The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tristan.” A little fuse of Callum’s temper sparked. “Must you be so very small all the time?”

Tristan cut him a glare. “So I should be more like you, then?”

This was obviously going nowhere.

“Have a nap,” Callum said, pivoting away in annoyance. “You’re a terrible bore when you’re unrested.”

He had hoped they’d have some sort of strategy session, determining which of the others they could most stand to lose, but it seemed Tristan was currently handling everything with exceptional ineptitude. Callum stalked through the corridors, returning to his room when he nearly collided with Libby.

“Rhodes,” he said gruffly, and she glanced up, face draining of color, before hurrying past him without a word.

If there was one thing Callum loathed about himself, it was the prison of his deduction. So, Libby and Tristan were suffering the same intolerable human illness of shame and alcoholism. Wonderful. Clearly something had happened between them, and Tristan had not told him.

Again, Tristan had not told him.

Callum reached the corridor of private rooms and pushed open the door to Parisa’s bedroom, shutting it behind him.

“No,” said Parisa lazily. “And don’t bother with Reina, either. Well—no, on second thought, that I would very much like to see,” she mused, lifting her head to prop it up with one hand. “I suspect she’d bite your dick if you even tried it. Shall we have a wager and find out?”

Parisa, unlike the others, reeked of nothing. None of Parisa had come loose. She did not even seem particularly dehydrated. She seemed…

Smug.

“What did you do?” asked Callum bluntly.

“What I do best,” said Parisa.

“What did Rhodes have to do with it?”

“You know, I rather like Rhodes,” Parisa hummed thoughtfully. “She’s very… sweet.”

Her smile curled up thinly, taunting, and Callum understood he was being toyed with.

He relaxed a little, relieved. Finally, someone who could play.

“They’re idiots,” he said, prowling over to recline beside her on the bed. “All of them.”

“Everyone’s an idiot,” Parisa replied, tracing mindless patterns on her duvet. “You should know that as well as anyone.”

“What did you do?”

“Changed them,” she said with a shrug. “Can’t reverse that sort of thing.”

That was the peril of thought. Thoughts were so rarely dismissed once they’d been picked up and toyed with, and a mind successfully altered could rarely, if ever, revert.

Worse were feelings. Feelings were never forgotten, even if their sources were.

“No, you can’t,” Callum slowly agreed. “But why would that matter to you?”

“Why wouldn’t it?” She shrugged. “It’s a game. You know it’s a game.”

“No matter the stakes?”

She blinked with surprise, and then her expression fell away.

“Did you kill them this time?” she asked tightly.

“Kill who?”