Page 29 of Thawed Gladiator: Victor

“Call me at this number if you know him. I have resources and want to help. Laura.”

His sharp intake of breath is the only sign that the news is affecting him. When he speaks, his voice is carefully controlled. “It seems now is the time for the truth, Maya.”

“Yes. Yes. It’s far past time.” Turning to face him, I find his expression unreadable. “Please… sit. This won’t be easy to hear.”

He settles onto the edge of the bed, maintaining perfect posture despite the bomb that has already dropped and I’m about to detonate. My hands shake as I close the laptop.

“You didn’t arrive here by ship.” I force myself to meet his eyes. “TheFortunanever made it to Britannia. It went down in what we now call the Norwegian Sea. You and thirteen others were preserved in the wreck, perfectly frozen at the bottom of the sea.”

I almost end the sentence with the even bigger bombshell—that it’s been almost two thousand years, but I pause, giving him time to absorb what I’ve already told him.

Something flickers in his eyes—not disbelief, but a deep understanding dawning. “The cold,” he says quietly. “When I first woke. It went deeper than any winter I had known.”

“And there’s more…” I take a deep breath, steeling myself. “TheFortunasank in what we now call 82 AD. You were found last year. You’ve been frozen for almost two thousand years.”

His face goes completely still. The only tells that this is affecting him are his flared nostrils and the muscle leaping in his jaw. For several heartbeats, he doesn’t even seem to breathe. Then his hands—those strong, capable hands that have never once trembled in all the time I’ve known him—begin to shake.

“Two thousand…” His voice breaks. He stands abruptly, moving to the window as if needing to see the modern world with new understanding.

“Everyone I knew.” The words come out hollow, distant. “Many of my brothers in theludus. The children who snuck food to us before our fights. The temple priestesses who offered prayers before our matches.” His fingers press against the glass. “Not just dead. Dust.Centuriesof dust.”

I move to stand behind him, close but not touching, giving him space to process the enormity of what I’ve just told him.

“They found you last year. Brought you to a facility in Switzerland. It’s far from here. They’ve been waking the others one by one, helping them adjust to… to this time.” The words feel inadequate for the magnitude of what I’m telling him. “But there was a problem during your revival. Someone sabotaged the power, and in the chaos, you were stolen. Brought here. Separated from your comrades.”

He turns to me, his eyes filled with a grief so profound it makes my chest ache. “My father once told me that a man could lose everything—wealth, status, freedom—and still maintain his dignity. But this…” He gestures to the world outside. “To lose time itself. To have the very earth beneath your feet become unrecognizable.”

His head tips in question, and he asks quietly, “What of Athens? The Parthenon? The temples to Athena and Tyche?” His voice cracks slightly on the goddesses’ names—patrons of his homeland, of wisdom and strategy, so central to his Greek heritage.

“Athens still exists,” I tell him gently. “But it’s changed. The buildings you knew—some remain as… ruins, preserved as monuments. And the temples…” I trail off, not knowing how to explain two millennia of religious evolution.

He nods slowly, absorbing these losses one by one. His composure is remarkable, though I can see the profound grief in the set of his shoulders, the tension in his jaw.

“All this time,” he says softly, “I’ve been trying to understand this strange place, these odd customs. I assumed I’d been taken to some distant province, some far corner of the world unknown to me.” He turns back to me, his eyes searching mine. “But it wasn’t distance that separated me from everything I knew. It was time itself.”

He wipes his mouth with his palm, probably to hide the depth of his pain from me.

“And in all this,” he continues with sudden realization, “your father somehow became involved in my story?”

“The man who stole you hired him to help. But there was an accident, and the man died trying to move you to a new location. Dad panicked. He grabbed you and ran.” Guilt threatens to choke me. “He called me for help. I should have turned him in right away, but…”

“But he is family.” His voice holds no judgment. “And now we are all tangled in this web.”

“The pharmaceutical companies—rich people who make medications—want to study you. The preservation process, your cellular structure—it’s worth a lot of money to them. They don’t care about you as a person.” My voice cracks. “And Tony… he’s playing them against each other while using you for his fighting ring. Everyone wants to use you…”

“I understand now,” he says quietly. “The strange materials, the impossible machines, the different customs.” His gaze moves around the room, taking in the modern conveniences with new awareness.

He’s silent for a long moment, processing. When he speaks again, his voice carries the weight of two thousand years. “My father taught me that time is merely a human construct—that the gods see all moments at once, that wisdom transcends the boundaries of days and years.” His eyes find mine again. “Perhaps in that, at least, he was right.”

He takes a step toward me, and there’s something different in his gaze now—a deeper awareness, yes, but also a profound clarity, as if seeing through the veils of deception to something essential beneath.

“I’m so sorry.” The words burst out of me. “I’ve been lying to you since the beginning. Letting you believe you were still a slave, still bound by ancient laws… Slavery is illegal now.” I shake my head and close my eyes against the magnitude of what I’ve been doing to him over the past few weeks. There’s a special place in hell for playing with his mind like that.

He rises in one fluid motion, closing the distance between us. His hand cups my cheek with infinite gentleness. “You showed me kindness. Respect. Even when it clearly caused you pain to maintain the lie.”

“I let them treat you like property!”

“No.” His thumb brushes away a tear slowly tracking down my cheek. “You protected me while I learned enough to understand this strange new world. I knew you were hiding something. Knew this place… thistimeheld mysteries I could not yet comprehend. But I trusted you would tell me when you could.”

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