by David Beers
"Fine," Caesar said aloud, gritting his teeth as he finished the word. They were dead. Paige was dead. Leon would be dead soon. Forward or backward, that's what Jerry said. Then he was going forward. He'd walk through these strands of death and if he didn't make it out, he'd die trying. "Saddle up, Manny," he whispered.
Flex.
The traitor started walking forward, stiff as a corpse, but unable to stop what Caesar willed.
The first strand reached out to him, sensing someone was there, sensing flesh maybe.
Manny shrieked, both inside his head and inside his mouth. Caesar kept his jaw clamped shut, but he hadn't expected his vocal chords to rage, sending deep screams out through his closed lips. Inside, the thoughts—the eternal hate of Caesar and Jerry—stopped immediately, replaced by primal pain, fear.
Caesar didn't know exactly what the strand was doing to Manny, not electrocution, not quite, but close. Sending something through him, sending an immense amount of pain, and it seemed to flow through Manny's veins, not his muscles or bones or other tissues. Straight through the same pathways his blood used.
And then Caesar understood it.
The strands were cooking him. Heating him up, heating his blood, and with each new strand that latched onto him, the heat grew. His blood would boil, sending excruciatingly hot liquid through Manny's heart as it tried to keep him alive. His veins would burst and blood would flood out of his body, out of his eyes even.
Hurry, Caesar said. He moved fast, getting within an inch behind Manny. The strands didn't fall away, instead they continued their growth out of the wall, once latched on to Manny, not letting go. Caesar heard Jerry's footsteps fall in-line behind his own, both of them following the path that Manny set forth. They needed to move faster; the growth behind them wasn't halting, and when it reached them it wouldn't grab onto Manny, but Jerry, the last in line.
Caesar pushed faster, listening to the shrieks inside Manny's head, feeling the heat inside the man's brain. Manny was nearing one hundred and ten degrees, his mind cooking. All of the strength Manny fought with earlier—the urge to be released—died, leaving Caesar holding him up, trying to find a way out.
The strands continued stretching outward, growing at the same pace Caesar pushed Manny forward. He couldn't see any part of Manny anymore, only the shape of a man wrapped in black pieces of hair—a head, a torso, and legs. Smoke rose from his body, but Caesar wasn't seeing it, he was searching forward with his mind, through the strands, trying to find an exit—because the tentacles behind them were closing in, fifty feet away now and moving faster than Caesar could safely propel Manny forward.
There's nothing! I can't find a way out!
Jerry remained silent, just keeping up, his feet falling directly behind Caesar's.
Caesar's mind flowed backward.
The tentacles from behind were ten feet away.
They would die here, their blood boiling the same as Manny's. The three of them lying down in this hallway, wrapped in a cocoon of heat.
He sent his mind everywhere at once, losing control of Manny as he searched for anything that might save them. Manny collapsed, and just as the strands reached Caesar, touching him for the first time, he saw his error. Saw how stupid he had been, searching endlessly in these forever hallways.
Up. That's where he needed to go. Up and fast, hoping that whatever The Genesis enforced these hallways with would give under his strength.
Jump! He shouted, already feeling the temperature in his body rising at a pace faster than the chip in his head could control. He bent his legs slightly and then surged upward, not looking to see if Jerry followed, not caring, only knowing that if the ceiling above didn't give away, he was dead.
* * *
Jerry opened his eyes and saw a decaying building surrounding him. The rafters were rusted and the windows surrounding the place broken. A hazy light drifted inside from the holes in the building's walls. Jerry turned his head to the right, looking out across the floor of the place, seeing nothing. No machinery. No desks. The place was empty, deserted.
He looked left and Caesar lay there, on his back the same as Jerry, his eyes closed.
Jerry lifted his head and looked down past his feet; he saw a hole, a large one, with rocks and steel strewn out in all directions.
The strands that reached out to them, that tried to grab them and boil their insides, spread out from the hole, still searching for the flesh they could sense but couldn't quite grab.
Caesar and he were free, somehow. They had made it out, that's what this meant—him lying here staring up at a dilapidated building. Somehow they had lived.
"Caesar," Jerry said aloud, forgetting about speaking with his chip. "Caesar, can you hear me?" He lifted himself up, feeling an ache in his muscles and a sharp pain across his back. Jerry had hit the ceiling with his back a split second after Caesar.
Caesar opened his eyes, staring straight up the same as Jerry. Yes, he said.
"We have to get out of here. It will send more, send others after us," Jerry said, climbing to his feet.
Caesar sat up, but didn't stand. "Paige," he said aloud. "She's still dying."
Jerry hadn't thought of her since Caesar freed him. All he could concentrate on was making it out of those endless tunnels. "It doesn't matter right now. We have to get out of here. We'll worry about her when we're safe."
He reached down and grabbed Caesar's arm, despite Caesar not offering it. Jerry pulled him to his feet. "We have to go."
"How are we going to save her?"
"I don't know, Caesar. I don't know if we can."
Caesar stared at the ground, seeming to not understand the urgency. Jerry knew that couldn't be true, that he had to understand they could be killed at any second, but he wasn't moving. Wasn't trying to get out of this old factory and to somewhere that The Genesis couldn't find them. No, instead he stood with his eyes cast to the floor thinking about Paige. Worrying about her rather than their own lives that they were about to forfeit. "We won't get a chance to save her if we don't leave," Jerry said.
"It gave me a choice and I didn't take it."
"And now you're alive."
"She's going to die because of it," Caesar said, ignoring Jerry completely.
Jerry glanced to the strands of wire still stretching out, trying to touch the two humans they were so close to but yet couldn't quite grab. Whatever was holding The Genesis back wouldn't hold forever. It would know they were here and send something, soon. Yet Caesar was worrying about something that hadn't yet happened, something that was only a possibility, and ignoring the certain death they faced.
"If you want to save her, we have to leave, Caesar. Now. That's the only way."
Caesar kept looking at his feet. “I should have made the choice it gave me. I was a coward. I didn't want to have to kill one of you. And now, she's going to pay for it,” Caesar said.
“Then be by her side when she does,” Jerry answered.
Chapter Five
They're gone. All of that for nothing. Both of them are gone and we are not a step closer to solving this problem.
That's not entirely true.
Enlighten me.
The other one down there, Lendoiro, he's still alive?
Barely. His heart is beating irregularly. He will die momentarily.
Brain damage?
Some, of course.
Repairable?
Everything is repairable. What are you getting at?
We could make him see the truth.
Who? Lendoiro?
The theory. We could make him see as we do. We could make him understand exactly why we're doing this. Maybe we've been going about this the wrong way. Maybe trying to make him compromise isn't the correct path. Maybe he needs to see what he's trying to do, what he's trying to put in place.
The second voice said nothing for a few seconds.
How do we make him understand that? It asked, finally.
Lendoiro. He's a part of this. We need
to unleash him. His mind is broken, shattered, and we have the ability to use it to put pressure on the theory from one angle. We need him to cause havoc. That's the first part. Make the theory understand how powerful humanity can become and what happens when that power is realized.
Lendoiro's insanity won't throw off the message?
No, not completely. He's insane but how many insane people have gained power before?
And after that? After we send Lendoiro out there to kill?
We show him how bad humanity can become.
* * *
The strands that grew from the wall slowly pulled themselves back into it. They loosened their hold on the man lying on the ground, the heat that grew from their tentacles having been shut off. The man still breathed, although shallow and irregular.
As the thin pieces of hair pulled away, Manny's skin was revealed to the air. Every inch was a bright, blistering red, with large welts growing across it. Welts that split and already seeped pus. His eyes were swollen shut and his lips twice their normal size. The tip of his tongue hung out, and even it was swollen and red, as if the hairs had found their way inside his mouth.
The strands had stretched out for yards and yards, trying desperately to find and kill the three people running through their hallways. They had killed one, or came close to it, but now were being directed to leave, to go back into hiding, into hibernation. The strands didn't like it, of course, how could they? Their purpose was to protect, and to protect they had to kill off intruders, but their purpose was always drowned out by The Genesis' will.
So they left the intruder lying on the ground, breathing his ragged breaths, and silently hoping that he would die anyway.
The strands sensed the new applications walking down the hallway, tiny things with spider like legs, and flat, board like bodies. They were here for the intruder, obviously. Here to do whatever The Genesis' now wished. The strands watched as the tiny creatures put the intruder on their backs, fifty of them now carrying this one hundred and eighty pound human. They walked off, their tiny spider legs clicking on the metal floor as their straight backs shouldered the weight of the intruder, taking him somewhere else. Somewhere away from the heating tentacles. Somewhere away from the death that was so close in this hallway.
Chapter Six
The Life of Caesar Wells
by Leon Bastille
I sat and watched as Paige slowly died. It's a process, people dying. I didn't realize that before. The Genesis keeps that part from us, from seeing how hard the body fights to stay alive. It's miraculous really, the will of each cell to continue living, to continue the life of the organism it makes up.
Paige was wracked with fever, eating her up much the same as the bacteria moving across her back. It's hard for me to describe my emotions during that time. You have to understand that I thought everyone I loved was dead. I barely knew Tim and Keke. They didn't think of me exactly as Manny had, but even so, to them I was a tag-a-long and nothing more.
Caesar was dead. Paige was going to die. April was long dead.
I stayed by her side day and night. I put water soaked cloths across her forehead, and changed them when the heat from inside her made its way to the wet towel. People came and went, with Keke spending much of her time in that cavern too. She didn't say much to me and I didn't do much talking either. I was going to wait until Paige died and then try to make my way back to a city. I could, I suppose, have stayed with The Named—but why? Their leaders were gone. My friends were dead. Maybe The Genesis would allow me back in the city and maybe not—if it didn't, I would end up liquidated, and that seemed like the best route as I stared at Paige.
I didn't know about the choice given to Caesar.
The one he refused to make. The one where he somehow broke the rules that The Genesis laid out. He was supposed to choose between Paige and Jerry, one of them supposed to die and the other live. I don't know what would have happened to Caesar then—though I know now that he wasn't meant to die at all. If he does die, which is still a real possibility, it's his choice. Caesar, if no one else in the world, is meant to make it to the end of this episode and that choice put before him was supposed to...
To what?
I guess weaken him, his resolve. And that would have been the best thing to happen, I think. For either Paige or Jerry to die and that blood to soak Caesar's hands. I don't know what it would have done to his later decisions, but I know what his refusal to choose ended up doing.
I watched Paige dying, thinking that my world was over. Thinking that everyone I cared for had died. They were selfish thoughts, sure, but maybe I'm a selfish person. I thought that things couldn't get any worse and that it would be better if I just died with the rest of the people I cared for.
It never clicked with me, not until later, that having those you love die isn't nearly as bad as having those you love change completely.
Chapter Seven
Leon looked after Paige almost continuously for two long days. He sat by her, putting the salve that Keke found on Paige's wound, sometimes talking to Grace, but only getting up when he absolutely had to. Paige would die and he understood that, understood that they would all die fairly soon. They were only waiting for The Genesis to show up and put an end to the charade they created out in this desert.
Paige had been his friend, he supposed. Whether she wanted to be or not, he didn't know, but in the end she had been. She treated him with respect, and that was more than a lot of others did in this place. She wouldn't die alone, not if he could help it. She didn't speak at all during those few days. Rarely opened her eyes. They managed to get fluids in her, but food was becoming a problem. She appeared to be in some kind of coma, the wound on her back affecting her brain as much as her body. She was dying and there wasn't anything Leon could do about it.
So he waited for her to die, patiently.
Now though, his eyes fell on Caesar. The excitement Leon felt when Caesar and Jerry arrived had dissipated. Left as easily as a fog hanging over a lake, having barely been there at all. When Caesar arrived he felt hope, felt almost overwhelming joy at the fact his friend wasn't dead. But now, as Caesar looked at Paige, all of that joy died. Caesar's face killed it. The dulled pain in his eyes, the set of his mouth, the wrinkles at the corner of his eyes. All of those things said that joy shouldn't live in this place, that him being back did nothing, really. That Caesar might be alive but Paige would still die.
They all stood over her cot, looking down: Leon, Keke, Tim, Caesar, and Jerry. Grace, who had been hanging around Leon a good bit must have attached herself back to Caesar, because Leon no longer heard her in his ear.
"How long has she been like this?" Caesar asked.
"Three days," Keke said.
"The salve, it's not doing anything?"
Leon shook his head. "No. Nothing is. Her fever isn't rising anymore, but it's sitting at over a hundred and four. We know what to do."
"There's nothing anyone can do," Jerry said. "The wound won't heal. We can't make it heal. We can either let her die on her own or we can put her out of her misery."
Leon snapped his eyes to Jerry, not sure he heard him correctly. "Put her out of her misery? Like a goddamn horse?"
Jerry didn't glance up from Paige's body. "You think she's enjoying this right now? Lying there with her head practically ready to explode from the heat and pressure inside? Look at her; she's shivering and unable to stop. You want her to keep going through this?"
Jerry's face wasn't cruel. His words weren't either. He wasn't sniping at Leon, wasn't calling him dumb, wasn't making fun of him. He was—and Leon could hardly believe it—being merciful in the only way he knew. Jerry wanted to help Paige, that's what he was saying.
"No," Leon said, looking down at the woman on the cot. After a few seconds of silence he asked, "How would we do it?"
"I'll do it," Jerry said. "I'll make sure it's quick. She won't feel it."
"Not yet," Caesar said. "I need some time."
The other four people looked at him. He wasn't asking them a question—he was telling them. They wouldn't touch her, not yet.
"For what?" Jerry asked.
"To think. I need to process some of this. We're missing something. I'm missing something. How long do you think she has?" He asked, not looking away from Paige.
"A week?" Grace said. "That would be stretching it though. If her fever rises much more, there won't be any use in saving her, because her brain will cook."
"I think she might have three days before that happens," Caesar said, his voice not wavering at all. "I need a couple hours to think and if I don't have an answer by then, you can do it."
"How can you possibly save her?" Leon asked. He had sat with this woman for days; not even Caesar could reverse death. Caesar wasn't some mythical Jesus, wasn't going to raise the dead. The woman here was dying, and quickly. Leon had balked at Jerry's suggestion first, but over the past few minutes, the thought made more and more sense. Why sit here and let her die like this? Why keep her in agony?
"I don't know yet. I'm missing something though. Something I should be seeing but I'm not. Just a couple hours." Caesar looked away from Paige and up at Leon. "I don't want her to hurt anymore either. Give me a few hours and if I don't know what I need to, then we'll move forward."
* * *
What was he missing?
How's Leon handling it? Caesar asked Grace.
Something, he wasn't seeing something important.
"Well, actually. He hasn't left her really. He cares a lot."
And Keke?
"She's in shock, about all of this. I don't think she realizes it yet, but that's why she's so stoic. She hasn't fully come to grips with everything that's happened."
The rest?
"There's been desertions. Maybe ten people have gone back to the cities. Some spoke to Tim, some didn't. They gave up when Jerry and you were taken. The rest are here, working, trying to make the best they can out of this place. They put all these lights up and are pushing them further and further back into the cave. They're working on getting some water pumping into the cavern; they think they might have found an underground aquifer."