Archenemies (Renegades #2)(76)

They passed through a circular lobby with various display cases and prominent paintings, but Callum didn’t comment on the prized artifacts. Not even the enormous painting that depicted the defeat of Ace Anarchy on the Day of Triumph—a painting that infuriated Nova as much now as it had the first time she’d seen it. Instead, Callum showed her through a wide door, down a short corridor that passed Tsunami’s office, and out onto the headquarter building’s observation deck.

Nova stepped outside and felt the temperature drop. They were surrounded by glass and steel—beneath their feet and curving upward to form a transparent shelter over their heads. Callum went ahead of her, placing his hands on a rail that wrapped around the deck.

Nova followed.

Her breath hitched.

The view wasn’t like anything she’d ever seen before. She had spent plenty of time on the rooftops of buildings, even skyscrapers, but never had she been so high up. Never had she seen Gatlon City laid out like a dream. There was the bay in the distance, where the morning sun was dancing on the waves like molten gold. She could see both the Sentry and the Stockton Bridges spanning the river, majestic with their towering pylons and the graceful arcs of their suspension cables. There was the landmark Merchant Tower, with its recognizable glass spire, and the centuries-old Woodrow Hotel, still sporting a ghost sign on its brick. Things she had seen a thousand times before, but never like this. From so far away, she could no longer see the scars of time left on the city. The buildings that were crumbling to the elements. The abandoned neighborhoods. The drifts of garbage and debris piled up on sidewalks and in alleyways. There was no noise up here to compete with the tranquility. No sirens, no shouting, no car horns. No yowling of stray cats or squawking of territorial crows.

It was breathtaking.

“You know what’s amazing?” said Callum. He pointed, and she followed the angle of his finger down to City Park—its lush green fields and autumn-painted forests like an unexpected oasis in the sea of concrete and glass. “You see that tree, near the southeast corner of the park? The evergreen, that kind of stands up over all those little deciduous ones? That’s a queen cypress tree. Do you know how slow those things grow?”

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.”