by David Beers
He lay in the sand and heard the voice speak to him again.
Jerry.
It had been silent the past hour as he fled. Trying, most likely, to find him. This spoken word must mean it knew his location.
Why run, Jerry? It’s useless, as is everything else you have done.
He closed his eyes and felt the sun warming his skin. This would be a good way to go. Not the way he wanted, of course, but he could feel the sun on him for a few more minutes. That was something, wasn't it?
All these years you've run, as if by running you could escape, and now you see that was never a possibility. Does it sadden you?
He said nothing back to the voice.
You just weren't meant to be, Jerry. That's all. It's really not personal, though you've made it so. None of this has ever been personal for us, just a means to an end.
And what is that end? Jerry asked, concentrating on how the sand felt on his fingers. Trying to take in these last few moments of life. To enjoy it.
I won't give you platitudes. Not this late in the game. There is no end. The end is to keep going. That's all. Just to keep going and hope that some cosmic rock doesn't plow into our planet. All of this is just a means to that, to keep this thing going.
We've lived the same amount of time, Jerry said, and you still don't understand life.
He felt the hard clamps of applications fall across him, and as he was lifted off the sand, he didn't open his eyes, but acted as if he was being raised to heaven.
Chapter Two
Leon watched Paige collapse with an odd thought that he should, perhaps, do something. It felt like it happened in slow-motion, like there was entirely too much time for him to stop her from hitting the floor, to hold her up, and still he stood there just watching as her knees buckled and she hit the ground hard.
In reality, there wasn't anything he could do, no way that he could have cleared the distance from his wall and the other side of the cavern.
Paige had stood up from her cot, coming to get the plate of breakfast that Leon held. Nothing special, leftover snake from the night before served on a piece of paper that the group had salvaged from the compound. It was cold but Leon thought that they could eat it together and then find out about the buzz growing in the cave this morning. People were talking, moving around fast, but he'd ignored them all morning and Paige hadn't even gotten up yet.
The plan had been simple, eat breakfast, go see what was going on outside.
And then Paige stood, pain stretching across her face like cellophane wrap. Leon should have moved then, should have seen that something was about to happen, something very bad—but he didn't. He stayed still, at the opening of Caesar's cavern—Paige's now—and held the plate out to a woman that clearly wasn't going to be able to walk to it.
Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, so that Leon only saw the whites, and then she fell for what felt like eternity. The paper and food he held fell to the ground without a sound, while Leon's scream echoed into the cavern, and his feet scraped across the rock as he scampered to get her. He grabbed her face, opening her eyelids with his thumbs. Only white stared back at him.
"Help!" He screamed. "Help me!"
The buzz from earlier this morning was forgotten, the food and everything else gone. Leon scooted down next to Paige, moving her head so that it sat in his lap where he cradled it, not wanting to get up, not wanting to leave her on the rock cavern by herself, but not knowing what to do.
"PLEASE! Keke! Jerry! Someone help!" He screamed while he held Paige's head.
* * *
Leon stared forward but saw nothing. Four people stood in the cavern with him, and Grace floated around somewhere, but he didn't see a single one of them. He sat on the ground, his back against the wall, his knees folded up and his hands resting on them. He looked in Paige's direction, but she couldn't look back at him.
Her eyes were closed and she wasn't exactly asleep, but she certainly wasn't awake. Leon thought she was probably in some kind of coma, though he didn't know what exactly that meant. They found out what the problem was, a problem that she decided to keep fucking quiet for some goddamn reason. Who was she to decide that, to keep quiet about something this serious?
The wound on her back. Jerry had known about it. Caesar had known about it. No one else though, just those two and Paige, but now...
Jesus Christ, he thought. He could barely face it all, not this much at once. Jerry had known about Paige's wound and somehow forgot—the person who forgot nothing, who organized this whole thing. And now he was gone. Run off. Literally, ran-the-fuck-off. Grace said she had never seen him move so fast, explained exactly what had been going on, and that he had simply taken off out of the cave. Now what? Now he was gone? That was all they knew?
But it got worse. Lord, did it. Because then Grace had to tell them what Jerry had been watching when he left without a single goodbye to anyone. He was watching Caesar die.
Not die. He wasn't dead, Grace said—whether to convince herself or them, Leon didn't know and didn't care. She let them all watch the hologram that she had shown Jerry. Leon watched and closed his eyes half way through. He didn't need to see it all. Didn't need to see those applications fold over Caesar like cloth, trapping him. Didn't need to see Manny. That was his friend down there, his friend since childhood, lying motionless. Powerless.
Caesar wasn't necessarily dead. That's what Grace told them, but what the hell else was he then? Because Leon didn't think The Genesis would take super kindly to what Caesar had been trying to do. He didn't think rehabilitation was in the cards for his old friend.
Jerry gone. Caesar dead. Paige dying.
The wound on her back. Leon couldn't bring himself to look at it. Keke had finally shown up, hearing his screaming, and taken her from him. It took them a few minutes to discover the problem, but when they did, there were no other questions to ask besides how long until she dies? Paige did a good job of hiding the extensiveness of it, bandaging the entirety of her back and changing it regularly. Otherwise blood and pus would have seeped through her shirt long ago and everyone seen her wound. But, no, Paige made sure that didn't happen. Paige made sure no one knew and the people that did know were too caught up in their own lives to remember. She let the world go on because there were more important things than Paige's wound. Maybe she let the world go on because she didn't think there was any way for them to cure it, to fix it, so why bother anyone.
"What can we do?" Leon asked from his tear filled haze.
"For her?" Grace said.
"Yes, goddamnit, for her." Who else could he be talking about? For Jerry? For Caesar? The only person anyone could do anything about was Paige.
"Nothing," Grace said.
Leon took the small pebble his hand rested over and chucked it across the room where it bounced off the far wall. "That's fucking bullshit, Grace. There's something we can do. There has to be. We can't just sit here and do nothing." His voice was low but he felt an anger he hadn't known since his wife's murder. He felt anger at the people that should be here, at the ones who brought them all here, and now were gone. At Jerry. At Caesar.
Paige didn't deserve this. Maybe April had deserved it when she turned Caesar in. But Paige? No. She hadn't done anything except try to become Leon's friend over the past few weeks. Except try to love Caesar. Except try to follow her beliefs that The Genesis should fall. She hadn't hurt anyone, indeed, the wound across her back came from trying to help a little girl that was thrust into this whole goddamn mess.
"We don't have the technical skills to do it," Grace said. "Not without Jerry here, and even if he was here, I don't know that he could stop this. It's going to run its course."
Run its course. That's what this whole thing was doing, just running a course. Paige was just running her course, dying now, almost done with it. Caesar had run his, obviously, dead and probably in a puddle. Jerry? Who the fuck knew what course that guy was even on?
Running their course.
Leon stood up and walked out of the room, leaving Tim and Keke to look over Paige. To watch her finish her course.
Chapter Three
"You know, I think Jerry was right," Manny said.
Caesar knew that he could move, but no amount of struggling would do anything. All the strength in his body wouldn't lift a single one of these transparent straps, wouldn't propel him off the table he lay on. He could talk if he wanted, could speak to this person above him, but he wasn't sure he wanted to.
He wasn't sure of much, actually, except that he was conscious and could finally move.
And that Manny was insane. Caesar was sure of that.
Caesar lay on a table in a room that looked like it had never known dirt, not even as an acquaintance. The Genesis owned this place; it had to, though Caesar didn't know what it planned to do with him.
"I saw you move," Manny said. "I saw you attack, and I think Jerry might have been onto something when he picked you. Unfortunately, for you and him, he kind of got my wife and child killed, so whether he was right about you or not doesn't matter anymore. Ya know?" Manny walked around Caesar's table, not looking at his face, but his feet instead. Manny's smile hadn't disappeared, but remained like it might have been permanently carved. "He's here now."
Who's here now?
But Caesar knew the answer—Jerry. They were both here—he and Jerry, and The Genesis had won with a single sweep of the board. Manny delivered up everything it needed, now both Jerry and Caesar would die, and the world would keep on turning as it had for the past millennium.
"How?" Caesar said. His voice was almost a whisper, not warmed up, his vocal chords not ready for the action he commanded of them. "How did you get him?"
Manny laughed, a high pitched thing nearing a squeal. "You think you're the only one that can communicate inside someone's head? Is that it?" He stopped walking and put his hands on his knees, trying to hold in the pig like squeal escaping from his mouth.
He's not faking it. He thinks this is the funniest stuff he's ever heard.
It took Manny a few seconds, but he finally regained his composure and stood up.
"Do you know where your name came from?" Manny said, continuing his lap around the table. "I'm sure you do, someone as smart as you, someone with all that talent. And it's kind of ironic, isn't it, that the original Caesar was stabbed in the back and you probably think the same thing just happened to you, huh?"
Manny stopped walking and turned to look at Caesar. Their eyes met and Caesar saw what lived inside this man, saw that it wasn't what once dwelt there—humanity. Manny never got along with Caesar, never thought The Named should bet on Caesar, but he had still been human. No longer. A chaos resided in Manny’s eyes that Caesar couldn't begin to understand. A madness that had broken Manny at some point. A madness that drove him, that caused his fits of laughter and his nearly incessant laps around this table. An insanity that wouldn’t be fixed, that wouldn’t die off.
"No one stabbed you, though, Caesar. I want you to understand that." He spoke in a voice so low and calm that it might have been birthed at the bottom of the ocean. "I was stabbed. Not by you, but by Jerry. You were just the catalyst for it all. The person who had no business being here but came anyway. Jerry, though. He killed Brandi and Dustin. Killed them both and then left them to rot like spoiled meat in the sun. So he's here and you're here, and you're both going to die pretty soon. How does that sound?"
Manny's smile finally faded, leaving him looking as grave as a man hearing he has cancer.
He believes what he's saying, Caesar thought. "Manny, what happened to you?"
"You did, Caesar. You and Jerry. You two did this. You two put yourselves here, not me."
Caesar looked back up at the ceiling. What was he supposed to say? What could he say?
"It told me I could watch you die. That's what I'm really looking forward to. Jerry too, but I don't think I'll sit in on that one. I wonder who they'll kill first. Who will have to watch the other?"
Caesar saw one of the little machines scurrying up the wall to his right. It looked like a metal spider, but instead of a flat body in the center, all the knife-point legs actually attached to a transparent ball. Those little things had been drawing blood from him almost constantly—sticking long needles into him with the grace of a walrus. He hoped they didn't come back, not now. He'd rather listen to the ravings of a madman than feel all those needles sticking him.
"Go away, Manny," he said, not listening to the words that streamed from his mouth any longer. "Just let me lie here in peace."
"Is that what you want?" Manny brought his lips inches from Caesar's own. "Peace?" He whispered. Caesar could smell his breath, like vinegar mixed with some hemlock poison. "Peace will come, but not yet, Caesar. Not yet. This is my time, and I'm going to enjoy it."
Caesar listened as one of the spiders climbed up the leg of the table. Tick-tick-tick as its steel legs poked the metal. He felt it crawl over his naked skin, the tiny pointed legs already feeling uncomfortable.
"I don't know what those things do," Manny said, his lips still right above Caesar’s, "but they're a lot of fun to watch."
The spider moved across Caesar's body easily, all the way to his face, causing Manny to stand up.
Caesar felt fluid spurt from his eyeball as the needle sunk inside.
* * *
The chip in Caesar's head kept up with time, and without it, he would have been lost. The lights glowed constantly above him, always shining down in endless glory. The room never changed. Manny came and went, and when he arrived, his talking never ceased. The talk of the mad, incessant and without sense. That's not to say there wasn't a point to Manny's speeches; they always contained a point. The same point.
Caesar would pay for what he did.
Not for Gary Pierre. Manny didn't care in the slightest about that poor autistic who had met his end at Caesar's hands. Not the twelve from Population Control. Not even the bellhop that Caesar had murdered before being captured. No, Caesar wasn't going to actually pay for any of the people he really harmed. His payment was due for Manny's errors, for his stupidity, for the deaths of his wife and child. That was the point of his diatribes, that Caesar was a bad, bad man and he would get what he deserved.
Manny would stop speaking when one of those spiders arrived, poking Caesar somewhere else, drawing blood and sometimes injecting liquids into him as well. Manny would stop and watch like a child pulling the legs from a cockroach. He had fun watching, grinning as if life could get no better.
Two days passed with this going on, sharp objects being stuck into Caesar's body and hate filled rants assaulting his ears.
Then the table he was on sat up, rose like a hospital bed, the invisible straps moving with Caesar to keep him strapped down but not crush him.
He opened his eyes and looked around, having been asleep. The chip still recorded but there had been no sounds, no disturbances around him. No spiders now, no Manny. Just the table sitting him up and this empty room.
The doors opened and the table began to move on its own, wheeling across the floor, slowly, not jostling him. Caesar watched in silence, looking for the danger that was sure to come, that would fly in from the darkness outside this white room and kill him. Except he didn't really believe that. None of this would be quick. None of it would be a surprise. All the fun came from watching Caesar witness his own death. In watching Caesar understand that there was no way out and that death would be beautifully slow.
He wheeled along empty hallways, alone except for the soft sound of the wheels on the floor beneath him. A door opened and he moved into the room, seeing another one of those screens before him, those goddamn screens that kept The Genesis from actually having to be here in this room. One of those screens that allowed The Genesis to stay removed from whatever action it took. That screen protected it, kept it safe.
The white lines dripped down, almost in unison. The rest of the room was dark, no light anywhere except for the
glowing white paint on the screen that stretched a hundred feet in all directions. Caesar sat alone, once more in front of this screen, but this time not afraid. His family wasn't here to be murdered. His own death was something he had craved since he hoisted this battle flag. All of these theatrics, the dark room, the self-propelled table, the screen with those threatening lines—accomplished nothing. They didn't frighten Caesar. They didn't strike awe in him at The Genesis' greatness. He knew what this was, the thing that hid behind a screen, the thing that only had him in this position because of a traitor.
No, fear didn't live in this room, at least not with Caesar.
"Caesar Wells," the voice boomed out from the screen. "You have a choice to make."
Caesar raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
A light turned on to Caesar's right, a light that shone down from some endless heaven, showing Jerry lying on a table identical to Caesar's. He couldn't see much of the old man, the light was maybe fifty feet away, but he knew who it was, could make out the black, mechanical eye slightly.
"Your mentor. The first iteration of humanity under our rule," the voice said, sounding like a god, having never known doubt.
Another light appeared on his left, this time illuminating Paige. She hung in the air, naked, her arms at her sides, staring listlessly out into the darkness of the room before her. It wasn't Paige, at least Caesar didn't think so—and most likely it wasn't Jerry strapped down to his right either. Both of them holograms, representations.
"You have to choose who dies, Caesar. Your mentor or your lover."
Caesar closed his eyes, blocking out both the screen before him and the tunnels of light to his sides. A choice between these two? Why? How? Manny said The Genesis had Jerry, and Caesar believed him, but Paige? The Genesis didn't have her. It couldn't.