Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  Indigo, indigo… Gram searched for this shade in a thrash of ochre oranges and goldenrod fabrics. He waded through the crowd, bumping elbows and jostling shoulders, turning every few seconds to get a view from all angles.

  “You sure know how to make a lass dizzy!” Imogen told him.

  “It can’t be just me.” The Invictus’s Historian console had three feeds going at once: his own, Eliot’s, and the recording of Empra synchronized with their time stamp. “Did you try minimizing some windows?”

  “Imogen is flirting, Gram.” The grumble through the comm belonged to Eliot. She’d returned from her jump into the predawn ludus and was searching the same crowd. “As adorable as you two are, now isn’t the best time for that.”

  “It’s the only time to flirt!” Imogen protested. “Oh, hey—Aunt Empra just passed arch LVII. Turn around!”

  “Are you talking to me or Gram?” Eliot asked.

  “Gram.”

  He spun on his heels and scanned the closest arch—LVIII were the numerals carved into its stone. A single digit off. Empra had to be nearby, but none of the women in the passing throng wore indigo. Nor were any of them pregnant to the point of waddling.

  “I’m not seeing her, Im.”

  “I see that you’re not seeing her.” Nervous energy frayed Imogen’s voice. “She should be right on top of you, but you don’t show up on her feed since you weren’t there the first time. Okay… she’s passing gate LVIII right now.”

  Except she wasn’t.

  “Are you sure the feeds are synchronized?” Gram asked.

  “Surer than sure,” Imogen answered. “Atomic clock sure. I don’t understand. Aunt Empra was supposed to be there. She was there.”

  The one constant in their plan had shifted, leaving Gram stuck in place. The crowd kept moving around him—colors of fire and earth, swarming into the amphitheater’s many entrances. Dirt, halitosis, shouts that cluttered up his translation feed… What did Empra’s absence mean? Gram hardly had time to work out a theory when the Recorder appeared.

  Empra McCarthy’s belly caused a break in the pedestrian traffic—everyone slowed to give the pregnant woman a wide berth. Her own walk was ponderous but persistent. It wouldn’t take much for Gram to catch up and recite the Latin lines Imogen had taught him: Cruenti sunt ludi. Oculo intimo spectare non sapiat. The words would—hopefully—signal Empra to cut off her datastream feed without alarming the Ab Aeterno. They needed the CTM to stay where they could find it.

  A hand landed on Gram’s arm. Eliot appeared at his side, soundless as ever, shaking her head as Empra McCarthy shuffled past.

  “Guys, Aunt Empra is right there! Go get her! We’ve got a world to jump-start!”

  “That delay was ten seconds long.” Eliot’s whisper doubled—next to Gram, in his comm. “Something’s changed and I don’t think it’s on our end.”

  Hers was a logical conclusion and, unfortunately, correct. Not fifteen steps behind Empra was a face caricatured in countless Academy restroom stalls. The mustache that made these illustrations so comical was gone, but there was no mistaking the militant frown beneath.

  “Blistering bluebox barnacles!” Imogen recognized the man, too. “What’s Instructor Marin doing here?”

  It wasn’t just their disgruntled instructor. An entire Corps unit trailed Empra at a distance. Gram recognized three other men from Central’s hallways, canvassing the crowd in togas loose enough to hide their stunrod holsters. Familiarity went both ways. Instinct urged Gram to run, but his Recorder training held strong. Hauling tail would only jerk eyes in their direction.

  “Duck,” he advised Eliot.

  The crowd of fifty thousand went from bane to boon as the pair bent their knees, disappearing into a mill of humanity. The flow of feet swept Gram and Eliot down a few more arches, out of the Corps unit’s watchful eye.

  “We are so fexed!” Imogen hissed. “So, so fexed. How did the Corps know to come to this exact moment?”

  “Agent Ackerman.” Eliot’s face was grim as they ducked into entrance LXII. “He must’ve tipped them off. Crux! How are we supposed to get Empra to the Ab Aeterno on time with a whole Corps unit watching her?”

  Gram shut his eyes, crunching variables, running scenarios. There was a solution—there had to be…. “The Corps doesn’t want to interfere with Empra. They’re only following her because they want to stop you, Eliot. If you pull a bait-and-chase like you did on the Titanic and draw the Corps away from Empra, I’ll get her back to the Ab Aeterno. If you hand over your pocket universe—”

  “I can’t. I’m in the middle of transferring files.” Eliot shook her head. “Vera’s link might not hold up if I run too far, plus I’ll need my jump equipment. I’ll lead Marin and his men as far away from the Ab Aeterno as I can, then teleport back to meet you.”

  “You better,” Imogen said. “Aunt Empra needs to say good-bye to Gaius.”

  “It’ll happen.” Eliot gave her wig a tug; all was secure, ready for the goose chase that was about to ensue. “Here’s to steady skies, swift feet, and no more surprises.”

  Two steps were all it took for Eliot to melt into the crowd. Gram hung back, leaning against arch LXII’s travertine stones. He tilted his head to the aforementioned skies. Blue still, interrupted by a few wisps of white. The Fade had stayed at bay, though Gram knew the odds of a whole heaven holding were shrinking. Any moment this could end.

  Imogen saw something different. “Looks like a giant blew dandelion seeds everywhere.”

  Science told Gram these were just droplets and dust, amassed into visible form, but he found—if he tilted his head and shifted his imagination—his vision changed. Cirrus clouds turned into seedlings, searching for someplace to grow.

  “Or maybe it’s a flock of doves who’ve all had terrible feather days,” Imogen went on. “And they’re all racing each other to the bird salon.”

  Gram wasn’t quite at that level of whimsy, but he kept staring at the clouds, back to fitted stones. Who knew? Maybe the sky would stay. Probability couldn’t discount much, because if he’d learned one thing from his eleven and a half months on the Invictus it was this: There were always surprises.

  43

  WHEN PLANS HIT THE FAN, RUN

  ELIOT FOLLOWED THE FOUR MEN FOLLOWING her mother: through an arch, presenting pottery-shard tickets, up stairs and stairs and stairs. The crowds thinned inside the amphitheater, siphoning into seats. Empra climbed all the way to the fourth tier, its steep wooden bleachers reserved for women and the games’ poorest spectators. The Corps unit stood out like sore thumbs in their fresh-pressed togas. Marin motioned for them to fall back to a section where they could keep tabs on Empra without being so conspicuous.

  Eliot hung back as well, watching her mother settle onto the bench, hands to bursting belly. Her youth glowed as she stared down the heights, eyes locked onto the Porta Sanavivaria. Was Far standing behind its towering latticework, armed for the slaughter? Could he hear the crowd’s growing roar, the swelling notes of the pompa—flute and horns and a water organ announcing the opening ceremonies? The emperor was due to arrive soon, amid elephants, acrobats, and Vestal Virgins. Weapons would be examined, bets placed, battles commenced.

  Then came the bloodletting, the water broken, the end of worlds.

  And maybe, just maybe, the start of a new one.

  Eliot glanced at her wrist. The pocket universe was sealed—soundproof and unaffected by the laws of this dimension’s gravity. Neither fact stopped her from whispering, “Strap in, Dad. This invisible chariot’s about to go for a whirl.”

  There was no need to smirk and wink to get the Corps’ attention. As soon as Eliot stepped into Marin’s line of sight, his face morphed into hunter mode. The rest of the unit mirrored their commander’s response, hands flying to stunrod holsters. Under no circumstances could Eliot allow them close enough to draw—the voltage wouldn’t just fry her, but Vera, too. Her interface was hard at work placing the Invictus’s memories onto the chip,
along with Eliot’s current footage. Even a single zap would be disastrous.

  Eliot spun on her heels and started running.

  She’d mapped out her escape route on the way up, adding enough twists and turns to keep the Corps men from reaching a full sprint. Wall frescoes streaked past too fast to tell what their colors conveyed. Eliot didn’t dare look back, with the steps so steep and the vomitorium passageways so crammed. Duck, dodge, leap, twirl. She took the stairs four at a time, as spectators kept spewing past, opposite the way she needed to go. Size worked to Eliot’s advantage—where she slipped, her Corps pursuers smashed. Latin curses mixing with harsh Central yells.

  Her veins were all pulse, high on the fact that this plan was working. Marin and his men had abandoned Empra, so intent on pursuit that they blazed past Gram in the second-tier corridor without registering his out-of-time outfit.

  “Good job!” Imogen sang in Eliot’s ear. “All you have to do is keep them running like the wind!”

  All. Ha! Were Eliot able to spare the oxygen, she would’ve laughed aloud. She was fast, yes, but speed came at a higher cost out in the open. There were no corners to turn here on the ground level, and the crowds around the amphitheater had thinned. Eliot was much too easy to see in these streets. Time to haul arse.

  “McCarthy!” Marin and his unit spilled out of an arch. Their togas flapped as they ran, ready to take flight.

  Eliot’s premeditated path had ended, but the chase had to keep going. She turned north, away from the Ab Aeterno and any route Gram and Empra might take to it, and began running. Hades licked her heels, hounding her until the Colosseum’s roar began to recede, deflected by a maze of red-tiled roofs. Other, more urgent sounds took over: heartbeat in her ears, Marin’s stunrod unsheathed, the air around the weapon crackling. It smelled of pennies and clean fire, too close for comfort. The man’s silver-hair-to-speed ratio was admirable, and Eliot figured she had only another minute or two before the ZAP.

  TRANSFER OF “YOU RAT YOU BURN” FILE IS 90% COMPLETE.

  “Not now, Vera!” The word Rat disappeared, but Eliot couldn’t help feeling like one, scrambling past palatial columns, up a road she saw no end to. She was tired of running. So hazing tired. The fact that this was her final dash only compounded her weariness. Without memories holding her up, her skeleton felt one step away from splintering. It would be such a relief to collapse, let the dust take her….

  “The distraction’s working, Eliot! Keep going!” That voice became the only thing keeping her up. Imogen—pumpkin- swearing, cocktail-umbrella-wearing, aurora borealis girl who felt like family because she was—counted on her. All of Eliot’s friends did, and if she fell now, she wouldn’t be able to catch them. “You’ve got this!”

  Ten meters ahead the air shuddered and Eliot’s insides with it. She knew that shimmer: atoms arranging into molecules, stacking into the shape of a man wearing a porkpie hat. He stood in the middle of the road, live stunrod in his fist.

  His was a broken-record question: “Where’s the catalyst?”

  “Ackerman? Take off that hat!” Marin bellowed. Never mind that the rest of the man’s wardrobe was just as ill-suited to 95 AD. The hat was the heart of the offense. “You call yourself a Corps man?”

  The Bureau agent hadn’t just tipped off the Corps. He’d hitched a fexing ride with them! His teleportation systems must have rebooted, for when Eliot veered to avoid getting trapped, Ackerman bloomed out of the ground in front of her like a hazing beanstalk. She could still see the blood on his sleeve, a streak he seemed determined to lengthen.

  “Warning!” Imogen screamed. “Evil man ahead!”

  “Take me to the boy, and this ends!” the Bureau agent snarled.

  Eliot had the perfect Yiddish curse—A zisn toyt zolstu hobn a trok mit tsuker zoldid iberforn. “I wish you a sweet death: a truck full of sugar should run over you.”—and no time to say it. Stunrods barricaded her back and chest, each just a few steps from scrambling her systems. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t run.

  Teleporting was her only option.

  Random coordinate numbers wiped away Marin’s shout when she jumped, arranging a whole new scene. Well-groomed paths, hedges wrapped in the cool of the morning, sunlit quiet punctuated by birdsong. The garden Eliot had landed in seemed a peaceful place, somewhere to get acquainted with deep philosophical thoughts. Any other hour she would have taken a seat beside the marble peacock fountain, let herself get lulled by the water streaming from beak to basin.

  But her bones could not be stilled, for five seconds later a new set of feet crunched the gravel. Electricity tugged at the air and sparks flirted with Eliot’s shoulder as Ackerman swiped his stunrod. She threw herself into some bushes, collecting a leg full of thorns. Nothing was singed. Not much was saved, either. The Bureau agent materialized in front of Eliot, causing her to double back.

  This wasn’t a chase. She was already cornered.

  “Can you turn off your beacon thingy?” Imogen asked.

  Eliot dodged Agent Ackerman’s second jab by teleporting to the other side of the garden. “Dunno. Vera, shut off the beacon.”

  I AM UNABLE TO COMPLY, the computer told her. TRANSFER OF “YOU RAT YOU BURN” FILE IS 93% COMPLETE.

  Et tu, Vera? The interface wanted the Multiverse Bureau to track her down. As long as Vera stayed online, Eliot was a moving target. Jump, jump, always in the crosshairs. Shutting off her interface wasn’t an option, either—it would cut Eliot’s link with the Invictus, stranding her with no way to flee from Ackerman.

  The agent appeared on Eliot’s side of the garden, stunrod in full swing.

  She scrambled her coordinates.

  Sparks showered across the frescoed wall, not a girl to be found.

  The garden vanished, Eliot had landed… underground? She couldn’t see much in the swampy darkness, except for open-flame lamps lining tunnel walls. These offered more heat than light, temperatures that ripened the smells of urine, feces, and blood. Noise raged above, at a volume matching her nausea, which had already been stirred by the previous two jumps. Eliot’s insides boiled with bile as she stumbled down the passage. This place couldn’t get any more hellish—

  She saw Ackerman’s stunrod before she saw him. The scepter’s crackling light cut farther than any flame, revealing cages filled with lions. A sure sign they were underneath the Colosseum. The beasts rippled behind the bars, muscles and honeyed fur; yawns peeled back into fangs. One of the big cats roared.

  The Bureau agent froze at the sound. Eliot teleported behind him, managing a kick to the back of his knee. Ackerman yelled and a whole line of lions snarled, ready for this fight, any fight, fangs at the ready, take him down! Her second strike found nothing but air. The target had evaporated, realigning on her. She lunged two steps ahead, missing Ackerman’s reappearance by centimeters.

  Run, jump, a bathhouse. Run, jump, a field. Run, jump, a temple. Wherever Eliot went, Agent Ackerman appeared five seconds later, automatically locked onto her coordinates. There was no way to shake him.

  “I can’t keep this up,” Eliot croaked on the seventh jump. Her body wasn’t used to so much rearranging. She was an overloved ragdoll, limp and coming apart at the joints. “If he hits me with that stunrod I’m done.”

  “Can you jump to a different time?” Imogen asked.

  “That won’t help.” Not in the long run. Eliot might get a breather, but the consequences would be the same as shutting off Vera—Gaius wouldn’t get to say good-bye to Empra, the Invictus’s memories would not pass through the pivot point. Even worse, the Bureau agent might find his way into the next universe and kill the new Far. Countersignature or no. Who would’ve thought a man with fexing feathers in his hat could be so dangerous?

  “This only stops if he does.”

  44

  INTERVENTION, MAYBE NOT DIVINE

  RECORDER EMPRA McCARTHY SAT IN THE bleachers of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, her pregnant belly round as a globe under her indigo stola. The Colos
seum was a frenzy of life around her. Everything had the sheen of a fever from the moment Empra had awoken in her bunk; the entire day felt warped. She’d been in such a daze walking here from the Ab Aeterno she thought she saw Edwin Marin, her tailhat of an ex-fiancé, studying the games’ red-letter edicta munerum announcement on the side of a building. She’d even paused, Marin’s name on the tip of her tongue, before realizing it was the wrong year, and this man was the wrong age. Silver temples, some twenty years Empra’s senior.

  So much seemed off. Her thoughts were fuzzy, spinning her head into itself. Empra wasn’t sure if it was a side effect of pregnancy or heartbreak or the crowd’s chanting. The three were a trifecta for misery as she stared at the sands below.

  Empra didn’t register the newcomer on the bench beside her until he spoke. “Cruenti sunt ludi. Oculo intimo spectare non sapiat.”

  Translation: Bloody are the games. With the inmost eye to watch would not be wise. It was a strange thing to say, in even stranger-sounding Latin. Empra frowned, but didn’t break her gaze into the arena. Conversations with ancient Romans went against her Recorder training, and even though she’d already shattered these rules—off-record interview with a gladiator x 320—none of her felt like talking. She was here for one reason alone.

  “I’m placing my bet on Gaius. What about you?”

  Empra’s heart rate spiked. She wondered if Doc would notice—connect the reaction with the name. More pressingly, she wondered how this young man knew to say it. One look and Empra knew she was sitting beside a fellow time traveler. Plenty of others in the amphitheater had skin as dark as his, but her neighbor’s toga virilis was dated by over a century. Besides, how else would he know about Gaius? Or want her to know that he knew…. A whole new meaning slid into his greeting: With the inmost eye to watch would not be wise.

  She cut off her feed. “Who are you?”

  The teenager frowned, his silence carrying until Empra began to second-guess herself. Maybe he was from this time, unable to understand her Central dialect. Maybe this was all some fever-haze coincidence.