The battlefield smelled like a butcher shop that had burned down.
Marcus walked through the carnage of the slope. The ground was slick with mud and blood. The "pink mist" had settled, coating the grass in a gruesome dew.
He stopped near a pile of enemy dead.
A Han crossbowman lay twisted over his weapon. His armor was strange—lacquered leather plates sewn together with silk cords.
Marcus crouched down. He picked up the crossbow.
It was heavy. The wood was dark, polished walnut. The mechanism on top—a rectangular box with a lever—was made of brass.
He worked the lever. Click-clack. Smooth. Precise.
He turned it over.
On the bottom of the brass trigger housing, there was a stamp.
Two characters. And a number.
TYPE 4. #38492.
Marcus froze.
Ancient weapons were handmade. Every sword was slightly different. Every bow had a unique draw weight.
But this? This was stamped.
He picked up another crossbow from a corpse five feet away.
TYPE 4. #38501.
"Galen!" Marcus shouted.
The physician was wandering through the dead, looking dazed. He couldn't hear Marcus. His ears were still packed with bloody cotton.
Marcus grabbed his shoulder. He shoved the two crossbows into Galen's hands.
He pointed to the stamps.
Galen squinted. He pulled a caliper from his belt. He measured the trigger guard on the first bow. Then the second.
He looked up at Marcus. His lips moved.
"Identical," Galen mouthed. "To the millimeter."
JARVIS ANALYSIS.
TOLERANCE VARIANCE: <0.05MM.
MANUFACTURING METHOD: INDUSTRIAL CASTING.
TECH LEVEL: ANOMALOUS.
This wasn't ancient craftsmanship. This was a factory line.
Someone wasn't just arming the East. They were industrializing it.
Night fell over the Roman camp.
The soldiers were celebrating. They drank wine and toasted the "Iron Dragons." They thought the loud noise had scared the enemy away.
Marcus knew better.
He sat in his command tent, scrubbing the soot from his face with a wet rag. The water in the basin turned black.
On the desk, the laptop sat closed.
It had been acting strange all day. Lagging. Overheating. The battery indicator fluctuated wildly.
Suddenly, the screen lit up.
Marcus hadn't touched it.
The Apple logo flashed. Then the desktop.
Then, chaos.
Windows opened and closed in a strobing frenzy. Red error boxes cascaded down the screen like a waterfall.
SYSTEM ALERT.
EXTERNAL CONNECTION DETECTED.
FIREWALL: BREACHED.
ADMIN OVERRIDE: ACTIVE.
"JARVIS!" Marcus yelled. "Cut the connection! Go offline!"
NEGATIVE. The AI's text was jagged, glitching. PROTOCOL LOCKED. HANDSHAKE ACCEPTED.
"Handshake?" Marcus typed furiously. "I didn't authorize a handshake!"
The cursor froze.
The cascading windows vanished.
The screen went black.
A single, white text box appeared in the center.
A blinking cursor.
HELLO, MARCUS.
Marcus stopped breathing.
No one called him Marcus. Not really. To the Romans, he was Caesar. To the history books, he was Commodus.
"Marcus" was his 21st-century name. His real name.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
WHO ARE YOU?
The response was instant.
I AM THE PLAYER. YOU ARE THE NPC.
Marcus stared at the words. The arrogance. The terminology.
YOU ARE RUNNING AN OUTDATED BUILD, MARCUS. JARVIS IS CUTE. V1.0? V2.0?
Marcus felt a cold sweat break out on his neck.
I AM RUNNING V9. WE ARE NOT THE SAME.
"You're feeding them tech," Marcus whispered. He typed:
YOU GAVE THEM THE CROSSBOWS. THE STEEL.
I GAVE THEM EFFICIENCY. YOU GAVE ROME GUNPOWDER. MESSY. LOUD. VERY "MICHAEL BAY."
The cursor blinked.
I PREFER RTS MECHANICS. RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. TECH TREES. YOU ARE PLAYING AN RPG. YOU THINK THIS IS ABOUT YOU.
IT IS ABOUT ME.
NO. IT IS ABOUT THE MAP. AND YOU ARE IN MY RED ZONE.
The fan on Marcus's laptop suddenly screamed. It spun up to maximum RPM. The case grew hot under his palms.
WARNING. CPU TEMPERATURE CRITICAL.
THERMAL THROTTLING DISABLED.
VOLTAGE SPIKE DETECTED.
"You're frying it," Marcus realized.
The enemy AI wasn't just chatting. It was running a kill script. It was overvolting the processor to melt the silicon.
GAME OVER, MARCUS.
Marcus didn't try to type. He didn't try to close the window.
He ripped the power cord out.
The screen stayed on. The battery was still engaged.
He grabbed the laptop. He flipped it over. He used his dagger to unscrew the backplate.
The metal was burning hot. It seared his fingers.
He pried the case open. He grabbed the battery connector.
He yanked it.
The screen died. The fan spun down with a dying whine.
Silence returned to the tent.
Marcus sat in the dark, breathing hard. His hands were shaking. The smell of ozone and hot plastic filled the air.
His greatest weapon—the library of the future—was dead. He couldn't turn it on. If he did, the "Player" would find him again. He would finish the job.
"Caesar?"
Narcissus ducked into the tent. The giant looked worried.
"What is it?" Marcus snapped.
"A messenger," Narcissus said. "An arrow was shot into the perimeter. It had this attached."
He handed Marcus a steel bolt. Tied to the shaft was a small, square piece of paper.
Marcus took it.
He walked to the oil lamp.
It wasn't parchment. It was glossy paper.
A photograph.
A polaroid. grainy, black and white.
It showed a tent. Inside the tent, a man was sitting at a desk, staring at a laptop.
It was Marcus.
The photo was stamped with a time code.
21:42 PM.
Ten minutes ago.
Marcus looked up at the roof of the tent. There were no holes. No spy cameras.
How?
He turned the photo over.
Handwritten on the back, in perfect, blocky English:
SMILE.
"They aren't just watching the battlefield," Marcus whispered, dropping the photo like it was poisonous.
He looked at Narcissus.
"They have a drone. A stealth drone."
"A what?" Narcissus asked.
"An eye in the sky," Marcus said. He grabbed his sword.
"Extinguish the lamps!" Marcus roared. "Put out every fire in the camp! Now!"
"Why?"
"Because they can see us!" Marcus screamed. "They are targeting us!"
As if on cue, a high-pitched whistle cut through the night air.
Not an arrow. Not a bolt.
Something falling from very, very high up.
BOOM.
An explosion rocked the center of the camp. Not a cannon. An aerial bomb.
"Move!" Marcus tackled Narcissus.
The war had changed. The enemy wasn't just ahead of them. They were above them.