Next to him lay the tiger, which was a brutally mangled carcass. Blood and fur were everywhere, matted into the black sand. The animal’s body was twisted unnaturally, jaw slack, eyes frozen in place as if death had come in an instant.
Ampelius looked down. The rock was still in his hand—slick and coated in dark blood. He dropped it instinctively. The clang was soft as it hit the sand, but it echoed in his head like a gunshot. His breath caught and his chest tightened. He didn’t remember killing the tiger. Hell, he didn’t even remember moving toward it. No contact nor memory.
His gaze flicked to his knuckles, noticing that they were raw, bloody, and throbbing with pain. A deep scratch ran along his forearm, crusted and half-dried. He didn’t remember that either. Probably from the tiger, or so he told himself.
Suddenly, he heard a faint whir stirring in his head, like a radio tuning into a new station.
Then came the voice. Casper. It took a few seconds for the signal to stabilize, cutting in and out like static between channels. But eventually, it locked into place.
"You adapted faster than anticipated. They'll be pleased. With that, they've greenlit the next step. The next phase is coming. Prepare yourself." Then the voice faded, slipping back into silence.
After Casper's message faded, several Roman guards entered the arena, all heavily armed and far more aggressive than before. They shouted at him to back away from the tiger and forced him into an uncomfortable position where they could restrain him. They weren’t taking any chances.
Without warning, one of them tased him. He hit the sand hard, muscles locking up, and before he could react, they pounced, treating him like a threat, even though he hadn’t resisted. They quickly cuffed his wrists and ankles, then pulled a rough cloth over his eyes.
A new set of footsteps approached.The guards yanked him upright just as a familiar voice began speaking.
"You weren’t expected to survive the encounter," he said, calm and clinical. "Now we need to understand why." Dr. Vulcan said.
The guards dragged him for several minutes, pausing at every checkpoint to wait for doors to unlock. Ampelius, blindfolded and cuffed, could only listen. Men exchanged clipped phrases nearby, likely sentries checking IDs and asking questions about the prisoner.
Dr. Vulcan answered in Latin, though his accent was rough and the grammar not quite native. He spoke slowly, as if translating each sentence in his head, but he was competent. Familiar enough to get by.
Eventually, they entered a colder space. The sound changed, it became hollow and sterile, echoing softly off tile and metal. Then suddenly a door hissed shut behind them, and Ampelius was forced into a reclining chair. The cold metal touched his back as he restrained into a half-bed, half-restraint device.
The cloth was pulled from his eyes. Vulcan stood over him, one hand still on the fabric, watching him with clinical interest. The room around them was dimly lit, tiled, and eerily clean. A single overhead light buzzed quietly.
Vulcan gave a small wave to the guards. Most left without a word. Only one remained at the back of the room, arms crossed, silent but ready. Just in case. Then Vulcan began the questions. His tone was quiet, almost gentle, but each word felt precise, like a scalpel.
"How did you kill the tiger?" Vulcan asked, voice even. "How did you do it? No one takes down a predator like that. Not without tools. Not without training."
"I don’t know," Ampelius said. "I blacked out. I woke up holding the stone. The tiger was already dead."
Vulcan didn’t respond right away. He stared at him, eyes narrow behind reflective lenses. Then his tone shifted, but it was still measured, though a bit tighter.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
"You don’t remember? Your vitals spiked off the charts. Heart rate, respiration, everything—pushing the limits of human endurance. That’s not blackout territory. That’s controlled output. You were on the edge of something... more."
He leaned in slightly. "Rome doesn’t believe in coincidences, Ampelius. Neither do I. There’s more to you than you’re saying, and trust me, one way or another, we’ll find out what it is."
As Vulcan continued speaking, Ampelius began to zone out. A faint, high-pitched tone stirred in his skull, vibrating just beneath conscious thought. He’d come to recognize the sensation: the Asventi establishing contact.
Vulcan leaned forward, mid-question, voice sharp. “When did the changes begin? Was it after—”
But he never finished. Casper’s voice cut through, overlapping him entirely. “He’s wasting time. You already know the answer. They fear what you’ll become.”
The tone was cool, certain, too loud to ignore. Ampelius flinched hard, muscles tensing. Vulcan noticed instantly as his brow creased. “What was that?” he asked, suspicious.
Without waiting, he grabbed a syringe from the nearby tray and preloaded it with a neuroresponse tracer. “We’ll see what your body says.” As he injected it smoothly into Ampelius’ arm.
Immediately, the monitors lit up as the medical equipment kicked in. Heart rate. Cortical activity. Bioelectric readouts.Then everything went wrong.The heart monitor spiked into red zones. Cortisol and adrenaline surged at impossible levels. His EEG, brainwave patterns, all began oscillating between delta and gamma frequencies at an abnormal rate.
“Impossible,” Vulcan muttered.
The blood sample, drawn automatically through an intravenous port, slid into the analyzer. One by one, results flashed across the screen:
-
Regenerative cellular activity accelerating at an exponential rate
-
Alien protein structures unclassified by Roman medical archives
-
Neurological pathways forming additional axonal branches in real time
Then everything started to break. Alarms chirped and static crackled over the intercom. Overhead lights flickered, stuttering in their sockets. Ampelius' skin shimmered, just beneath the surface, like heat distortion. His pupils dilated fully. For a moment, his veins glowed faintly violet.
Dr. Vulcan took a measured step back, jaw tightening, eyes locked on the screen. “Begin lockdown protocol,” he said, low and calm. “Something is happening.”
The building began to shake with a low rumble, subtle at first. Monitors quivered on their mounts. A nearby tray clinked with shifting instruments. Ampelius glanced up. The guard tensed, but said nothing.
Then suddenly, the intercom buzzed to life overhead.
"Dr. Vulcan, you're needed in the command wing. Now."
Vulcan’s expression tightened. He hesitated for only a moment, then stepped back from the console.
“Stay with him,” he ordered the guard flatly. “Watch everything. Don’t engage unless he moves.”
Without waiting for a response, Vulcan turned and left, the door sliding shut behind him. Not long after, the tremor had passed, but only for a moment. Then another rumble rolled beneath the floor, this one stronger. The tray rattled again. A scalpel tipped and fell with a soft metallic ring. The guard stiffened but shook his head, muttering something about structural stress. “Happens sometimes. Geothermal fault lines. Volcano nearby.”
Ampelius said nothing. Then came the third tremor, much sharper and deeper. The floor jerked beneath them. The overhead lights flickered, then cut out entirely, plunging the room into darkness for a full second before the backup lighting kicked in, bathing the space in pale red.
The guard turned toward the door as a harsh alarm erupted from the ceiling right outside the door. Red emergency lights pulsed across the corridor beyond, casting long shadows into the medical bay. His posture stiffened, obviously nervous. Then came the voice.
Automated. Calm. Measured. But loud enough to rattle the bones. “Breach detected. This is not a drill. Hostiles have crossed the outer perimeter. All personnel: initiate Custos Protocol. Shelter in place. Security forces: report to designated battlestations. Prepare for immediate engagement.”
The Latinized codename Custos hung in the air like a warning bell. The guard stepped closer to the door, hand twitching near his holster, clearly torn between staying and responding. Despite the automated voice being in English, the Latin speaking guards understood the meaning.
Ampelius kept his eyes on the guard, like a predator waiting for just the right moment. The man’s focus was split now, caught between the flickering lights, the alerts, and the growing rumble in the distance. Every sound from the hallway made him flinch and more nervous by the second.
Silently, Ampelius began working at the restraints. Small shifts. Careful angles. Testing pressure and leverage. But before he could make any real progress, something snapped loose on its own and his hands were free. He blinked, surprised, and glanced down. A small, mechanical spider, no larger than a rat had scurried across the edge of the chair. Its chrome limbs clicked softly as it disconnected the final lock on his ankle. Ampelius’s lips twitched into a grin. It wasn’t the guards who had freed him. It was Casper.
The little construct clicked once more, then retracted its legs and morphed, folding in on itself until it became a compact metal cube. It magnetized to the base of his spine with a soft click.
“It’s time,” Casper said, his voice clear and close in Ampelius’s mind. “Let’s escape.”