The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(133)

The perfect team for what?

“For anything,” Atlas said. “For everything.”

He meant: Let’s take this bloody mess and all its damn books and do something that’s never been done.

They drafted imaginary plans for it at length: a physicist who could approximate what Ezra could do, but bigger. Wormholes, black holes, space travel, time travel. Someone who could see quanta, manipulate it, understand it, use it. (Was that possible? Surely it must be, said Atlas.) Someone to help them power it, like a battery. Another telepath to be Atlas’ right hand, to be his eyes and ears so he could finally rest his own. What were they building? Neither of them were entirely sure, but they knew they had the instincts, the guts, the painstaking deliberation.

“I found something,” Atlas said, earlier than anticipated. Just the one, an animator.

(Animator?)

“Just trust me,” said Atlas, who was entering his late thirties now and beginning to dress in suits, concealing his true origins behind a posher accent and better clothes. “I’ve got a feeling about this one, bruv.”

It was around this time when the initial euphoria of the plan had begun to wane, and Ezra was starting to question his usefulness. The plan relied mostly on Atlas’ gut, which was certainly something Ezra trusted, but all the darting in and out of time and meeting wherever Atlas happened to be in the world wasn’t exactly the same as being present. Ezra wasn’t contributing anything, wasn’t part of it, not really. Go back to NYUMA, Atlas suggested, see what you can find, you’re only twenty-three now (or something) and you still look young. Besides, Atlas said with a laugh, you’re too American to blend in anywhere else.

So Ezra went.

Unfortunately, in order for Ezra to see anything worth finding, time had to slow down. He had to experience time linearly again, remaining in one chronological place and putting down the half-hearted roots of a passably unthreatening persona. He resented it, finding existence slightly dull without the one thing that had always felt natural to him, but before he could abandon his efforts and move on, the banality of his existence led to a position as a resident advisor in a freshman dorm and then, unexpectedly, he had found something.

“You need them both,” Ezra told Atlas after seeing Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona face off in the row of the century. “When the time comes, you absolutely must take them both.”

“But they have the same specialty,” Atlas pointed out, looking doubtful. His hair had started to grey at the temples a few years before, so by then he had opted to shave it off. “Don’t you want to be initiated? You were always meant to be the sixth.”

Ezra paused to consider it. He had always intended to be initiated someday, but suddenly the formality seemed unimportant.

“You’ll have to have both,” he repeated, adding, “Nor do I think you could conceivably get one without the other.”

Atlas mulled it over, considering the idea from all angles.

“They’re… physicists, you said?”

“They’re mutants,” Ezra said. (High praise, in his opinion.) “Absolute mutants.”

“Well, keep an eye on them,” said Atlas thoughtfully. “I’ve got something else I’m working on right now.”

Easy enough to do. Assuming the unremarkable role of a student two years above them despite being born nearly twenty-five years before meant that Libby in particular proved herself to be intriguing to Ezra. That wasn’t an interesting story, particularly after knowing it would eventually sour.

As for Nico, they never quite got on. Ezra already knew he was giving up his spot for Nico, or for whomever Atlas found to serve one of the more necessary roles among the six. (A naturalist, Atlas said. What did they need plants for? scoffed Ezra, only to be met with Never mind about the plants, I’ve got a feeling, you’ll see.) At least Nico made things easier by rendering the offer impossible for Libby to refuse.

It was the year leading up to their initiation that finally opened Ezra’s eyes to the possibility that he may not have been starving so much as fasting. Now that Libby and Nico were gone, Ezra was left performing his cultivated mundanity for a fleet of empty seats. Worse, he had underestimated the discomfort of no longer being integral to Atlas’ plan.

“Nonsense, of course you are,” said Atlas. “In fact, I suspect you can do the ritual this year after all.”

“How?” Ezra asked irritably. Boredom stung, it itched somewhere intangibly, like a cramp in his calf. “Five are initiated, not six.”

“Yes, but I suspect I was wrong about Parisa,” Atlas said.

Ezra frowned. “Is she not as good as you thought?”

“No, in terms of ability she’s precisely what I’d hoped.” A pause. “But I suspect she’s a problem.”

“What sort of problem?” Ezra was unaware Atlas had any of those. As far as he knew, everything was going swimmingly without him. Hence the boredom.

“A problem.” Atlas sipped his tea. “I can convince her to get the others to kill Callum, at least.”

“Which one, the empath?”

“Yes.” That was always the one meant to die; even the perfect group of candidates would have to lose a member, after all. In Atlas’ eyes—and Ezra agreed—Callum was the equivalent of a nuclear code, and ridding the world of him was a favor to humanity. “Then you can have Parisa’s spot.”