The safehouse smelled of mold and old leather.
Marcus sat on a crate, massaging his temples. The Ghost of Commodus was screaming.
It wasn't a voice this time. It was a sensation. A low, constant buzzing at the base of his skull. The city outside was humming.
Electric lights. Generators. The sheer, unnatural noise of industry where there should have been silence. To a man from 180 AD, it would have been maddening. To Marcus, a man from 2025, it was worse.
It was familiar.
"We have nothing," Narcissus said.
The giant sat by the blocked-out window, sharpening his axe with a whetstone. Scritch. Scritch.
"We have gold," Galen argued. He was hunched over the table, dissecting the dead assassin's gear under the light of a single tallow candle.
"Gold is useless," Marcus said, not opening his eyes. "I saw the market on the way in. They don't take coins. They take Script."
He gestured to the plastic card Galen had pulled from the assassin's pocket.
It was white. Stamped with a barcode. A name: UNIT 734. And a balance: 50 CREDITS.
"It's a company store," Marcus said. "You work, you get credits. You buy food from the company. If you have gold, you're a thief or a relic."
"We need to eat," Narcissus grunted. His stomach growled, a loud rumble in the quiet room. "I cannot swing an axe on empty air."
Marcus opened his eyes. He looked at the card.
"We can't buy food," Marcus said. "So we steal it."
"Rob a granary?" Galen asked.
"No," Marcus said. He stood up, the headache fading as the adrenaline kicked in. "We steal the mint."
The Subura was a gray maze.
Marcus and Narcissus walked through the alleyways, heads down. They wore beggar's rags scavenged from the safehouse—rough wool cloaks that smelled of mildew.
Marcus had rubbed ash into his shaved face to hide his features. Narcissus limped heavily, his massive frame hunched over to look less threatening.
They didn't look like an Emperor and a Gladiator. They looked like debris.
The streets were clean.
That was the most disturbing part. The shit, the rot, the dead dogs—all gone. Swept away by the "Sanitation Corps."
But the people were gone too. No children playing knucklebones. No whores calling from balconies.
Just workers.
Men and women in gray tunics marched in lines. They didn't speak. They stared straight ahead.
Above them, on the tile rooftops, things moved.
Click-whir-click.
Mechanical birds. Pigeons made of brass and wood. They jerked unnaturally, their glass lens eyes scanning the street below.
"Don't look up," Marcus whispered. "They track eye movement."
They reached the Piazza of Mercury.
It had been converted. The temple was now a "Distribution Center."
A line of a hundred people snaked out the door.
It was efficient. Silent.
A person stepped up to the counter. A "Peacekeeper" in black armor scanned their card. Beep. A brick of brown, dense bread was shoved through a slot.
"Next."
Marcus and Narcissus joined the back of the line.
"That bread," Narcissus whispered, sniffing the air. "It smells... wrong."
"It's nutrient paste," Marcus said. "Sawdust, vitamins, and probably processed insects. It keeps you alive, but it doesn't make you happy."
A beggar shuffled past the line. He wasn't in queue. He was digging through a trash bin, looking for crumbs.
He was old. His toga was a rag. But the ring on his finger—dirty, tarnished gold—was unmistakable. A Senatorial seal.
Marcus grabbed his arm.
The man shrieked. "I have no credits! I am registered! Don't hit me!"
"Cassius?" Marcus hissed.
The beggar froze. He squinted at Marcus through cataracts and grime. Recognition dawned, followed instantly by terror.
"You," Cassius whimpered. He tried to pull away. "You're dead. They said you burned."
"I'm here," Marcus said. "What happened to the Senate, Cassius?"
"Gone," Cassius sobbed. "Privatized. The Mother... she offered us a choice. Become Directors or become... redundant."
He pointed a trembling finger at the distribution center.
"The ones who refused... they are in the meat."
Narcissus looked at the brown bricks of bread. He looked sick.
"We need a card," Marcus said to Cassius. "Give me yours."
"I have none!" Cassius cried. "I am unassigned! I am waste!"
A Peacekeeper turned at the noise. He raised a baton.
"Silence in the line!"
Marcus let Cassius go. The old Senator scuttled away into the shadows like a rat.
"Plan B," Marcus muttered.
"Violence?" Narcissus asked hopefully.
"Distraction."
Marcus signaled to the rooftop across the street.
Galen was there. He held a clay pot.
Marcus nodded.
Galen dropped the pot.
It smashed on the cobblestones in the center of the crowd.
It wasn't an explosive. It was a stink bomb. A mixture of concentrated ammonia, sulfur, and rotten egg protein Galen had whipped up in the safehouse.
The smell was instantaneous. It was a physical blow.
People gagged. The line broke. Chaos erupted as fifty people tried to run away from the stench at once.
"Civil unrest!" the Peacekeeper shouted, reaching for his whistle.
"Now," Marcus said.
Narcissus moved. He didn't limp anymore.
He plowed through the panicking crowd like a bull. He reached the distribution window.
The glass was thick. Reinforced.
Narcissus didn't care. He punched it.
CRASH.
The glass shattered. The Peacekeeper inside looked up, stunned.
Narcissus grabbed him by the throat and threw him out of the booth.
Marcus vaulted the counter.
He didn't look at the bread. He looked at the machine.
The Stamp Press. A heavy iron device used to validate the ration cards. And next to it, the ledger—a book of active barcodes.
"Grab it!" Marcus yelled.
Narcissus ripped the press bolted to the table. Wood splintered. He tucked the fifty-pound iron machine under his arm like a football.
Marcus grabbed the ledger.
"Exit!"
They ran out the back door.
WHEEE-OOO-WHEEE-OOO.
A siren wailed.
Above them, the mechanical pigeons screeched.
Target acquired.
They sprinted through the labyrinth of the Subura.
"Roof!" Marcus shouted.
They scrambled up a stack of crates onto the low tiled roofs of the tenements.
Narcissus was struggling. The heavy press threw off his balance. His bad leg dragged.
"Leave it!" Marcus yelled. "It's too heavy!"
"I am not leaving dinner!" Narcissus roared.
Behind them, three Peacekeepers were climbing the wall. They moved with unnatural speed—enhanced? Drugs? Tech?
And the drone.
One of the brass birds was diving. It wasn't attacking. It was marking them. A red laser dot danced on Narcissus's back.
"It's guiding them!" Marcus realized.
He stopped running.
He turned.
The drone swooped low, its gears clicking.
Marcus waited. The Ghost calculated the trajectory.
He jumped.
He caught the mechanical bird out of the air. The metal wings slashed his hands, but he held on. He slammed it against the chimney stack. Crunch. Gears flew.
He threw the broken toy off the roof.
"Go!"
They jumped the gap to the next building.
Narcissus landed heavily. He stumbled. The press slipped from his grip.
It slid down the tiled roof.
It was going to fall into the street. If it broke, the heist was for nothing.
Marcus dove.
He caught the press by the handle, hanging half-off the roof edge. His fingers screamed.
He hauled it back up.
"Go!" Marcus gasped.
They scrambled over the apex of the roof and slid down onto a balcony on the other side.
They crashed through a drying rack of laundry, tumbling into a pile of linen.
Silence.
The sirens were fading. The Peacekeepers had lost the trail.
Marcus lay on his back, chest heaving. He clutched the ledger to his chest. Narcissus hugged the iron press.
They looked at each other. They started to laugh.
It was the laughter of men who had just robbed a convenience store in the middle of a war zone.
"We have the machine," Narcissus wheezed. "We can eat."
"We can do more than eat," Marcus said, sitting up. He opened the ledger. Rows of barcodes. "We can disappear."
He looked at his hand. It was bleeding from where the drone had cut him.
But he felt alive.
For the first time since the desert, he wasn't just reacting. He was playing the game.
"Let's go home," Marcus said. "Galen is going to be very busy."