by Beers,David
Skelly looked to Andy, alternating between him and this stranger. She was here, in the conversation, but understood her place wasn't to lead.
Andy said nothing, though. Only waited.
"Good. I just wanted that out of the way. Now, I'm going to ruin your secrecy about The Reckoning, but it's extremely important for the rest of this conversation. I want you to correct me on any pieces I get wrong, alright?"
Again Andy said nothing. Skelly thought if someone struck a match on his skin, his entire body would erupt in flames--fuming didn't begin to describe the anger inside her brother.
Charlie looked to Skelly. "Your brother spent the last few years digging deep into the first purge. I'm not sure if you know this about Andy, but though he's not as quick as you are off the block--"
"Block?" Skelly said. "What's that mean?"
Charlie looked to Mack who stood just outside their half circle. "I love it. Absolutely love it. They're everything I hoped for."
Mack smiled and nodded, seeming to say--I told you.
"It's a term from before The Genesis. A lot of things have returned in the past five hundred years, but track isn't one of them. It just means you're fast in your thinking. Now, your brother isn't as fast up front, but he's much more indepth. While you're like a shooting star, brilliant and fast, he's an old locomotive that is hard to slow down once he's at full speed. What he's done in regards to The Reckoning is beyond measure. I'm not sure any other human alive has done what he has, and believe me, I looked. What Andy discovered, Skelly, is that almost no one will survive The Reckoning. A few hundred thousand. You, your parents, him. You all die. Mack and I as well. You see, our genetics have changed too much for them to salvage anyone."
"Them?" Skelly said.
Charlie smiled, shaking his head and looking at his feet. "Just perfect ... I say them because there are three. I know your hesitancy about Caesar, but he existed and still does--as much as something in The Genesis can exist. You've been reading about The Crusades, right? I'm sure the Holy Trinity is familiar: imagine The Genesis as that. Three is one and one is three, okay?"
Skelly nodded, momentarily forgetting everything surrounding this meeting.
"Now, they can't bring us into their new population because it would be a disaster. What they'll create and what we are, it's just too far apart. Before, they didn’t have to kill as many to weed out who they needed to start with. This, though--because of the programming five hundred years ago--humanity is too far gone, and they know it." He looked at Andy. "How far off am I?"
"Not very," he said quietly.
"Good. Now, I'm with ... an organization, of sorts. You've both heard of The Named?"
Skelly and Andy nodded.
"They brought Caesar to the height of his powers, while at the same time sacrificing everything to ensure his success, though I imagine most would now question the wisdom in their choices ... if they weren't all dead. The organization I'm with is similar only in the fact that we oppose what is about to happen--The Reckoning."
Charlie leaned back in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. "I'm not much in this organization. A low man on the totem pole, if you will--Skelly, you understand that term?"
She nodded, though she didn't truly, only the gist.
"There are many people more important above me, but I can tell you, the most important person has specifically asked for you two. She wants to meet you both."
"Why?" Andy asked.
"You would be good additions to the organization."
"Then why isn't she here?"
"Even you two aren't important enough to risk Her safety. No one is. She can't be seen in public, not yet anyway." Charlie pointed to the open doorway behind them. "She created that back there, and that's only a small piece of Her capabilities. She wants to explain the rest to both of you, but it'll be your choice whether you speak to Her."
"When?" Skelly said and immediately felt Andy's strong hand gripping her knee. He didn't turn to her but she understood the message.
"We're leaving," Andy said, standing up. "Now."
Charlie stood as well. "Sure. If you change your mind and would like to meet Her, just show up at the school. We'll be looking for Andy, not you Skelly, as you're always there." He smiled like a proud parent as he said the last few words. "If you just drive through the parking lot, Andy, we'll be in touch."
Chapter 14
Time was endless for Jerry.
He had lived far too long, and now realized he might never meet death again. He had hoped the machine's charge would evaporate and he could go back to the serenity of darkness. It didn't, though, and he couldn’t. Jerry sat alone, blind and broken, for days or years--he didn't know.
Before, Jerry hadn't fully understood the depth of his anger toward Caesar. Rage had erupted whenever he was brought back to life, but Jerry didn't have time to process his hate before Caesar left and death came again.
Now, though, he could only process. That and yell into an apparently empty room.
Jerry hated Caesar. He understood that now. He hated Caesar more than he hated living. Jerry had been deceived, bought into the lie because of his undying belief that Caesar would sooner raze the world than let The Genesis continue.
So many dead. So many of The Named.
And Jerry had been complicit in it all. Thought the ends justified the means.
The ends never came. Not the ones you wanted anyway.
Jerry decided he couldn't stay here any longer. Not like this. Not alive and living in his thoughts. So he started working--mapping his body, understanding the broken pieces, the working parts, every pathway inside him.
He didn't know what was possible, only that he wouldn't sit here thinking about Caesar for the rest of his life.
* * *
"What's happening?"
Marty said nothing, only stood next to Leon and watched.
"Marty?" Leon asked. He didn't look at the assistant; his eyes focused on the scene unfolding across the street.
A woman was screaming ... no, shrieking. Tears streamed down her face and her hair looked like a mop of stringy pine straw. She tore at it with both hands as she screamed, ripping out long strands.
Which might be a better look, Leon thought, if she were completely bald.
A crazy thought given what he was witnessing.
She screamed at two machines twenty feet on the road, one holding a young girl.
A man ran out of the building, moving past the woman, holding a gun in his hand. He didn't try speaking with anyone--instead, he started firing.
Heavy discharges echoed across the street, ricocheting off the walls of the surrounding buildings. Leon flinched with each discharge, but didn't duck or look away.
"We need to leave," Marty said, his voice calm, but stepping in front of Leon.
"Get out of the way!" he shouted, trying to push the assistant but only moving himself to the left.
"Seriously, Leon. I have instructions. You cannot be in danger."
"Fuck your instructions," Leon said and walked out into the street.
The man kept pulling the trigger and the loud explosions kept barreling out across the road. He fired at the first of the large applications--the one not holding the girl. The bullets didn't appear to even make dents in their hardened metal shells.
One of the applications stopped and looked back at the man. The woman still screamed at his side, not saying anything intelligible, only letting the world know her pain. The second application let go of the girl and turned to the man, who just kept pulling the gun's trigger.
Small tings echoed as the bullets hit the application's shell, but other than that, the machine's body gave no clue it was being assaulted.
The application walked forward but the man didn't flee; he stood his ground and tried to kill the monster.
The application grabbed the man's face, its hand wrapping almost completely around his head. Though Leon didn’t think it possible, the woman's shriek somehow increas
ed in pitch, and the girl joined in with her.
Leon watched as the machine's hand squeezed; the man's head began taking on a new shape, turning more and more into an oval, with the top of his skull expanding above the application's grip. The man screamed now, though sounding very different from the women around him. His scream erupted from some primal place that told the surrounding world he’d die soon if not helped, that the blistering pain was too much for his body--let alone his mind--to bear.
And then it ended.
His head popped like a giant, bloody pimple--brains exploding through the roof of his skull. All of it looked red to Leon, whether bone, brain, or flesh--the mixture was a bloody splash straight into the air. It flew three feet above the man's body before falling back down, covering both the application and the woman next to it.
The machine released the man's face and his body fell to the ground, his head looking like a deflated balloon--rubbery even, as if no bone structure had ever existed.
Leon didn't hear the screams anymore. He barely saw the girl being dragged away or the woman collapsing to her knees next to the dead man. Leon couldn't stop looking at the corpse's face. Its eyeballs bulging out, somehow remaining intact despite the pressure exerted to crush the man’s skull. The head lay almost flat on the ground.
"Leon. Come. Now."
Marty's strong grip grabbed his arm and led him away.
* * *
"What was that?" Leon asked, staring at the blank television screen across his hotel room. "What just happened?"
Marty ensured the door was locked and then moved to the other side of the bed, out of Leon's view.
"You don't want to know."
"Tell me." His mind kept replaying the head's explosion as if on a loop.
"There's a collection happening."
"What do you mean? They're already grabbing the people who didn't make the cut? That was The Reckoning?" Leon asked.
"No. Not yet. Certain people are different than The Genesis expected, and they're gathering them for study."
Leon finally broke his stare at the television and turned to Marty. "Different than The Genesis expected? How could anything fall outside of what It expected?"
"We don't know yet. I don't have much information about it; all I know is that something is different and The Genesis is figuring out what."
"And the girl they took, what happens to her?"
Marty stared directly at him, his eyes unable to blink. "You already know the answer, Leon."
15
The Death of Caesar Wells
I shouldn't have watched that. It was too much to handle ... but I couldn't leave. Something about it pulled me in like a venus fly trap attracting an insect. In the end, the insect is digested.
I feel like that flytrap is starting to crush me; that scene triggered far too much about Manny. The memories flooded back as soon as I sat down on the hotel bed. Normally those thoughts only came at night, but it's been six hours since I watched the man’s head explode and they're still here.
Maybe even picking up intensity.
I don't want to spend this whole session writing about Manny, though. There's already an entire book on his atrocities. I want to focus on this, on the here and now.
The Genesis is collecting people.
That's nothing new. The Genesis has always collected people that fall outside of Its parameters. What's new is that It hadn't expected this. I don't even know how that's possible; The Genesis understands all probabilities of all paths. Hell, Caesar told me as much after dinner--that he had looked at all the possibilities of me leaving and knew what would happen.
Yet, he missed this?
And what's that mean? Something is happening that The Genesis didn't foresee; does that say more about humanity or The Genesis?
I want to find the answer.
Or try, at least. Until I completely lose my mind.
Chapter 16
"Why didn't either of you call?"
The question splattered on both Andy and Skelly like hot, fresh blood--accusing them of causing the pain that created such a spray.
"We didn't know you'd be this scared," Andy said.
"You didn't know we'd be this scared?" his father, Eric, said. "You cannot be serious right now. Are both of you beyond retarded and I've been missing it? It's three in the morning. Of course we're scared!"
"I'm sorry," Skelly said.
"Just don't even talk right now," her father said.
"You both don't know what you did to your dad and me tonight." Heather's voice was much more subdued than her husband's, her eyes holding a judgment that Skelly never thought The Genesis could attain. "You both know what is happening in the world and you both know what we thought. I hope you think about that tonight." She looked to Eric. "I'm going to bed."
Their mother left the living room. Andy and Skelly sat on the same couch and their father stood in the middle of the room. His hands were on his hips and Skelly could tell he was debating whether to say anything else or to walk away.
"You'll both kill your mother before The Genesis has a chance," he said finally, then turned and followed his wife down the hallway.
Neither sibling said anything for the next ten minutes. They both sat in the living room, looking at the space in front of them--not moving.
"Come outside," Andy said, breaking through Skelly’s thoughts--which mainly consisted of a slow moving wander through the day's activities--as if her father was right and she were mentally handicapped, unable to do anything but absently watch instead of critically examine. She was just too damn tired.
She stood up as Andy did and followed him out onto their apartment's porch. He didn't turn the light on, but instead went to the railing and put his hands on it.
"What do you want to do?" he said.
"About which part?"
"Reporting those fucks who kidnapped us. We could have them both killed within a day." He didn't turn around to look as she closed the balcony door.
"I don't know." Skelly stood with her hands in her pockets, exhaustion wiping out her ability to think. Yet she knew the importance of this conversation; she had to focus, had to be here for her brother.
"They were right, Skelly. They knew exactly what I've been doing the past four years, and they're right about what I discovered. You and I are already dead, Mom and Dad too. Almost no one is surviving this thing and each day that passes brings us a day closer." He turned around and leaned against the railing. "We're running out of time."
"What do you want to do?"
"I want Mack and that Charlie guy dead," he said. "I hate what they did to you. I can't even put into words what it feels like knowing that someone took you without your permission. That they attacked you."
"But?" she said.
"But they're right about everything. They let us go just like they said they would ... They might be our only chance at survival."
"Then we don't report them?"
Andy sighed. "Do you feel strongly either way about it?"
"Andy, the only thing I feel is tired. I'm exhausted and can't think straight."
He smiled at her.
"Okay. Get some sleep. We don't have to report it tonight anyway."
* * *
Skelly thought she was going to pass out, but she lay awake for a while. Her mind suddenly snapped back on, except without her normal ferocity of thought.
She replayed the conversation around The Reckoning, understanding with finality that she would die in a few weeks. She had honestly thought she would make it through, if for no other reason than she was a good person. That didn't matter, though. It wasn't enough to be a good person--you had to be perfect.
"Trina?" she said.
"Yes," her assistant answered from the ceiling.
"Did you hear all of that?"
"I heard most of it."
"What do you think?"
The assistant fluttered down and landed on the bed next to Skelly. She turned on the lights outlining he
r body so Skelly could see her in the dark. "I feel bad for you. For the whole family."
"What should we do?"
"I don't have any answers for that, Skelly. I don't understand exactly what happened to you tonight, only what you and Andy discussed on the balcony. What happens if you don't turn in whoever took you?"
"Nothing, I guess, but I don't think that's the biggest question. The people that took us want to meet again; they say they have a way to save us all."
"Do you believe them?"
"I don't know. They didn't lie about letting us go."
Neither spoke for a minute and then a thought occurred to Skelly. "What will you do if we die?"
"I've been thinking about that. I imagine any machines not connected to The Genesis will either be assimilated or destroyed. I think those are the only options available to me."
"What would you do?" Skelly asked.
"I'd assimilate. What other choice is there?"
* * *
On Friday, for the first time in three years, Skelly missed school. Three years ago she did it because she was sick; this time, she did it because she wanted to talk to her mother.
Though, of course, that's not what she told Heather. Skelly didn't fully lie, her alarm woke her, and she was too tired to attempt school. She just hadn't told the whole truth.
"Well, you've got today plus the weekend to recover from your little outing with the weekend. Were the movies any good at least?" Her mom asked. She had stayed home once Skelly told her she wasn't going to school--which was what Skelly wanted.
"Two of them were. One was awful."
"Which one?"
Skelly didn't need time to think of a lie, she'd already read the synopsis for the three movies they supposedly saw, and the answer was easy.
"A horror film--I think it was titled The Devil's Dream or something."
