The Atlas Paradox

Callum wakes up exhausted, muscles cramping, with Reina standing over him. She still wants him to use his power to influence the archive. She suspects that the archive won’t give her the books because it thinks she’s looking for instructions on how to become a god. She argues that there are generations of gods and perhaps they’ve moved into a new generation.

Callum suspects that the library is using his power and draining him. The next day, he sleeps through a meeting, but Reina finds him again. She brings Dalton, who explains that Society members, even the Caretaker, don’t decide what the archives lend. Reina wants to know why it denies texts to her and asks Dalton if his requests are ever denied. He replies that his research is narrow, but he’s certain that it would. Callum wonders if it’s because the archive thinks the text would be dangerous to the requestor, and Dalton finds this idea interesting.

The next day, Nico knocks on Callum’s door, looking for Reina. Callum refuses to use his power to find her but later seeks her out himself. She’s in the chapel, where there are no plants to bother her. He explains what he learned about her from her dossier, which the archive gave him. He understands why she doesn’t want to use her power. However, Reina replies that she’s beginning to believe that the world appears random only to humans—but that, unlike humans, they can see the order, supporting her theory that they’re gods. Callum says her logic makes sense. He agrees to influence the archives, but they decide to try it on a person first.

Nico has been killing Tristan and reviving him for a month now, with no success, and Tristan blames Nico. They realize that because Tristan knows Nico is a good person, he doesn’t really believe he’ll kill him, and so his power isn’t activated.

Nico knows that Tristan’s theory is sound and believes that his power far exceeds Nico’s or anyone else’s. If he learns to control it, Tristan will be able to create universes. Although Nico joined the Society in order to research and help Gideon with his power, he’s becoming interested in his own power too. He commits to the idea of truly killing Tristan so that Tristan will believe it. He attacks while Tristan is sleeping. When Tristan wakes up, terrified, his power is activated, and the window shatters. When Nico looks up, Tristan is standing in front of the window, which is intact. Nico can tell that, for the first time, Tristan fully feels his power.

Since Libby escaped, Ezra has been traveling a lot, meeting his collaborators: Nothazai, from the Forum; James Wessex, head of Wessex Corp.; Julian Rivera Perez from the CIA; Sef Hasa, who represents MENA, a medeian from Beijing; and Dr. J. Araña. Their goal is to end the Alexandrian Society and replace it with something more transparent, making its resources available to the public. Atlas once shared this goal, but once he became Caretaker, his ideas changed.

The Society is so secret that Ezra’s collaborators aren’t even sure that it exists—he’s the only one who has seen it firsthand. His plan is to apprehend the latest class of initiates and then use them to expose the Society’s secrets. He believes that it’s the only way to prevent it from happening all over again. The initiates will leave the Society grounds in one year to go out into the world, so they have a limited time to execute their plans.

When Ezra goes to meet Nothazai at a brasserie, he sees Atlas at a nearby table. Atlas tells him that he knows Ezra abducted Libby and that she escaped. Ezra pretends not to understand, but Atlas also tells him that he found and fixed the hole in the wards that Ezra had used to get onto the Society’s grounds. Ezra, however, refuses to change his mind—he says he has seen the destruction that results from Atlas’s plan.

After Atlas leaves, Dr. J. Araña sits down at his table. Ezra isn’t sure how useful she is to the plan—she’s quiet, and doesn’t seem to have resources to offer but insists on attending every meeting. Ezra worries that too many people are involved in the plan and that his secret will get out. He realizes that he’ll have to tie up loose ends. At the meeting with Nothazai and Dr. J. Araña, he thinks of Libby, whom he’s still tracking. It’s difficult for him to stay in one time, as Atlas had, rather than jump around.

Parisa is visiting the young Dalton, who is trapped inside Dalton’s subconscious. After questioning him, she knows that he’s sentient—now she wants to know if he has memory. If so, he’s not just a projection of the real Dalton’s subconscious. Two months ago, Dalton told her that only he could have made the animation of Libby’s body—but somehow without his own knowledge. Now, the young Dalton tells her that someone is watching him and wants her to help him get out.

Lately, Parisa has been probing the archive’s sentience, interested is why it’s learning about them. She tells Dalton about young Dalton; she knows it’s a part of him, and his being unaware of it doesn’t change that fact. She shares her belief that this part of him created the Libby animation. They argue, but then Dalton seduces her, while she wonders why it was so easy to distract him from their fight. She enters Dalton’s mind again, and the other Dalton reminds her that he’s being watched. When she wakes up, Parisa realizes that Callum influenced Dalton—which was why everything was so easy—and that it was Reina’s idea.

Libby has been trying to open a wormhole to return to her own time. She can feel her power fading, and although she created wormholes with Nico while at the Society, they were to different places, not times. She realizes that she’ll have to look for a nuclear power source to amplify her own power and open the wormhole.

She discovers that there’s a magical school nearby, the Los Angeles Regional College of Medeian Arts (LARCMA), and while riding the bus, she falls asleep. Gideon comes into her dreams again, asking her where she is, but before she can answer, she wakes up. When she falls asleep again, Gideon is there, and she sees the shimmer of another being behind him. She tells them that she’s in 1989, and the other being says they’ll rescue her.

When Nico tries to kill him again, Tristan destroys Nico’s knife, breaking it into pieces. His body is showing stress and exhaustion from being under threat for the last few months. Nico is pushing him to do more than just destroy the knife—he wants him to go on the offensive.

Earlier that day, Dalton asked about Wessex Corp. and their work with fission, although Tristan was never involved in that part of the business. Dalton tells Tristan about how the other team members are beginning to work together, and he thinks Tristan should choose an independent study topic that will contribute to their overall research. Now, he brings this up to Nico, who has ideas about what he should do. However, before they can discuss it, Nico makes another attempt on Tristan’s life, using a different knife, which Tristan also destroys. Frustrated with Tristan’s inability to use his power to transform the knife, Nico leaves. Tristan goes to Atlas’s office, demanding to know the truth about his powers.

Once again, Reina is attempting to explain her god theory to Callum, who seems determined to misunderstand it. Now Reina knows that Dalton is studying genesis and cosmology but doesn’t understand why. She also doesn’t understand why Parisa and Callum are so interested in Dalton. She finally convinces Callum to influence the archive, with the caveat that he choose the text. She lends her power to him, and he makes the request. Callum has requested Atlas’s dossier. When Reina asks to try again, Callum says he can’t do it more than once a day.

Wanting to spar, Reina leaves Callum and goes looking for Nico. They haven’t spent much time together since the simulation, and he’s happy to see her. He tells her, in general terms, what he and Tristan have been doing and asks what she’s doing with Callum, but she doesn’t tell him. She asks him about Dalton’s research and what cosmic inflation is, and he tells her that it’s what they think happened after the big bang. They argue about the initiation ceremony, and Reina regrets seeking him out. She leaves, and both of them know that their friendship is over.

Atlas invites Parisa to the upcoming Alexandrian Society ball. They aren’t required to attend, but he doesn’t want her interfering. The Forum attends the ball, so security is an issue, but it’s something he implemented during his time as Caretaker. She asks if the Forum took Libby, and Atlas says he believes that the person who took her is working with them. She only knows about the Forum from what she found in Dalton’s mind and thus doesn’t see them as much of a threat, but Atlas says she’s wrong. Parisa realizes that he wants her to spy for him at the ball, specifically to ensure that Reina and Callum don’t turn to the Forum’s side.

They discuss his surveillance of Dalton, as well as Callum and Reina’s experiment with influencing him. She wonders why he did nothing, and tells Atlas that Callum has a dossier on him. After he leaves, Callum and Tristan find her. Parisa asks Tristan what’s wrong, because she has noticed, via her telepathy, that he’s being scared nearly to death every day. She asks Callum what he found in Atlas’s dossier, but he won’t say. She’s annoyed, and she finds Dalton. She enters his subconscious immediately, not bothering to seduce him first.