by David Beers
I'm tired of it now, too. Maybe I've been tired of it since my wife was murdered. I didn't kill myself then but I don't know how much further I can go on, to be honest.
We never spoke in that apartment. We saw each other constantly, in between the only things that we could control—blinking and breathing. All the communication that happened between Paige and I happened before Manny found us—from then on, we were separated in a way people can't really imagine. And still, I felt like everything she went through, I basically went through it as well. Everything that happened to her happened to me, and everything to me to her. We became siblings, I think. When I watched her roll out of that window, happiness replaced the fear of the knife above my forehead. Happiness because Manny couldn't hurt her anymore, happiness because she escaped even though I wouldn't be able to. Happiness because it was all over. For her, the nightmare had ended.
Caesar didn't know. I don't know if Jerry did; I don't know what he could hear—whether he understood Manny's shrieks as Paige fell tens of thousands of feet. Shrieks that sounded like some insane abyss, some black hole screaming out into the universe about its own madness, its inability to find sanity. The only word that describes those shrieks is forever, because I think they're still going on—somewhere, maybe passing by some star in the universe, but reaching out to anything that will hear them, will understand them.
Caesar, I now know, was plotting to get in here. Was preparing to take the complex. Was preparing to save us both. He didn't know he was too late.
Chapter Twenty-Three
"He's going to black out the city," Grace said. She had heard the entire conversation between Theo and the application called Mock. She found Theo easily enough, had simply floated around the new fortress until she heard someone mentioning him, and from there moved to the landmark church. She watched him for a while, Theo, alone and in the dark. He moved very little and said nothing. Just sat in that chair behind his desk, staring out into the room that he couldn't possibly see.
She wondered if he was insane, like everyone else in this city. Like the entire world, apparently. The fortress she visited functioned well enough, but the people in there, they weren't the type of people Grace had known her whole life. They weren't hacking each other up into bits, but Grace thought—or felt, rather—that the very act could occur at any moment. That the entire fabric of this pseudo-society they were creating could rip apart with a single word. And the man in the church gave off that same feeling, that the happenings outside this church happened inside it too. Grace got as close as she could, viewing his face, seeing his unblinking eyes, focusing on nothing in the room. A word away from ripping apart, that described this man as well as anything else.
Grace thought about leaving, about heading home to tell Caesar right then, but she waited. She wanted to know more about him, wanted to know where he went when he wasn't here. So she waited while the man sat and stared blankly.
And then Mock arrived.
She had heard of the application—anyone as old as Grace knew of Mock. It was special, maybe revered in certain circles. The Genesis created it for purposes that only rumors described. It was an architect, a strategist, and for what? That's where the rumors came in. It did things for The Genesis that no one else could. It created...
But Grace didn't need rumors anymore. It created disasters. It destroyed humanity. Because all of this, every bit of it, was its work—not the man's sitting in the chair. Whoever he was, he only took orders from Mock. And Grace listened as he took his orders this time.
"Black out the city?" Caesar asked. "What do you mean?"
"He's going to close it off completely. Around the perimeter of every city, there's a digital field. You saw it when you went after The Tourist—that one is in a permanent position, but every city has one. It's used for any number of things, from asteroids, to containing diseases. Allencine has one too. He, the Representative, is going to raise it out of the ground and when the two halves reach at the top, he's going to turn it black—as in no light out and no light in."
"Why?" Caesar asked.
That was the part Grace didn't understand. She didn't understand anything happening in this place. The Genesis had worked so long and so hard to create a balanced planet, to make humanity copacetic with the rest of the world. And now, with Mock leading the charge, the whole thing would be wiped out in a couple of weeks.
"The Representative isn't in charge. He doesn't matter at all. He probably has the virus in him the same as everyone else. There's an application running this, an old one, and... I think it's doing everything for fun. It'll enjoy the panic this incites."
"Where's the Representative going to do it?" Caesar asked.
"I think he wants to see it happen. He's going to the top of Dillian's Plaza. The main building."
She watched as Caesar turned away from the small hole in the window. His back had been to her, and he'd been speaking out loud, maybe to make sure Keke heard him. Grace didn't think Keke cared about anything he had to say anymore. She was asleep on the floor, a shirt balled up for a pillow underneath her head. Another casualty, if not with her life, then with her soul.
"What are you going to do?" Grace asked.
"I'm going to the top of the building. How long ago did he leave?"
"Ten minutes, probably."
"He's wearing the suit?"
"Yes," Grace said. Nothing else mattered to Caesar, only putting on that suit so he could get inside the building. The blackness about to overtake this city didn't concern him in the slightest. The fact that the entire city ran on solar rays and when they stopped shining down, the city would lose power, didn't matter to him.
"How long will it take him?"
The sound battered the outside of the apartment complex, and the wood across the boarded windows screeched as they flexed inward. The room shook, the entire structure straining under the incoming wind. The field was already moving. It was causing the noise echoing through the room and bending the wood—so large that it caused seismic shifts in the wind patterns around the city.
"It's started..." Grace whispered.
Caesar turned back around to the window and grabbed the corner of a board. He ripped it free with a single pull and the wind shot in like an animal from the cold. Caesar put his hand in front of his eyes, trying to block the barrage of air from hitting him full on. Grace moved to his side, both of them staring out the window.
She heard Caesar gasp at the sight.
The field rose from the ground, transparent and massive. Grace watched as it moved upwards, slowly, extending from some unseen place near the base of the city, two halves stretching the entire perimeter. It was beautiful, the field moving like water, but yet Grace could see through it to the sky above.
Caesar turned from the window and went to the door, not looking back. Grace didn't say anything to him as she watched him go. She kept quiet.
It was the last time she ever saw Caesar.
* * *
The wind was nearly strong enough to lift Caesar into the air and carry him wherever it wanted. He kept his head down and his feet pumping as fast as he could, moving both with the wind and against it, depending on how it changed. He launched across the sidewalk, clearing blocks in seconds.
Thoughts flashed through his head, and at the same time, he barely registered any of them, because they weren't important. This wind, it was deadly, and if the man in black truly was on top of that building, he might not be there when Caesar arrived. He might have been blown off, dying in a way that would leave the suit useless. Caesar didn't need the man alive, but he needed the suit. It didn't matter if the city went black. It didn't matter if nothing grew inside this place for all eternity. All that mattered was getting into that apartment, was finding Paige, Leon, and Jerry. He'd worry about the goddamn sun after that.
He watched as the field continued to move upwards, relatively slow, but steady—closing off the entire city from everything. Rain. Sunlight. Everything.
It took him a few minutes, but he made it to the bottom of the building. One that stretched above the clouds, the same as the rest of the city. The sun still shone down, and sweat drenched Caesar's body. His lungs heaved in his chest, up and down, but there was no time to stop. The field would finish its ascent in ten minutes, and then...there would be no reason for the man to stay on top of that building, maybe no reason for that application to keep him around. How long would Paige survive with no sunlight, no recycled air? Ten minutes to get that suit.
He went through the first floor of the building like a phantom, noticing nothing. He found the elevator and started upwards. It seemed to stretch forever, that ride to the top. It took probably two minutes, but those two minutes were an eternity. Caesar never had much control over any of this; he had always been playing catch-up, trying to outmaneuver The Genesis, trying to find some way over the insurmountable odds. Now, though, things had moved far past control. So far past insurmountable odds. He wasn't even thinking about how to get to The Genesis any longer. He wasn't thinking about how to bring it down or what might happen when he did. The immediate realities of the world below him usurped any other areas he wanted to concentrate on. Saving those three—that was the only thing that mattered.
Caesar only understood that The Genesis had planned it all. That the world below was engineered. He didn't understand the why. It eluded him like an octopus might, deep in the ocean—shooting out blinding ink, polluting his vision anytime he thought he was close. But the truth was, he had never been close, and the ink he thought he saw was just the blackness of the ocean surrounding him. The truth was, there weren't any calculations he could create that would explain the death, the destruction, the mayhem. Whatever was happening, it wasn't based on any probabilities he could understand. The entire mess went against everything he knew or understood about the world.
The doors in the elevator faded into transparency, allowing him to see through, scattering his thoughts like a bowling ball through pins.
He was there, the man in black. Caesar had never climbed to the roof of a building before, never had a reason to be so high up, but he saw how the man stood underneath the near crushing wind. A digitally created canopy enveloped the roof, much like the one still encircling the city.
The doors parted and Caesar stepped through.
The man was staring up through the field, looking at the larger one spreading across everyone. He didn't bother to check whoever came off the elevator, wasn't interested in him at all, apparently.
Caesar looked up, too, briefly. The field was inches from completing its business. He didn't know how to stop it or if he could. Regardless of how fast he moved, that thing was going to close.
Wind raged at the smaller field, actually bending the digital material, creating what looked like large bubbles on the inside of the dome. The noise with each consecutive blast of wind sounded like someone snapping a stick down on a drum, making the clamor almost deafening.
"HERE IT COMES!" The man in black shouted across the ten feet separating him and Caesar.
"STOP IT!" Caesar screamed back.
"I CAN'T! IT'S TOO LATE TO STOP ANY OF THIS!"
Caesar looked at the man's right hand, and saw that he held a black ball, a shiny thing but without any visible buttons.
The wind stopped its assault and what was deafening noise became deafening silence. Caesar looked up into the sky and saw that the field was complete, no longer two halves, but one whole. His ears rang with the sound of drums. He looked back to the man in black and saw that they now stared at each other.
"You're the man from the apartment complex," the Representative said. "I told it about you, but it didn't want to listen."
"Put the ball down," Caesar said. The man wasn't stable, not by a long shot. His left hand shook, though the one holding the black orb was still. His eyes were red, blood shot like he hadn't slept in days—his face thin and yellow.
"I can't. I have to finish this or it'll kill me."
"Who?"
"Mock. It'll kill you too, if it finds you up here," the Representative said.
"You don't have to do this. I can protect you."
The man laughed, a genuine grin spreading across his face. "You can't protect me, because I don't need protection from Mock. I need protection from myself. That's what is dangerous. It doesn't matter where I go or how far away I get. I'll still be myself."
"What do you mean?" Caesar asked, the words spilling from the man's mouth sounding insane.
"The anti-virus," the man said, smiling. "I took it. I took it because I had to. Because I had to kill those kids and I wasn't going to be able to do it without that pill."
Caesar was looking at the man that destroyed Keke. Her psychosis, her near paralysis, was because of this man. Caesar's mind calculated the pressure Theo held on the black orb, intuitively thinking that pressing on it would cause the field above to turn dark, but the rest of his mind focused on what this man had actually done. All those children dead, all because he gave approval.
"You killed them?" Caesar asked, his jaw twitching.
"Yes. I had them all killed. Every one of them." He stopped smiling. His face warping from glee to something...
And Caesar saw it clearly, what was in the man's face. Hate. For himself. For everything in this world. A hate that filled him, that coursed through his veins, traveling inside the red and white blood cells. Hate that filled his bones, as much a part of them as marrow.
The man's hand flexed, and it didn't matter how fast Caesar could move, he wouldn't have made it. The man's head tilted to the sky and Caesar followed his glance. It was beautiful, what he saw, despite the terror that came with it. Parts of the field blinked with swirls of blackness, with more appearing every few seconds. They amassed across the field, turning the digital landscape darker by the moment. And as the blinks lasted longer, the black spots began taking on a look of permanence.
Caesar stood underneath the dome, and watched as the entire world around him went dark.
* * *
Theo saw no beauty above him. He saw the rightful end to a life destroyed. A man that had lived on his own terms up until he didn't. A man that allowed his own life to take precedence over everything else in the universe. That's what he was, a coward, unable to stand up even for his own soul.
The digital field above him was blinking to life, turning into a force field. Nothing would get through it, maybe not ever. Maybe the people inside here would end up eating the dead, or killing the living so that they could then be eaten. This was the end of it all, of everything that Theo had ever known and he didn't even know why. Didn't know how the man standing before him could exist. Didn't know truly why he had done all of things he had. He only knew that it was over, that this man, for whatever reason was here to stop him.
And that was fine.
That was fucking fine.
Because he could hate Mock for the rest of his life, but the important thing was that he hated himself more. He was finally realizing the feelings that he had shoved away. He could hate himself, and that was the biggest damn relief Theo had ever felt.
The ability to hate what he'd become.
He didn't have to squeeze that black ball, but he did it because he also hated everyone in this city. He hated all of the people that had been just as weak as he. All of them taking those pills and going down this dark hallway together, hand in hand, trusting that they were being led the right way. Trusting that their benevolent overlords would do right by them. They deserved to die, just as he did, and so...
He looked at the man in front of him, the one that could make the world move when he wanted. Theo dropped the dead ball to the ground, knowing that it would never work again. "Go ahead and do what you want." He wasn't smiling because he hated this man too. Because something about this man said he wasn't on Mock's side. That he wasn't on Theo's side. That somehow this man had the internal fortitude to deny the outside world what it wanted, when Theo had acquiesced.
&n
bsp; The man's eyes met his own, moving down from the black sky above them, black in a way Theo had never seen before. The only light in the city now came from the glow of windows and street lamps. None of it filtered down from the sky, no sun, no stars, no moon. They were alone in this place.
"Can it be undone?" The man asked.
"Nothing Mock does can be undone."
The man looked to his feet for a second.
Theo didn't see him move, it was so incredibly quick. He only saw his hands grabbing Theo's own chin and the other reaching around to the back of his head. It was a sharp and blessedly brief pain. Theo thought, I deserved wor—
But then he thought no more.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Manny stood at the edge of the apartment, looking down into the clouds. There was no sign of her. Not a single fucking one. It was like the clouds had swallowed her up, her entire existence, leaving nothing behind for Manny.
And right now, Manny wanted her. He wanted the fucking bitch that had thrown herself from this window. He could still feel her as she rolled out of his grasp, her muscles tightening as he retook control,using her hand to reach out and catch something. But it was too late. He couldn't stop the momentum, and he watched as she tumbled over the side. He had run to the edge, was able to watch as she fell into the clouds, back first, her arms splayed out.
He wanted her because he was going to desecrate her body in a way the world had never seen before.
But that was gone now. Her body was a puddle at best, somewhere down there on the ground. Manny would never have her back.
Was Brandi ever really there? The thought sprang up from the simmering rage consuming his mind. Was she? Or were you just hoping she was?
His eyes went to the couch where the bitch had slept. No. It was Brandi. It was. She was coming back and Paige killed her. I know it. His eyes shifted back to the clouds below the apartment, back and forth, unable to focus on one or the other for longer than a few seconds. He hadn't imagined it. He couldn't have. It was too real—the entire time was too great for it not to have been her. The child in the back room, that was theirs too—that was Dustin.