The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

He blinked, his vision clearing.

A wave.

That helped. He tried to raise his right hand and faltered from pain, switching to the left to take hold of the particle of sound and aim it, like a whip, until it cracked. Libby, now freed the effort of dragging him from the sound wave’s immobilizing effect, extinguished it with a spark.

“—can’t be a test,” she finished, and Nico realized the pain in his shoulder was much more than a sting. The wound was slick with blood, and as far as he could tell, that didn’t typically happen with magical weapons.

“That,” Libby was saying with horror, “is not a fake injury!”

“It’s a gunshot wound,” observed Parisa. “Whoever they are, they must not be magical.”

Made sense, even if the first shot had been some type of magic; certain forms could be easily provided to a buyer with enough money, and medeians were rare enough that sending in a group of them would probably be a waste. Guns were cheaper and perfectly effective; case in point. Nico growled with annoyance, clotting his blood with a wave of his hand.

“But this can’t be the Society’s doing,” Libby protested. “Surely we’re supposed to do something!”

“There’s at least one medeian here,” Nico gritted through his teeth, struggling to rise. He wasn’t going to bother with easing the pain, as that would only require more energy than he could spare at the moment. It wasn’t a lethal wound by any means, and he would heal it later. “We should split up, I think. I can take care of the rest if Rhodes looks for the medeian.”

“The rest?” echoed Callum, doubtful. “That’s a mess you’ve got on your shoulder. It’s not a pistol, it’s an automatic rifle. You could be dealing with military special ops.”

“Thank you ever so,” replied Nico crassly, as another round was fired from below. He knew perfectly well what he was dealing with, which was precisely the point. “They wouldn’t bother arming a bunch of medeians with AKs,” he shouted over the sound of weaponry, “just like they wouldn’t send in mortals without magical oversight.” If it was a military task force of some sort, they were probably being commanded by a medeian. “And if he’s good at waves, Rhodes will hear him coming.”

“Then we should split up,” said Parisa, who was at least very coolheaded.

“Yes, good idea. You stay with me,” Nico suggested to her, “Rhodes can take Tristan, and Reina can go with—”

“I’ll stay,” said Reina.

“What?” said Callum and Libby.

Reina seemed undeterred. “Nico’s the one taking on more people. I have combat experience.”

Nico glanced at her. “You do?”

“Well, I trained in hand to hand combat,” she amended, which sounded an awful lot as if she had merely read a lot of books on the subject. “Besides, you lot seem to think I’m useless at my specialty, don’t you?”

“We don’t really have a lot of time to argue,” Libby pointed out, cutting in before anyone else could speak. “Parisa, take Callum,” she said; anything, Nico guessed, to get out of going with Callum herself, “and Varona’s right, Tristan can come with me.”

“Fine,” said Parisa flatly. “I can find the medeian in the house.”

“Good, and we’ll check the access points—”

That was about as much Nico had the patience to discuss when it came to logistics. By then his arm had gone a little numb, probably because his mind was leaping ahead

to the prospect of fending off intruders.

He had been very, very good at the physicist tournament. Voted MVP four years running, in fact, and as good as Libby may or may not have been (fine—she was, but still), she had never once beaten him. Nico had a taste for adrenaline, and besides, he had to see someone about a bullet wound. In his not-so-humble opinion, he was rather richly owed.

“Come on,” Nico called to Reina, leaping atop the gallery’s bannister and beckoning her after him into the hail of gunfire below, shielding himself with a hand outstretched. “Meet you down there.”

“Varona,” Libby sighed, “you do realize there are stairs—”

He wasn’t listening. Shots were fired, surprise surprise, but he was ready for them now. He slipped one as easily as he might have ducked a punch, catching the uniform that suggested he’d been right; this was some sort of military task force. Fun! Exciting. All of them against him; how terribly unfortunate they hadn’t thought to bring a party twice as large. He curled the floor in slightly, funneling them all into an invisible drain. Better that way, to see how many. He counted six and smiled to himself, returning the floors to how they’d been. The gunmen stumbled, then shot towards him.

It was Reina, to Nico’s surprise, who took aim first, sending a bolt of something very crude but very fast into the chest of an oncoming gunman. It knocked the wind out of the gunman, sending the butt of his rifle flying into the face of his comrade. By the sound of his swearing, Nico guessed American, maybe CIA. That, he thought with a shiver of anticipation, would be very exciting indeed. He had never been important enough to merit assassination before.

More shots were fired, which certainly wouldn’t do; one bullet wound was plenty. After waiting a moment to take the impact through a temporary shield of his making, Nico took hold of the nearest gunman and aimed him in a circle, prompting the others to launch themselves behind the aristocratic furniture for cover. A little tug of gravity out from under them sent them floating in slow motion, the rifles drifting from their hands. Nico summoned their weapons and disassembled them with a single, explosive blow, sending the components flying like shrapnel as the ordinary forces in the room returned.

There, he thought. Now let’s really have a fight.