For half a moment, I was ready to hear him respond, just as he would often do months ago. It was a painful memory, one that constantly poked at my vulnerabilities and apprehensions, but it seemed I really was sane again, as Felix simply jerked his head in a manner completely unrelated to my question and remained silent.
At least, I assumed it was unrelated.
Helena stepped up beside me a moment later, and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
“I think we’re ready, Jacob,” she said supportively. “Take your time.”
I looked into her always supportive eyes. “No time like the present.”
She smiled and we turned to face all those present. Gaius, Marcus, Stryker, Brewster, Bordeaux, Vespasian, and Galba had all backed away, leaving only Helena, Wang, Santino, Felix, and myself near our gear containers, and I was immediately struck with the realization of just how few of us were returning. While Cuyler and Titus were already on their ways home, I was again reminded of those who hadn’t made it: Archer, Vincent, the son Helena and I had lost, my Roman ancestor Varus, and our old commander, Dillon McDougal. The ancient Roman Empire would be their final resting place. Each of their deaths still weighed on my heart, a few more heavily than the others, but I’d find no solace in their loss by remaining in Rome any longer, nor would I be capable of working toward redemption or penance here either.
And then there was Diana, my sister. Lost in time, space, dimension, wherever. Maybe dead, hopefully alive, I couldn’t let go of the idea that she was still out there. I had no way of affecting a meaningful rescue effort, nor could I simply expect her to show up at any moment, but… still. There was always the possibility that she would do just that, and it was that possibility that continuously filled me with hope.
That thought in mind, I lifted a chin in Galba’s direction. “If my sister shows up, tell her we went home.”
He looked at me quizzically, having recently been made aware of what had happened to her but still not totally understanding the specifics. After a moment, he seemed to understand something of what I had suggested, and nodded. “She was certainly more pleasing than you ever were. I shall inform her.”
“Thanks, “I said.
I huffed a quick breath, preparing myself for what would happen next. Turning my head to Santino and Wang to my right, I tilted my head at them. “Ready?”
They both nodded, their expressions and body posture poised, battle ready almost. It was an appropriate reaction. I looked to my left and at Helena. “Ready?”
She reached out and rolled up my shirtsleeve, gripping my arm tightly with her right hand. “As long as we’re together.”
“Always,” I said, steeling my face as I reached down to retrieve the orbs.
Finding them was easy, taking them into my hands even simpler, but even though I’d done this a number of times now, I had no way of knowing what to truly expect in the next few seconds. I looked into their swirling physical forms as I’d done dozens and dozens of times, finding comfort in their dichotomous but twin appearances. With another quick breath, I looked right and left as I spoke.
“Everyone take hold of whatever you want to bring with you. James, take my arm. John, take his. Take hold of our containers and someone hold onto Felix.”
“I’ve got him, Jacob,” Helena assured.
“Good,” I said. “I’m still not sure how these things work, but skin contact seems to make sense.”
“Wait!” Santino exclaimed, and I snapped my head around in sudden panic. “If skin contact is all that’s required, how come I won’t leave my boots behind? I’m wearing socks! My boots aren’t even touching skin!”
“Probably because of all the holes in them,” Wang suggested.
“Oh,” Santino uttered. “Good point. Carry on then.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head, although Santino had raised an excellent point. If I were touching a tree, or the planet Earth in general, would all of the world be transported through the orbs? I hadn’t a clue, but I certainly wasn’t about to test the theory. I was willing to just leave it as magic and move on. Arthur C. Clarke was more than just a brilliant author, but a true prognosticator, because this kind of technology truly was indiscernible from magic – but technology it still was.
But now wasn’t the time for my last internal digression in Ancient Rome. Now was the time to concentrate, but first, one last goodbye. I placed the orbs in the crook of my left arm so that I could raise my right in a quick wave. It was all I could do, as all the possible combinations of words I could utter to say farewell were suddenly lost to me. I was amazed at how sad I felt in this moment. Looking at the faces of all my friends I’d be leaving behind was harder than I ever thought it would be, especially as they waved back.
But then Helena squeezed my arm, not roughly or demandingly, but lovingly, reminding me that it was time to go home.
With one last look at each of them, I finally settled on Vespasian and Galba. “Remember what I told you,” I said. “Govern. Don’t rule. Be good to the people. Be strong militarily. Set an example for the senate. Think ahead not backward. Do what needs to be done, but do it from a good place in your hearts and heads. And take care of Nero. The kid deserves it.”
“We shall,” Vespasian assured. “May the gods watch over you in your travels.”
I nodded one last time before closing my eyes and setting my thoughts to activating the orbs. It seemed even easier this time. Like flicking on a brand new computer, within seconds I could sense the Multiverse as easily as I could see a computer screen. Unlike the first few times, when the experience had been a jumbled, confusing mess, everything was laid out before me like a cosmic roadmap.
Merlin had been right about my mind making sense of it all on its own.
It seemed I had something of a system now.
It all started with seeing this hunk of land as it was now: ancient, old, pristine, Roman, with all of us present. I was viewing it from some fifth party perspective, like a drone flying overhead spying on us. We were in this timeline, this reality, this dimension, and then I started to think of tomorrow and the scene cleared. It was just empty space. Ever so slowly, I hit the mental fast forward button and the scene started shifting in rapid succession. Days turned to nights, days and nights blurred together, seasons changed, years passed, decades. It was all almost too much to process, my subconscious mind still somehow drinking it all in like it was a movie with the fast forward button set to its maximum speed.
Intuitively, I ceased this momentum, understanding that I was now, in fact, viewing this timeline’s future, and I had no desire to do that. I’d already forgotten much of what I’d seen, if I’d understood any of it at all, and I felt my desire shifting now toward the red orb, feeling it out, placing the blue orb on the back burner while I focused on finding the reality we’d left seven years ago.
Again, it was almost too easy. It was as though the timelines were simply stacked next to each other in an endless rolodex, and it was as easy as flipping through them to find the one I was searching for. And it even made a certain amount of sense that our timeline was only a few over to the right, since I’d only create just a couple myself. Of course the original one would be nearby, and it I knew what I was looking for immediately. Like when I’d dropped off Cuyler, it simply felt right. It was an instinctual, primal feeling, one that assured me I’d found not necessarily “home”, but the timeline I wanted to journey to.
Since beginning the process, my heart hadn’t yet had an opportunity to beat.
Now that I’d found our timeline, it was again as simple as pressing that fast forward button to its maximum setting. Rome changed in my mind at rapid speed, exponentially faster than the fastest time lapse camera back home. Buildings fell, buildings sprang up. Neighborhoods changed and blurs of motion sped through the scenery. Unfamiliar sights filled my mind until exactly what I was looking for finally sprang into sight: St. Peter’s Basilica.
I lowered the speed, letting it coast, but before
I knew it, my mind sensed that I’d found the date of our original departure. It was now July 22, 2021 at 3:30 in the morning, and it would be as simple as saying, “engage” for me to transition us to this point in time.
But I didn’t.
We’d discussed this.
No one wanted to return home on the date we’d arrived. We’d been gone nearly seven years. It didn’t seem fair to return on the day we’d left. There was also the question that World War III was still in full bloom, and something I’d seen during the time Remus had first instructed me on how to operate the orbs that had given me an idea.
It had been the tourists.
The scores upon scores of tourists.
When I’d arrived in Rome to take up a position as a member of the Pope’s Praetorian Guard, tourism, while still a thing, had been at an all-time low all over the world. Very few ventured from their homes, for a million safety-related reasons. But I’d seen thousands of happy tourists that day. It had a been a bright, sunny, cheerful day with so many individuals touring the ancient Roman ruins that I hadn’t believed what I was seeing. More importantly, Remus had said that I’d overshot my intended time. I’d gone into the future. I’d gone past 2021.
Rome had still been standing.
And tourism had been at an all-time high.
I focused my thoughts and inched my time slip forward. 2022 passed. Few tourists. 2023. Fewer still. 2024 saw more. But on July 22, 2025, at high noon, as I stared down at our location from my bird’s eye view, there were thousands upon thousands upon thousands of individuals gathered in St. Peter’s Square, cameras out, eyes up, wide, and mesmerized.
Could so much have changed in only four years?
Could an entire world war simply fade away in such a short amount of time?
History suggested it was entirely possible. In 1941, prior to the events of Pearl Harbor, there was no way the conquered citizens of France or Poland could have possibly imagined the complete downfall of Nazi Germany by June of 1945. Hell, the battered allied troops surrounded at Bastogne, France in the winter of 1944 had no way of knowing that the end was only six months away. People constantly complained about how quickly time seemed to go for them as they grew older and older, but few of them, if any, could really appreciate just how slow it actually elapsed in retrospect.
And I was a time traveler. If this was the only time I ever fulfilled this role fate had for some reason thrust upon me, then I was going to do it right. I could never in good conscious return Helena and the others to a time of brutal war, not if another option was available to me. And another option was available to me.
I was a goddamned time traveler.
I could go anywhere I wanted. Any when.
I concentrated.
High noon was too crowded. We’d appear in the middle of an enormous crowd, and while I felt confident there was a way to shift our position around slightly, I certainly wasn’t confident in my ability to do so. I ticked us forward. Midnight. 0200. St. Peter’s was desolate, just a few night owls, the square illuminated brightly with floodlights, the obelisk moved here by Pope Sixtus Something unmoved and calling to me like an emergency beacon.
My thoughts ceased completely, only one word coming to mind: engage.
“Jacob…”
I didn’t want to open my eyes. Didn’t want to see it. Didn’t want to risk it all being phoney-baloney, a dream, a hallucination, a nightmare…
“Jacob!”
It was Helena’s voice. It was high pitched. She had screamed my name. But it took a moment for my mind to process her yell as one of sheer joy, not horrendous terror.
I opened my eyes.
Here we were.
St. Peter’s Square.
July 22, 2025.
Home.
We were home.
Beside me, I heard whoops and cries of joy and saw Santino and Wang gripping each other’s forearms, jumping up and down in circles as they screamed in joy, Santino yelling at the top of his lungs, “mama, mia! We is a home-a!”
Felix neighed behind me, confused and dumbfounded. But he was a horse. He’d recover quickly enough.
But I wouldn’t. Shock was only just now setting in as the muscles in my legs betrayed me completely, losing their strength in an instant. I collapsed to a knee, my still healing leg kicking out in self-preservation, my forearms falling to rest upon my thighs, and I started to cry. I couldn’t help it and nothing could make me stop. It was the first time in my entire life that I could remember openly weeping tears of joy. They flowed like waterfalls down my cheeks, and I couldn’t care less. I didn’t care what anyone would think.
But something happened then that caused the tears to nearly dry up completely. An odd sight caught my eyes, forcing them downward so that they could see my hands more clearly. There were the orbs, much as they always were, but something was happening to them. Something was… changing. Incomprehensibly, they were altering their form. They were… melting. In a rush of movement, like a gelatinous mass beneath a hair dryer, the orbs broke down, became like liquid, and then… completely disintegrated in my hands. In the blink of an eye, there was nothing left. There was no dust upon the ground, no debris sitting in neat, red and blue piles in front of me. They’d simply dissolved in my grasp, exiting my life as though they’d never been a part of it at all.
But I had little time to ponder what had happened to them. No time, in fact. A heartbeat had passed before I was body checked from the left by an assailant, sending us to the ground in a heap. My mind sharpened, its first thought suspecting one of Agrippina’s old Praetorian Ninjas had somehow followed us here and had ambushed me.
But it had been Helena.
We’d gone to the ground hard, but her soft lips upon my own blunted the impact and everything, everything, suddenly became a distant memory. Thoughts of Ancient Rome, Caesars and Praetorians, Byzantium and Caesarea, Ancient Britain, Romulus and Remus, Merlin, Agrippina, and everything else melted away just as completely as the orbs had, which was the final memory to escape me as I lost myself in Helena’s passionate assault, Wang and Santino still dancing beside us, Felix wandering away from us aimlessly.
We were home!
After seven long, brutal, horrendous years… we were home!
It was unbelievable. It had all been impossible. Time travel? Multidimensional hopping? Making out with an empress of Rome and the queen of an ancient British tribe? Interacting with countless historical figures?
Impossible.
Except it hadn’t been impossible. It had been more than real. And it was a story I knew I would have to tell someone sooner rather than later as I was growing vaguely aware of flashing red and blue lights approaching at the behest of ear-shattering sirens. Helena sensed this too, and for the first time in nearly a minute, pulled her lips away from mine and looked up. I followed her gaze, and saw what she saw.
Above us stood a pair of men wearing brightly colored uniforms that looked more like pajamas than duty clothes. In the dull light I couldn’t quite make out the colors, although I already knew in my head what they were, but what stuck out in stark contrast to their clothing were the halberds they hefted, ancient pikes with curved blades at their tips, pointing directly at Helena and me. I looked to my left, and saw a half dozen similarly dressed and equipped men threatening Wang and Santino while dozens of men in suits with pistols streamed from SUVs all around us. Wang and Santino had their hands up like they were in a movie, but they didn’t seem particularly concerned. They were elbowing each other like a pair of kindergartners, trying to get the other to do something stupid, all the while the Swiss Guardsmen around them shouted for them to restrain themselves.
I grinned at the whole damn situation. I placed my hands on Helena’s head, tilted it down so that she could look at me, and basked in the joyous smile she had on her face, the kind of smile I hadn’t seen there in half a decade. It was dazzling, infectious, and the only thing I could think to do to keep me from bawling in happiness again was to pu
ll her down for another kiss that I intended to hold forever.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two Swiss Guardsmen glance at each other in confusion, and then I could no longer help myself. I started to laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh. Helena pulled away and flopped onto her back, resting her head on my outstretched arm and joined me in uncontrollable laughter.
We were home!
There wasn’t a damn thing in this entire universe that could darken my mood today, even as the guardsmen finally came to their senses and hauled Helena and I, still laughing, to our feet before escorting us to one of their vehicles. Just before the slammed the door shut, I could hear Santino shouting joyfully and at the top of his lungs, “We come in a peace-a! Take us to your pope-a!”
Epilogue
Thirty Minutes Later…
I sat on an uncomfortable metal chair in a dark room with a single light source that failed to illuminate its corners, my arms crossed against my chest. There was a small metal table in front of me and a large Italian man in a cheap Italian suit seated opposite me. He was a serious man, who’d spoken a lot considering he was the one supposedly interrogating me. His English was proficient although it had a thick Italian accent, but I couldn’t care less. Just hearing the sweet, sweet sound of English being spoken by a new voice was music to my ears.
“I will ask you again, sir,” the man said. “How were you able to simply appear within the confines of the Vatican with… a horse?”
I smiled at him. “Hunter. Jacob. Lieutenant. Praetorian Guard. Wasn’t around long enough to get a service number.”
He frowned. “Is that all you will say?”
I cocked my head to the side. “No. But that’s all I’ll say to you.”
“Who will you speak with then?”
“Someone who knows me.”
“And who might know you?”
I waved a hand at him dismissively. “You have all the relevant information you need. Go find someone.”
Praetorian Series [4] All Roads Lead to Rome Page 52