The world was a high-pitched scream.
Marcus lay face down in the dirt. The taste of copper and ash filled his mouth. He couldn't hear anything but the ringing—a sharp, piercing whine that drilled into the center of his skull.
He tried to push himself up. His arms felt like wet clay. They buckled. He hit the mud again, hard.
Get up, Marcus thought. Move. You have to move.
His body refused. He was Marcus Holt. He was a logistics manager from 2025. He wasn't built for this. He had just watched a tent evaporate in a flash of orange light. The shockwave had scrambled his inner ear. He was going to vomit.
He stared at his hands. They were shaking so violently his rings clicked against each other.
I can't do this. The thought was a cold, jagged stone in his gut. The laptop is gone. JARVIS is gone. I'm blind.
A shadow fell over him.
A Roman legionary stumbled past. The man was missing his helmet. His face was a mask of soot and blood. He was screaming something, but Marcus couldn't hear the words. He only saw the terror in the man's eyes. The primal, animal panic of a soldier facing a weapon he couldn't fight.
The soldier looked at Marcus. He didn't see an Emperor. He saw a man lying in the mud, trembling.
That look broke something inside Marcus.
Or rather, it woke something up.
The "Ghost" didn't ask for permission. It surged from the base of Marcus's brain like a shot of adrenaline. The shaking in his hands stopped instantly. The nausea vanished, replaced by a cold, metallic hunger.
His vision sharpened. The gray blur of the camp snapped into high-contrast focus. The ringing in his ears faded, replaced by the dull, rhythmic thud of his own heartbeat.
Get up, the Ghost commanded. It wasn't a thought. It was an impulse, hardwired into Commodus's muscle memory.
Marcus planted his palms in the bloody mud. He pushed. He rose.
He wasn't Marcus Holt anymore. He was Caesar.
The camp was a slaughterhouse.
The "Thunder Weapon"—the aerial bomb—had struck the supply train. A crater, five meters wide, smoked in the center of the main avenue. Around it, the remains of pack mules and men were scattered like discarded rags.
The smell was atrocities. Burning hair. Roast pork. Sulfur.
"Demons!" someone screamed.
Marcus turned.
A Centurion—a veteran with twenty years of service—was sprinting away from the crater. He had thrown down his shield. He had dropped his gladius. He was tearing at his own armor, trying to shed the weight so he could run faster.
"The Sky Gods are angry!" the Centurion shrieked. "We are cursed! Run!"
Panic is a contagion. It moves faster than fire. Ten other men saw the Centurion run. They hesitated, their eyes darting to the darkness beyond the torchlight. If the officer ran, the line would break. If the line broke, the army died.
Marcus moved.
He didn't run. He flowed. The Ghost knew exactly how to move in heavy armor. He intercepted the Centurion's path.
The officer saw him too late. "Caesar, we must—"
Marcus didn't speak. He stepped inside the man's guard and drove his fist into the Centurion's throat.
The man gagged, eyes bulging. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his crushed windpipe.
Marcus drew his sword. The sound of steel sliding against leather cut through the chaotic noise of the camp. He grabbed the Centurion by the hair and yanked his head back. He raised the blade.
Execution. Public. Brutal. Necessary.
The Ghost demanded blood to settle the panic. The logic was simple: Make them fear you more than the sky.
Marcus's arm tensed for the swing.
A hand—massive, scarred, and covered in calluses—clamped around his wrist.
Marcus snarled. He spun, ready to gut whoever had touched him.
Narcissus stood there.
The giant gladiator wasn't looking at the enemy. He was staring at Marcus. His eyes were wide. For the first time since the Colosseum, Narcissus looked afraid. Not of the bomb. Of Marcus.
"Too far," Narcissus grunted. His voice was low, a rumble of gravel. "He is one of ours, Caesar. He is scared."
Marcus stared at the gladiator. The Ghost wanted to cut Narcissus down for the insolence. Marcus Holt fought back, clawing for control of his own arm.
He's right, Marcus thought. Don't kill the loyal ones. Not yet.
Marcus lowered the sword. He didn't release the Centurion's hair. He leaned down, his face inches from the gasping officer.
"Look at me," Marcus hissed. The voice wasn't his. It was a growl from the bottom of a well. "There are no gods here, soldier. Only men. And men do not run."
He shoved the Centurion into the mud.
"Stand up!" Marcus roared, spinning to face the gathering crowd of terrified legionaries. "Pick up your shields! If you run, I will hunt you down myself!"
The men froze. They looked at the crater, then at the Emperor with the bloody sword. They chose the known devil. Slowly, shakily, they began to form a line.
Then came the sound.
It wasn't the roar of a jet. It wasn't the hum of a drone motor.
Clack-clack-clack-clack.
It sounded like a massive loom, or a child's wind-up toy amplified a thousand times. A rhythmic, mechanical rattling.
"Above!" Narcissus shouted, pointing his axe at the night sky.
Marcus looked up. The smoke from the explosion parted.
Illuminated by the fires below, the second attacker swooped in.
It was hideous. And it was brilliant.
It wasn't a drone. It was a glider. A skeleton of lacquered bamboo and black silk, shaped like a bat. A single propeller spun furiously on the back, driven not by fuel, but by a massive, unwinding torsion spring. It wobbled in the wind, jerking left and right like a wounded bird.
Hanging from its belly was a clay pot, swinging in a net.
Marcus felt a strange, hysterical laugh bubble up in his throat.
He had been terrified of a predator drone. He had expected a Hellfire missile.
This was a kite. A glorified, lethal kite.
"It's wood!" Marcus screamed. The realization cleared the last of the fog from his mind. The enemy wasn't a god. They were engineers. "It's bamboo and cloth! It's not magic!"
The glider dipped. The pilot—or the mechanism—was aiming for the command tent.
"Archers!" Marcus bellowed. "Fire at the wings! Tear the wings!"
The archers were confused. They were trained to shoot at men, not flying demons. But the order was clear. Muscle memory took over.
"Loose!"
Fifty arrows hissed into the dark.
Most missed. But the glider was low, slow, and fragile.
Three arrows punched through the left wing. The black silk tore. The bamboo frame splintered with a sound like a cracking bone.
The glider lurched. The aerodynamic balance failed. It entered a flat spin, the propeller whining as it fought against gravity.
It didn't explode in mid-air. It just fell.
It crashed into the supply wagons fifty yards away. The impact shattered the clay pot.
Whoosh.
Liquid fire—refined naphtha—splashed across the canvas wagon covers. The night turned orange. The heat hit Marcus's face like a physical slap.
"Water!" Varus was shouting somewhere in the distance. "Sand! Smother it!"
Marcus didn't retreat. He started running.
"Caesar!" Narcissus yelled, chasing after him. "It burns! Get back!"
"No!" Marcus shouted over his shoulder. He kept his eyes on the burning wreckage.
The fire was consuming the silk wings, but the central fuselage—the body of the machine—was still intact. He could see the gleam of metal gears inside the burning bamboo cage.
He needed it.
He needed to know how they were aiming. He needed to know how a wind-up toy could find a camp in the dark.
He reached the crash site. The heat was blistering. It singed the hair on his arms. The smell of oil was overpowering.
A soldier tried to jab the wreckage with a spear, thinking the machine was alive.
"Don't touch it!" Marcus grabbed the soldier's shoulder and threw him back.
Marcus grabbed the burning bamboo strut.
Pain seared his palm. His skin blistered instantly.
The Ghost shoved the pain away. It locked the sensation into a box and buried it. Marcus didn't flinch. He hauled the wreckage backward, dragging it out of the pool of spreading fire.
"Help me!" he screamed at Narcissus.
The giant hesitated for a fraction of a second, staring at the burning machine. Then he moved. Narcissus unclasped his heavy wool cloak and threw it over the flames licking at the central gearbox. He stomped on the cloak, smothering the fire with brute force.
Steam and black smoke hissed up around them.
Marcus let go of the strut. His hand was raw, red and weeping fluid. He stared at the machine.
It lay in the mud, broken and scorched. The propeller had snapped off. The gears were exposed—brass and steel, coated in grease.
It looked pathetic. A toy broken by a child.
But it had killed twenty men in seconds.
Narcissus kicked the charred remains of the wing. He looked at Marcus, his face grim.
"Is this it?" Narcissus asked. "The monster?"
"It's not a monster," Marcus said, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He wiped the soot from his face with his uninjured hand. "It's a messenger."
He looked at the wreckage. There was no pilot. No cockpit. Just a mess of springs and gears.
But near the nose, protected by a metal casing, something glinted. A glass tube. Copper wire.
Marcus's heart stopped.
He knew what that was. He had seen diagrams of it on Wikipedia, back when he had the internet. Back when he was safe.
It was a Coherer. An early radio receiver.
They weren't flying these things visually. They were guiding them.
The enemy had radio.
Marcus looked up at the black sky. The smoke blocked the stars, but he knew they were out there. Somewhere, miles away, a man was sitting at a desk, tapping a key, waiting for a signal that his bird had dropped its egg.
"Galen," Marcus said. His voice was terrifyingly calm. "Get Galen. And bring the laptop."
"The tablet is dead, Caesar," Narcissus said gently. "You smashed the heart."
"I don't need the heart," Marcus said, staring at the copper wire inside the burnt machine. "I need the ears."
He turned to Narcissus. The red tint of the Ghost was fading, leaving Marcus exhausted, burnt, and colder than he had ever been in his life.
"Wake the physician," Marcus ordered. "We're going to perform an autopsy."