The Atlas Paradox

Libby’s ex-boyfriend, Ezra Fowler, has left her a room that’s fully supplied with clothing, indicating that she’ll be there for some time.

Ezra thinks that Libby will forgive him, but even if she doesn’t, it’s worth it to save the world from Atlas Blakely.

In the year since she and her fellow initiates entered the Alexandrian Society, they seem to have become more divided. Although Libby has been gone for a while, her absence is still notable. The remaining five, plus Dalton and Atlas, have gathered for their initiation ceremony.

The initiation takes place on the astral plane, outside their bodies. Each initiate will face another specific initiate, although the astral projection they face won’t be the actual person but their idea of that person. After initiation, they’ll become full members of the Alexandrian Society.

Nico goes first. A projection of his consciousness leaves his body and appears at the center of their circle. A projection of Reina, his sparring partner, appears, and they begin to fight. Reina, who’s watching this, critiques the projection’s fighting style, and is annoyed that Nico sees her as a weak adversary. She and Parisa, who’s communicating with her telepathically, both understand that Nico’s projection of Reina means that he doesn’t see her as a threat or someone worth destroying. Reina realizes that her lack of interest in power may look like weakness.

After her birth, Reina’s grandmother took her in, but when her mother remarried—to the “Businessman”—he discovered Reina’s power and forced her to attend family dinners. After her mother died, however, she lost contact with the family, even to the point that the Businessman had seen and not recognized her. She was glad, because he had only wanted to use her naturalist power—and to keep her power safe, Reina distanced herself from everyone.

Now she realizes that she let Nico get close, and he learned her vulnerabilities. She’s angry—and disappointed in him. When the ritual is over, Nico returns to his body, but before he and Reina can talk about the experience, it’s her turn.

In Reina’s ceremony, the projection is of Parisa. It’s night, candles are lit, and Parisa sheds the robe she’s wearing. Callum and Tristan, who have both had sex with Parisa, notice some differences between her actual body and Reina’s projection of her. Callum and Parisa discuss why Reina’s projection of her is naked, especially since they’re both sure it isn’t about sex. Tristan notices their conversation and is annoyed. Since Libby has been gone, he seems to have taken her place as the most anxious of the group.

Lately, he thinks about the night Libby disappeared, when he nearly killed Callum. He has dreamt that he did kill Callum, as the group had decided he would. While the rest of them watch, Tristan fidgets uncomfortably. He stands and paces around the circle as the projections talk, angry at the idea that the rest of them feel badly for him after Libby’s disappearance.

The projection of Reina and Parisa is a conversation, in which they discuss whether Parisa is interested in Reina. She claims that she can tell that Reina is powerful, but Reina pretends she doesn’t care. Parisa claims that Reina is afraid of becoming like Parisa and in the meantime isn’t using her power. A knife appears in the Reina projection’s hand, and she stabs Parisa just before the projection winks out.

Tristan’s turn is next, and his projection leaves his body. A projection of Libby appears, and he wonders if he’s about to be forgiven, but instead she curses at him, and shoots a stream of fire from her palm.

Tristan ducks Libby’s fire. Parisa, a telepath, tries to see into Reina’s mind to understand what happened in her projection, but Reina blocks her. Atlas, who’s also telepathic and has been watching the ceremony, gives her a small smile. She tries to communicate with him, but he blocks her out, as he has done since Libby disappeared. Parisa has learned that the way people see her says something about them. She thinks Reina’s downfall is that she expects everyone to behave according to her own standards. She has also seen inside Callum’s mind and knows that he has been fantasizing about killing Tristan. She remembers seeing into Tristan’s mind when he saw Libby’s fake body, and Parisa understands how powerful he is yet that he’s unable to recognize or use it.

Parisa realizes that the simulation is being acted out for someone else, who will learn about all their weaknesses. Meanwhile, Tristan’s projection is still dodging Libby’s attacks, and Parisa believes that the simulation is about his guilt. The projection of Libby continues to attack, and Tristan can’t withstand it anymore. Unlike the other simulations, when Tristan returns to his body the projection of Libby remains, and Parisa and Atlas both realize that Tristan has moved through time. Parisa sees into Atlas’s mind for a moment and understands that he’s seeing Tristan as the answer to his problem.

Callum assumed that Tristan would appear in his simulation. After the betrayal of Tristan’s murder attempt, he assumed that he’d have the opportunity to do the same and rise above it, proving himself the better man. However, when his simulation begins, the projection is also himself. Callum and the projection of himself have a drink, and the projection expounds on all his worst fears and insecurities. Callum knows that the others are watching and now can understand the toll his power takes on him. They now know that, as an empath, everything he alleviates for other people, he takes into himself, sometimes even physically.

Since Libby disappeared, Nico’s days are all the same. He’s beginning to wonder what the point of anything is when Gideon returns to his dreams. He tells Gideon that the initiation ceremony was meaningless, but Gideon insists that, even if it felt like a game, it meant something. He tells Nico that he has located Libby but can’t just enter her dreams unexpectedly. He has to make her believe that he’s consciously in her dreams, which will be difficult because Libby is chronically skeptical.

Gideon also tells Nico that he has promised his mother, Eilif, that he’ll do a job for her, breaking someone out of their consciousness. Nico is resistant but finally tells him to be careful. When he wakes up, he realizes that, by spending so much time in his dreams, he’s spending his power. He feels exhausted lately, and wonders if the others are feeling the same. Then, Tristan knocks on his door and asks Nico to help him die.

When Reina goes to the archives, she finds Parisa there, in the center of the room, apparently doing nothing. Parisa brings up how Nico’s projection must have hurt her feelings, but Reina denies it. Parisa leaves when Atlas arrives, and Reina returns to her project—she has been looking into cosmology and returns research on Viviana Absalon, the medeian that Dalton mentioned in one of their lessons. When Viviana Absalon died, her organs were those of a woman half her age, suggesting that she had the power of longevity. The question is why she, and others like her, often seem to die young from untimely accidents. When she receives her books from the archive, she finds a note that some of her requests were denied.

Nico comes to the archive and tries to make peace with her, but she refuses. He’s requesting a book on Schopenhauer but won’t say for whom. Reina thinks about how everyone has been implying that the archives are sentient. She has an idea and goes to find Callum. She wants him to use her power to amplify his abilities in an attempt to influence the archives to give her the texts she wants. He doesn’t say no but asks for time to think about the idea.

When the projection of Libby was about to kill Tristan, he was able to use his powers in the same way he did when he recognized that Libby’s body was an animation. He realizes that the intensity of the situation prompted this shift and wants Nico to try to kill him in order to pressure him into making that shift again. Using Schopenhauer’s will to live as a reference, he explains that if his life is threatened, his natural inclination toward survival will prompt the vision shift. Nico agrees, and they decide to meet later that night.

Tristan now understands a few things: He can see time as well as the energy waves that are magic. In the moment when projection-Libby was about to kill him, he was able to escape by shifting his perspective on reality. There is no objective reality, because he’s not seeing the same one that everyone else sees. He returns to the spot outside, on the grounds, where he saw Ezra, the traveler, so many months ago.

He stays there until it gets dark, when Nico arrives with a Schopenhauer text. Tristan explains that he needs Nico to nearly kill him—and to mean it—so that he can figure out his power. He talks about how he previously used his ability when he was a child to escape his father’s abuse even though he didn’t understand what he was doing. Before Tristan can react, Nico punches him so hard in the chest that he’s knocked unconscious.

When Atlas came to the reading room, Parisa thought he was going to reprimand her for using her telepathy on the library’s sentience. Instead, he asks for her help, and she can feel his urgency. He needs her help to fix a hole in the Society’s security wards—and doesn’t want anyone else to know.

Parisa asks if this issue is connected to Libby, and he tells her that he knows who took Libby—but not where. Parisa realizes that this event has affected Atlas deeply. She looks into his mind and steals information, hearing bits of conversation about becoming gods.

Libby realizes that Ezra abducted her to keep her away from the Alexandrian Society, not to hurt or kill her. Ezra clearly believes that she’s dangerous and that if all six initiates are together, they’ll destroy the world. She hears the others’ voices in her head sometimes and wonders if they were able to kill Callum as planned.

Callum’s voice is in Libby’s head more than anyone else’s, telling her that Ezra is overreacting and that Atlas won’t destroy the world. In one dream, she’s in NYUMA’s dorm, and knocks on Gideon Drake’s door. He tries to prove to her that they’re in her dream, and he’s truly there. He tries to get information from Libby about where she is, but she wakes up. Ezra is there, and she grabs him by the throat.