Atlas Six (Atlas Series, 1)

He almost didn’t hear her over the sound of his blood rushing, but it had been enough to make Callum blink. Enough for him to glance down at the knife in his hand and toss it away after looking at Tristan with visible disgust.

“I wouldn’t have done it,” he said, but Tristan’s adrenaline said otherwise. The knowledge of Callum’s face unmasked said otherwise. The reality of their circumstances said, quite firmly, otherwise. Tristan’s muscles ached, his entire body slow to reconvene its usual rituals of survival.

How would Caesar have made Brutus pay if he had lived?

“I’m sorry.” The words left Tristan’s mouth numbly, unevenly.

“Apology accepted,” said Callum, his voice cool and unaltered. “Forgiveness, however, declined.”

The red light in the corner flashed, attracting both their attention.

“No one could have gotten through the vacuum,” said Callum. “It’s nothing.”

“Is it?” Tristan’s breath had yet to slow. “That’s not what it sounds like.”

“No.” Callum’s brow furrowed slightly. “No,” he agreed, “it doesn’t sound like that.”

He rose to his feet, exiting the dining room, and Tristan glanced at the discarded knife before shuddering, stumbling upright in Callum’s wake.

Callum’s stride was long and surprisingly urgent as Tristan followed him up the stairs.

“What is it?”

“Someone’s here,” said Callum without pausing. “Someone’s in the house.” 

“No shit,” came Parisa’s voice around the corner. She was hurrying after them from somewhere else in the house, lovely and disorderly and wearing a man’s shirt over bare legs. 

Tristan arched a brow in response to her appearance, and she gave him a silencing glare.

“I don’t understand how it happened,” she said. “The house’s sentience usually alerts me when someone tries to enter. I see he’s still alive.” 

It took Tristan a moment to register that the last line had been said in his thoughts.

“Obviously,” he mumbled, and Callum’s eyes slid to his. Tristan didn’t have to look to know that Callum had understood perfectly well what Parisa had asked him, even without words. Even without magic, Callum knew.

He knew they had agreed on him to die, and now none of them would ever be forgiven.

They rounded the gallery corner to the rooms. Nico was forcing open the door to Libby’s bedroom, Reina at his heels. 

“Did you—”

“No,” Reina answered Parisa blandly. “I heard nothing.”

“Who could have—”

There was a blast of something inconceivable from Nico’s palm as Tristan thought for the thousandth time, my god—marveling at the power they had, Libby and Nico; individually and apart. 

Imagine having something so wild in your bloodstream. Imagine feeling something, anything, and seeing it manifest without the blink of an eye. Even at Tristan’s angriest he was nothing, only of any use to anyone when he was thinking clearly, seeing sense. No bombs exploded at the whims of his frustration, which made him ordinary. It made him normal; something he had tried his whole life not to be.

It was Nico who entered the room first, letting out a sound like a wounded dog in answer to the fading sound of Libby’s scream. The bitterness on Tristan’s tongue at the sound, however mystifying and incongruous it was to feel, was envy, because of course. Of course one pseudo-twin would suffer the other’s pain, the two of them in orbit to something Tristan would never grasp or understand. It was the same reaction as always: brittle unsurprise.

But what startled him properly were the others.

The sound from Parisa’s tongue had to be Farsi, though it was the first time Tristan had ever heard her use it. It morphed rapidly into French, but by the time her color had fully drained, she had fallen silent again. Reina, too, was speechless and pale, though she was often speechless. More alarmingly, it was the first time Tristan had ever observed her forcing her gaze away from something rather than boring holes in it, unrelenting. 

Callum stared loudly. His expression was vocal, even if his mouth was not. He was saying things like how could this be happening and also, somehow, I told you. It was as if the hard look in his eyes was saying something to all of them that the rest of him could not: See? I was never your enemy after all.

Nico fell to his knees, shoulders folding in around his torso like he’d lost an organ. 

“This can’t be real,” he said, and swore softly under his breath. “No. No.”

The four of them, one by one, had turned to Tristan, expectant. His brow furrowed, lips tight.

“Do we think it was the Forum?” asked Parisa after a moment, her voice like sandpaper. “They got in and out last time, didn’t they?”

“Could have been someone like Wessex Corp,” said Reina darkly. 

“Someone should tell Atlas. Or Dalton.”

“Whoever did this, are they still here? In the house?”

“No.” Parisa glanced at Callum, who shook his head. “No. Not anymore.”

“I want answers.” The words, when they left Nico’s mouth, were explosive, juvenile with demand. “I want an explanation.”

“Does it count?”

To that, the others glared at Reina, who sighed loudly.

“Look, we were all thinking it,” she said. “Rhodes is gone. So that means—”

“The elimination is about sacrifice,” Tristan spat. “Death.”

The room fell silent.

“Is this not death enough for you?” Nico’s voice shook with outrage. The ground beneath them rumbled with it, but in answer, there was little Tristan could do but stare.

“How dare you,” Nico suddenly snarled at Tristan from the floor, leaking with toxicity that sparked mid-air. “How dare you—”

“Wait,” Tristan said. “What are you seeing?”

The others froze, stiffening.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

“It’s Rhodes,” Callum supplied, and the others flinched at her name, revulsed. “Her body on the ground.”

“What?” Tristan’s pulse quickened. “No. No, it can’t be—”

He felt the cool traces of Parisa’s presence in his head and shivered.

“He doesn’t see it,” Parisa said, sounding bewildered at first, and then astounded. “He doesn’t see anything.”

“Wait.” Nico scrambled to his feet, taking Tristan brusquely by the shoulder. “What’s there, then?”

“Nothing.” Not entirely true. There was an excess of magic in the room—volumes of it, impossibly swollen—but the air was empty of her. It was vacant of Libby herself, and that was the only thing Tristan could see or feel: her absence. 

Libby was gone, clearly. Even her magic was gone from the room. 

“She’s not there.”

“But she’s here,” Nico insisted raggedly, while Parisa, the first to manage a response, hastily bent down, brushing her fingers over nothing.

“This is… uncanny.” She stared down in awe. “The blood, it’s—” real.

Blood. No wonder they were all repulsed. 

“There’s no blood,” Tristan said.

“No blood?” 

He could feel their eyes on him, waiting.

“I told you, nothing.” Only emptiness. Only absence. Magic unrecognizable, belonging to no one. “But she’s definitely not here.”

“So it’s an illusion,” Parisa said, as Nico’s expression turned to a ghastly mix of concern and relief. “A really excellent one.”

“Professionally done,” Reina said, glancing at Callum.

It took a moment for Callum to process what she’d said.

“You honestly think I would abduct Rhodes and leave an illusion in her place?” he demanded.

“Your family is famous for their illusions,” Reina said. “Aren’t they?”

“I also know Tristan would see through it,” Callum snapped. “I’m not an idiot.”

“So someone outside the Society must have done it,” Parisa inserted quickly, rising to her feet again. She was barefoot, Tristan registered, and still thoroughly unconcerned with her appearance. “Only someone who wouldn’t know what Tristan’s specialty is could have done it.”

“Does anyone know—?”

“No,” Tristan said. Only Atlas had ever guessed the details, though he must have had to discuss it with the Society’s board. “I mean, maybe. But I don’t think so.”

“Could still be the Forum,” Reina said. “Or one of the other groups.” She glanced at Nico, whose face was pale.

“But why?” he asked, swallowing. “Why Rhodes?”

Reina glanced at Parisa. “Victim of circumstance?”

“No. This was planned,” said Parisa with abject certainty, just as Atlas entered the room behind them, Dalton trailing in his wake.

“What’s this? Wh-” Atlas broke off, staring. “Miss Kamali, your hands—”

Parisa glanced down, scrubbing them with disgust onto the shirt that was clearly not her own. It was comical, really, how Tristan wanted so desperately to see the carnage the others were seeing, even if they obviously wished to put it out of their minds.

For him there were only the traces left behind, which was oppressive. There were no fingerprints, no clear signature. Only the enormity of what was missing.

“It’s an illusion,” said Tristan. “It’s not real.”

Atlas frowned, glancing at him without conviction. “An illusion that powerful would take—”

“I know what it would take,” Tristan snarled, rapidly losing his patience with repetition, “and I promise you, it’s not there.”

It was the harshest tone any of them had ever taken with Atlas, though at the moment Tristan didn’t much care. That someone who could break into this house and take something inside it did not mean Libby Rhodes was still alive. The fact that she had not been killed in this room, or that this was not her body, was not, for Tristan, a comforting piece of information. Particularly not if whoever had taken her had the resources to do it in a way that could successfully trick all but one of the most talented medeians alive.

The look on Atlas’ face in response was carefully measured.

“I will have to contact the board,” he said. “They will need to know about this immediately.”

Then he disappeared, leaving Dalton standing alone in the doorway.

None of them particularly expected him to speak, though he did. “It’s not an illusion,” Dalton said, his tone blank and perfunctory, and Tristan gave a loud growl.

“For fuck’s sake, I’m telling you, it’s not r-”

“It’s not real, no,” Dalton confirmed quickly, “but it’s not an illusion.”

He waved a hand and whatever the others saw, they leapt back from the sight of it, Parisa stifling a scream as the traces of magic rose up in a thick blur, like heavy fog. Nico looked like he was going to be sick.

“It’s an animation,” Dalton said, and then he turned and left.

In his absence, the others stood speechless again.

“We should go,” Callum said in a measured voice, at the same time Reina said, “It’s his specialty.”

Parisa glanced up. “What?”

“Dalton. He’s an animator. I don’t know what that means,” Reina added. “But that’s what he does.”

“What’s the difference between an illusion and an animation?” The question sounded bitter from Nico, though it might not have been. His anger or his loss or whatever it was that was ailing him at Libby’s loss was bleeding, uncontained, into everything he said. 

To Tristan’s immense surprise, Parisa turned to Callum for confirmation of something. 

“Sentience?” she asked. She was asking him alone.

“Sort of,” Callum said. Nobody but Parisa seemed willing to meet his eye. “Illusions have no sentience, but animations have… some. It’s not strictly sentience,” he corrected himself, “but it’s an approximation of life. A sort of… naturalistic spirit. Not to any level of consciousness, but to the extent of being, arguably, alive.”

“There are myths about that.” Reina’s tone was cerebral. “And writings from antiquity.”

“Yes,” Callum said. “Spectral things, certain creatures. They’re animated but not sentient.”

“It’s not in our heads,” Parisa said. “Tristan can’t see it.”

“No,” Callum confirmed. “It’s still just magic. Manufactured somehow and put here deliberately for us to find.”

“But why would someone want us to think Rhodes was dead?” (Nico.)

“Is the question why Rhodes, or why us?” (Parisa.)

“Either. Both.”

Their collective silence suggested a confounding lack of answer. Tristan’s sore muscles ached, throbbing with pain.

“Let’s get out of here,” Parisa said eventually, turning her face away with another flinch. “I’m done looking at this.”

She turned and left, followed by a hesitant Nico. A less hesitant Reina glanced at Tristan, then at Callum. Then she, too, turned and left.

When only Callum and Tristan remained in the room, the briefly forgotten intensity of the evening returned. It occurred to Tristan that he should be prepared for something, anything, but acknowledging so to himself already seemed like the beginning of an end.

“There was something else in the scream,” Callum remarked without looking up from whatever animation had been left in Libby’s place. “It wasn’t fear. It was closer to rage.” 

After another beat of silence, Callum clarified, “Betrayal.”

It took a while for Tristan to find his voice.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning she knew the person who did this to her,” Callum said, perfunctory in his certainty. “It wasn’t a stranger. And—”

He stopped. Tristan waited.

“…and?”

Callum shrugged. 

“And,” he said. “That means something.”

Clearly more remained unsaid than not from Callum, but considering that Tristan was expected to have killed him by now, he didn’t particularly feel the need to press the issue. The magic left in the room, whatever it was and whoever it belonged to, was already starting to rot. The whole room was off-color, tainted, like the magic itself was corroding the further its creator went from them. Whatever form of intent had cast it, that was poisoned now.

Along with other things in the room.

“Why didn’t you tell the others?” Tristan asked, and now Callum’s mouth morphed into some misbegotten smile, like a laugh he meant to indulge earlier but remained somewhere deep in his throat, awaiting a more spontaneous delivery.

“I may have to kill one of them,” Callum said. “Tactically speaking, I’d rather they not know everything I know.”

So Tristan had been correct: They would not be forgiven. None of them.

Nor, he realized, would they get a second shot at Callum.

“Why tell me?” Tristan asked, clearing his throat. 

The thin line of Callum’s mouth told him he already knew the answer.

“Because you deserve to wonder whether it might be you.”

Tristan forced himself not to flinch when Callum raised a hand, touching his thumb to the center of Tristan’s forehead. A blessing, or the mockery of one. 

“Truthfully, I respect you more for this,” Callum remarked, withdrawing his hand. “I always hoped you’d make someone a worthy adversary.”

In his mind, Tristan manifested a new talisman; a new scroll to recount his new truths.

Part one: Your value is not negotiable.

Part two: You will kill him before he kills you.

“Sleep well,” Tristan said. 

Callum spared him a nod before turning to the door, passing irreversibly through it.