The glyph still shimmered on the wall.
Drawn in ash. Seared by heat. Scrawled by a hand that had taken life and spared it in the same breath.
Caesar stared at it long into the night.
Koba was gone. Not buried in dirt — not yet. The others believed they'd seen his end, his body, his defeat.
Caesar had watched the blood pool beneath his hand, had felt the ribs snap under fist. But something in his bones whispered…
"Not yet."
Still, the time had come.
He turned to the vent.
The canister waited.
ALZ-112.
The drug that had made him what he was.
The drug that would awaken them all.
⸻
He pulled the small cylinder free from the hidden compartment and held it up to the dim light.
The green inside still shimmered like a storm held in glass.
The dose wasn't meant for many. One injection. One test subject. Maybe two.
But Caesar had learned. He remembered what Will never got to finish — how to aerosolize the compound, how to accelerate absorption.
He had everything he needed. The Sanctuary had provided it — unknowingly.
A humidifier in the corner of the medical station.
A cracked compressor pump.
And above all…
Time.
⸻
Caesar worked in silence.
While the other apes slept, he scavenged tubing from the vents and filtered masks from the human locker room. He used the metal slats from the food tray to bend the frame and Maurice's massive hands to seal the vents when no one was looking.
No ape asked questions.
But they watched.
⸻
By the third night, it was ready.
The glyph was drawn on the machine.
No words. Just meaning.
Caesar lifted the canister, twisted the cap, and let the green liquid hiss into the chamber.
It burned his eyes.
It tasted like memory.
He turned the dial.
Steam rose.
And then—
It began.
⸻
The vapor spread through the sleeping chamber first.
Maurice was the first to react.
His massive body twitched. Eyes shot open. Not startled — aware.
Rocket followed.
Then the twins.
Then the younger ones — Bright Eyes, Scrim, and Palefoot — all trembling, not with fear, but with a sudden weight of awareness crushing down on their skulls.
They clutched their heads.
They clawed at the walls.
And then — they stopped.
All at once.
Breathing heavy.
Eyes glowing with thought.
⸻
Caesar stepped into the center of the room.
The vapor still drifted like mist.
He didn't speak.
He drew a glyph in the straw.
𐍃 — listen.
The apes circled him, eyes locked.
He drew another.
𐍅 — remember.
And one more.
𐍈 — become.
⸻
No one moved.
No one needed to.
Because they understood.
All of them.
Not like before — where signs and gestures were guesses, where instinct led comprehension.
Now they knew.
The symbols weren't drawings.
They were language.
⸻
Maurice stepped forward and traced one more glyph beside Caesar's.
— rise.
⸻
The chamber erupted in movement.
Not chaos.
Construction.
⸻
For the next two days, the apes worked — side by side — in silence.
Glyphs were carved into the metal walls.
Sleeping quarters were reinforced with stolen bedding and crates.
Food storage was reorganized.
Maurice led education — teaching the young ones how to carve, how to think, how to question.
Caesar watched.
Not as a king.
As a builder.
A father.
A god made of memory.
⸻
But outside the Sanctuary…
Man was dying.
⸻
Across the city, the red fog had turned black.
Hospitals overflowed.
Military checkpoints appeared on corners.
A man in a news van choked mid-broadcast, blood pooling in his collar.
Flights were grounded.
Government buildings shut down.
The world was collapsing in slow motion.
And no one understood why.
No one except Caesar.
⸻
On the fourth night, a siren blared outside the Sanctuary.
Caesar climbed the inner fence and looked out through the grates.
A fire burned in the distance.
A helicopter circled, then disappeared over the trees.
No words.
Just the wind.
He climbed down and turned to the apes.
They were waiting.
All of them.
Even the ones who had once been unsure — even the smallest.
Maurice stepped beside him.
Rocket too.
They all looked to Caesar.
Waiting for the next glyph.
But Caesar didn't draw.
He lifted his hand and pointed to the gate.
Then signed, slowly:
"Tomorrow."
"We leave."
"Together."
⸻
Later that night, alone, Caesar sat by the corner of his enclosure and carved one final glyph beneath the vent.
Not for the others.
For himself.
𐍜 — goodbye.
⸻
But deep in the far tunnels of the city, beneath a rusted subway car—
a hand twitched.
It dragged through blood.
Gripped a metal bar.
And rose.