The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(125)

“Libby is gone.”

Nico shut his eyes again.

“She’s gone, Nico. But you will not disappear.”

“I won’t, I told you—”

“No, you won’t,” Gideon said flatly. “And you know why? Because I won’t let you. Because I’ll do whatever my mother asks of me, for you. Because I’ll hunt you down if you even try.”

“Gideon—”

“You’re not safe there. Not as safe as you think you are.”

“What are you talking about? You’ve seen the wards.” He had repaired them himself. He and Libby.

“Yes, I know, but you’re not prepared.”

“For what?” He was. He had checked everything. Libby had checked everything.

Impenetrable. They should have been impenetrable.

Libby is gone.

Impossible.

“Dimensions, Nicolás, dimensions. Don’t just think big, think shapeless. Think infinite.”

“Gideon basta, infinity is false, it’s a false conception.” Even Nico could hear himself mumbling. “Grains of sand and atoms could all be counted if we really tried—”

“Listen to me Nicky, your wards have a hole. A big one.”

“That’s—”

“Don’t say impossible.”

Blearily, he watched Gideon’s feet step closer to the bars.

“Watch this,” said Gideon, and before Nico could look up, it was already happening.

It was a touch against his cheek, spectral and bodiless.

It was Gideon’s touch; gentle, soothing. Impossible.

Nico closed his eyes and felt relief again. Impossible.

Libby was gone. Libby was gone. Libby was gone.

Impossible.

“It’s a memory,” Gideon explained, and the little spurts of dreamscape shook Nico a bit, rocking him somewhere less stable. He could feel the earth beneath him shaking, the smell of fire, the sound of the scream.

She had left his room moments before she disappeared. She had been gone what, five minutes? Ten at the most? He had been drifting off, not quite awake, and it had been the warp in the atmosphere that called him. Waves were Libby’s method of interference. Nico was reliant on her ability to sense them—too reliant—but for that moment, she had been the wave. He only understood the danger after he’d already smelled smoke.

The loss of his usual grasp of reality—the box of limitations he used in order to function, in order to exist—came over him with a flood of sudden nausea.

Dimensions, Nicolás, dimensions.

Nico lifted a hand to his face, trying to understand it through the low doldrum of restless slumber.

“What is it,” he asked, “a memory?”

“Time,” said Gideon, shrugging. “I told you. Another dimension.”

Time. Fuck. Fuckballs. Fucking balls. Nico felt the sharp pins of opposition bursting in through the numbing wave of sleep.

“The amount of energy it would require to break a time ward is… impossible, unfathomable,” Nico mumbled, trying to sift through his thoughts. “And easily combated by other wards. Too much magic.” His wards, Libby’s wards. They would have been enough to keep it out.

“Okay, but what if it wasn’t?”

“What if it wasn’t? Gideon, it is. Rules of conservation apply. No one could possibly restore that amount of energy and power themselves unless—”

“Unless they could,” Gideon answered for him, and then, “Unless someone exists who can.”

The idea that someone could possibly be so powerful was beyond disconcerting. It was well outside the scope of Nico’s understanding. He had never met anyone more powerful than he was, or more powerful than Libby was, so for this to have been the work of some unknown medeian who wasn’t even in this Society was— “They wouldn’t have to be more powerful than you,” Gideon said. “It could be a very specific ability. Something very niche, possibly even limited.”

“Stop,” grumbled Nico, because Gideon was reading his mind. It wasn’t the same as Parisa reading his mind, because Parisa didn’t care and she did it by magic, but Gideon was doing it because he did care and it wasn’t magical at all. It was because Gideon knew Nico too well, and all the caring Gideon was doing about Nico was starting to make Nico feel slightly sick, or at least unsteady. It was wrapping around Nico like a blanketed embrace, making him drowsy, serving a gratifying warmth to the aching in his chest.

“Help me,” Nico said. He was suddenly tired, too tired to stand, and he sank backwards. “Help me find her, Gideon, please.”

“Yeah, Nico. Okay.”

“Help me.”

“I will.”

“You promise?”

“Yes. I promise.”

Nico felt it again, the touch that had been against his cheek before, only now it was full-bodied, whole. He remembered it from years ago, suddenly reapplying itself like a fine layer of gauze over the person he’d once been.

You don’t need to help me, Nico. You have a life, plans, a future— You should have all those things!

Face it, a ticking clock isn’t the same as a future.

You and your ticking clock, Gideon, that’s my future. That’s mine.