The news from Maximus that his men were ready to go inside the ancient vessel was a spark thrown into the tinder of Alex's obsession. The political victory over Pertinax, the grim satisfaction of neutralizing his enemies—it all faded into the background, dwarfed by the colossal, silent mystery lying in the mud of his own harbor. This was the source, the origin point of the anomaly that had defined his new life. He had to go.
He made his preparations under the now-familiar guise of a religious pilgrimage. Another solemn trip to Ostia was announced, this time to perform a larger, more elaborate sacrifice to Neptune to give thanks for the "calming of the seas" and the capture of the first grain pirates. The Senate, now thoroughly cowed, approved the expenditure without a single dissenting voice.
This time, Sabina insisted on coming. Her confrontation with Alex had cleared the air between them, and his partial confession about a search for "lost technology" had transformed her from a wary skeptic into a deeply intrigued co-conspirator.
"If you are going to commune with the 'spirits of the deep,' Caesar," she had told him, her eyes sharp with an intelligence that saw through his excuses, "then your financial advisor should be present to audit the transaction." It was her way of saying she refused to be shut out again. Reluctantly, Alex had agreed. Her practical, cynical mind might be a useful anchor in the face of the impossible.
They arrived at the secured site to find it a hive of disciplined activity. The massive winch and crane system had been reinforced, and a larger, more stable platform now floated above the excavation area. The crude diving bell, which Alex had privately nicknamed Charon's Ferry, waited for them.
The descent was even more unnerving the second time. Alex, Maximus, and a pale but resolute Sabina crowded into the cramped bronze chamber. As it was lowered into the green, murky water of the harbor, the familiar silence and pressure descended upon them. Sabina's eyes were wide, her usual confident poise stripped away by the raw, alien nature of the experience.
They reached the seafloor, and the view was transformed. Maximus's Speculatores had done incredible work. They had cleared away centuries of silt and rock, exposing a much larger section of the colossal, curved hull. It was unmistakably the side of a ship, a vessel of such impossible size that it defied all comparison. It was less a ship and more a small, metal hill rising from the seabed.
And there, in the center of the cleared area, was the breach.
It was not a door or a hatch. It was a wound. A jagged, brutal tear in the ship's dark, metallic skin, roughly ten feet wide and twenty feet high. The edges of the strange alloy were peeled back like torn parchment, a testament to a cataclysmic impact that had happened millennia ago. It was a raw, violent scar on a surface that was otherwise impossibly smooth and seamless. Looking into the dark, still water within the breach was like staring into the mouth of a dead god.
The plan was for Alex and Maximus to enter, while Sabina remained in the bell. She was a woman of numbers and influence, not a soldier, and her safety was paramount. They helped her into a primitive breathing apparatus that Hero of Alexandria had designed—a simple leather bag filled with air, connected by a long, reinforced tube to the larger air bubble trapped in the bell. It was a clumsy, dangerous invention, but it would give her a few precious minutes of air if the bell's integrity was somehow compromised.
Alex and Maximus donned their own. Theirs were designed for movement, smaller bags strapped to their chests, offering only a few minutes of breathable air. It was a terrifyingly small window.
"We go in, we take one look, and we come back," Maximus said, his voice muffled by the leather mouthpiece. "No heroics."
Alex nodded, his heart hammering against his ribs. He gave Sabina's hand a reassuring squeeze, then he and the general slipped out from under the relative safety of the bell and into the cold, silent water.
The moment he passed through the jagged tear in the hull, he entered another world. The water inside the vessel was preternaturally still and perfectly, shockingly clear, having been protected from the harbor's currents for thousands of years. The fine silt had long since settled, creating a floor of dark, soft mud. The interior was a cavern, a vast, silent space that swallowed the light from their waterproof lanterns.
The walls were made of the same seamless, dark metal, but here, in the protected interior, they were not covered by marine growth. They were etched with strange, geometric patterns that seemed to pulse with a faint, dormant, internal light, a web of glowing lines that crisscrossed the immense, curving surfaces. The architecture was wrong, alien. It followed a logic of impossible angles and non-Euclidean geometry that made Alex's head spin. He and Maximus were two ancient men with bronze-age minds, floating through the guts of a dead leviathan from a distant star.
They were in what might have been a cargo hold, or perhaps an engine room. It was difficult to tell. Massive, incomprehensible structures, ribbed and curved, rose from the floor to the ceiling, all of them silent and dark. But everywhere there were signs of the ancient crash. Great pillars of the strange metal were bent and twisted as if they were made of wax. A section of the ceiling had been torn open, revealing a nightmarish tangle of what looked like metallic nerves and crystalline conduits. The scale of the power that had caused this damage was simply unimaginable.
They swam slowly, carefully, their movements hampered by the water and their own sense of profound, reverent awe. This was a tomb. A tomb from the future.
Their lanterns, cutting through the ancient darkness, swept across the vast chamber. The beams glinted off something in the far corner, something half-buried in the deep, settled silt. It was another object, smaller than the chamber they were in, but still larger than any Roman fishing boat. It had a distinct, angular, wedge shape, and it was made of the same dark, unblemished metal as the main ship. It was not part of the ship's internal structure; it looked like a separate vehicle that had been stored here.
A shuttle. An escape pod.
They swam closer, their hearts pounding in unison. They could see it more clearly now. It seemed to have been thrown from its moorings during the crash, landing heavily in the corner of the chamber. There was a deep sense of expectation, of imminent discovery, that made the water around them feel thick and electric.
As his lantern beam played across the shuttle's smooth, dark surface, Alex saw it. A line. A thin, perfectly straight seam that was almost invisible against the black metal. A hatch. And at one end of the seam, it was slightly bent, slightly open. A gap, no more than a few inches wide.
It was ajar.
The implication was immediate and terrifying. It meant that after the crash, after settling into this watery tomb two thousand years ago, someone, or something, had gotten out.