Four percent. The number pulsed on the screen, a digital countdown to his death and the starvation of Rome.
Marcus stared at the laptop, the blue light reflecting in his wide eyes. The air in the archives was cold, but sweat trickled down his back. Riots. Starvation. An empire on the brink of chaos because he'd shown a moment of mercy.
"JARVIS," he commanded, his voice tight. "Give me options. Now."
The AI's response was immediate, a cascade of cold, hard text.
ANALYZING CRISIS PARAMETERS. THREE PRIMARY SCENARIOS IDENTIFIED.
Marcus read the first, his stomach clenching.
ACTION A: MILITARY SUPPRESSION. Deploy the Praetorian Guard to the port of Ostia. Use lethal force to break the strike. Result: Strike broken in approximately 3 hours. Estimated civilian casualties: 400-600. Long-term effect: Solidifies your public image as a brutal tyrant. Lucilla's 'madness' narrative gains 90% credibility.
He scrolled down, his heart pounding.
ACTION B: FULL CAPITULATION. Grant all striker demands immediately. Result: Strike ends. Grain flow resumes. Long-term effect: Sets a catastrophic precedent for civil extortion. The Imperial Treasury will be bankrupted within six months. Your authority will be permanently undermined.
Blood on his hands or the ruin of the empire. Neither was a choice.
"There has to be another way," he muttered, scrolling to the third option.
ACTION C: NEGOTIATION. Proceed to the port. Offer the dockworkers a 10% raise as a compromise. Result: 22% probability of success.
Only twenty-two percent?
"Why so low?" he demanded.
"The strike is no longer about wages," JARVIS's synthesized voice explained. "It has evolved into a political challenge to your authority. My analysis indicates a high probability of Lucilla's agents acting as instigators within the crowd. They are leveraging your previous act of mercy as a sign of exploitable weakness."
Marcus leaned back, the weight of a million lives on his shoulders. He couldn't be the butcher from Action A. He couldn't be the fool from Action B. He had to believe in his own world, his own methods.
He was Marcus Holt, operations lead. He solved problems by talking to people, by finding common ground.
"No," he said, more to himself than to the machine. "People are rational. They don't want to starve. They just want to be heard."
He slammed the laptop shut. "I'll take Action C. I'll reason with them."
JARVIS's speaker remained silent. Its lack of protest was more damning than any warning.
Marcus strode from the archives, calling for his guards but dismissing the ornate golden litter they brought for him. "We walk," he commanded. He would go to them as a man, a leader, not as a distant god-king carried on the shoulders of slaves.
The move backfired instantly. As he walked the stone-paved streets towards the port, the common people of Rome stopped and stared. Shopkeepers emerged from their doorways. Children stopped their games. Their faces were not filled with awe or respect. He saw shock, confusion, and something that looked dangerously like contempt.
An Emperor walking in the dirt like a common man? It wasn't humble. It was weak.
The atmosphere at the port of Ostia was thick with tension. Thousands of dockworkers stood in a vast, silent crowd. They were big men, hardened by labor, their bare arms crossed over their chests. They weren't shouting. They were waiting, a sea of hostile faces. Their silence was more intimidating than any riot.
In the harbor behind them, the massive grain ships sat motionless, their sails furled like giant shrouds. A city's lifeline, cut.
A barrel-chested man with a scarred face and a tangled black beard stepped forward. Geta, their leader.
Marcus met his gaze, raising his voice to be heard. "I am here to listen. I understand your grievances."
He made his offer, the one he had practiced in his mind. A fair wage increase of ten percent. A promise of better conditions, of Imperial oversight. He spoke of their shared duty to Rome, to their families, to the people.
He was rational. He was fair. He was a 21st-century manager trying to solve a labor dispute.
Geta stared at him for a long moment, then threw his head back and laughed.
It was a loud, ugly, brutal sound. The crowd of workers joined him, their laughter a wave of mockery that washed over Marcus. They weren't listening to a negotiator. They were watching a cornered animal.
"Ten percent?" Geta bellowed, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. "The Lady Lucilla's men came to us last night! They told us if we held out, the 'merciful' Emperor would give us fifty percent!"
Lucilla. She was three steps ahead of him. She hadn't just predicted his move; she had poisoned the well before he even arrived.
Geta took a swaggering step forward, right up to the line of Praetorian guards. He looked Marcus dead in the eye, his face a mask of triumphant scorn.
Then he turned his head and spat on the ground, inches from the Emperor's leather sandals.
The laughter died. The act of supreme defiance hung in the air. The Praetorians gripped their swords, their knuckles white. One of them took a half-step forward, his blade already clearing its sheath.
"No," Marcus ordered, his voice dangerously quiet. He stood perfectly still, his face a stony mask, hiding the inferno of fury and shame that burned inside him. He had offered reason. They had answered with contempt.
He turned and walked away, the jeers and insults of the crowd following him like stones.
As Marcus endured his humiliation at the docks, Lucilla was holding court in the Forum.
She had ordered her family's vast, private granaries opened. She stood on the steps of the Temple of Vesta, personally handing out small, warm loaves of bread to a long line of hungry women and children. She was a vision of nobility, her face a carefully crafted portrait of compassion and sorrow.
"Your Emperor may have forgotten you," she said, her voice carrying across the crowd, filled with a theatrical sadness. "But the blood of Aurelius has not."
Senators loyal to her stood nearby, murmuring to anyone who would listen. They spoke of the Emperor's strange behavior, his incompetence, his weakness. They praised Lucilla's grace, her strength, her love for the people.
A small, starving girl with wide, frightened eyes took a loaf of bread from Lucilla's elegant hand. The girl looked up at her, tears of gratitude streaming down her dirty cheeks, and kissed Lucilla's heavy gold ring.
The image was a masterpiece. A perfect piece of propaganda, and it spread through the city faster than any plague.
Marcus returned to the palace, the jeers of the crowd still ringing in his ears. The taste of failure was like ash in his mouth. He had tried to be a better man, a better ruler. He had failed on every level.
He found Marcia waiting in his chambers. She wasn't preparing his bed or arranging his clothes. She was standing by the window, watching him, her face grim. She had heard. Everyone had heard.
She walked towards him, her usual deference gone, replaced by a fierce urgency.
"They are not laughing with the dockworkers," she said, her voice low and intense. "The servants, the guards, the merchants in the market… they are terrified."
He stared at her, confused.
"They don't see a reasonable man," she explained, her dark eyes searching his. "They see an Emperor who cannot control his own port. A leader who is spat upon and does nothing. They don't want a friend, my lord. They want a father."
She took a step closer, her words hitting him with the force of a physical blow. "And a Roman father must sometimes be cruel to be kind. He must show strength, or his children will starve and his house will fall."
Her words sliced through his 21st-century ideals. He had been trying to manage Rome like a company, with logic and compromise. But Rome wasn't a company. It was a brutal, dysfunctional, power-hungry family. And it only respected one thing. Strength.
His modern morality wasn't just useless here. It was a liability.
He turned and walked out of the room, his posture different. The defeated manager was gone. In his place was something colder, harder, shaped by the harsh reality of this world.
He strode into the archives, the familiar scent of papyrus doing nothing to calm the storm inside him. He opened the laptop, its light casting sharp shadows on his face.
"JARVIS," he said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "Cancel Action C."
The text on the screen vanished. A single cursor blinked, waiting.
"Run a new simulation," Marcus commanded. "An optimized blend of military suppression and political theater. A solution for this world, not mine." He paused, the words feeling like poison on his tongue. "Call it... 'The Roman Solution'."