The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“I’m not,” Nico began, but at Gideon’s look of skepticism, he sighed. “Fine, I am. But in my defense, I make it look very appealing.”

“When did you even have time to grow maternal instincts?” Max asked him, sniffing the air as Nico began sifting through food in the kitchen.

“Probably during some class you didn’t attend,” Gideon told Max before turning back to Nico. “Hey,” he cautioned in a low voice, nudging him. “I’m serious. If you’re going somewhere, I’d like to know about it.”

“You won’t even notice I’m gone,” Nico said with a sidelong glance.

“Why, because you expect me to come visit?”

Nico reached over, backhanding Gideon to remove him from the path to the fridge. “Yes,” he said, pretending not to see that his answer had left Gideon with some relief. “In fact you could come, actually. Could put you in a nice drawer somewhere, you know? Stand you upright in my closet.”

“No, thanks.” Gideon sank to the ground to lean against the cabinets, yawning. “Do you have more of that—”

“Yes.” Nico dug through one of the kitchen drawers, tossing Gideon a vial that was caught with one hand. “But you’re not using it,” Nico warned with a spatula, “unless I’m allowed to come tonight.”

“I can’t decide if that’s a reflection on your concern for me or just your massive fear that something exciting will happen without you present,” Gideon muttered, draining the contents of the vial. “But yeah, sure, fine.”

“Hey, you need me. That stuff doesn’t come easily,” Nico reminded him, though in truth he would never tell Gideon just how easily it didn’t come. He’d had to do a lot of things he didn’t want to say aloud just to make sure the third year alchemical had left her mind blank enough for him to steal the formula. That he’d even managed that skill—which had taken nearly the entire four years at NYUMA to learn and had depleted him so thoroughly that for four days Libby Rhodes thought he was either dying or trying to trick her into hoping he was dying—was already more than he’d do for anyone else.

The trouble with having Gideon for a friend was the constant possibility of losing him. People like Gideon, who was not technically a person, were not, by most laws of nature, supposed to exist. Gideon’s parents, an irresponsible finfolk and an even more irresponsible equidae (a mermaid and satyr respectively, by colloquial terms), had always possessed the 25% chance their offspring would look perfectly human, which Gideon did. They, of course, had not cared that their human-looking child would not be technically anything at all that could be registered, and that while he would have medeian abilities, he would not be afforded the class of species to which all medeians were required by law to belong. Gideon wasn’t entitled to any social services, couldn’t be legally employed, and unfortunately couldn’t spin straw into gold without considerable effort. That Gideon had been educated at all was mostly an accident, along with an instance of wide scale institutional fraud.

It all basically came down to one thing: the opportunity to study a subspecies like Gideon was not something NYUMA had been prepared to pass up, but now that he was no longer enrolled as a student, he was back to being nothing.

Just a man who could walk through dreams, and Nico’s best friend.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said, and Gideon glanced up. “I was going to tell you, I just…”

Felt guilty.

“I keep telling you,” Gideon said. “You don’t need to.”

If Libby Rhodes mocked that Nico and Gideon were attached at the hip, it was only so that Nico could personally assure Gideon’s survival. Libby would not understand that, of course; she was one of the spare few who knew that Gideon was not what he seemed, but she didn’t know what it meant. She didn’t know how often Gideon ended up in harm’s way, unable to secure himself corporeally in a single realm, or how often he got swallowed up inside his own head, lost to the intangible spaces of thought and subconsciousness, and couldn’t find his way back. She didn’t know that Gideon had enemies, or that those who knew what he was and intended to use him for it were most dangerous, above all.

Libby didn’t know, either, that while Nico didn’t underestimate her, she relentlessly underestimated him. He had perfected skills in multiple specialties outside his own, all of which had cost him greatly. He could change his shape to follow the other two into the environment of dreams (animals had fewer restrictions on their boundaries than humans), but only after learning to manipulate each element of his own molecular structure; something he only did once a month, because it meant a full day’s recovery afterwards. He could brew something to bind Gideon’s physical form more permanently to the reality he currently stood in, but only after backbreaking effort that left Nico throbbing and sore for a week.

There had been no way Nico was turning down the Society’s offer. Power? He needed it. An obscure cure? He needed that, too. Money, prestige, connections? He needed all of it, and Gideon would be better for his access. Two years away was hardly too much to ask.

“I never expected you to put your life on hold for me, Nico,” Gideon said.

No, he didn’t, and that was the only reason Nico had done it to begin with; or thought he had no choice but to do it, anyway, until today.

“Look, the moment you became my friend, you became my problem,” Nico told him, and then, realizing what he’d said, he amended, “Or, you know, mine. Or whatever.”

Gideon rose to his feet with a sigh. “Nico—”

“Can you guys stop whispering?” Max yelled from the sofa. “It’s hard to hear you from here.”

Nico and Gideon exchanged a glance.

“You heard him,” Nico said, figuring it wasn’t worth continuing the argument.

Gideon, who had obviously decided the same, plucked some carrots from the produce drawer for a side dish, nudging Nico aside with a motion of his hip.

“Shall I grate?”

“You’re grating already,” Nico grumbled, but he caught the evidence of a smile on Gideon’s face, deciding the rest of the conversation could stand to wait.

TRISTAN