The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(113)

Simple choices were what registered to Callum most honestly, the truest truths: fairytale peasant needs money for dying child, accepts whatever consequences follow. The rest of the story was always too lofty, about choosing good or the inevitable collapse of desperation and vice; recordings of human nature, prescriptions to rectify its ills. They were the lying truths, ideologically grand but implausible on the whole. In his view, human nature wasn’t an artful curation of morality, but merely cyclical patterns of behavior. Self-correcting; leaning one way only to balance it out with the other over time.

Callum had always tended towards the assassins in the stories, the dutiful soldiers, those driven by reaction rather than a cause. Perhaps it was a small role to serve on the whole but at least it was rational, explainable by even biological terms. A person had to have a foothold somewhere; a role in the ecosystem, like any species. Callum admired that, the ability to choose a side and behave as it dictated. Take the huntsman who failed to kill Snow White, for example. An assassin acting on his own internal compass. Whether he lived or died as a result of his choice? Unimportant. He didn’t raise an army, didn’t fight for good, didn’t interfere much with the queen’s other evils. It wasn’t the whole world at stake; it was never about destiny. It was whether or not he could live with his own decision, because life was the only thing that truly mattered.

The truest truths: Mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else. In terms of finding satisfaction, all a person was capable of controlling was himself.

Libby was a hero. Parisa was a villain. Their goals were overarching, appositional.

Nico and Reina were so impartial and self-interested as to be wholly negligible.

Tristan was a soldier. He would follow wherever he was most persuasively led.

It was Callum who was an assassin. It was the same as a soldier, but when he worked, he worked alone.

“Do you worry about dying?” Tristan asked him after dinner one evening, the two of them left behind beside the dining room fire. Unnecessary warmth, given the spring breeze outside, but the Society was nothing if not committed to aesthetics. “That someone might choose you to die, I mean.”

“I will die someday,” Callum said. “I’ve come to terms with it. People are free to choose me if they wish.” He permitted half a smile as he raised his glass to his lips, glancing at Tristan. “I am equally free to disagree.”

“So it doesn’t bother you that the rest of the group might elect—”

Tristan stopped.

“Elect what? To kill me?” Callum prompted. “If I feared elimination I would not have come.”

“Why did you come?”

Reaction. Tristan would not understand that, of course, even if his reasons were precisely the same. He was a soldier who wanted a principled king, though he seemed unaware what his own principles were.

How pitiful, really.

“You keep asking me that,” commented Callum. “Why should it matter?”

“Doesn’t it? The point of the current subject is intention.”

“So you’re asking my intentions?”

Callum took another sip while he considered his answer, allowing his thoughts to steep.

His life at the Society was not uninteresting. It was methodical, habitual, but that was a consequence of life in any collective. Self-interest was more exciting—sleeping through the afternoon one day, climbing Olympus to threaten the gods the next—but it scared people, upset them. Tending to every whim made others unnecessarily combative, mistrustful. They preferred the reassurance of customs, little traditions, the more inconsequential the better. Breakfast in the morning, supper at the sound of the gong. It soothed them, normality. Everyone wanted most desperately to be unafraid and numb.

Humans were mostly sensible animals. They knew the dangers of erratic behavior. It was a chronic condition, survival. “My intentions are the same as anyone’s,” said Callum after a few moments. “Stand taller. Think smarter. Be better.”

“Better than what?”

Callum shrugged. “Anyone. Everyone. Does it matter?”

He glanced at Tristan over his glass and registered a vibration of malcontent.

“Ah,” Callum said. “You’d prefer me to lie to you.”

Tristan bristled. “I don’t want you to lie—”

“No, you want my truths to be different, which you know they won’t be. The more of my true intentions you know, the guiltier you feel. That’s good, you know,” Callum assured him. “You want so terribly to dissociate, but the truth is you feel more than anyone in this house.”

“More?” Tristan echoed doubtfully, recoiling from the prospect.

“More,” Callum confirmed. “At higher volumes. At broader spectrums.”

“I would have guessed you’d say Rhodes.”

“Rhodes hasn’t the faintest idea who she is,” said Callum. “She feels nothing.”

Tristan’s brow furrowed. “A bit harsh, isn’t it?”

“Not in the slightest.” Libby Rhodes was an anxious impending meltdown whose decisions were based entirely on what she allowed the world to shape her into. She was more powerful than all of them except for Nico, and of course she was. Because she would not misuse it. She was too small-minded, too un-hungry for that. Too trapped within the cage of her own fears, her desires to be liked. The day she woke up and realized she could make her own world would be a dangerous one, but it was so unlikely it hardly kept Callum up at night.