The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“Lib?” Ezra asked, startling Libby back to their phone call. “Still there?”

“Yes, sorry,” she said, blinking. “What was the question?”

He gave a low laugh, the sound of it muffled into the receiver. He must have been in bed, turning onto his side to prop his phone against his ear. “What are you working on at the moment?”

“Oh, um… ecological conservation. In a sense.” That was sort of true, if one considered the process of terraforming hostile environments to be an ecological study. The previous afternoon, Libby and Nico had spent nearly all their energy trying to alter the molecular makeup of the painted room, hoping to tweak the nature of its atmosphere to their preferred specifications. They had been told to stop, though, in a rather snippy tone, when Reina said the fig plant in the corner was suffocating.

“We’re just trying to understand basic principles of science and magic so we can apply them to… bigger projects.”

Like, for example, wormholes. So far, Nico and Libby had managed to successfully create one wormhole, which had taken two weeks of research and an entire day of casting to accomplish. Ultimately, Nico had been forced to test it himself, because no one else was willing to take the chance they might accidentally wind up on Jupiter. (An impossibility, technically, as it would have taken at least ten thousand Nicos and Libbys to power anything even close to that magnitude of power and precision, but still, Tristan in particular had looked as if he’d rather eat his own foot than test it out.)

In the end, it took Nico from the first floor corridor of the west wing to the kitchen. In typical Nico fashion, he now used it on a regular basis.

“Well, it’s understandable if it doesn’t feel interesting yet,” said Ezra. “Most of academia can feel fairly pointless while you’re in the early research phase. And probably for quite a while after that, I imagine.”

“That’s… true,” Libby permitted hesitantly, not wanting to admit that the creation of a wormhole was actually not a pointless thing at all, even if it meant Nico was constantly and inconveniently disappearing and reappearing with snacks.

As far as Libby knew, they were the first ones who had ever managed to do it, even on a micro level. If there were sufficient power sources in the future—if, by chance, some medeian was born somewhere with nuclear energy in their fingertips—then they could easily do the same thing in space, in time… in spacetime! In fact, if any government agencies knew they had done it, they could easily get enough medeians together to bolster a magical space program. She had wanted to call NASA the moment they managed it, only then she remembered it would ultimately be controlled by a politician (any politician, somewhere, or at least a whole flock of them, some which would inevitably be less competent than others), and as Atlas often said, most forms of knowledge were better reserved until they were certain such revelations wouldn’t be abused. Even if Libby could manage to successfully terraform Mars, there was no guarantee it wouldn’t bring about a second global Age of Imperialism, which would be disastrous and destructive. Better they kept it in the archives.

“—’s Varona?”

“What?” Libby asked, having been daydreaming about planetary exploration again. “Sorry, I was just—”

“I just wondered how things were going with Varona,” Ezra said, sounding slightly more tense now than when he’d laughed her inattention off before. She supposed Ezra would never not sound tense about Nico, and understandably so; she had a practice of bristling at the sound of his name, too. “Is he being… you know. Himself?”

“Oh, well—”

At that precise moment, Libby heard a burst of nonsensical Nico-sounds from the gallery, which meant he was probably sparring with Reina again. That had begun almost immediately after the installation (‘installation’ being Atlas’ word for all of them nearly dying on their very first night as part of the Society) and now, Nico and Reina had a habit of doing what appeared to be daily martial arts workouts together.

It was strange, obviously. It had all the hallmarks of Nico’s pre-established habits and customs while manifesting in a new and disturbing way. Not that Nico had ever been particularly devoted to wearing shirts, for example, but coming across him without one, dripping sweat and colliding with Libby in the hallway only to slime the front of her blouse with his perspiration, was now all too frequent an occurrence.

Admittedly, the ease of Nico’s comradeship with Reina, or whatever it could be called, had bothered Libby at first. Terrible as it was to acknowledge, Nico was currently the closest thing Libby had to a friend. Reina had made it clear she had no interest in being amicable with Libby, and the others certainly hated her (in the case of Callum, that feeling was deeply mutual), so the potential loss of Nico was a blow; something Libby had never thought she’d say about Nico de Varona, or the lack of him.

She was particularly resentful of the fact that Reina and Nico had bonded over their joint foray into violence, both because it meant Libby might lose Nico’s alliance—thereby chancing her own elimination once the others felt free to confess their collective dislike—and because it was annoying that Nico had spent four years hating Libby only to befriend a girl who almost never spoke except to scowl.

“Don’t pout, Rhodes,” advised Nico. By then they had all taken to exploring the grounds within the Society’s wards; the house was surrounded by a lovely manicured lawn, a grove of trees, and some roses, beside which had been the first site of Nico and Reina’s communal venture into recreational pugilism.

It was sometime in the early weeks when Nico had first pulled Libby aside, her shading her eyes from the high summer sun and him chirpily toweling the sheen of sweat from his chest. “I still need you,” he assured her, ever his effervescent, pompous self.

“Oh, good,” Libby said drily, “thank heavens I’m still of some use to you.”

“Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you something.” Nico wasn’t listening, having grown entirely too used to her sarcasm by then, but he surprised her with a conspiratorial hand on her elbow, tugging her around the collection of rose bushes that she supposed counted as a garden to the English. “I’ve noticed something about Reina.”

“Varona,” Libby sighed, “if this is going to be gross—”

“What? No, nothing like that. If anything I’d want to sleep with—well, never mind,” he muttered, “that’s not relevant. The point is, trust me, you want me to get Reina on our side,” he assured her, dropping his voice in a manner she supposed he found provocative. “We need her, and I’m not even sure she understands that. Or why.”

“Do you?” prompted Libby doubtfully. It wasn’t as if Nico had ever been notorious for his talents of perception. For example, he had somehow managed to miss that Libby’s best friend at NYUMA, Mira, had been sickeningly in love with him for the entirety of their schooling.

(Before and after he slept with her. Fuckboys, honestly.)

“I sorted it out by accident,” Nico admitted, again dismissing Libby’s loyal efforts to undermine his masculinity on Mira’s behalf, “so your skepticism isn’t entirely the worst, but yes, I do. Reina is—” He broke off, frowning. “She’s like a battery.”

Libby blinked. “What?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking about it, and what is a naturalist except for a type of energy source, right? I don’t know how she’s doing it or what she’s tapping into, but think about it, Rhodes.” Nico seemed to be imploring her; irritatingly, as if the gears in her head were not already turning precisely as his had turned. “I noticed it when we took on the waves medeian at the installation. When I was touching her, it was like I had an extra power source.”

(The epiphany and its corresponding conversation had occurred pre-wormhole. Truthfully, they wouldn’t have managed it at all if not for Nico figuring this out about Reina, but Libby certainly hadn’t confessed that to his face. Nor did she plan to.)