Chapter 68: Stolen Memories
Chapter 68: Stolen Memories
The silence in the holding area was a living thing, heavy and cold, pressing against the stone walls like water against a dam. The distant roar of the crowd above was a muffled thunder, accompanied by the clash of steels. The semifinal bout was still raging, but down here, in the dark, there was only the slow rhythm of Alex’s breathing and the faint, steady pulse of the system UI in the corner of his vision.
Gaius stood at the bars of the cell. His hair was more disheveled than usual, his eyes more tired, the lines on his face deeper than they’d been a few days ago. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept. He looked like a man who had been carrying something heavy for too long.
"We need to talk."
Alex looked up at him and let out a short, dry breath. "Old man, you look like shit."
Gaius didn’t respond. His expression didn’t change. The usual grumble, the usual sarcasm and jokes—none of it came. He just stood there, staring at Alex with something that wasn’t quite fear and wasn’t quite exhaustion but was somewhere in between.
The silence stretched. Alex’s faint smile faded. He sat up straighter on the straw bed, his back leaving the cold stone. "What’s the matter? Is everything okay?"
Gaius didn’t answer immediately. His grip tightened on the strap of his bag. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and rough, the voice of a man who had been rehearsing this conversation for days and still didn’t know how to start it. "What exactly are you?"
The words landed like stones in still water. Alex felt his stomach drop. "What do you mean?"
"Don’t." Gaius’s voice sharpened, just for a moment, before settling back into something quieter. "Don’t play dumb with me, boy. I’ve been watching you since the day you arrived. The way you move in the arena—like you see things before they happen. The way your wounds heal. That cut on your ribs from the Palacius blade should have taken weeks to close. It was gone in days. I saw it close on it’s own. I’ve been seeing it." He paused, his jaw tightening. "I tried to stay quiet, but it’s been giving me sleepless nights. And now, I demand to know exactly why."
Alex didn’t speak. His heart was hammering against his ribs, but his face was carefully blank. He had learned, over weeks of threats and taunts and the cold silence of the holding cell, how to keep his expression still even when everything inside him was screaming.
Gaius reached into his bag. His hand emerged with a scroll—old, worn, the leather binding cracked. He held it for a moment, staring at it like it was a confession he wasn’t ready to make. Then he dropped it through the bars. It landed on the stone floor at Alex’s feet with a soft, dry whisper.
"I found that weeks ago," Gaius said. "In the restricted section of the Palatine library. It describes a man who heals impossibly fast. Who moves like the wind. Who took down armies with a sword in each hand." His voice dropped. "A man whose description matches you like a portrait painted centuries before you were born."
Alex stared at the scroll, without picking it up. He could feel it, the weight of it, the truth of it, sitting on the cold stone between them.
"I came to Macedonia looking for answers," Gaius continued. "And I found them. In a ruined library in the lower tier. A Macedonian manuscript with a Latin translation. It named the legend. It told the story of a great conqueror who resisted the first Roman conquest. A man who was supposed to be a myth. A man whose name every Roman knows but no Roman believes is real." He looked Alex dead in the eyes. "You’re the reincarnation of Ale—"
The word caught in his throat. Not like a cough or a a stutter. But like something had reached into his mind and gently, carefully, removed the name before it could leave his lips. His mouth stayed open, but no sound came out. His eyes, which had been sharp and focused a moment before, went distant. Confused.
Alex watched it happen. His blood ran cold. The system UI flickered in the corner of his vision—a pulse, a ripple, a brief distortion that settled back into stillness.
Gaius blinked. He looked around the holding area like he was seeing it for the first time. His gaze landed on Alex, and there was no recognition in it. Just the vague, tired acknowledgment of an old medic checking on a patient.
"What was I..." He trailed off. His brow furrowed. "Why am I here?"
[Ping!]
Alex’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look at the notification. He kept his eyes on Gaius—on the old man standing at the bars of his cell, his memory hollowed out, his revelation stolen, his weeks of investigation erased in the space between one word and the next.
[Protocol breach detected. Corrective measures applied.]
Alex opened the notification with a thought. His hands were shaking. Not from fear. From rage. "No no no no no! Not again. What the fuck have you done? Why did you hurt him?"
The system’s response was immediate. Cold. Matter-of-fact. [The system did not HURT him.]
Alex stared at the words. His fingers curled into fists at his sides. The old medic was still standing at the bars, still confused, still waiting for an answer to a question he couldn’t remember asking. And the system—the thing that had abandoned Alex in the water, that had punished him for defiance, that had apologized with extra tenacity points and then gone silent when he needed answers—was telling him it hadn’t hurt Gaius. It had just... corrected him. Removed the dangerous knowledge. Sealed the breach in protocol.
"You took his memory. Just like you took mine" Alex’s voice was barely a whisper, but the fury in it was unmistakable. "He spent weeks looking for answers. He found them. And you just—"
[The protocol was breached. Corrective measures were applied. The subject is unharmed.]
Alex wanted to scream. He wanted to punch the wall until his knuckles bled. He wanted to grab the system by whatever passed for its throat and demand answers—real answers, not points, not apologies, not cold, clinical deflections. But the system was silent. It was always silent when he needed it to speak.
He took one breath, then another. The rage was still there, burning in his chest, but he forced it down. Gaius was still standing at the bars, still confused, still waiting.
"You came to wish me luck," Alex said. His voice was steady now, but there was something hollow underneath it. "Before the finals. You wanted to make sure I was ready."
Gaius frowned. "I did?"
"Yeah." Alex bent down and picked up the scroll. The parchment was brittle under his fingers, the edges rough and the ink faded. He couldn’t read it. The Latin was too old, the script too archaic. The truth was literally in his hands, and he couldn’t access it. "You should go get some rest. You look like you haven’t slept in days."
Gaius nodded slowly. The confusion was still there, but it was fading now, replaced by the familiar exhaustion of an old man who had been working too hard for too long. He turned and walked toward the iron doors, his sandals scuffing against the stone. The doors groaned open, then shut. The holding area was silent again.
Alex stood alone in his cell. The scroll was in his hands. The tray of food was still sitting by the bars, cold and untouched, forgotten. The distant roar of the crowd was still filtering down from above.
He turned to the system UI. His voice was low and cold and trembling with barely-contained rage. "What exactly is your deal? What the fuck do you want from me? Why do you keep hiding things from me?"
Nothing. No ping. No flicker. Just silence.
"I fucking hate you at this point."
The system said nothing. Alex stood there for a long moment, his chest heaving, his knuckles white around the brittle parchment. Then he turned, walked to the straw bed, and sat down. He dropped the scroll beside him and stared at the empty cell across the corridor—the Gaul’s cell, where two weeks of threats had given way to an eternity of silence.
Alex sat alone in the dark. The old medic was walking back to his room with a hole in his memory where the truth used to be. The woman who wanted to possess him was somewhere above, watching the semifinal bout with hungry eyes. And the system—the thing that had brought him here, that had given him power and taken his memories and punished his defiance—was silent as the grave. The finals were coming. The Ghost was almost free. But the truth was still out of reach. And the rage was just beginning to simmer.