Greg Keyes - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Firestorm

And he knows that this is too much to ask.

Koba is at the new place, and it is more… white.

The truck takes them to another building, where he is led to another cage, and there it starts all over again. They do things to his eyes. They cut him open and sew him back together again. They stick long needles into the middle of his stomach without putting him to sleep first. But Koba—Koba is going away. He doesn’t feel anything anymore. His body isn’t his own, and he doesn’t care. He is hardly even present.

He is his cage. He is his pain.

Koba hardly notices when he is moved yet again. He has a new cage, but it is hardly different from the old one.

It is a little later when someone kicks at the door of his cage. Koba looks up and sees a face he remembers. It is Jacobs.

“Well, by God,” Jacobs says. “If it isn’t the ugliest ape in the world. My fortunes have changed, but I would say yours haven’t noticeably improved. Rest assured, there will be no hand-talking nonsense here. You’re not human, you know, even if you think you are. You are a chimp, an animal, and you’ll act like one.”

Jacobs smiles, and it is terrifying.

But Koba isn’t terrified for more than a moment. He sits in his cage, and he thinks about Jacobs. And deep inside of him something starts to burn, something that wants out, wants to come out through his hands, through his feet, through his teeth.

There is a reason why all of the things that have happened to him have happened. Roger and Mary took his mother from him. Tommy hit him with the stick and burned out his eye. Countless others have tortured him in more ways than he knows numbers. But behind each of those is a reason, is the reason.

And Jacobs has said it.

You’re not human, you know, even if you think you are. You’re a chimp, an animal, and you’ll act like one .

Koba doesn’t know all of these words, but he knows what they mean. Mother thought she was human, like Mary, and they both taught Koba he was human, too. They lied, and Jacobs has told him the truth. The reason for everything that has been done to Koba is simple. It is obvious.

The reason is that they are human. They are human, and he is an animal. And everything that humans are, that is Jacobs. It is all him. He is them and they are him. He is their truest voice, and he is here. Koba cannot reach all humans. But maybe he can reach Jacobs.

This way Koba can focus. This way he can be angry.

This way he can fight back.

Now Koba was fighting back, rushing through the woods with other apes, and he belonged to something, something more than anger and hatred. He had other things to keep him going, and that was all thanks to Caesar.

Although, as the flying cages beat ahead and his apes approached the human line, he still had plenty of hate in him.

He saw fog rolling in ahead. That was good—in the fog the humans wouldn’t see their real numbers, wouldn’t know that there were only a few of them. That the real troop was going to break through in another place. The fog had been their friend from the beginning. He wondered if maybe the trees themselves called it to protect the apes, if the trees had been waiting for them, hoping they would come.

As they entered the fog, his eyes suddenly stung, and his nose began to burn. Confused, he scrambled back, and saw others were doing the same, shaking their heads, trying to clear out the pain. This fog was not their friend, and it kept coming.

Koba scrambled up a tree, trying to get above the burning mist, and there he saw something it took him a moment to understand. One of the flying cages was weaving back and forth above them, and the fog was pouring from the machine.

The circle closing in on the troop was not just men and machines—it was also this stinging cloud. The humans were counting on it forcing them back, until all apes stood in one place, surrounded by humans and their machines.

He jumped down and skittered over to Roy, a chimp who knew some sign.

Find Caesar. Warn him of the fog that stings .

Roy hooted and set off back the way that had come.

And now he had one fewer.

The remaining apes in his band were slowly retreating, backing away from the mist.

He remembered once, in the white place, they had pulled back his eyelids and pinned them open. Then they had sprayed something in them. It hurt like this, but worse. Even his dead eye hurt, and he couldn’t blink to try and relieve the pain.

It had hurt, but it had not killed him.

He stood up straight and gestured into the fog. He wiped his palm over his eyes and closed them. Then he opened them and stabbed his fingers back at the fog. He went into it, walking upright, like Caesar.

“Ohgk!” he barked. He had been trying to say “go,” as Caesar did, but it didn’t come out right. But they understood, and when he plunged into the mist, they came with him, eyes closed.

Once again Koba’s eyes burned, but now he chose to keep them open, to guide the gorillas with the sound of his voice, with the prod of his hands. Suddenly, through the mist, Koba saw a silhouette that stopped him for an instant. It stood like a human, but the face was oddly shaped, more like a chimp…

Then gunfire erupted, and Koba saw that it was a human after all, but wearing something on its face. And he wasn’t shooting darts. It was far too loud for that. They were not trying to capture him. Which was just as well.

Koba scrambled behind a tree, then up it, and flung himself over the human. The man followed him with the gun, and Koba heard the hiss of bullets passing near. Then he was down. The man let out a muffled scream as the hulking forms of the gorillas appeared. He backpedaled and hit a tree, dropping his weapon.

Koba screeched and ran forward, propelling himself now on all fours. He wished Caesar would let him hit the humans, knock them down, but that was specifically forbidden, and a part of Koba knew that if he started attacking them, he might lose control and be unable to lead. And he wanted to lead.

He felt that now.

More shots rang out, now from the sides. That meant humans were leaving their positions in the circle, coming to him. One of the gorillas moaned as bullets struck him. Koba screamed, pushing him, inducing him to go on.

He pushed them all forward, half-blind, his throat closing—but now the burning mist was starting to thin. He looked up and saw the flying cage turning to come back. Shouts from his left and right told him that even more humans were running toward them. That was what Caesar wanted. He had to pull them here, make his few seem like many. So instead of just breaching their line and continuing on, Koba led them back into the burning mist.

A chimp screamed as bullets ripped through his body. Koba hoped his troop would live long enough to make a difference.

“They’re trying to breech the western perimeter,” Corbin reported. “Is everyone ready?”

“Sure,” Clancy said, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.

“Quite,” Malakai said. And he meant it. For the first time since this whole mess had begun he felt complete, with a tranq rifle on his shoulder and a Glock at his side. He no longer felt naked in the land of the clothed or, perhaps more aptly, like a balloon surrounded by needles.

“Everyone knows the drill, right?” Corbin said. “We find the apes, start bagging them while everyone else shows up. This time we will have air support.”

“Got it,” Malakai said. He saw Clancy nod.

They piled into the Humvee.

“Western perimeter, here we come,” Corbin said as he started the engine.