Chapter 13 #2
“But days like this,” he sighs. “It just feels . . . hopeless. Or . . . it did,” he says, looking down at me, his expression
soft.
“What is it?”
I realize I’m grinning. “You’re still you,” I say. “Still good.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “You thought I wasn’t?”
“Not many people would be after eight years of fan edits and fawning,” I joke.
Callum makes a face. “Fan edits. Do you watch those fan edits?” he jokes, and I give him a playful shove. “I hope I’m good,” he continues. “That’s the story I tell myself, at least.” Even though he glances down, it can’t hide the pink spreading across his cheeks. And it’s not from the cold.
“Do you like stories?”
He shrugs. “I don’t watch my DopaMine much. It’s weird to see my face, y’know?”
I don’t. “No,” I say, my heart hammering. Is this the moment that I can do it, recruit him to Lyceum? “I mean, like books.”
His mouth quirks up. “Books? You reading books, Ripley Hart?”
I nod. This is a risk. And I’m taking it. “I am.”
He looks back out at the water. “Well. We’re going to be here for a bit,” he says, turning and leaning back against the metal.
“So tell me a story.”
The sun streaks across the sky as Callum and I walk the upper deck, and he listens while I tell him about The Lord of the Rings. Just as the hobbits are reaching Rivendell, I stop and look up, feeling eyes on me.
Hux sits in a crow’s nest, one arm slung over a knee as he stares down at me.
I glare up as I link my arm in Callum’s, and we keep walking.
“So, they think Frodo is beyond saving, because the poison is seeping toward his heart—”
“She’s coming over!” someone cries, the press spilling outside in their excitement.
I tighten my grip on Callum’s arm.
“Marcy?” I ask sadly. Part of me expects to see a person in a suit, marching along to orders from an earpiece. I don’t want
to have the illusion shattered. Right now, I can choose to believe.
“We don’t have to go look,” Callum says, but I shake my head.
“I want to. I have to,” I answer.
Callum and I slowly head to the starboard side, where reporters, guards, and crew all lean against the railing.
Just beyond, not even one hundred feet out, sits Marcy. And she’s definitely not some guy in a suit.
She’s on an iceberg no bigger than a car, her feet tucked under her as she rests, mouth open, panting. The massive ship sends
a wake slamming into the iceberg, and she tries to steady herself. Bright crimson, so red it can’t be real, stains her flank.
I don’t need the binoculars to see how skinny she is. Her stunning white fur is matted in some places, the white faded to
a dull yellow. Tears bite at the back of my throat, and I shake my head.
Callum puts a hand around my shoulders.
She sits up, and it’s a struggle. I can’t imagine how weak she is.
No one speaks as she tilts her head up toward us.
Her eyes are tired and milky. If she’s scared of us, she’s too exhausted to do anything about it.
Finally, she lowers herself and slips into the water, diving into the waves and out of sight.
Around us, the crowd disperses, voices already muttering about what filters they’ll use; one even asks Alba aloud to swap
out Marcy for a stock photo they had prepared. Already, the truth is being rewritten. Callum keeps his arm around me, and
I am faintly aware of the camera flashes behind us. Along the waves, a small dinghy returns to the ship, packed with soldiers
in white camo. They all hold long nightsticks. The end of one is tinged with blood.
It’s no mystery why Marcy positioned herself for a photo op.
One of the guards appears at Callum’s side. “Copter is ten minutes out,” he says, and Callum nods.
We saw what we came to see, I guess.
Callum and I both look at the water where Marcy dove. I was na?ve to think there was hope. Marcy is, really and truly, alone.
Callum’s voice breaks the silence. “A week. That’s how much longer we have to . . . lie for him.”
“What happens in a week?” I ask as my pulse kicks up. Does Callum finally have a plan? I fight the urge to seek out Hux in
the crow’s nest. I wonder if he’s listening to us right now. Of course he is.
“The Union Conference.”
“Where he’s supposed to endorse a successor?”
“Yes. Because he’s not going to.” His voice is quiet, gaze set dead ahead.
I’m probably imagining it, but the sky seems to have gotten a little darker. It was one thing to hear Becka guess at it. But Callum knows. Still I have to say it: “He’s seeking a third term.”
He looks out at the water with me. “No,” he answers. “He’s extending his current term.”
“For another four years?”
“For life.”
I tighten my hands on the railing, and we’re quiet for a moment. “What do you think about it?” I ask.
“I hate being the son of the president,” he admits quietly.
Hope blooms in my chest. “What if you told him that? Like you said, he’s a good guy. He’ll listen to his son.”
Callum stares at the water and then drags his eyes to me. “Exactly, Ripley. He’s a good guy. Not perfect, but . . . better
than others. If it’s not him, it will be someone worse. It’s the right thing for him to be our leader . . . for his whole
life.”
“For life?” I echo. “Callum, that’s not democracy.”
Callum nods. “I know. I know, Ripley. But we’re not dealing with ideals here. The billionaires at the dinner? They pull the strings. They’d let the world
end if it meant more dollars in their pockets and clicks on their videos. The will of the people died a long time ago.”
I process his words, forcing myself to be still. He continues gently, “This is just like what we’re doing here, with the Peary Act. Working in the system, compromising. Once we get past this vote, they can’t stop us. We just have to wait for the right time, and then we can do the right thing.”
I listen. I can’t tell how much of this Callum really believes and how much he’s saying because he can’t say the alternative:
that his father is going to become a dictator.
“What does it mean for you, Callum? If he’s like some sort of king, what does that make you? A prince? A king, one day?”
He looks up at me, his expression broken and sad but strangely hopeful. “That’s not what I want. That’s the last thing I want.”
He breathes, looking at his hands on the railing. “But damn, the things I would do. The rights I would wrong.”
Graves abolishing the term limit is wrong, but it can always get worse. But with me and with Callum? Maybe this is a third
option. An option where he—we—could make our own rules. And we could do it right.
I shake my head. “Why did you tell me?”
“Because I’m scared, and you always had a way of making me feel brave. Helping me sort out things that felt impossible,” Callum
says softly. The honesty shocks me, and I feel myself tear up. I blink fast.
“And when you were talking about the bad guy in the story?” he asks. “What was that phrase you used?”
The sun breaks through the clouds, weak, anemic, and he squints as he looks at me.
“Absolute power corrupts absolutely,” I reply.
He nods. “That.” He’s looking back at the water. “That.”
When the hovercopter lands on the circular pad that dominates the gallery deck, Callum helps me up and we ride back to New
Washington in silence, not letting go of the other’s hand, even when we disembark and approach the motorcade. Callum moves
to open the door of the last dark hovercar, a hulking vehicle that should seat at least eight, but one of the guards tells
him to hold on. I don’t know if they’re doing a safety sweep or, equally as likely, they’ve been ordered to leave time for
the eagerly waiting press to snap more photos. But as I stand on the blacktop with Callum, even though it’s been minutes since