The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“What?” said Libby, Parisa, and Callum.

“You heard me,” said Nico, gesturing for Libby to follow. “Reina, wake Tristan and tell him to follow. Rhodes, stay close.”

She gave him a glare of don’t boss me around, but he had already started moving.

A good thing he had, too. It was almost immediate from the time they emerged onto the gallery landing.

“Get down,” Nico hissed, tugging Libby to the floor as something shot overhead, aimed from the entry hall up to the vaulted landing of the second floor. It was much larger than a bullet, so probably not deadly. Something for temporary immobilization, most likely, which most magical weapons tended to be. But they were expensive, and not particularly useful when fired up at an unknown target, which gave Nico pause.

“Probably a test,” said Callum, in something of a low drawl. “Some tactic to scare us into working together.”

Possible, Nico thought, though he didn’t particularly want to agree with Callum aloud.

“Cover me,” he said to Libby.

“Fine,” she said, grimacing. “Keep your head down.”

Every year, NYUMA held a tournament for the physical specialties; something akin to a game of capture the flag, but with fewer rules and more allowances. He and Libby had never been on the same team, almost always facing off in the final round, but all the games were essentially the same: someone attacked while someone else covered.

Nico rose to his feet while Libby conjured a thin bubble of protection around him, manipulating the molecular structure of the air in their immediate vicinity. The world was mostly entropy and chaos; magic, then, was order, because it was control. Nico and Libby could change the materials around them; they could take the universe’s compulsion to fill a vacuum and bend it, warp it, alter it. The fact that they were natural energy sources, twin storage units for massive electrical charge, meant they could not only harness the energy required for an explosion, but they could clear a path of least resistance for it, too.

Still, even batteries had their limits. Single combat was an excellent way to waste a lot of time and energy, so Nico opted to cast a wider net. He altered the direction of friction in the room, sending the entry room’s occupants into the furthest wall; helpfully, a thin tendril of plants crept out to twine around them, holding fast.

“Thanks Reina,” said Nico, exhaling as he returned the balance of force in the room.

Libby’s shield bubble dissipated.

“Is that all?” she asked.

“No,” said Parisa. “There’s someone in the east wing—”

“And the library,” said Reina, before amending irritably, “the painted room.”

“Which one?” demanded Callum.

“Are you planning to be useful at all?” Reina countered, glaring.

“If I felt there was any need to be concerned, I probably would be,” replied Callum. “As it is, why waste the effort?”

“What’s going on?” asked Tristan, who had apparently managed the decency to join them.

“Blakely’s testing us,” said Callum.

“You don’t know that,” Libby said. Beneath the gallery corridor, the sound of further entry was imminent, and she had her brows knitted in concentration. “It might be real.”

“What do you want me to do with these?” Reina asked, pointing to the men wriggling within the vines of their captivity.

“Well,” Parisa said, impatient, “seeing as we don’t want them in the house—”

“Varona, do you hear that?”

Before Nico could retort that yes, Rhodes, if she could hear it, he could obviously hear it just as well, there was a strange, disorienting ringing from inside his ears; it filled his mind with a vacant whiteness, blinding him behind closed eyes.

He vaguely felt a sharp sting of some kind, like the entry wound of a needle. Something stung his shoulder and he wanted to swat it away, only the screech of white that somehow filled his ears and eyes was debilitating; paralyzing. He felt a pressure inside his head that threatened to fill the space, like a rapidly expanding tumor.

Then the ringing faded, just enough that he could open his eyes, and he saw that Libby was speaking, or trying to. Varona, her mouth was saying, Varona, it’s a way!

Way? No, not a way.