. She calls herself the Mother. She has installed machines in the temples. She feeds the poor with bread baked in iron ovens.
She wears your sister's face.
Come home. Rome is dying.
Marcus lowered the letter. His hand was shaking.
Lucilla.
He had left her in prison. He had thought she was safe. A loose end to be tied up later.
"The Player," Marcus whispered. "He didn't just have a radio. He had a candidate."
He looked at Galen.
"How fast can we move?"
"The army?" Galen asked. "Weeks. We have wounded. The cannons are heavy."
"Not the army," Marcus said. "Me."
He turned to the wreck of the Behemoth. He looked at the vast, empty desert.
He had won the battle. He had killed Liang. He had destroyed the super-weapon.
But while he was playing soldier in the sand, the enemy had taken the throne.
"Varus!" Marcus shouted.
The old general jogged over, his armor clanking.
"Caesar?"
"You are Governor of the East," Marcus said. "Take the army. Fortify the trench line. Do not advance. Just hold."
"Caesar, the men will want to march to Ctesiphon! We have the momentum!"
"No," Marcus said. "The war isn't here anymore."
He pointed West. toward the setting sun.
"The war is in the Forum."
He turned to Narcissus.
"Can you walk?"
Narcissus stood up. He grabbed his axe. He winced as weight settled on his bad leg, but he didn't falter.
"I can walk to Hades if I have to," the gladiator said.
"Good," Marcus said. "Because that's where we're going."
He looked at Galen.
"Pack the books," Marcus ordered.
Galen blinked. "I thought you said to burn them."
"I said burn the ones about steel," Marcus said. "Keep the ones about poison. And explosives."
He walked toward the horses.
"We aren't going back as conquerors, Galen. We're going back as assassins."
As he mounted his horse, Galen ran up to him.
"Caesar," Galen said. "There is one more thing. From the cockpit."
Galen handed him a small, rectangular object.
It was a photograph. A Polaroid. Grainy, black and white.
It showed the Colosseum. The great amphitheater of Rome.
But something was wrong.
Banners hung from the arches. Not the SPQR eagle.
They were banners with a symbol Marcus recognized from his old life.
A barcode.
And above the Colosseum, hovering in the sky, was a shape.
A Zeppelin.
Marcus stared at the photo. The air left his lungs.
"Air superiority," he whispered. "In Rome."
He shoved the photo into his tunic.
"Ride," Marcus ordered. He kicked his horse into a gallop. "Ride until the horses die!"
They thundered across the salt pan, leaving the burning wreck behind.
The victory tasted like ash in his mouth. He had killed a gamer in the desert, only to find out the Game Master had moved into his house.