The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

It was late one night when he couldn’t sleep, sitting cross-legged in the center of his mattress to test his eyesight again. Of course, it wasn’t his actual eyes he was using; it was some other form of looking, which he supposed was his magic, though he hadn’t progressed to knowing what to call it yet. Mostly, if he concentrated, he could see little particles of things. Like dust, almost, where if he focused in on one thing, he could watch its trajectory, follow its path. Sometimes he could identify something from it; a mood, which took the form of a color, like an aurora, which was still somehow none of those things, because of course he hadn’t honed the sense required to name it. He wasn’t hearing or smelling reality, and he certainly wasn’t tasting it. It was more like he was dismantling it layer by layer, observing it as a model instead.

It had the same logical progression most other things possessed. Take the fire that had been burning in the hearth, for instance. The weather was getting colder now, moving briskly into autumn, and so Tristan had fallen asleep to the light dancing, shadows falling, the smell of flames warming the air as flakes of ash floated down to the base of the wood. He knew it was fire because it looked like fire, smelled like fire. He knew from experience, from his personal history, that if he touched it, he would burn. He knew it was fire because he had been told it was fire; that much had been proven countless times.

But what if it wasn’t?

That was the question Tristan was struggling with. Not about the fire specifically, but about everything else. A very existential crisis, really, that he no longer knew the difference between what was true, objectively, and what he merely believed to be true because it had been told to him that way. Was that what happened to everyone? The world had been flat once; it was believed to be flat, so in the collective consciousness it was, or had been, even if it wasn’t.

Or was it?

It was giving Tristan such a monumental headache that he didn’t even stop to question why someone would be knocking on his door at this hour. He simply waved a hand and summoned it open.

“What?” he said, Tristan-ly.

“Turn down the cataclysm, would you? It’s the middle of the night,” said Parisa, Parisa-ly. She, he noted, was fully dressed, if a bit?

?? rumpled. He frowned at her, and she shut the door behind her, leaning against it.

“I obviously didn’t wake you,” Tristan commented in observation, wondering if she would take the bait and explain.

Unsurprisingly, she did not. “No, you didn’t wake me. But as a general rule, you could stand to calm down,” she said, and then stepped further into the room.

Moonlight fell on her from the window in a panel; just narrow enough that he could see the little furrow of concern in her brow. Each of Parisa’s expressions were so artful they could hang in the Louvre, and not for the first time, Tristan wondered what on earth her parents must have looked like to achieve such outrageous genetic symmetry.

“Actually, my parents aren’t particularly attractive,” said Parisa blandly. “And my face isn’t technically symmetrical.” She paused, and then, “My breasts certainly aren’t.”

“I know.” He hadn’t specifically noticed, but it felt like the right thing to remind her; that he had been in a position to know, at least. Several positions. “And is that supposed to be self-deprecation? Or humility?”

“Neither. Beauty is nothing.” She waved it away and stole towards him, settling herself on the edge of his bed. “Everyone’s perception is flawed. They have standards drilled into them by cultural propaganda. Nothing anyone sees is real; only how they perceive it.”

How very topical, Tristan thought grimly. Which might have been intentional on her part, though at the moment he didn’t care to dwell on which of his thoughts she was or wasn’t using.

“What is it?” he asked her. “Clearly something’s bothering you.”

“I’ve just discovered something. I think.” She toyed with her fingers, tapping them mindlessly in her lap. “I’m not sure yet whether it will be in your best interest to tell you.”

“In my best interest?”

“Well, you’re right, it wouldn’t be in yours. You wouldn’t take it well at all.” She glanced at him, eyes narrowing. “No, I can’t tell you,” she determined after a moment. “But regrettably, I do want you to trust me.”

“Perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the concept of trust,” Tristan pointed out, assuming that she almost certainly was, “but it is very rarely based on nothing. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re suggesting that you’d like me to blindly trust your judgment despite having multiple things you’re unwilling to tell me?”

“I know the inside of your head, Tristan,” Parisa reminded him, the same way he’d commented on his intimacy with her, albeit more confidently. She had actually taken stock of his details, whereas he, with her, had been mostly preoccupied. “You wouldn’t take it well.”

“Ah, wonderful,” Tristan muttered. “You even condescend beautifully.”

When she shifted towards him on the bed he caught a hint of her perfume, only it wasn’t hers entirely. Parisa had a signature scent, a spectrum of florals. At the moment, there were traces of cologne, musks of something masculine and smoky, which, to Eden’s credit, Tristan’s former fiancée had always been very careful to prevent. Eden Wessex might not have known that Tristan could see through her illusions, but she was a very dutiful adulterer. He had considered it—still considered it, in fact—to be one of her primary strengths.

“This Society,” Parisa said, jolting him back to the point. “It’s not what I thought. They’re telling us at least one lie.”

The restless feeling of resistance bristled again, rearing up in protest. Again, the usual torment: Tristan wanted to believe the Society was giving him something he could not have gotten otherwise. He was suspicious of what that something was. Now, Parisa was tipping the scales once again, feeding his inexhaustible doubt.

“I don’t think there’s anything to be done about it,” Parisa remarked curtly. “Not yet. But I think it’s worth knowing who we work for.”

Tristan frowned. “Atlas, you mean?”

“Or is it?” she posed, pursing her lips. “There are some answers I need to dig up, I think, but in the meantime, you need to be careful.”

He hated to continuously express his bewilderment, but there was nothing for it.