Tibus shocked expression was quickly replaced with one of pride, and Cassandra knew it was because she had called him not only by name but also an expert. Such a simple lesson to learn, and yet she had to learn it from a man not of her world.
Tibus now smiling said, “Yes Dr. Vespus everything is operating perfectly.”
“Good I don’t want any mistakes and I feel better hearing that from you. Now if you don’t mind, can you please double-check all the systems? We still have two hours to go.”
“Yes ma’am. I’ll get right on it.” Tibus said still smiling.
“Excellent. I will be in the dining room if you need anything.”
The mood in the dining room was somber. It appeared everyone had ordered food, although James and Marcus obviously had not eaten anything. Cassandra couldn’t help but smile when she walked past and found several stacks of empty plates in front of Optio and each of the Team members. Nothing slowed down their appetite, she realized.
She sat down next to James, took his hand and gave a little squeeze. “Not much longer. The dimensions will line up in just over two hours.” James just nodded and turned back to Josephus, who was quietly telling war stories from his days in the Legions.
Time seemed to Cassandra to both stretch and shorten, clearly an artifact of the anticipation and tension. With only a few minutes until alignment Josephus got a call from the security guards. They informed him a Senate Security team was here to arrest Drs. Marcus and Cassandra Vespus. “Just hold them! Under no circumstances are they to be allowed in the building.” He said forcefully.
The announcement brought a chill to Cassandra, what was going to happen now, but first things first, she thought. It is time to keep my promise and send James back. “All right everybody, it is time. Follow me to the Lab.”
Once back in the lab, Cassandra nodded to Tibus, and he returned a thumbs up. She then positioned James at the portal entrance and gave Tibus the signal to start the generators. She looked one last time into those captivating green eyes and said, “Good by James” and extended her arm.
James just shook his head, “No! I don’t want to say goodbye. I want you to come with me. They are after you now. What better place to escape than with me?”
She just stood, at first unable to speak, and finally said, “James I can’t this is my world.” She turned and walked back to stand next to Marcus.
Only to hear James say, “Why? Why must you stay? Come with me and be safe. Let me show me you my world. Cassandra … I love you!”
She watched the clock tick down, “One minute to go,” she announced. Then turned to Marcus, “Tell me Marcus how did James get the virus?”
At first Marcus started to say, “I don’t know,” but quickly changed, “I gave it to him. When he was in the hospital the first time.”
“Marcus that is despicable”
“Perhaps, but he had not yet caught it, and I needed to prove the cure worked and he was the perfect test subject. He didn’t have the virus; I gave it to him, and then cured it. The results are incontrovertible.” Cassandra just shook her head in disbelief, how could he, her brother, do such a thing.
“But Cassandra, I had to. I needed to show I could cure the virus. I needed someone who was not a citizen, and James was the only person on earth I could use. Hell Cassandra, it was my destiny. Just as our ancestor Marcus Vespus experimented on slaves, I also had to experiment on a human. The lives of one or a few people are not important compared to the population of the world. And let’s face it, we would not be here if our ancestor Marcus Vespus hadn’t recognized that, and only the gods know what the world would look like if he had not.”
Cassandra was still shaking her head, while the whole time in the background; she could hear James calling her name. Completely disgusted with Marcus, she looked at Optio, and saw him mouth the words, “go with him”. Then she heard the dimensional generator engage and turned to James, smiled, then turned to Marcus and said, “Well I’m going to join gods, I too am going to find out what the world would have been like without Marcus Vespus.” She turned, ran and jumped into James arms, saying, “I love you too,”
From behind her, she could hear Marcus yelling, “No Cassandra! You can’t!” But there was no stopping. Her kinetic energy propelled her and James through the portal, and at exactly that point the power to the Laboratory was cut, leaving the room and everyone left in it, in complete darkness.
- Epilogue -
Marcus sat in the very same cell, his assistant Quintus had occupied, just a couple of weeks ago. He was cold, but not from the ambient conditions. He was cold with fever. The guards were kind enough to give him a blanket, although it didn’t help much. Yesterday he noted several lesions were forming on his back. He didn’t need a second opinion to know what was causing them; he knew.
He had been in the prison for some time, but there was no way to quantify the how long. He sat in a small cell on a bunk, built into the gray composite walls, with lights shining on him, twenty-four hours a day from slits in the walls and ceiling. The little information he had gleaned from the guards was not very optimistic. It seems the Empire was in turmoil. The government was suffering the worst case of paralysis in recorded history. The void left in the wake of Kukulcan and Claudius’s death could not be easily filled.
Both men were strong confident leaders, leaders who were also politicians, but were leaders first. Kukulcan was so effective at weeding out all but skilled politicians from the Senate, there were no leaders left to take charge. And Claudius’s son Flavious was just a boy, completely unprepared to assume his father’s role. Marcus was certain a leader would emerge, probably from the military to take command, but it would take time for someone to develop an effective strategy. In the meantime, the Senate politicians were busy plotting and scheming, but they would never accomplish anything, because every action was calculated, calculated, but not bold. There was never an action taken that if things didn’t go well, meant disaster for the plotter. They only took safe steps, ones where the danger of failure was slight. There result was stagnation.
The longer the Empire was run by a disparate bunch of scheming politicians the worse it was for Marcus. One of the first things the Senate did was undertake several investigations involving Kukulcan’s death. Since it occurred at the Ministry of Health and Environment, the institute was invaded by a swarm of bureaucrats. As would be expected every activity at the Ministry came to an abrupt halt. Every record was subpoenaed and fed to the minions of the Senators on the committee. Marcus had no idea if Dr. Singh was able to finish his report, if he had not, Marcus doubted the committee members would be able to recognize the value of the study and was certain the results would languish for months or years before research would be allowed to continue. Months or years he might not have. But his death was not the worst part. Sitting here in this cell he had come to believe how inconsequential his death would be; yet he wasn’t ready to carry his true sin to the grave. In his single-mindedness to develop a cure he had sentenced six billion people to death. He had infected another world. Afraid for his sister’s life with an unproven technique, he never administered the real cure. She left his world as a carrier.
- The End -
Blood on the Water Page 36