Atlas Six (Atlas Series, 1)

Part 4 -Space

“So,” Ezra said. “How’s it going?”

“Oh, you know,” Libby said. “Fine.”

“…fine?” Ezra gave a little groan; half-charmed, half-doubtful, accompanied by an eye roll she could hear through the phone. “Come on, Libs, I just went on for ten minutes about my supervisor’s affinity for onion bagels. I think you can probably come up with something to tell me about your new job.”

Well, magnificent. She thought she’d escaped any necessity for confession, given her dutiful half-listening to said story about supervisor and bagels along with the likelihood that she could slip casually into phone sex, but evidently not. It was just what she needed, really, to have to tell someone who would want to know everything the absolutely nothing she was allowed to explain.

“It’s a fellowship,” Libby began, chewing the inside of her cheek. “We do… you know. Fellowship things. Research.”

There. That was one way to put it. A boring one, ideally, inviting no further questions.

“What are you researching?”

Alas. 

“Oh, um…”

“There has always been an intersect between magic and science,” Atlas had said upon introduction to their first topic of study, leading them inside what he referred to as the reading room. It was a split level, high-ceilinged open space with a series of tables in the center, most of which were occupied with nothing aside from one or two chairs and a small reading lamp. Illumination was minimal in the bottom half of the room, so as to not disturb the literature itself, while the top level glowed faintly with track lighting, looked down from a balcony lined with shelves. 

At the moment they entered, a middle-aged man had glanced down from above, observing their entry and nodding to Atlas. 

Atlas, in return, gave the visitor a courteous wave. “Bom dia, Senhor Oliveira,” Atlas offered in greeting, startling Libby slightly with the reference to someone she was fairly certain was currently the chairman of the medeian offices of Brazil.

“In any case,” Atlas continued, tonally unchanged, “much of what exists in the Society’s archives draws no separation between magic and science; that distinction is more often made in later centuries, particularly pre-Enlightenment and post-Protestant Reformation. The scientific reflections of antiquity, such as the many works of Democritus we have in the archives—” 

(Here Reina suddenly came alive from her usual half-comatose look of wanting to be elsewhere. Unsurprising that she would be interested; Democritus wrote dozens of texts on ancient atomism, nearly all of which would have been classified throughout Reina’s classics education as ‘missing.’)

“—indicate that most studies on nature, and of the nature of life itself, do not suggest any preclusion of magic. Indeed, even some medieval studies of heaven and the cosmos suggest both scientific and magical study; take, for example, Paradiso by Dante, which manages an artistically interpreted—but not inaccurate—understanding of the Earth and its atmosphere. The mystique of Dante’s heaven may be attributed to both scientific and magical forces.”

Most of their ‘lessons,’ if one could call them that, were Socratic discussions that took place in one of the outrageously stuffy drawing rooms, various places redeemed only by the presence of their countless first edition texts. Any additional books—anything referenced during the day’s discussion, for example—were easily summoned from the archives; in fact, they were so easily available that a handwritten copy of Heisenberg’s notes once appeared beside Libby on the table even before she had spoken her curiosity aloud. 

(“Interestingly,” Atlas said, “Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle is based, in large part, on a major misconception. Perhaps you might have heard that on the evening he first began his calculations, Werner Heisenberg had been watching a man a little ways before him who seemed to appear beneath a lamp, then disappear into the night, and appear from another pool of light, so on and so forth. Naturally, Heisenberg’s estimation was that the man was not actually disappearing and reappearing, but simply becoming visible and invisible due to light sources; thus, if Heisenberg could reconstruct the man’s trajectory by its interaction with other things, the same could be done for electrons, which is a tenet of physics that has been proven time and time again. Unfortunately,” Atlas chuckled, “the man that poor Werner was watching was actually a medeian called Ambroos Visser, who could very much disappear and reappear at will, and who happened to be having a marvelous time doing so that very evening. Post-death, Ambroos came to lead the poltergeist society at that very park in Copenhagen, and today he is deeply revered for his contribution to our understanding of atomic spectra.”)

“Lib?” Ezra asked, startling Libby back to their phone call. “Still there?”

“Yes, sorry,” she said, blinking. “What was the question?”

He gave a low laugh, the sound of it muffled into the receiver. He must have been in bed, turning onto his side to prop his phone against his ear. “What are you working on at the moment?”

“Oh, um… ecological conservation. In a sense.” That was sort of true, if one considered the process of terraforming hostile environments to be an ecological study. The previous afternoon, Libby and Nico had spent nearly all their energy trying to alter the molecular makeup of the painted room, hoping to tweak the nature of its atmosphere to their preferred specifications. They had been told to stop, though, in a rather snippy tone, when Reina said the fig plant in the corner was suffocating. 

“We’re just trying to understand basic principles of science and magic so we can apply them to… bigger projects.”

Like, for example, wormholes. So far, Nico and Libby had managed to successfully create one wormhole, which had taken two weeks of research and an entire day of casting to accomplish. Ultimately, Nico had been forced to test it himself, because no one else was willing to take the chance they might accidentally wind up on Jupiter. (An impossibility, technically, as it would have taken at least ten thousand Nicos and Libbys to power anything even close to that magnitude of power and precision, but still, Tristan in particular had looked as if he’d rather eat his own foot than test it out.) 

In the end, it took Nico from the first floor corridor of the west wing to the kitchen. In typical Nico fashion, he now used it on a regular basis.

“Well, it’s understandable if it doesn’t feel interesting yet,” said Ezra. “Most of academia can feel fairly pointless while you’re in the early research phase. And probably for quite a while after that, I imagine.”

“That’s… true,” Libby permitted hesitantly, not wanting to admit that the creation of a wormhole was actually not a pointless thing at all, even if it meant Nico was constantly and inconveniently disappearing and reappearing with snacks.

As far as Libby knew, they were the first ones who had ever managed to do it, even on a micro level. If there were sufficient power sources in the future—if, by chance, some medeian was born somewhere with nuclear energy in their fingertips—then they could easily do the same thing in space, in time… in spacetime! In fact, if any government agencies knew they had done it, they could easily get enough medeians together to bolster a magical space program. She had wanted to call NASA the moment they managed it, only then she remembered it would ultimately be controlled by a politician (any politician, somewhere, or at least a whole flock of them, some which would inevitably be less competent than others), and as Atlas often said, most forms of knowledge were better reserved until they were certain such revelations wouldn’t be abused. Even if Libby could manage to successfully terraform Mars, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t bring about a second global Age of Imperialism, which would be disastrous and destructive. Better they kept it in the archives.

“—’s Varona?”

“What?” Libby asked, having been daydreaming about planetary exploration again. “Sorry, I was just—”

“I just wondered how things were going with Varona,” Ezra said, sounding slightly more tense now than when he’d laughed her inattention off before. She supposed Ezra would never not sound tense about Nico, and understandably so; she had a practice of bristling at the sound of his name, too. “Is he being… you know. Himself?”

“Oh, well—”

At that precise moment, Libby heard a burst of nonsensical Nico-sounds from the gallery, which meant he was probably sparring with Reina again. That had begun almost immediately after the installation (‘installation’ being Atlas’ word for all of them nearly dying on their very first night as part of the Society) and now, Nico and Reina had a habit of doing what appeared to be daily martial arts workouts together. 

It was strange, obviously. It had all the hallmarks of Nico’s pre-established habits and customs while manifesting in a new and disturbing way. Not that Nico had ever been particularly devoted to wearing shirts, for example, but coming across him without one, dripping sweat and colliding with Libby in the hallway only to slime the front of her blouse with his perspiration, was now all too frequent an occurrence. 

Admittedly, the ease of Nico’s comradeship with Reina, or whatever it could be called, had bothered Libby at first. Terrible as it was to acknowledge, Nico was currently the closest thing Libby had to a friend. Reina had made it clear she had no interest in being amicable with Libby, and the others certainly hated her (in the case of Callum, that feeling was deeply mutual), so the potential loss of Nico was a blow; something Libby had never thought she’d say about Nico de Varona, or the lack of him.

 She was particularly resentful of the fact that Reina and Nico had bonded over their joint foray into violence, both because it meant Libby might lose Nico’s alliance—thereby chancing her own elimination once the others felt free to confess their collective dislike—and because it was annoying that Nico had spent four years hating Libby only to befriend a girl who almost never spoke except to scowl. 

“Don’t pout, Rhodes,” advised Nico. By then they had all taken to exploring the grounds within the Society’s wards; the house was surrounded by a lovely manicured lawn, a grove of trees, and some roses, beside which had been the first site of Nico and Reina’s communal venture into recreational pugilism. 

It was sometime in the early weeks when Nico had first pulled Libby aside, her shading her eyes from the high summer sun and him chirpily toweling the sheen of sweat from his chest. “I still need you,” he assured her, ever his effervescent, pompous self.

“Oh, good,” Libby said drily, “thank heavens I’m still of some use to you.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” Nico wasn’t listening, having grown entirely too used to her sarcasm by then, but he surprised her with a conspiratorial hand on her elbow, tugging her around the collection of rose bushes that she supposed counted as a garden to the English. “I’ve noticed something about Reina.”

“Varona,” Libby sighed, “if this is going to be gross—”

“What? No, nothing like that. If anything I’d want to sleep with—well, never mind,” he muttered, “that’s not relevant. The point is, trust me, you want me to get Reina on our side,” he assured her, dropping his voice in a manner she supposed he found provocative. “We need her, and I’m not even sure she understands that. Or why.”

“Do you?” prompted Libby doubtfully. It wasn’t as if Nico had ever been notorious for his talents of perception. For example, he had somehow managed to miss that Libby’s best friend at NYUMA, Mira, had been sickeningly in love with him for the entirety of their schooling. 

(Before and after he slept with her. Fuckboys, honestly.)

“I sorted it out by accident,” Nico admitted, again dismissing Libby’s loyal efforts to undermine his masculinity on Mira’s behalf, “so your skepticism isn’t entirely the worst, but yes, I do. Reina is—” He broke off, frowning. “She’s like a battery.”

Libby blinked. “What?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and what is a naturalist except for a type of energy source, right? I don’t know how she’s doing it or what she’s tapping into, but think about it, Rhodes.” Nico seemed to be imploring her; irritatingly, as if the gears in her head were not already turning precisely as his had turned. “I noticed it when we took on the waves medeian at the installation. When I was touching her, it was like I had an extra power source.”

(The epiphany and its corresponding conversation had occurred pre-wormhole. Truthfully, they wouldn’t have managed it at all if not for Nico figuring this out about Reina, but Libby certainly hadn’t confessed that to his face. Nor did she plan to.)

“We’ll have to test it,” Libby said, glancing over her shoulder. It was a bit exciting, discovering that their alliance was an alliance indeed; he had clearly waited until they were alone to share his suspicions. “Do you think she’d be on our side?”

“Rhodes, she’s already on our side,” Nico scoffed, which at first Libby attributed to his indefatigable arrogance, but then, thankfully, he went on to support the allegation with actual evidence. “We don’t talk much,” he clarified, gesturing to his recent bout of physical activity, “but there’s no question she definitely loathes Parisa. And she doesn’t make a secret of not trusting Tristan or Callum.”

“Nor should she,” Libby murmured to herself.

This appeared to have sparked some secondary, tangential epiphany in Nico de Varona’s manic web of thoughts. “You were with Tristan that night,” Nico observed aloud, holding up a water bottle and pouring some of it over his head (splashing Libby, which she did not appreciate) before consuming what remained. “How was he?”

Ah yes, Tristan. A complete enigma, as far as she was concerned.

“He can do something strange,” Libby admitted, brushing a droplet of water from her brow before it made her bangs all wonky. She was growing them out, which meant they were inconceivably annoying. “You know how he said he can see through illusions? I didn’t realize that means he doesn’t necessarily see them while they’re being used.”

“What, at all?”

“No. Not at all. He had to ask me what I thought the room looked like.”

“Huh, weird.” Nico paused thoughtfully, chewing on the lip of his water bottle. “Useful, you think?”

“Very. Well,” Libby amended after a moment’s thought, “it’s a useful skill, at least. Though I’m not sure whether it qualifies as enough to keep him from being eliminated. Much as I hate to admit it,” she sighed, “an empath and a telepath could be much more helpful allies when we move out of the physical sciences.”

“Better a telepath than an empath, don’t you think? If we had to choose,” Nico said.

“You only say that because you like Parisa,” Libby muttered under her breath, and Nico gave her an unforgivably broad smile.

“Can you blame me, Rhodes?”

“Varona, honestly.” No, of course she couldn’t blame him; Parisa was, hands down, the most beautiful girl Libby had ever seen in her life. Luckily, Libby was not a useless boy and did not focus on extraneous details like Parisa’s looks. “Your dick aside, she’s really not a team player. I’d hardly call her an asset when it comes to working as a group.”

“True,” Nico said, who must have taken a blow to the head to actually consider taking something she said seriously. “She’s been weird to Callum, hasn’t she?”

Libby gave Nico a glance intended to indicate that they were all weird to Callum, and rightfully.

“True,” Nico repeated. 

“What’s the deal with this, anyway?” Libby asked him, gesturing warily to his relationship with Reina. “Are you two, like—?”

“It’s exercise, Rhodes,” Nico said, flexing his stomach for emphasis. “I told you, we don’t talk much.”

“Okay,” she sighed, “but do you… I mean. Are you two, you know—?”

“What do you care?” He gave her one of those smug, dazzling grins that she loathed to the core of her being. “Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

Christ Almighty. “Oh, shove it, Varona,” she said, turning to leave. There was really only so much Nico she could take in one sitting.

He, however, had caught her arm before she left, tugging her back. “You’re not telling Fowler about any of this, right?” Nico asked her. “If I can’t tell Gideon, you certainly can’t tell Fowler.”

“Ah yes, because your roommate and my boyfriend are exactly the same scenario,” Libby said with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m just saying—”

“Relax, Varona, I’m not telling him anything.”

“Not even about the installation, right?”

“Hell no. Are you kidding?” She’d wanted to tell him at first, but a single moment’s consideration had reminded her that Ezra would lose his mind if he knew she’d been in harm’s way. He was one of those old-fashioned types; a white knight, even though she hardly needed rescuing. “Absolutely not.”

“Where’s Tristan’s head at?” Nico asked, having already discarded the thought of Ezra and moved onto whatever thing he’d have to conquer next. “Do you think we can get him on our side?”

“Do we want him on our side?” Libby asked doubtfully. 

“Why, you don’t like him?”

“It’s not that.” Truthfully, she’d been prepared to dislike Tristan much more than she did. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that,” she conceded, thinking of the way he’d helped with their calculations much more than either Callum or Parisa. Tristan’s background as an investor in magical technology made him intensely knowledgeable, even if his practical inexperience with physicalities precluded him from contributing much magically. “He’s just also very, um—”

“Grumpy,” said Nico.

“Well, I wouldn’t—”

“He’s grumpy,” Nico repeated. 

“Varona, I’m trying t-”

“He’s grumpy,” Nico said loudly.

“Maybe he’s shy,” countered Libby, unconvincingly.

And then, because that had fooled no one, she sighed, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with him, I just… Well, for one thing, he almost certainly doesn’t like me,” she said, and then stopped, dismayed with herself for sounding so much like a child.

“I don’t like you either, Rhodes, so I hardly think that’s relevant,” said Nico, proving himself reliable, if nothing else. “And besides, it seems fairly obvious that Tristan doesn’t like anyone, so you can’t take it personally.”

“I don’t.” Not really. “I’m just saying I’m not ready to be in an alliance with him. Or with Reina, for that matter,” she added quickly. “She might be useful and all that, but it’s only been a few weeks.”

“I didn’t say we should devote ourselves to her body and soul,” Nico said. “I just think she’s, you know.” He smiled broadly, vengeful in his delight. “Moderately epic.”

High praise from someone who considered Libby to be only somewhere in the bottom twenty worst people he’d ever met (or so he told her once during a heated argument third year at NYUMA). Not that Libby was jealous of Reina; it was clear, at least, that Nico intended to see his alliance through with Libby, and that was really all she needed from him at the end of the day.

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.”

“Why couldn’t you make a wormhole through time?”

“I—” That wasn’t what she expected his follow-up to be. “Well, I… theoretically I suppose we could, but that would require understanding the nature of time to begin with.”

“What would you need to know in order to understand?”

He didn’t seem to be mocking her; she hazarded an attempt to explain without getting defensive at being asked a moderately obvious question.

“Well, time’s not a physical thing,” Libby said slowly. “Var- Nico and I can manipulate things we can see and feel, but time is… something different.”

“You can’t see or feel it?”

“I—” Again, she stopped, a little taken aback. “Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you can?”

He regarded her for a moment, mildly troubled.

“I didn’t say that,” he amended. “I just want to be prepared for whatever we do on Monday.”

It didn’t seem worth it to point out that Tristan had done almost nothing the past few weeks as it was. Aside from posing theoretical arguments to guide their experiments, he hadn’t contributed all that much.

But she supposed it wasn’t his fault he hadn’t. At least he worked hard, didn’t he? He was reading and annotating all the texts, working on his own over the weekend. And maybe if he could see differently than she could when it came to illusions, he could see other things differently, too.

The idea that maybe Tristan, like Reina, had some additional talent that Libby could make use of and report back to Nico filled her with a little thrill. Why should Nico de Varona be the only one to sort out what a person was good for?

“There’s a theory that quanta is space,” Libby said, exciting herself with the prospect that she might have stumbled onto something. “That space itself isn’t emptiness, but a fabric of tiny individual particles. So, I assume that time could be made up of similar particles? The gravitational potential is—”

“Look, I appreciate the book,” Tristan said, “but I don’t really have anything to chat about.” 

“Oh.” The word slipped out of her defeatedly. “Right, sorry.”

Tristan’s jaw tightened, annoyed, and she grimaced.

“Not sorry,” she amended, forcing a smile. “I only meant—”

“You don’t have to be sorry for existing, you know,” Tristan cut in irritably, and then he turned to leave, prompting Libby to wish she’d stayed on the phone with Ezra instead of answering the door.

Ezra was so good about being supportive. That was why she liked him, really. He was her number one fan, her tireless champion. He believed in her so much and so powerfully that it always made her feel there was someone in her corner, and at times like these, she longed for something to make her feel centered. Secure.

“Rhodes,” Tristan said, startling her into noticing he’d paused in the threshold before exiting the room. “Thank you for the book.”

She blinked, and then nodded.

“Hope it helps,” she said.

He shrugged and closed the door behind him, leaving her to fall back on her bed with a sigh.