Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (2 page)

“
Thanks,” I told her.

“No you’re not
,” she countered, but there was humor in her voice.

I smirked
to no one but myself.  “No, I guess I’m not.”

“Nobody’
s forcing you to read it,” she said as she placed her hands on my shoulders and kneaded them gently.  “Even Archer said it might not be a good idea.”

An annoyed breath escaped my lips as I sneered at the name.
  “I know, but I have to read it.  I… just have to.  I have to know what happened to the Other Me.”

She took her hands off my shoulders and I heard her take a step back.  I waited for her usual
monologue of encouragements and reassurances that usually followed such comments, ones that also usually fell on deaf ears, but they didn’t come.  I continued to wait, but the silence lingered, and I felt sad.  Maybe she’d finally given up on me after all.

O
r maybe she was simply trying to see if I’d grown up a little.

“I may be here for a while,” I
said, deciding a continued silence wouldn’t help either of us.  I turned my head so that she could see the side of my face, and smiled for her benefit.  I could just barely see her tall form at the edge of my vision, but I managed to catch her nod.

“Try not to be too long,” she said as her voice moved away.  “There’s something I want to show you.”

Wondering what could possibly exist in this godforsaken world that was worth showing me, I completed my turn so that I could look at her, but she was already walking away.  As she strutted away, my eyes were drawn downward to her backside, clad in the last of her black, tight fitting running shorts.  But what really drew my eyes to her was the way in which she walked – lifting her hips high with every step in an exaggerated catwalk.

Just before she was out of
sight, she turned her head to look at me, and while her face was concealed in shadow, too dark to make out her expression, my imagination filled in the rest.  I turned back to the document eagerly, and like a kid who knew he had to eat his broccoli before he could have his ice cream, I settled my nerves and decided to read.  When Helena was in that kind of mood, I’d be an idiot if I didn’t shovel that broccoli down my throat as quickly as possible and get back to her.

So
I read.

Mission Entry #12

Jacob Hunter

Syria
, October 42 A.D.

I’m done.

It’s finished
.  I’ve kept myself alive for months for reasons I no longer remember.  I’ve been dying formonths, buried alive in a supply container, left with nothing more than the clothes I wore the day we were captured, a glow stick, my journal, andthe orb.

The orb.  It works.  I can work it.  Every
few hours, I’ve used it, and gone back. Hour after hour.  Day after day.  For months?  Years?  Gave me time to think.  To think.  To ponder.  To remember how they all died.  To relive each death over and over.

T
he memories, the pain, the anger.

They
took us an hour after we survived Agrippina’s trap.  SHE took us.

Wounded.  Pained.  Slowed.
Hurt.  No ammo.  No chance.

The
y took us.

Kill
d my friends.  Tried to break me.  Made me watch.  Them die, one by one, over the course of weeks… months?  I can’t remember.  Crucified them.  Tortured them.  Made them suffer.  Made them die. Agrippina.  Made me use the orb.  Watched over and over.

They’d saved Santino and Helena for last.

Helena… I… She… Gone 4 good this time.  Gone.  They…

“
Never thought you’d actually come around to reading that thing.”

I jumped,
the voice so abrupt and my mind so enraptured that I hadn’t heard it coming.  I tumbled from my rock and fell in a heap beside it, but somehow managed to hang on to the papers in my hand.  I just barely avoided slipping into the cool water, and a spike of pain erupted out from my side and I was forced to clench my teeth to help bear the pain.

I let myself lay there for a few seconds, trying to slow my racing heart and stave off embarrassment
and pain alike.  While the latter diminished slowly, the former lingered, and I almost didn’t want to return to my feet at all.  But a hand was lowered before my eyes, almost helpfully, surprising considering the source.  I looked up to see a man with a bare upper body that was encased by a harness of combat webbing meant to carry gear.  His entire physique was immensely strong, hard, and solid, with a series of weed like veins stringing their way along his outstretched arm.  Atop his body was a chiseled face, not one I was entirely used to anymore, with blue eyes and topped with blond hair cut like an overgrown crew cut.

I looked at him suspiciously but
brought myself to grip his dangling forearm, allowing him to pull me to my feet, surprised at how genuine the gesture seemed.  Once upright, I ignored the man who’d helped me up, and dusted off my pants and shirt as I returned to my rock.  He sighed as I reseated myself and held the pages out before me with my left hand, and wrapping my right around my body so that I could hold my wound.  With no intention of speaking to my new guest, I prepared myself to pick up where I left off.

“How far in are you?”

I froze again and my eyes shot to the sky in silent annoyance.  I let the papers fell between my knees as I glanced at my guest, who now stood beside me eating noodles from a steaming Styrofoam cup.

I took a deep breath and decided to
play nice.  “Almost done with the first page.”

“Skip the second and third page
s, Hunter,” the man said, his voice hard, as he twirled his eating utensil at me.  “For all our sakes.”

I
looked at him with chilly eyes as I inspected his face, which was illuminated by the light of his own glow stick attached to the right shoulder harness of his gear webbing.  He was in full combat gear sans a shirt – at least what could be passed off as “full combat gear” by these newcomers, as their kit seemed no more advanced in terms of design and quality than what grunts had used back in WWII where I came from.

“Why?”  I asked, not
even trying to hide my frustration.

The man slurped another fork full of noodles into his mouth and chewed patiently as he gazed at me.  He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and pointed his fork at me.  “You’ve always been high strung, Hunter.  The past six months especially
.  We could all read it in your journal.  You let things get to you.  And I know what’s in those next two pages.  Listen to me when I tell you: do not read them.  The Other You rambled, and it isn’t pretty.”

I nearly lost it
at that point, no longer in the mood to hear what
anyone
thought about
anything
, especially when it concerned me, and I certainly didn’t care about
his
opinion.

“How could you p
ossibly know anything about me?”  I asked, looking out over the water.  “I don’t know anything about you!  From where I come from, you’re dead!  You’ve been dead for half a decade as far as I’m concerned, in fact.”  I paused and leaned away from him.  “You don’t know a thing about me.”

He sh
rugged.  “Believe what you want, Hunter, but you seem exactly how I remember, even if you are from some… alternate timeline, or whatever, and not the actual Hunter I knew.  I can’t explain it and neither can anyone I’ve talked to, but that doesn’t meant I don’t know
you
.  I do.  Just try and convince me otherwise.”

I didn’t even bother.  We both knew
I couldn’t.

“See?”
He asked.  “Exactly as I remembered.  Now explain that.”

“You know I can’t. 
Net yet, anyway.”

“That’s fine, Hunter.  Take your time. 
It looks like we’re going to be here for a while.”

“Great…” I muttered.

He ignored me and decided to put his hand on my shoulder.  I felt my head instinctively snap toward it, my mouth ready to bit off a finger or two, but I didn’t.  I just sat there with the pages between my legs, looking at his hand.

“I know we’ve had our differences
in the past,” the man said as he squeezed my shoulder, “but the Hunter I knew made his peace with me, and so did Artie. I just wish you and I could do the same, so let me start by saying again: do not read the next two pages.”

H
e finished with that and left as abruptly as he’d arrived.

I turned to watch him
walk away, his back a wall of muscle as his figure was slowly obscured by the invasion of night.  I watched him go with a frown, feeling little comfort at his words.  The only reason I’d decided to read the Other Me’s twelfth mission entry in the first place was because I’d hoped to learn where he’d screwed up and what he’d done so wrong that ended with Archer, Artie and the rest of them showing up here.  I’d also hoped to find answers as to why and how they were such different but eerily similar versions of the people I remembered, but it wasn’t exactly something I
wanted
to do.  I’d always been too curious for my own good, or at least that’s what people kept telling me, and my present circumstances hadn’t changed that.

After
Archer and Artie had told me that they’d found my skeleton in a cargo container with nothing but the orb and my journal in some warped, alternate version of the year 2021, I’d known almost immediately that I had to read it.  But I had been terrified of what I’d learn, and still was, and now that I’d gotten my first taste of it, I was glad for Archer’s warning.

Despite
how convoluted the Other Me had started, I’d been drawn to his words, entranced by his broken story.  If not for Archer’s intervention, I would have read right through to the end without pause, only realizing what I’d done once it was too late, because I already knew how it was going to end.  I already knew the evidence that the Other Me had gone insane would be quite evident in his words.

I knew this because
I could already feel it happening in myself.

It started
six months ago when I tortured one of the most beautiful women in antiquity.

It
had continued when I saw a friend’s head blown to pieces.

I
t was furthered when I’d witnessed another friend’s stepson crushed beneath a slab of concrete.

Or, finally, when I’d watched the woman I loved
die for a second time, a memory only exacerbated by the fact that she’d been carrying our unborn child.

Then again, maybe none of that should matter, because
through the grace of God, science, and/or magic… whatever… the man with the shattered head had recovered.  The crushed man had regained his lower half.  And the woman I loved had been raised from the dead, and our baby preserved.  But while they’d all come back, the pain I felt at the memories lingered, building and growing and becoming harder to handle as the days rolled on.

Archer was right.

I could do without the gory details and soliloquies I was sure the Other Me was bound to add.  I was prone to them myself, and if what I’d just read was true, and if he’d repeatedly operated the orb, reliving the same moments over and over, thinking and thinking, trapped in a voluntary
Groundhog Day
scenario with nowhere to go and no one to interact with for what may have been years…

Well,
I didn’t want to think about it.

Without another thought,
I pulled up the pages again, peeled off the top three and placed them behind the rest.  I angled my head down and read.

believe it’s come to this.  We were ready
.  Prepared.  So prepared.  Shoulda listened to Helena.  Should always listened to Helena.  Never again. But never more.  Dead.

Must find way to fix.  Had two weeks to think.

How to fix this.

I’ve
thought of something.

My name is Jacob Hunter.  I was born in
Greenwood, Indiana.

August, 199…

At 6, family moved to Columbus.

Dartmouth U
.

History
an Classical Studies. 

B
ecame Navy SEAL

F
ind my sister.  Diana Hunter.  Should be a astronaut.

I don’t know how the orbs work.  Not really. 
Been using mine.  Feels good to use.  Been using mine for months but have no idea how.  It just work.  But the first time I connected with a Roman. Marcus Varus.  Hes dead, but we connected.

I think.  I thnk Diana and I can connect.  Just
like Varus and me.  I… I dont know.  Maybe she can help me. Help me somehow.  Brng some light.  So dark.

I need help
.