The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(32)

“I know.” Not really. It didn’t feel real yet, but it would soon. “Is it quiet, at least?”

“Yes, and I don’t like quiet,” Gideon said. “Makes me suspect my mother’s going to surface from the garbage disposal.”

“She won’t, we had a talk.”

“Did you?”

“Well, she surprised me in the bath,” said Nico. “Still, I’d say she’s fairly well persuaded.” Or something close enough, he thought grimly.

“Nicolás,” Gideon sighed, “déjate.”

“I’m only trying to h-”

He broke off as the bars warped, Gideon’s face disappearing. He opened his eyes to jarring darkness, someone shaking him awake.

“There’s someone here,” said a voice he didn’t recognize for a moment, and Nico groggily struggled to sit upright.

“What? It’s just my friend, he’s not—”

“Not in your head.” It was Reina’s voice, he realized, adjusting to make out the general shape of her face in the dark. “There’s someone in the house.”

“How do you—”

“There are plants in every room. They woke me.” She was using a tone that sounded like stop talking. “Someone is trying to get inside, if they aren’t here already.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” she said, brows creased. “Something.”

Nico reached over, pressing a hand to the floor to feel the wood pulse beneath his palm.

“Vibrations,” he said. “There’s definitely someone here.”

“I know that. I told you.”

Well, better if he could take care of it alone, or close to alone. Reina had probably done him a favor waking him first.

Ah, but he’d said he wouldn’t do things alone.

“Wake Rhodes,” Nico said on second thought, rising to his feet. “She’s in the last—”

“The last room on the right, I know.” Reina was gone quickly, without asking questions. Nico crept out into the house, listening for a moment. Libby was better at listening; she was more attuned to waves of things, usually sound and speed, so he gave up and started feeling instead. He could sense the disruption from somewhere downstairs.

The middle door opened, revealing Parisa in the frame.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” she informed him with palpable distaste, as Libby emerged from her room.

“Shouldn’t we wake—”

“What’s going on?” demanded Callum, bursting from his door.

“Someone’s in the house,” said Nico.

“Who?” said Libby and Callum in unison.

“Someone,” replied Nico and Reina.

“Many someones,” Parisa corrected. She was holding a hand to the wall. “There are at least three compromised access points.”

“She’s right,” said Reina.

“I know I’m right,” Parisa growled.

“Has anyone woken Tristan?” asked Libby, looking predictably fretful.

“You do it,” said Parisa, disinterestedly.

“No,” Nico said. “Rhodes is coming with me.”

“What?” said Libby, Parisa, and Callum.

“You heard me,” said Nico, gesturing for Libby to follow. “Reina, wake Tristan and tell him to follow. Rhodes, stay close.”

She gave him a glare of don’t boss me around, but he had already started moving.

A good thing he had, too. It was almost immediate from the time they emerged onto the gallery landing.

“Get down,” Nico hissed, tugging Libby to the floor as something shot overhead, aimed from the entry hall up to the vaulted landing of the second floor. It was much larger than a bullet, so probably not deadly. Something for temporary immobilization, most likely, which most magical weapons tended to be. But they were expensive, and not particularly useful when fired up at an unknown target, which gave Nico pause.

“Probably a test,” said Callum, in something of a low drawl. “Some tactic to scare us into working together.”

Possible, Nico thought, though he didn’t particularly want to agree with Callum aloud.

“Cover me,” he said to Libby.

“Fine,” she said, grimacing. “Keep your head down.”

Every year, NYUMA held a tournament for the physical specialties; something akin to a game of capture the flag, but with fewer rules and more allowances. He and Libby had never been on the same team, almost always facing off in the final round, but all the games were essentially the same: someone attacked while someone else covered.

Nico rose to his feet while Libby conjured a thin bubble of protection around him, manipulating the molecular structure of the air in their immediate vicinity. The world was mostly entropy and chaos; magic, then, was order, because it was control. Nico and Libby could change the materials around them; they could take the universe’s compulsion to fill a vacuum and bend it, warp it, alter it. The fact that they were natural energy sources, twin storage units for massive electrical charge, meant they could not only harness the energy required for an explosion, but they could clear a path of least resistance for it, too.

Still, even batteries had their limits. Single combat was an excellent way to waste a lot of time and energy, so Nico opted to cast a wider net. He altered the direction of friction in the room, sending the entry room’s occupants into the furthest wall; helpfully, a thin tendril of plants crept out to twine around them, holding fast.