Atlas

by Nicholas Gagnier

  “Are you sure she’s in there?”

  “Yes,” Pol says. “Seraphina is known to go into deep meditation. It becomes nearly impossible to reach her in these trances, if at all. We may be forced to wait until her session concludes. It could be a long one, so brace for a wait.”

  I don’t care if she’s at fucking Seaworld — I’m getting through these doors. I raise the shotgun, firing dual shells at the door. They bounce off metal and ricochet into the far corners, leaving a trail of sparks. Pol and I duck as they ring off one wall, throttling toward the next, almost taking both of us out.

  “Are you insane?” the angel yells. “That’s six-inch metal!”

  “Sorry,” I repeat, and prepare to resume banging on the door when a massive shift occurs beneath my feet. The doors creak voluntarily; a loud whine rings in my ears and doesn’t cease until both are opened wide.

  “Leave us, Pol.”

  The shrill inflections float out of Seraphina’s chamber. Pol nods as I look toward the chamber where our final confrontation will ensue.

  “Come in, Miss Knox,” the voice invites from the disembodied corners of my dread.

  Keeping the shotgun raised, I advance inside, unsure if either of us will re-emerge.

  ***

  Seraphina’s chambers are impressive and colorful. Exotic rugs run the room’s length. Bookcases filled with ancient texts in leather-bound tomes line the walls. Seating consists of large cushions spread throughout the room, which is dimly lit and adorned in bead curtains throughout. Candles provide most of the illumination — their arrangements remind me of the way a serial killer might lay them out before performing some sick, sacrificial ritual.

  The High Priestess waits cross-legged on one of the circumferential cushions. Its texture looks to be animal skin of some kind, and Lord knows what makes up the stuffing. Seraphina seems to be more lost in despair than meditation — her eyes are sunken, ridges of her unforgiving jawline darker. The red strands of her long hair are frayed.

  “Have you come to gloat?” she groans. “You would have been wiser to wait until I had my face on. Not my most flattering look, hmmm?”

  I don’t lower the shotgun, slowly advancing toward her.

  “It’s time we had an honest talk, Priestess. I would buy you a drink and do it in a more civil manner, but your attitude has made that a bit challenging. So if you want to clear your name in this conspiracy, I suggest you put aside whatever problem you have with me, and cooperate.”

  Seraphina scoffs.

  “Don’t flatter yourself, Miss Knox. My issue is not with you any longer, hmm? It is with truth.”

  “Truth?”

  “Yes. That my usefulness in this political hierarchy may be outlived. I have been here for a long time, Ramona. I have seen things that would haunt me mercilessly, if I had not learned to block them out, hmm?’

  Seraphina has nothing to do with any of this. The shotgun lowers at this realization — the woman has been defeated so long, any attempt to defend herself is heresy.

  “When the uprising happened,” she says, “I knew it was my fault. I saw what Gabriel was becoming — the Council trusted him, and he was too willing to sacrifice others in their eyes to get his way. I saw how he treated Tomas, who loved Gabriel like a brother. But Gabriel only loved himself, hmm?

  “I shouldn’t have...fought them after. I should have done it before all this happened, and I was irredeemable — after I failed to protect Atlas.”

  “What about the dragons?” I ask.

  “The dragons,” Seraphina scoffs. “My weakness. All because my outbursts were ill-timed, I am forever associated with their return. I can’t tell you about the dragons, Ramona, hmm? I can’t tell you, because I have no more information about them than you do.”

  I was right.

  “If that’s true,” I say, finally pointing the weapon all the way down, “you need to stand with us now. Let the Nephalim earn their way home — not with resentment and petty politics, but honor and pride. Stand with the Council against this threat.”

  Seraphina chuckles.

  “And what’s to say the Council doesn’t turn us away, hmm? We are disgraced. Forever on the fringe of Atlas now — just another gang of thugs.”

  “What’s to say they do?” I counter. “The Council needs you, Priestess. Will you stand with us?”

  The disheveled leader says nothing, but doesn’t need to — there is a slight relief to her expression, as if the world’s weight has lifted from her shoulders, and she tries not to let the long-coveted exhale show.

  The Nephalim stationed downstairs eyeball me walking past them as I leave, exiting onto the stone staircase. I try to suppress gratification at being right for once. The journey to coax Seraphina into civility was long and treacherous, and part of me is glad to have her allegiance at last. My circle of allies is building, our foothold into every level of Atlas more secure with each confrontation with its factions.

  That self-congratulations is cut short by the lone figure standing alone in the courtyard as I approach. The blond woman from the ball. She waits with a crooked smile, as if she expected me — as if someone told her I would be here. Only a handful of people knew— but here she stands, in a white t-shirt and jeans, almost as tall as me and dressed for a day at the mall, rather than manifesting at the most inopportune times.

  Her smile grows wider as I close the gap. There are maybe two hundred paces from the Obelisk and the barrier separating it from the God’s Road, but each step is heavy and my heart revolts at the sight of her.

  Did she let Linus and company into Atlas? If she did, who told her how to access the Illumitory or the Council? I reach the center where she stands, and the world between us rings with deafening silence.

  Who is this woman?

  I don’t speak first, but neither does she. And when our staring contest stumbles into the snapping beams of patience, I finally ask the question on the tip of my goddamn tongue.

  “What do you want?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The woman leads me to Devil’s Corner. She is silent through the walk. Blond hair in a loose ponytail, her clothes are simple in comparison to the ball.

  Instead of panicking, I resort to taking in my final view of Atlas, if she does indeed plan to murder me.

  Her destination is unremarkable — a tall, snaking structure reminiscent of all the others in Devil’s Corner. From its southern point, the thin building curves out before swinging inward like the letter S. A nondescript glass door on the eastern wall leads into an apartment building of sorts. The lights inside flicker and people slump under graffitied descriptions like PRAISE ZIZ and OUR S ULS OR HE DARK L RD. The woman ignores the ground floor’s occupants, leading me to a cluttered stairwell.

  The third floor apartment resides in a less populated hallway. It takes a moment to recognize my surroundings as we enter the frame. The woman closes the door as my eyes fall on the tile entrance, master bedroom door and bathroom. Deja vu is instantaneous. Through the swinging kitchen door lies the table where I kept folders of forensic evidence and conversed with a ghost who appeared throughout my existence, offering guidance. An antique rotary telephone on the countertop is yellowed by time and cigarette smoke, and I still smell nicotine on the walls.

  The woman says nothing as I explore. I exit out of the kitchen, hands passing over walls, my eyes meeting the mirror in our front hallway whose reflection I could never meet. In the living room where Maya lived in a chair for years, hooked up to an oxygen tank until she died, all the furniture is perfectly preserved. The couch where I slept, holding her hand still bears my faint outline. The gray machine by her recliner whirs and beeps, although it was turned off the second they carted her away.

  “What is this?” I ask, wheeling to face the woman.

  Her lips remained pursed, hands clasped in front of her.

  “This is where it all began, wasn’t it?”

  “Where...what began?”

  “You,” the
woman says. “Where you learned you were special, Ramona. Where greater forces found you, demonstrated there was more to the world than you’d been shown.”

  “Tim.”

  “If that is what you call a man who sentenced the world to die — all to appease some personal grudge, no less — then call him what you will.”

  “The World-Killer, then. He’s who you’re referring to.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” the woman replies. She paces to Maya’s chair, caressing the spot her head used to lay. “Atlas will soon have bigger problems than one rogue celestial being.”

  “The dragons?” I ask. “Do you know about them?”

  “That, and so much more, Ramona. I have been gifted with an unimaginable calling — the gift of knowledge. That which drives you is in my possession.”

  “What does that mean?”

  The woman smiles, but its arrogance drags more anger out the question than curiosity.

  “You have been given a great responsibility, Miss Knox. To protect the pinnacle of Creation from threats in the shadows. A noble cause, to be sure. But not all who admire you for your heroic deeds — saving the Council at the Cathedral, then again at the ball — might know you would have never survived the Jordan West case without divine intervention.”

  “What are you trying to say?” Discomfort is reaching critical mass in my tensed jaw and bunching fists. “And who the hell are you?”

  “I am a catalyst, Ramona. Nothing more. Like you, I was given a great opportunity to serve something bigger than myself. The only difference between us? I chose the stronger horse.”

  “Ziz.” The words escape my mouth without braking to consider the velocity of their landing. The woman must have expected I would deduce her allegiance quickly, because the answer satisfies her.

  “I was quite pleased when your investigation targeted the High Priestess. She is quite the conspicuous one, isn’t she?”

  In an illusion of the only home I’ve ever known, all my wildest failures unravel. The revelations are like fireworks, lighting up my expression with explosions of colorful horror.

  I don’t know what part she’s playing yet, Maester, but she’s involved in this somehow. The High Priestess has been stewing in her anger for years; pretty much since she lost any grasp on power following Tomas’ rebellion.

  Seraphina had no part in this.

  “Same goes for the Crimson League. The Whisperers. Quorroc.” She clearly delights in how wrong I’ve been. “I couldn’t have timed the Behemoth better. All these forces the Council and its proxies were so sure were involved — the perfect distraction.”

  “But why?” I ask. “Even if I can never understand, why tell me?”

  Even as I ask it, home movies of my human error infinitely playing in my head, the woman wants me to know I’ve failed.

  “When I first came to Atlas,” she explains, “I was broken. I had given up everything to right a wrong. But instead of being rewarded — as some may see it — I felt emptied of everything I had ever loved.”

  I say nothing.

  “But time has a funny effect. The longer I was here, the more my eyes opened. I saw the Council’s hypocrisy, how they treated everyone who has ever laid down their lives for them. I saw the love that I someday hoped to reclaim...taken. I felt replaced, in every aspect of the word.

  “I started...hearing voices — at first, I thought I was going crazy. It came to me in dreams, when I ventured too close to Devil’s Corner. In the beginning, I ignored it. But then, the voice became stronger. Beckoning me. It flowed into my thoughts at all times of the day, and I would have gone mad eventually.

  “I followed its instructions. It led me to the darkest depths of Atlas, where the sun never goes and even the rats are scared to idle. I went well below the underbelly of this city. There, Ramona, I found what was always missing — a part of my soul that was always kept from me.”

  “What part?” I ask, suddenly more uncomfortable with my childhood home than I’ve ever been. After Maya died, I could barely dwell here, but our conversation within its memory tarnishes it, and this moment may never leave me.

  “Power,” she says. “Of such magnitude, to go back to a time without it would leave me a skeleton of what I am — a weak, dishevelled being that would make the longest-tenured Whisperers look like the belle of the ball.”

  This agent of Ziz — who has made all of us look like fools chasing a loose group of suspicious individuals — is a bigger threat to Atlas than anyone I have encountered. And yet, wringing her neck would get me no closer to stopping her plan, whatever it may be.

  “And what are you planning to do with this power?” I ask. “What’s the endgame here? Or is that some big mystery?”

  The woman’s smile reaches its apex.

  “Not at all,” she nods. “Let me tell you.”

  And so, she does.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I don’t know what to do.

  Leaving the weird conjuration of my childhood home — where a suited man named Death first appeared to me at five years old; then, years later, took my aunt’s soul — I want to die, and go all the way back to the beginning; let the Habinar feed me to the White Light, let Luca spearhead the investigation. It would have ended with a Behemoth killing him, and the Council would die, anyway.

  But my part in this nightmare would be removed.

  My feet feel like nothing as I pass leery-eyed Crimson League. I pass the mother with a suckling infant and forget about the persistently murky sky of the district, just trying to outrun my panic.

  I have to get to the Council.

  They will be at Tim’s trial. After Seraphina’s accusations at the ball, they couldn’t delay any longer. No doubt Hardwick will be in the audience — a public trial was another result of the High Priestess’ challenge — to see justice visited on the man who sent him to Stone Mountain.

  I will need his help.

  The trial is held in the Observatory, thankfully a short sprint from Devil’s Corner in the west. The nebulous sky greets me after passing the destroyed Cathedral.

  The northernmost structure in Atlas is massive. A giant device atop its domed roof looks outward into the universe that makes the building seem so small. It is the second largest building in Atlas after the Seat, easily dwarfing the Illumitory and Obelisk. The district is filled with people crowded around the building because it is too full to get inside. Many of them are of negligible status — all are poorly dressed, no nobles, Maesters, or angels among them.

  “Knox!”

  Stephen Hardwick cuts through the sea of people to my left, pushing aside from the west as I traverse north through the bodies, and I beckon him to follow.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “We have to get inside the Observatory,” I reply, pushing through sets of shoulders. The fifty feet between the gate I entered the district and the Observatory steps are more like Woodstock than a public trial or inauguration.

  “Good luck with that,” Hardwick says, trying to keep up. “This place is fucking packed.”

  “If we don’t cut through it, the Council is dead.” I explain it will have to wait as we navigate up the stream of chattering people awaiting a verdict. Soon enough, I can make out the giant open doors and an inadequate number of Royal Guard to hold back the bottlenecked crowd.

  “How solid is this intel, Knox?” Hardwick asks.

  I never have the chance to respond — there is a loud crash, followed by a roar, then a second scream ascending the Observatory district’s stone wall. I turn my head — arms pushing ahead withdraw, tapping Hardwick on the shoulder. My partner is fixated on the original plan, still trying to advance.

  It is not my touch that draws his attention to twin beasts perched on the stone wall, but their second set of bellowing that rings through the district.

  “Jesus fuck!”

  Behemoths.

  The woman said her forces were coming for the Council. I had no reason to disregard her, bu
t the dragons stop my heart every time I see their brown scales and rippling nostrils. A cone of fire escapes one, provoking the second to match its fiery breath. Both outbursts blow like welding torches over the fleeing crowd. Limited entryways into the quadrant prevent them from escaping fast enough. The dragons rest atop one of them, and it crumbles as the population tries to funnel through the other. The result is charred bodies in the hundreds, and the smell of cooked flesh filling the front lawn behind us.

  “It’s a dragon!”

  “Light help us!”

  “Everybody run for your blasted lives!”

  “Knox,” Hardwick says. “We have to get inside now!”

  The scene in front of us is no better. People in the doorway avert their eyes from the trial to the terror behind them, and begin to stampede the other way. Several knock shoulders with me — I stand upright through the first two, before the third knocks me to the ground. The world deviates from light to dark, dark to light.

  “Ramona!”

  Hardwick’s scream is absorbed by pounding feet around my head. One set kicks me, is followed by a chorus of shrieks — whether from the dragons or the crowd running into their treacherous area of destruction, I can’t tell. A pair of hands grab my arms, losing grip on them; the second attempt is more successful, dragging me against the sea of fleeing people.

  “Close the doors!” someone yells.

  “It’s a dragon, isn’t it?”

  “Knox!” Hardwick says. He releases me. I slump to the floor; hair drapes my face, chest aching like I was hit by a freight train. Regaining focus, I sit up, observing a much different scene that the one I just escaped.

  The room is emptied of everyone but the Council, assembled atop a marble bench that resembles a half-moon. Tim stands shackled in a gated platform; its spiked gold-picket fence gleams in Muerkher’s natural glow. The suit he has always worn is replaced by

  a white crew neck shirt and pants like what I wore when speaking with the Avatar. Several Nephalim and Seraphina, the Maesters and a handful of Royal Guard are assembled around them.