Atlas Six (Atlas Series, 1)

“Maybe we should kill Rhodes,” remarked Callum over breakfast.

At which point Tristan stopped chewing, swallowing thickly around his toast.

Callum slid a glance to him, half-shrugging. “It just seems practical,” he said. “She and Varona are a pair, aren’t they? Why keep both?”

Tristan’s response was slow. “Then why not suggest killing Nico?”

“We could, I suppose.” Callum reached for his coffee, taking a sip. “I could be convinced.”

He replaced the cup on the table, glancing at Tristan’s waylaid toast. “Everything alright?”

Tristan grimaced. “We’re discussing which among us to murder, Callum. I don’t think I’m expected to go on eating.”

“Aren’t you? You’re still here,” Callum observed. “I imagine that means you’re expected to go on doing everything precisely as you normally would.”

“Still.” Tristan’s stomach hurt, or his chest. He felt nauseated and broken. Was this what Dalton meant about a person being fractured? Perhaps they were being disintegrated on purpose, morality removed so as to be stitched back up with less human parts. Maybe in the end his former beliefs would be vestigial, like a foregone tail. Some little nub at the base of his philosophical spine.

It was astounding how easily he had come around to the idea. Shouldn’t he have balked, recoiled, run away? Instead, it seemed to have settled in like something he’d always suspected, becoming more undeniably obvious each day; of course someone had to die. Immense magic required a power source, and a sacrifice of this nature would be precisely that: immense.

For him, anyway.

“Maybe it won’t work if you feel nothing,” Tristan murmured, and Callum looked up sharply.

“What?”

“I just meant—”

What had he meant? This was Callum, after all. “Never mind.”

“You had faith in me once.” Callum’s fingers tightened around his cup. “Not anymore, I take it?”

“Well, it’s just—”

“This is what I do to survive,” Callum said, his voice harsh now with something; betrayal, maybe. Tristan flinched, remembering what Callum had said: Trust, once dead, cannot be resurrected. “I thought you understood that about me by now.”

“I did. I do,” Tristan corrected himself. “But you just sound so…”

“What, callous? Cold, indifferent, ambivalent?” A pause. “Or do you mean cruel?” 

Silence.

Callum turned his head to glance expectantly at Tristan, who didn’t look up. “You still don’t get it, do you?”

Tristan said nothing.

“We are this way because of what we have, not what we lack,” Callum said, suddenly bristling with impatience. “Who would Parisa be if she had not seen her brother’s thoughts? If Reina had not been leached upon from birth?”

“Callum,” Tristan managed to say, “I was only trying to—”

“To what? To vilify me? In the end we will make the same choice, Tristan. In fact, we have made it already.” Callum’s mouth was thinly lined; tight with malice, or pain. “Eventually, you and I will both decide to kill someone. Are you less guilty simply because you’ve been the one to unravel more?”

Foggily, Tristan thought to say yes. He thought to argue: This is guilt, it is human, your decisiveness is robotic, like a machine. In the end I could not carry on as I was, I could not become a false version of myself, I have a beating heart inside my chest and where is yours?

He didn’t.

 “You are here,” Callum said, “because you crave something from this as much as I do. Power, understanding, it doesn’t matter which. Maybe it’s knowledge you want, maybe not. Maybe you’re here because you plan to walk out of this Society and take over James Wessex’s company the moment you do. Maybe you’ll bankrupt him, send his daughter into ruin. Maybe this is vengeance for you, reprisal, whether you plan to admit that to yourself or not.”

Tristan swallowed heavily.

“Maybe you can see others, Tristan, but I can see the parts of you that you won’t allow yourself to see. That’s my fucking curse, Tristan!”

Callum slammed a fist against the table, rising to his feet. 

“There isn’t a person alive who can see themselves as I see them,” Callum snarled, and it did not sound like a warning. Not a threat. “You want to believe that your hesitation makes you good, makes you better? It doesn’t. Every single one of us is missing something. We are all too powerful, too extraordinary, and don’t you see it’s because we’re riddled with vacancies? We are empty and trying to fill, lighting ourselves on fire just to prove that we are normal—that we are ordinary. That we, like anything, can burn.”

He pivoted as one hand fell to his side, exasperated.

“We are medeians because we will never have enough,” Callum said hoarsely. “We aren’t normal; we are gods born with pain built in. We are incendiary beings and we are flawed, except the weaknesses we pretend to have are not our true weaknesses at all. We are not soft, we do not suffer impairment or frailty—we imitate it. We tell ourselves we have it. But our only real weakness is that we know we are bigger, stronger, as close to omnipotence as we can be, and we are hungry, we are aching for it. Other people can see their limits, Tristan, but we have none. We want to find our impossible edges, to close our fingers around constraints that don’t exist, and that,” Callum exhaled. “That is what will drive us to madness.”

Tristan glanced down at his forgotten toast, suddenly feeling drained.

Callum’s voice didn’t soften. “You don’t want to go mad? Too bad, you are already. If you leave here the madness will only follow you. You have already gone too far, and so have I.”

“I won’t kill Rhodes,” said Tristan. “I can’t do it.”

Callum paused a moment, stiffening, and then he resumed his seat, waving a hand over his coffee to replenish its warmth.

“Yes,” he said without expression. “Parisa made sure of that.”

For the rest of the day, Tristan felt dazed, as if he’d suffered a wound that hadn’t clotted. The constant questioning of himself, of others, was viciously acute. It was one thing to be understood by someone else, to be exposed by them, and another (however inevitable it was) to be misused by them. Both Parisa and Callum had seen pieces of Tristan that he either didn’t or couldn’t understand; both fundamentally distrusted the other. What, then, had they seen in him that they could each use to their advantage? He was caving in on himself beneath the weight of his doubt, uncertain. 

Nothing was concrete anymore. Time did not exist and neither did infinity. There were other dimensions, other planes, other people who could use them. Maybe Tristan was in love with Callum or Parisa or both or neither, maybe he actually hated them, maybe it meant something that he trusted them both so fucking little and they didn’t mind, having known it all along. Maybe the only parts Tristan couldn’t see were himself and his place in their game between each other.

What Tristan wanted was to believe in something; to stop staring at the pieces and finally grasp the whole. He wanted to revel in his magic, not wrestle with it. He wanted something, somewhere, that he could understand.

He was pacing while he postured. Movement didn’t help the blur of things half-seen, but sitting still was not an option. He closed his eyes and reached out for something solid, feeling strands in the air. Their wards were gridlike, difficult to disturb, like bars. He paused and tried something different: to be part of them, participant instead of observer.

He felt himself like a flicker of existence, both in place and not. It was meditation, in a sense. A focus on connectedness, and the more embedded in his own thoughts he became, the less he was able to place himself in any physical reality. In the absence of sight, sense and memory could tell him where he was: hard wooden floors, the smell of kindling burning in the furnace, the air of the Society mansion, occupied by magical contortions he himself had made—but in the interest of unlearning his preconceptions, he discarded them. He was nowhere, everywhere, everything and nothing. He abandoned the necessity of taking a form or a shape. 

Bewilderingly, it was Parisa’s voice that spoke to him.

“You ought to have a talisman,” she said. “Find one and keep it with you, and you’ll never have to wonder what’s real.”

Tristan’s eyes snapped open, alarmed, but upon recalling himself in reality, he confirmed that he hadn’t moved from where he’d remembered himself last. He still sat on the floor of the painted room, surrounded by no one and nothing. 

Where had he gone in that instant, or had he actually moved at all? Had Parisa been inside his head somehow, or had it been a memory? Was it her magic or his own?

So much for not wondering what was real.

In the end, Tristan shook himself, rising to his feet. After a pause to think, he took a small scrap of paper, scribbling something on it and tucking it into his pocket. 

Callum looked up when he entered, bracing himself for a continuation of their prior argument, but Tristan shook his head.

“I’m not here to have a row,” he said. “You’re right, of course. I know you’re right.”

Callum looked warily unconvinced. “Is that supposed to be concession or a compliment?”

“Neither. A fact. Or rather, a white flag.”

“So this is a truce?”

“Or an apology,” Tristan said. “Whichever you prefer.”

Callum arched a brow. “I don’t suppose I need either.”

“Perhaps not.” Tristan folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the frame of the reading room. “Drink?”

Callum regarded him another moment, then nodded, shutting the book before him and rising uncomplicatedly to his feet.

The two of them walked in practiced cohesion to the painted room. Callum summoned a pair of glasses from the corner, glancing over his shoulder to Tristan. “Whisky?”

“Sure.”

Callum poured with a wave of his hand, leaking magic as he always did, and beside him, Tristan took his usual seat. Their motions were practiced, frequently rehearsed, and Callum set a glass in Tristan’s hand, taking hold of the other. For several moments they were silent, each savoring the drink. It was a smoky, hollow blend, silken with amber and caramel in the light, with the smooth finish they both tended to prefer.

“It doesn’t have to be Rhodes,” Callum said eventually. “But you have to admit she’s unpopular.”

Tristan sipped his whisky. “I know.”

“Unpopular doesn’t mean valueless.”

“I know.”

“And if your attachment to her is…”

“It isn’t.” Again, Tristan sipped his glass. “I don’t think.”

“Ah.” Callum turned his head, looking at him. “For the record, she has been trying to research her dead sister.”

Tristan blinked. “What?”

“Her sister died of a degenerative disease. I suppose I might have mentioned that before.”

He hadn’t, though Tristan remained undecided as to whether or not he should have.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I know,” said Callum simply. “Someone who has seen another person waste away is easy to spot. They are haunted differently.” He paused, and then added, “And she is also requesting books on human degeneration, which the library is currently denying her.”

“And that you know because of…?”

“Coincidence. We do live in the same house.”

“Ah.” Tristan cleared his throat. “How do I know you’re being honest with me?”

“What reason would I have to lie?”

“Well, it’s not as if it doesn’t benefit you. Having someone.”

“Having someone, or having you?”

“You tell me.” Tristan slid him a glance, and Callum sighed.

“You are not accustomed to being desired, are you?” Callum prompted, and before Tristan could manage his surely uncomfortable reply, Callum clarified, “As a friend, I mean. As a person.” A pause. “As anything.”

“Please don’t psychoanalyze me today,” Tristan said.

“Fine, fine.” Callum’s smile quirked. “Daddy issues.”

Tristan glared at him, and Callum laughed.

“Well, the whisky’s good, and so is the company,” said Callum. “Astoundingly, that is the primary extent of your worth to me, Tristan. Ample conversation, at the very least.”

“I don’t know about ample.”

“That,” Callum said, “is the best part. The silences are particularly engaging.”

Aptly, they sat in silence for a moment, saturating themselves in the relief of conflict resolution.

After a few minutes of quiet coexistence, Callum glanced at the clock.

“Well,” he said. “I suppose I’m for bed, then.” He rose to his feet, setting his empty glass on the table. “Are you staying up?”

“For a bit,” Tristan said, and Callum nodded.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, clapping a hand on Tristan’s shoulder, “the parts of you that you seem to loathe are hardly abhorrent at all.”

“Thanks,” said Tristan pithily, and Callum let out another hearty laugh. He strode through the doors and disappeared, the warmth of his magic swallowed up by the dark and gone with him.

Tristan, left alone in the light of the painted room’s fireplace, set his glass on the table, reaching into his pocket. He removed the note he’d scrawled to himself earlier, unfurling it to read the script written inside.

A glass of wine. Vintage. Old World.

Tristan looked up at the sweat on his glass of whisky, watching it fall to the table below.

“Fuck,” he swore aloud, crumpling the piece of paper in his hands.