“You are fired.”
The guard left of Atlas says, “Sir, I can do better. I know I can. Please.”
“You are fired.”
All shaking, glancing at each other, the four guards release Samuel and Atlas and slip their weapons, one at a time, out of their holsters and off their backs. They lay them at the base of the stairs. They exit through a door along the left wall, behind ribbed columns and decorated arches.
Atlas looks at his arms still red from the guards’ grips and tenses his forehead. The guards—where did they leave to?
He whips his head around and remembers: seconds ago, the guards released him and went out the north exit. Atlas slides a hand down his neck, his vision wavering across the wavering webs in floor’s marble.
“You have a concussion,” the man says. “You hit your head.”
Atlas meets his eyes. They’re stone. “What?”
“You have a concussion.”
“Oh,” Atlas mouths.
The man turns the ten degrees required to face Samuel and says, “Your names?”
It’s not a question; nothing sounds like a question and nothing sounds like an order. Tone inflection dies at his lips and opinion staccatos onward as fact.
“Liam Neeson.” Samuel steps forward and gestures to Atlas. “That’s Dreshawn. But he’s unpopular so no one likes him.”
The man stares.
“Oh.” Samuel’s eyelids droop. “You’re the Sideran. You do that thing with the not doing things.”
Atlas leans onto the balls of his feet and looks the man up and down. Blue eyes. No other indication of Sideran descent. Head heavy with thoughts breeding, Atlas wets his lips, adjusts position so Samuel falls out of vision’s periphery, and raises his voice.
“My name is Atlas.”
The man moves his hand a centimeter down his lapel. “From the Taurus constellation.”
“Yes.” Atlas stretches his neck to study the man’s face, the shape of his jaw, chin, the color of his eyebrows. “You’re truly Sideran.”
“I cannot tell you I am Sideran,” the man says, “because you must perceive and decide.”
Atlas presses his lips together. “Your word may help me decide.”
“I am a stranger. My yes’s and no’s mean little. To you, my pledge to truth could merely conceal an undisclosed pledge to lie and so,” the Sideran blinks, “I pledge nothing.”
A smile tugs at Atlas’s mouth. “You won’t shout at me that your word is absolute truth. You trust me to discern it.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good—” Samuel exhales. “Book the honeymoon suite and take it elsewhere.”
The Sideran looks at Samuel and asks Atlas, “Does this being always speak with such vulgar obscurity.”
“Without respite.” Smile emerging in full, Atlas steps to the stairs’ base. “What do we call you?”
“Minkar of Corvus. But that does not hold importance to you now. You have traveled far for some pivotal objective,” he asks.
“Oh, yes. I, um—” Atlas twirls a finger at the ceiling; “I escaped Sidera three—” he glances at Samuel, “no, four earthly days ago and I—”
“Ayn Rand wrote this guy’s name,” Samuel nods to Atlas, “into a book title so he converted to objectivism and escaped your crap land with his crap knowledge and we want to know how you did the same.” He inhales. “You mingling with rebels, Minkey?”
Minkar stares.
“I wish to understand your dissension,” Atlas says, “and help abolish the Imperium in any way I can.”
Minkar stands and breathes. “If you came for answers on how I entered this world, you will receive none clearer than the answers you received when you did the same, Atlas of Taurus.” He shifts to the right. “You, Accend, come seeking a mend in a relational break. And you, escaped Sideran,” he shifts to the left, “come seeking direction in an ocean of freedom that has you paddling blindly. Neither comes for answers I can give.”
Atlas thinks it and Samuel says it:
“How—”
“Notwithstanding, to address your concerns, yes, I am raising a resistance with a network my select group has been constructing for a very long time. We plan to battle Sidera.”
“Hey, me too. But the Accenda,” Samuel throws his hands through the air, “can’t. Dimensional barrier problem. How do we get past it?”
“Pylon,” Minkar says.
“Like StarCraft or those orange road cones?”
“Pylon is the name given to the grand portal as prophesied in Sideran text.”
“Grand portal?” Atlas asks.
“Yes, the gateway.” Minkar lets his hand drop from his lapel. “The one portal said to be opened where Earth’s dimensional barrier thins, where the veil could easily tear. The portal to be opened for mass exodus.”
Samuel narrows his eyes. “ ’Kay. How do we open it?”
“It must be opened.”
“Opened how?”
“Through the Walker, the human called from the beginning, and the liberator—one to hold the walker key.”
“Who are they?” Atlas angles forward. “What is the Walker’s name?”
“It is said that no being knows save the Sideran who mapped it long ago.”
Atlas’s head spins. It throbs and aches and muddles his vision. He forces it to focus.
“Why must the portal be opened? Is there no other way to defeat the Imperium?”
“No.”
“But—” Atlas inhales and steadies his swaying knees. “But doesn’t such risk immense war on Earth that requires the blood of innocent walkers and Siderans alike?”
“—and Accenda, unfeeling glute growth,” Samuel says.
“Yes.”
“Does freedom require blood?”
“Blood is important.”
Atlas blinks. “What?”
“Blood’s always the way to get a revolution going, Attie.” Samuel folds his arms. “War’s necessary.”
“No,” Atlas squints at Minkar, “what did you say?”
“You have a concussion,” Minkar says. “You hit your head.”
Chin sinking, Atlas steeps the marble floor with his gaze until its webs stop swirling. “Yes.”
“So,” Samuel jerks his bangs out of his face, “let’s talk firepower. What espionage, munitions, and or bioweapons do your people have that my people can work with? How close are you to getting Pylon cracked open? And when can we start killing fascists?”
“Yes,” Atlas whispers.
“The only way to open Pylon is through the Walker as prophesied,” Minkar says. “All has been foretold in The Presage: the text that reveals the Walker’s identity and the means to cast Pylon’s door ajar.”
“Presage.” Atlas’s head snaps up. “Who wrote this all-powerful Presage?”
“The mapmaker.”
“Who is the mapmaker?”
“The one who came before.”
Atlas darkens his tone and sharpens his frown. “Give me names.”
“Names are merely masks that suffocate our titles.”
Samuel lifts his hands, looks to the vaulted ceiling, and yells some word Atlas heard him yell at a slow-moving vehicle hours prior. He points at Minkar. “I’m taking you to Eden.”
Minkar upturns his palms and swings them through the air. Atlas launches off the ground and halfway across the room, limbs lagging after his spine, organs hovering displaced, white and blue and silver blurred into restless oblivion, before he comprehends that wind drives him. He and Samuel drink a tornado through their nostrils, hit the ground sliding, and tumble a couple more meters. They groan. Air’s rush falls silent and their ears ring.
“This is my Column and I will not leave it,” Minkar says.
Atlas pushes himself onto his knees. Samuel coughs. They stand, wobbling on their feet, and limp back toward Minkar’s stage.
“I wish to help you.” Atlas cringes, clutching his chest. “I merely desire answers in return.”
Minkar’s eye twitches. “How certain are you, Atlas of Taurus, that you wish to assist in freeing Sidera.”
He scoffs. “What are you asking?”
Samuel grins and Atlas scowls.
“He’s asking if you’re in this revolution for the brotherly kindness we all know you don’t have or,” Samuel reaches the first step and plants his foot on it, “if you’re in it for the blood.”
Atlas narrows his eyes. “Not a soul was addressing you, Accend.”
“Freedom or vengeance, Attie?”
“Te precor,” Atlas drags his hands down his face; “subsistite hanc insulsitatem aut statim occide me because if I live another second without communication beyond spontaneous attack and analysis of personal motivation,” he drops his hands, glares at Samuel, “I will make this about blood.”
He smiles. “Aw, cute.”
“Are you willing to open Pylon,” Minkar asks Atlas.
“I don’t know.”
“Then leave me until you come to a conclusion.”
Atlas walks up the stairs, grimacing each step, and meets Minkar’s eye level. “Where is this Presage? I wish to see it for myself.”
“It is lost in Sidera,” Minkar says.
“Lost? How is it lost? How could some being lose it?”
“By design.”
Samuel steps up to the stage. “I’m not going anywhere until you give me something to work with.”
Minkar turns his back on Atlas and Samuel and walks across the platform. He jolts—jerks a centimeter out of place, one fraction of a movement to the left, and Atlas’s forehead crumples. The motion was too quick, jagged to be natural.
“I do not know a detail of the text within The Presage or its specifics relating to the Walker and Pylon. If you wish to open it as soon as possible, I would not be the Sideran that could assist you. My people—”
“And,” Samuel tilts his head, “who are your people, Data?”
Minkar turns to him. “A system that occupies one hundred and ninety-two outposts such as this in eighty-four countries and labors every earthly day, under constant secrecy and meticulous caution as to never,” his body again flickers, “demolish what has been built upon our anonymity. We are hidden in every race and in every faction. Millions of Siderans await our advances.”
“Siderans hide—they occupy one hundred and ninety-two outposts?” Atlas asks.
“Not Siderans, no.”
Samuel gasps. “Reptilians?”
“What is your state?” Atlas whips to the black-clad Accend two steps too close and glowers at the sweat beading on his brow, the dilation of his pupils. “Sedation is needed, I think, you hyperactive urchin.”
“Oo-hoo—” Samuel sniggers, swirls his forefinger skyward in a stiff-wristed spiral. “Slap me that sass, Marjorie.”
Mouth twisted, Atlas pauses. Points his cheek toward Samuel and perks his lips to a question unformed.
“You know,” Samuel turns his finger on Minkar, “you’re the bane of my existence, really.” He draws the tip of his forefinger to his own hair. “But my psyche is five planes above all y’all right now. I’m getting more out of you than you think.”
“You know nothing,” Minkar almost blinks, “Samuel Covey.”
Samuel purses his lips. “If my name doesn’t radiate from my style, then you’re a mind reader or devoted Google-r?”
“Like yours, my people desire war. We cannot open Pylon because we do not have the resources to read The Presage. What has been said of it is merely rumor.” Minkar looks at the sweat-cleansed scab on Atlas’s temple, barely right of his eyes. “Whatever else I know and how I am on Earth are unimportant. I cannot create a portal to any dimension. However, you may be able to.”
“How?” Atlas asks.
“Through a gold token you brought to this world.”
His lungs constrict. “The coin?”
The slightest gleam flashes in Minkar’s eyes. It leaves as quickly as it came.
“3,000 kilometers from here is a rural stretch of land near a town called Helena, Montana,” Minkar says. “An assortment of strange activity there has been reported. Four days ago, an abrupt, narrow tornado fell, as the citizens say, ‘like a visit from an alien spacecraft,’ and disappeared three and seven tenths of a second later. The same phenomenon occurred at exactly the same time in exactly the same manner above central Pittsburgh. You did not keep your coin close on descent, Atlas of Taurus.”
Atlas studies the floor, his eyes darting left and right. “It fell in this territory Helena?”
“Very plausibly.”
“How do you know these supposed facts?”
“His people,” Minkar looks to Samuel, “are not the only ones concealed amongst trees and buildings.”
Cold pierces Atlas’s skin.
“If you wish to read The Presage, retrieve your gold token and search Sidera,” Minkar says.
Samuel scoffs. “Right. Attie here isn’t gonna want to skip back to the dimension he escaped four days ago.”
“Is there no other way to enter Sidera?” Atlas asks.
Samuel’s mouth falls open.
“No.” Minkar glares at Atlas. “Your coin can open a gateway large and sudden enough for the journey of one. It is the only known key, the most powerful relic that lies upon Earth at this moment, and this from the lips of someone expert in historical matters.”
“Why don’t you retrieve it?”
“I cannot. Not a being would discover it among the land without years of exploration.”
“Then how would I discover it?”
“It is yours. It is bound to you. You will find it.”
Atlas’s blood surges with new fire. He rubs his hands together and inhales the charge exchanged between his fingers and exhales one word to himself. “Mine?”
“Yeah, okay,” Samuel rolls his eyes, “your ‘own,’ your ‘precious.’ What does this mean for the war?”
“That it could begin on your actions.”
Atlas tracks Minkar’s dead pupils. “And if I don’t wish for war?”
“You desire purpose and I have given you a path. You can choose to walk it or not.”
Samuel shakes his head and slides his hand into his jacket. “Thanks, Patrick and Kristen Stewart’s challenged child, for the times but I didn’t come for your bald head or level tones. You’re leaving with—”
Samuel flies off the floor. Minkar lowers his raised palm and Samuel shoots across the marble hall, in a furious cyclone, until the whistle in Atlas’s ears sinks under and the gust through his hair leaves it sculpted backward. Samuel’s shoulders crunch into the corridor’s front doors; he slumps to the ground. His collision echoes a dozen times over. On the last mimicked beat dampening into decay between columns, the doors open and Samuel’s dragged through them.
Atlas breathes out. “Thank Imperium.”
“Leave.” Minkar points to the doors.
Spinning on a heel, Atlas turns and limps down the stairs, across the hall, and out the double doors and down their portico. The grass and trees and night sky of the fortress’s opening again meet Atlas. He squints through floodlights above, to the deep sage of earth beneath.
His foot bumps something. Atlas looks down: Samuel’s leg. He steps over it and walks for the forest.
“Get up, Accend,” Atlas yells at distant trees. “You must return me to where I departed.”
Samuel groans.
Atlas cocks his head to the side. “Coming or not? I’m getting considerably tired of dragging you along.”
Clenching his jaw, Samuel cranks himself off the ground and hobbles on knees bent as little as possible after Atlas. He glances over a shoulder, at the sentries posted around the doors—front, back, every entrance—and snorts waving them off. He winces with the movement.
“ ‘Considerably’?” Samuel wobbles to Atlas’s side. “You don’t sound remotely like me.”
“That is because you sound similar to a diving musculus in child labor.”
Atlas grabs Samuel’s collar; he yanks him backward. “Imperium help me, I will twist your head off if you don’t cease.”
Straightening his collar, Samuel flips around and replaces his scowl with a smile. He centers himself, stiffens his stance.
“You’re so,” he touches a finger to Atlas’s nose, “adorable.”
Atlas recoils. “The sole reason for your continued existence is my need in returning to the province of what you call Pennsylvania. I must rest and organize my thoughts.”
Samuel stares and sucks a breath. “Sure, okay. Deal? Deal. Let’s go.”
Turning, he forces his walk to smooth as he enters the forest; Atlas follows. They stagger under branches that soak up the spray of fortress glare, over roots gnarling away the last flickers, and they shoulder past overgrown bristles and twigs and knobs that dilute shape out of ahead’s path. Darkness embraces Atlas. He gropes for every leaf and kicks for every rock and squints until his pupils dilate.
“I have some conditions of course,” Samuel says.
“I declare the conditions.”
“See, that’s not true. You need me. You wanna try chatting up another Accend without getting sold into S&M trafficking and wind up dead in a ditch?” Samuel ducks under a spruce branch and lets it smack Atlas in the face. “I’m your information fix and the road that leads you. You’re Sideran: you need to be led.”
“Do you wish a torturous death upon yourself?”
“I want,” Samuel scuffs dirt, “The Presage.”
“As do many it seems.”
“I want you to help me get this stupid prophecy so I can take it to Elisium and make Eden go with me on that three-week vacation to Rome and steal lots of expensive things and blast lots of music and assimilate lots of souls and have lots of—”
“Why?” Atlas says. “What specifically will I receive in return?”
“In return? You won’t make it as far as the street corner on your own. Earth is a Japanese restroom to you, and someone else is gonna snatch up The Presage while you’re trying to read the signs. I know stuff you’d never dream of learning by yourself. I know Accend secrets, what Eden’s let slip, where you came from.”
Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn Page 14
