Well, I didn't expect this to happen. It was originally going to just be a oneshot the way I left it, but then ideas kept coming, so I had to write them down and it kind of turned into a full-fledged plot. Big thanks to BeetZel for helping me out with getting things organized :)

Sorry the first chapter is so short, but this is mostly just to see the kind of response it gets and warming up for longer chapters if you want to see more ;)

xxxx

I wasn't sure what to think. The only thing I could do was stare down at the limp, red-stained form in my arms. What just happened? Had it just been a terrible dream? I was definitely awake, or at least I thought I was.

The night air swept past, a cool breeze following along with it. I gripped the body in my arms tighter, willing it—him to wake up again. He couldn't be gone!

Deep down, I knew none of it had been a dream. Caesar had somehow escaped out of the sanctuary, and he spoke—he actually spoke.

I'd been able to create a drug that had almost cured alzheimer's, but I could never come up with something like that in my own head.

"Do not test the virus again on Koba. The human race will pay a heavy price," he'd said. What did it mean? Obviously something bad, but it was a lot to process. How did he even know who Koba was, a bonobo who had never even seen the outside of the lab?

It suddenly felt like thousand-pound weights had been dropped onto my shoulders. Caesar had said that he'd come from the future—a future where the ALZ-113 virus had become deadly, causing sickness and death instead of hope and a cure. I said I believed him—and I did. There was no other explanation for how he'd returned from the shelter, how he'd grown bigger or how he knew Koba, nor how he could talk of all things.

Time travel existed, and I was the first human being to discover it. Caesar had been the first time traveler; the thought just made my head hurt. I looked carefully over his bloody wound, a wound that he had received in the future. He'd been fine while I had talked to him in the kitchen, but then...the wound had come back? I leaned towards the theory that no matter if someone was saved in another timeline, time itself would find a way to make sure whatever had happened repeated itself until the victim was gone for good.

"...Will?" A voice broke the silence. I didn't have to turn around to see that it was Caroline.

"Is that...Caesar?" She gasped.

I lowered my head, letting out a long sigh.

"Yes," I answered without hesitation. It wasn't like I had any other explanation, and it was clear who I was holding in my arms.

"How did he...how is he...?"

Get out of the sanctuary? How was he bigger than before, and how had he gotten hurt with an arrow punctured so deep into his side there was nothing we could do? Caesar had explained that something in the future caused it, but what exactly? I wasn't sure I wanted to find out.

"I don't know, Caroline," I answered again.

"Is he..." she whispered, moving to kneel down next to me. She eyed his arrow wound, eyes wide with just as much sorrow as there was confusion.

"Yes. It's too late." Too late. It was too late to save the only son I'd ever had—the son I'd raised as my own after saving him from the lab.

She cupped her hands over her mouth. Her eyes shone in the dark, bright with tears. Just a few days ago, we'd dropped him off at the ape sanctuary. Now he was here laying still in my arms, his own eyes far away and unseeing. I could tell she wanted an explanation just as much as I did.

"I heard something, so I went to see what it was, and then I saw him. He was in the kitchen...trying to get a cookie. Then he saw me...and spoke."

"What?"

If I were her, I'd want to double check if I'd heard things right, too.

"He spoke, Caroline," I repeated firmly. "And what's even more unbelievable is that he said he came from the future. He said the 113 is going to destroy us."

She narrowed her eyes; she didn't believe me. I didn't believe me, either. I didn't want to believe that the cure I'd been working so long and hard on was going to be a failure if it was all true—the complete opposite of making history, and Jacobs making money like our plan had always been.

"Are you sure it wasn't just a dream?"

No, it definitely wasn't a dream. I pinched myself just to be sure, and I could feel the sharp sensation. Feeling any kind of sensations such as pain in a dream was rare, which only confirmed the impossible.

"I'm pretty sure I can tell the difference between being awake and dreaming," I settled with. Right?

She shook her head. "It's all...it's just...impossible."

It was also impossible for an ape to grow and develop the way Caesar had, becoming faster and smarter each day, no matter if he'd had help from a virus that was passed down from his mother. It was once impossible to even think about creating a cure for a disease that was thought to be incurable.

"He said he had kids in the future," I continued slowly. With each passing word, it was beginning to become just the slightest bit more believable in the way Caesar had described everything. "Blue Eyes and Cornelius. If he decided to save us instead of trying to have children again, something bad must have happened to them he wanted to prevent."

The sun was just beginning to peek behind the houses across the street. "He called me their grandfather, Caroline. Remember that day in the woods when he asked who his father was? He said I..."

I stopped myself, bringing Caesar closer to my chest in a protective motion as if something was going to hurt him again.

"What are we going to do?" Caroline questioned in a resolved kind of tone. She was finally beginning to believe it all herself. There was just no way I could make all of it up in one night.

"He gave us a second chance to make things right; we can't let everything he worked so hard for go to waste."

It was dangerous to mess with things we didn't understand, and I was starting to see that now with ALZ-113 thanks to Caesar and what he'd told me. But time travel was something else entirely, and if all the theories and cliches in time travel films were correct, then time would always try to right itself and go back to the way things were before. It was most likely that no matter what I did or attempted, humankind was still going to pay the price of my own mistake.

But I had to try.

"He wants me to stop the testing at the lab. He wants me to free the other apes."

Caroline squeezed my shoulder softly. I moved a hand gently over Caesar's face to close his once bright and green eyes that were now so dim and lifeless, my heart clenching in despair and my brain working into overdrive to honor his wishes.

"So that's what I'm going to do."