The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(137)

Eventually the truth would sink in for Libby, and when it did, it was best to remove any flammable objects from the room, such as Ezra’s limbs and clothing.

“What,” Libby spat, “does Atlas Blakely need me for?”

Yes, there it was. The rage was settling in.

“You’d better hope you don’t find out,” Ezra said, and then he departed for his meeting through a door, the sound of his careful stride echoing from the floors the moment they hit familiar marble.

He already knew who the room would contain when he entered it. Much like Atlas, Ezra had chosen its occupants carefully, using the contacts he had procured beneath the meticulous cover of his unremarkable face, his eradicated name. They all wanted to be found—were easily lured by the right price—and so the primary leaders from every enemy the Society had ever possessed would not have hesitated to reply to Ezra’s summons. They had been lured here by the promise of a single prize: the Society itself, which no one but Ezra had ever turned down.

Provided the animation worked, Ezra doubted Atlas would suspect him. But even if he did, it was Atlas who had made him invisible, and therefore impossible to find.

“My friends,” Ezra said, striding in to address the room without preamble. “Welcome.”

If they were surprised to discover he was so young, they hid it well. They would not have known, after all, what to make of the summons they had received, each of which contained secrets from their youth as irreconcilable leverage. (Only people who exist in three dimensions ever believe history to be sacred. Keep that to yourself.)

“The six most dangerous human beings alive,” Ezra said to the room, “are, as you all know, currently in Atlas Blakely’s care. One has been neutralized, which should buy us some time, and another has been eliminated by the Society itself. But the other four will bear the enormity of either our extinction or survival—the chosen of a despotic Society for which we are little more than pawns. We have one year until they emerge again from its protection.”

The members of the room exchanged glances. Six of them, as Ezra found beautifully ironic. The synchronicity was so crisp that even Atlas would have appreciated it, had he known.

“What do you want us to do about them?” asked Nothazai, the first to speak.

Ezra smiled as Atlas would have shrugged.

“What else? Our world is dying,” he said, and took a seat, ready to put himself to work. “It’s up to us to set it right.”





END.



AND SO FIVE STOOD where there had once been six.

“I won’t do it,” said Nico de Varona, breaking the silence. “Not unless I have some assurances moving forward.”

Parisa Kamali was first to reply. “Assurances of what?”

“I want Rhodes back. And I want your word you’ll help me find her.” Nico’s expression was determined and grim, his voice steady and unflinching. “I refuse to be part of this Society unless I know I have your support.”

Dalton opted not to contribute things like there is no refusal, because it did not seem relevant.

Instead he sat quietly, waiting for what would come.

“I’m with Nico.” That was Reina Mori.

“As am I.” Callum Nova’s voice was smooth with confidence. Presumably he possessed the cleverness to know that for him, only one answer would be sufficient.

“You?” Nico asked Tristan Caine, who didn’t look up from his hands.

“Of course.” His voice was thin with derision. “Of course.”

“Which leaves you,” Reina observed, turning to Parisa, who glanced askance with irritation.

“Would I really be stupid enough to refuse?”

“Don’t,” Nico cut in before anyone could respond. “This isn’t a fight. It’s not a threat, it’s a fact. Either you’re with me or you’re not.”

Either they were with him or he was not with them, Dalton interpreted in silence. But this was the point of the binding, wasn’t it? They had not suffered this year for nothing.

“Fine,” Parisa said. “If Rhodes can be found—”

“She will be,” Nico said brusquely. “That’s the point.”

“Fine.”

Parisa slid a glance around the room, to the five candidates present alongside the absence that none could ignore. She dared them to contradict her, but when, as predicted, they did not, she said, “You have our word, Varona.”

And so where there had once been six were now, irreversibly, one.



* * *



WHEN AN ECOSYSTEM DIES, nature makes a new one. Simple rules for a simple concept, for which the Society was proof itself. It existed on the ashes of its former selves, atop the bones of things abandoned or destroyed. It was a secret buried within a labyrinth, inside a maze. To reach it was only to find a tumor that grew insidiously within itself.

The Society was built upon itself, higher and higher, like Babel reaching for the sky. Invention, progression, the building up of everything had no option but to continue; something put in motion did not, of its own volition, stop. The trouble with knowledge, the idiosyncrasy of its particular addiction, was that it was not the same as other types of vice. Because knowledge was not chemical, was not physical or hormonal or easily within reach, someone given a taste of omniscience could never be satisfied by the contents of a bare reality without it. Life and death as once prescribed would carry no weight, and even the usual temptations of excess would taste unsavory. The lives they might have had would only feel ill-fitting, poorly worn. Someday, perhaps quite soon, they might be able to create entire worlds; to not only reach, but to become like gods.