The engineer's charcoal drawing of the vessel was seared into Alex's mind. A ship. An ancient, massive ship made of a futuristic alloy, entombed at the bottom of his harbor. The questions that had plagued him before now multiplied, growing into a chorus of terrifying possibilities. He had to see it for himself. Reading reports and looking at drawings was not enough. He needed to lay his own eyes on the anomaly, to feel its presence, to confirm that it was real.
He couldn't just sail out to the site; his every move was watched. He needed a plausible pretext, another layer of his carefully constructed imperial theater. He announced to the court that he would be making a personal pilgrimage to Ostia. The official reason was to perform a solemn sacrifice to Neptune, to appease the sea god and ask for his blessing on the new grain convoys and the protection of Rome's shipping. It was an act of public piety that no one could fault.
Under the cover of this "religious" journey, he arrived at the heavily fortified and now-isolated work site. Maximus had turned it into a small, efficient military camp. The air buzzed with the disciplined energy of the Speculatores, a stark contrast to the civilian chaos of the rest of the port.
The "diving bell" his Greek engineers had constructed was waiting for him. It was a crude but ingenious device, based on principles Alex had sketched out for them, which he'd claimed were from an old treatise by Archimedes. It was essentially a large, bronze cauldron, reinforced with iron bands and weighted with lead ingots. It would be lowered into the water by a massive winch, trapping a large bubble of air inside, allowing two people to descend for a short period. It was incredibly dangerous.
Maximus insisted on accompanying him. "If you go, Caesar, I go," the general had stated, his voice leaving no room for argument. "I will not have you face the gods of the deep alone."
They stripped down to simple linen tunics and climbed onto the small wooden platform inside the bell. The world outside was a cacophony of creaking winches and shouted commands from the soldiers manning the crane. Then, with a great lurch, they were lowered into the sea.
The moment the bronze lip of the bell went under, the world changed. The noise of the surface was instantly cut off, replaced by a deep, muffled silence, punctuated by the gurgle of water and the sound of their own breathing in the strange, compressed air. Sunlight filtered through the murky green water, casting an eerie, spectral glow inside their small, cramped space. As they descended deeper, the light faded, and a crushing pressure built in Alex's ears. It was a disorienting, alien environment.
They reached the seafloor at a depth of about forty feet. Through the open bottom of the bell, Alex could see the silty seabed, illuminated by a waterproof lantern one of the soldiers had lowered beside them. And there it was.
It was colossal. The charcoal drawing had not done it justice. A great, curved wall of dark, smooth metal rose out of the mud, disappearing into the gloom in both directions. It was covered in two millennia of marine growth—barnacles, seaweed, thick layers of calcified sea life—but underneath, the unnatural perfection of its curve was unmistakable. It was not a rock formation. It was manufactured. Alex reached out a hand from under the bell, his fingers brushing against the hull. It was cold, unnervingly smooth beneath the layers of sea life, and felt ancient beyond comprehension. It pulsed with a quiet, dormant power that had nothing to do with the gods of this world.
He and Maximus were silent for a long time, two men from vastly different ages staring at a mystery that belonged to neither of them. They could find no visible seams, no windows, no hatches. The section they could see was a single, seamless piece of construction. The ship, or whatever it was, was a sealed tomb, its secrets locked away by time and pressure. The experience was profoundly awe-inspiring and left Alex with a fear colder and deeper than any he had yet known.
His strange behavior, however, did not go unnoticed in Rome. Sealing off a major section of the port, dedicating his best soldiers to guarding a pile of "cursed" rocks, and undertaking a personal, risky pilgrimage to the site—it was all too eccentric to be ignored.
Lucilla, his unwilling spymaster, saw it all. She didn't know what he had found, but her sharp, intuitive mind knew that his actions were not those of a pious emperor. They were the actions of an obsessed man guarding a secret of immense importance. And she used it as a new weapon.
Her previous rumor campaign about him being a "hollow emperor" had been blunted by his decisive actions. So she started a new one, this one far more subtle and, in some ways, more dangerous. She didn't whisper that he was possessed anymore. She whispered that he was going mad.
The stories spread through the elite circles of Rome, carried on the tongues of her society friends. The Emperor, they said, was cracking under the strain of his office. He was having visions, hearing voices that spoke to him from the sea. He had become obsessed with a "cursed" underwater ruin, squandering state resources and the manpower of his elite guards on a personal, paranoid delusion. He was neglecting the real problems of the city to chase phantoms.
The new narrative was devastatingly effective because it had the ring of truth. To an outside observer, his actions did look like madness.
The first person to confront him was Sabina. She arrived at his study one afternoon, her face a mask of frustration and concern, her usual witty banter gone.
"What are you doing, Caesar?" she demanded, forgoing all pleasantries. "I have senators, sober men, coming to me and asking if the Emperor has taken to consulting fish for his policy decisions. You have sealed off a vital section of my port expansion project, a project you authorized. You have alienated the engineers and angered the dockworkers' guild. And for what? To protect a pile of old rocks from a fabricated curse?"
She stepped closer, her eyes searching his. "You are giving your sister the perfect weapon to use against you. She is painting you as an unstable mystic, and your actions are proving her right. I thought we were partners in this. You trusted me enough to help you plant your miracle roots in that garden. Why won't you trust me with this?"
Her words were a direct hit. He was losing her trust, and he couldn't afford that. He looked at her, at Rufus who had accompanied her, and at Maximus who stood guard, and he knew he had to bring them deeper into the secret. He couldn't tell them the whole truth, but he had to give them a version of it they could believe.
He sent for a sealed chest. He opened it and took out the strange, non-corroding piece of metal he had shown no one but Maximus. He placed it on the desk between them.
"This is not about a curse," he said, his voice low. "It is about this."
Rufus and Sabina stared at the object. The senator reached out and touched it, his brow furrowed in deep thought. "By the gods… what is it?"
"I believe it is the key to a 'lost' technology of the ancients," Alex began, weaving his new, calculated lie. "A power source. The old legends, the ones Rufus's researchers are studying, speak of it. The Greeks called it orichalcum. The Egyptians spoke of 'stones that held the light of the sun.'" He looked at them, his expression one of deadly seriousness. "The legends say this metal can turn heat into light and power. My 'philosophical experiments,' my interest in the site at Ostia—it is all part of a secret project to understand and replicate this power. If I can unlock its secret, I can build machines that can grind our grain without oxen, pump water to the highest hills of the city, and power forges that can create steel stronger than any we know. I can solve the energy crisis, which will, in turn, solve the food crisis forever."
He let the grand vision hang in the air. It was a lie, but it was a magnificent one, rooted in their own myths and plausible within a world where they believed in lost, golden ages.
"But if my enemies," he concluded, "if men like those who followed Metellus, knew what I was truly searching for, they would try to steal it. They would try to use it as a weapon. That is why the secrecy. That is why I have trusted only you with this truth."
Rufus looked from the metal to Alex, his old eyes wide with wonder. Sabina was quieter, her gaze sharp, analytical. She was intrigued, but he could tell she sensed he was still holding something back. He had bought their loyalty again, but he knew the foundation was built on a partial truth.
Just as the tense silence settled, Perennis burst into the room, his usual composure gone, his face pale with alarm. "Caesar," he said, breathless. "A dispatch from my agent watching the Augusta."
"What is it?" Alex asked, his stomach tightening.
"She has given up on rumors," Perennis said. "She has found a new proxy. A new champion to rally the Senate's discontent."
"Who?"
"Senator Publius Helvius Pertinax," the prefect said, the name falling like a stone in the quiet room. "He has just returned to Rome from his command in Britain. He is a respected general, a former consul, a man of immense gravitas and unimpeachable ambition." He took a shaky breath. "And my agent has confirmed it. Lucilla has been seen meeting with him, twice, in secret. She is no longer trying to prove you are a ghost, Caesar."
He looked at Alex, his eyes filled with a new and terrible understanding. "She is trying to prop up your replacement."