Entering the tent, I threw off my recon rig, rolled out my bed roll, and knelt on it, my back to the tent’s entrance. I sat on my heels, and rested my forearms against my legs, my palms facing up. I tried and failed to rationalize everything that had just happened.
People always looked at modern military personnel as passive, stoic, unemotional killing machines. Men and women capable of killing on nothing more than the orders of another. All they saw were the apathetic victors, the heroes in the photographs or the caskets of the fallen, brave and daring volunteers each, who risked their lives for the sake of others.
What they didn’t see were the times those emotional barriers came down. In many instances, these public barriers were little more than façades meant to assure those we were protecting that we would never fail them. The news media may offer the public a glimpse into the lives of a handful of vets dealing with PTSD or, in many a sad case, failing to deal with it, but what they rarely ever see is raw emotion, the eventual byproduct of trying to rationalize every despicable action perpetrated on another human being.
Everyone dealt with it differently. Some cry alone, others suffer panic attacks, while others talk to no one but themselves before passing out from exhaustion. It always happened behind closed doors, usually when they were alone. Alone with no one but their conscience. Others never react, managing their emotions by disconnecting with reality and moving on like I always had. I’d always been able to push those feelings into some dark recess of my mind, never thinking they’d come back to haunt me someday. Somehow, I’d always been in that latter group, able to distance myself from emotion, but tonight, I just felt empty.
Helena came in a few minutes later.
She zipped up the tent and moved to kneel opposite me.
“Santino told me what happened,” she said consolingly.
“I was going to kill her, Helena. No remorse. No more questions. Just… murder her.”
“The orb was there. It…”
“It had nothing to do with it,” I snapped. “I could tell when it was influencing me, and it wasn’t then. It was just that the things she said, the things she implied… Agrippina wasn’t lying to me, Helena. There’s something about her and the orb that can control me and I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know what to do to protect myself from it.”
“Jacob, you won’t always have all the right answers,” she said carefully, “no one does. We talked about that. That isn’t some indelible personal deficiency you alone possess, but what separates you from everyone else is that you know how to survive. Adapt. What’s more is that you have me. And Santino. We can help you so that you’ll know what to do next time.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that simple. Besides, I’m not nearly as perfect as you think. Look at how I treated you and Santino only a few months ago. The orb can take advantage of emotions like that — pride, arrogance and anger, and warp your will with them. What if… what if I turn out like Caligula or Claudius if I keep exposing myself to it?”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Jacob,” she said, her voice filled with emotion. “You’re your own man, and as good a one as I’ve ever known. Don’t lose yourself over something you can’t control or even understand yet. Stick to your gut and stay focused. You don’t have to be perfect because everyone makes mistakes! Everyone! You just have to learn from them.”
I felt anguish tear my heart to pieces as feelings of rage and dread continued to overwhelmed. “I can’t control it, Helena. If I go near the orb again, I don’t know what I’ll do. It may affect my judgment beyond my ability to handle. What if it gets someone killed? What if it gets you killed. I can’t watch that happen again. I … I can’t… I…”
Helena shot to her feet and moved in to surround me in an engulfing hug. She sat off to my side and threw her arms around my chest and back, digging her head into the side of my neck as I sat there in denial. I tried to fight down my fear but only felt anger rise up again instead. I started to shake, irrepressible convulsions that threatened to throw Helena off of me, but she held firm, refusing to let me go in my moment of pain and panic.
“Please don’t do this, Jacob,” she whispered. “You’re not the only one who can’t stand the idea of losing the one you love.”
I heard her words and drank them in, but was unable to repress the fury swirling within me as I found myself being dragged to the floor of our tent by Helena, tremors continuing to course through my body. She turned my head to rest it against her chest, and an overwhelming need to sleep overcame me. I shut my eyes, forcing any potential wayward tear back behind the shoddily erected barricades my subconscious struggled to rebuild, and felt the sweet escape of sleep overpower me as Helena rocked me in place.
But my last thought before unconsciousness was that maybe Agrippina was right. Maybe she really did have all the answers. Maybe the only thing I needed was to accept her offer and work with her. Maybe with her, my life would be complete, or… or at least find meaning again, and the sense of emptiness deep within me would be filled. The responsibility I’d heaped upon myself would be gone and I could dictate a new path to the future without the need to reorient the timeline.
Who would care?
I thought of little else as my mind slowly spiraled on a downwards course towards oblivion, but a physical presence reminded me not to trust random thoughts influenced by emotion. The warm, familiar form of Helena next to me reminded my subconscious to think more clearly and rationalize everything, the same as her comforting voice always did when I was awake.
It was unfortunate then that at that very second, when my mind finally collapsed in on itself, that the last thing I remembered was the sweet scent of Helena’s presence associated with the horrifying idea that maybe Agrippina was in fact right. It was a furtive thought that threatened everything I had come to understand and hope for, but was perhaps an idea worth investigating.
The only question left was how I would feel when I woke.
Part Two
V
Mission Entry #5
Jacob Hunter
Byzantium, Thracia — June, 42 A.D.
If you are at all knowledgeable about geography, you should already know from the heading that we went east. As for the mission to capture Nero, all I have to say on the matter is that it was a failure. He wasn’t even there.
No — that’s not all I’m prepared to say, actually. There’s more.
Finding Agrippina hadn’t been a problem for us that night, but what really threw a wrinkle in our plan was that we found the blue, time traveling orb as well. It was the same one I knew we’d have to find some day, but was also the one thing I hadn’t been prepared for. There had been, and still are, too many unanswered questions about the thing, so many, in fact, that I hadn’t even wanted to go looking for it until we were satisfied the timeline was back on track.
And still don’t.
But I’d found it that night and it had influenced me in ways I hadn’t thought possible. There’s just something about it, some kind of draw that I can’t resist. Something that makes me think things and do things I wouldn’t normally do. I’ve yet to determine whether it affects others as well, but I haven’t really had many opportunities to test the theory. But regardless of whether it does or doesn’t, I can vouch for how it affects me:
Negatively.