The Atlas Paradox

. BEGINNING .

Gideon Drake shaded his eyes from the red-burning sun and swept a glance across the scorched and blackened hills. Heat rippled in the air between particulate clouds of ash. Little moth wings of debris floated delicately across his limited vision. The smoke was thick, chalky enough to stick in his throat, and if any of it was real it would constitute a medical emergency on the spot.

But it wasn’t, so it didn’t.

Gideon glanced down at the black Lab beside him, frowning at him in contemplation, and then turned back to the unfamiliar scene, pulling his shirt above his mouth to manifest a thin veil of semi-breathable air.

That’s very interesting, Gideon murmured to himself.

In the dream realms these burnings happened from time to time. Gideon called them erosions, though if he ever met another of his kind, he wouldn’t be surprised to learn there was already a proper name. It was common enough, though almost never this … flammable.

If Gideon had a philosophy, it was this: No sense despairing.

There was no telling what was real and what was not for Gideon Drake. His perception of dreamt wasteland might be a completely different scene to the dreamer. The burnings were a fine reminder of something Gideon had learned long ago: there is doom to be found everywhere if doom is what you seek.

Well, come on then, Max, Gideon said to the dog, who was coincidentally also his roommate. Max sniffed the air and whined in opposition as they headed west, but they both understood that dreams were Gideon’s domain, and therefore their path was ultimately Gideon’s decision.

Magically speaking, the dream realms were part of a collective subconscious. While every human had access to a corner of the realms, very few were able to traverse the realms of dreams as Gideon was.

To see where a person’s own consciousness ended and others’ began required a particular set of skills, and Gideon—who knew the shifting patterns of the realms the same way sailors know the tides—had even keener senses now that he rarely left their midst.

To the outside world, Gideon presented as a fairly normal person with narcolepsy. Understanding his magic, though, was not straightforward at all. As far as Gideon could gather, the line between conscious and subconscious was very thin for him. He could identify time and location within the dream realms, but his ability to walk through dreams occasionally prevented him from making it all the way through breakfast upright. Sometimes it seemed he belonged more to the realm of dreams than to the world of the living. Still, Gideon’s apparent somnambular flaw meant that he could make use of the limits others faced. A normal person could fly in a dream, for example, but they would know they were dreaming, and therefore be aware that they couldn’t actually fly in real life. Gideon Drake, on the other hand, could fly, period. Whether he happened to be awake or dreaming was the part he couldn’t always figure out.

Gideon wasn’t technically any more powerful than anyone else would be inside of a dream. His corporeal limitations were similar to those of telepathy—no magic performed in the dream realms could possibly harm him permanently, unless his physical form suffered something like a stroke or seizure. Gideon felt pain the same way another person might feel it in a dream—imagined, and then gone when they woke up. Unless he was under unusual amounts of stress that could then cause one of the above bodily reactions, that is … but that he never worried over. Only Nico worried about that sort of thing.

At the thought of Nico, Gideon suffered the usual twinge of something exposed, like having misplaced one shoe and carried on trudging without it. For the last year, he had trained himself (with varying degrees of success, depending on the day) to stop cataloguing the absence of his and Max’s usual companion. It had been difficult at first; the thought of Nico usually came back to him reflexively, like muscle memory, without preemption or forethought, and therefore with the unforeseen consequence of disrupting his intended route. Sometimes, when Gideon’s thoughts went to Nico, so did Gideon himself.

In the end, the pitfall and the providence of knowing Nico de Varona was that he could not be readily forgotten, nor easily parted from. Missing him was like missing a severed limb. Never quite complete and never whole, though on occasion the vestigial aches proved helpfully informative.

Gideon allowed himself to feel the things he tried (under other circumstances) not to, and like a sigh of relief, he felt the realms shift courteously beneath his feet. The nightmare gradually subsided, giving way to the atmosphere of Gideon’s own dreams, and so Gideon followed the path that came to him most easily: his own.

The smoke from the dream faded as Gideon’s mind wandered, and as such he and Max found themselves moving through conscious perception of time and space. In place of scorched earth, there was now the faint suggestion of microwavable popcorn and industrial-strength laundry detergent—unmistakable top notes of the NYUMA dorms.

And with it, the familiar face of a teenager Gideon once knew.

I’m Nico, said the wild-eyed, messy-haired boy whose T-shirt was inadvertently folded up on one side from the presence of his duffel bag. You’re Gideon? You look exhausted, he decided as an afterthought, tossing the bag below the second bed and glancing around the room, adding, You know, we’d have a lot more room if we bunked these.

Was this a memory, or a dream? It was hard for Gideon Drake to tell.

It was difficult to explain what exactly Nico had done to the air in the room, which Nico himself didn’t appear to have noticed. With mild claustrophobia, Gideon managed, I’m not sure we’re allowed to move the furniture. I guess we could ask?

We could, but asking so diminishes our chances at a favorable outcome. Nico paused, glancing at him. What is that accent, by the way? French?

Sort of. Acadian.

Quebecois?

Close enough.

Nico’s grin broadened. Well, excellent, he said. I’ve been wanting to expand linguistically. I think too much in English now, I need something else. Never trust a dichotomy, I always say. Though on a relevant note, do you want top or bottom? he asked, and Gideon blinked.

You choose, he managed, and Nico waved a hand, rearranging furniture so effortlessly that in the span of a breath, Gideon had already forgotten what the room looked like to begin with.

In real life, Gideon had learned very quickly that if there wasn’t space, Nico made some. If things sat still for too long, then Nico would inevitably disrupt them. The school administrators at NYUMA had felt the only necessary accommodation for Gideon’s presence was to label him in need of disability services and leave it at that, but given everything Gideon had observed about his new roommate within moments of meeting him, he was uneasily certain that it was only a matter of time before Nico found out the truth of him.

Where do you go? Nico had asked, proving Gideon right. When you sleep, I mean.

It was two weeks into the school year and Nico had climbed down from the top bunk, manifesting at Gideon’s side and startling him awake. Gideon hadn’t even known he was sleeping.

I have narcolepsy, he managed to say.

Bullshit, Nico replied.

Gideon had stared at him and thought, I can’t tell you. Not that he thought Nico was going to turn out to be some sort of creature hunter or someone planted in his room by his mother (although both were a distinct possibility), but there was always a moment when people started to look at him differently. Gideon hated that moment. The moment when others started to find something—many somethings—to reinforce their suspicions that Gideon was repulsive in some way. Instinctual knowledge; prey responding to a threat. Fight or flight.

I can’t tell anyone, Gideon had thought, but especially not you.

There’s something weird about you, Nico continued matter-of-factly. Not bad-weird, just weird. He folded his arms over his chest, considering it. What’s your story?

I told you. Narcolepsy.

Nico rolled his eyes. "Menteur."

Liar. So he really was planning to learn French, then.

What’s ‘shut up’ in Spanish? a former version of Gideon had asked in real life, and Nico had given him a smile that Gideon would later learn was exceptionally dangerous.

Get out of bed, Sandman, Nico had said, tossing aside the covers. We’re going out.

Back in the present, Max nudged Gideon’s knee with his nose, just hard enough that Gideon had to stumble for balance. Thanks, he said, shaking himself free of the memory. The dorm room faded back into the erosion’s distantly blazing hillside as Max supplied him with an unblinking look of expectation.

Nico’s this way, Gideon said, pointing through the thick brush of smoldering evergreens.

Max gave him a doubtful look.

Gideon sighed. Fine, he said, and conjured a ball, tossing it into the woods. Fetch.

The ball illuminated as it picked up speed, dousing the forest in a low, reassuring glow. Max gave Gideon another look of annoyance but darted ahead, following the path that Gideon’s magic had created.

Everyone had magic in dreams. The limitations were not the laws of physics, but rather the control of the dreamer. Gideon, a creature who constantly wavered between consciousness and unconsciousness, lacked muscle memory when it came to the limitations of reality. (If you do not know precisely where impossibility begins and ends, then of course it cannot constrain you.)

Whether Gideon simply had magic or was himself magic was perpetually a subject up for debate. Nico was adamant about the former, Gideon himself not so sure. He could scarcely perform even mediocre witchery when called upon in class, which was why he had stuck primarily to theoretical studies of how and why magic existed. Because Nico was a physicist, he saw the world in terms of pseudo-anatomical construction, but Gideon liked to think of the world as something of a data cloud. That was all the dream realms were, in the end. Shared space for humanity’s experience.

The real Nico was closer now, and the edge of the burning forest quickly dwindled to a thin stretch of vacant beach. Gideon bent down to brush his fingers over the sand, then plunged an arm through it, testing. Things were not burning here, but his arm did disappear instantly, swallowed up to the cuff of his shoulder. Max gave a low, cautioning growl.

Gideon retracted his hand, reaching over to give Max a little chin scratch of reassurance.

Why don’t you stay here, Gideon suggested. I’ll come get you in an hour or so.

Max whined softly.

Yeah, yeah, I’ll be careful. You’re really starting to sound like Nico, you know.

Max barked.

All right, fine, I take it back.

Gideon knelt on the beach with a roll of his eyes and submerged his hand again, this time leaning into the sand until it overtook his body and he slid fully into the other side. Instantly there was a shift in pressure, high to low, and Gideon found himself tumbling headlong into more sand, dropping from the sky onto the rolling hills of an arid desert.

He hit the sand face-first and spat a bit out of the side of his mouth. Gideon was not what one might call a lover of nature, having been exposed to a few too many of its less pleasant gifts. Were there worse things than sand? Yes, definitely, but still. Gideon didn’t think it was entirely out of line to find its effects offensive. He could feel it everywhere already, in the lining of his ears and in his teeth, taking residence in the rivulets of his scalp. Not ideal—but, as ever, no point despairing.

Gideon dragged himself upright, struggling to maintain his balance in the endless ribbon of sand that rose to the top of his calves. He peered around at the dunes, bracing for something. What it would be, he had no idea. It was different every time.

A buzz in his right ear had him pivoting sharply (or trying to) with a yelp, swatting blindly at the air. Anything but mosquitoes—Gideon did not care for bugs. Another buzz and he flicked it away, this time suffering a needle prick to his forearm. A welt had already started to show, a plump tear of blood pearling up from the puncture. Gideon brought his arm up to inspect the wound more closely, brushing away an exoskeleton of metal, the minute trace of gunpowder.

So. Not bugs, then.

Knowing what type of obstacle came next was usually a mixed relief, because it meant that Gideon now had both the ability and the necessity to plan his defense. Sometimes entering this particular subconscious was a tactical matter. Sometimes there was combat, sometimes there were labyrinths. Occasionally escape rooms and chases and fights—those were preferable, owing to Gideon’s general proficiency (up to this point) at eluding death and all its horsemen. Other times it was merely about the sweat of it, the strain, which was a matter of simple but terrible endurance. Gideon couldn’t die in dreams—no one could—but he could suffer. He could feel fear, or pain. Sometimes the test was just about clenching your jaw and outlasting.

This dream, unfortunately, was going to be one of those.

Whatever tiny weapons were being fired at Gideon now were too small to dodge and too quick to fight—probably nothing that could exist on Earth or be operated by humans. Gideon took the blows like the unavoidable bites that they were and dove into the whip of the wind, closing his eyes to guard against the sting of sand. It mixed with his open wounds, blood streaking across his arms. He could see the blurs of red between slitted eyes, bright and relatively benign but still ugly. Like tear tracks on the statues of martyrs and saints.

Whichever telepath had set up these wards was without question a sadist of the highest, most troubling order.

Something pierced Gideon’s neck, embedding in his throat, and Gideon’s airway was instantly compromised. Choking, he rushed to apply pressure to the wound, willing himself to regenerate faster. Dreams were not real, the damage was not real—the only thing real was the struggle, and that much he would give without question. That much he would always give, always, because in the deepest caverns of his heart, he knew it was justified. That it was not only righteous, but owed.

The winds picked up, sand crusting his eyes and lips and adhering to the sweat in the folds of his neck, and Gideon, summoning the volumes of his pain, let out a scream—the primal kind. The kind that meant the screamer was giving in, letting go. He screamed and screamed and tried from somewhere inside his agony to offer the proper capitulation, the secret password of sorts. The right message. Something like I will die before I give up, but everything inside your wards is safe from me.

I am just a man in pain. I am just a mortal with a message.

It must have worked, because the moment Gideon’s lungs emptied, blistering with pleading and strain, the ground gave way beneath him. He fell with a slurping sound of suction before being delivered, mercifully, to the sudden vacancy of an empty room.

Oh good, you’re here, said Nico with palpable relief, rising to his feet and approaching the bars of the telepathic wards that separated them. I think I was having a dream about the beach or something.

Gideon instinctively glanced at his arms for evidence of blood or sand, indulging a testing inhale to check his lungs. Everything appeared to be in order, which meant that he had made it inside the Alexandrian Society’s wards for the hundred and eighteenth time.

Each time was a little more nightmarish than the last. Each time, though, it was worth it.

Nico smiled as he leaned against the bars with his usual smuggery. You look well, he remarked in playful approval. Very rested, as always.

Gideon rolled his eyes.

I’m here, he confirmed, and then, because it was what Gideon had come to say, he added, And I think I might be close to finding Libby.

THE PARADOX:

If power is a thing to be had, it must be capable of possession. But power is not any discrete size or weight. Power is continuous. Power is parabolic. Say you are given some power, which then increases your capacity to accumulate more power. Your capacity for power increases exponentially in relation to the actual power you have gained. Thus, to gain power is to be increasingly powerless.

If the more power one has, the less one has, then is it the thing or are you?

I

DAZE

. LIBBY .

The moment Ezra Fowler left her behind, two things became clear.

The first was that the room—with its sparsely made bed and neatly folded clothing and orderly collection of prepackaged food—was meant for someone to live in for months, perhaps years.

The second was that Libby Rhodes herself was the room’s intended occupant.

. EZRA .

She would forgive him, Ezra thought.

And even if she did not, the alternative was still the end of the world at Atlas Blakely’s hands.

So perhaps forgiveness was better not asked.

II

INITIATES

. REINA .

YESTERDAY

It was nearly a year to the day since the six of them had set foot in the Alexandrian Society’s manor house and been promised, elusively, power. All the world’s knowledge under one roof. A lifetime of prestige, to crown the privilege of having access to the universe’s greatest secrets.

And all they had to do was survive a single year until the date of their initiation.

There was unity in that—as there had been over the course of the year in which they’d been modified and mutated and changed—and so where there had once been six was now, irreversibly, one.

Or something.

Reina cast a glance around the room and wondered exactly how long their unity would last. Presumably less than an hour. Already the energy in the room had begun to shift as Atlas Blakely, their so-called Caretaker, stepped quietly through the painted room’s door, observing them in silence.

Beside Reina, Nico de Varona was fidgety as usual, glancing at Atlas and then away. Tristan Caine was brooding silently behind them. From Reina’s periphery, she could see Parisa Kamali’s features remain placidly unchanged upon sight of the Caretaker, while Callum Nova, behind Parisa, did not even acknowledge Atlas’s entry. Callum stood at a distance from the others, chin angled slightly outward, as if to signal that his mind was on other things.

Try to think of everything that follows as a game, suggested Dalton Ellery, the bespectacled researcher who was presently filling the role of initiation concierge. He nodded in Atlas’s direction, then continued addressing the other five. They stood against a bookcase, waiting, as Dalton directed their attention to the center of the room.

The painted room had been cleared of its furniture, aside from a series of ordinary dining chairs. The five chairs, placed several feet apart, all faced inward and addressed a circle of empty space.

The loss of their sixth member was, by then, no longer fresh. It was, however, still noticeable. Like an old war wound that pained them only when it rained, the missing hum of Libby Rhodes and her anxiety seemed to haunt the standing space between the five initiates, unspoken—existing only in the promises they had made to one another. From somewhere beneath the floorboards, her absence pulsed.

You’ve come this far, Dalton continued, stepping into the center of the empty circle, and you are no longer being tested. There is no passing or failing. However, we do feel an ethical obligation to warn you that while you are safe from bodily harm, that does not guarantee your comfort during this ceremony. You will not die, he concluded. But, all other outcomes are plausible.

Beside Reina, Nico apprehensively shifted against the shelves. Tristan folded his arms more tightly across his chest, and Parisa slid a glance to Atlas, who hovered near the door. His expression had not changed.

Or perhaps it had. It was possible Reina was imagining it, but the Caretaker’s customary look of bland attentiveness seemed a touch more marble than usual. Fixed, in a way that suggested curation.

"All other outcomes are plausible? Callum asked, voicing the room’s collective doubt into the empty space. As in, we won’t die, but we could conceivably wake up a giant cockroach? (Beetle," murmured Reina, which Callum ignored.)

It’s not a known outcome, Dalton said, but neither is it technically impossible.

There was another intangible shift among the soon-to-be-initiated. Nico, sensing the potential for discord, glanced at Reina before saying, Initiation means more access, doesn’t it? And we’ve clearly all made choices to get here. Nico carefully directed his comments to the room at large rather than any specific candidate, though he lingered a moment on Atlas before turning to Dalton. Seems like the intimidation factor isn’t really necessary at this point, right?

It’s really more of a disclaimer, Dalton said. Any other questions?

Several, obviously—but Dalton wasn’t known for being forthcoming. Reina snuck a glance at Parisa, who was the only person who would know if there was anything to be suspicious about. She didn’t look concerned. Not that Reina made a habit of being nervous, but she certainly wasn’t going to waste her time on fear if Parisa wasn’t worried first.

The initiation ceremony requires you to leave this plane, continued Dalton. The constraints of your transition will be defined for you.

This will all be in our heads? asked Tristan gruffly.

A tick of distress manifested on Nico’s brow; ever since they’d witnessed Parisa’s death at Callum’s hands, they had all—but Parisa, ironically—been rendered skittish by the prospect of telepathic counterfeits.

Dalton paused. No, he said, but also yes, definitely.

Oh, good, Nico exhaled in an undertone to Reina. And I was so worried he might be unhelpful.

Before Reina could respond, Parisa said warily, What exactly are we doing on the Society’s astral plane? And no, that does not give me an advantage, she added, cutting off any further questions with an impatient sweep of the room. If there are constraints, then I am also constrained, she said conclusively to Reina, who surely wasn’t the only one thinking it. Just because it’s within the realm of my specialty doesn’t mean I have any significant advantage.

Reina slid her glance away. Touchy, she thought in Parisa’s direction.

She felt Parisa’s posture shift stiffly in reply. I don’t appreciate the accusation.

And suddenly you care what I think?

Parisa didn’t respond. From the far corner of the room, the potted fig unhelpfully cackled.

Dalton cleared his throat. The construct of your initiation is not a secret—

How charming, muttered Tristan. Something new and different.

—it is simply a simulation, Dalton finished. Within the simulation, you’ll be faced with a projection of someone else in your initiate class. Not as they are, but as you perceive them.

He paused to observe the expressions of the others, which varied from marked indifference (Callum) to resigned ambivalence (Nico). If anyone felt a hint of distress, none who remained were willing to show it. Atlas, for his part, merely raised a hand to his chin, scratching an itch. It seemed an odd thing to notice, but Reina felt sure his suit looked more glaringly pristine than it did usually. Pressed within an inch of its life, like he’d known someone would be looking. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

This is not a test of what you’ve learned, Dalton added. It is not a test at all—merely a formality. For the last year you have studied what we asked of you. Soon you will have the right to ask of the archives yourselves, wherever your paths of study take you. There was a brief shiver up Reina’s spine, propitious and fateful. As initiated members of the Society, the contents of the library will be yours to use, and to contribute to, as you wish, until your obligations to the archives are fulfilled and your tenure is at an end. You have earned your place here, but every bridge has two sides. Cross it.

He withdrew a file from nothing, catching it as if it had been tossed aloft.

We’ll start from youngest to oldest, which means Mr. de Varona will go first. Dalton glanced up at Nico, who nodded. It would always be Nico’s preference to go first. He was built that way, always rushing into things. Without Libby for a counterweight, there was nothing to temper his recklessness. Nothing to anchor him at all.

Nico wasn’t the only one left unbalanced. They were all slightly different without Libby Rhodes. Without them realizing it, she had established herself as the but in their collective conscience, their measure of morality. But what if this happens, but what if something goes wrong, but what if someone is hurt. The effects of her displacement from their anatomy as a group seemed imperceptibly compounding, like an infection that went undiagnosed. They could go on without her, of course, but the loss would surely prove significant given enough time. Slow internal bleeding, the toxification of a kidney. A tiny puncture somewhere in the constitution of an otherwise healthy lung.

A beleaguered fern sighed out doomdoomdoom, commentary that only Reina could hear and frankly did not appreciate.

All right. Nico took a step toward Dalton. Where am I going?

Nowhere. Sit. Dalton gestured to the five chairs, leading Nico to the one at approximately twelve o’clock. All of you, Dalton clarified, in order.

They each sat. To Reina’s right was Tristan, to Tristan’s right Callum, to Callum’s right Parisa. Nico closed the circle on Reina’s left.

There was a brief moment after they took their seats when they all collectively braced for something—something to fall from the ceiling or rise from the ground. There was nothing of the sort. The plants in the room bristled and yawned, Atlas took a seat among the anterior bookshelves, outside of Reina’s view, and Dalton took his place behind Nico’s chair, clipboard in hand.

Nico, fidgeting, glanced first at Reina and then swiftly over his shoulder. What exactly am I supposed to d—

Begin, said Dalton.

Nico’s head snapped forward—struck like a match, a corporeal off switch—while his consciousness slid out from beneath him. The air of the room crackled momentarily with static—with magic or life or some intangible wave of Nico himself. The uncanny energy pebbled their skin, lifting the hairs from their arms, the backs of their necks.

Within seconds, the sensation of unbridled electricity had resolved itself, becoming palpable condensation—a fine mist, at first, and then a cloud—and then, like the crack of a whip, a spectral image of Nico rose up from the center of the circle. His conception of the painted room blanketed the initiates as he stood within a projection of the furniture’s usual arrangement: the table beside the bookcase, the sofa across from the hearth. He seemed incapable of seeing his four peers and two initiators as they sat in a circle around the room. In the projection, it was high noon, the heat of the sun emanating from the windows. The drapes were thrown open, the weather outside a clear, bright contrast to the wet summer gloom of their physical reality.

From the corner of Reina’s eye, Tristan leaned forward, bracing his forearms on his knees with apprehension that read like disgust. We’re going to be able to watch each other’s initiation rituals?

Yes, said Dalton, and just as he spoke, a spectral version of Reina materialized across from the projection of Nico, who grinned.

Excellent, Nico said, clearing the projected room of its furniture with a wave of his hand. Like all of Nico’s magic, it was difficult to see in proper sequence. There was simply a blink, and then all the furniture lined the room’s perimeter. As if that were the layout as it had always been.

Nico put forth a hand to be shaken, offering it to his projection of Reina. It was the beginning of any standard sparring match. Even now, after a year of recreational combat, they still commenced every match that way.

From across the translucency of the projection, Reina caught Parisa rolling her eyes.

What? Reina demanded.

Parisa’s dark gaze met hers. If I wanted to spend my time watching the two of you behave like children, I’d have done so by now.

But even before Parisa had completed her thought, the projection-Reina had already lunged. Nico’s head narrowly slipped to the side as he pivoted out and threw a straight punch, testing his range. The real Reina would have known to expect that (and likely done the same herself), but the projection of her slipped the punch as if it had been thrown at full strength. Her hand fell low enough for Nico to give her cheek a light tap in warning; a reminder to stay light on her feet.

Projection-Reina threw out a series of single jabs; one, two, then a third, then a fourth, which Nico parried with his right hand, catching her forearm. The motion rocked projection-Reina forward, setting her off-balance, and Nico took advantage of the drop in levels to aim a hook at the side of her head, which she rushed to block with her forearm rather than roll beneath—a poor choice, Reina thought with a grimace. Her projected self succeeded in preventing the majority of impact, but she still took at least half the punch’s intended force, if not more.

Nico and projection-Reina circled each other, each testing the other’s footing. Nico worked his way to the inside of her wingspan, then swung easily to the outside of Reina’s close hook when her projection took the bait. Nico’s knuckles tapped her kidney as he slid deftly out of range. She responded with a blind swing for his head, catching the tip of his ear. He laughed. Her projection didn’t.

Parisa suddenly sat up straighter, a thought creasing her brow.

Now you’re suddenly interested in combat strategies? Reina scoffed in her direction. Reina couldn’t see Atlas from where she was sitting—he was obscured by one of the room’s many bookshelves—but she had a feeling he had taken notice, too.

Parisa shot her an irritated glance. Please. This isn’t combat. As usual, you’re missing the point.

What point? This was all so obviously pointless. Reina could witness this exact scenario in real life at any time—though she wouldn’t, if given the choice. It was uncomfortable to watch herself fight, if only for the awkwardness of being forced to observe her usual shortcomings. Like this, in the audience, her failures seemed more exaggerated than usual. Movement came fluidly, naturally, to Nico. His rhythm—his orbit of the space—was always light and never stiff. He was never in the same place twice. Reina, by contrast, seemed stocky and immobile, a cliffside being steadily chipped away by Nico’s tide. Reina found herself repeatedly looking away from the ritual’s projection—though, in doing so, she noticed Parisa’s attention still intently on her projected counterpart.

What exactly is so interesting to you about this? Reina asked grumpily, and Parisa stared at her from across the simulated combat, apparently no less annoyed by having to answer.

Don’t you get it? This is a projection of what he thinks of you, Parisa said in Reina’s head.

Reina thought she saw Parisa glance in Atlas’s direction. If she did, though, it was brief and uncommunicative. Parisa’s primary concern was the projection of Reina, not Atlas—which was, if anything, the most disconcerting thing currently taking place in the painted room. Being the object of Parisa’s concentration couldn’t be a good thing. (The potted fig agreed.)

So? thought Reina.

So, first of all, nobody said we couldn’t use magic, but Nico isn’t—and neither is his version of you. A flicker of a smile crossed Parisa’s lips. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he doesn’t seem to find you dangerous at all, does he?

Again: So?

For a year, we were all tasked with killing someone. We only recently learned who that might be. Parisa gestured with a glance to Nico’s dancing form. Does this seem like someone concerned with your threat to his life?

Projection-Reina staggered, caught in one of Nico’s usual traps: a jab that distracted her, causing her to miss Nico’s hook from the edge of her periphery. He’d thrown a hard right cross and then an uppercut, the latter of which she’d been unable to block. These were all errors, but specifically they were Reina’s errors. They were mistakes she’d made before.

Ah, you see it now, Parisa observed with a keen, disturbing satisfaction, and though Reina made every effort to clear any outside commentary from her mind, Parisa came through like white noise, radio static.

He thinks you’re vulnerable.

And then, more derisively—

He thinks you’re weak.

Reina bristled and forcefully thought of nothing, queuing up the usual punitive earworm of an old toothpaste ad from her youth. Parisa’s smile turned tightly to a grimace of touché, asshole and then her attention drifted away, no doubt to some other game of amateur psychoanalysis. Projection-Reina slipped a right cross from Nico and dealt him a reasonable double jab in return, though he countered with a combination of punches she wasn’t quite fast enough to fully block. Reina—the real Reina, who was growing increasingly annoyed—kept her expression still, realizing that Parisa wasn’t the only one watching for her reaction. From the other side of Nico, Callum’s gaze had slid surreptitiously to hers, observing her for a long, discerning moment before glancing away.

She wondered what her feelings were doing at that particular moment. Typically she did not concern herself with these things, believing herself to be a person of no great feeling. (Annoyance, irritation, impatience did not count. They were the mosquito bites on the emotional Richter scale.) Still, she could feel in some unpracticed, prickling way that she was wrestling with something. Not anguish, not fear … and certainly not betrayal, because despite Parisa’s tacit claim to comprehend every nuance of all humanity, she was definitely wrong about that.

Though, in typical Parisa fashion, she wasn’t quite wrong enough. Reina, who unlike certain people (Libby) was not completely subject to every whim of her own insecurity, knew that Nico didn’t actually consider her weak. In Nico’s mind, which Reina already understood to be a lawless and cluttered place, she knew that he did not consider anyone enough of an enemy to actively try to destroy them. That was both the charm and the rub of him: confidence that was also arrogance. To hold that against him would be to fundamentally misunderstand who he was. To care about his arrogance would only be an exercise in emotional fragility, and thus a waste of both their time.

Still, seeing herself through his eyes, it did seem that Nico considered Reina … predictable. Slightly inferior. Good, but not quite good enough. An impression that, to be fair, was accurate in certain areas, combat and physical magic included. Reina had never pretended it wasn’t. Her concern with regard to the Society had always been access, not clout.

Had she considered that her obvious ambivalence to her own abilities might have struck the others as a reflection on her lack of skills? Yes. But if it were Tristan, or Callum, or Parisa who saw her this way, it might not have mattered. Reina had successfully revealed nothing of herself to them. Not to Nico either—not really—but he had spent far more time with her than any of the others. Hadn’t he been paying attention?

Reina’s mind served her an unwelcome flashback then. Tea with her grandmother, which had taken place after an especially fruitless dinner with her mother. Someday they will see, Baba had said with her gentle softness that had easily given way to forgetfulness, and then to mindless fluff that was sometimes connected to reality and sometimes not. Someday they will look at you and see everything I see.

MotherMother? the corner fern asked doubtfully.

Reina, despite herself, agreed.

Reina’s mother, whom Reina generally did not think of and whom she most certainly did not speak of, had been the middle of three daughters and two sons. (A troublemaker in her youth, Reina’s grandmother had always said fondly, as if she had watched an entertaining but unrealistic drama instead of her daughter’s unfolding life.) Baba, an eccentric woman already with her odd penchant for kindness, had not wanted her daughter’s whole life destroyed by one little indiscretion, so she had taken Reina in as an act of apparent generosity. Within one or two years, Reina’s mother was successfully married to a mortal businessman, someone whose family had profited from the electronics boom that gave way to the medeian technomancy age. Reina always thought of him in the formal sense—the Businessman, who had no true name or meaning outside of his profession. He was not her father, merely the man who had married her mother after Reina was born. He knew that Reina lived in his mother-in-law’s house only because he asked a lot of questions about her. At first he had thought she was a child of one of the staff, perhaps the housekeeper, and therefore someone he could ultimately control. Reina often wondered about the conversation her mother must have had as a result of this ironic turn of events. (Perhaps nothing had been said. Reina’s mother did not talk much. She had the air of someone who had seen a lot and decided to simply close her eyes and stop