Atlas

by Nicholas Gagnier

  “Or,” the Habinar corrects, “as a reminder of the mistakes we made in naïveté.”

  “Naïveté?” Hannah repeats. “You have settled into your history so comfortably, it must be difficult for you to see past lies.”

  “What lies do you speak of, woman?” Muerkher snipes. “Level your accusations in a timely manner or hold your tongue! I am tired of these games.”

  Hannah’s smile grows wider.

  “Very well— a rendering of truth is in order, for you have all forgotten what it is. And once that truth is laid out, this Council will see it has lost the moral authority to govern Atlas— that in valuing order and complacency over compassion and true leadership, you have invited open season.”

  As the Council members whisper to each other, Hannah recounts her tale. She begins with Creation, and the Sphere of Light— what I assume is her name for the Big Bang Theory— creating the Seed, a precursor to the Avatar. She speaks calmly and methodically regarding the creation of five gods, three of who remain lucid and in working order. She speaks of Zizikk, whose compassion was unparalleled among his four peers. For every audience, Zizikk tempered the other four, who were prone to malicious power trips. He offered those who kissed the Council’s feet with reasonable solutions and pragmatic offers, angering the others. Zizikk was the best of them— establishing the Nephalim in their infancy as an order of true-hearted warriors. He was committed to the defence of not only Atlas, but its most vulnerable.

  The Council was angry with Zizikk, the blond woman claims. His efforts made them appear greedy. After all, they coveted control over all Light in the universe, sacrificing innocents to harvest its power. Zizikk warned them against this. The other members ignored him, because he was a weak boy whose place among gods was circumspect at best.

  “Eventually,” Hannah remarks, “you had driven those beneath you so far, they became monsters. Zizikk saw this, and finally understood— the real monsters were the ones exploiting them, and knew you would never see reason. And why not? You had the Behemoths to instill terror in the hearts of those who loved you— who saw you as saviors, rather than tyrants.

  “But Zizikk— the Boy God, so brilliant he had bonded with dragons as more than slaves— knew there was no place for him among you—“

  “And rather than mediate,” Venicia says, “he absorbed Aumothera’s wastes and sought to unseat us instead.”

  The remark is clearly meant to rile up the intruder, but Hannah remains calm.

  “The irony of Ziz is that he is far better at acknowledging his shortcomings. In retrospect, he considers that move as emotionally charged and unwise. Time has a way of revealing these things to us, don’t they?”

  “You are speaking of ancient history,” the Habinar says. “Our confrontation with Zizikk is old news. This Council was humbled by that uprising, as we were by the Nephalim—”

  “Perhaps your greatest crime of all,” Hannah says. She smiles at the High Priestess, who has remained silent alongside her grimacing band of surviving angels.

  “Explain,” Muerkher says.

  “You know as well as I do that Tomas was no traitor to Atlas. Like Zizikk, he loved this city. He cared more about the people who lived in it than his own personal quest for power. It was Gabriel who felt threatened by his brother’s compassion. Had you sent Tomas to handle the situation on Earth, it would not be a wasteland! That was all Gabriel’s doing— just like the Nephalim uprising.”

  “You are submitting a lot of statements without evidence, woman,” Muerkher says. “There are few left alive from the First Age— all those who could corroborate your facts have long passed to the White Light.”

  “I think what my associate is trying to say is,” Venicia offers, “you have taken an awfully great risk in confronting us in such a manner, based on hearsay! If you can present an argument based on more than anecdotal evidence, you will save yourself and your co-conspirators a great deal of pain.”

  I was once a monster in the eyes of the world— maybe God himself, if anything I have seen or heard can still attest to a singular, all-powerful being at the center of everything. But in all my post-mortem travels, gods are prettier than men and it is my job to protect them from people like Hannah.

  Held back by Hardwick from tearing the woman apart myself, I have failed. But it is not until I look at Tim, a certain conversation returns to me from long ago.

  I had a wife once.

  As that dialogue floods into every part of my brain— infecting sight, sound and memory — my gaze shoots to the pontificating woman who wields dragons in the palm of her hand and destroyed a chunk of Atlas without batting a fucking eyelash, and the words are supreme.

  I had a wife once— she was the love of my life.

  How did I miss it?

  She used to tell me the universe is built on unfairness. In fact, they were her last words on this Earth.

  Tim has the look of a man who has been shown up by nobody less than his life partner— a person I had assumed was long dead. Due to her longevity in Atlas, her knowledge of its darkest workings and sudden reappearance, it’s safe to assume the man who calls himself Death did as well.

  She died. Childbirth. It’s a long story.

  The revelation has not occurred to the Council — all their focus is on her, and Tim’s warnings might not be heeded, even if he could muster the courage to speak.

  My point is, I used to think I was nothing without her, he says, somewhere in the distant past. And when she died, existence became a whole lot messier. But eventually, there came a day when I was forced to be everything without her. I had to become something new.

  Finally, in a crescendo of all-out war on my limited set of emotions, I am reduced in equal measure. A ball in my stomach twists and revolts against the organ’s lining, and I am five years old, hiding under that table with the suited man.

  Would you like to be friends, Ro?

  The grownups are playing around us, and I wonder why I ever bothered playing at all.

  Hannah is unfazed by the threat of eternal punishment. The Habinar, however, is at his wits’ end. He stands, hand fully enamored around his ax. Though not as tall as his projection in the Seat, he is nearly ten feet tall; his weapon drags on the floor, rounding the bench, lurching toward the blond woman who is an insect in comparison. Tim’s wife shows no fear at the Viking storming towards her, lifting the ax high by its handle.

  “I will warn you, Your Eminence —”

  The cleaver rotates through the air in a perfect hundred-degree angle, closing the distance to Hannah with a single thrust over his head. Time slows as the ax reaches its midpoint through empty space, beginning its final descent. As the bellowing scream from the god’s mouth is let loose, Hannah’s expression is satisfaction.

  The blade strikes her silhouette. A blinding light dispels outlines of every soul inside the Observatory. The flash is everlasting and my eyes ache from the brightness— a supernova within the court. And when it fades, and the room filters back into my mortal judgement, everything has changed.

  The Council is gone. The first sign is a loud bang that rings throughout the Observatory as the Habinar’s ax clatters on marble flooring with a hollow wince before settling for good. Muerkher’s light is excruciatingly absent from my general awareness, having grown used to the man’s natural glow. There is no sign of Apollo, other than some white hairs that blow off the bench where he sat.

  And Venicia, whose only remaining presence is a convulsing snake on the bench’s surface. It topples off the glossed surface in its struggle to breathe, landing at the foot of Tim’s box. The man who calls himself Death looks down at it with sadness as it falls still and dissolves to ash, as if he was the cause of all this destruction.

  All the Maesters to the bench’s left are gone, save a despondent Barrett. On its right, Seraphina sinks to the knees of her golden dress, alternating between sobbing and screaming—her entire band of Nephalim was wiped off the face of Atlas, scattering to the breeze l
ike Venicia’s last serpent.

  Hardwick has no words to console my murderous stare toward Tim’s wife, the hyperventilating tide of despair washing over me, or the returned screams of victorious Behemoths beyond the Observatory.

  “Well, then,” Hannah smiles, turning on the bench where she wiped the governors of Creation away in one fell swoop. “I believe we have a trial to get underway.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The world is dead, and I have to be alive to witness its end.

  Hannah steps over the Habinar’s abandoned weapon, approaching the half moon bench. The blond woman disregards both Barrett and Seraphina on either side of her, trying like all Hell to stifle their losses, and rounds the pedestal to where Venicia and the others were wiped from existence.

  Tim’s eyes never leave her.

  “Now that we have dispensed with unpleasantness,” she says, and takes Venicia’s seat, “I say the real trial should begin.”

  “And who are you to judge?” the High Priestess spits from the sidelines. “Everything we stood for, you have thrown into chaos! Disorder! Ever think of that, witch?”

  Hannah smiles— that wicked, upturned grin that unravels my deepest, dark reaches; the smile of a winner, like my childhood friend Alison Delahunt used to flash when she won over me in some stupid, juvenile game. But Hannah is no young daughter of a blue-collar mechanic and there is more than her twisted grin if we lose.

  “I find it quite convenient, Priestess,” Hannah replies, omitting half the title due. “To my knowledge, you have spent two thousand years scheming— plotting revenge, biding your time to humiliate gods whose own schemes were beneath you. Unworthy of, say, basic respect?”

  Seraphina’s face lights up, yanking it from the shadows it had settled, anticipating despair and rebuke.

  “Not to mention the Maesters— isn’t that right, old fellow?” Hannah asks, looking at Barrett. The Maester’s face does not change. The last of his Order keeps a tongue behind firmly closed lips, but Hannah doesn’t linger— her eyes canvass the room, ignoring her former husband. With the Council dead, that only leaves Hardwick and I.

  “Stephen Hardwick,” she says. “Step forward.”

  My gaze shoots to Hardwick, praying his lips don’t find the upwards curve Seraphina’s did at the blond woman’s promises of power. His thin frame is a good fifty pounds lighter from his adventures in Stone Mountain, making him a shadow of his former self.

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  “I recall,” she cooes. “Do you remember our deal?”

  Deal?

  “I do,” Hardwick says.

  “And? Do we still have one?”

  What is she talking about?

  A woman came to see me.

  Hardwick glances back at me, shaking his head. His beard bristles in dead air— quite possibly riled by my storm of emotions— and I recognize a different look than the one he showed in me in Washington, learning of his depraved deeds.

  Remorse.

  “We do,” he says, looking back at Hannah. “Long as you hold up your end. Reincarnation, as we discussed.”

  “Very good,” Hannah says, and dismisses him. Two of the five survivors are in the blond woman’s court— both are my fault. I pushed Seraphina too far; put too much stock in Hardwick’s redemption. He joins the High Priestess— leaving Tim, Barrett and I as her sole challengers.

  A familiar rage boils the surface of my throat. Hannah’s eyes drift to me, but she doesn’t call my name before diverging to the prisoner in a gated box with force-fielded walls; they hum like laughter, mocking my oldest friend’s predicament.

  “I suppose that brings us to the reason we are gathered here today. We will dispense with...whatever that was, that the Council called a trial,” Hannah says, leaning over the bench. “But first, some ground rules— not to bestow undue unfairness, as our mutual friend here is so fond of using to shield himself. Let’s discuss that, shall we? Then, I will call our first witness.”

  I don’t know what right this woman has assumed. She is neither a god nor celestial. And still, someone has granted her this...power, as she called it...were it defined by wiping out beings triple in size.

  “Fairness,” Hannah says, “is a made-up word— created by those who disagree with the way things are; some form of delusional justice unto those who have the final say.

  “Justice was done when the Seed of Light chose five beings to govern the supreme realm. It is done again in evolution— the strong weeds out the weak, establishing a new order for Creation. To rail against this cosmic justice is not a matter of unfairness. It is the song of whining gnats who have never taken the time to outwit their oppressors — to win over them.

  “I’d like to sit here all day and talk about fairness, but time is short, and the Dark Lord’s is far more valuable than ours. That said, I call the first witness— Stephen Hardwick.”

  Hannah’s revelation— that my former partner betrayed me (again), and would rather stand with the Devil than make amends— roils every look in his direction, burning with the hatred I have long pushed down. Hardwick stands with his back to Hannah, inadvertently facing the accused, and me.

  “State your name for the record,” Hannah says from behind him— despite having no stenographer or intention of recording these proceedings.

  “Stephen Henry Hardwick.”

  “And would you tell us about your history with this man?”

  “Yes. He is the Devil,” Hardwick grimaces.

  “Please tell us more,” Hannah smiles.

  And so, Stephen Henry Hardwick does.

  ***

  Hardwick’s testimony lasts nearly an hour. Each minute is an eternity. Words drip off his tongue like venom, poisoning everything good within me and increasing my resolve to murder him when this is all over.

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  He begins by speaking about his life— growing up in Maryland, where his father was a reverend in the United Church. His mother was a former prostitute and his father Russell converted her to Christianity.

  (“The religion of charlatans,” Hannah says at one point.)

  But his mother eventually died, and Young Stephen— as I imagine the little boy with peach-fuzz on his face, skinny shoulders and a head full of idealism— wanted to escape the shadow cast over him since childhood. God was always watching in the Hardwick household, and Young Stephen was only interested in getting far away from Him.

  Young Stephen joined the army— both angering Russell, and greatly saddening him. But Young Stephen was meant for more than being the doting son of a church minister, and soon enrolled in the FBI training program at Quantico. He had a natural affinity for the work, and could hit a shooting target like nobody’s business. Over time, he became one of the Bureau’s most valuable assets.

  Russell passed, and his only son forgot to pay his respects. The big guy was upstairs now. His father was never a sentimental man, merely a compassionate one, but Hardwick had despised him for it.

  Young Stephen became Old Stephen, the man predisposed to yanking the rug out from beneath my feet every time. He conceived his grand plans, all gone swimmingly until a young female agent came along, dragging her indispensable morality into matters she was beneath— not even realizing until he had her cornered at gunpoint.

  Arriving at our confrontation inside Tim’s afterlife tunnel, Hannah smiles; she knows about all of it. Hardwick’s testimony is simply the confirmation she craves.

  “And that’s when he sent you to the Arbiters, correct?”

  “Correct,” Hardwick says. “I was taken to Stone Mountain, and left to rot! Twenty years, I withstood those fucks, counting the days until I was let out.”

  “Something that might not have happened without certain information in your possession, correct?”

  Hardwick nods, eyes on Tim.

  “Correct. I would likely still be there now.”

  Hannah thanks him, having wrangled all the biased testimony from Hardwic
k she will, and says her agents will meet him outside the Observatory.

  “Don’t have to worry about the dragons, do I?”

  “Not at all,” the woman promises.

  Hardwick bows his head, looking back at her with gratitude. I can’t look at him as he exits the self-opening doors. Instead, my nascent rage returns the blond woman calling her next witness. Seraphina beams as she assumes the spot Hardwick stood, but I’m beyond participating in this charade any longer.

  I’ve heard enough.

  ***

  The High Priestess’ account lasts almost three hours, detailing every transgression against her immeasurable pride over three ages of Atlas. She recounts the Council’s arrogance, the Nephalim uprising and her struggle to achieve recognition. Seraphina speaks of loyalty— the word occupies every tenth spot in her long-winded complaints— and candor; of responsibility and unity, stating the Council held palaver with none but themselves.

  Tim is also less interested in the Priestess than he was in Hardwick. Seraphina’s shrill voice echoes with festering resentment that pleases the blond woman— and when she is done, Seraphina is also dismissed.

  The High Priestess refuses.

  “I would prefer to stay, Your Eminence,” the Priestess pleads.

  “Very well,” Hannah says. “It is time to deliver the verdict then. Miss Knox, if you would join your accomplice before me— this will not take long at all.”

  I am frozen, disgust reaching deep as Seraphina’s toward the Grand Council. Luca is dead. Hardwick has turned on me, again. The Council is gone, Atlas is in ruins, and there is no Earth for any of us to return to, if Siskett was telling the truth prior to his passing.

  “Miss Knox? Don’t make me ask twice.”

  Insofar I have stood, like a lone idol against the tides of darkness, listening to the Devil’s many mouths. Weak knees take their vulnerable first steps from near the doors, slowly joining Tim’s side.

  “You obviously have questions. Rest assured, they will be answered in time. The Dark Lord is merciful for those who are willing to help themselves—“