A half-baked murderer and a dumbass. Such was his lot in life.
The clock tower of Alexylva University hit eleven. But Neapolio was nowhere to be seen.
Stephanus fiddled with a multitool, adjusting various options and settings in his servo-powered arm. Culture among the Empire held that modifying your own body was the way of cowards; to modify yourself was an admission that you couldn't excel on your own merits. Stephanus was at the forefront of a movement to challenge that idea; it was raw aptitude that mattered, not raw strength.
Silently, Stephanus admitted to himself that body augmentation had its drawbacks. For example, his arm never seemed to exactly match what his brain wanted it to do. He swung it around a little. It seemed to go a little further than he intended… or was it a trick of the eyes?
Lycus sighed loudly. Plotia shushed him, glaring at him with the metal spikes driven into her eyes.
"Quiet," Stephanus whispered. "The house owner's on vacation, but there's no telling who else is listening."
"Neapolio was supposed to be here fifteen minutes ago," Lycus complained. One of his cat ears twitched.
Plotia shrugged. "He flaked," she whispered. "You were mean to him."
"We offered him immortality," Stephanus grumbled, clenching his hands. He stared out the window into the night sky, simmering with rage. "We offered him apotheosis. Could he have really turned that down?"
"You should've offered him cat ears," Lycus said smugly. "Or, dog ears. He seems like a dog person."
"Not everyone wants animal features," Stephanus said. "I'm fairly sure that's just you."
Lycus hissed, Plotia put a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe he'd be more willing to fight Professor Mattheus with us if we didn't threaten him."
"You need the carrot and the stick," Stephanus said matter of factly.
"I like the stick," Lycus purred. "I, for one, am looking forward to seeing how many limbs of his we can cut off before he bleeds out."
"Do we call it off?" Plotia asked. She leaned against the Mechanical Turk; whoever owned this house kept some bizarre artefacts in their attic.
"We've come all this way," Stephanus replied, turning back around, "and Professor Mattheus will certainly realize what we've done to the student government tomorrow morning. This is our only chance. Besides, the lug probably would've only gotten in the way anyways."
"Fair enough," Lycus said. He bared his claws and settled into a fighting stance. "Let's tear open the professor, then we can eat the twerp for desert!"
Stephanus opened the window, letting Lycus and Plotia jump to the connecting rooftop. They were going to go through his chimney and slit Mattheus' throat in his sleep. Mattheus would never see it coming.
Neapolio knocked on the fine wooden door.
Neapolio did fully intend to sneak into the vacant house and take down Dr. Mattheus with the transhumanists. It wasn't like Neapolio had qualms with killing; he'd butchered many pigs during his childhood in the Imperial heartland. The issue was that a pig produced meat in addition to companionship; Neapolio actually quite liked Dr. Mattheus' lectures and teaching. It felt wasteful to slaughter him for a better grade.
However, he'd decided he'd needed to be more cutthroat if he wanted to have a snowball's chance in hell at passing Alexylva's classes. What was more cutthroat than murder?
The transhumanists did not anticipate Neapolio having trouble with the grid system that made up the suburbs around the university. In Neapolio's hometown, a building was easily identified as "that red one over there". The concept of street names and numbers confused Neapolio, and he was too afraid to ask Stephanus for clarification. Although Neapolio tried his best, he was now knocking on the door of MXXII Anastasius Court, as opposed to MXXII Anastasius Street.
He expected either a grizzled cyborg or a sadistic catboy to answer the door. Instead, when the door opened, he saw a shriveled-up old woman that barely stood at half of Neapolio's height
"Can I… help you?" she asked. Her voice felt dusty and scratchy, like it was full of cobwebs.
"Uh, hello," Neapolio replied, looking down. "Is this… M-X-X-I-I Ana—"
"Why, yes!" she said.
"I was supposed to meet someone here," Neapolio said. "Stephanus? About my height, full of metal?"
She shook her head. "I don't know anyone like that, sorry…" She sniffled.
"It's okay," Neapolio said nervously. "I think I made a mistake. I should be going."
"No, no," the old lady said. "I have a stew cooking, and you look like you've been through a lot. Come in, I'll serve you some."
On one hand, the transhumanists would probably kill Neapolio if he didn't show up and help them ambush Dr. Mattheus (although, there was a pretty good chance they'd kill him anyways). On the other hand… Neapolio sniffed the air. That smelled like a really good stew.
"I can be a few minutes late," he muttered, walking inside.
The old lady smiled, nodded and went into the kitchen. Neapolio smiled for the first time in a while. He hadn't had hospitality like this in what felt like years.
Neapolio sat down in the dining room, noticing that the house was decorated extravagantly. There were no photos of the Gods, or of the old lady or any of her family. Instead, it was just paintings of a man with long hair and a beard, next to weird metal fixtures that looked like the lowercase letter "t".
"Just so you know," she said, "my son will be home soon. You're from the university, right? He's a professor there, you know."
A professor? Suddenly, everything made a lot more sense. The transhumanists didn't send him here to meet up; they wanted to use him as bait. This wasn't some disused vacation house, it was Dr. Mattheus'. Which means that the old lady was…
Neapolio's heart sank, and his breath caught in his throat. He stared down at the fine porcelain plate, the pyrite embossment outlining the clean worksmanship. He was already crossing a line in murdering the professor. But, Neapolio didn't know if he had it in him to kill an old lady.
Alexandria may have burned, but Nero liked to imagine that the library at Alexylva brought it back in its full glory. The entire floorplan was an open warehouse of knowledge; it wasn't uncommon to zipline from one level of the library to another. The bookshelves were stacked as high as skyscrapers, with students making desperate, sky-high climbs to find certain books. If there was any scrap of knowledge that the Empire had accumulated, it could be found here.
Its openness also made it the perfect place to have a meeting between mutually distrustful parties. There were thousands of students and faculty enjoying the library; any murderous activity would have a dozen witnesses.
Nero noted that Zeno was three minutes late. Ironic. You would think that, of all the students at Alexylva University, the math club lead would understand the importance of being on time.
Nero spent the time simultaneously reading three books: one of Professor Mattheus' political treatises, a textbook on chronological mechanics and timeline intersection, and a breezy quantum mathematics textbook (for fun). His brain could handle multiple parallel lines of thinking at once; his eyes rapidly moved between the books in order to adequately feed words to his thought processes. He spared a moment to briefly flick his eyes up towards one of the many balconies. Charmides, his foolish minion, was still in position.
After exactly five minutes, Zeno slid into the chair across from Nero. Nero noted that it was exactly five minutes, down to the second; this was a deliberate show of disrespect. At the moment, Zeno was squaring up to be the class salutatorian. Nero would be valedictorian, of course.
"Greetings," Zeno said squaring his shoulders. He wore a clean buzz cut with a goatee that looked like it could stab someone.
Nero nodded. "Greetings to you as well. Do you have the timeline combinator?"
"I would recommend not saying that aloud," Zeno hushed. He reached into his bag and retrieved the combinator. Usually, artifacts of its kind were small and smooth, fulfilling the Imperial design motifs of elegance and simplicity. This artifact was the size of a suitcase, covered in rough edges and had wiring spilling out. Clearly, Zeno had thrown it together frantically. Alternatively, Zeno had made it deliberately difficult to use.
Nero turned it over in his hands. It was covered in levers, buttons and switches. "How do you activate it?" he asked.
Zeno shook his head. "I won't tell you."
Nero had anticipated this. "What do you mean?" he said, feigning. This is what Nero hated about Zeno. He seemed to constantly approach the point without actually getting there.
"One of my compatriots will bring it with us to the confrontation. Then, they'll activate it, and you can do what you wish to the good professor. Consider it an incentive for future collaboration."
Nero thought on this for a moment. A decently planned out move. He did need to ensure Zeno found his rightful resting place six meters under the ground at some point in the near future. However, Zeno was trying to make Nero reliant on him for this technology. That way, Zeno could hold it over his head in the future, or take advantage of it to dispatch him.
It wasn't airtight. There was a flaw that Nero could exploit.
"Can you show me that it works?" Nero said. "I won't go to all this trouble for scrap metal."
Zeno nodded; he flipped a handful of levers on the device, pointed it towards Nero, then used both hands to simultaneously depress a dozen switches and buttons. The combinator glowed blue and whined. Suddenly, a dozen other Neros popped into existence. They all wore different clothes and had different scars, but were all distinctly Nero. A second later, Zeno deactivated the device, and they all vanished.
"Excellent," Nero said. "I thought it wouldn't be possible."
"It just takes perfect genius," Zeno replied, smiling. "Now, you'll use this to do the dirty work of dispatching the good professor, and we'll both take A's in his class."
"I'll agree to your terms, on one condition," Nero replied. "I need to know ahead of time who is using the combinator. It can't be you; I don't trust your ability to hold down the switches. It needs to be someone I can trust."
Zeno thought for a second. "Would you accept Bepharo?"
"Bepharo?" It was almost an insult. "I would appreciate it if you recommended someone who can successfully operate a stove, let alone a timeline combinator."
"Fine, Saturio."
"Saturio?" Nero pretended to think for a moment. "You mean, the Saturio that's sitting in the Math Club workroom, trying to solve a proof of the Riemannus Hypothesis?"
A look of confusion crossed Zeno's face.
"Or," Nero continued, "do you mean Bepharo, who is flirting with one of the cafeteria workers as we speak. Could you possibly mean Pius, in his dorm room; or Tertinia, in her biology class; or Annia, who is watching us right now from the highest floor of the library as we speak? If you understand me, keep your hands flat on the table and nod wordlessly."
Zeno looked frightened. He couldn't resist darting around with his eyes.
"Keep your eyes on me," Nero said. "If I wasn't explicit enough, I have men watching them. Make one errant move and they all die."
"You wouldn't—"
"I would. You think it isn't in my best interest to annhilate your 'Math Club' now? The only reason I hesitate is due to your continued use to me. I weep for the custodial staff, they will need to clean their guts and viscera off of the—"
"Fine, fine." Zeno placed his hands flat on the table and nodded.
"Good. You have an 'all clear' signal, I believe. Do it now. Remember, my man is watching your observer. If he acts strangely, I won't hesitate to kill all of them."
Zeno gulped. He picked up his hand and made a few signs. Nero tilted his view upwards towards Charmides on the balcony. Charmides gave a thumbs up.
"Excellent," Nero said. He closed his leftmost book, then his rightmost book, then bookmarked the middle book before closing it. This was a signal to Charmides that meant "fetch Saturio at knifepoint and bring him to me." From the recognition in Zeno's eyes, Nero could tell he understood that as well.
"Here's what your near future will look like," Nero continued. "We will stand up and shake hands. You will take the combinator and we will both walk out of the library together. There is a public bathing room in the hallway between the library and the amphitheatre. We will enter the bathroom. You will hand me the device, then I will handcuff you to the inside of the bathing stall. Someone will likely find you in the next half hour. If you try to attack me, sabotage the combinator, or signal any of your 'compatriots', I will kill you, then kill all of them. Are we clear?"
Zeno's deadpan stare said a million words. "Crystal clear."
"It's a pleasure doing business," Nero said, standing up. He extended his hand.
"Saturio won't give into you," Zeno muttered as he stood as well.
"He's taken out substantial debt to come to Alexvyla," Nero whispered. "Promising to pay off that debt would surely buy his loyalty. Barring that, he has family members that can be threatened."
Zeno grumbled, then took Nero's hand and shook it twice.
"Shake it a third time," said Nero, defeating any possible attempt at signalling an observer.
Zeno exhaled, then shook it a third time.
Nero smirked. "Now, let's get you tied up. My man has just signaled that the transhumanists are starting their assassination attempt."
"What?"
"I know; I, too, predicted they would wait longer." Nicolinum had followed Neapolio the farm boy and overheard their undercooked "plans" for murder. "If I hurry, I can make it there before Dr. Mattheus is finished removing their internal organs."
Mattheus did see it coming, in prophetic detail.
In hindsight, the transhumanists should have expected the chimney to be fake. By the time they reached the dead-end bottom, they had set off three traps. One had managed to skewer Stephanus' leg with a spear; if he felt pain, that would've incapacitated him.
Stephanus briefly considered finding another way into the house, but could hear that the noise had already awoken Professor Mattheus. Realizing they had lost the element of surprise, Stephanus instead chose a more blatant approach. He broke through the wall of the chimney into the house proper.
They were immediately greeted by Mattheus, wearing slippers, nightclothes and an oversized jacket. He didn't look upset or even threatened. Just mildly miffed.
"Congratulations," he said while yawning. "You've broken into my house in the middle of the night. What is it you could possibly want?"
Stephanus lunged at him, his fist revving up to deliver a punch that could destroy a steel door. Mattheus dodged the clearly telegraphed attack like it was nothing, causing Stephanus to trip and fall over.
Plotia carefully aimed the shotgun embedded in her arm for Mattheus' head. Mattheus noticed this and leaped over to her, immediately clearing the distance in one bound. When Plotia tried to aim for his head, Mattheus drew some kind of sonic device and pressed the button on it. The noise was ear-splitting, and the sonic boom shattered the glass spikes Plotia had replaced her eyes with. Now blinded, she started screaming, and instinctively fired her shotgun arm.
Mattheus grabbed her wrist before she could and directed it just a little to the right. The shotgun blast knocked Lycus, who was brandishing a gun that would've converted Mattheus' entire skeleton to rubber, to the ground. Mattheus then grabbed her arm with both hands. With a visceral grunt, Mattheus yanked her arm out of her shoulder socket, splattering the floor with torn tendons and bone fragments. After weighing it, he casually tossed it across the room.
"Eye implants are far too great of a weakness to be practical in any use case," Mattheus lectured, as blood spattered out from where Plotia's arm used to be. "If disabled, they render the user effectively defeated." Mattheus pushed Plotia to the ground, letting her bleed out.
Stephanus finished getting up as Mattheus turned towards him. "While your servo augmentations increase your strength, their inaccuracy makes them almost useless. In hand-to-hand combat, swiftness is twice as important as strength."
Mattheus then turned to Lycus, who had withstood a shotgun blast remarkably well. "As for you, while I appreciate the attempt at harnessing animal dexterity, the tail serves no practical advantage."
Lycus seethed angrily as he stood back up. He roared a primal meow. "You killed Plotia!" he shouted. "I'll fucking tear your guts out!"
"Frankly, I was looking forward to seeing how your transhumanist experiment played out to its logical conclusion," Mattheus said, cracking his knuckles. "It's a shame I'll have to put it to an end tonight."
Stephanus carefully approached Mattheus. He was determined not to make the same mistake. Keeping his guard up, he threw jabs at Mattheus' chest and body. Even a small jab would be enough to knock the wind out of him. But, Mattheus effortlessly dodged and weaved between each jab.
Lycus came in close and attempted to scratch and grab Mattheus. He kept dodging; only a few of the scratches even landed. Stephanus could tell Mattheus was being overwhelmed; two on one was tricky for him.
Stephanus threw a feint, then an uppercut. It landed true, in Mattheus' solar plexus, sending him flying across the room. He recovered midair, landing on his feet.
"Stay close," Stephanus told Lycus. Mattheus was wiping the blood from his mouth. A few more punches like that would disable him.
As they approached him, Mattheus suddenly changed his strategy. Previously, he was on the defensive, but now he charged directly at the transhumanists. Stephanus instinctively blocked, only to take the full blunt of a flying dropkick. They both grunted as Stephanus was once again sent to the ground.
Why are my augments so heavy? Stephanus asked himself. He'd never noticed how helpless he was when he was knocked down. Then again, no one had ever managed that before. It's my leg he thought, realizing the spear was still sticking out of it.
Stephanus looked up to see Lycus grabbing Mattheus by the abdomen. Stephanus knew from experience that Lycus' claws were enough to gore human flesh. He was rearing back, ready to tear into Mattheus' stomach.
But, Mattheus drove a knee into Lycus' chin, dazing him. Mattheus grabbed Lycus by the waist, easily supplexing him then pile-driving him into the ground. Stephanus winced as Lycus' spinal column audibly cracked like chalk broken in half. For good measure, Mattheus grabbed Lycus' legs and swung him around, slamming his body into the hole in the brick wall. The blunt force mangled Lycus' bones beyond recognition. By the time Mattheus was done, his corpse tumbled to the floor, his spine folded in half and his elbows touching his feet.
Cats may have been around since the dawn of time, but it was man that Prometheus made to worship the Gods.
"Fucker!" Stephanus yelled. The rage was enough to bring Stephanus to his feet. Fuck being careful. This ended now.
Stephanus recklessly charged at Mattheus, aiming to grab him and tear him into two. Mattheus anticipated this and leaped into the air, landing behind him. Stephanus felt a twinge coming from his back. He opened my port!
Mattheus held a screwdriver in his hands; Stephanus hadn't even noticed it. Stephanus gasped. If Mattheus disconnected his power source, Stephanus was as good as dead.
Stephanus and Mattheus carefully circled each other, staring daggers. Stephanus looked around, trying to come up with his next plan. There were no sharp objects, or even any blunt objects Stephanus could use as a weapon. The furniture was nailed to the floor, and the fireplace was fake. The living room was actually a carefully constructed arena designed to give Mattheus the advantage.
Except… Stephanus grabbed the ceiling and yanked a chunk out. A dusty mix of fiberglass and drywall covered the room. It added variability to the battlefield. Mattheus would clearly win in a one-on-one confrontation, but with some randomness there was a possibility that Stephanus could have a chance.
Unfortunately, Stephanus couldn't come up with a plan on the fly. He threw wild haymakers in the place where Mattheus was last, hoping to hit him by chance. Stephanus hit nothing.
Stephanus heard a thump; he swiftly turned around, moving his back away from Mattheus. But he wasn't there. Narrowing his eyes, Stephanus could see that the source of the sound was a thrown screwdriver.
Click.
The sensation drained from Stephanus' arms and legs. They suddenly stopped being usable limbs and started being useless hunks of metal. Stephanus collapsed to the floor and found himself unable to move.
Weak… when did I become so weak? he thought. When his limbs ran out of power, he used to be able to at least drag himself to the nearest outlet. Now his atrophied muscles struggled to move.
Mattheus stepped on his back; with effort, Stephanus was able to look over his own shoulder and see Mattheus' cold glare.
"An external power source is an obvious weakness," Mattheus uttered coldly. "Even a rudimentary strategist would've worn armor. But, I see, that would've prevented your sneak attack. The one that failed. A pity."
"Fuck…" Stephanus weakly forced out. "…you…"
Mattheus shook his head. "You clearly learned nothing from my class." He drove the screwdriver through Stephanus' eye, then strangled him until he stopped breathing. Stephanus' lifeless body clattered to the ground.
Exhale.
The fire of battle drained from his body, leaving Dr. Mattheus with the cold logic needed to assess the consequences. Dr. Mattheus began to assess the situation. First of all, he'd gotten blood all over his slippers and nightgown. Secondly, the three students had left a hole in the wall of his living room. Dr. Mattheus had specifically put traps in the chimney to deter students from punching holes into his expensive brick wall.
…but something wasn't right. Was it still the thrill of battle? Dr. Mattheus turned towards the corpse of the cat person. No, still dead; they had exhausted all nine of their lives. But what? Dr. Mattheus had long known to trust his instincts, and therefore threw his arms into a block in a direction that felt right.
The block was timed perfectly to deflect a knife wielding by the class valedictorian, Nero. As Dr. Mattheus stepped back, he gasped as he witnessed seventeen parallel Nero's, all in combat stance.
The real battle had yet to begin.
Neapolio had excused himself to the restroom, ostensibly to wash his hands. Of course, Neapolio would never actually wash his hands. He just needed time to think.
Could he really kill an old lady?
His parents and preachers had spent years drilling many fundamental laws into his head. Worship the Gods, leave the world better than you left it, shit in the toilet bowl, and never kill anyone. They expected him to throw all of that away now that he was in university?
On the other hand, Neapolio had to. Dr. Mattheus was about to come home to find one of his students eating dinner with his mother. Once the transhumanists arrived, it would be pandemonium. Neapolio clearly recalled Dr. Mattheus' lesson on taking hostages. You must be prepared to follow through on any threats you make.
But could Neapolio do that? He imagined himself holding a dinner knife to Mrs. Mattheus' neck. He tried to imagine her pleading for her life, struggling to break free, sobbing. All the stew she made for him, all the kindness and hospitality she showed him, blood in the gutter. He imagined the feel of her raisined skin against his forearms as he held her in a headlock, choking the life out of her eyes. Then, he imagined plunging the knife into her neck and cutting, spilling her viscera all over the floor, hearing her groan and collapse onto the granite tiles. A woman with children and grandchildren, a life's story and emotions and wisdom, all being spilled to nothingness as the blood drained out of her body. Then the corpse—
Neapolio dry heaved.
Then the corpse would rot, the children would come to see it and cry. Then it would get buried and people would visit the headstone from time to time. All remembering the woman they loved, the woman who had raised them, the woman who had been an important part of their lives. Killed as part of some turnabout plot to get a better grade.
No. None of his classmates would think like this. Neapolio pushed out all of his useless emotions. His family had sent him all the way to the Imperial core for this education. Could he really come back empty handed, after all he'd been through? He had to choose between a life of Imperial royalty and the life of a farmhand covered in dirt. All that stood in his way was one old woman.
It was for a good cause, right? She had a life well lived, judging by the well-decorated house. He tried to think of it in a utilitarian way. His total happiness over the course of his life would vastly increase, while it wasn't like she had much life left to live anyways?
It still felt wrong, but Neapolio steeled his mind. He had to. There was no other option. There—
A tapping at the window distracted Neapolio from his spiraling. He turned and saw a man in a tacky beige robe at the window. He beckoned Neapolio over. Desperate to leave the confines of his own mind, Neapolio opened the window.
"Hey, listen," said the man, his greasy combover wafting in the subtle wind. "Who are you?"
Neapolio said the first fake name that came to mind. "Frank."
"Frank? Frank who? Jesus Christ."
"Who's that?"
"Nevermind, Frank. I need your help."
"Why?"
"Listen, Bantia has documents I need in there," the man talked fast, like an auctioneer. "She'd never let me have them, but if I don't get them, the police are gonna crucify me like a rotisserie chicken. You need to fetch them for me."
"What documents?"
"They're in the back room, in a file cabinet labeled 'D'. They're… they'll have my name on them. My name's Rogerius Maximus. Just, just grab anything with that name on it. I need the files."
"Honestly," Neapolio said, "I was going to kill her. You could probably take her documents yourself after that." The word kill got stuck on his tongue.
Rogerius gasped. "You're going to kill her? Jesus, you're going to kill Bantia? What's wrong with you?"
"What? You were going to steal from her."
"Yeah! There's a pretty big difference between killing and stealing!" Rogerius held his hands apart to demonstrate how big of a difference there was.
Neapolio didn't reply.
"Wait a minute," Rogerius said. "You're one of the university students, aren't you?"
"…no?"
"Christ," Rogerius said, running his hands through his combover. "There's a reason why I quit that job. The tenure was great, but not enough to justify dodging the psychopaths that walk those halls."
"Wait, you used to work at Alexvyla?"
"I was a professor!" Rogerius' hands were shaking. "What, you're trying to take my mother hostage for a better grade? I say, good luck with that! As of a week ago, I'm out! No more math for me!"
"You're her son? Why are you trying to steal from her?"
"She has the documents demonstrating I own a full stake in my friend's supplement store. She never approved."
Neapolio shrugged. "Wait, why would she make you a stew?"
"It's tomato bisque, I'm allergic. She's trying to rub it in. Not important. You're trying to kill my mother!"
"You're trying to kill me?" she said from the doorway.
Neapolio wheeled around. She was standing in the hallway, carrying an aghast look that made Neapolio's heart drop into his stomach.
"No!" Neapolio yelled.
"He was!" Rogerius said. "This psychopath student of mine said he's probably going to kill you!"
"I'm not his student!"
Bantia started crying, and fumbled for a fork. She held it out shakily, trying to protect herself.
"Get out!" she screamed.
"Yeah!" Rogerius shouted.
"Both of you!" she screamed. "Bastards! Leave my home! I will s— stab you!"
Neapolio's heart felt hot, and his head swelled with overwhelmment. He put his hands up, then climbed out through the bathroom window. She continued to berate the both of them. The night was cold and stewless.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" Rogerius said.
"Fuck you," Neapolio said as he stormed off into the night.
As he walked away, Neapolio felt like he'd been taken over by a completely different person. He hated himself.
Dr. Mattheus was fighting for his life. He didn't just have to fight Nero, who was already an adept tactician and fighter. He had to fight every possible version of Nero at the same time.
He threw up one end of his nunchucks, blocking dozens of versions of Nero's shortsword. He brought it down and spun, blocking tens of others aimed directly at his vitals. Some were deflected, some weren't deflected just right and left cuts, a few punches hit his ribs. It had only been a few minutes, but Dr. Mattheus was already badly hurt.
Dr. Mattheus dodged backwards, needing to curve around ten different Nero's aiming for different vitals. He picked the transhumanist woman's shotgun arm up off the ground and fired wildly into the crowd. Dr. Mattheus figured that the more Nero's he killed, the less exertion they could impose on him. Some Nero's fell. Many more took their places.
This is perfect, Dr. Mattheus thought. He was almost proud of Nero. No accomplices; they were all the same person, after all. Accomplished with nothing but simple tools anyone could stumble upon; a sword and a cloning machine. The best part was the dead transhumanist corpses already surrounding him; other students would take the fall for Dr. Mattheus' death.
Actually, thought Dr. Mattheus, swinging around his nunchucks to disarm several Nero clones. They were all screaming animalistically, making thinking difficult. Am I sure about 'no accomplices?' These weren't physical clones, they seemed to weave in and out with each other like a trick of the light. Dr. Mattheus jumped and briefly hung from the hole in the ceiling left by the transhumanist. In the kitchen, there were two other students. One was holding some strange artifact that was clearly projecting the duplicates. The other was holding a knife to his neck.
That was it; the source of the projections. Thinking fast, Dr. Mattheus swung over the Nero's and broke into a sprint for the projector. He whipped out the sonic device from earlier and pressed the button, forcing many of the Nero's to cover their ears. His only chance was to destroy that projector. After which, three students could be easily—
He dodged one of the Nero's tackles, but foolishly dodged into another tackle. Dr. Mattheus was sent to the ground. He plunged a knife into the Nero's chest to kill him, but he was already on the ground. Dr. Mattheus contorted his body to dodge some of the knives, but some stabs landed true. He tried rolling out of the way, but in every direction Nero was readying a soccer kick.
Dr. Mattheus blinked. It was only a matter of time before one of his students managed to overwhelm his defenses. Dr. Mattheus had never really studied religion, except for its obvious application as a mechanism of control over a large population. He pondered what would happen after he died. Nothing, probably.
Dr. Mattheus blinked again. He was not dead. There were also no longer hundreds of Nero's; only one standing in the center of his living room.
Quickly, Dr. Mattheus jumped to his feet. He looked over to where the students were previously standing. The projector and bald student were nowhere to be found. There was only the fresh bleeding corpse of the projector's operator.
"Charmides!" Nero shouted. "You rat! What have you done?"
Dr. Mattheus smiled. Nero had made the classic mistake; the one Dr. Mattheus had demonstrated in class. Nero forgot to check for loyalty in his accomplices.
Nero burst through the window glass, cutting his body up even more than it already was. Thinking quickly, he rolled into the bushes, and started crawling away. He was completely, utterly outmatched.
He'd originally thought that he could take on Dr. Mattheus in one-on-one combat, now that Dr. Mattheus had suffered a few stab wounds and a multidimensional beating. Nero had thought wrong. Every stab Nero had made, Dr. Mattheus deflected with relative ease. Every technique he tried, Dr. Mattheus had the exact countertechnique to send Nero to the ground. Within ten minutes, Nero had accumulated as many stab wounds as his doppelgangers had inflicted on Dr. Mattheus. In fifteen minutes, Dr. Mattheus had sundered the bones in Nero's left arm with a decisive shoulder slam. At that point it was less of a fight and more of a rout.
All Nero could do was run; every parallel thread in his mind was focused on finding a hiding spot. There, in the shed. Nero crawled to the shed, his useless arm dragging behind. He hid.
Dr. Mattheus walked outside, and surveyed the backyard. He cleared his throat.
"Nero, you disappoint me," Dr. Mattheus lectured loudly. "You had such a good plan. If only you'd trusted the right person. It's a classic mistake; the kind that I expected a student of your caliber to avoid.
"As you know, any attempt on a professor's life will be met with capital punishment. It will be a permanent record that the moment you emerge in public, you are to be executed. You will never hold any position, let alone public office.
"I don't doubt your ability to hide. But a lifetime of hiding in the fringes of society, barely better than a slave? I condemn you to a worse fate than death."
As Dr. Mattheus stepped back inside, Nero could only acknowledge that he was right. Damn it. He assigned one thread of his mind to identifying the most conspicuous route to Norway, another to finding ways to rise through outlaw organizations—
Fuck. What was the point?
Nero couldn't believe he let Charmides stab him in the back like that. Days spent poring over his plans, and he let the man who he knew couldn't be trusted get an advantage like that. He hadn't even explored that possible outcome. He—
Nero's foot hit something. It was the timeline combinator; the device that had brought all of Nero's possible selves into this physical reality. A groundbreaking discovery, easily worth millions of tons of gold coins, and Charmides had just casually tossed it into the bushes? Nero had never really understood that man, had he?
With a grunt of frustration, Nero stomped on the device. Stupid thing.
His foot got stuck in it. Suddenly, it came to life. Nero tried shaking it off, but his foot was surely stuck inside. It glowed blue, and that blue glow completely enveloped Nero.
Out of nowhere, everything went white. Nero screamed; every atom of his body shouted with searing pain. Was this Infernus? Was Nero facing punishment for his sins?
After a few seconds that felt like hours, the glow stopped. It was daytime; Nero looked around. He was no longer standing in the suburbs of Alexvyla. Tall, rectangular buildings surrounded him; people wearing strange, non-flowing attire walked him by on the street. He took stock. He saw two especially tall, especially rectangular buildings on the horizon. He turned around and saw a giant green statue holding a torch, wearing the robe he was accustomed to.
Did I just change timelines by accident? Nero thought. This was all new to him, he'd never studied chronology. One of the passersby noticed Nero's arm and started shouting in some language Nero couldn't possibly understand.
This would prove to be very, very interesting. Nero walked away to find someone who could understand his language.
Neapolio wandered around the suburbs, going to nowhere in particular. He didn't want to go back to the university, ever. He hated Alexvyla Neapolio. He also hated Farm Boy Neapolio. A half-baked murderer and a dumbass. Such was his lot in life.
As he wandered, he spotted someone else, walking down the street. Was that… Charmides?
"Charmides!" Neapolio shouted.
Charmides looked at Neapolio, then rolled his eyes. "Great, you're here to kill Dr. Mattheus too?"
"What?"
"Well, you're a day late and a gold coin short. Dr. Mattheus already wiped the floor with Stephanus' gang, and he's about to kill Nero."
"He's fighting Nero? Why aren't you helping him?"
Charmides sighed. He took a glowing purple key out of his pocket and tossed it into the air. It seemed to distort the air around it.
"The secret is, Nero's dumb as bricks. Dumber than dirt. Probably dumber than you. He's able to convince a lot of people that he's smart, including himself."
"Huh?"
"I really didn't have another way to get this," Charmides said, catching the key. "Dr. Mattheus would have stopped me, maybe even figured out who I really was. Nero was the mother of all distractions. That was his problem. He's an egotist; he assumes everyone has the same goals that he does. He wanted to kill the professor, I simply wanted to rob him."
"Why?"
Charmides pocketed the key. "Not important. It's too late to really stop me now, anyways. Word of advice: never be a friend to Rome."
Charmides stalked off into the night, carrying an almost casual demeanor Neapolio had never seen from him.
'Who I really was?' Neapolio turned the words over in his head. He decided it didn't matter. Nothing Charmides said was that important.
But hearing that Nero and the transhumanists had fallen? Neapolio briefly considered going to help him. But, Nero really did deserve it, and Neapolio didn't want to end up as the target of Dr. Mattheus' ire.
So what would Neapolio do? He thought on it for a moment. He let those boulders roll around in his brain until they were reduced to gravel. After that, he came up with an idea.
Neapolio was a farm boy and an Alexvyla student, but not a murderer. Neapolio was a student. What did a student do?
They studied.
Neapolio walked back to his dorm. He couldn't beat Dr. Mattheus in combat. Maybe he could beat his tests.
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