I Rule Rome with a God-Tier AI-Chapter 143: The Serpent’s Welcome

Alex left the cold, sterile crisis of the forges behind and ascended into the warm, gilded crisis of the palace. The threat from the Silenti was a problem of science and survival, one he could fight with knowledge and intellect. The threats from Lucilla and Maximus, however, were problems of the heart, of politics and belief, and they required a different, more venomous kind of weapon.

He summoned Senator Servius Rufus to his private study, a room of quiet luxury with walls lined by Greek philosophy and Stoic histories. It was a room designed to project wisdom and calm deliberation. When Rufus entered, he looked like a man who had aged a decade in a week. His journey back from Noricum had been a grim affair, escorting the shell-shocked survivors of the Urban Cohort, and his subsequent defeat in the Senate had clearly taken its toll. He looked old, tired, and deeply disillusioned. His posture was stooped, his eyes lacking their usual fire.

Alex rose to greet him not as an Emperor receiving a subordinate, but as a concerned friend welcoming a cherished elder. He poured two goblets of a fine Falernian wine himself, handing one to the senator.

"Rufus, my friend," Alex began, his voice a carefully crafted instrument of sincerity and warmth. "Please, sit. You look exhausted. I owe you an apology."

Rufus looked up, surprised. He had come expecting to be dismissed or perhaps even censured for his failure to control the commission. He had not expected contrition.

"An apology, Caesar?"

"Yes," Alex said, settling into the chair opposite him. "I put you in an impossible situation. I thought I was being clever, balancing the factions. Instead, I sent you into a viper's nest with nothing but your honor for a shield. My plan failed, and you were made to pay the political price for it in the Curia. For that, I am truly sorry."

The apology worked like a master physician's balm. It disarmed Rufus completely, lowering his defenses, making him receptive. He had been so certain Alex would be angry, so certain he would be blamed. This unexpected empathy made him feel valued, understood.

"It was... a difficult situation, Caesar," Rufus admitted, taking a sip of the wine.

Alex nodded, his expression one of shared disappointment. He let the silence hang for a moment before he began to skillfully weave his poison. "My sister..." he said, his voice dropping, taking on a conspiratorial tone. "She is a true daughter of Rome. Ambitious. Strong. Fiercely protective of what she believes is right."

He paused, letting the faint praise settle before delivering the killing blow. "But she sees this crisis not as a danger to Rome, but as a rung on a ladder. She has seized power, and the Senate, in its fear, has given it to her. But does she have the wisdom to wield it? You saw the enemy in Noricum, Rufus. You held their strange, obsidian tools in your hands. You know they are not simple barbarians. Do you truly believe her legion, marching in with trumpets blaring and banners flying, will succeed where your caution failed?"

Rufus frowned, the seed of doubt finding fertile ground. He had tried to warn the Senate, and they had ignored him, swept up in Lucilla's call for decisive action.

"I fear she will be too... aggressive," Rufus confessed. "She will mistake silence for weakness and answer it with steel."

"Precisely," Alex said, leaning forward. "Which is why I need you, Rufus. More than ever." He then delivered his masterstroke, couching a treacherous mission in the language of patriotic duty. "I cannot stop her; the Senate has spoken, and I will not overrule them and risk a constitutional crisis. But you can guide her. You can temper her. I am formally appointing you as Legatus Augusti pro praetore—my personal civilian advisor, attached directly to her command. You will travel with her legions, sit on her war council. You will have my full authority to counsel her."

Rufus looked horrified. The idea of serving the very woman who had humiliated him, of being a mere advisor on an expedition he believed was doomed to fail, was galling. "Caesar, you want me to serve her?"

"I want you to serve Rome," Alex corrected, his gaze intense. "I want you to be Rome's conscience at her side. To temper her ambition with your wisdom. To ensure her 'restoration of order' does not become a series of atrocities that shames the Roman name. She will listen to you, if only to maintain the pretense of heeding my counsel. Be the voice of reason, my friend. Be the brake on the speeding chariot. It is a thankless task, I know. But there is no one else I trust to do it."

The old senator was trapped. Alex had framed the mission not as a political maneuver, but as a sacred, personal trust. To refuse would be to admit he was unwilling to serve the state in its time of need. With a heavy heart, Rufus drained his goblet and nodded. "I will do my duty, Caesar."

The unspoken part of his duty, the real mission, was sabotage. Alex knew that Rufus, the ultimate stickler for procedure and law, was the perfect weapon to deploy against Lucilla's ambition. Rufus would question her requisitions. He would demand proper legal justification for every village she searched, for every man she detained. He would slow her inexorable march north with a mountain of bureaucratic obstacles, tying her up in the red tape of her own authority. Alex was using the old man's virtue as a weapon, and he felt a cold, sharp pang of self-loathing even as he did it.

After Rufus left, conflicted but resolved, Alex summoned his next co-conspirator. Sabina entered the study, her face a mask of controlled anxiety. He had already sent her a brief, terrifying summary of the crisis at Vulcania.

"Is it as bad as your message implied?" she asked, her voice tight.

"Worse," Alex said bluntly. "Our entire economic model is on the verge of total collapse. The heart of our new Rome is failing."

Sabina's mind, always practical, always moving, did not dwell on the disaster. It immediately leaped to managing the consequences. "We have to control the narrative," she insisted, her words sharp and quick. "We must impose a total information blackout on the north. No merchants allowed past Ravenna. No private couriers. We blame it on the escalating barbarian threat, the very threat Lucilla is marching to meet. It gives her mission more legitimacy while giving us cover."

Her eyes were hard, her logic brutal. "If word gets out that our 'miracle fuel' is worthless, that Vulcania is dead, the panic will be immediate. The merchants who invested in our new industries, the senators we forced to fund the Occidental Company... they will see it all as a house of cards. The run on the treasury will make the last crisis look like a market holiday. The economy will implode within a week."

Alex listened to her cold, precise plan. He was becoming a man surrounded by firewalls. A firewall for his AI. A firewall of bureaucracy for his sister. And now, a firewall of information for his Empire. He was no longer a builder, a visionary bringing light to the past. He was a man desperately plugging leaks in a sinking ship, governing through secrets, manipulation, and lies, all to hold his fragile world together for one more day.

"Do it," he said to Sabina, his voice heavy. "Seal the north. No one gets in or out without our approval."

He felt another piece of his 21st-century self, the part that still believed in transparency and ideals, chip away and turn to dust, just like the coal in his dying forges.