A group of priests slit the throat of a white goat under a makeshift tent while augurs and a few of the senators looked on, desperate for a sign that today’s meeting should take place unhindered. The dying animal stopped struggling in the space of a few breaths, accepting its fate. As much as I wanted to look away as they began rooting through its entrails looking for a sign from their gods, the importance of my assignment held my gaze steady. The glasses could only record what I saw, and as a Historian, that was my job.

Research. Record. Reflect.

A flock of crows, black smudges against the blue sky, swept in from the left side of the city. The crowd gasped as the bio-tat wired into my brain fed me information about ancient Roman superstition. That the birds were crows bode badly enough for the day’s events, but the fact that they flocked from the left? Worse than bad.

The Latin word for left was sinistra. Sinister.

Interesting and sort of relevant, but I pushed the rest of the information away after a quick sift through, anxious to create my own observations. The reflections required new information, nothing obvious, and after fifty years, that required a sharp eye.

I wish they took us to more positive events, ones that highlighted the goodness of people, but those were few and far between during our apprenticeship. The time I spent looking for the joy and beauty was wasted as far as the Elders were concerned.

It wasn’t part of the assignment here, no matter how pretty the gardens were, so I refocused on Gaius Julius Caesar. The genius military man and visionary, who tried his best to change Rome for the better, strode up to confer with the augurs and priests. His black eyes, set against weathered skin and patrician features, revealed a sharp, probing intelligence. They belonged to a man who missed nothing, and common sense insisted that he must have confronted plots against his life on nights before this one.

But then, he strode across battlefields in foreign lands, stood strong in the face of enemies with drawn weapons. Today, his friends concealed sharpened blades underneath their loose, flowing togas. Or at least, men he believed to be friends.

Even so, the suspicion hung about. Could he have known? Suspected? Believed every last bad omen given to him in the previous days and walked in here tonight anyway?

But, why?

Before I could chase that rabbit down its hole, Brutus—Marcus Junius Brutus—strode up to his friend and placed a hand on his shoulder. They held a terse conversation in a tone too low to be overheard, which was unfortunate. Historical documents suggested Caesar had, for the second time today, allowed himself to be talked into taking his seat inside the curia and beginning the senatorial session, despite signs that should have discouraged him.

But we’re here because historical documents can’t always be trusted. They were written by people invested in the interpretation of the events of their time where as we, almost three thousand years removed, wanted only to understand the truth and its consequences.

Whatever Brutus said, the two of them turned their backs on the priests and made their way inside the building. Analeigh tensed at my side, her sweaty palm sliding into mine as we stand witness to what’s about to happen.

Across the exedra, the lines of horror on Sarah’s face made her stick out like a sore thumb, at least to me, but no one else seemed to notice. All eyes were on Caesar, and the toga-clad men pressing closer and closer as he climbed the stone steps to his seat of honor.

He was a god among men. A Caesar. The first of his kind, and the men about to murder him only wanted to preserve life the way it had been for centuries. Save the Republic from a man they saw as a power-hungry tyrant without the best interest of their beloved Rome at heart.

Or so history would have us believe. Now, searching their faces for righteous indignation, I glimpsed apprehension and fear. Anxiety. Hints of manic glee. History has judged them, both immediately and in the intervening decades, and most of it landed them in the asshole camp. I mean, they stabbed their best friend in the back. Even if he needed to die for the good of the Republic, which remained a judgment call, they pretended to be his friends. Not cool.

I cast a glance at Analeigh. “If I ever decide you need to die for, you know, valid reasons I promise to give you the chance to defend yourself.”

It took a split second for her bio-tat to render the translation, and then her eyes bugged out. “Or maybe give me the chance to run away?” she hissed back.

“Sure. Or that.”

Her head whipped back toward the assignment, her jaw tight as though it could ward off the bloody horror we both felt coming. In fact, it didn’t seem possible for a man so adept at warfare that he was more legend than mortal to sit in that chair, unaware of the suffocating tension spilling out of the curia and into the courtyard. It made me think again that something felt off. Too convenient.

A man stepped forward, draped in the same off-white, purple-striped toga as the rest of the room. A senator of Rome, a nobleman. My brain stem tat spit out the answer into my mind before the question fully formed—Tillius Cimber.

My heart climbed into my throat, lungs struggling with oxygen. It was happening.

“You were going to consider my petition to return my brother from exile,” he said, too loudly. The words vibrated on the taut strands of anxiety in the air, bounding off the stone walls and crashing into my ears, easily translated by my tattoo.

It was hard not to wince, but that would shake my face. I’d been distracted enough today, wandering into the portico, and my tendency to be sidetracked did not endear me to the overseers or our Elders. My family had endured enough disgrace in the past few years without my adding to it by being a space cadet. I was two Level-1 sanctions away from the Elders notifying my parents. After what happened with my brother, they might die from shame.

“I’m still considering it,” Caesar replied, his tone dismissive.

My lungs ached with unspent air. They struggled to call out, to warn him. Policy forbade any interaction, of course, and the brain stem tat did more than provide me with handy dandy information—it insisted I follow contemporary custom. It saved me a ton of studying, but the downside meant occasionally losing control of my own limbs. It had forced me into an absurd curtsy on more than one occasion, once nearly toppling my giant wig right onto Marie Antoinette’s feet at a ball.

There was no way to change the scene that began to unfold in front of us, anyway. No way to nudge it a different direction without setting off unknown effects that might reach all the way to Genesis in 2560. I squeezed Analeigh’s hand tighter as Caesar shook off Cimber.

He barely took a step before another senator, Casca, stabbed him square in the neck, the blade sinking all the way to the hilt.

The almost comical surprise on his face slid quickly toward resignation as Brutus attacked him next, his blade strong and true as it sunk into his old friend’s heart. The betrayal in Caesar’s eyes sent a sizzling chill down my spine, but no words passed his lips. He did not single Brutus out as more important than the others, despite the infamous line in Shakespeare’s version of these tragic events.

In fact, though he struggled and fought, Gaius Julius Caesar spoke not one more word as nearly sixty grown men surrounded him with daggers, each intent on taking their part of the blame—or the credit—by plunging their own weapon into flesh.

Sarah’s face turned pale, chalky, as the scene descended into a melee. Men stabbed each other instead of their target. Their leather shoes slipped in crimson puddles dotting the floor, more than one of them slipped, and Caesar disappeared inside a crowd of thrusting blades. The coppery, slick odor of spilled blood clogged the air, coated my tongue. I swallowed, and it stuck to my throat.