Chapter 28: The Untouchable Enemy

The days following the Night of Long Knives were quiet. It was an unnatural, heavy silence, the kind that follows a violent storm. Rome was cowed. The Senate, once a hotbed of conspiracy and insolent debate, was now a model of terrified obedience. Senators who had once met Alex's gaze with contempt now bowed so low their foreheads nearly scraped the marble. The news of the bloody events in the palace had spread through the city like a fever, embellished with every telling. The new emperor, the whispers said, was not the just and pious reformer he appeared to be. Beneath the stoic facade was a man of terrifying, decisive violence. He had crushed a Praetorian coup in a single night, and the bodies had been displayed for all to see. Alex had won. He had absolute control. And yet, he felt more powerless than ever. The source of his frustration held court daily in her magnificent palace on the Quirinal Hill. Lucilla. His sister, the confessed mastermind of the coup, remained utterly untouched. She moved through Roman society with her head held high, a serene, regal smile fixed on her face. She attended the games, made offerings at the temples, and hosted lavish dinner parties. She acted as if nothing had happened, as if a cohort of soldiers hadn't just been slaughtered for acting on her orders. Her very presence was an act of defiance, a public declaration that she was above his reach. He could command legions, execute traitors, and rewrite the laws of the empire, but he could not touch her. She was the Augusta, sister of the Emperor, and daughter of the deified Marcus Aurelius. Her person was sacrosanct, protected by a shield of piety, tradition, and law that was stronger than any legion's iron. Every day she walked free was a quiet mockery of his authority. He summoned his council to his study. The mood was one of shared, simmering frustration. "Caesar, this is an unacceptable state of affairs," General Maximus began, his voice a low growl of contained rage. He paced the floor, his armor creaking with every agitated step. "She walks the city freely while the men she hired rot in a traitor's ditch. This is not justice. It is an insult to the men who died defending you." He stopped and looked at Alex, his eyes hard. "Give the word. We do not need a trial. My Speculatores are more than just spies. They are discreet. We can arrange an... accident. A tragic fall from a balcony. A sudden, untraceable illness. A tipped carriage on a sharp turn. Let us end this, quietly and permanently." Before Alex could even respond, Senator Servius Rufus spoke, his voice sharp with horror. "General, you speak of high treason! Of murder! Absolutely not!" The old senator looked aghast, his face pale. "To assassinate the Augusta? The daughter of your beloved Marcus Aurelius? It would be a crime against the gods and a mortal stain upon the Emperor's honor. It would unravel everything we have built. We would become the very tyrants we are fighting. We cannot stoop to their methods." "Then what do you suggest, Senator?" Maximus shot back. "We allow the serpent to remain coiled in our house, waiting for another chance to strike?" "The law must be our guide!" Rufus insisted. "Her person is sacred. There is no legal precedent for trying an Augusta for treason, especially not on the word of a single, executed traitor." As the two men argued, the rock of honor versus the pillar of law, Alex turned to the third member of his council. Tigidius Perennis had been silent, observing, his face a carefully neutral mask. He had embraced his new role as the Emperor's creature with a chilling efficiency, but he was still a man who understood the mechanics of Roman power better than anyone. "Perennis," Alex said quietly. "Your thoughts." The Prefect looked up, startled to be included in a debate between such men. "Senator Rufus is right, Caesar," he said, his voice soft. "Killing her is impossible. It would make her a martyr and you a monster. She would win in death a victory she could not achieve in life." He paused, choosing his words carefully. "But her power is not solely derived from her title. It comes from three sources: her personal wealth, inherited from her late husband, the former Emperor Lucius Verus; her social influence over the old, proud patrician families who resent your father's legacy; and her network of political allies in the Senate." He looked at Alex, a flicker of his old, cunning self in his eyes. "We cannot attack her person. But we can attack her pillars of support. We cannot kill her, but we can... isolate her. We can make her a queen with no subjects and no gold." Alex saw the path forward. It was not a swift, clean military solution, but a slow, grinding siege. A new kind of war, fought not on the battlefield, but in the salons, the counting houses, and the marketplaces of Rome. A cold war. But as he contemplated this new strategy, the full weight of his blindness fell upon him. He didn't understand the intricate web of patrician marriage alliances. He didn't know which families were tied to Lucilla by ancient debts of honor, or which merchants depended on her patronage. He didn't have the data. Lyra could have mapped the entire social and economic network of the Roman elite in seconds, highlighting every vulnerability, every point of leverage. He, on the other hand, was faced with a mountain of raw intelligence from Perennis's spies—family trees, financial reports, shipping manifests—and he lacked the tool to properly analyze it, to see the patterns in the noise. He felt her absence more keenly and painfully than ever before. Later that night, he sat alone in his study, the scrolls and tablets spread across his massive desk in a chaotic mess. The dead laptop sat at the edge of the desk, a black, useless brick of plastic and metal. He stared at it, a constant, mocking reminder of the god-like power he had lost. It was like remembering what it felt like to fly after having his wings torn away. Frustration and exhaustion boiled over into a moment of pure, unthinking rage. He slammed his fist down hard on the polished wooden surface of the desk. The impact was jarring, sending a tremor through the heavy furniture. The laptop, perched near the edge, slid from the impact, its lid flopping open as it clattered onto the floor. Alex swore under his breath and bent to pick it up, expecting to see a cracked screen. But what he saw made his heart stop. For a single, fleeting instant, the dark screen had flickered. A single line of stark, white text had appeared against the black, burning itself onto his retinas before vanishing into nothingness. CRITICAL POWER FAILURE. BOOTING IN SAFE MODE LEVEL 5. DIAGNOSTIC ONLY. His breath hitched. His heart began to hammer against his ribs. He snatched the laptop from the floor, his hands trembling. He pressed the power button, once, twice, a third time. Nothing. The screen remained stubbornly, lifelessly black. He stared at it, his mind reeling. Had he imagined it? Was it a hallucination, a phantom message conjured by stress, exhaustion, and desperate hope? Or had the physical shock somehow jolted a deep, last-resort power cell? A flicker of life. A ghost in the machine. He had no way of knowing. But the hope, however faint, however irrational, was agonizing. It was a key to a locked door, with no idea of how to make it turn.