Caesar supervised the work being done by the slaves at the plant and finally had been satisfied. The power would be turned on that part of the city within the day though the humans looked nearly dead on their feet.

No matter, they had served their purpose. The world no longer had a place for them except to work until they dropped dead. He'd asked Armando to increase their food to increase their work productivity until the power grid had been fixed but they could be transferred back to their cages and if they survived then in a day or two they could work on repairing the main lines so that water could be restored.

He'd learned through reading and observation that restoring a civilization's infrastructure would strengthen that society or any that replaced it. But the people who had those skills had died off for the most part.

He signed to Armando to power up the generators by the end of the day and see if it worked, then they could wait until tomorrow to begin on the water side. He'd sent Alisa out to the grocery stores which had been stripped bare of almost everything in the final frantic days of the plague.

People had been urged not to go out in public at all, since the killer virus had been airborne, tracing back to an outbreak in San Francisco. But it had spread like wildfire thanks to air traffic. They'd have to worry about foraging for their own food and then figuring out how to grow it themselves. The humans had left plenty of books and manuals behind on farming and Caesar had picked up several at an abandoned library.

He thought about the journey he felt drawn to take but knew he had a lot of work to do before he could seriously entertain taking off. But he remembered that day that Will had found him and his army in the forest and they had come to terms with what had happened. He knew that Will had tried so hard to make it right for him and when Will had in his last moments asked him to do something for him.

Caesar had been so consumed with rage at what had just happened that the man who raised him from infancy had been killed by his own kind for trying to save him. So his army had attacked the invading army with such fury that there hadn't been much left among the carnage to prove that there had once been humans there. He'd tried so hard to stop the apes from killing people but now, he thought they all deserved to die. They'd pretty much killed themselves off anyway.

Intelligence and all its gifts had been wasted on them. With the apes, it would be much different, the world would be better not worse for their rise to the top of the chain. But then again, it had been human intelligence and the best of intentions by one human that had led to his own evolution and that of those around him.

When he balanced that dichotomy in his mind, he remembered his promise. He fingered the chain he wore around his neck, his sole reminder of where he'd come from and what he needed to do with it.

One reason he'd decided to take his journey to do this one last thing for the human who had loved him and who had saved his life.

Armando and a cadre of gorillas had been putting the humans back in their cages without any resistance. Most of them appeared stupefied or at the very least numb to their new existences. Almost as if the shock of their sudden fall from grace had proven to be too much to comprehend. That or the virus that had sickened more than it killed had rendered them damaged.

Caesar left them and went to head back to his office thinking as always about the future.

She tried to sleep but the images rushed through her fast and furious…the deep shadows of the trees in the forest…the last time she saw Will and how she couldn't warn him that he had the military on his tail when he'd went to find Caesar and the apes. She'd tried so hard to stop him from rushing off but Will had been consumed with Caesar's belief that he had been betrayed by those that he loved. The forgiveness towards a father by his surrogate child superseded everything else.

When she kissed him goodbye then she hadn't known it would be forever…and that she'd be left alone for hours locked up inside a police car by the men who set out to murder Caesar and the apes.

Then Will hadn't come out of the forest, as she sat waiting for him to return but then again neither had the cadre of armed men who followed him. As the sky darkened into night, it dawned on her that she had been left alone.

So she'd taken matters in her own hand and found something to bash her way out of the car finally succeeding and then another team had been sent in and they found Will and then later the remains of the army torn to shreds by the ape army.

Will had been shot to death so his death had been at the hands of his own kind. She couldn't bring herself to look at him in death and she'd been dragged back to the city to be questioned around the clock by all types of suits who began an inquisition about the ape revolution and its origins leading back to the laboratory where Will had done his experiments to create the cure as it had been called back then.

She had met him later and by then he had shed some of his intensity, his edges softened by Caesar who had become the center of his life both professionally and personally.

But she imagined his death over and over again even if the details remained sketchy. If only she could have stopped him from going into the forest, but he'd been anguished by the thought that Caesar believed he'd betrayed him. He had to at least try to make him understand.

So she'd let him go and that had been it. And soon after his death, the rest of their species began to follow. The morgues at the local hospitals had filled up almost as quickly as the bed, the corridors and the emergency rooms. San Francisco had many hospitals but it hadn't been enough to stem the tide of death.

She hadn't time to mourn him because between being treated like the worst kind of criminal herself and even having her photo in the newspaper while it's still been publishing, everyone around her had started getting sick and dying. Why she didn't fall ill herself, even as she waited for the symptoms of the flu that turned deadly, she didn't know, she still didn't understand her apparent immunity.

A fluke of natural selection maybe but there had been pockets of others like her and she'd spent so much time tending to people she loved and had worked with that had fallen ill.

All to no avail.

"I have to know if he's forgiven me…"

She remembered those words that he'd said and she felt like trying to stop them and then when the men started following him…she couldn't stop them. The faces of the team that had been sent as a search party deep into the forest, ashen and trembling as the combat hardened men put the sight that greeted them into words.

"I…."

She felt someone shake her and thought it was one of the search party members but when she opened her eyes, she looked up and saw Burke sitting on the edge of her bed. She realized that perspiration soaked her sheets and her heart beat rapidly.

Then she felt the strong arms of a man around her, holding her close to him. The scent of him and the deep timbre of his voice in her ear…what was he saying?

"Hey…it's just a nightmare."

She shook her head.

"No…I tried to stop him from running into the forest but…he just wanted to make things right."

"Okay…that's fine but you've got to get back to sleep."

She resisted him and he eased the tension away from her by rubbing her back. It felt like what she'd needed for so long, the tactile sensation that she had pushed away since she'd lost him.

"I miss him so much…why did he have to go?"

Burke sighed, not knowing what she was talking about but he seemed to know what to say to her.

"He must have thought it mattered enough to do it," he said, "Sometimes the people we love don't choose the way we want and we have to live with it."

She heard some regret in his own voice and wondered what had put it there. No doubt they all had painful accounts of the last time they'd seen or talked to the people they had loved and lost. But right now, she ached for the man who would never see their child because he'd made a choice.

Earlier choices he'd made helped shape the downfall of humanity and that concept just proved to be overwhelming.

"We're all going to get through this…we're going to find our way," he said, "but you need to get some rest for you and that baby of yours."

She felt him lower her back on the bed and she didn't fight it. He pulled the damp sheets back and pulled a comforter over her body looking at her.

Her breathing became more regular as she felt the fatigue hit her again but she didn't want the dreams even if that were the only place he still lived. Burke sat on the edge of her bed and stayed with her until she drifted off to sleep again.

Burke tucked the comforter around her and then noticed that something had fallen on the floor beside the bed. He picked it up and saw a photo of the woman now asleep with a young man with the woods as their background. Both were smiling and had their arms around each other.

But something else had been in the photo as well.

A young chimpanzee.

He gazed at it for a while and suddenly everything began to make sense.