The hours started to fade like the bubbles in soda, they kept moving forward, only halting every few hours to take breaks. Sharing food once again at a McDonald's, Rizia waved to the worker behind the counter with a polite smile painted over their lips, tray sliding to their exposed fingers; the tips of her claws ensnared the edge so they could walk over to find their spot right across Callum. Their booth right beside a widened window, Rivers couldn't help but reflect the beauty of the setting sun's bright sky into the center of his red-eye. The clouds parting without a care, the birds chirping in the twilight illumination, claws embedded on branches to ensure their embedded position.
Life truly was beautiful, in the middle of an Angel admiring the sights God carved unto the planet for His creatures, those wretched deformed wings poked out his back ever so slowly. An Angel… as he stared down at his hand, altering his vision from outside the window, examined the scars inscribed into his palm. Another time where these scars didn't exist was but a fragile window in the neverending timeline enveloping mankind, Callum leaned back with a scoff. One arm against the chair's rear stretched outward, with the other free hand, one extremity pushed outward so he could scratch at his chin. The nail barely grazing his skin, Rivers closed an eye, then allowing the pupil to peek, there they were, just as foretold,
"Hopefully, they got my order correct. Didja know if they don't and they charge you for it; you can get a refund?" Cal questioned his partner curiously, a hand digging into the fries' crimson-colored container, Rizia chuckled as she slid to the lengthy seat across his face,
"Is that right?" Kosuke sarcastically asked back, resting against the cushions of the booth, eyes closed,
"Nah, I'm just fuckin' with cha," He replied jokingly.
The duo shared a momentary short moment of laughter as the sun set further below the Earth's horizon, but as it dwindled, and the only audio that entered their eardrums was his chewing on chicken nuggets; they turned their head. Forehead pointed at an angle-that being the window to their left-their pupils examined the calming scenery protected by a glass shield, a fragile barrier and yet a sustainable one from the horrors of the outside world,
'I will have my justice, no matter what. You should have known, I told you before … This is who I am. You, of all people…'
Words like knives stabbing her heart just barely, they couldn't help but wonder how convenient it all was, the way everything seemed to seamlessly piece itself together like a river's calm flow. The sun shined the way it did because it was fated to do so, they sat beside one another in that car because Rizia was destined to press their foot against the gas. If that were the case, and free will was but a social construct in this world, was she predestined to have THAT in her bag? And if so, who was it that willed this fate into existence, could it have been some higher power, or were they staring right down the belly of the beast himself. Chewing away at fries, sucking in soda through a straw, throwing nuggets to his mouth. Eyes closed, enjoying the ecstasy of the meal he was chowing down, their hand slammed right down onto the table, and what laid below their palm was none other than a folder.
Callum's signature mischievous smirk spread wide over his lips, while Rizia stared deep into the endless abyss that was his eye, they couldn't help but come up with a final question before he'd be given the contents of this folder,
"How did you know I was outside the campus' radius?" They interrogated deeply with their ambiguous vocals.
Back then, Callum remembered just hours earlier, when he was told by Kelly that Rizia was heading to a cemetery, and yet, despite never checking his phone, he knew exactly where Kosuke would be. Parked right outside the campus' limits, awaiting his arrival, but something was missing from this and that was the how. And so, Cal happily explained, taking another fry and crushing between his clenched teeth letting the salt linger on his tongue,
"I had an epiphany after I was taken to that place, where I was treated at a hospital for over a year, being trained to walk again, taught how to see… one day, after I'd regained all my abilities, and was about to be discharged, I was struck with a premonition. Overflowing knowledge of all collective events that had occurred in the Old World and that will occur in this one.
You see, we were fated to meet one another, don't you think so? Why else do you think our eyes met yesterday? That was fate intervening because our destinies are tied together. It is fate's sole intention to drive me to my uprising at the peak of the world, to alter the framework of a corrupt society, reduce it to ashes so I can recreate another from the ground up," Callum's words were calm, ensuring he spoke at a casual pace so they'd be able to understand clearly, instead, they just nodded to themselves.
Not a scream bursting from their lips or a frightened slumber discharging out her mouth, they just nodded and slid the folder right to him, fingers stabbing into the paper, he halted its movement,
"When will it begin? After you take this offer, drop out, come work for us under my recommendation… there's a beginning somewhere, so when?" They asked yet again, now with their fingers interlocked, placed forward on the table, they stared into his red-eye and awaited a response,
"In one year, the middle of summer, 2010. So, with that being said, what do you plan on doing?" Letting a document paper as he asked this with a menacing rasp near the edge of his vocals, Callum let out a maniacal giggle, peeking from the paper's side, gazing into their dark eyes...
Back then, at that time they spent at the cemetery, they stared down at those tombstones, when the sun was still high in the sky to contrast the sky's bright blue coloration... their engraved names reflected into their eyes. Their screams echoed through time, when they were just a little girl, holding that dagger drenched in their blood with the door open to the contents of the world. Yet as she stood there when they were escorted to the back of that police car, she wasn't taken to an interrogation room. Instead, as her height lengthened and her age expanded, their mark was made on their body, and they were a weapon, made, manufactured solely for the American Government because they took an insane girl at a young age who had no way to object.
This was their life, however, as they stared down at these graves, there was something else fueling them. That look in their eyes as their blackened strands prohibited their vision, nails digging to their palms, teeth clenching, veins protruding out their fists. They were meant for more than this, they knew it in their heart! Her kick smashed the tombstone to pieces... shrapnel of rock entering the air, they stared downward and fell to their knees.
In the end, that was when they decided to make the choice, and now, as they flashed back to reality, sitting before Callum, that look in his eye, one that determined his ability to tear down everything and give up anything to do whatever it took to accomplish his goal; it was admirable. They were meant for more than doing good in school and covering up nationwide fiascos that were truly the Elite's doing. A righteous life, one carved out of her blood's desire to be useful in this world, where they weren't a cog in an endless machine always moving without falter.
The 'right' choice...
"I choose to be by your side. I'll avenge my past and make it right by helping you alter the world... I devote my heart to your cause, Callum Rivers,"
From then on, as nighttime set on the country, the future had already been written and the end always in motion, it had already been determined. And so, as they got back onto the road, we flash forward a year in advance to where Kelly, was laughing along with her friends. The next summer, memories of a time she'd cherished suppressed, the date read June 30th, 2011 on her phone as she slid it out her pocket to check her messages.
And, just as predicted, it read his name: 'I have an offer for you. Answer back when you can...' Seeing as how it was just sunset at the moment, she slid her device right back into concealment yet her demeanor altered, she closed herself off from the others she was communing with. The next thing they knew, the second one of the girls asked where she'd gone, she vanished without a trace, and ten minutes later, the door to her dorm locked behind her. A simple push of a button and the connection had been established, her back to the door, the phone to her ear, her lips parted,
"Is this really... is this Callum Rivers? T-the... the man who threw me away like trash at the end of a curb... like I was nothing but trash when I nursed him back to health?" Kelly tearfully asked with cracks forming in her vocalization, to which he calmly shushed her, and on the other side of the phone, there he sat.
In a dimly-light room seated behind a desk, his thumb against his forehead and the index finger pointed to the ceiling, a smile curving upward at both ends from ear to ear, Rizia stood guard to the rear of his seat. Cracked lips parting, strands still hiding his features while the red-eye glowed through the whitened locks, at the beginning of this new era at the dawn of humanity's alteration, Cal's words had struck a chord in the shattered heart of his former caretaker. Those being,
"Indeed, the same Callum Rivers is truly calling you. A thousand apologies could never make up for how much I want to make it up to you, so let's start with this. Kelly Summers, I offer you a stay at humanity's biggest aid on the forefront of the Elite's elimination. In other words, Kel, we're drafting you... into our new future. Welcome-
To the Mankind Evolution Frontier."
To Be Continued in this story of justice.