Atlas’s experiment was not inherently evil. Yes, the ethics of such a thing were questionable, but what about existence was not? Libby understood this now, that to be alive and to have this kind of power in her blood was to be indeterminately responsible for making or unmaking worlds, whatever she chose to do. Whether she acted or failed to act, it would invariably cause a rift. What was right, what was wrong, who was good and who was bad? These were unanswerable questions about ineffable concepts. What Ezra Fowler had seen or what he knew was less important than how he had acted, and whether she ultimately believed him. She didn’t.
And even if she had once, the materials were already at her disposal.
She had the tools to circumvent the threat, and so she did. She already had.
What happened between Libby Rhodes and Atlas Blakely in his office wasn’t personal. It wasn’t even—as Ezra’s death had been—a personal matter, a coin-flip of vengeance or self-defense. This was a simple question, simpler at least, than the one the Society had asked of her. It was straightforward, can you save the world? And her answer had been yes. Yes, I can.
Six months ago now. Six months ago, precisely. She had struck Ezra down with the force of her rage, using his chest for a target. A wild, uncontrolled blast to the heart he’d once promised was hers before she fully understood she’d taken aim.
I can kill her, Ezra had said with the same lips that had kissed her. In the end, it left her more like a sob than a strike.
She had not yet recovered full sensation in her hands when Atlas began talking—incessantly talking, on and on without stopping, eternally and without end. She remembered most of it like a dream she’d once had, absent chronology or meaning. None of it seemed important or even relevant at the time.
“What else are you willing to break, Miss Rhodes, and who will you betray to do it?”
There was a ringing in her ears from the moment Ezra’s body hit the floor. It had been growing louder, steadily, unbearably, until all of a sudden, it broke. Gone, just like that. It gave way, and in its place: clarity. A way forward. A next step.
Not personal. Just a job to be done. He’s going to destroy the world, Ezra had said so, and was she really willing to risk it? Suddenly, the answer seemed obvious.
Not just obvious. It was the only thing. There was nothing else.
“I don’t know,” Libby said, “and I don’t care.”
The combustion, the explosion of pure fusion, was difficult to hold from the beginning. Almost immediately, she felt the distance between herself and Nico blur. They had always been like stars in orbit, chasing each other, faster and faster until sometimes they got caught, becoming one with the orbit itself. The line where he ended or she began, it inevitably became irrelevant. Her magic responded to his like it had been born in his body. His joined up with hers like it had finally found its way home.
It was beautiful—it really was. The moment of pure synchronicity was like meeting up with fate. Like the kiss at the end of the movie, two souls becoming one. She could feel it, the way it was different this time, because they both accepted it. There was no use fighting anymore. No use lying about it. The constraints of their respective powers evaporated the moment they resigned themselves to the inevitable; the unexplainable and inarguable. The moment they both finally said yes was the one that opened the door.
Difficult to hold was not the same as difficult to see. Libby saw the bliss on Tristan’s face, the orientation of his destiny. The tips of his fingers outstretched like Adam reaching tenderly for God. She saw the sweat on Nico’s brow, the glimpse of a smile on his face, the triumph of something, peace and acceptance. From now on he could be satisfied, maybe even happy. He had seen his purpose through to fulfillment. He was vindicated and whole, and she told herself she felt no bitterness. No envy.
She saw Dalton. The flickers of him. The flash of something in his eyes. She saw Gideon. But Dalton’s eyes, there was something about them. They reminded her of something lifeless, unnaturally still. She saw Gideon. Tristan’s hand outstretched, the surge of mania on Dalton’s face—had he even asked her about Atlas?
She saw Gideon. I can’t find him.
Nico’s reassurance. I trust you, Rhodes.
Tristan and the wine, is it over? Is it broken?
She saw Gideon. I can’t find him.
He knows, she realized. He’s known it all along.
She saw Gideon clearly now. He wasn’t the nightmare. The nightmare was hers. There was something wrong with Dalton and something was pulling at her, unraveling like a thread. Was it possible that Ezra was mistaken? He said Atlas was the dangerous one. His plan is already set in motion. But Atlas was not the weapon. She was. Everyone in this room was an arrow, which had always meant Dalton, too.
She saw Gideon, she saw Nico’s look of serenity, she saw Tristan’s look of wonder, she understood that nothing in the universe was purely ugly without something beautiful; nothing wholly good without the shadow of something bad.
Where did Dalton get his energy from? She saw Gideon. She saw the thing she should have questioned, the inconsistency she should have fought with from the start. Miss Rhodes, nothing in the universe can come from nothing. Not even life. Especially not life. She saw Gideon. She saw Nico. Either she was enough or she never would be.
But what did it mean to be enough?
Something was wrong with Dalton. Something was wrong with all of them—they would never have enough. This Society was a sickness, a poison. She had always known it. She had always been right. She had always been wrong. She saw Nico, saw that he could convince her again, could convince her of anything, she listened to him, she always had. She saw Gideon. Something twisted inside her now, something solely hers, something only she could bear. A burden that only she could carry.
I trust you, Rhodes. A choice that only she could make.
She saw Gideon, the things he had not done, the things he had not seen, the price he hadn’t paid. The consequences he could never understand. She saw Tristan. Saw Nico. Saw that only she could do it. Listen to me, Libby, you’re a weapon, I saw to it myself. No, the strain in her chest, pieces of her brokenness like shrapnel. No, Ezra, I am not a weapon. Belen’s face reappeared in her mind, twisted with accusation. He said that nobody was killed, that’s very specific phrasing—!
No one else could have made that decision. This would be the same. It could not come from a place of nothing. No one else could possibly understand the intricacy of it; the why of it that would look like nothing but ultimately mean everything. Sacrifice. Lethal arrows. Salvation could only be made from the rib of Adam. Sacrifice from carving out a piece of her own heart.
I am not a weapon.
She saw Gideon just as Tristan’s hand met something. A new reality. An alternate world.
See your path, Miss Rhodes, and change it.
No one was the hero. So she would have to be the villain.
She saw Gideon.
What else are you willing to break, Miss Rhodes, and who will you betray to do it?
I don’t know. I don’t care.
But that was only half the answer. The rest of it was the truth.
It doesn’t matter, because I am my own weapon now.
They couldn’t move forward. She understood that now. The other side of the door was not the problem. The existence of the door was not the problem. The problem was what it took to turn the latch. Which meant the stakes were not just high, they were precisely as Ezra had said they were: annihilatory, apocalyptic. Only she knew it. Which meant that only she could save them all.
She was desensitized now, anesthetized. The right thing, the necessary thing, it came with pain that only she could bear. If this was going to end, if it could be salvaged, then only she could do it. Only she loved deeply enough. Only she had ever been strong enough to make this choice.
She saw Gideon. She saw him mouth one word.
NO—