The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(72)

She hesitated, stepping inside, but then stopped. This could wait. That, or it was an answer she could find on her own.

So she turned, darting back into the hallway to thrust open the second door.

Almost immediately, she was hurled into Dalton’s consciousness, living it from his memory, though it had not begun where she thought.

“—you sure?”

It was a whisper from a young man to a young Dalton, who was nearly unrecognizable. His hair was the same, his appearance as meticulous as always, but there was something about his face that was distinct. A decade younger, true, but filled with something.

No. Absent something.

“Once we do this, we can’t go back.” It was a tawny-skinned young man who spoke with an unfamiliar accent. “Can you live with it?”

Dalton was only half-listening. He was charming something idly; the air surrounding his open book flickered and twisted, a small storm forming above the page.

“I wouldn’t have to,” Dalton said. Eerily, he turned to Parisa. “People think it’s the meaning of life that matters,” he said, and she blinked. She wasn’t sure how he was manipulating his memory to speak with her, but there was no doubt that he was. “It’s not the meaning. Everyone wants a purpose, but there is no purpose. There is only alive and not alive. Do you like this?” he asked, abruptly shifting in tone. “I made it for you.”

He turned back to the other young man before Parisa could answer.

“I could bring you back,” he suggested.

Even Parisa could see that this younger Dalton did not sound genuine.

“I thought you said you couldn’t do that?” the young man asked.

“I said I don’t. But of course I can.” Dalton twisted again for another sidelong glance, giving Parisa an unnerving smile. “I’m an animator,” he told her, which the other young man did not appear to hear. “Death does not register for me with any sort of permanence. Except my own, which I suppose explains what I did next.”

He turned back to the young man. “There is nothing to say we can’t bring you back,” he said. “Maybe it’s an additional test? Maybe there’s always an animator, and therefore no one actually dies.”

There was a flash of something; a knife. It glinted in Parisa’s own hand.

Then she felt a lurch; the unmistakable entry of the blade into flesh.

Then, without warning, she was sitting alone.

“I shouldn’t be doing this, but you have to listen to me.” It was Atlas Blakely, pacing, and Parisa glanced down, recognizing Dalton’s clasped fingers as her own. “It’s you they want to kill, Dalton. The others have agreed on you.”

“How do you know?” came out of Parisa’s mouth, which was Dalton’s.

“They’re afraid of you. You unnerve them.”

“Rather small of them,” said Dalton irreverently, before conceding, “Fine. Let them try.”

“No.” Atlas spun. “You must change their minds. You must survive.”

“Why?”

“The Society needs you, whether they see it or not. What can they do with him? There have been others like him before. Men like him become wealthy, become rich, that’s all. They contribute to the global oligarchy and that’s it, that’s the end. You are necessary in other ways.”

There was a rip, a small tear, and then Dalton was sitting before her again like a sunspot Parisa tried fruitlessly to blink away, returning to her armored form within his mental tower’s small room. They were alone this time, and Dalton—this young version of him—was leaning forward, inches from her.

“They got used to me,” he said. “And I didn’t like killing. I’m an animator,” he added, as if that explained everything. She supposed it did, in part.

“You bring life,” she remarked.

“I bring life,” he agreed.

She could see the evidence that he had been tampered with, the jerks of his motions so unlike the fastidious Dalton she knew. It was unclear how honest he was being with her; his memories had clearly been altered, either by the corruption of his past experience or by the clever hand of his present self.

“Are you using me?” she asked him, wondering if she might have permitted herself to be lured somewhere unwise.

His younger self smiled brilliantly.

“I wish you’d seen the other room,” he told her. “We’d have both enjoyed it immensely. This one is dull.”

“You lied to him,” she observed. “You told him you would bring him back?”

“He never actually agreed to do it,” said Dalton. “I think he knew I wouldn’t.”

“Kill him, or bring him back?”

“Neither, I suspect.”

“So he told the others to kill you?”

“Yes.”

“And you persuaded them otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“Was it difficult?”

“No. They were just happy it wasn’t them.”

“And why didn’t you bring him back?”

“Too much work,” said Dalton, shrugging. “And anyway, I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“About everything.” Another shrug. “Someone always dies. They have to.”