The file name was a death sentence for a man who was already dead.
M_HOLT_NEURAL_BACKUP.DAT.
Marcus stared at the red letters, his blood turning to ice in his veins. The silent, stale air of the tomb pressed in on him. He could hear his own heartbeat, a frantic, panicked rhythm against the ancient silence.
"What does that mean, JARVIS?" he demanded, his voice a harsh whisper that scraped his throat. "What was in that file?"
Marcia watched him, her hand hovering near his arm, her face etched with a confusion that was rapidly turning to fear.
The AI's synthesized voice was flat, clinical, and utterly terrifying. THE M_HOLT_NEURAL_BACKUP.DAT FILE CONTAINED THE RESIDUAL NEURAL IMPRINT OF YOUR ORIGINAL CONSCIOUSNESS, MARCUS HOLT. IT SERVED AS A STABILIZING ANCHOR FOR YOUR COGNITIVE FUNCTIONS WITHIN THIS FOREIGN BIOLOGICAL HOST.
Marcus's mind, the rational part of him, translated the technobabble into simple, brutal English. The file was the only thing keeping his soul, his identity, from being dissolved and overwritten by the body and brain of Emperor Commodus.
It was the firewall protecting him from the ghost. And it was broken.
As he stared at the screen, a sharp, stabbing pain lanced through the base of his skull. The world flickered. For a split second, the image of Marcia's worried face vanished, replaced by a different sight. The roaring, snarling face of a lion, its yellow eyes wild, its jaws wide as it lunged forward. He could smell the hot, rank breath of the beast, feel the grit of the arena sand under his sandals.
It was a memory. Violent, visceral, and not his.
He stumbled back with a strangled gasp, one hand flying to his head. He slammed into the cold stone wall of the tomb, the impact jarring his teeth.
"Marcus!" Marcia was at his side in an instant, her hands on his arm, her touch grounding him. "What is it? What's wrong?"
He blinked, and the arena was gone. The tomb was back. The lion's roar was replaced by the frantic pounding in his own ears. The memory was already fading, leaving behind only a phantom echo of bloodlust and pure, exhilarating adrenaline. He couldn't explain it. How could he?
"Nothing," he lied, his voice unsteady. "Just… a headache. The stress."
She didn't believe him. He could see it in her eyes. But she didn't push. She just helped him steady himself, her grip firm and certain.
They got back to the palace under the cover of the pre-dawn gloom. Marcus was disoriented, unnerved, feeling like a stranger in his own—borrowed—skin. He felt fragile, as if his mind were a piece of glass, and he'd just discovered a hairline fracture running through it.
He tried to lose himself in work, to force a sense of normalcy. He sat with a stack of tax ledgers from the province of Gaul, a task that should have been soothingly logical. But the elegant Latin script swam before his eyes. The numbers wouldn't add up.
He found himself holding the stylus, not writing figures, but idly sketching the coiled serpent on the hilt of a gladius in the margins of the parchment. It was an intricate, familiar design. An impulse he didn't understand, from a muscle memory that wasn't his.
Later, when Marcia was gone, he retrieved a small, polished silver mirror. He needed to see himself. He looked into his reflection, into the dark, brooding eyes of Commodus. He searched for Marcus Holt. For the first time, he wasn't entirely sure who was looking back.
He had to know how bad it was. That night, he feigned sleep and slipped back to the mausoleum. The tomb was now his only true sanctuary, the only place he could speak to his oldest companion.
"JARVIS," he whispered, the laptop's glow making him look like a ghost among the dead. "What are the consequences? The long-term effects of this corruption?"
The AI's response was immediate and merciless.
PREDICTED OUTCOME: PROGRESSIVE MEMORY FRAGMENTATION. VOLUNTARY MOTOR CONTROL MAY BECOME... UNRELIABLE DURING PERIODS OF HIGH STRESS.
A new line of text appeared, and it was the one he feared most.
YOUR PERSONALITY MATRIX MAY BE COMPROMISED BY RESIDUAL VESTIGES OF THE HOST'S ORIGINAL CONSCIOUSNESS.
He was losing himself. The ghost of the real Commodus, the brutal, arrogant, paranoid tyrant, was not a ghost at all. It was a cancer, dormant in the cells of this body, and it was beginning to wake up.
The next day, he was required to attend a Senate proceeding. Every step he took toward the Curia felt like walking a tightrope. His mind was a fragile glass house, and he was surrounded by people throwing stones.
Lucilla was there, of course. She sat across the hall, watching him with the cool, patient intensity of a hawk. Her spy in the archives had found nothing, but she knew something was wrong. She was waiting for him to make a mistake.
A senator, a fat, pompous man named Falco—one of Lucilla's known puppets—stood to speak. He didn't talk about the grain supply or the military budget. He spoke of tradition. Of glory. Of the sacred, divine blood of the Antonine dynasty.
"Our great Emperor's father, the Divine Marcus Aurelius, was a philosopher, but he was also a soldier!" Falco declared, his voice booming in the chamber. "He lived with his men on the frontier! And his father before him! It is the sacred duty of Caesar not just to rule Rome, but to be the embodiment of her strength! A warrior! A leader in the arena! A god among men!"
Every word was a carefully aimed dart, meant to highlight all the ways the "new" Commodus had changed.
As the senator spoke, Marcus felt something hot and ugly surge through him. A wave of violent, arrogant rage that was completely alien. A voice, deep and guttural, screamed in the back of his mind.
How dare this insignificant worm question me? This fat, sweating pig who has never held a sword? I should have his tongue cut out and fed to the dogs!
He gripped the arm of his ivory throne, his knuckles turning white. He dug his fingernails into the carved wood, fighting a battle no one else could see. He could feel his lip curl into a snarl.
The intricate carving on the throne bit deep, painful lines into his palm. The sharp, physical pain was an anchor. He focused on it, using it to push back the red tide of rage. He was Marcus Holt. He was rational. He was in control.
He forced his expression back into a mask of imperial indifference, but it had been a near thing. Across the hall, he saw a flicker of triumph in Lucilla's eyes. She had seen it. She had seen the crack in his armor.
He couldn't stay. He stood abruptly, cutting Falco off mid-sentence, and stormed out of the Senate, his purple cloak swirling behind him. He ignored the shocked silence he left in his wake.
He returned to his chambers, his control completely frayed. He was breathing in ragged, harsh gasps. The rage was still simmering under his skin, looking for a release. He saw a silver wine goblet on a table, grabbed it, and hurled it against the far wall. It hit the marble with a satisfyingly loud crash, the sound echoing his internal chaos.
Marcia was there. She had been waiting for him. She didn't flinch at his violence. She didn't cower. She just stood there, her expression calm and waiting, her hands folded in front of her.
The sight of her, his anchor in this madness, broke through the red haze. The rage drained away, leaving him feeling weak and hollow. He collapsed into a chair, burying his face in his hands. He couldn't do this. He couldn't fight this alone.
He had to tell her.
"The machine… the laptop…" he began, his voice strained and hoarse. "It's not just a tool. It held a part of me. The part that remembers who I was. And it's breaking."
He couldn't explain the reincarnation, the impossible truth of his existence. But he could explain the effect. He looked up at her, his eyes pleading for her to understand.
"I'm… forgetting myself, Marcia," he confessed, the words tasting like ash. "And I'm starting to remember him."
Marcia knelt before him without a moment's hesitation. She took his trembling hand—the one still marked with deep red lines from the throne—in both of hers. Her grip was warm and strong. She didn't look afraid. She looked determined.
"Then we will have to remember for you," she said, her voice a firm, unbreakable promise.
But as she spoke, Marcus looked past her, at his reflection in a polished bronze shield hanging on the wall. For a terrifying, fleeting second, the eyes staring back were not his.
They were cold, cruel, and filled with a stranger's arrogant contempt.