Caesar had to break up a fight between an orangutan and a gorilla over the treatment of a young girl who had broken from the line of slaves working at a stable where some horses had been discovered. She had been sleeping in the stable in a small room when the apes arrived to take them.

They had discovered that horses ran fast and that they could be directed by those who rode on their backs. Caesar had remembered that from programs he'd watched on television while growing up in Will's attic. And he'd ridden before back on the day that they'd left San Francisco.

But the girl had been frightened when she'd woken up and seen large apes wandering around opening stall doors and leading horses out while Caesar had instructed others on how to put bridles on them.

The horses had gone wide eyed and bucked when they saw the apes but he noticed that at least they'd been healthy. There had been some grain left but the alfalfa had started to rot.

When the girl saw them, she ran out of her hiding place to grab one of the horses away from them, a dappled mare and one of the gorillas had struck her with his arm, sending her flying in the air. The plucky girl who had hair the color of straw and a pinched face got up and started back to the horse. This time two of the gorillas had grabbed her and as the one with the silvery hair on his back decided to snap her neck, Caesar had rushed up to stop him.

Signing "children no kill to the gorillas.

One of them signed back. "children adult kill apes"

Caesar sighed and tried to think of a response to match the gorillas' rudimentary signing skills and then an orangutan intervened.

"Child cage zoo."

Now that had been an idea Caesar considered, after all apes including their young had been kept in caged exhibits in zoos and in the sanctuary where Will had sent him. They'd be fed in their cages of course and given shelter and some toys to play with to entertain the apes.

But the girl just looked at the apes defiance in her eyes, her attention still on the mare and when she leapt again, Caesar had to block the gorillas from grabbing her again.

"No zoo…"

So he gestured at some chimpanzees who'd been watching the exchange to grab the girl and take her to the zoo.

"Girl feed lions"

Caesar shot that chimpanzee a look and shook his head no before they grabbed her and took her kicking and screaming away to the zoo. That problem solved, he turned back to the matter of getting them some horses. For one thing, it would improve the speed of messages traveling through the new world.

He couldn't forget his first time on horseback, an impromptu act but what freedom to take off at a gallop with the wind against your face, to serve as master over another species for a change. Horses did as they were directed to do without complaint and soon humans would too.

He chose a chestnut horse with a splash of white on its face, which stood there trembling but not trying to escape. He approached it slowly and allowed it to get used to his scent before reaching out to stroke its face. The other apes just looked at him wondering why he took such a subtle approach to an inferior creature but Caesar knew that the horse had its own physical strength and he didn't want to fight it.

Another ape handed him a bridle and he moved forward to put it on, and after some careful handling within minutes he had swung up on the horse's back and started riding through Seattle.

The streets were deserted and littered with the kind of clutter that only comes when a society is being abandoned. As it must have been the final weeks before the curtain closed on humanity's dominance of the planet. It hadn't been his intention to inherit the earth at all but to share it.

He tried to explain that to Will before the armed men appeared behind him. Will's face told him that he hadn't been aware that he'd been followed.

Now that the plague had dwindled their numbers, Caesar knew that the world belonged to his kind, at least until they made the same mistakes as their former masters. He remembered those who had engineered the revolution, Jacobs the corporate head who had been consumed by greed when he realized the future highlighted by Will's serum. Dodge the sadistic handler at the facility where he'd been dumped who just had to die.

Greed, cruelty had no place in the new society, but Caesar already saw cracks in his vision of an idyllic utopia for apes to live in freedom. He didn't know what to do about them because most of the apes had never known the concepts of love in their own lives and at least he had that until the betrayal.

So he knew he had to be on guard for those among the apes that might want to run a society based on the same human values that they had renounced.

And be prepared to take action if that happened.

They returned to the small dwelling after dinner and she sat in a chair next to a rudimentary table that looked like in better times it had served another purpose. Burke dwarfed his chair, being built like an ox. Ruth had offered them some supplies to take back including medicine and they had offered them some tools from the campground to help them maintain the generators and water pumps. Enough fuel had been stored in underground tanks to keep them busy for some months. But as the technology and supplies which fueled it continued to degrade in upcoming months and years, canned goods spoiled and medicines went bad, they had to start looking more at the production side of what they needed to survive.

She knew the apes in their own society would face similar challenges.

"We'll have to get up early to head back tomorrow."

Burke had been all business at the dinner meeting which cemented relations between them and Ruth's people. He'd treated her with respect which told Reese he had no problems with female leaders or scientists for that matter.

"I told them what to do if they do decide to raise beef cattle," she said, "It's not my specialty but I know the basics."

"You get along with the doctor all right?"

She nodded, leaning back in her chair.

"He said the baby's doing well," she said, "I think he's doing better than the mother."

Fatigue when it came over her freed up her other emotions usually reined in by her defenses but she'd been so relieved that the baby had been thriving inside of her that she'd almost forgot about keeping that side of her hidden. Emotions that stemmed from her old life had no purpose anymore not if she had a future to think about for her and her child. But it didn't mean that she didn't have her moments of weakness.

"It's not easy and it's going to be," he said, "Everything's different now but that doesn't mean it's not going to work out once we figure out what to do."

She ran her hand through her hair after removing the tie.

"I know…most of the time but there are things I miss so much," she said, "I miss people…friends…my baby's father."

Her voice caught at the end of her sentence. She squeezed her eyes shut to not think about the last time she saw him.

"Things were difficult even before it happened," she said, "He was haunted by some of the decisions he made."

A long silence came up between them but it didn't feel uncomfortable to her as she tried to push those memories back where they belonged.

Then Burke broke it with an unexpected question.

"Why did he do it?"

She looked at him suddenly, her eyes in question.

"Who…who did what?"

He sighed and suddenly she knew but still she waited for him to speak.

"I saw the photo of you together with that scientist who started this whole mess and some ape."

She blinked her eyes and felt bitterness rise in her throat.

"That was Caesar when he was younger," she said, "before he started having problems."

Burke nodded remembering that this chimpanzee had been the ringleader in the rampage through San Francisco.

"And the man was that scientists…Will…the one who invented the cure as it was called…some cure…"

She heard the bitterness in his voice but she couldn't blame him.

"He was trying to find a way to fix the brain, a cure for Alzheimer's disease because his father had it."

Burke sighed, folding his arms.

"He stole an ape from the lab."

She shook her head.

"No, he saved him. They were going to kill Caesar along with his mother after they thought she had gone violent because of the protocol she'd been given but she'd just been protecting her baby."

"But he kept the ape didn't he?"

She nodded, rubbing her arms with her hands.

"He raised him from infancy," she said, "I met him when he got hurt. Not badly but I didn't know anything about him. I thought he was a pet."

Burke digested what she told him and she waited, poised to react if necessary. She ha known this day would come but didn't know how he'd react.

"But he wasn't…he was as smart as you or I. Too damn smart."

She sighed.

"He told me later on and I told him I thought he'd messed with nature in a way that wasn't right but he was so sure he'd done the right thing. I don't think we ever really agreed on that point."

"But you loved him."

She lifted her chin.

"Yes I did very much and I loved Caesar too," she said, "I just didn't know that the place where we sent him after he injured a neighbor was so awful in how it treated them."

Burke sighed and shook his head.

"How could someone be so reckless and mess with something they had no business…and make the rest of humanity pay for it?"

She heard the anger in his voice and steeled herself for more of it.

"He didn't do it for himself or where it could take him," she said, "It was always about his father. He'd admired him his whole life and didn't want to lose him."

"What about the plague," he said, "That came from the same laboratory as this cure didn't it?"

She hesitated and then she nodded.

"I still don't know what it was," she said, "but I'd heard that they were pushing a more aggressive protocol that would produce faster results."

"Oh god…I never understood scientists thinking they could play god with the rest of us."

She sighed preparing to get up.

"Look I know this is a shock," she said, "but if you don't want me to go back with you, I can stay here. I don't know if they'll understand any better but you've been really good to me, you saved my life and I guess I owe you back."'

She walked over to get her bag and put some stuff inside it. He watched her.

"Where the hell are you going?"

She looked at him.

"I told you I'll stay here if my being here is a reminder of what destroyed the world."

He sighed and got up to grab her arm.

"No…I don't want you to go," he said, "We can't hold each other's lives in the past world against each other and you've worked harder than anyone else to pull your weight."

"I've just done what was needed."

"We need you and your skills," he said, "and you need us too, you and that little one. You can't help who his father is…"

She glared at him suddenly.

"I loved his father and if that's too much for you, then this conversation is over."

She grabbed her bag and she left the dwelling leaving him in her wake.