Atlas

by Nicholas Gagnier

  Still skeptical.

  “If that’s true,” I ask, “does Ziz not know you’re here?”

  “He might. But Atlas is my home. I have had my grievances, not done as well by it as I should have, hmmm? It grew easy to assume it would always be there, like a child who bad mouths her mother. You expect that which birthed you can withstand your most childish challenges. Push, and see how far your minders will allow you to venture outside the rules. But you don’t love them any less for their weakness, hmmm? Their overreactions?

  “The point is, Ramona,” she says, “I have taken the greatest risk in coming to you. I did not come asking forgiveness, but awareness.”

  “Awareness of what?”

  Quorroc assumes control from the Priestess — Seraphina’s eyes drift back to the table, and in that moment, I sense her guilt is real.

  Joining Hannah went against everything she stood for.

  “If the opportunity to remove the woman presents itself, the High Priestess will act in the best interest of Atlas. It is understood that in the event she is caught, there will be nobody to save her. She will be on her own.”

  She has no wish to live with it. I can’t really fault her — Seraphina will find redemption with or without my blessing.

  “I accept,” I say, pushing back my chair. “May the Light protect you, Priestess.”

  Avalon’s portal opens in the brick facade. Before either Quorroc or Seraphina can say anything else, I step through it, rejoining Luca and the Magus on the other side.

  “Get all that?” I ask. Luca nods tepidly, eyeing Seraphina talking quietly with Quorroc on the portal’s other end. “She plans to martyr herself if it means killing Hannah.”

  “A bold plan, assuming the woman doesn’t catch on. What do you think?”

  Crossing my arms, I am uncomfortable sending the Priestess to certain death, much as she deserves it. The remorse in her face, both at the Arena and during my interrogations on multiple occasions, will never cease to haunt me.

  “I don’t know yet. Tell me about this plan you and Tim came up with.”

  And so, Luca does.

  ***

  “This is the plan.”

  Back in a room with Creation’s last defenders, the mood is less hopeful than before our attempt to destroy the Arena. The people are more tired, their wounds deeper. Few reasons remain to see hope in the situation. None of them were almost forced to carry the Devil’s spawn, or have knowledge of Seraphina’s plan, but they hurt nonetheless.

  The High Priestess slinked back to the Seat, taking her rightful place looking over the blond woman’s shoulder before too many questions were asked. I consider her gamble a contingency, and don’t inform the larger group of our bargain.

  Our forty are down to twenty-five, and we may be down to fifteen before this last-ditch attempt to halt Hannah’s death match goes off.

  “Tim and Luca will lead the assault on the Observatory where the Phoenix is held. If all goes according to plan, it will be lightly guarded. They’ll take three or four men with them. The rest will come with me to the Cathedral ruins.

  “The dragons are the biggest obstacle, followed by the angel Mykul. Lesser so are the Brotherhood, who form the main line of defense around Hannah. Quorroc will raise alarms in Devil’s Corner, filtering most of her forces that way.

  “If we’re lucky,” I finish, “we’ll clear the debris by the time Harper reaches the ruins. If there’s something there, her locket will point us to it. Once Harper and I go down, everybody will lose their tails and rendezvous in the Gardens. Do not come here. It is the first place Hannah will send her people once she realizes the deception. Does everybody understand?”

  Murmurs, concerned glances and unspoken panic around the room are stifled with encouraging nods from Tim and Luca.

  “Alright, then. Let’s fuck up this woman’s day, and bring the Phoenix home.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  They say the best laid plans are often the first to go awry.

  Since coming to Atlas, there has been no plan. I have lurched from one twisted scenario to another, compartmentalizing double-crosses, shifting allegiances, misdirections and personal betrayals. I played my deepest fears with a straight face, cutting through an unprecedented amount of hokum and bullshit to nab my suspect.

  I found her, but she was Pandora’s Box, and opening her tightly wound secrets destroyed Atlas. It cost the Council their lives, turned Hardwick against me; exposed Seraphina’s true colors and annihilated her league of self-serving angels.

  Our future now depends on this plan — again, not a real plan. A reaction to the reaction, an action merited by desperation and anger and exhaustion.

  Guerilla warfare.

  The Cathedral ruins are quiet. Quorroc has yet to raise the alarm in the west, drawing the woman’s forces away from the Observatory. Once that happens, Luca and Tim will eliminate resistance, and extract the Phoenix.

  It’s up to the rest of us to clear this mess in time. Avalon’s surviving students work together to create a larger portal than either of them could conjure on their own as Avalon uses some form of telekinesis to lift the larger pieces up. The Crimson League helps me shovel aside smaller pieces, working our way around an adjacent wreckage. With Demetrius gone, their leadership falls to a man named Errol. He is not as mouthy, and mostly responds in grunts.

  “Oy!” his companion Homan calls. “Ain’t we got somethin’ better to do than dig in a bunch o’rocks? What in the bloody Light are you looking for, anyway?”

  The handful of men in red robes are whittled down to seven from their original twenty. Errol does not dignify Homan’s jabs, nor those in agreement with him.

  “Pot of gold,” I tell him.

  “What’s that?”

  “Little leprechaun. Lives at the end of the rainbow? Quit complaining and start helping, Homan. That alarm is going to sound any second.”

  He glares at Errol.

  “Is this wench serious?”

  Homan’s de facto leader grunts and returns to hoisting debris aside. The other League members take a cue and return to work as well. My sore hands haven’t stopped clawing in the crater of oblong rocks and brick, not even for Homan’s bitching.

  A sharp wail sounds on the other side of Atlas, followed by a racket beyond the Cathedral district’s walls. The Behemoths circling the Seat split off into separate groups, flapping hollow currents down as they arc toward Devil’s Corner.

  “Light be with you, Tim,” I mutter.

  In a few minutes, Luca and the man who calls himself Death will storm the Observatory, assuming the Behemoths guarding it join their brothers and sisters in western Atlas. Otherwise unguarded, that will leave Reaper as their only source of resistance. The mutant Nephalim seemed more bemused than loyal to the woman—it wouldn’t surprise me if he simply throws bony hands in the air and lets it happen.

  I return to the task at hand, casting occasional glances at Homan and Errol. The former’s pace has slowed to a crawl, while Demetrius’ successor diligently pitches pieces of debris out of the pit. Avalon continues guiding the larger chunks through his students’ portal.

  Just as I think this is a fool’s errand, the Magus calls out.

  “Found it!”

  Grabbing the ledge of my adjacent crater, I clamber out, joining the Magi by their separate pit. Errol and his men follow — a moment later, we are admiring the trapdoor belonging to the Cathedral’s former basement.

  “Where’d you put all them big pieces, mate?” Homan asks. Avalon’s students close their joint portal, returning to his side.

  The teacher smirks.

  “Jammed the doors out of Devil’s Corner. The Brotherhood will take a minute escaping our diversion. You can’t hear it, but they’re probably still investigating the alarm.”

  Brilliant. Even the cynical Homan agrees with a chuckle.

  “Where do you think it leads?” I ask, eyeing the trapdoor.

  “Hard to say,” Avalon replie
s. “If it leads where I think it does, it is better to only send two or three down.”

  “And where do you think it leads?”

  The Magus shakes his head.

  “I’m getting ahead of myself. Best to wait until the Phoenix gets here, than put one’s foot in one’s mouth.”

  And so, we wait.

  ***

  Harper makes her appearance about ten minutes later. With only the dragons to contend with — the rest of Hannah’s forces exclaimed confusion a moment earlier as they realized they’d been tricked — the Behemoths canvass near the Seat. Their beady eyes scan every district.

  Our party hides behind the northernmost debris. I see my allies first, chased by a familiar shadow pitching up and over the Cathedral district’s wall. It arcs down, swimming along the crushed grass before perking up and materializing as the man who calls himself Death.

  As Harper and Luca trail behind him, ducking under the arch, another shadow appears over the walls, prompting me to yell at the League members to open the trapdoor.

  Homan has other plans.

  “What? That’s a bloody dragon, you hollow-headed wench! We’ll be exposed to it!”

  “If we don’t get the door open, we’re all dead! Now go!”

  Homan relents with a scowl. He and Errol descend in the pit, keeping low to avoid alerting the hovering dragon, fully focused on the trio bolting from the district wall toward our position.

  The stream of flame blowing down into the pit hits Errol and Homan, missing the newcomers. The cone burns long and hot, charring their screams to a crisp silence. Both men collapse as the dragon is winded.

  “We’ve got to get that door open!” Avalon yells over the thunder of rising smoke in my conscience.

  Tim dissipates to his cloud form once again. The smoke column crosses the district in a diagonal path, and wraps around the Behemoth’s back haunches, crossing under the animal’s stomach, arcing upward to tie off the wings. The dragon screams at its siphoned mobility, and physics do not allow it to remain airborne.

  “Ramona! The door!!”

  Harper and Luca join us behind the mess of collapsed wall. At Avalon’s reminder, I leap forward into the pit, landing in a roll toward Errol and Homan’s charred bodies.

  The dragon erractilly swerves through the air as Tim’s tendons tighten around it, grazing over Luca and Harper’s position, nearly flattening them. The animal crashes through the northern district wall — beyond which lies nothing, just endless blue trailing down to the cosmos below.

  The trapdoor gives under my pull, exposing a gently descending tunnel. I wave the Phoenix into the pit as Luca watches over the edge.

  “We’re going down. Take the rest and pull back to the Gardens. Do not go back to the Obelisk.”

  Luca nods.

  “I’ll see you soon, sister.”

  “Be careful, hear? I don’t want to hear you got killed by one of those stupid things. And tell Tim, no more risks.”

  Harper is already down the tunnel. It leads to something, something her locket wants us to see. I follow her down, over narrow stone steps leading into the heart of Darkness.

  Light willing, there will be something to help us defeat Ziz.

  Worst case, it’s a cruel trick.

  I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  All my life, I felt pointless — whether it stemmed from surviving an event I should have died, or life seemed to assign me no greater purpose, I had to make one. Nobody told me to go into law enforcement, or made me feel I was destined to join the FBI. Tim only knew because he first heard of me investigating his sister Grace’s abductors, years after her disappearance. He witnessed my betrayal at Stephen Hardwick’s hand and from there, manipulated time and space to move backwards through my chaotic youth, until finally intervening.

  Sometimes, I wonder what my life would have been without Death’s interference. Did I become the first prominent female FBI investigator on my own, or because of him?

  Where does my autonomy end and his begin?

  The dark tunnel Luca herded Harper and I into is pitch black once the doors close. The floor is a slope beneath our feet. Silver glints offer the occasional, faint dim glow, and we won’t make it far in this state.

  Thankfully, Harper’s locket ignites, pouring its strange cosmic Light between star-shaped seams. The effect is muted by the expanse of a stone tunnel that creaks and drops dirt from its ceilings every hundred yards or so. The Phoenix is mostly quiet as we traverse its span in single file.

  “Quite the impressive piece of jewelry, if you don’t mind my saying so.” My voice echoes down the tunnel, no matter how quietly I speak.

  Harper doesn’t turn her head for small talk.

  “It was my mother’s.” Her feet keep shuffling, leading the way as the tunnel takes on a steeper slope, beginning to wind downward— a staircase without stairs, too angled to keep our feet on any kind of balance.

  I suggest sliding. We take a seat, one behind the other. Harper pushes herself off, descent picking up speed quickly as she disappears around the winding bend.

  Spine against the ground and arms over my chest, my body plunges along the curving chute, around and around. Wind kicked up by my joined ankles is pushed to my face, pouring in both eardrums. The corridor spins, keeping me pressed along the side of the tube. Feeling I’m coming to the tunnel’s end, a nervous sensation overcomes my concern — I wouldn’t exactly call it a fear — of falling. That feeling grows as a black hole grows under my groundless footing.

  This tube is a fucking chute out of Atlas. It leads to nothing, a trap for invaders who dared send their men down. The chasm widens quicker than I can come up with a solution to avoid falling out the bottom.

  I don’t know what happened to Harper, but —

  Short of finding myself cast off into open space, a hand grabs my forearm. The rest of my body jolts, then bounces back, slamming against a stone wall. Harper’s slender fingers hold onto me with superhuman ease; the locket flares as she effortlessly pulls me onto her ledge.

  “Thanks,” I say. “Thought I was a goner for a second there.”

  “Yeah, well, they didn’t exactly advertise there’s a door down here.”

  Her statement points my attention to the alcove beyond the ledge with a stone door, blue unlike the tunnel housing it. It is jagged in places and several feet thick.

  “Any ideas?” I ask.

  Harper shakes her head.

  “None whatsoever. You?”

  I mimic the gesture.

  “Let’s see where this thing leads, shall we?”

  As my hand compresses against the door, it begins to tremble, shaking the corniced ledge over an infinite drop. The door shifts at a snail’s pace into the cavern it conceals. The air is humid and full of condensation, like a boiler room. Stalactites drip overhead as I take lead into the dark recesses, leaving the Phoenix to accompany at her own pace.

  Harper and I turn the corner, coming face-to-face with a glowing object through the time-laden columns above and below. Its surface is blinding and has no physical shape — only raging formlessness, swimming in a calmed state.

  The Avatar.

  After the invasion by Ziz in the First Age, the Council had the Avatar moved, Luca says in my memory.

  It never moved, but was here all along.

  Siskett told me it was an artificial intelligence.

  Laying eyes on its true form, threaded Light spills out onto the floor, casting the same arrangement of stars as Harper’s locket.

  The Avatar is so much more than that — without her, the world would be covered in eternal night. In creating her, the Council placed all its eggs in a single basket, so to speak.

  She is the key to controlling Atlas.

  The center flares as we approach it, spreading its glow further down the cave. There is no mouth I can see, but its voice is identical to every time I’ve heard it —female, robotic and cold.

  “
Greetings, Nephalim. I have been waiting for you.”

  The booming voice that greeted me on entry to Atlas and spoke during the ball is unburdened by the events occuring a mile up. It has not been located by Hannah, but that could easily change.

  “You have?”

  “Yes,” the Avatar replies. “You are the last remaining guardian of the Light, Ramona Knox. This meeting has been sorely delayed, due to unforeseen circumstances that have led to the Council’s demise.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “This means I am to instill you with guardianship of the Seed of Light, which will grant you a greater chance of saving Atlas.”

  “How?” Harper asks, nowhere as infatuated with the hovering light as I am. Her locket dims in the Avatar’s presence like a dog heeling to its master.

  “The Seed is the central processing unit of the Light— to reduce it to technological terms, its wielder controls distribution of Light. Historically, I was built to house it after the Council learned it was too much for any single individual to hold. Ziz seeks to drain the Seed’s essence, but to do so would come with catastrophic consequences to all living things.

  “By possessing what the Dark Lord covets, you will hold the power to drive his forces back. This is your only chance of restoring Atlas to its rightful state.”

  “And the dragons?” I ask. “How do we get rid of them?”

  “After Zizikk was sealed, the Council banished its Behemoths to a wasteland world called Ezzark. They bowed to the Seed then, and will do so again — it is their weakness. As with all things that require the Light to survive, too much of it can be fatal to their kind.”

  This all-knowing device holds all the universe’s answers — from the meaning of human life to defeating Ziz and his mistress. It possesses the only weapon I need against the Devil, and speaks with none of the condescension from our first meeting in a metal box.

  Harper also understands the Avatar’s significance, and also has questions, albeit from a far different place than my childish wonder.