NOW I AM RIGHT HERE, AND IT’S TIME, ‘CAUSE THIS IS REAL, THIS IS REAL AND IT’S ALL MINE*

**Chapter 5: The Break in the Chain** **The city was breathing fire.** Not metaphor. Not symbol. Fire. It licked at the bones of the Aventine, smoked through cracks in Subura rooftops, crawled like a serpent across the grain stores near the Forum Boarium. They called it arson. They called it divine punishment. But everyone who mattered knew it was something else: A message. The people had stopped asking for freedom. They were taking it. --- **Cassian—Palatine Prison** Cassian hadn’t slept. Sleep was the first betrayal in a place like this. The dark was always listening. So was the man in the next cell. Silvanus. Once friend, once shadow, once the first man to say: > “The chains are in your mind, boy. You’re already stronger than the ones who feed you.” Cassian breathed slow, listening for him. No cough, no breath, no mutter of prayer. “Still alive?” he asked. A pause. Then a dry, soft voice: “Barely. You sound worse.” Cassian chuckled. “I feel worse.” “You should. You’ve become an idea.” “Wasn’t that the plan?” Silvanus didn’t answer. After a moment, he whispered, “Ideas get men killed.” Cassian leaned his head back against the stone. The chain clinked. “So do empires.” --- **Elsewhere—Lycia Plans** The plan was broken glass held together by spit and rage. Lycia had read the blueprints of the Palatine Vaults three times. Ancient scrolls. Probably inaccurate. The tunnels might have collapsed. The Praetorian guard was tripled since the riots started. And someone had betrayed them. They just didn’t know who. But they had one advantage: Nobody believed they were stupid enough to try something this reckless. “We have one chance,” Lycia said to Sergius, Tullia, and Junius, circled around a dying oil lamp. “We come through the Cloaca Maxima—the old sewage line. Half-collapsed, but Junius found a dry stretch. That gets us under the vault. Sergius blows the wall. We extract Cassian and Silvanus, or we die in the attempt.” No one moved. Then Tullia said: “Why?” Lycia looked at her. “Because we don’t want freedom handed to us.” She drew her blade, pressed it to her palm until blood rose. “We take it.” --- **Volcatius—The New Rome** Volcatius stood at the center of the Curia Julia like a priest over a corpse. “This city must be reborn,” he told the remaining senators. “Rebellion is the blood of youth. But now we are old. And we must kill the child to save the father.” He unrolled a parchment—new, fresh ink, imperial seal. “By this order, we rename the *Lex Aurelia Libertatis* an act of treason. Those who preach it, distribute it, or wear its symbol—death. Public. Without trial.” The senators nodded. From the rafters, a drop of ash fell. --- **Junius—Beneath the City** He had never crawled through so much filth. His arms ached, scraped raw by broken brick. Water dripped from above like the breath of the gods. He clutched the satchel tight: inside, the charges Sergius had prepared. “Left turn here,” he whispered. Lycia, behind him, grunted. “How do you know?” “I lived down here. When I ran from the masters, this was my roof.” She stopped. “And now?” He looked back at her. “Now I burn the roof down.” They moved again, slow, silent, through Rome’s buried veins. --- **Cassian—The Conversation Turns** “Do you remember,” Silvanus said suddenly, “the first time you struck a citizen?” Cassian smiled in the dark. “An overseer. Cracked him with a grain shovel. He didn’t walk right after.” “You were shaking.” “I thought I’d die.” “You did,” Silvanus said. Cassian blinked. “What do you mean?” “You died that day. That boy. The slave. The thing they told you you were. You killed him.” Cassian swallowed hard. “Then what am I now?” Silvanus answered without hesitation. > “You’re real.” **The Vaults – Beneath the Palatine** The wall groaned. Stone flaked from its seams, a slow bleed of dust from cracks that hadn’t seen light in a hundred years. Inside the narrow cell, Cassian sat upright as the sound reached him. Boom.A deep thud.Then silence. Silvanus raised his head. “That wasn’t thunder.” Cassian didn’t smile. Not yet. Another thud. Then a groan—iron, ancient—like the stomach of Rome herself shifting in her sleep. A voice called, muffled through stone. “Cassian!” He stood. Pressed his ear to the wall. “Lycia?” “No time. Step back!” He did. **And the wall exploded.** Brick and dust surged through the air like a sandstorm. Cassian ducked behind the stone cot as chunks rained across the cell. When he looked up, a tunnel yawned open where the wall had been. Lycia stepped through, face streaked in ash, torch in one hand, blade in the other. “Miss me?” --- **Moments Earlier—The Breakthrough** Tullia had timed it perfectly. While Lycia set the charges, she looped two thin copper wires back through the tunnel. Sergius held the firestarter. They didn't speak. It was too late for words. The explosion was sharper than they expected, and louder. A ripple of force knocked Sergius into the wall. Tullia swore and dropped to one knee. But the tunnel held. “Go!” she shouted, already climbing through the breach. Behind her, Junius slipped the trigger and remaining powder back into the satchel. “Don’t lose that,” Sergius barked. “We’ll need it on the way out.” Junius nodded but didn’t answer. He was thinking of something else. --- **Inside the Prison—The Reunion** Cassian hugged Lycia in a blur of motion, the first human contact in days. His hands trembled, blood smeared across his wrists where the shackles had rubbed raw. “Silvanus,” he said. Tullia was already cutting through the lock on the next cell. She grunted as the rusted iron resisted, then snapped with a shriek. Silvanus staggered out. He looked at Cassian like a ghost. Then at Lycia. “You really did it.” “We’re not out yet,” she said. “This way.” They ducked into the tunnel. --- **Above—Volcatius Reacts** “They’re inside the Palatine?” The guard captain nodded. “We believe so. Explosion near the south shaft. We found a breach in the lower tunnel wall.” Volcatius didn’t blink. “Seal the outer gates. Flood the vaults with oil. Burn them.” The captain hesitated. “There are prisoners—imperial prisoners—in the cells, sir.” “Then they’ll die as reminders.” Volcatius turned to his scribe. “Draft a proclamation. The uprising is ended. Its leaders are dead. We announce it at dawn.” He smiled. “Let Rome wake to the smell of its own justice.” --- **In the Tunnel—A Dead End** They were running now. The plan was to exit through the far shaft into the sewer—a narrow drop into the Cloaca Maxima. But it was collapsed. Stone and debris blocked the way. There was no time to dig. “We go back,” Sergius said. Lycia shook her head. “They’ll be waiting.” Junius stepped forward. “There’s another way.” They all looked at him. He pointed upward. “That shaft leads to the old imperial mint. It hasn’t been used in years. But there’s a lift tunnel for metal deliveries. We can climb it.” Cassian stared at him. “You’re sure?” Junius didn’t hesitate. “I came through it once. When I ran away from my last master.” --- **Cassian—To the Wall** Before he followed the others, Cassian stopped. He turned, looked back at the hole they’d blasted. At the shackles. At the cot. At the name carved into the stone wall: **Cassian, Property of Varro**. He spat on it. Then he carved something underneath with the point of a broken chain. > “Not anymore.”

Other insights from Success Uwakwe

Referral Earning

Points-to-Coupons