The Throne Room hummed.
It wasn't the sound of power. It was the sound of fans cooling silicon.
Lucilla sat on the marble throne, but it looked ridiculous surrounded by blinking server racks. She wore her sharp black suit, her legs crossed, a tablet resting on her knee.
She didn't stand up. She didn't call for guards.
Marcus walked toward her. His sword dragged on the floor, leaving a scratch in the polished stone. He was covered in ash, blood, and sweat. He looked like a barbarian sacking Rome.
"It's over," Marcus said. His voice was hoarse.
Lucilla sighed. She tapped the screen of her tablet.
"Do you know what you just did?" she asked. Her tone was conversational. "You destroyed three factories. You burned the granaries. You broke the Sentinel line. That's roughly fifty million credits in damage."
"I don't care about the credits," Marcus snarled. "I care about the people."
"The people are assets, Marcus!" Lucilla snapped. She stood up, throwing the tablet onto the throne. "And you just devalued them!"
She walked down the steps. She stopped ten feet from him.
"You think you won," she said. "You think you beat the Player. You think you liberated the city."
She laughed. It was a brittle, fragile sound.
"Look."
She pointed to a massive screen mounted on the wall behind the throne.
It flickered to life.
It showed a view of Earth. From space.
But it wasn't the Earth Marcus knew.
The atmosphere was thick with smog. Massive orbital platforms hung in the void, tethered to the ground by space elevators. The continents were scarred by strip mining.
"The Board isn't coming, Marcus," Lucilla whispered. "They are already here. In orbit."
She pointed to a cluster of lights over Italy.
"They are terraforming. They view this timeline as raw material. I was trying to prove we were useful. I was trying to show them that humanity could be a workforce, not just biomass."
She looked at him with pleading eyes.
"You just proved we are a liability. You proved we are too dangerous to manage."
Marcus stared at the screen. The scale of it crushed him. He had been fighting for a city while the enemy owned the sky.
"We can reboot," Lucilla said, stepping closer. "Surrender the East. Give them the oil fields. We keep Italy as a Reservation. A protected zone. We can live, Marcus."
"A Reservation?" Marcus asked. "A zoo?"
"Better a zoo than a graveyard!"
"No," Marcus said. He gripped his sword. "I don't want a cage. I want my world."
Lucilla's face hardened. The mask of the CEO slipped back into place.
"I can't let you do this," she said.
She reached into her jacket.
Marcus expected a knife. A poison vial.
She pulled out a gun.
A Glock 17. Matte black. Modern.
In a world of swords and crude muskets, it looked like a magic wand.
BANG.
She didn't hesitate. She fired.
The bullet sparked off the marble floor inches from Marcus's foot.
Marcus dove.
He rolled behind a server rack.
BANG. BANG.
Bullets punched through the metal casing of the server. Sparks showered down. Blue smoke hissed from the electronics.
"Come out!" Lucilla screamed. She was firing wildly now. "I saved us! I made the deal!"
Marcus crouched in the dark. The Ghost of Commodus was screaming Kill her! She is a threat!
But Marcus saw his sister. The girl he used to play tag with in the gardens. The broken woman he had left in a cell.
He couldn't do it.
Galen crawled up beside him. The physician was bleeding from a shrapnel wound in his shoulder.
"The uplink!" Galen whispered, pointing to a thick bundle of fiber-optic cables running from the main server to the ceiling. "She is transmitting to the orbit! If we cut the feed, maybe they can't see us!"
"Do it," Marcus hissed.
Galen nodded. He pulled a heavy iron wrench from his belt.
"Distract her," Galen said.
Marcus took a breath.
He stood up.
"Lucy!" Marcus shouted.
Lucilla spun. She leveled the gun at his chest.
"Don't make me do this, Marcus."
"You already did," Marcus said. He threw his sword.
Not at her. At the screen behind her.
The blade shattered the display. Sparks exploded.
Lucilla flinched, shielding her eyes.
"Now!"
Galen lunged from the shadows. He swung the wrench.
CRUNCH.
He smashed the fiber-optic trunk.
The cables severed.
The room died. The humming stopped. The lights on the servers winked out. The screen went black.
"NO!" Lucilla screamed. "You idiot! You disconnected the telemetry!"
The emergency lights kicked on. Red. Dim.
Lucilla dropped the gun. She fell to her knees, staring at the dead cables.
"They will think the site is compromised," she whispered. "They will sanitize it."
Marcus walked over to her. He kicked the gun away.
He grabbed her by the shoulders.
"It's over, Lucy. The Board is blind."
She looked up at him. She was crying. Not tears of sadness. Tears of absolute terror.
"No, Marcus," she said. Her voice shook. "It's just beginning."
RUMBLE.
The floor shook.
It wasn't an explosion. It was an impact. Something massive had slammed into the courtyard outside.
The vibration knocked a bust of Caesar off a pedestal.
"Asset Denial Protocol initiated," Lucilla whispered.
The doors burst open.
Narcissus stumbled in. He was leaning on his sledgehammer, dragging his bad leg. Blood soaked his tunic.
"Caesar!" Narcissus gasped. "The sky! A star fell!"
He pointed back toward the courtyard.
"A metal egg. Huge. It is opening."
Marcus looked at Lucilla.
"What is it?" he asked. "What did they send?"
Lucilla smiled. It was a broken, hysterical smile.
"They sent the Cleaners."
A sound echoed from the courtyard. A mechanical shriek that sounded like grinding metal and screaming dying animals.
It wasn't human. It wasn't Roman.
"Run," Lucilla whispered.
Marcus grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away, to stay on the floor and wait for the end.
"Get up!" Marcus roared.
He hauled her to her feet.
"We aren't dying here," Marcus said. "And we aren't surrendering."
He looked at Narcissus. He looked at Galen.
"The back exit. The tunnels. Go."
"Where do we run?" Galen asked, eyes wide with panic. "If that thing is from the stars..."
"We go underground," Marcus said. "We go where the satellites can't see us."
He dragged Lucilla toward the secret passage behind the throne.
He paused at the door. He looked back at the dead server room. The symbol of the "Player's" control lay silent and broken in the dark.
He had won the Civil War.
But as the alien shriek echoed through the palace halls, Marcus realized the truth.
The invasion had just begun.