by David Beers
Caesar sat and then stood, coming to his feet and looking around the glass container as if he would see Leon standing somewhere.
"Yes. How are you talking to me?" He asked, his voice slow, unsure of anything.
"I...I just called you. I thought it would go to a messaging service. I didn't know what else to do, who else to call. I was just going to, I don't know, talk to whatever service it sent me to."
Leon sounded stunned, whatever he had been about to say into the service completely forgotten, removed from his head the way a thief would remove jewels from a safe.
"You're alive?" Leon asked after a few seconds.
"Yes," Caesar said. Was it Leon? Or was this a trick? He didn't know what The Genesis could do with Leon's voice, what it might even want to do. Caesar had admitted to the crime and he only waited on death, hour after hour, the passage of time virtually unknown. There were no clocks, no sun to go by. There was the never ending glow of the glass surrounding him and there was solitude. He lived with that solitude under the light and waited on death. So why would The Genesis want to use Leon to speak to him, if that's what was going on? What could Leon's voice possibly get out of him that he hadn't already given them?
It didn't matter. If this was The Genesis or Leon, he would talk to either one of them the same. He had nothing to hide.
"Where are you?" Leon asked.
"I don't know. I'm a prisoner of sorts, I guess. You can't see me?"
"No. I dialed in but there's only blackness from the entertainment center."
"Well I'm here, not liquid yet."
I'm here.
Those two words spawned more thoughts. He was here, and here was a cage, and the cage was underground, and he was underground because he was about to die without anyone to remember him. And all of that was because...
"You put me here," Caesar said. "You put me down here."
He said it to himself as much as to Leon. He had been down here thinking about his life, about his impending death, about his family, about any number of things, but somehow, what Leon did slipped away. Like his mind was content with forgiving Leon, letting go of the reason behind his imprisonment. Content with not having that strife inside his head during the last few hours of life.
Until now. Because he wasn't supposed to speak to Leon again. Wasn't supposed to speak to anyone again.
"She's dead," Leon said, his voice breaking. "April's dead."
"What?" Caesar said, his own thoughts halting.
"April. Someone killed her. They stabbed her to death, Caesar."
Caesar couldn't see his own face in the glass, but it stilled completely at Leon's words—going completely slack. Killed? Murdered? What did that even mean? The word was only used in quarterly reports when The Genesis reported how many years it had been since the last murder. No one was ever killed, at least not by humans.
"What are you talking about?" Caesar asked, his voice low.
"Last night. I came home and..." Leon started crying into the phone, Caesar's cage sounding like he stood inside one of Leon's tears. "She was dead. They just stabbed her head until there wasn't...until there wasn't anything left." The tears kept coming, the sobs echoing across Caesar's glass walls.
"What's happening? What's being done?"
It took Leon a few seconds to get himself under control enough to speak. "Applications are investigating. They haven't told me much else. Rachel is dead, too, April's assistant.”
Caesar sat down in the middle of the box. An application murdered. Had that ever happened? Humans had murdered humans before, but had an application ever been put down? He couldn't remember even reading about such a thing.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes; Leon cried into the box and Caesar sat, letting his thoughts wash over him like water from a shower spout—except the water wasn't clean; it was rust filled, sullying him rather than clearing off his own dirt.
"I woke up with a note pinned to my door this morning."
"To your door?" Caesar asked.
"Yes—"
"Not on your scroll?"
"No, Caesar. Why?"
Because We know. Because of his own note. Because of the old man on the train. Because people weren't murdered anymore, and now a few days after his own capture, the person that turned him in ended up with holes in her head.
"What did it say?" He asked.
"She was the beginning."
"That's it? Nothing else?"
Only the sound of tears answered Caesar's question.
"Did you report it?"
"Yes," Leon whispered.
Caesar scooted back to the wall and leaned his head against the glass. They threw him in here, locked him away, and then April was killed. We know. She was the beginning. The old man on the trains. And why wasn't Caesar dead yet? Why hadn't he been liquidated? He didn't know the process of how this went, but he didn't think it took this long. He admitted to his crime, admitted to being Unnecessary, and yet still lived.
"What are they doing to you?" Leon asked.
"Nothing. I'm in a cell of some kind. I sit here and I wait."
"They killed her because of you didn't they? Because she told."
Caesar knew it to be true. What other reason could it be for? The first murder in a millennium. But what was he supposed to say to Leon? He hadn't killed her. He didn't even know who they were.
"I don't know what's happening. I don't even know why I'm not dead yet."
"We're all going to be dead soon, aren't we? They'll come for me next. They'll stab me just like they did her and then The Genesis will liquidate you. None of us are going to get out of this."
"I don't know, Leon. I'm in here. I haven't spoken to anyone besides you."
Leon didn't say anything for a bit, but he stopped crying. "I'm sorry," he said, finally. "I told her not to tell, Caesar. I said she couldn't tell anyone. I'm so sorry."
Caesar swallowed. He brought his hands to his knees, resting them palms down. He didn't know how to respond. He didn't know what to say to his friend, wouldn't have known even if April hadn't just been murdered.
"I never thought things would end up like this," Caesar just started talking, none of it planned, not a path to be found in his words. "I mean, when we were kids, I didn't have any big dreams or anything, but I never thought I'd end up in a cage, waiting on liquidation. I never saw any of this happening."
"Do you think they'll let you go?" Leon asked. "It's been three days since they came for you and you're still alive. Do you think they'll let you live?"
"No," he said. "How could they let me go back into the world? I let someone go, someone Unnecessary. They have to kill me."
* * *
Leon stood in front of his apartment door. He didn't want to step forward, didn't want the door to open, didn't want to go inside. He had felt the same way last night, but for a very different reason. He hadn't wanted to see April. Now he didn't want to see where April died. The applications had been in here throughout the day, investigating. Looking over everything. They had the note that was pinned to the door, a piece of tape holding it to the metal. Leon's scroll alerted him when they finished, when he was allowed to come home.
Investigation commencing.
That was the only other piece of communication about it. Not who they thought might have done it. Not where his wife's body was. Not how he could get her body. Not anything. Just investigation commencing. Leon didn't even know what that meant really. That they would look for her killer? That they would investigate what he knew about it? That they would look deeper into Caesar's own crime? It could mean anything and it could mean nothing, too. It could mean that they didn't know who killed April and that they didn't care in the slightest. That The Genesis was fine with her death and fine with the panic starting in this city, and already being reported in others as well.
Shock moved through the city and the word of what happened was spreading across the globe. People couldn't handle the word murder, could barely comprehend it, an
d fear was setting in. Fear of neighbors. Fear of applications. Fear of anyone that could have committed the crime. If it could happen in one city, it could happen in any city—the whole reason for The Genesis was to stop something like this from happening.
People knew who he was now. They never had before. He was just another nameless face getting on a train, getting off a train, showing up at a restaurant. Nameless, and that was the way he wanted it. Who wanted to go through life with people knowing you, people you had never met in your life being able to point you out of a crowd? No one. Not anymore, and that's why fame was a thing relegated to a distant past. Until now. Because Leon was famous. He saw the looks out of his peripheral, because he certainly wasn't going to match their gaze. He didn't want to see their eyes, knowing the rumors growing behind them.
He hadn't gone to work today because he didn't want to answer the questions.
Gone to work.
Why would he even think about such a thing? His wife was dead. More than dead, she was murdered. Here. In this apartment he was about to enter.
Don't think like Caesar. Don't you dare think like Caesar.
That was April's voice, inside him.
He would have gone to work if it wasn't for the questions he would have to answer. He would have gone to work because he didn't know what else to do. His best friend was locked down somewhere. Locked away and awaiting execution. His own parents were in another quadrant across the world and April's mother in a nursing home, unable to even wish that she had the cure for dementia because she couldn't remember that she had dementia. He didn't have anywhere else to go besides work.
His whole life had been taken from him inside seventy-two hours.
Tears rolled out of his eyes at the thought. Work. Life. April. Caesar. It was all so closely intertwined and he didn't know how. Not exactly. He was missing something, something that Caesar could have pointed out immediately. Something just about to roll from some deep part of his brain, spreading across the rest of him like the sun rising on the world. He couldn't find that part of his brain though, couldn't find where it hid in order to push it out. And it seemed important, goodness, did it. Seemed like if he could name what he was thinking then all of this would make more sense. Caesar in a cage. April dead. Leon standing out here thinking that he might have to go to work tomorrow.
But it was just beyond his grasp. And he hated himself for it. For the first time in his life, he hated himself for not being able to see something. He normally just accepted it, accepted it the way that April had accepted everything. Everything besides Caesar stepping outside the bounds of The Genesis's directions. She hadn't been able to accept that.
And now she was dead.
Stop standing out here and thinking. Go inside. Think there if you must, but not out here in the hallway.
He thought the words but he didn't believe them. Didn't want to listen to them. They were just more of what he 'should' do. Like going to work. Like turning Caesar in. Even so, he stepped forward and the apartment door registered his eyes and opened. He didn't walk in, but stood looking at the scene before him. What yesterday had been a red mess of internal fluids, was now as clean as the day April and he purchased it. Her body wasn't lying on the floor. Blood wasn't splattered across their house. The place looked like it had before last night. The place looked like April still lived here and like she might come home tonight, or might already be home, just in a back room.
She wasn't here.
She wasn't coming here. Not ever again.
Leon walked inside, mainly because he had nowhere else to go. The door closed behind him and he stood still, much as he had the night before, except now it wasn't his dead wife he stared at. It was the absence of his dead wife. It was the absence of everything.
He moved forward, slowly, his hand on the back of the wall, feeling like he might collapse at any moment. He rounded a corner and sat down on a chair that faced the entertainment center. The same chair he lied to Allen in.
Allen.
Gone now.
Just like Rachel.
Except not just like her, because Rachel was dead and Allen was just told his services weren’t needed. Rachel was dead. Rachel and April were both dead.
A dawning realization came to Leon, that he might be losing his mind. That whatever he had been so close to naming outside in the hallway was now eating his brain alive, that everything around him was going to collapse very soon and that he had no choice but to let it happen. Allen. Rachel. Caesar. April. Everything gone and he just sitting here staring at a darkened entertainment center five feet from where his wife died.
What the fuck was he doing?
His eyes went up the ceiling above him and they stopped on the knife stabbed through his ceiling. They stopped on the note pinned to the ceiling. On the note that obviously hadn't been there when the applications did their sweep, did their cleaning. On the note that had been stabbed to his ceiling sometime after the programs left and sometime before he showed up.
'If you could do it again, would you do it differently?'
Leon stared up at it for a long time. When he finally looked away, back to the rest of the room, he didn't move to call anyone, to let a single application know about the letter above him.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The man in the glass vat looked scared.
Leon had never seen this happen before. Public executions were stopped years and years ago. They were used in the past when people needed to be reminded what happened when necessary rules were discarded. The Genesis decided, at some point, that humans didn't need that reminder anymore and so they stopped the public liquidations. The vast majority of them now were done in private.
And yet, here he was, standing with a crowd looking at a thin black man, naked, his head shaved bald, and shivering like the glass vat was a block of ice. Shaking. His jaws chattering. His eyes frantically searched the crowd, his arms forward, his hands pressed on the glass before him. What were his eyes searching for, that's what Leon wanted to know. What did he hope to find out here in this crowd of people? Help? Safety? There wasn't any safety for what came next. There wasn't any hiding from it.
Maybe humanity needed a reminder. Or maybe humanity just needed to know that The Genesis had taken care of the crime. That the perpetrator would die and die publicly so that everyone could see murder wouldn't be tolerated. Ever.
It took the applications a week to find this man. Seven days in which Leon lay in his apartment, alone, still not going to work, doing nothing of what his life used to be made of. He wept constantly, remembering his wife, remembering Caesar, remembering everything that he once possessed. The crying, the sorrow, had something to do with what he tried to name in his hallway when first returning to the apartment. It was the emotion he should have felt from the beginning, instead of the insane need to...but he didn't even know what. A need to go to work? A need to act like nothing had happened? A need to just go on with life? That need was gone now, broken, but it had been there for a day. Two, maybe.
He tried calling Caesar again, tried over and over again, but it never went through. Maybe his friend was dead. Maybe Caesar had gone through what the man standing in the vat was about to. Leon didn't want to think about Caesar in a glass cage, shaking, looking around for help that wouldn't come. Instead, he looked at the man who murdered his wife, focused on him, focused on the red veins in his eyes and quick motions of his chest, sucking in air and letting it back out rapidly. Maybe he would pass out.
Would they still be able to liquidate him if he wasn't conscious?
A man scooted up next to him, brushing Leon's shoulder as he did. Leon didn't look over, but kept his eyes on the man about to die.
"I DIDN'T DO IT!" The man inside the vat shrieked. An animalistic, primal, terrifying sound that didn't so much come from the man's vocal chords but from some place inside of him that didn't want to die. That wanted to live. A place that Leon wondered if he had inside himself. What about April—did she have th
at place inside her as well? Did anyone around them? That man wanted to live worse than Leon wanted anything in life, even worse than he wanted his wife back.
"IT WASN'T ME! YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE ME! I DON'T EVEN KNOW THAT WOMAN!" He banged his hands against the glass vat, his muscles straining as he tried to somehow break loose from his prison.
Leon listened to him, to the screams, and wondered—is he telling the truth? But that was a silly thought. No, the man wasn't telling the truth. How could he have been? The Genesis didn't commit murder. The Genesis protected humanity from people like this, from people that killed others. The man wanted to live and that was all. He wanted to keep on breathing and so he was saying anything he could right now, at the end of his life.
"Do you believe him?" The man next to him asked. His voice wasn't a whisper but it wasn't boisterous either, and Leon understood why he wouldn't want to say something like that loudly. Leon looked over, seeing an older gentleman in sunglasses and a hat, a gray beard covering much of his face.
"Believe what?" Leon asked, almost in shock at the question coming from the old man.
"That he didn't do it?"
Leon blinked, not fully accepting what was being asked. With people surrounding him. That this person would ask that of the widowed spouse.
"He did it. Now don't talk to me anymore." There wasn't anywhere Leon could move, anywhere for him to push forward, so he stood next to the crazy old man but didn't look over at him. He stared up at the dead man still breathing, hoping the person next to him would shut up.
"PLEASSSSSSSSSSE!" The man in the vat screamed, the end of the word turning into a snake's hiss.
"You didn't answer my question," the old man said, seeming not to have heard Leon's last comment or the scream from the condemned.
Leon kept quiet. Wanting desperately to move but knowing there wasn't anywhere to go, knowing that all he could do was head backwards, and if he did so, he'd miss the liquidation. Miss the execution of his wife’s murderer.
"I left it somewhere I thought you would see it."