The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“It’s not real, no,” Dalton confirmed quickly, “but it’s not an illusion.”

He waved a hand and whatever the others saw, they leapt back from the sight of it, Parisa stifling a scream as the traces of magic rose up in a thick blur, like heavy fog. Nico looked like he was going to be sick.

“It’s an animation,” Dalton said, and then he turned and left.

In his absence, the others stood speechless again.

“We should go,” Callum said in a measured voice, at the same time Reina said, “It’s his specialty.”

Parisa glanced up. “What?”

“Dalton. He’s an animator. I don’t know what that means,” Reina added. “But that’s what he does.”

“What’s the difference between an illusion and an animation?” The question sounded bitter from Nico, though it might not have been. His anger or his loss or whatever it was that was ailing him at Libby’s loss was bleeding, uncontained, into everything he said.

To Tristan’s immense surprise, Parisa turned to Callum for confirmation of something.

“Sentience?” she asked. She was asking him alone.

“Sort of,” Callum said. Nobody but Parisa seemed willing to meet his eye. “Illusions have no sentience, but animations have… some. It’s not strictly sentience,” he corrected himself, “but it’s an approximation of life. A sort of… naturalistic spirit. Not to any level of consciousness, but to the extent of being, arguably, alive.”

“There are myths about that.” Reina’s tone was cerebral. “And writings from antiquity.”

“Yes,” Callum said. “Spectral things, certain creatures. They’re animated but not sentient.”

“It’s not in our heads,” Parisa said. “Tristan can’t see it.”

“No,” Callum confirmed. “It’s still just magic. Manufactured somehow and put here deliberately for us to find.”

“But why would someone want us to think Rhodes was dead?” (Nico.)

“Is the question why Rhodes, or why us?” (Parisa.)

“Either. Both.”

Their collective silence suggested a confounding lack of answer. Tristan’s sore muscles ached, throbbing with pain.

“Let’s get out of here,” Parisa said eventually, turning her face away with another flinch. “I’m done looking at this.”

She turned and left, followed by a hesitant Nico. A less hesitant Reina glanced at Tristan, then at Callum. Then she, too, turned and left.

When only Callum and Tristan remained in the room, the briefly forgotten intensity of the evening returned. It occurred to Tristan that he should be prepared for something, anything, but acknowledging so to himself already seemed like the beginning of an end.

“There was something else in the scream,” Callum remarked without looking up from whatever animation had been left in Libby’s place. “It wasn’t fear. It was closer to rage.”

After another beat of silence, Callum clarified, “Betrayal.”

It took a while for Tristan to find his voice.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning she knew the person who did this to her,” Callum said, perfunctory in his certainty. “It wasn’t a stranger. And—”

He stopped. Tristan waited.

“…and?”

Callum shrugged.