The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(84)

“No,” said Parisa lazily. “And don’t bother with Reina, either. Well—no, on second thought, that I would very much like to see,” she mused, lifting her head to prop it up with one hand. “I suspect she’d bite your dick if you even tried it. Shall we have a wager and find out?”

Parisa, unlike the others, reeked of nothing. None of Parisa had come loose. She did not even seem particularly dehydrated. She seemed…

Smug.

“What did you do?” asked Callum bluntly.

“What I do best,” said Parisa.

“What did Rhodes have to do with it?”

“You know, I rather like Rhodes,” Parisa hummed thoughtfully. “She’s very… sweet.”

Her smile curled up thinly, taunting, and Callum understood he was being toyed with.

He relaxed a little, relieved. Finally, someone who could play.

“They’re idiots,” he said, prowling over to recline beside her on the bed. “All of them.”

“Everyone’s an idiot,” Parisa replied, tracing mindless patterns on her duvet. “You should know that as well as anyone.”

“What did you do?”

“Changed them,” she said with a shrug. “Can’t reverse that sort of thing.”

That was the peril of thought. Thoughts were so rarely dismissed once they’d been picked up and toyed with, and a mind successfully altered could rarely, if ever, revert.

Worse were feelings. Feelings were never forgotten, even if their sources were.

“No, you can’t,” Callum slowly agreed. “But why would that matter to you?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” She shrugged. “It’s a game. You know it’s a game.”

“No matter the stakes?”

She blinked with surprise, and then her expression fell away.

“Did you kill them this time?” she asked tightly.

“Kill who?”

“Whoever it was. From the Forum.”

“No, not particularly.”

She stared at him. “Not particularly?”

“Well, if he dies later on, that’s really not my doing. They’re his feelings,” said Callum, shrugging. “How he chooses to process them is not my responsibility.”

“My god, you’re an absolute psychopath,” said Parisa, sitting fully upright. “You don’t feel any empathy at all, do you?”

“An empath with no empathy,” echoed Callum. “Surely you hear how foolish you sound?”

“You can’t just—”

“And what did you do, hm?” prompted Callum. “You can hear their thoughts, Parisa. You can change them, as you’ve just willingly confessed. By default you are no less interfering, and was your cause any more noble than mine?”

“I don’t destroy people—”

“Don’t you?” Callum asked her. “From what I just saw, Tristan and Rhodes look severely devolved. They are not who they were before.”

“Devolved,” Parisa said, “is hardly the word I’d use. And it’s certainly not the same as destroyed.”

Callum shifted an inch closer to her on the bed, and she leaned away, repulsed.

“You hate me because we’re the same,” he told her softly. “Haven’t you come to that conclusion yet?”

She bristled, distractingly lovely in her fear. “We are not the same.”

“How are we different?”

“You feel nothing.”

“Whereas you feel sympathy but act regardless. Is that it?”

Parisa opened her mouth, then closed it.

“We are not the same,” she said, “and what’s more, you overestimate yourself.”

“Do I?”

“You think you’re more powerful than I am, don’t you?”

“You have to work much harder to accomplish the same result. If I am not more powerful, I certainly have a more extensive vault from which to draw.”

“The others know better.”

“Do they? Perhaps not.”

He could feel pieces fitting together for her, melting smoothly into place. An effortless joining. Her process of thought was so elegant, so pleasing. It was so satisfying to watch her make decisions, unlike other people. Normal people were so messy and unkempt. Parisa poured out her thoughts like honey, and though Callum couldn’t read them the way she could, he could intuit other things far more clearly.

For example she thought, rather foolishly, that she could win.

“Shall we prove it?” Parisa prompted him. “Maybe you’re right. After all, you clearly think we’re the same, so for all intents in purposes, so must they. Thoughts, feelings, this is all the same to them.” Again they were conspiratorial in their agreement. Even safely out of Callum’s reach, surely Parisa could feel the way they were bound by similar circumstances. “They ought to have a chance to know the truth of what each of us can do.”

“A battle of wits?” Callum replied.

“Of course not,” she said. “Why do battle when we could simply… play a game?”

He slept well that night, untroubled. In the morning, they persuaded their referee.

“We do have a specified lesson for the day,” said Dalton in his stuffy academic’s voice. “And I hardly think this is necessary.”