The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(44)

Would it have been nice to have an ally who was also a friend? Yes, sure, maybe. She had thought for half a second that maybe Tristan would have warmed to her after their brush with danger, but he had been deliberately keeping his distance from her since then. She supposed that might have been in her head; she was the youngest, after all, and Tristan was somewhere around the same age as Callum, so maybe that was why they seemed to be increasingly together. Maybe the fact that Callum clearly didn’t like her (or her emotions, anyway, which in her defense, she didn’t care for, either) was making Tristan less inclined to like her, too.

In that case, Tristan was not only an idiot, but also hardly someone whose instincts she could trust. It hadn’t required much to convince Libby that Callum was bad news, and even Parisa seemed to agree. If Tristan couldn’t see it, then…

“He’s not worth your energy, Lib.”

“I know,” Libby said, before remembering that Ezra was talking about Nico, not Tristan, and that oh, yeah, she was still on the phone talking to Ezra. “I mean—sorry,” she amended with a blink, “Varona’s fine, I was just—”

“Is there someone else?”

“Hm?” Drat, more things she couldn’t talk about, like who was in the program with her. “No, I was just—”

There was a quiet knock at the door.

“Hang on, Ezra—Yes?” Libby called, covering the receiver with one hand.

“It’s Tristan,” came the voice from the other side. Perfunctorily, and with a sense of wishing the interaction was already over with, as one might expect from all of Tristan’s interactions.

“Oh, um—” That was a surprise. “One second. Ezra?” she said, returning to her phone call. “Can I call you back?”

There was a pause.

“I’m about to head out, Lib, it’s getting late here. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” she promised, mildly relieved. “I love you.”

“Love you.” Ezra hung up and she rose to her feet, padding to the door and pulling it open.

For someone who didn’t care much for illusions, Tristan Caine certainly was one. It was a Saturday, meaning they all had the day off from their usual work—assuming nobody breached their recently updated security measures, that is—but Tristan was fully dressed (smartly, with a tucked-in shirt and a J. Crew sleeve-roll and everything, like he was heading to a brief but critical lunch meeting), holding a newspaper tucked under his arm. Libby was willing to bet that Tristan had gone down for both breakfast and lunch already that day, which they had the option of taking in their rooms on the weekends. It was as if the appearance of normalcy was a crucial piece of Tristan Caine’s identity.

“Yes?” she asked, a little breathless from her jaunt to the door.

He was as inscrutable as always, peering down at her in his hawkish way. “Do you still have the Lucretius?”

“Oh, yes, of course—hang on. Come in.”

She left the door open for him, turning to sort out where she’d left the book. “Working on a Saturday?” she asked him, peering around for it in her pile of things. She hadn’t planned to touch the manuscript any time soon; she was rather intent on spending the day in her yoga pants, recovering in advance of whatever massive energy output she’d need to produce on Monday.

“I just want to have another look at it,” he said.

“Truthfully, I don’t know if it’ll be much help,” she said, finally spotting it in the pile beside the nightstand. She wasn’t the neatest person alive, nor was she the best at rising early. All in all, she felt woefully inadequate next to Tristan, who was so pulled together he nearly sparkled. “I can’t say it has much in it that hasn’t been addressed by later works.”

“There’s something about time,” Tristan said, “isn’t there?”

“Sort of. Nothing concrete, but—”

“I’d like to see for myself,” he told her curtly, and she blinked.

“Sorry, I wasn’t trying t-”

“Don’t apologize,” he said impatiently. “I just have a theory I’d like to test.”

“Oh.” She held the book out for him, and he took it. Before he could leave, though, she cleared her throat. “Any chance you’d like to tell me what theory you’re testing?”

“Why?”

“I… curiosity, I guess.” Incredible how he made it feel like a capital crime just to ask him a simple question. “I do actually care about the research we do, you know.”

He bristled slightly. “I never suggested you didn’t.”

“I know, I’m s-” She broke off before apologizing again. “Never mind. You can hang onto it, by the way,” she said, gesturing to the book. “I don’t think there’s anything useful. Theoretically, I suppose the idea that time and movement aren’t separate functions is an interesting baseline, but that’s hardly unique to—”

“You and Nico manipulate force, correct?”

She was startled, first by the interruption and secondly, by having her abilities addressed.

“What?”

“Force. Yes?”

“Yes, force.” He seemed to be playing with something in his head, so she added, “We use it to alter the physical makeup of things.”