Invictus

by Ryan Graudin

  “Gram, how do you feel about putting your Recorder skills to use?” Far glanced at the Engineer, who looked even more unsettled than Imogen: too tall for the couch, kneecaps tilted at awkward angles. “I’d like all eyes I can get on the ground.”

  “Sure thing, Far—”

  Eliot broke in. “I don’t think that’s the best idea.”

  “Oh?” Far asked. “What happened to more hands, more loot? I thought you wanted as many scrolls as we could manage?”

  “We’ll need an Engineer on the Invictus in case…”

  All eyes in the common area settled on Eliot, waiting for the rest of her sentence even as it slipped away. Her expression added to the room’s uneasy air. It was not unlike the look he’d seen in Vegas: big and very, very complicated.

  “In case?” Far prodded.

  “There’s a possibility that we’ll need to make a quick exit,” she admitted.

  “What do you mean by that?” Gram sat up straighter, frowning. “Corps interference? Birthing a paradox? Timeline crossings?”

  All good guesses, especially the last, considering that Eliot had been to the Library of Alexandria before, but Far had a suspicion he couldn’t shake. “This has to do with the forgetting, doesn’t it?”

  The girl’s eyes shivved him—filled with every sharpness and the yes her lips trapped.

  “Forgetting?” Priya echoed. “What forgetting?”

  “The Titanic—” Far stopped to feel the hole in his memory. It was larger now—swallowing not only first class but the whole hashing ship. He knew he’d been aboard the steam liner; the fact hung above him with a workman’s shirt. “I can’t remember being there.”

  The room grew quiet enough to hear red panda chirps—tackling shins in his dreams, most likely—as the crew sifted through their own memories. Gram’s spine turned into a ramrod. Priya held her breath, while Imogen’s shock was all exhale.

  “Me neither.” His cousin’s voice became tiny. “I remember the prep, but the mission itself is gone.”

  “The numbers changed,” Gram murmured, “then it goes blank.”

  Far looked at Priya. She shook her head: mustn’t lose it, already lost.

  His mind wasn’t the only one crumbling.

  “Mass memory loss? How’s that possible?” Imogen asked Far. “How could we all forget the same moment?”

  “You’re asking the wrong person,” he told her.

  All eyes fell to Eliot—girl who’d sprung out of the forgetting. When during those black hours had she joined their crew? Had she taken the Rubaiyat and wiped their memories of it? Why did she look as if she’d been bled to a husk?

  “Nepenthe,” she answered, when it was clear she had to. “I dosed all of you to protect some sensitive personal information that slipped out during our first encounter. But that has nothing to do with the mission at hand. This city is under siege, which means things could go sour at any moment. We may need a quick evacuation, so it’s best if Gram stays at his post. Far and I will take care of things on the ground.”

  Heads shifted back to Far. He knew them all so well— Imogen’s green gaze. Gram’s brown eyes. Priya’s smoke-soft stare. He could feel the doubts squirming behind each, waiting for him to step up to Eliot’s explanation with a challenging what where when why exactly? Useless queries. If this girl had ripped away their memories, she wouldn’t hand them back on a silver platter. Besides, the details of the heist wouldn’t sort themselves. The Rubaiyat might be safe in Lux’s hands, but Far’s remained tied. They had to retrieve these scrolls to keep the Invictus flying.

  “Gram, you’ll stay at your station,” Far said. “No games this time. Sounds like we might need a swoop in. I want you to be extra vigilant.”

  The Engineer nodded.

  Priya stood, walked to the infirmary, and shut the door. Were there answers behind it yet? Far needed them more than ever, so he waited an unsuspecting amount of time and followed. His girlfriend started when he entered, tossing a lab coat over the Ancestral Archives screen.

  “Anything?”

  Again, she shook her head. “Eliot’s lying.”

  “That baseline’s been established.”

  “No, you don’t understand. Nepenthe is an incredibly potent drug. The human body can only handle enough to forget forty minutes. An hour max. According to the Invictus’s systems, your Titanic feed was live for over an hour and a half.” Priya paused, let her words sink in. “If Eliot dosed all of us with Nepenthe, as she claims, we should all be dead.”

  December 16, 48 BC, was an excellent day, weather-wise. Cloudless skies, emboldened sun, low humidity. A breeze swayed through the palms, threading scents of sea brine and cinders through the Invictus’s open hatch. Far had known worse smells. Between a lack of consistent bathing and suboptimal sewage systems, history often wreaked havoc on the olfactory nerves.

  “The fires have already started.” Imogen stared in the direction of the harbor, where smoke twisted in mangled black pillars, wind stretching it thin. Haze crept across the horizon, clung to the silhouette of the ancient world’s seventh wonder: the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Far could see Poseidon’s likeness on top from half a city away. The god’s trident stabbed the sky, trying to bleed it blue again.

  “Are we too late?” The least of Far’s worries, and a mammoth one.

  “The flames haven’t reached the docks yet,” Eliot said, adjusting the drape of her stola. “We have time.”

  For once.

  Far fluffed his toga. “How do I look?”

  His cousin’s arms were full of fur—securing Saffron so he wouldn’t bolt into BC Egypt. She hugged the red panda close as she studied Far’s outfit. “Appropriately ancient.”

  Priya drew near. Her shoulder to his, cheek against cheek. “Be careful. Your life isn’t worth a few papers.”

  She kissed him in the doorway to a city in flames, their bodies melting together in two-sided surrender. Far forgot the sting of smoke, the taste of ashes. For a moment the world was her—all her. Priya lingered even when her lips left, their eyelashes close to tangling.

  “You might want to start hauling tail.” Imogen was gazing out of the hatch again, sunlight playing iridescent off her hair. “That smoke’s getting wickeder by the minute.”

  Far turned to Gram. “Vigilance!”

  “Vigilance.” They nodded at each other as most boys do: quick and curt. “Good luck, Far.”

  Normally Far laughed such tokenisms off—Luck-schmuck! He made his own fate!—but he kept his lips pressed tight as he faced the warring city. Imogen was right; the smoke was already worse, thunderstorm thick. Flecks of ash had begun falling onto clay-tile rooftops. Desert snow.

  They had to get moving.

  Three, two, one. Mission: Rescue Scrolls from Inferno is a go.

  The team dispersed: Imogen and Gram to their console stations, Priya waiting by the hatch to close it. Eliot’s wig fluttered against acrid wind as she stepped into the street. Far followed her into Alexandria’s royal quarter. North and west, where the smoke was thickest. The way the girl moved reminded Far of a rat in a maze—one that ran the course from memory. She turned corners with automatic precision, sought out side alleys that he never would’ve spotted at first glance. Scurry, scurry, hurry!

  The city’s syncretic beauty—statues of Egyptian deities nestled alongside classic Greek structures—passed in a blur. The Invictus was already well in the pair’s wake by the time Imogen was settled enough to provide directions.

  “Hades, Eliot’s hauling tail! Where are you guys?”

  “You’re the one who’s supposed to tell me!” Thank Crux the Romans believed in underwear, for while Far hated tight pants, he wasn’t a fan of going commando, either. Especially in an airy toga. Especially, especially when running was involved.

  Dust licked their heels as they dashed past old gods still new. Horse-drawn chariots. Columns wrapped in hieroglyphs. Roman centurions in full regalia. This was the feeling Far traveled for. The exhilarat
ion of running through an age not his own, battle-shout harsh on the air, a stranger among the strange. He wondered if Eliot felt it, too—the thrill of being where they shouldn’t, the bending of time beneath every step.

  She halted. Far followed suit, though everything inside him kept lurching.

  They’d reached the library.

  Like many of Alexandria’s buildings, the library was built in a style that honored both its Greek patrons and the Egyptian soil beneath it. Stately columns were guarded by statelier sphinxes. Stairs led to a courtyard flanked on either side by extensions of the symmetrical main building. Three stories made doubly magnificent by the courtyard’s reflecting pool.

  This is the last time anyone will see this sight. The library’s edifice, and some of its collection, would survive the fire, but it would never be the same. This was the dusk of its old glory, moment before ruin.

  Imogen saw the same view, shared the same sentiment. “Crux, that’s beautiful….”

  Smoke billowed heavier than devil’s breath over Far’s shoulder. Ruin had risen; it was well on its way. Eliot didn’t even glance toward the approaching flames. Ashes that should’ve caught on eyelashes tumbled down her cheeks instead. Her eyes pierced across the waters, past the columns, through doors, almost as if she was searching for something….

  They were searching, Far reminded himself. “Let’s be quick about this. You collect Berossus’s Babylonaica. I’ll go for Sappho. We’ll meet back here in five—”

  “Sappho’s mine!” Eliot was already running up the staircase, past a crowd of gaunt, scholarly-looking men at the courtyard’s edge. All were too focused on the building wall of smoke to notice her.

  “Go, team!” Imogen muttered. “Guess we got Babylonaica, which means you’ll be going to the right. Southeast corner. Try not to trip over any librarians. Notice most of them are wearing chitons. I’m starting to second-guess the toga choice.”

  Eliot had reached the main entrance, its hungry doorway swallowing her. Far wished invisibility on himself as he clattered up the steps, past the onlookers. Again, flames won out. Why were they just standing there? Why weren’t they doing something? Maybe they didn’t know what to do, in the face of something so massive. It was a feeling Far could relate to, with so many fires of his own: amnesia and Eliot and keeping his ship and completing this half-baked mission.

  One step at a time. He moved across the courtyard, through the doorway, into the library.

  Doomed sterling light fell through glassless windows, magnifying the building’s magnitude. The sight was foot-stopping, breath-seizing. There were gods here, too—Greek, Egyptian, painted, carved—standing between the pillars, guarding books they could not actually protect. Imogen had told them there were nearly half a million scrolls in the library’s collection. The count sounded make-believe, zeros on a screen. Only now, with his chin tilted high as he took in row after row of shelves, did Far understand the breadth of it. The smell of papyrus was overwhelming. So much of it had been etched with ink, rolled tight, and placed onto diamond-shaped shelves. Histories, poetry, philosophical revelations, epics, so many thousands of years of progress…

  All about to burn.

  “To the right,” Imogen reminded him.

  Far’s footsteps didn’t even echo against the floor stones, such was the library’s size. He passed a likeness of Anubis—pointy ears, fangs of a dog, torso of a man—and started down the row. He wasn’t alone. There were people who’d taken the smoke for the warning it was, desperate to save what they could, gathering as many scrolls as their arms could carry. Far found himself hoping that the Babylonaica was on one of the higher shelves, less likely to get pilfered by random passersby.

  “Imogen, talk to me. What am I looking for?”

  His cousin sounded just as lost. “Hold on….”

  Far narrowly missed a collision at the end of a row. The other patron swerved, dropped a scroll, but did not stop. Probably wise. Smoke was slithering through the windows, steadier and steadier. Soon it would get hard to breathe….

  “Am I hot? Cold?” he asked once the man was out of earshot. “Should I ask for directions?”

  “No! Sorry, I misplaced my notes. You’re heading for the southeast corner. Last row. Fourth shelf up. Fourth cubby from the left.”

  Far twisted through these instructions, all the way to the final row. Its fourth shelf was well above head height. He’d have to use the ladder to reach the manuscripts. This sat at the end of the row, and despite its rudimentary set of wheels, Far was panting by the time it was in place. The air was too thick—he couldn’t fit it in his throat without choking.

  “You okay, Farway? Try not to breathe too much.”

  Yeah, I’ll just switch that basic function off now. Far didn’t say this aloud, if only to conserve oxygen. He held his breath as he climbed the ladder to the predetermined cubby. It held dozens of scrolls, far more than he was capable of carrying.

  “Which ones?” he asked Imogen.

  “Eliot says the top six.”

  “Six?” These scrolls weren’t small; they held the history of the world, after all. Far wasn’t sure how he was supposed to get them down the ladder, much less haul the bunch back to the Invictus.

  He’d figure it out. He had to. Far plucked the scrolls out one by one and dropped them to the floor below. Battered loot was better than none.

  “Ow! Eek! Ah! Oof!” His cousin winced with each manuscript’s impact. “Careful!”

  Far leaped off the ladder with the sixth scroll under his arm and set to collecting the others. He was even more thankful for the Romans’ love of undergarments as he scrambled on his hands and knees, trying to roll the books back into place.

  “Hic tu non sis.”

  You shouldn’t be here.

  Far froze. It wasn’t the words—spoken in Latin, no translation tech needed—that caught him, but the voice that gave them form. Everywhere the air was filmy and the library had turned opaque as a dream. The woman at the end of the shelves seemed the only solid thing. Her Greek chiton shone white, and Far knew he wasn’t sleeping, but maybe the smoke had seeped into his head, because he’d imagined this moment for so many years, sought it, and this was the wrong time, the wrong place, but here she was in front of him.

  His mother.

  27

  AN EXPLOSION OF RUBIK’S CUBES

  TURNS OUT VIGILANCE WAS CODE WORD for “boring.”

  Gram sat at his station, reading through the numbers of their landing for the umpteenth time. All was well with math and universal order. He wasn’t sure why he kept checking them or what he feared to find. Nothing had changed since the landing he’d had trouble solving. Or so he thought… Fallible memory was something Gram’s brain was struggling to calibrate.

  He was regretting his promise to keep Tetris on pause. No games meant just sitting. Just sitting meant his mind started wandering, analyzing things that were better off left alone.

  1.2191 meters: the space between his chair and Imogen’s. He’d never measured it before. He’d had no reason to. Imogen was his friend. She’d always been his friend, from the very first day Far had introduced them. Four Central time months ago—one biological year past—Gram had been invited to the McCarthys’ flat to celebrate Far’s seventeenth unbirthday. Her hair had been highlighter yellow that evening, but it was her laugh that really struck him. The ease and flow of it, how often she let it out… Everything about Imogen felt bright.

  It was impossible not to like her.

  But did he like her?

  It’d be a lie to say that Gram hadn’t thought of her in an amorous way with increasing frequency. In such close quarters, it was hard not to form attachments. 1.2191 meters was comfortable. They shared so much: jokes, near-Far-death experiences, celebratory high-score gelato. Even though Imogen’s hair color changed every twenty-four hours, the change itself was a constant clockwork rainbow. A cycle he could count on.

  For all his love of patterns and predictable steps,
Gram was rubbish at dancing. He could manage a formulaic waltz. He might even be able to eke out a fox-trot if the situation were dire. Not that there were many emergencies involving ballroom dancing. Club dancing was a special brand of torture—no rules, go with the flow. He’d only ventured into the fray at Caesars Palace because Imogen had called him out. Five flailing songs and two stiletto-smashed toes later, Gram had slipped back toward the cabana, certain that Imogen wouldn’t notice. She had, though. A tug on his vest and he’d turned to find her much closer than 1.2191 meters. Shiny eyes made shinier by a combination of alcohol and nuclear-green hair.

  Don’t go, she’d told him. You’re the only one I want to dance with.

  He’d stayed. Not for the dance, but for her.

  Gram tried not to read too much into the statement. People said all sorts of shazm when they were inebriated: unfiltered truth, brazen lies, things to be regretted in the morning. Imogen certainly seemed to regret it. She’d avoided him all day, sliding out of whatever room he entered, averting her gaze. Had his dancing been that heinous?

  Things had started to feel comfortable again in the wardrobe. Too comfortable…

  He’d almost said something to regret of his own.

  He didn’t want to upset their balance, but it was off anyway. All the weight was on Imogen’s side of the room, her presence gravitational. Gram had to fight to keep from staring at her. He studied his Rubik’s Cubes instead. Again, there were no answers there, just a mug of tea beside the green one. The drink was cold when Gram picked it up; milk had formed a skin over the top. It’d been there awhile.

  “I’m starting to second-guess the toga choice.” Even Imogen’s frown was vibrant as she guided her cousin through the library. Her screen’s glow was all-encompassing, making the blues in her hair bluer. Saffron curled tight in her lap.

  Gram took a sip of the tea. It was still good. Maybe even better for age. He scanned his own screens again. The numbers were steady. All systems sound.