While sobbing at the road's side having fled the Hybrid town, a voice reached out to him. Not feminine. Raspy, Elden, and masculine.
"Now what's a youngin like you doin' 'ere in these midsts? It's dangerous nowadays, ya hear?" Asked the old man.
Callum wiped away at his eye, then sniffled. Clearing his throat into a fist, he picked the cigarette pack out of his pocket and picked out another stick. Alighting the butt with a calm flame, he pushed it into his mouth.
"I heard, sir. Met one of those 'dangerous' people holding up a store and everything. Real garbage people, they are," Callum's muffled voice replied.
"Say, gimme one of those you got there. Been a long while since I had one of 'em," The old man beckoned.
Rivers turned his head, noticing the man's dark skin and grey beard. Needless to say, he wasn't a Hybrid. Standing tall, he slid onto the bench the elder was seated on, and now sat beside him. Handing him the pack, the elder chuckled as he picked one out for just himself, a charming smile over his lips.
"Thank you."
"Anytime, sir."
Despite the elder's obvious display of whittling health, he smoked. He smoked but he didn't cough, neither did he take heavy breaths as he inhaled then exhaled. Cal stood quiet at this observation, but in his mind, he couldn't help but shrug, watching the smoke drift into the twilight's purple heavens as it slid past his eyes.
"You know, back before this 'hole Evolutionary and Hybrid mess, uh, there used to be humans. Black, white, Asian, whatnot. I remember something happenin' way back when some maybe... 12 years ago at this point where the police committed another crime. They falsely accused a black man of multiple crimes, and he was killed in his cell. Hung, they said. A suicide, they said. Now, this had happened before, we knew this was bullshit. And so, it was. They checked the cameras and some white men clad in officers' uniforms done beat the brother to death. Sometime after the truth came out, riots spread all over the country, and somehow, Texas was sent off the map. Everyone died... even the neighboring nations, most of them inhabitable thanks to the radiation. Everyone died 'cept for one. One kid. Now, my old brain has degraded over some time, so I don't remember his name but I can't help but wonder 'bout him from time to time. If that child were to grow up and realize what happened to him was an injustice because some people above didn't want to admit defeat, then, surely, he'd be a monster. Don't you think so?" The old man asked, inhaling more smoke.
Callum turned his head, eyes not wide, yet generating shock from the pupils' centers from the intensity of his stare going unnoticed.
"Wha... what do you mean?"
"For someone to live through all that and know the excuses of the Government won't work on them, they'd be willing to destroy everything for the sake of proper justice. Whether it means killing anyone else innocent in the process, as long as you save some people from that hell and ensure you survive with a righteous conscience, then it doesn't matter. After thinking about it in retrospect, I've concluded that while that person might not be the best, they are understandable. The desire to burn away everything after having lost everything. If anything else, that is undeniably what I define as 'love.' Does that make sense?" The elder yet again asked the former Founder for his opinion, turning his head.
He was idle, his lips closed. The awe-inspiring scenery of birds' wings flapping in tandem with the summer's air, the descent of the Earth's sun lowering behind a rocky horizon. Soon, the stars would arrive, sparking the night's grace onto its subjects without prejudice, for they were unknowing--to how beautiful that crackling sight of that brightness truly was.
What a cruel world they resided within. Nevertheless, as the moon gradually rose throughout the shared silence, they couldn't deny that, if angels were to fall from the sky and live on this planet, not even their divination could rival such a sight as marvelous as the one before their very eyes.
"You know who I am... don't you, sir?" Asked Callum.
And the elder nodded, chortling softly as his head hung, allowing his eyes to examine the miniature critters scattering around his covered feet.
"I do. You're the one responsible for everything. Hybrids, Evolutionary, Retly, that Jester bastard. But, despite the widespread chaos occurring thanks to you, I don't feel any animosity towards you. While I'm sure my interpretation is most likely right, I want to ask you... why did you cause all this?"
Cal started to stand, tightening his bag over his shoulder, entranced by the beauty of the dimmed night. It was only after that question ran through his head secondly did he lightly chuckle, and turn his head away from the elder. The outside world. Retly. Hybrids. Evolutionaries. Riverton Island. The Evolutionary Capital, neither of it mattered because it all spawned from one man-one will. Whether it was righteous or not plagued his being, but there was one thing he was sure about. From the moment he was born, whether memories of the future would've been sent to him or not, he would've turned out the way he did because he was... a chosen one. Because he was One of Inheritance.
"Because this world is my birthright."
And he kept moving. Until the end of the path, he marched through the desert's cool night, through the desert's blisteringly-heated day. Eventually, the right place would arrive, and it would click. That instinct to build what he was meant to have since the day of his birth, the moment of his uprising--happiness. Atop that cliff, he gazed upon them all. Like ants waiting to be crushed or ignorants awaiting to be enlightened. Whether it was one or the other was up to his next step, but right before he could, his eyes widened.
'The wind whispered that the world had begun to change.'
On that day, amid the summer, his eye, colored a warm red, started to glow. The distance he'd walked just hours before, had it been so far? And had it been so long since he was just there, centered in that printed path? He turned back to the bottom of the cliff, that little down hidden below, but raising his head, there was Retly's transparent bubble surrounding the metallic Capital. Man-made horrors birthed from his mind laid bare within. And to his chin, what laid there, nestled between these cramped rocks they called walls? A small town, full of people as small as ants he could destroy with a finger's flick.
If he stepped into this town, surely, he'd meet another experience and commit another action he'd soon regret. The audacity to succumb to righteousness after a lifetime of sins, to think he could ever reach such a height of self-deprecation he debated killing himself at that very moment. His foot hovered off the verge, but just as he was about to end his own life, he remembered HIS words.
'This is the path I chose. All I can do now is give it all I've got. If you want to kill me, then kill me. If that's your justice, this is mine. And at least I'd have died… without regrets.'
What was the hope he saw when he said that to her? Or rather, was he speaking to her at all? To convince himself the sins of the past were righteous, he set off to wander. But beyond the means of what's known, across the sea from America's Evolutionary Capital, there he was. Standing above a neighboring town beside Retly's glass bubble encapturing the metal city. Forgiveness. Atonement. Did he truly deserve any of those things when he decided to make that march away from Katie's Blackened Blade?
He turned away from his heightened perch atop the rocks, but before he could initiate any more steps after two, his teeth gritted. He'd come this far. Outside the walls, across the sea, in this desert, devoid of water. This journey would mean something, whether he was proving that to himself or someone else, wherever they were watching from, it didn't matter. He would do it because he wanted to.
That was just the type of person Riverton's Founder always was.
To Be Continued.