by David Beers
"Your punishment, Caesar Wells, is to witness the liquidation of your family and the girl you saved. The Genesis still deems you Necessary, but the four of them Unnecessary. So you will watch and then you will go back to your life and you will never consider disobeying the recommendations set forth."
Caesar's legs gave out completely, and he hung suspended in the air by two invisible clasps around his arms. Tears sprang from his eyes like geysers, pressure building up inside his head and finally breaking forth in the form of liquid.
"PLEASE!" He spat out.
And then the current of the air changed. He could still remember what it meant, all those years later. The same current that had moved through the crowd he walked among as a child, the current that said the world was about to change in a very real way for everyone involved. Caesar was involved.
Cato screamed first. Looking down at his hand, he started screaming, and Caesar didn't know if it was from surprise or pain. His hand had dripped down to the floor, all at once. He held his arm up, but his hand simply melted, long gooey strands of skin splattering onto the floor.
Caesar tried to close his eyes, but he couldn't. The application made him watch until there was nothing left identifiable inside either vat.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The Life of Caesar Wells
By Leon Bastille
I can't say for certain that what was done to Caesar wasn't done before, but I have a strong belief he was the first. Caesar should have been destroyed. To destroy only his family though, and leave him? It only made sense if you were aware of The Named. The world wasn't, but The Genesis knew. April's murder. The little girl. Everything had been for Caesar, to draw him out, for The Named to get to him. And The Genesis needed to get to The Named.
Thus, Caesar had to live. If Caesar died, The Named would drop back into the shadows. They would wait. I suppose The Genesis was tired of the waiting; it wanted everything out to the front, it wanted The Named forced into the light so that the hiding, the games as it saw them, would all stop.
I think a lot of people will wonder if The Genesis made a mistake. If The Genesis wouldn't have been smarter to kill Caesar outright and let The Named hope that someone else like him might live again. I don't believe that line of thought, though. Not now. I think The Genesis played its hand perfectly. It let Caesar watch as his family, his brother, mother, and father, died, knowing that they would be fed right back to the children he was responsible for. Knowing that each child had digested a portion of his parents. A portion of his brother. How could he turn away from The Named? How could he go back to that life? The man had already rejected everything told to him, and now he had nothing left in this world. His best friend betrayed him and his family was dead. They didn't melt his parents in front of him in order to cow him back into obedience. The Genesis did it to bring him to life. The Genesis did it because in the end, The Genesis always wins.
It played the long game. The Named couldn't have known it, and if they did, what choice did they have but to go to Caesar?
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Leon hated the old man, even hated his name: Jerry. What the fuck kind of name was Jerry? Jerry served ice cream at the local parlor. He didn't kidnap people and hold them as hostages. Jerry didn't demand questions of people and threaten them with death, constantly. Jerry...man, Jerry should have been asking Leon whether he wanted chocolate or red velvet cake and regular or waffle cone.
"I hate your goddamn name," Leon told Jerry.
"Really? I'm rather fond of it," the old man said.
"How many days have I been here?"
"Four."
"And how many more do I have to stay?" Leon asked.
Jerry shook his head. He still wore his sunglasses, but instead of the jacket, wore a t-shirt that said Mexico City in big blue print across the front of it. His beard grew thick as ever, and Leon was coming to hate that too. Not for any real reason, just because of the general Jerriness about it.
"I wish you were smarter. I really do. You've kind of tripped into all this and it's not your fault, but if you were smarter, this would be a lot easier on all of us. You'll probably be here another two days. Then you'll either die or stay forever, depending on a few choices."
Jerry held the plate of food on his lap. Leon looked at his reflection in the black sunglasses and wondered how many other's had done this exact thing. Leather straps tied him down to a chair, his white t-shirt covered in food, his hair probably disheveled and his pants a pair of someone else's old sweats. Jerry had given him some socks, "Make sure you don't get sick," he'd said. Now Jerry was trying to feed him, and while Leon knew he could spit the food right back into the old man's face, he didn't really see the benefit in it. He figured he would probably die during all of this, but he didn't see any reason in dying on an empty stomach. Jerry put the fork into Leon's mouth and he took it, hating how much he hated this man but still sat eating out of his hand.
Jerry had brought him somewhere and strapped him to this chair. That had been the extent of it. There wasn't any torture, wasn't any degradation, just this chair and a bathroom when Leon had to go. He saw Jerry and when he had to use the bathroom, he saw those people covered in darkness.
"Who are they?" He had asked.
"They're protection."
"You're the one that kidnapped me," Leon said.
"Maybe you should have hired them first, then," Jerry said.
They spoke sometimes. Jerry didn't have a problem talking to him. He wasn't nearly as menacing in this place as he had been out there in the crowd. Out there, Leon had felt that he might die at any moment, this man's hands wrapping around his neck and simply choking the air from him. In here, the man was only arrogant. Not deadly.
"What choices?" Leon asked now.
Jerry brought the fork back to the plate and scooped up some more corn, gently. "What Caesar wants to do with you."
Leon pulled his head back, both out of shock and to tell Jerry preemptively that he didn't want any more goddamn corn until they hashed out what was just said.
The conversations in the first two days had centered around April.
"I had her killed because of what she did. She ratted on a close family friend. Should she not have died?"
Leon cried at the question. He didn't scream or rage, just cried with his head bent down, his body strapped to the chair. It was the nonchalance about it. The way the man said it as if he had just left the trash outside to be picked up. He had murdered April because she told on Caesar and now Leon was here for what reason?
"To see if you need to die as well," Jerry had said.
Leon hadn't asked anymore about it. He didn't want to sit here and cry in front of this man; he didn't want to think about how brutally this old man had killed his wife, or had her killed. It didn't matter in the end; Leon had an idea that whatever Jerry said went through exactly as he said it should.
"Caesar's dead," Leon said now. He had to be. There wasn't any other way about it. The Genesis locked him up for a crime just about as serious as any Leon could imagine. People didn't live through that.
"No, sir. Your wife's dead. Caesar is still alive and he'll be here soon. I have my own thoughts about you, but I won't make that decision for him. He doesn't have a lot left, so I want him to at least have this."
"Have what?" Leon asked.
"The decision of whether you live or die."
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Caesar sat on the bench for twenty-four hours. He didn't get up to urinate, just released it on himself. He didn't eat. He didn't speak. He didn't even cry. He just sat on the bench and stared out at the park before him. The sun came up and the sun went down, replaced by the moon, and still he didn't move. Partly, Caesar could think of nowhere to go. He had sat on this bench when he told Paige he would let the little girl go. He had sat here and made peace with himself that he would die, had been okay with that knowledge. He hadn't really wanted to live anymore anyways, didn't want to go back into that jo
b and watch some kids grow up while others were turned into beef stew. He had been okay with dying.
Where was Paige? He had thought the question when he looked at her daughter, but had no answer. Paige was dead. If not dead, then gone from this place. Gone and never returning, because if she did return, she would die. Maybe The Genesis would make him watch her die, too, watch her hair catch on fire as whatever force inside the vats turned her tongue to mush. What was one more person to watch? So come back, Paige, come back and see all of what I gave you and then die and I'll watch that too.
Caesar didn't know where to go. Not even as the night turned cold and he sat staring at the same tree he had watched for the past sixteen hours. He didn't want to go back to his apartment. It wasn't his apartment anymore. It was some place that another person had once lived in, a person who hadn't known much about anything, but thought they knew a lot about a great bit. That person was dead and Caesar didn't feel like going to live in the dead's apartment. He had been instructed to go to his parent's apartment, to gather things he wanted from there, but what did he want there? Where would he put the things? Would he bring them down to this bench and set up a shrine to his parents, to Cato? He didn't think that would be looked at too highly by the other park visitors. The Genesis would probably catch wind and then maybe make him watch someone else die.
Except they don't really die, Caesar. You know that. Not until they're deep into the digestive tract of some child.
For a time, his mind grew silent, and no thoughts rushed through. Caesar was alone in the park, with the occasional squirrel coming down from a tree. He didn't move his eyes to look at the animal though, just kept them focused on the tree fifty yards off. Just kept staring at the branches and the trunk and the leaves and not making any sense out of anything. Not the madness he had started seeing a few weeks ago, not the actions he took because of that madness, and not the death of everyone he held near. None of it made sense. It had all been stupidity. Selfish stupidity and Grace had tried to tell him. Grace told him to hush, to go on with life, and to not cause a ruckus. Instead, Caesar caused quite the ruckus, and now everyone was dead for it.
Grace too, apparently. Because he hadn't heard from her. The Genesis put her down the same as it put his parents down. It left him nothing, not a single thing, in this world.
The sun rose and Caesar didn't look at it either. If it wasn't the tree in front of him, his eyes had no use for it.
And finally, at midday, he stood from the bench. He smelled of piss and sweat. He looked like the entirety of human misery had been placed squarely on his head.
He started walking and when he got on a train, people stared. Caesar didn't stare back because he didn't care enough to. He looked straight ahead, his eyes blank, and only his blinking showed any kind of outward identification that he wasn't completely catatonic.
When he got to his parents' stop, he walked off the train. He would go get their things he supposed, and he would take them all in his arms, and then he would throw himself from the window, and with any luck land on the concrete below still holding them.
* * *
Nothing looked different.
All of it the same, and perhaps that was more disturbing than anything else he'd seen or thought since watching his brothers face drop to the floor. The place looked as if his family would be home any minute, that his mother would start cooking dinner and his father would settle down on the couch and put the news on. What would his brother do when he got home? Video games with his friends? That might not be right but it sounded good enough. If Cato didn't play video games then he'd probably do homework. All the same, either way. He would do something when he got home and that was good.
Except no one was coming home to this place. Caesar was the last. And when he left through the living room window, applications would show up and clean the entire apartment, trashing the furniture and fixing the window that Caesar threw himself from. No, this was the only homecoming, the last homecoming. Caesar grew up here and now he would die here. There wasn't anyone to pull him back, wasn't Grace here to talk him out of it. He had only himself.
What was he going to jump out the window with? That was important, perhaps the only important decision he had left to make. What did he want to die with?
He walked to the back of his house, starting in Cato's room. It still smelled of his brother, although if someone were to ask what that smelled like, he wouldn't have been able to use a single word to describe it. The bed was made and none of the drawers open with unfolded clothes half sticking out. His brother had been the clean one, Caesar the messy one. Caesar the one that needed something like Grace to clean up after him. Not Cato. Cato put his things away and made his bed and organized everything to a specific form in his room.
Caesar hadn't cried in thirty-six hours. He'd sat in nearly stunned disbelief, unable to come to grasps with what happened. Not fully realizing that his parents, his brother, wouldn't be returning.
Looking at the made bed though, understanding that it was probably one of the last acts his brother ever did, brought everything home. His brother, forty-eight hours ago, had made his bed before going to see Caesar. Before going to see what happened to his brother, probably excited and scared, but with the eternal hope of youth that things would work out okay. They hadn't. Nothing had worked out to anything resembling okay.
Caesar turned to his left, placing both hands on the dresser and the tears came. He wept, not bothering to wipe anything away, just letting them flow downward, falling to the dresser, the floor, and his own shirt.
When he opened his eyes, he was looking at the dresser, and a print out from his brother's scroll sat in front of him. His brother's job assignment. The assignment he had been so proud of, so thankful for. The assignment that started Caesar thinking all this fucking nonsense in the beginning. There it was, sitting as proudly as anything else Cato had owned, right there where he could look at it every day. And why hadn't Caesar just been happy for his brother? Why hadn't he simply said 'Way to go, man. You're gonna love it.'? No. He couldn't have done that because his goddamn conscience wouldn't let him. His conscience obligated him to go against humanity and look at where all that bullshit got him. Look at where it got his brother, already having a virus circling through his DNA, trying to figure out where there might be something wrong with him. But it wouldn't find anything, because there was nothing wrong with Cato. There was something wrong with Caesar. But that didn't matter, did it? Not to The Genesis. This hadn't been about saving humanity; it was about punishing Caesar.
He took his brother's assignment and folded into fourths, then stuck it in his pocket. He'd drop to the ground with that on him. That would be his apology to his brother.
Caesar went to the bed and climbed on it. He didn't pull back the blanket, didn't do anything to mess up what his brother had done; he only lay still on top of it. He wanted to sleep, to sleep and breathe in Cato's smell and maybe imagine that his brother was alive for just a few hours.
He fell asleep with his head buried in his brother's pillow.
* * *
Cato looked at him but his eyes weren't Cato's eyes. They were The Genesis' eyes—a black backdrop with white lines moving up and down them. They vibrated, just like The Genesis' lines had when it spoke, but Cato wasn't speaking. He was only staring at Caesar, and the lines in his eyes vibrated from hate instead of words.
Caesar watched Cato trying to walk to him. He had no doubt about what Cato would do when he finally reached Caesar; he would murder Caesar. He knew that if Cato found him, he'd open his mouth and sink his teeth into the soft flesh of Caesar's neck and simply rip it open. Caesar wouldn't melt like Cato had, but his blood would flow out in a similar pattern, and in its own way, that could count as melting, couldn't it?
Cato wouldn't make it to him though.
Somehow, he got out of the vat, leaving their parents behind in it, behind to melt alone. But Cato was still melting too, even as he struggled to reach Caesar. Each s
tep he took left more of his body behind. Strings of blood and bone turned first to jello and then a pure liquid. Still he came forward, those white lined eyes buzzing with the hate of the Devil. Came forward because he was going to eat Caesar alive for putting him in that vat, for causing his right hand to melt off like candle wax.
Cato's teeth snapped down in a chomping gesture, but as he opened his mouth again, Caesar watched as his two front teeth turned into curdled milk and dripped out of his head onto the floor. The rest of his teeth followed suit, liquidating while Cato was still twenty feet away. His brother didn't scream out in pain, but the white lines continued trembling with rage.
He eventually made it to Caesar, and Caesar didn't turn away. He didn't run. He didn't hide. He wanted to die, even at his brother's hands. Especially at his brother's hand, because who had a better reason to judge him. His brother was sixteen, an entire life left to live, and Caesar tossed it in the air with all the care of pizza dough being handled by a college kid—without any idea how it would land.
But when Cato reached him, there weren't any teeth left to bite with or nails to claw with or muscles to swing with. Instead, Cato clamped down with his gum filled mouth and tried to bite, but there wasn't any pain associated with it, just a sticky warmness as his mouth melted around the shape of Caesar's neck.