Archenemies (Renegades, #2)(77)

Nova blinked at him, unable to discern where he was going with this. “I don’t.”

“Slow,” Callum said. “Really slow. So whoever planted that tree, they must have known that they were going to have to wait years—decades—before they could sit under it and enjoy its shade. Maybe they never got to. Maybe they planted it, hoping that their kids or their grandkids, or even complete strangers, generations away, would be able to sit under the boughs of that tree and that maybe someone would spare a moment of gratitude for the person who had the foresight to plant a little sapling in the first place.”

He fell silent and Nova’s brow furrowed. This was the important thing he had to show her?

“Also,” said Callum, “trains. Trains are so cool.”

Nova hummed to herself and began plotting what she could say to politely remove herself from this conversation and go back to work.

“Think of the early steam trains. All that engineering, all those resources … It must have been faith at first, right? A confidence that this was the future—travel and industry and trade. There was no guarantee that those tracks would be laid, connecting all these cities and ports, but someone had enough conviction to go ahead with it anyway.”

“Callum—”

“And the alphabet!” he said, turning to her. “Have you ever stopped to consider the alphabet?”

“Uh…”

“Think about it. These symbols, they’re just lines on paper. But someone, at some point, had the idea to assign them a meaning. And not just that, but then to teach those meanings to other people! To envision a way for ideas and thoughts to be recorded and shared … it must have seemed like an impossible task at first, but they persisted, and think of all that’s led to. Isn’t that fantastic?”

“Callum,” Nova said, more firmly now. “Do you have a point?”

He blinked the excitement from his eyes, and peered at Nova, almost sadly for a moment. “My point is that Ace Anarchy, whatever his motives might have been, was ultimately a destructive force. He destroyed things. But we are so much stronger and better when we put our energy into creating things, not destroying them.”

“Of course,” she said sourly. “And the Renegades are the ones that create.”

Callum shrugged. “They’re trying, but no one’s perfect. Like you said, even Ace Anarchy was fighting for a cause he believed in—a cause that was worth fighting for. But he didn’t build anything. Instead, he killed and he destroyed and he left the world in shambles. The result wasn’t freedom for prodigies. It was twenty years of fear. Twenty years in which people weren’t thinking about writing books or planting trees or building skyscrapers. It was an accomplishment just to survive another day.” He smiled wryly. “But then … Agent N is a destructive force too. It depletes, but it doesn’t replenish. I’m worried it’s a step backward, for all of us.”

They were silent for a moment, then Callum groaned and ruffled his own hair. “I’m sorry. People have told me I’m boring when I talk about this stuff, but sometimes it’s so frustrating to go through life seeing all of this.” He spread his arms wide, as if he could embrace the city below. “There are so many things to marvel at. How could anyone want to hurt it? How can people wake up every morning and not think—look, the sun is still there! And I’m still here! This is incredible!” He laughed and turned to Nova again. “If I could just make everyone see … I mean, for more than just a minute, then … I don’t know. I can’t help but think that then we could all start working to create things. Together, for once.”

Nova regarded the city again. She saw fishing boats cutting through the waves, heading toward the sea. Cars making their way through the streets, almost as if they were part of a choreographed dance. Teams of cranes and construction workers repairing fallen buildings and erecting new structures over the skeletons of the old.

Hundreds of thousands of people, going about their lives. Day after day. Year after year. Generation after generation. Somehow, humanity had managed to build all of this. Despite everything that had tried to get in its way. Somehow, they prevailed. They continued on.

It was incredible. How had she never considered it before? Maybe because she’d never had a chance to see it like this. She had spent so much of her life underground. Squirreled away in the dark, lifeless tunnels. She had never paid much thought to exactly how much that secrecy was costing her and the Anarchists. The lives they could never live.

Or maybe she was seeing it now, because …

Because.

“Wonder Boy?” she whispered.

Callum groaned. “Just Wonder. Prism thinks adding the Boy turns it into a cute nickname, which would have been fine when I was seven.”

She turned to him, shaking her head. “I didn’t think you were a prodigy.”

“Yeah, it doesn’t come up often. Being able to temporarily reveal all the great wonders of this world”—he swooped his arm toward the horizon again—“doesn’t seem like much when compared to chrome biceps or volcanic eruptions coming out of your fingertips.” He snapped to prove his point, but rather than seem disappointed, his face took on that captivated expression again. “Did you know that in the seventeenth century, a prodigy held back the lava flow of an erupting volcano so their village could be—”