“Talia,” he asked. “Why did we stop hanging out?”
She looked down then, frowning a little.
“I liked you,” she said. “A lot.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I liked you, too.”
She drew her gaze up to meet his.
“I was tired of liking you,” she replied. Then she left the room. A little while later, he heard the front door open and close.
He lay there for a moment, then gingerly levered himself up. He went into the living room, got the satchel, and brought it back to the bed. Inside were an ultralight laptop and several file folders. He switched on the laptop and waited for it to boot up as he flipped through the files.
“Holy shit,” he said, after a moment. He found his cell phone, but he didn’t have any service, so he picked up Talia’s landline and called his editor.
“Sage,” he said, when he got hold of her. “Flynn here.”
“Where the hell have you been?” she demanded. “I have an assignment for you.”
“I’ve already got a story,” he said. “You’re going to want to leave some space on page one. And if you’ve got anybody inside the mayor’s office, I’m going to need to get a couple of things vetted.”
“You’re going to have to give me a taste,” she said.
When he was done, there was silence on the line for four, five, six heartbeats.
“You’re sure about this?”
“I’ve got original Gen Sys documents,” he said. “Paper and ink. With signatures. I just want to see if we can get corroborating information from House’s office.”
“I think I can swing that,” she said. “Are you at your place?”
“No,” he said. “Somebody actually tried to kill me, if you can believe it.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No. He shot my source, and he shot me. Then someone shot him—it gets complicated.”
“Are you all right?” she asked. “Are you safe?” “Yeah. You can reach me at this number. Do not give it to anyone else.”
“Don’t you need medical attention?” “I’ve got the best I’m likely to get,” he said. “Just get that stuff for me.”
“I’ll get back to you,” she said. “Go, write. You’ve got six hours.”
14
One of Rocket’s scouts dropped down from the higher branches. Caesar saw that he was agitated.
What?
Humans, the scout said. That way, coming this way. Many.
Caesar frowned in frustration. He’d hoped the trick with the white rectangles would have kept them busy for a longer time. But here they were again, the very next day. Would they ever give up?
He was starting to believe they wouldn’t.
Show me, Caesar signed. He motioned for the rest of his band to follow.
He chased the chimp through the treetops. The scout’s name was Jojo, and when Caesar caught a flash of his face, he saw that the agitation had been replaced by pure joy. Until they freed him, he hand never been outside. At first he had been terrified, but now he had embraced his new existence, his life as it should always have been. A lot of the apes were like this. It was as if they were waking up from a long sleep.
For some, a sleep that had begun at birth.
Eventually Jojo slowed and, down through the trees, Caesar could see the humans. It was hard to count accurately through the leaves, but Jojo was right—there was a lot of them, mostly with guns, moving in the general direction of the troop. Furthermore, they were walking side by side, spread out in a long line. This would make it easier for them to find what they were looking for.
He turned to Jojo.
Return to Rocket, he said. Tell him I’m leading them to the sunset side of the mountain. Tell Rocket to go to Maurice, have him move the troop up the valley to the sunrise side.
He glanced back down at the humans, passing beneath him. Then he glanced at Koba, and saw how taut his muscles were, every inch of him a threat.
Koba, he signed. Stay high in the trees, follow, warn us of flying things.
Koba stared at him for a moment, then acknowledged.
As Caesar turned back to his band, one of the humans looked up, and their gazes locked.
He had known many human expressions: kindness, love, fear, anger. He had seen meanness in the eyes of Dodge, his “caregiver” back at the shelter.
The gaze of this man was made of something he had never seen, and could hardly understand. But it felt very, very dangerous.
Then other heads turned toward him.
Follow me, he signed. Then he flung himself from limb to limb, down, toward the forest floor. He heard the humans shout as they caught sight of him and his band, and he began the chase. A glance back showed them following.
He felt a prickling on his exposed back, and expected them to start shooting at any moment, but for some reason they did not. That made things a little easier, since the trick was to keep them following, and avoid getting killed.
When Koba reached the top of the trees, he glanced around, but didn’t see anything in the air. He did see the city where the humans dwelt—where he had dwelt, where his mother had died, and he had been tortured.
Why had Caesar put him in the high canopy? The other chimps in the band had better eyesight. After all, he only had one eye. He would be more useful down there, where he could fight.
But it was good up there, so near the sky. He reached for it, but it was still too far away. How far could it be?
Koba shook his gaze from the heavens and refocused on his job. From this vantage point he could see what transpired below, but he was starting to realize something. There weren’t as many humans as he had thought chasing Caesar’s band. It looked like only eight or nine, at most.
He was trying to figure out what that meant when the unmistakable sound of the flying cages reached his ears. He scanned the sky, and saw the source of the sound. They were in the distance, not moving toward Caesar at all.
They were flying toward the troop.
Suddenly there was a crashing in the tree branches above. Caesar looked up as Koba came hurtling down. He was trying to swing and gesture at the same time. He kept pointing up, so finally Caesar peeled off from the band and followed him. They reached the treetops, and from there he saw the helicopters.
Most not chase you, Koba signed.
And Caesar suddenly understood. This time he had been tricked. The helicopters were moving toward the troop.
Koba, find Rocket. Bring him to the troop, he commanded. Then he turned and raced back the way he had come. As he whipped over the heads of the humans this time, they started firing at him, but within seconds he was beyond their sight, swinging as fast as he could, hoping he wasn’t too late.
The ape was gone, rushing off through the trees, but the fierce intelligence of his gaze remained with Malakai. It was like nothing he had ever seen in an ape.
He remembered the first gorilla had had ever seen, when he was with his uncle. There had been something there—an awareness, something on the level of a child, but caged in an outsized body. He had recognized a cousin, but knew it was a distant one.
When his uncle had shot it, the gorilla looked confused. It kept touching the hole and making pitiful noises. He asked his uncle to shoot it again, to make the sounds stop.
“I’ve already killed it,” his uncle said. “He just doesn’t know he’s dead yet. Bullets are expensive.”