by David Beers
Caesar listened and said nothing. It was true. Her words held as much validity as Jerry's, that Paige was dispensable. Both were right, the cyborg and the application, neither of them human—not fully. Both telling him the truth but neither of them making the decision. Neither of them were in his position, with a dead family hanging around his neck. Grace should have let him die and now that's what she was doing. Guiding him to his death because...
I'm a detriment to those around me. That's what you're saying.
"Yes."
His father told him to break everything. Told him that if he was going to do anything, then he should go all the way. Did he mean break those that he loved? Did he mean break his family and then break the woman that fell in love with him?
Caesar closed his eyes and blocked out the people around him. He blocked out Grace. Paige. That's who he wanted to think about. He had been willing to sacrifice himself for her happiness and now he was sacrificing her for...The Genesis. He was sacrificing someone he cared about for an entity that killed everyone he loved. He was sacrificing her for the thing he wanted to destroy. Maybe she was dispensable. Maybe, in the end, she would die and maybe if he went back for her now, he would destroy whatever chance he had of coming face to face with The Genesis. Maybe they would all die and The Genesis would rule for eternity. But would he sacrifice her for it? Sacrifice his love for its death?
Caesar didn't say anything to Grace. He didn't say anything to Jerry. He stood up from the train and stepped off just before the doors closed behind him.
* * *
Bradley was in a hurry. He was always in a hurry. He couldn't ever find the time to simply rest and he knew it was partly to do with his digital make-up. Something in the ones and zeros coding him not allowing him to manage his time more effectively. Some of the blame rested with The Genesis, for sure, but some with him too. He was always talking to other applications too much. Like now, he was fifteen minutes late for surgery because he'd been gabbing with Tucker for an hour. He would get his hand slapped for this, for sure, and that's what he hated more than anything. It's not that he really cared about being late, the human would be fine—there were plenty enough applications to make sure that she lived until he could get there. Hell, the surgery wasn't even anything that important, reattaching a leg from some kind of work accident. Routine. It was that applications saw him arriving late.
If no one knew, Bradley would never show up on time. Really, his time was more important than this woman's. She couldn't fix her leg so why did he have to work around her schedule? The Genesis had a real soft spot for these creatures, that was for sure, setting his entire life around what worked best for them. Sometimes the whole thought of it upset him. Now he was going to look like an idiot because he had to do everything around their schedule.
Bradley was moving as fast as he possibly could, the air propulsion system inside his body hot from the amount of pressure he was putting on it. He went through the air, twenty feet above the humans walking below him, high enough so that he didn't have to worry about smacking into one of them, which at this speed, would hurt them pretty bad—and then he’d have to answer for that as well.
The hospital was just around the corner and he wasn't going to bother checking in with anyone. Straight down to his floor and then to surgery.
Bradley was so intent on getting there that he missed what was in front of him. In this city, where everything was underground, he flew near the hallway's ceiling—which was actually the size of a large road. Maybe he could have seen it, he would certainly think he should have later on. A tiny reflection of light, a tiny reflection that said the path in front of him wasn't as clear as he thought.
He flew right into it, and by that time, there wasn't anything he could do.
The digital tarp wrapped around him like plastic wrap, sticking to every piece of him and covering his entire body. At the size and shape of a basketball, there wasn't much space to cover, and before he knew it, Bradley was completely engulfed in something that he could hardly see and couldn't get out of.
And then he was being pulled. The air propulsion inside him still tried to push him forward, but as soon as it sent the jets out, they collided with the tarp, leaving him nowhere to go. He couldn't move, couldn't do anything, couldn't even scream out because the tarp blocked the goddamn hole that his voice exited from.
Bradley tried to struggle forward, to somehow make it to the hospital where something or someone would see him. It didn't work though. Despite his struggle, the digital tarp—and him inside it—moved back the way he had come, until it turned the corner of another hallway, and then Bradley's thoughts went dark.
Chapter Thirteen
"What do you need from me?" Mock said, the first time in a long time it had been in front of The Genesis.
It's a delicate situation.
"I understand, how can I help?"
We need you to...establish fear inside of Allencine. A lot of fear.
"More than what people are already experiencing? They're just now starting to come outside of their homes."
That wasn't real fear. There was nothing to fear. That was an overreaction. We need you to establish true fear; we need the people in Allencine to have a reason to be frightened.
"You mean that people need to be injured? They need to have a real chance of danger affecting them?"
Yes. People will need to be hurt.
"Okay. When?"
When you leave here, you should start making preparations.
"What's the overall point of this, though? Am I just killing people or is there a strategy?"
The strategy is to start a revolution. That's what we want you to do.
Mock left The Genesis, happy to be working again.
Chapter Fourteen
Paige was dying and nothing about it looked peaceful. She didn’t look like she was sleeping, which would have been somewhat okay; she looked like she was dying, and that was nearly unbearable.
Jerry stood over her, his hands at his sides, simply looking down. He came in alone, wanting to be alone with Paige because...he was the one killing her. He told Caesar he had to go forward, that he had to go to The Genesis, and in doing so, he sentenced this woman to death. The Eight was nearly no more and he was killing off one of the last members now. Sacrificing her for a chance. That's all. Just a chance. Nothing else, no guarantee. A chance that Caesar might be able to stop The Genesis when he got there.
Got where, Jerry? And what's he going to do when he gets there? Have a staring contest with it? Ask it to relinquish control? What exactly is your plan?
Paige had stopped shivering, but Jerry didn't know if that was good or not. More than likely, nothing going on inside Paige was good right now. He had dressed the wound earlier this morning, and the skin was completely inflamed, now with green, rotten looking streaks spreading out from the slashed flesh spreading to her rib cage and beginning to wrap themselves around her whole torso. The bacteria was spreading, infecting her entire body, trying to finish her off.
Are you going to get them both killed? Are you going to get her and Caesar killed? Because you don't know what he's supposed to do and you're sending him out there anyway.
The thoughts continually came to him, the doubts. And he couldn't say they were just an old man's fears. They were accurate and he knew it. He didn't know what would happen when Caesar got on that train, didn't know if Caesar would even make it to his destination; and still, he was sending him out there. He was sentencing the woman in front of him to death, all for a single chance that wasn't planned out.
Call him back. Call him back and heal Paige and then wait. Come up with a plan, something that will give you a chance at success. Don't go into this blind.
"How long do you think she has?"
Jerry jumped, spooked by the voice behind him, so lost in his own thoughts he hadn't heard anyone enter.
"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you," Leon said, stepping up next to Jerry and looking down at Paige. Jerr
y looked at him for a few seconds, but Leon didn't raise his eyes from the cot.
"Caesar said a few days," he answered. A few days and the woman that he had helped raise would need to be buried. Would need to have dirt thrown on her. He hadn't cried when Manny defected. He hadn't cried when the compound was burnt to the ground. But now, looking at Paige, he thought he might. "How have I messed up so bad?" He asked, not looking up, not wanting to see Leon's eyes fall on him. He hadn't ever asked Leon a question like this, hadn't ever brought him into his confidence in such a manner—but right now, there was no one else. Right now, there were only three of them in this room and one was dying.
"Because you're convinced, I guess. Convinced that what you're doing is holy, that what you're doing has to be done."
"And you don't think it has to be."
"No, I don't," Leon said. "But she did. She's the one that kept quiet about what was happening to her, that let this thing fester until she ended up in this bed. She did it because she didn't think it was as important as what Caesar was doing, what you were doing."
"And now she's going to die."
Leon didn't say anything.
"Caesar could save her," Jerry said, unsure why he said it, knowing that he told Caesar he wouldn't but somehow wanting blame to fall on the two of them—wanting someone to hate Jerry for this. "He found out how when he grabbed The Tourist."
Now Leon did look over to him, his eyes widening. "He can save her?"
"He knows how, but we won't."
"Won't?" The word was slow leaving Leon's mouth, more like molasses than air.
"He can either save her or go to The Genesis. There isn't time to do both."
"What do you mean there isn't time to do both?"
Jerry wondered if he should go on, if he should continue telling Leon this. What was the point? Leon had no say in the decision; it would only confound him and breed hostility. And still, Jerry went on, because he hated himself for it. Because Leon stood here next to this cot, looking at a woman he hardly knew and caring for her. Leon knew her for a fraction of the time Jerry did, and yet he wasn't willing to sacrifice her.
"He can either find an application to save her or he can board a train that will take him to The Genesis. That's it. He can't do both because when the train leaves, it doesn't come again for another six months."
"So he's going to get on the train? He's going to let her die?"
Jerry nodded. "I told him to. I told him not to come back."
"Fuck that," Leon said. "You're insane. You both are. You're going to kill her and watch while you do it. Do you care about anything, Jerry?"
"You really think that her life is worth more than what we're doing here?"
Leon knelt down next to the cot. He didn't touch Paige, just looked at her pale face. "I don't even know how you can ask that question. Is this woman worth more than trying to destroy the indestructible? It's like asking if this woman is worth more than alchemy, worth more than something that doesn't exist. Your conviction has led to delusion. You're going to kill her and at the same time not get what you want."
Jerry didn't say anything. Leon might be right, but not for the reasons he thought—but what if Jerry was sending Caesar on a suicide mission? That he was sacrificing Paige for a dream that wouldn’t happen, not right now. They needed to plan. They needed time. And yet he couldn't make himself tell Caesar to turn around. He couldn't make himself reach out and say, simply, wait.
"What if he does come back and save her? What if we don't get another chance at The Genesis because it comes for us here, comes for us and kills us all? Then I wasted our chance. Then we all die."
"Jerry, we all die. It's what we do while we're alive that matters."
Jerry kept quiet and looked at Paige for a long time, stood there looking even after Leon left, thinking that not everyone dies. He knew that better than anyone else. Not everyone dies, and when you don't die, you have to deal with the consequences of your actions for a much longer time.
* * *
Caesar looked at no one. He looked nowhere else besides the path in front of him. The backpack over his shoulder was still now, although for a lot of this trip it had been rustling, fighting him, the thing inside trying to get out. The little bastard had talked up a storm for a while, threatening him, threatening things much worse than death. When The Genesis finds out...and other such things, although it knew The Genesis wouldn't be finding out. It could feel that the tiny switch inside itself—the switch that allowed the body it inhabited to communicate with The Genesis—was turned off. Caesar kept it off, flexing his mind the entire time, not letting the thing have a chance to send back a single message.
Caesar hadn't slept in two days and now he was back at the cave. Back with the asshole application strapped to his back.
People stopped and stared as he moved forward, his feet gliding across the rock floor beneath him as easily as skis over snow, moving without a thought of stopping. All that mattered was getting this thing to Paige, and all the rest of the people here could speak to him after, could ask him questions after, could do whatever they wanted after this thing healed her.
He rounded the edge of her small cavern, seeing Leon sitting on a chair in the corner.
"Caesar!" Leon shouted, shooting up from the chair.
Caesar said nothing. He took the backpack off and set it on the ground, then unzipped the top of it. He lifted the application out—a large round orb—with his mind, holding it in place a few feet from the bed.
"Not dead yet?" The thing asked.
Caesar could click its voice off if he wanted, he knew the wiring inside well enough to clamp down, but he didn't want to. This thing was arrogant, thought that its voice should be heard above everyone else's, and that might be too much—keeping it from speaking. It might not do anything he wanted, regardless of the threats he threw at it.
"Still here," Caesar answered, turning the thing around so that the single red eye on its front could look at Paige.
"Wow. She is fucked up," the thing said, still hanging in the air. "This is why you brought me here? For her?"
"You're going to make her better."
"No, I don't think I am."
Caesar rotated the application back around so that it looked at him again. "If you don't, I'm going to kill you. Not just this mechanical body, but you. Grace, you here?"
"I am," she said, loud enough so that her voice traveled across the room.
"You see, I live with an application, and I know what it takes to eliminate her, and I know what it takes to eliminate you, too. So either you fix the woman on the bed or I kill you and go find something else that will."
"Let's not lie, okay?" The application said. "I know what's infecting her and I know you don't have time to go find another application like me. I also know that you're not going to let me live either way, that there's no way I get out of here, so there's not a lot of incentive for me to do this."
Caesar flexed—the chip in his head sensing that Jerry had entered the room, but that was secondary, on the peripheral of his consciousness—and the application cried out as he did.
"STOP!"
Caesar didn't though; he squeezed down harder, bending the metal pieces inside the application, and in doing so cutting off the electrical flow that the application needed to continue living.
"PLEASE!" It screamed again.
Caesar relinquished his grip on the thing's insides. "I don't have time for these fucking games. You either heal her now or you die. You can sit here and worry about what happens next if you want, but it's not going to make you live much longer."
The room was silent for a few moments, Caesar and the application staring at each other.
"You've got to let me go if you want me to fix her," it said finally.
Caesar nodded, releasing all control besides the single switch that would allow it to send messages outside of the cave.
* * *
Grace moved around the room, wandering above the four
people's heads below her. They knew she was here, but not where. She was quiet, listening to them rather than speaking.
She felt happy, and the squabbles below her didn't matter all that much, not right now. Paige was going to be okay. That's what mattered. Caesar had come back, had saved her. That's what mattered. The things being said right now didn't hold any weight when she thought about those two things, and so she was content to let them argue.
Caesar had done what he should. Caesar didn't get on that train; he didn't chase a dream. He came back for the person he loved and Grace didn't know exactly how to put into words what that meant. She had watched him kill an autistic man. She watched him blow up an entire room of people he once knew. She watched him cast away all that civilization had put on him, all the morality that humans were imbued with, indeed, all the morality that The Genesis took and imbued applications with too. She watched him turn into something that she didn't love, something that she didn't fully understand and didn't want to support.
And now, for just a moment, Caesar had returned. The person she knew as a boy, the person that she decided to save at all costs. It didn't mean he wouldn't revert back to the thing he'd been morphing into. It didn't mean that horrible things didn't await those that stood in his path, but it did mean that there was at least a part of the Caesar she once knew still alive and capable of making decisions.
Grace floated above the conversation, in momentary bliss, happy for the first time in a long time.
* * *
"Now what?" Jerry asked, not fully understanding his own feelings. Caesar had taken the choice out of his hands. Caesar had returned and in doing so saved Paige and destroyed their small plan. Caesar did what Jerry hadn't been able to. Caesar made a choice that Jerry wouldn't.