The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)

by Olivie Blake

All men can love a forbidden thing, generally speaking, and in most cases knowledge is precisely that; lost knowledge even more so.

Many people incorrectly assume time to be a steady incline, a measured arc of growth and progress, but when history is written by the victors the narrative can often misrepresent that shape.

Beware the man who faces you unarmed. If in his eyes you are not the target, then you can be sure you are the weapon.

Really, there was nothing more dangerous than a woman who knew her own worth.

A uniquely upsetting curse, really, how little he knew how to exist when she wasn’t there; his only source of pleasure was knowing she probably felt the same whenever she could bring herself to stomach the admission.

The promise of your talents is nothing compared to whatever you ultimately prove to be.”

Always dangerous was the pairing of hunger with any skill of manipulation; it is an essential law of human behavior that when given the tools to do so, those born at the bottom will always try to claw their way to the top.

A self-perpetuating cycle, really, that knowledge begets knowledge just as power begets power—generationally, institutionally.

“Because the problem with knowledge, Miss Rhodes, is its inexhaustible craving. The more of it you have, the less you feel you know,” said Atlas. “Thus, men often go mad in search of it.”

The world was mostly entropy and chaos; magic, then, was order, because it was control.

Maybe after a lifetime of being useless, Tristan simply wanted to be used.

didn’t say we should devote ourselves to her body and soul,” Nico said. “I just think she’s, you know.” His smile broadened, vengeful in his delight. “Moderately epic.”

“Right, sorry.” Tristan’s jaw tightened with annoyance, and she grimaced. “Not sorry,” she amended, forcing a smile. “I only meant—” “You don’t have to be sorry for existing, you know,”

“Well,” Callum said, “a telepath is useful, of course, if your goal is to interfere with someone’s thoughts. But do you know how infrequently people actually think?”

“But with very rare exceptions, emotions are far stronger and harder to conceal. And, unlike thought, emotion can be easily manipulated. Thoughts, on the other hand, must be implanted or incepted or stolen, which means a telepath will always burn more energy than an empath when magic is being used.”

“Why are you angry?” “Because you seem to think for some stupid reason that you should be handling everything on your own—” “—when really you should be handling it on your own, is that it?” Touché. The bastard. “Gideon, for fuck’s sake, I’m rich and extremely handsome,” Nico growled. “Do you think I have my own problems? No, I do not, so let me have yours. Put me to use, I beg you.” Gideon rolled his eyes. “You are,” he said, and exhaled, “unbearable.”

“You know why you don’t understand me?” Parisa answered Reina’s thoughts, stepping closer to lower her voice. “Because you think you’ve figured me out. You think you’ve met me before, other versions of women like me, but you have no idea what I am. You think my looks are what make me? My ambitions? You can’t begin to know the sum of my parts, and you can stare all you like, but you won’t see a damn thing until I show you.”

Aren’t you tired? All this work, all this running, none of it you can ever escape; I can feel it in you, around you. You feel nothing anymore, do you? Only erosion, fatigue, depletion. Your exhaustion is all you are.

They will have to kill you to keep themselves alive.

Fear of what? Failure, probably. She was the sort of perfectionist who was so desperately frightened of being any degree of inadequate that, on occasion, the effort of trying at all was enough to paralyze her with doubt.

Most likely the moment she touched him she could already feel the direction his power had taken. They’d had a knack for it from the start, a way of becoming the other’s beginning and end.

Only the dead kept secrets.

“Magic comes only at a price, Parisa. You know that. Some subjects require sacrifice. Blood. Pain. The only way to create such magic is to destroy it.”

“Intelligent people respond more quickly to stimuli, therefore intelligent people experience time faster, and may be perceived to have more of it. Intelligence is, in some senses, also an illness—genius is frequently a side effect of mania. Perhaps some would have such an excess of time that they are experiencing it differently. Also, if time could be consumed differently, it could also be preserved. And if a person had an excess of time—” “They could travel throughout their own experience of time differently,”

“Ah. I regret being such a straightforward case.” “No one is ever straightforward.” He half smiled. “So we’re not simple, we’re just . . . all the same?” “A flaw of humanity,” said Parisa, shrugging as they walked. “The compulsion to be unique, which is at war with the desire to belong to a single identifiable sameness.”

“Libby, don’t,” he sighed. “You’re my girlfriend. You’re important to me. You, for better or worse, are my responsibility, and—” “Ezra, listen to me carefully, because this is the last time I’ll say it.” She took three steps to close the distance between them, slamming the book shut on the last argument she planned to have today. “I am not,” Libby said flatly, “yours.”

“You’re asking when I knew I was beautiful? I’ve always known.” “Well, surely that’s true in some sense,” Callum said, “but you’re not just ordinarily beautiful, are you? You’re the kind of beauty that drives men to warfare. To madness.”

Now Callum’s mistake was obvious: he had thought to prove himself strong, but nobody wanted strength. Not like his. Strength was for machines and monsters; the others could not relate to faultlessness or perfection. Humans wanted humanity, and that meant he would have to show evidence of weakness.

There was no stopping what one person could believe.

What was being human except to crave things unreasonably?

She understood, in a way the others did not, the existence of polarities, the mysticism of opposition: that acknowledging the presence of life meant accepting the presence of death. That knowledge necessitated ignorance. That gain meant loss. Ambition suggested contentment, in a sense, because starvation implied the existence of glut.

Beneath it all, they were equally ambitious—individually, they were all starved for something—but the polarities of the group were the ones whose incongruity couldn’t be rectified. The presence of Parisa implied the existence of Callum, and that was the tension the others were unable to stand. Unused to the necessity of opposition, they would find it necessary to choose.

“Maybe you can see others, Tristan, but I can see the parts of you that you won’t allow yourself to see. That’s my fucking curse, Tristan.”

“What else but death could give such life to the knowledge we protect?”

What is a life, compared to all of this? This Society is a poison,”

Nature craved balance that way: with destruction always came rebirth.

The truest truths: Mortal lifetimes were short, inconsequential. Convictions were death sentences. Money couldn’t buy happiness, but nothing could buy happiness, so at least money could buy everything else.

“My intentions are the same as anyone’s,” said Callum after a few moments. “Stand taller. Think smarter. Be better.”

“You’re a fire hazard, Rhodes,” he said. “So stop apologizing for the damage and just let the fucker burn.”

The day you are not a fire,” he said, “is the day the earth will fall still for me.”

Killing is wrong, it’s immoral, death is unnatural, even if it is the only plausible result of being born.

“Energy