“Did you now?” He raises an eyebrow. “And, uh, how’d you do that?”
Atlas glares at him.
“No one has seen your kind on Earth in a,” the man talks in a falsetto, “weewy, weewy long time. The question we should be asking is: apart from Sideran, what are you?”
“I am someone seeking refuge.”
“Uh,” he squints, “huh.”
“You don’t believe me.”
The man looks at the ceiling. “We’ve got a smart one here. Yessiree.”
“Why would I deceive you?” Atlas asks.
“A reason other than because we’re at impending war with Siderans and you’ve got me pinned against the wall like all good friends do?”
“Slow your words.” Atlas clenches his jaw. “Who is ‘we’?”
“The elaborate answer? Eden’s always monologuing about how we’re refiners that seek out well-dressed tyrants and schedule their early cremations. We do as we please and what we do pleases us, blah, blah, blah.” He snorts. “The real answer? We’re Accenda—I’m an Accend. Plural: Ah-chend-AH, singular: Ah-chend, which is the Medieval Latin pronunciation or something that some idiot probably came up with when he was drunk. It’s very complicated, I know, but I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Then, Ah-chend—”
“Bless you.”
“—know that I have no part in this ‘impending war.’ I’ve had no knowledge of any such thing or any Accenda in lives previous or present. In fact,” Atlas straightens, “proceed as you wish. I’d be far from bothered by the Imperium’s incineration.”
“You would just sit there while your dimension falls from the sky?”
“Yes.”
“What about your little friends? The cutie-pie slaves? You may have a peanut’s education but I know all about the regime up there, about the Imperium, about your powers—thanks for the new bruises, by the way. Women think they’re sexy.” The Accend nods at Atlas. “If you’re hanging out with the right women.”
“What other information do you have?”
“Don’t underestimate the power of a nice car. Female-types love—”
“Good Imperium.” Atlas grasps the Accend’s shoulders and slams them against the wall. “Tell me of your Sideran knowledge.”
He grunts and swallows. “I know about your work habits, your Vulcan lingo, your,” he glances at Atlas’s shirt, “fashion choices. I like the new look. The traditional white was a bit bold—couldn’t help but notice you stumbling around Pittsburgh like a disabled cow from a mile away.”
“You were watching me.”
The Accend grins. “I’m betting my life I know fifteen Harvard libraries’ worth compared to you.”
Atlas stares him in the eye, at the slightest glint.
Lifting his chin, the Accend says, “I think you and I could work out a little deal, escaped Sideran. You let me go, I explain everything to you—the war, my home dimension, powers, taste in music, everything—and you tell me how you got to this world.”
“Why do you concern yourself?”
“Funny thing is, Sidera’s inescapable. You just threw that centuries-long fact out the window. The ‘impending’ drops from ‘war’ when Sidera’s inescapability becomes less so because the only force,” he angles toward Atlas, “keeping us back is the barrier between Earth and your golden sky land.”
Atlas tenses his fingers around the Accend’s shoulders. “If I tell you, you must promise not to harm Gene—not to travel within twenty kilometers of this region ever again.”
“Oh, the girl? Psh, yeah, whatever.”
“Swear it.”
He rolls his eyes and says in his high-pitched tone, “I promise. Let me go.”
Releasing his hold on the Accend, Atlas steps back but keeps his palms outstretched and his power pulsing inside them. The Accend aligns his jacket and shoves his hands into its pockets. Atlas takes such as permission to look left, to the shadow mulling in his periphery.
Gene stands a meter from the hallway, her arms wrapped around herself, her legs shaking, skin white. She stares. She almost blinks. But doesn’t.
Atlas forgot she was there.
She mouths, “What . . .”
The Accend follows Atlas’s gaze to Gene. “Privacy, woman. Learn it.”
“My,” Gene uncurls her forefinger pointing to the ceiling, “house.”
He makes a face that Atlas interprets as both “No, it’s not,” and “Do I look like I care?” Or possibly “You should be more grateful for my presence and, since you’re not, I’m going to take my styled hair and ambiguous expression elsewhere.” Stepping one foot over the other, the Accend spins ninety degrees and walks out the front door. Atlas trails after. He glimpses Gene’s wide eyes and then exits, shutting the door behind him.
Its thud echoes through his skull. He can never come back.
The Accend and Atlas descend the apartment stairs, cross the parking lot, and come to a stop under cover of the bordering forest. Beams yellowed and span straining, one small streetlamp flitters through nearby branches. They stand in shadow.
Right hand in his pocket, the Accend holds out his left. Atlas flinches. He recoils a couple centimeters.
The Accend sighs and lets his hand drop. “I’m Samuel Covey. Your name’s what?”
Atlas continues to glare at his fallen hand. “Is this part of the agreement?”
“It’s more of a courtesy. A courtesy that’s key to our arrangement, yes.”
“My name is Atlas.”
Samuel’s eyelids droop. “Like the mythological Greek Titan who held the world on his shoulders or a book of maps?”
Atlas presses his lips together and stiffens posture.
“Book of maps,” Samuel says. “You have a last name?”
“I have a constellation. I lived within its walls. Imperium categorizes citizens by constellation.”
Samuel scowls at the ground. “Lovely. Star people. I must’ve hacked that detail to granules in my subconscious.” He looks up. “And what would you call that?”
“Taurus.”
“Wait. You’re Atlas,” he grimaces, “of Taurus? That sounds so stupid.” Samuel folds his arms and juts out his bottom lip, exhaling an upward drift into his bangs. “Look, I’m itchin’ to sit and chat with you—”
“But?” Atlas asks.
“There are eyes.” Without budging, he watches the trees behind Atlas. “Don’t turn around.”
Too small for the air inside them, Atlas’s lungs constrict and swell three times in Samuel’s one breath. His ears scold the hiss between his teeth, and his neck burns, not from the blisters still lingering but from the hot mark of inhuman vision on his skin. Swaying over asphalt, branches’ shadows whisper and waltz with streetlight too hypnotizing to release his stare. A large shadow jumps across the twigs. Atlas’s lungs freeze.
Movements smooth and casual, Samuel slips a hand into his cropped trench coat and pulls out a metal device. He aims over Atlas. The hollow cylinder protruding from a wider cylinder, girded by uniform indents, hovers a half-meter above Atlas’s shoulder. Samuel squeezes the device’s curved handle, and it explodes. The blast shatters Atlas’s eardrums. Clutching the sides of his head, he buckles and staggers to his crashing pulse and liberated breath. He fights to keep his eyes on Samuel’s metal instrument. His brows tense when he finds it intact and Samuel tucking it back into his jacket, smirking.
“Got it,” Samuel says.
Atlas spins around, scouring the trees, parking lot, shadows. His ears ring. He yells, “Got what?”
“Shh.” Samuel holds up his forefinger. “People are trying to sleep.”
“What was—what did—”
“I shot a raven that was getting into,” he stops, pivots, and shouts in the general direction of the woods, “OTHER PEOPLE’S BUSINESS.”
Atlas scoffs.
“I don’t like eavesdroppers,” Samuel lowers tone, “even if they share a bed with you.” Yanking his jacket collar up his neck, he headshakes of
f his voice’s suppression. “Everyone’s all in your business these days. Think MKUltra’s done? Naw, it just escalated into something uglier for the next few generations.”
Atlas glances around. “Raven? Do you mean the bird?”
“No, the poem.”
He glares.
“Yes. It was a moron bird that’s been following us for some time now.” Samuel sinks down and meets Atlas’s eye level. His facial expressions soar to the extreme and his voice parallels them. “The pretty people in my dimension don’t have fairies to fly around and watch for losted baby teeths so they can put credit card applications under Suzie’s pillow. They have to use little black birdies to sneak up and gather secret information and cutesy blackmail for all the girls and boys.”
“Your attempt to make me understand easier was,” Atlas squints at him, “ineffective.”
Samuel gestures to the woods. “This is pointless. I’ll just have to show you.”
Atlas rolls one step toward the trees, one step ahead of Samuel, and something dense smacks him in the back of the head. For a second, his crinkled eyelids project dozens of colors blotched into networks of creeping lime mycelium. Then there’s black.
* * *
Blurred and swirling, sight can’t define its images and pain doesn’t hit for minutes. It emerges in segments: first, Atlas’s back slumped at an angle; second, his legs scraping receding dirt; third, his throbbing head; and last, his wrists, trussed together, bound with thick rope. Its knots claw at his skin with a jagged friction hotter than the pebbles working their way into his shoes. Atlas fears his hands will yank clean off if his skidding across rocky terrain and through branches low enough to scratch his face continues.
He stretches his neck, winces, and peeks through the gap between his head and extended arm. His back to Atlas, a flash of his face breaking the perfect black of his jacket and hair and background, Samuel holds the rope’s other end. He hoists it up on his shoulder. He trudges forward, dragging Atlas along behind.
“Don’t you love kidnappings in the woods?” Samuel inhales, then says, “A breath of musty air.”
“You,” Atlas clears his throat, “are a traitor.”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’d be wise to watch your steps, Samuel Covey.” He pulls against the rope. “Trip on one twig, enjoy one rest, stop for one moment and I will break free and force your fire onto its master.”
Samuel smiles. “Someone doesn’t like restraint.”
“Why?” Atlas breathes out. “Why me? Was I born with a mark of persecution upon my head?”
“And I’d rather be in some stranger’s home, absorbing fifteen sessions of Apocalypse Now and stealing hard drives. We all have our complaints.”
Watching the faint white of his shoes bob up and down, dirt smear his jeans, Atlas releases all support of his own weight. He goes limp. Samuel groans and tenses his grip on the rope, plunging his heels into ground. The corner of Atlas’s mouth turns up. He lifts his chin and peers past the drifting black canopy, to navy sky. It’s dawn and his eyes ache to close, forget the throbbing, and roll back into dreamless sleep.
Samuel sighs and readjusts his hands and their seeds of new blisters. “I can’t have you running around willy-nilly in Elisium, okay? If you have an ounce of decency, you’d cooperate.”
“Assist you in my capture?”
“Who knows what they’d do to me if I brought you in not bleeding?” Samuel yanks him forward. “Suck it up and go with it. You’re making me weep uncontrollably and I don’t want my mascara to run.”
Atlas hangs his head and listens to leaves rustling beneath his body. “Why didn’t you merely use your pocket weapon on me at Gene’s resthouse and end it?”
“You mean my gun—my revolver?” Samuel takes one hand off the rope and tugs on his jacket lapel.
Atlas waits.
“Becaaause,” Samuel says, “I need you. We’ve been through this.”
“And I would express all you wish, as agreed. I don’t care to withhold a detail about any subject thinkable so why must you—”
The rope goes slack and Atlas hits the ground with a thud and grunt.
Samuel lets the rope snake onto mulchy turf until its fringe catches in a loose hand. Batting a bush out of the way, he steps toward a tree thicker than its surrounding relatives. “Here you are.”
His elbows and wrists as leverage, Atlas pushes himself onto his knees. “Who is?”
“Silly goose.” Samuel shakes a finger at him and then slides his hand into his jacket. The lethal handheld machine isn’t what he pulls out; instead, he wraps his fingers around a long knife, intricate carvings in its handle, curved blade and paper-thin edge. “We’re here.”
Focusing his triple vision, Atlas gets on his feet and glances around. Blackness and branches. Nothing else but a light breeze that raises his arm hair.
Samuel points his knife at the large tree, five or six deep, sapless grooves—aged scars—embedded into its bark. “Usually, I open a door straight in the dirt but, since everything’s a part of the earth or something the Lion King said once, a tree’s as good as any. Seems a few of my folk agree.”
Atlas narrows his eyes. “A door—a door is where?”
“Oh, that’s right.” Samuel taps his head with the tip of his blade. “I forgot: you’re a walking brick. You can’t feel the heat in the earth, just like the humans.”
Atlas lifts a foot off the ground and looks under it.
Gripping the tree’s side, knees bent, Samuel jerks his bangs out of his eyes and swings the knife above his shoulder. Atlas recoils. The blade reflects moon rays and then flies forward. Samuel thrusts it into the center of the trunk, carving the freshest of slits.
“My dimension’s a hop away.” He sucks a breath and saws downward. “It’s a part of Earth, really. It’s just hidden where Jane and John Doe can’t find it. Ready to come home and meet the family, Atlas—Atley—Ashley—” Samuel yanks the knife from the tree, pockets it, and scratches his temple. He pulls on the rope. “Attie?”
Face contorting, Atlas staggers toward Samuel.
“Sidera’s your hell, yeah?” Samuel grins. “This lively one’s mine.”
A violet flicker shoots across Atlas’s peripheral vision. He fastens his eyes to the tree. At the bark’s new gash, it again flashes: a vivid, thumb-wide burst of tinted flame unanchored to any fuel source. And again. The latter of glimmers doesn’t fade and its glowing lavender pours from morning blackness, from nothing, into a warmer-tinted red. Blood red. Blood painted on a thousand panes of glass stacked a magnifying dome under the hottest sun at Earth’s highest point. The light cups its crest overhead and curves its flanks around shoulders and highlights across clothing ripples, grimacing lips, tensed fingers. It sears into Atlas’s closed eyelids, consumes his equilibrium and swallows his body.
He steps back. Samuel grabs Atlas’s shirt collar and throws him forward, into the radiance, the emanating heat. The light burns. It draws in Atlas, sucks him toward Samuel, the trunk, the fire until the ground beneath his feet disintegrates and his grasp on reality wavers.
Samuel’s smile widens. “Hold on to your guts.”
V
Blood Is Important
Three, four, five—
Fourteen seconds in the light of the portal and a chill zips up Atlas’s spine. Fire fades first, warmth next. He feels the ground under his feet again. Different ground. The red glare leaves last and he opens his eyes to where he imagines his shoes would be. But overexposure riddles his vision with black splotches, his ears thrumming his pulse, and every sense sputters to adjust in the dark his eyes make darker.
Atlas coughs. A thick substance swims through the air, into his lungs. He shortens his breaths.
The rope around his wrists tugs him forward and he stumbles after it. Three dozen steps later, murmurs from his right, left, far and nearer, female and male, touch his hearing. He shrinks into his blindness, pressing feet to terrain padded but dense, until he sm
ells char and tastes soot and sight flutters to glimpse blurred periphery.
“What you got there, Covey?”
“Bold—bringing a full cup like that. Try to compete with eastside traffickers and you’re gonna get slaughtered.”
“I want it!”
“Not your usual. On one of those crave fads or have you changed orientation?”
The voices brush his ears and, raising the hair on his neck, hush as he staggers closer. The breath down his back magnifies each voice until they drill as frigid peals through his hearing’s haze.
“It’s got this chemical smell. There’s something wrong with this one. I wouldn’t touch it.”
“I would. Covey, can I? I’ll pay you back, promise,” a female yells from a distance. “It’s been days.”
His wrists falling limp, Atlas stops walking. A hand grips the back of his shirt and yanks him up by it. Samuel’s voice follows.
“He is not,” Samuel shakes Atlas, “for sale, negotiation, gifting, stealing, extortion, or prostitution because Dr. Phil told me it’s wrong once.”
Several sighs drift on the polluted air. Atlas puts body to voice. The black spots clear, sight focuses, and his ears rise above a sea of cotton. He squints.
Shadows of figures squint back through a wall of smog. Their stares deflect his and, the moment his gaze leaps horizon, the prick of onlookers dissolves in the feathery vapors down his collar. His lips part. Eyes drift through the fog tipping his tongue. He wheezes and blinks and stares the more—
Atlas stands in overgrown grasses, at the edge of an immense clearing lined with worn buildings: buildings from a different world or, rather, a different earthly time era, one candlelit and rugged, one crafted in whittled ebony and walnut and detailed with wrought iron curling along A-frames and up belfries and spires too many to count, too sharp to bolster sky’s deep swag. Three and four-story miniature castles overlook gnarled yards and ornamental, floral fence pickets capped with flourishing spearheads. It’s nothing like Pittsburgh’s symmetrical, towering blocks of light and nothing like Sidera’s golden land and enclosed laborspaces. Atlas peers through murk at the organic, earthy, and ancient, all refined toward lackluster elegance. The tallest and farthest manor scrapes branches, evergreen needles hastening the peel of its shingles.
Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn Page 5