by David Beers
The tears fell like snow in an avalanche, not caring what they hit and unstoppable. They rolled down Leon's face and dove to the floor beneath. Leon reached his hand out as far as he could and touched Jerry's shoe. His head hit the floor and he sobbed into it, snot and spit pouring from him.
Everyone he came here with, all were dead. Everyone he knew, all dead. He was alone in this hellish apartment, the last one of his group. He looked back to the broken window, understanding that he would take the same route as Paige, understanding it with a religious conviction. He turned away from Jerry and looked at the last twenty feet of his life. Once he was at that window, he could join the two that entered this apartment with him, either in some kind of heaven or, more probably, an eternal darkness. Both were fine. Both were perfectly fucking fine.
Leon started crawling again, dragging his destroyed body back across the shards of glass that had just tasted him.
A little further, he thought. A little further. A little further. A little further.
"You finally made it?"
The voice boomed from behind him, Manny's. Leon jumped with a strength he didn't know he still possessed, turning his head to see what the monster was about to do.
No one was there.
"Where are they?" The Genesis and all its Holy Disciples, that was Caesar's voice. Without a doubt, without any question, Caesar had just spoken, and to Manny. The voices were coming from the back room, but that wasn't possible. That didn't make any sense. Manny had just left through the front of the apartment, and there was no goddamn way he came back in without Theo knowing.
And then he understood.
Holograms were speaking from the back bedroom. Which meant Caesar was here, in this building. Caesar had come for them. Caesar had finally come to save them. Leon looked at the broken window, ten feet from him now.
Caesar had come.
Everyone was dead.
Everyone but Leon.
He looked behind him to the door of the apartment.
Go, he thought. One more time, go to Caesar.
* * *
"Where are they?" Caesar asked.
People were streaming out of the elevator, every time it stopped, another twenty got off. People were even running down the stairs now, flowing out of the doors to Caesar's left and right. The entire lobby filling at a rate Caesar didn't know if he could control. He didn't care either. If Caesar died here, then everyone else would too.
He took care of those coming from the elevators fairly easily, twisting the same weapons implanted into the walls of the lobby, blasting holes in the animals with tiny, tiny pebbles. He felt the machines trying to turn back, trying to fire at him—they knew him as the enemy and they wanted him dead. He held on though, blasting out thousands of those little balls at skull piercing speeds.
The ones coming from the stairwell, those would be the problem. He would lose control of them, because they weren't a pack leaving the elevator all at once. They came constantly. And even though he kept the weapons focused on the two doors, people dropping like sacks of flour, but some were getting through. Some still came.
"They? Who do you mean?" Manny asked.
Here, stay here. He is what matters, because when he's dead, you go upstairs and you get the rest.
"Where are they, Manny?"
"I'm afraid there isn't a they anymore, to be honest. The they has been dwindled down to just a he."
Caesar swallowed and his teeth ground together involuntarily. Dwindled down to just a he? No. No, that wasn't what Manny said. Caesar must have misunderstood because of all the people, all the damned people running around here were distracting him. There was a they, without any doubt.
"You see, Paige turned out to be a real bitch, if I can speak candidly with you."
Caesar heard the pellets leaving the guns around him in the thousands. He heard people screaming as they fell. He even heard their bodies hitting the floor. He knew, vaguely, that the crowd was getting closer, that he was losing control—that they were a foot closer than five minutes ago. He heard and knew all of that, and yet he focused only on Manny's phrase.
A real bitch.
"She tricked me, Caesar." The bastard smiled, that same grin that said there were no consequences for actions, not in this life or any other, because no one would look like that if they believed judgment waited. "She made me think she was someone she wasn't. The thing is, I would have found out eventually. And then she would have hurt. But now, thinking back, I guess she hurt plenty. I fucked her a good fifty or sixty times, Caesar."
Blood pushed up into Caesar's cheeks while rage pushed down from his brain. Not yet a blind rage, but getting close, and if he lost it, at least some part of him knew he would no longer control the hundreds of people racing down. Only Manny would exist.
Not yet. He hasn't told you anything.
"Where is she?" Caesar asked, his words measured.
"Oh, I thought I said it. She's dead, Caesar. She jumped out of your parents' window yesterday. Hell, some of the people you met outside were probably standing on her remains."
Hot tears filled Caesar's eyes, coming immediately, as if his brain needed no more information, his heart breaking the moment Manny finished the word dead.
"No," he whispered, but despite all the noise in the lobby, the word found its way to Manny, and his grin widened, however impossible it seemed.
"Yes, sir. She said something nasty and then tried to fly like a bird. She fell like a rock, instead. She wasn't the brightest, was she? Don't worry—I left you Leon. Jerry, he wasn't in very good shape anyway, so I went ahead and let him die. A thousand years is a good life, wouldn't you say?"
And then, everything Caesar knew, or had ever known, ceased mattering. The people closing in, still dying in massive numbers, but getting closer with each passing minute, didn't matter. The weapons looking to shoot him didn't matter. His parents, Paige, Leon, Jerry, The Genesis—none of them mattered. His mind became murder, and he was finally closer to Manny than he ever imagined.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Life of Caesar Wells
No one noticed the scarred, burnt, bleeding man in the elevator. I thought they would kill me when I stepped aboard, that they would end my life before continuing their downward journey. Everyone in the building seemed to be heading in the same direction, all of us moving to the lobby. Now I know why they went, they wanted Caesar. They were going to kill him while I was going to see him. To cast eyes on him one more time.
The elevator ride was silent, everyone else holding a weapon, though I wasn't sure I could have held one if I tried. I leaned against the side of the elevator just to keep standing. No one looked at me; no one cared.
The doors opened and everyone blitzed out, almost as if they were a hive mind. I watched as the first five fell immediately to the ground across a mass of dead bodies. The rest streaked forward, bullets hitting some of them, but not all, some were heading toward the middle of the lobby, and then I lost sight of them.
I stepped forward gingerly, realizing that whatever killed those five would probably kill me the moment I walked out. I wasn't going to stay here though; I wasn't going back upstairs under any condition. I stuck my head out, but the weapons that had focused on this area were following others, trying to mow people down.
I walked out, low, hugging the wall, until I stood directly behind a bullet riddled pillar. And from there, I watched the end of my world.
Caesar and Manny stood in the middle, a group of hundreds surrounding them. I could see some of the weapons from where I stood, and they looked... confused. They would fire into the crowd, dropping tens at once, and then some would look to the middle of that circled crowd—to Caesar and Manny. They didn't shoot, not quite yet, but it looked to me like they were thinking, considering whether or not to fire on those two men as well.
I couldn't hear what Manny said, it was lost in the noise of the screaming, the dying, and those killing each other. The very people that had rode do
wn together on the elevator were now hacking at each other, clawing each other's faces, turning on one another like rabid dogs. Caesar was controlling it all, every bit, though I didn't know that then. To me, it was all just madness, just a fitting end to all our goddamn lives.
Caesar leapt, and as he did, the people clawing and killing one another—for a brief second—stopped what they were doing. All of them turned, almost immediately, to the two men in the center, all of them focusing once more on killing the man that shouldn’t be here: Caesar.
Manny caught Caesar in midair, grabbing him by the waist and using his momentum to slam him into the floor. The marble cracked, sending up dust and fragments into the air. Manny was on top of him, his fist in the air, when Caesar kicked with both legs—sending Manny across the lobby, flying backwards, unable to stop.
Caesar climbed to his feet, and just as people behind him reached to grab him—finally making it to their goal—he turned them on each other, and they started ripping at one another again. Caesar jumped forward, crossing twenty feet in less than a second, one leap into the air, almost like he was flying. Manny was getting back up when Caesar caught him with a hard right across his face. Manny's head whipped back with enough force to break someone else's neck. Another punch, and then another.
The weapons weren't confused anymore, not as Caesar pounded on Manny's smiling face, blood spurting out in a mist like from a spray bottle. The weapons fired, tearing up the ground beneath Caesar, the tiny pellets hitting both him and Manny. Hundreds, maybe thousands, all colliding with his skin and sinking into the metal beneath. The crowd trying to fall upon both of them was forced back, unable to venture any closer or the bullets would wreck their bodies as it did the men they circled around.
Caesar grabbed Manny by his shoulders and swung him in a large arc, throwing him back the way they had just come. As soon as Manny's body was in the air, the weapons switched back, firing now at the people within three feet of Caesar. The black suit he wore, the one with the peace symbol on the chest, was in tatters. Blood leaked out every part of him, from his face to his feet, I could see the holes—small, glaring things, like tiny eyes looking out onto the world.
Manny, again climbed to his feet as Caesar walked toward him. Slow this time, breathing heavy, the weapons and people around him killing one another with brutal efficiency. Manny didn't wait, rushing forward with his head down and his arms in front of him, sacking Caesar with so much force that both rose off the ground. Caesar landed on his back once more, and Manny's fists started raining down on him like gods from the sky. The guns switched back, focusing again on the two in the middle of the room, hitting Manny and Caesar with equal ferocity.
A bullet pierced Manny's eye, but he didn't stop. He didn't even stop grinning, his mouth full of dark holes where his teeth had once been, blood pouring out onto his chin.
The crowd, the hundreds of people that hadn't died yet, inched forward, coming closer and closer as Manny pounded down. Caesar on his back, weakly slugging back. Hitting Manny over and over, his own face whipping back to the floor every time Manny struck him.
Someone shoved someone, and a person from the edge of the crowd flew forward at both men, the tiny pellets ripping her apart. That was all the crowd needed though; the rest came, the mass—all of them falling on Caesar and Manny like a pride of lions on a gazelle.
Chapter Thirty
It's time.
The two entities looked on at their massacre, seeing everything, although in a different light than Leon.
Yes. Go on. Stop it.
Chapter Thirty-One
Caesar only knew his head was exploding, repeatedly. Each time Manny's fist connected, bright, white lights that shouldn't be inside his mind flared with a criminal obnoxiousness. His own right arm kept moving, he wouldn't let it stop, although he couldn't see what he was hitting. He kept swinging upwards, finding something each time.
It was over. Despite the explosions in his head, a certain calm fell over him. All of this, all of his struggle would end any moment. He felt the never ending barrage of bullets entering him, denting the metal beneath his skin, not quite making it to the vital organs beneath—but that wouldn't matter soon. The blood loss by itself would kill him, if Manny's fist didn't break his skull first.
The first group of people that raged forward tackled Manny, and Caesar felt him lifted up, a momentary respite from the punishment being dealt. It was only a moment though, nothing more. The next group fell on him, and as he saw their twisted faces, the spit and blood dripping from their mouths, he welcomed them all. Not with joy, but a vicious hate. He hated them as much as they him, and when they finished with his body, they would turn on each other, this entire lobby filling with their blood, and that was the only justice fit for this world.
He watched as they started stabbing, briefly, and then blackness consumed Caesar Wells.
* * *
The light pierced through everything. The blackness, the people, the noise—everything, like heaven opening up, pouring down its righteousness. It came from a single source, a single point somewhere high above the fray on the floor. It shot straight down, a lone light that held a brightness never before seen. From that point, it spread rapidly, taking over the entire lobby, and everyone it touched, dead or alive, rose into the air. The living, the ones doing everything within their power to kill the two people in the middle, froze—their faces in snarls and even the blood dripping from their open wounds stopped flowing.
Moving quickly, the entirety of the room stopped, everyone rising into the air like statues, leaving a bloody floor and Caesar lying in the middle of it. His body was still and his eyes closed. Tiny metal spiders ran out from opening holes in the floor, fifty to a hundred of them, all heading for the person in the center of the room, the only one not in the air. The Genesis had filled each of them with an intricate knowledge of his DNA, a knowledge of how to jump start his specific life, and no other. They crowded on top of him, each one sticking their needle-like legs inside his body. They thought nothing of causing pain or damaging this man. They had one purpose, to savehis life.
Their round white bodies began crackling all at once, a sound that echoed across the now silent lobby. Their legs straightened and the material they carried inside their globe centers shot down through their legs and into Caesar. His body stiffened, his limbs stretched out, his fingers twitched like a shaking drug addict.
Caesar opened his eyes.
* * *
Caesar saw them, all of those frightening things that had climbed on him.
He couldn't think though, couldn't fully understand what he was looking at, because it felt like his brain had been set afire. Not in a painful sense, but only that there was too much activity between his synapses to consider anything outside of his mind.
They crept off him slowly, almost reverently. They didn't speed back to the still open holes, but stood around Caesar, as if watching him though they had no eyes.
Caesar's limbs loosened though his brain didn't quiet any.
Enlightenment.
The word swam to the top of his consciousness, coming from the black depths beneath. He didn't push it away, didn't truly worry about it, both because it accurately described what he felt, but also because there was no need to push anything away, ever.
His eyes focused above him, and he saw the crowd, four hundred and fifty two people hovering sixty feet above his body. He didn't need to count them, this wasn't the chip doing its thing; he just knew. Caesar pushed himself up with his arms and looked down at his body. A complete wreck. Innumerable holes, blood stained clothes, tattered flesh. He felt no pain, though. He felt no real connection with his body, like it was a wrecked piece of furniture, one that he didn't know nor had ever owned.
He stood up, careful not to slip on the blood beneath him. He looked around the room, the entire place bare except for the blood painted on the floor.
"What is this?" He said, knowing that two entities were with him, knowing tha
t he was connected to them in a way that he had never connected with anyone.
"Caesar, you finally made it."
The voice came from one of the bodies above, but Caesar knew who it was—Leon, or what was left of him. He watched as Leon righted from his position inside the light, and then lowered to the floor. Leon's body only looked slightly better than his own, and Caesar felt a twinge of emotion pull at him. The man was desecrated, torn apart in savage, savage ways. He didn't need to search for what happened; he knew because the other entities knew.
Leon walked over to Caesar, his feet bare, but no longer dripping blood. His ears were gone, a few fingers, and large scars traveled across the top of his forehead. Manny tried to peel his face off, the thought came to Caesar, calm and collected.
"I wasn't completely sure you would," came another voice to his right. Manny's body, standing upright, but filled with the second entity. "To be honest, I wasn't completely sure the path we created was the correct one."
"He doesn't think anything I do is right," Leon said, the three of them now standing in a circle.
"You're The Genesis," Caesar said. "It was two, not one."
"Yes, two entities, because one mind—no matter how powerful—shouldn’t make all decisions by itself," Manny said.
"No one knew," Caesar said.
"Yes, because the second one," Leon pointed to Manny, "was created after. It came from me. My offspring, but at the same time, myself. Our connection is unbroken, always. Its mind is my mind, and my mind its. But you know all that, don't you?"
Caesar did. He knew it because his mind was theirs and theirs his. Because what those spiders sent into him connected his consciousness with theirs. Because those spiders made him a part of The Genesis.
"Walk with us for a second," Manny said, and took a step to his left, his hand reaching out, asking Caesar to follow. Both Leon and Caesar moved forward, with Leon walking step by step next to Caesar. They walked across the blood smeared floor and headed toward the front doors, exiting to the area where Caesar had ended so many lives with basically one thought. Dozens of applications hovered in the street, all of them shining bright lights to the road below. Shining lights on the bodies that Caesar left out here when he went inside.