“You’re here.” Gene closes her eyes. “I’m glad.”
Samuel makes a face and looks to the ceiling. The corner of his mouth twitches.
Gene opens her eyes. “Okay, okay, I’m dreaming, right? I mean, it’s jus’ like that one where my elbows were my feet so this happening is probably not.” She bursts a muted laugh. “Like, did I really actually just get tortured by some non-woman,” she lifts a finger to Atlas, “possibly man, alien person with a, may I say, fantastic fashion sense and end up in a hospital with my two non-woman, alien person friends who carried me across Pittsburgh because I’m—I’m—”
Atlas’s forehead crinkles. He watches her eyes grow wet and dart back and forth and catch the fluorescent glow. They stop and focus on him.
Gene says, “Because I’m worth the effort.”
Chest tight, Atlas squeezes her fingers and glances at Samuel, whose face falls blank.
“Wow.” Gene swallows. “I’m very—very so, so, so drugged right now. I should sleep.”
“Of course.” Atlas pulls his hand away.
“No, don’t—” She reaches for his fingers and he pauses; she grabs them. She flips his hand over, palm upward, and fits hers into it.
Atlas closes his hand. His wrist balanced on her bed’s bar, he stretches toward a fold-up chair by the door, grips it, and slides it to her bed. He sits. Samuel switches off the lights and plops into a recliner by the corner. They quiet their movements, settle into darkness the Chicago, the Dickinson hotels pressed on their shoulders, feel the coolness that reflects off bare walls and floors and ceiling, that reminds them of the one dim light rectangle still humming and replays internally the four days past.
Gene nudges Atlas’s hand with her thumb. “I think you’re all right.”
He half-smiles.
She whispers, “And sort of sexy.”
Atlas mouths the word and, brows tensed, looks to Samuel, who looks back.
“But not in a normal way but in a weird, kind of bizarre, unnatural, more cushy, more funny way because—” she opens her eyes and laughs, “because you’re a little bit . . .”
Atlas’s tensed brows contort the rest of his face. Samuel mouths “cushy” and sets his chin on a fist, his grin reaching the moon.
Gene blinks. “Samuel, I know what you’re like. Want me to tell you? What you’re like? I can tell you.”
His grin falls.
“Samuel, I think you’re kind of a jerk—not because your hair is weird but mostly because you murder people. But I like you anyway.” Her tone deepens. “I might like you both better if you changed your clothes once in a while. Atlas, I got it!” She bounces their hands. “I got it. You’re a little bit like a vanilla version of our thirtieth president. And—and I wasn’t going to tell you this but—”
“Gene,” Atlas says, “go to sleep.”
“Okay.”
She closes her eyes and Samuel leans back. Atlas brushes his thumb over Gene’s bandages and embeds the texture into mind and dreams as he repeats.
XXIII
Humanity
Her scream penetrates a thousand steel fences and lances Atlas through the gut. Ice scalds his shaking, bloody hands in a toxic black whispers of gloating swim through. “The constellations keep all safe and content.” “You think you escaped?” “This is what comes of it.” “Hers and yours.” “Pain. Your dissension—this is what comes of it.”
Atlas digs his fingernails into his palms until his blood drips, with hers and his and theirs, off his skin.
“This is your freedom?”
“Atlas.” A hand squeezes his. “It’s okay.”
He pries his eyelids and Gene’s white bed, its bar pressing his wrist, stands before him. Gene leans on her side, her unbandaged hand over his. Previous voices shrink into mind’s abyss behind fresh sunlight slipping through the hospital blinds. Strips of highlight glimmer across the beeping machine and Gene’s blankets and the clear tube curved around her stomach, up to her collar, where its nasal prong hangs off her gown. Atlas lies halfway upright on the folding chair that hasn’t budged from its spot for five days. Five days: this morning marks the first of the sixth. For five days, he’s slowed his body to a stillness that rivals the chair’s, failing only for intermittent minutes. For five days, he’s avoided Gene’s requests to sleep somewhere other than his seat.
“Are you all right?” Gene asks.
Atlas’s forehead crumples.
“It’s just—” She ducks her head. “You looked pretty not all right a second ago.”
He sits up. “No—yes. I am adequate.”
“But you were all fidgety. And,” Gene shifts her mouth to the side, “yell-y. Yellying.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry? That’s all I get? Say it like you mean it.”
Atlas frowns and slides his hand out from under hers. “Sorry.”
Gene grimaces. “Atlas, that wasn’t—” She exhales. “I was joking. You don’t apologize for not being all right, all right?”
He nods.
“I didn’t mean—I mean,” she changes tone, “how many times has the Imperium told you it’s not okay to not be okay?”
He shrugs.
Gene scoffs. “So help me—so many thoughts of things I want to do to them and now I have to repent for a week.”
Frown lifting, he scans her face, the color in her cheeks and brightness in her eyes. “Are you feeling better?”
“Mmhmm.” She smiles. “Them taking off a bunch of bandages has got to be a good sign. I don’t feel all drugged or in lots of pain or anything.” Gene looks past his shoulder and makes a face. “I am feeling embarrassed and gross. I need to get home and shower and do normal things. I miss my bed.”
Twinges touch the sides of Atlas’s mouth, but he blanks his stare at her bedding.
“This is not where I pictured myself a couple weeks ago. I can’t believe this. ‘Surreal’ doesn’t really cut it.” Turning to Atlas, she lights up and drops her jaw. “I finally got you in a hospital. Ha!”
“Gene,” Atlas breathes in, “I am sorry.”
“What did we just talk about?”
He rubs his neck and lowers tone. “The pains I brought from Sidera—I shouldn’t have allowed them to spread to you.”
“Are you kidding? I was tortured in some fire dimension by a superhuman who wears a lot of satin—”
“I know. I cannot express how deeply I wish I could amend the past.”
Gene squints at him and holds a finger to her lips. Atlas shuts his mouth.
“I was tortured,” she says, “and made it out alive. I’ve never had this much meaning in my life for my life. I’m beginning to understand it. Like, I finally have the freedom and the opposition and view—”
“Understand what?”
“Life.”
Atlas’s brows tense. Gene looks to the pale mounds that indicate her feet.
“Something I’ve always been ignorant to,” she says. “This is what I wanted when we met. You don’t have to live in Sideran constellations to live sheltered.”
“That doesn’t make what occurred right.”
“No. But some things happen for a reason and some things can’t finish right unless they start wrong.”
Atlas lifts his hand to Gene’s bangs and brushes a few strands from her eyes. He drops it. His mechanics disobeyed mind; again and still, he tilts his head at her hair’s shimmer, skin’s shade, irises’ hue no Sideran shares.
“Oh, man.” Gene recoils, cheeks flushing. “I look awful. I don’t want to know what I look like right now. I haven’t washed my hair in five days—haven’t brushed it. I haven’t been physically aware of anything until—”
Atlas diverts his eyes.
Hers widen. “Good, great gracious. What did I say? I remember talking about Samuel’s hair and lizard people and . . . something about the president? I can’t remember much else these past few days.”
Atlas clenches his jaw.
Gene twitches and scoo
ts up her pillow. “What did I say?”
“You should know,” he meets her eyes, “you don’t appear at all awful. You’re beautiful as always.”
Sinking into her pillow, Gene half-smiles and holds her breath. She rubs a section of blanket between her thumb and forefinger.
“Hey.” She glares at Atlas. “What—”
Samuel bursts open the door and strides into the room.
Atlas points. “Look! Samuel’s present.”
Samuel gives Atlas a look, face deflated, eyes narrowed, and crashes into his recliner in the corner. He sets a plastic sack on the floor. Resting his left foot on his right leg, he leans back. His eye’s purple has healed into yellow splotches and his lip, cheek, jaw have mended their cuts and faded their bruises, his hair more styled today, jacket sharper, cleaner, its tears stitched.
Atlas pushes up his own sleeve and runs his hand over the faint pink line on his forearm; no bump interrupts the stroke. He smooths his sleeve back down: the sleeve of a dark navy jacket Samuel brought to the hospital and threw at Atlas’s back three days ago, the same Atlas wears over his stained tunic, the same Samuel and Atlas don’t talk about. Atlas’s body glues him to his chair but his muscles itch to awaken. He envies Samuel, who hasn’t sat for longer than a few minutes at a time, striding from the room every moment of quiet and returning hours later. Atlas, Samuel, and Gene sit with stronger posture.
“Hi, Cushy, glad to see you too,” Samuel says.
Face contorting, Gene looks to Atlas.
Who looks to Samuel. “What did you discover?”
Samuel raises his eyebrows and snatches the thick, corded remote off Gene’s nightstand. “That the gas station down the street has an unbelievable selection of doughnuts and assorted single drinks.”
“No, what did you,” Atlas eyes Gene from his periphery and angles toward Samuel, “discover about Elisium?”
Thumbing the corner of his mouth, Samuel twists in his seat and cranes his neck toward the miraculous rectangle mounted above his head. It bursts alive at the press of a button. Within the frame, the shrunken profile of some walker chatters into a handheld cylindrical device, text rolling across the screen below her. Atlas goes rigid, ogles the rectangle for the thirtieth time this week, his attention abducted and eyes unblinking. Samuel crinkles his nose at the picture, one of several he’s described as “daytime milk toast garbage,” despite his repeated returns to its bustling colors and frenetic clamoring. He lowers the remote and Atlas blinks from his enchantment.
“Have you ever had a doughnut?” Samuel lifts a finger. “Well, not me. Not until today. Not gonna puke this one. Unless Nurse Mop-Top walks in—then it’s on his polka dot scrubs.”
Television’s drone jostling his pulse, Atlas leans over the scar in his gut—the one Eden slit his third day on Earth—and doesn’t feel the ache. He speaks a breath barely over digitized voices.
“Is there an area where you could open a portal?”
Samuel slaps his armrests. “Couldn’t feel a thing. Not the slightest warmth.” He glances between the television and Atlas. “I don’t know if it’s bad luck or my insensitivity—”
“That one,” Gene says. “It’s that one.”
“—to portal hot spots,” Samuel scowls, “but nothing’s coming up. The only way we can snag our coin is by catching Eden outside of Elisium somehow.”
“And how do we accomplish such?”
Samuel glares. “Attie, did you not hear my emphasized ‘somehow’?”
Gene straightens her back and bends her knees high, her blanket a tent. “What in the world have you two been planning? Who wants to catch Eden? No,” she swallows, “no, none catching.”
Atlas looks at Samuel through the corner of his eye; Samuel smirks back.
“Gene,” Atlas ducks low, “what specifically do you remember the cycle—the day we fled Elisium?”
She plays with her thumb. “I was underground and—and Eden was doing stuff. She asked me so many things I couldn’t answer but most of the time she was just walking around talking about blood and charity but like how Satan would and the evils of the upper class and days and things—like,” Gene shifts her mouth, “she was keeping track of time really closely, counting hours and minutes. She got impatient and then—”
She looks at her bandaged arm, the needle poking out of it, and pauses her mouth. Atlas squeezes his eyes shut and draws a breath. He clenches his knee.
“Do you remember anything specific she said?” Atlas asks.
Gene frowns. “I didn’t say a word and she didn’t like that. The restraints, the pressure everywhere, the darkness, burning, so, so much earth closing down—I was—” Pinching her covers, she shrugs. “Everything got confusing.”
“And after that? Do you recall any other event?”
She beams. “You came for me.”
The corner of Atlas’s mouth lifts but it feels askew. It falls, silence descending upon TV’s buzzing, and he studies the tips of his shoes, their dirt streaks against spotless vinyl.
“Eden expressed ideas,” Atlas says. “Ideas that might cause you some alarm.”
Gene’s brow furrows. “Like what?”
“Like ‘Hey, I’m a foxier Norman Bates and cracking Pylon so Sidera can wrestle it out with Elisium, Earth burning in the process, because,” Samuel smiles into the distance, “power complex and daddy issues.’ ”
She looks to Atlas. “Can she do that?”
“We don’t know.”
“It’s possible,” Samuel shrugs, “but doubtful for now. She hasn’t made a single real move yet and whoever she’s working with is holding her back.”
“But doesn’t that just mean they’re planning something big to happen at a big time?”
“Er—” Samuel flares a nostril. “Yeah.”
Gene’s breathing accelerates. “Well,” her face falls to her hands, “world, you’ve been good. I really liked your mountains and food and America. Bye.”
Atlas grips the bed’s bar. “Don’t grow concerned. We have vowed to recover the coin, discover The Presage, and protect Pylon’s key Eden has yet to wield. We will keep Sidera from Earth.”
“Vow is a strong word,” Samuel says.
“So Eden has the coin?”
“That harsh ‘V.’ ”
“If she has recovered as we have, Eden will be rearranging her plans. She will want us again in her hands after she has used or stowed the coin.”
“Attie, no. No, no. Eden would never take the coin off her. Anything outside her control empties her bladder all over her pants and that’d ruin the Italian-imported silk and polyester lining. In all seriousness, she definitely slipped the glorified penny in her bra.”
“Her ‘bra’ is where?”
“Tell him, Samuel.”
“If we’re smart, we’d be running ’cause she obviously wants you two for something.”
“Wait, guys—”
“But why doesn’t she want me?”
“Shush.” Gene swats the air, her gaze faraway. “I remember something Eden said. She kept saying ‘eight days.’ Atlas,” she turns to him, “when you came for me in Elisium, how long had you been on Earth?”
With his forefinger, Atlas taps the numbers into his leg. He lifts his chin. “Eight days.”
“What if that’s days to come, not days spent?” Samuel says.
Gene purses her lips. “It could be either.” Voice wilted, she hops her eyes between her knees. “Or both. Could she be keeping track of Atlas and planning something for later?”
“Perhaps she’s simply gathering armies and counting the days such takes.”
“I think,” Samuel jerks his hair from his eyes, “Attie’s escape tipped the first interdimensional domino and Eden and her partner are counting the domino chain.”
Gene scoffs. “What does that even mean?”
“Elisium and eastern US share a time zone—don’t ask—but, you know, if one dares say Sidera ain’t timeless, Sidera and Earth have wildly
different time zones. Not just zones, but rates,” Samuel says. “Sidera’s slow compared to Earth. Maybe Eden’s using Minkar to check Sidera’s time and what’s going on there. That sketchy fiend seems to have connections. Maybe, all starting with Sidera’s first dimensional crack—thanks, Attie—Eden’s aligning Sidera’s time and events with ours for the right,” he glimpses Gene through his eyelashes, “big time.”
Atlas raises a hand. “Minkar expressed he had people—not Siderans—hidden everywhere on Earth in outposts. Do you believe it true? He did deceive us about much.”
Samuel freezes; he stares past trickling IV bags and at the back wall. “Accenda. There aren’t any rebel Siderans Minkar knows. Here or there.” He looks to Atlas, to Gene. “They’re all Accenda. All Eden’s folk, with a few hired, clueless humans probably. Accenda have easy portal access to the whole world, after all.”
Blackness sinks into Atlas’s gut. A thick, liquid weight squeezes his shoulders into his body and fills his lungs. His head spins.
Gene says, “Nobody wants to free Sidera.”
Atlas’s vision blurs.
“Atlas,” she frowns and rests her hand on the bed’s bar, “I didn’t mean—”
An explosion of peppy soprano and tenor voices gushes from the television; Atlas jumps off his seat, face white. He wrings a clump of his hair as he inspects the singing, dancing brush-sticks and harmonizing molars that riddle pictures’ chaotic strobe. He throws his hand at it, leaving his hair more craggy than usual.
“Will you end that—” Atlas faces Samuel. “That.”
Brow quirked, Samuel only taps the volume down to a murmur.
“I have many,” Atlas upholds his finger, “questions about,” and lets it float in the TV’s general direction, “that.” Chin tipping, he moves his finger to the wrinkle between his brows and clears his throat. “Absolute, not now. Do you believe Eden would travel to West Virginia and there converse with Minkar?”
“She could be in Sidera for all we know,” Samuel says.
“Reading The Presage?” Gene asks.
Atlas budges his head left to right and kneads his hands. Again and fully, he shakes his head. Walks to the room’s striped window.
Atlas: A Pylonic Dawn Page 29
