Invictus Read online

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Ryan Graudin

  Cover art copyright © 2017 by Sammy Yuen. Cover design by Sammy Yuen. Cover copyright © 2017 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First Edition: September 2017

  Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Excerpt from “East Coker” from FOUR QUARTETS by T. S. Eliot. Copyright 1940 by T. S. Eliot. Copyright © renewed 1968 by Esme Valerie Eliot. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Graudin, Ryan, author.

  Title: Invictus / by Ryan Graudin.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2017. | Summary: “A group of time-traveling teens races through history to try to stop time and the multiverse from unraveling”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017000174| ISBN 9780316503075 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316503136 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316503235 (library edition ebook)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Time travel—Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.G7724 In 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000174

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-50307-5 (hardcover), 978-0-316-50313-6 (ebook)

  E3-20170805-JV-PC

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  0. AB AETERNO

  PART I

  1. THE BOY WHO SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN

  2. LET HIM EAT CAKE

  3. LOOPS WITH THE BIRD

  4. OLD PAPER, REAL INK

  5. YESTERDAY YET

  PART II

  6. PRETTY, PRETTY PLUNDER

  7. WHOOPS

  8. A ROYAL GREETING

  9. RACE AGAINST TIME

  10. THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW DRESS

  11. SCANNING WILL NOW COMMENCE

  12. CHORUS OF THE DAMNED

  13. THE HILLS REMAIN

  14. THE GRID

  15. FOLLICLE FALLACIES

  16. WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS…

  17. STILL POINT

  18. IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS

  19. WIZIZARDS

  20. NIGHT ARMOR

  21. WOBBLES

  22. THROUGH LIGHTS AND TIME

  23. MAGIC E VINO

  24. AN AGREEMENT

  25. CLICKS AND SWIRLS

  26. TUMBLING INTO A PAPYRUS TINDERBOX

  27. AN EXPLOSION OF RUBIK’S CUBES

  28. CONFLAGRATION SITUATION

  29. DEVOURER OF ALL THINGS

  30. FAR FROM THE TREE

  31. 100 PERCENT

  32. WEIRDEST WORST DAY EVER

  33. WHAT THE HASH/HAZE IS GOING ON

  PART III

  34. PAST THE END

  35. THROUGH AND THROUGH

  36. FINALLY

  37. A HAT AS FINE AS THAT

  38. THE LAST DAY

  39. DENTAL HYGIENE IS THE MAIN CONCERN

  40. A NEW LOW FOR ACKERMAN

  41. THAT TIME GODS POPPED OUT OF THE FLOOR

  42. AN EMPRA IN A HAYSTACK

  43. WHEN PLANS HIT THE FAN, RUN

  44. INTERVENTION, MAYBE NOT DIVINE

  45. MEMENTO MORI

  46. THE MOTH WHO KNEW HER WINGS WOULD BURN

  47. AMONG THE TOMBS

  48. EVERY GOOD-BYE

  49. TAMÁM SHUD

  PART IV

  50. THE BOY WHO NEVER WAS

  51. THE ROOTS WE DID NOT CHOOSE…

  52. … BUT CHOSE US

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  To my mother, whose roots go deep enough to stand even after a fall

  0

  AB AETERNO

  ACCESS LEVEL: RESTRICTED [PLATINUM BLACK]

  RECORDS OF DECEMBER 31, 95 AD, ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC.

  PLEASE REFER TO ARCHIVE 12-A11B FOR ORIGINAL DATASTREAM.

  RECORDER EMPRA MCCARTHY SAT IN THE bleachers of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, her pregnant belly round as a globe under her indigo stola. The Colosseum—not that it was called that, not yet—was a frenzy of life around her. Nearly fifty thousand souls had come to watch the day’s bloodbath, filling the seats with earth-toned togas, popping salted peas and chunks of bread into their mouths, screaming last-minute bets and Latin slang as the gladiators marched through the Porta Sanavivaria into the arena below. Morning air was already salty-ripe with sweat and blood, scents so thick the crowd seemed drunk with it. They retched and roared and called for more. Blood! Blood! Blood!

  Two gladiators lined up in front of the imperial box, bowing to Emperor Domitian and handing over their weapons for inspection. Both stood as men prepared to die.

  And for what?

  Blood! Blood! Blood!

  Empra tried to take note of everything—it was her job, after all, the reason she was here, in a time not her own. She tried to ignore the constant ache of her lower back, the throb of her ankles, the flaming, wet misery of her heart.

  Usually, when Empra sat in the thick of living history, she thought of her great-grandfather: Bertram McCarthy, professor of history at Oxford. A man whose life was a tidy sum of tweed jackets and pipes and paperbound books. He worshipped the past with a strange fervor. It was, he liked to tell her, the weight all mankind was born to bear. The roots we did not choose, but chose us.

  Bertram McCarthy had terrible timing. Born four centuries too late, dying two years too early. Two years before time travel was firmly within humanity’s grasp. Empra often thought about what it would be like to travel back to Oxford’s mote-strung halls, to show her great-grandfather the CTM Ab Aeterno and take him for a ride through time. But there were rules upon rules regarding this sort of thing. Time travelers were to be unobtrusive observers. Interacting with people from the past was dangerous business, best kept at a minimum. Lest the course of history be altered.

  Not, her swollen belly reminded her, that she’d been so diligent in all the rules.

  Thus, Bertram McCarthy was stranded in his own timeline: dusty life and quiet death. But the love of history he’d planted in his great-granddaughter rooted well. Empra hungered for the past: a world unwired. Without personalized adverts constantly streaming through her corneal implants or meal blocks that tasted suspiciously the same no matter what kind of food she ordered.

  That was why she’d worked her tail off to become a licensed time traveler by age eighteen, why she’d joined the Corps of Central Time Travelers on a yearlong survey expedition to ancient Rome. Traveling, seeing, recording. Blue skies, green plants, real food. These were the things Empra lived for. Also, love… which she
hadn’t known she was looking for until it found her. Until he found her.

  Love. Which brought her back here. To this round belly. To this bloodthirsty arena. To the gladiator who stood at the center of it all. Empra wondered if Gaius searched for her among the crowd that roared for his death. She’d already said good-bye, already told him they could never be together. Every moment of their last encounter had felt like plucking out her own heart, string by sanguine string. Empra knew she’d never forget the shadows hooding his already shadowed features, his promise to live for her and the baby, his Why? so broken and desperate that for just a sliver of a moment Empra considered telling Gaius the truth.

  Star-crossed didn’t even begin to describe their romance. She loved him to the core, but there could be no future between them, even if he lived. This was because he’d already died. On a day thousands of years before Empra twinkled in her own parents’ eyes.

  She had a feeling that day was going to be today, though Empra couldn’t know for sure. She’d scoured the Historian databases with keywords like Gaius and gladiatorial games and 95 AD, but the results were sparse, informationless wastelands. Gaps of knowledge waiting to be filled with her own datastream.

  The facts weren’t hard to add up: Gaius was a good fighter. She’d seen him train as a retiarius at the gladiator school, snaring opponents in his net to be trapped at the mercy of his trident. But the gladiator Gaius was pitted against today was one of the empire’s best. A secutor with a brutish blade and fifteen victories under his belt.

  Empra hated watching the violence, but more than this, she hated not knowing. Did Gaius die today, his blood just one more reason for the crowd to cheer? Or did he survive this fight? Gaius was a man long buried. His ending did not matter in the scheme of things, but Empra knew if she didn’t watch this battle, did not see his past future ended or extended, it would haunt her.

  This was why, after nine months and one day of pregnancy, Empra sat in Rome’s barbaric heart instead of coddled up in some Central hospital, plugged into an entertainment system to distract her from the oncoming woes of childbirth.

  “You’re pushing it,” Burg, her ship’s Historian, had warned her the night before. “The Corps isn’t going to like that you’ve stayed so long.”

  “Just one more day.” This could have been a plea except for the way Empra had said it. With the same determined gravitas that had secured her this post in the first place. “That’s all we need to finish out the survey year. Besides, tomorrow’s fight… it’s important.”

  She’d never told anyone about Gaius. Simply speaking to him—sitting down for that first off-the-record interview to learn more about gladiatorial life—had been a massive breach in protocol. What followed was unforgivable, and if word of it slipped out, Empra’s Corps license would be revoked forever. She’d be as stuck as her great-grandfather Bertram.

  “Watching men hack each other to bits for fun is not what I would consider good maternal preparation.” Burg frowned. “You can’t have the baby here, Empra.”

  The baby’s paternity had been a point of contention among the three male crew members of the CTM Ab Aeterno, each of whom regarded the others with raised eyebrows and unvoiced suspicions. As long as they didn’t suspect the truth…

  “It’s not like we can’t come back,” he’d gone on softly. Too softly for her liking.

  Maybe she’d get a chance to return after all this, but Empra wasn’t willing to bet on it.

  She could feel the baby kicking, even now, tiny heels thumping against her gut as the gladiators took their positions, weapons gripped with lusty fists. Gaius was the fighter on the right, standing under the box of Vestal Virgins. Had Empra’s eyesight been limited by biology, she would’ve been too far away to see his face. Her Recorder equipment magnified the details. Gaius’s proud falcon nose turned into the ring, dark-as-earth eyes calculating his opponent. His calf muscles rippled against his sandal straps, ready to spring.

  Empra’s heart swelled: sick, sicker, sickest.

  And then it burst.

  She thought it strange that she felt it leaking, wet and warm against her stola, until Burg’s voice buzzed into her comm implant. “McCarthy! Your vitals are spiking! Are you going into labor?”

  Below, the fight had started. First blood had already been drawn—not Gaius’s, but the secutor’s. The crowd went feral at the sight.

  “McCarthy! Answer me!” Burg shouted louder this time.

  “I think my—my water just broke,” she whispered into her hand, and stood on shaky legs.

  There was a louder roar. Empra didn’t want to look, but she had to. This time it was the secutor’s blade that had landed a blow. There was a bright smear on Gaius’s left arm, mixing with the fibers of his net.

  “Get your hashing tail back here this instant!” Empra could just imagine Burg sitting at the Ab Aeterno’s Historian console, rubbing his bristly silver crew cut with an agitated palm. “Don’t make me come get you, McCarthy. You don’t want to see me in a toga.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming.” She didn’t want to leave, but Burg was right. She couldn’t have the baby here. The event would attract too much attention.

  Time was not on her side today.

  Most of the crowd was too riveted by the fight to pay attention to the pregnant woman stumbling down the bleacher steps. Two more blows had been struck by the time Empra reached the exiting arch. Her back was to the arena, but she could tell by the round after bloody round of cheers.

  One last look. She could risk that, couldn’t she?

  And there was Gaius, her Gaius, still fighting. His trident seemed a part of him. It was a terrible, wretched scene, but somehow he was beautiful in it.

  Already dead, she reminded herself. It doesn’t matter if it’s a second from now or decades.

  This didn’t make it any easier to turn away. Neither did the fact that the red-notched secutor had managed to slice away Gaius’s net and was backing him slowly, surely, into a corner.

  “McCarthy, Doc says your stats are off the charts. Kid’s coming fast. You need me to come get you?” Burg’s question was low and steady in her ear.

  There was nowhere for Gaius to run. His back was to the wall, dark curls splayed. The point of his enemy’s blade drew closer, closer.

  Empra changed her mind. She couldn’t watch this.

  No one should have to watch this.

  “No, I—I’m coming.” She turned her back and stumbled away. Blinded by the pain of a white-hot contraction. Deafened by the roar of a gore-glutted crowd.

  The CTM Ab Aeterno’s engine purred as Burgstrom Hammond waited by the hatch. According to the infirmary monitors, Empra’s contractions were crowding closer together, and judging by the cries that burst through Burg’s comm, they hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before.

  “C’mon, McCarthy! Keep going. You’re almost here!” Burg wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth—the visual on his Historian screen was blurry with Empra’s tears and the field where their time machine was parked looked like every field surrounding it. His fist was white on the latch, five seconds from running to the Appian Way in his coveralls.

  There was no need. Empra beat him to the punch, crumpling into Burg when he opened the door. Her tears dampened his chest as he carried her to the ship’s infirmary. Doc already had his sleeves rolled up, med-patches fanned out in his hand like a card deck. One was enough to fool pain receptors for an average wound, but Burg counted ten. After Empra’s next scream—a sound that cleaved everything around it—he wondered if even ten would be enough. They hadn’t planned for Empra to have her baby on the Ab Aeterno.

  “We need to get her back to Central, stat!” Doc’s yell carried into the console room, where the CTM’s Engineer was doing last-minute landing calculations. “Nicholas, get us out of here!”

  The ship lurched in response, engines propelling it into the aching winter sky. Again, Empra screamed—new life’s pain made all the louder by their comm connection.
Burg pressed a hand to his ear, surprised not to find blood trickling out.

  “Deep breaths! Hold tight. Just a few more minutes and we’ll get you to a proper hospital.” Doc applied med-patches to Empra’s arms as fast as he could, adhesive peels flurrying across the floor. They didn’t seem to help. Burg’s eardrum threatened to rupture as he made for the console room—an uphill incline to the ship’s bow—where Nicholas was hunched over the controls.

  “Hades’s clangers!” Sky glared at Burg through the vistaport, its blue too bright for the future. “What are we still doing here?”

  “Gotta get the right elevation or things could get a mite toasty.” The Engineer wasn’t wrong. Central—the crew’s home city, seat of the Central World Republic—sat on this exact spot some twenty-two and a half centuries in the future. If the Ab Aeterno didn’t climb high enough, its jump through time could send them careening into hovercraft traffic. “Trust me, I’m as ready to say good-bye to this year as the rest of you.”

  Nicholas’s voice cracked with a strain they all felt—364 days spent inside a 65-square-meter CTM, watching Empra come and go and grow from the belly out. Back issues of holo- paper zines and two hours a day on the walkabout machine could only do so much to ward off cabin fever. In fact, the sight of Rome spread below was one of the best Burg had seen the whole hashing year. From this elevation, the capital was a model maker’s dream—hills crowned with temples, Colosseum the size of a coin. The Ab Aeterno leveled above it, letting only a second pass before the city—and the time that held it— vanished. They’d peeled out of 95 AD, into the Grid. Darkness pressed against the vistaport, endless and eager.

  The screams from the infirmary grew louder. Burg wanted to tell the Engineer to hurry up, but there was no point. The Grid was a timeless place. Clocks stopped and what you thought was a second could be an hour, a week, a year, a decade. He stared through the vistaport instead, willing the world’s capital to reappear in its twenty-fourth-century iteration. Rome had changed a good deal in the last two millennia: from dusty republic city to Caput Mundi to selfie-stick-wielding tourist destination to Novum Caput Mundi. The heart of the ancient world had risen to new, all-powerful heights. Its cityscape even resembled a crown. Zone 1—the Colosseum, the Vatican, countless basilicas and fountains and piazzas—sat at the center, the buildings of Old Rome protected by the Global Historic Preservation Act of 2237 AD. Modernity hemmed it in on all sides. Zone 2’s jutting skyline was bejeweled with neon adverts, hovercraft traffic dotting the slices of intervening sky. The centerpiece of Central was— without question—the tiered New Forum skyscraper designed by the famed architect Biruk Tekle. All 168 floors of the building were sheathed in gold glass. Six hundred senators worked inside these gilded walls, representing half as many global districts, headed by a dual consulate.