This time, Marius snorted. “Of course. We suffer, and the new gods laugh.”

Cade wondered whether to tell Marius of the true identity of these so-called new gods, but thought better of it.

“How do you know English?” Cade asked.

“A man named Louis Le Prince,” Marius replied. “He lived with us in this place for years, before he died from a sickness. From him, we learned the wonders of your future … and it was I who was tasked to learn it from him.”

So that explained the accent—Le Prince had been born in France.

“Not all of the wonders,” Cade said. “We come from beyond Le Prince’s time, by more than a century.”

Marius shrugged. “The world does not change so quickly.”

Cade begged to differ, but now was not the time for a history lesson. “What happened to you? How are you still alive?” he asked.

Now it was Marius’s turn to pause.

“We came here with thousands of men,” he said. “Even I did not know how many. In truth, I do not know the specifics of our mission here, for I am but a centurion, and our leader does not divulge his plans.”

“The … legatus?” Amber asked.

“Yes, Atticus Publius. A worse leader I have never known … but I stray from the path of your question. Our task was to attack the headquarters of our enemy, and leave none alive inside.”

“Those Grays we were fighting?” Scott interrupted.

“Yes … we call them the Tritons.”

Marius stood a little higher as he said their name, peering out across the grasslands. Satisfied, he resumed his seat.

“Our legion joined those who had been here on Acies before us. I did not know the leaders, for they led us but for a few days before their death. We had been given a year to defeat these … Grays … but it was our commanders’ decision to attack as soon as we arrived, for we did not know the land—what to eat, what to drink.”

He spat to the side, as if disgusted by this decision, though Cade wondered if he would have done any different. Feeding several thousand men by living off an alien land seemed a daunting prospect.

“We sent scouts to discover their headquarters and attacked as soon as we found it. Apparently a surprise attack was to be better than a siege. But, as we charged … bright lights flashed … and our men who were struck by them turned to dust before my very eyes. It was as if Medusa herself stared out from their fortress. Yet our leaders refused to retreat, sending them on into the moving light. Halfway through the battle the lights stopped, but our men could only pound at their front gates as arrows rained from above. Only those in the baggage train at the back survived.”

He wiped at his eyes.

“Only the weakest, the sick, and the injured were in the baggage train. And with it the most incompetent of their commanders … Atticus. It is he who has led us all this time since. Who let the timer expire, and thus let our Codex abandon us. Now, we only fight to survive. I had thought we would never see another human soul again. Yet here you are.”