The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(89)

Not that she seemed to be fixating much on what had passed between them.

“Electrons,” Libby said without preamble, startling Tristan. He had recently begun trying to fiddle with the dials of his magic while listening to music, or otherwise disabling or distracting one of his senses. At the moment, he had been filling his ear canals with ambient noise while thinking about the taste of her mouth.

“Sorry, what?” he said, relieved that only Parisa could read his mind. (Fortunately, she was not in the room.)

“How small can you see?” asked Libby.

That wasn’t much clearer. “What?”

“Well, you seem to be able to focus on the components of things,” she said, still not addressing any of the more obvious things, like how they had slept together somewhat recently.

He had woken up in bed with her—with her, not Parisa—and had expected to find something more similar to the usual Libby Rhodes. Apprehension, regret, guilt, any of the above. Instead he’d awoken to Libby reading a manuscript, glancing at him as he sat up with difficulty.

“We don’t need to talk about it,” had been the first words out of her mouth. “In fact I’d prefer if we didn’t.”

Tristan had managed somewhat miraculously to straighten, squinting at her. His mouth was inconceivably dry, his head pounding, and he was being treated to merciless flashes of things he’d recently done and felt and tasted.

“Fine,” he managed, though she paused, clearly hitting some sort of internal snag.

“What were you doing back here with Parisa last night, anyway?”

Dehydration wasn’t going to make this conversation any easier. “She asked me to come. Said she had something to discuss.” He could hear the coldness in his voice and paused, unsure whether it was worth getting into what Parisa had revealed about the Society under these uniquely troubling circumstances.

“Oh.” Libby glanced away. “Well, if you don’t want to tell me—”

For fuck’s sake. He would have to now, wouldn’t he?

“Rhodes,” he began, and stopped.

There was no way she would take it well.

Though, keeping it from her would be morally quite worse, given how he had spent the previous evening. There was something about waking up naked in someone’s sheets that made Tristan quite unwilling to subject her to secret group homicide.

Where to start, even if he could? Parisa had told him that in order for five to be initiated, one had to die. They had never been choosing someone to be eliminated; they were responsible for choosing someone to eliminate. The whole time they had been led to believe this was civilized and fair, but really it was primitive and shameful and, if Parisa was right, then they were possibly under the thumb of an organization that killed and had been killing for thousands of years.

But Tristan expected some form of panic, and so determined perhaps a half-lie would be best.

“Are you familiar with the trolley problem?” he asked Libby instead. “Where you find yourself at a lever in control of a runaway trolley—”

“And you either kill five to save one, or kill one to save five. Yes, I know it.”

What a miraculous coincidence it was, that he would be having this conversation with her in her bed during the study of thought. Of course, where it came to magic, thought was less about philosophy than it was about the compulsions of it, and how it could be read or toyed with or interpreted.

In this case, ethics would have to do.

“Would you?” he asked, and when Libby frowned, he clarified, “Kill one to save five.”

“Parisa summoned you here for a thought experiment?”

“What?”

Libby waited, and he blinked.

“Oh. No, she was—Well, it was about the Forum. Apparently—” More hesitation. He had never been so hesitant in his entire life, and wished desperately that he were clothed for this. Or that he had not known it to begin with.

Parisa was right. Thoughts, once planted, could not be forgotten. He could not unthink the way it felt to run his fingers over the bone of Libby’s clavicle, his thumb hovering above her throat like he could slice it or adorn it, or both.

“Apparently,” he attempted again, “Parisa’s visit from the Forum rather made her… think.”

“About the Society, you mean?”

“Yes. Sort of.”

“What does that have to do with the trolley problem?”

“Well, someone gets eliminated, don’t they? In this case you kill one to save yourself. Not literally, of course,” Tristan rushed to add. “But… conceptually.”

“I never cared much for thought exercises,” said Libby warily. “And besides, the experiment does hinge a bit on who the people are, in some cases.”

“Suppose the one person was me, then. Would that change things?”

He attempted a lightness to the suggestion, though of course the reality of knowing what he knew rendered things immensely more disconcerting than Libby could possibly guess. Then again, she wasn’t exactly Parisa. He doubted Libby would inform him she’d be rid of him while they were still in bed together, and he was right.

“You don’t really think I’d eliminate you, do you?” she asked, frowning, and went on to say something entirely not what he’d expected: “Your potential is fully unrealized. If anyone needs the Society, Tristan, it’s you. I think even Atlas can see that.”