Leda lifted her chin and planted a kiss on his lips, tentative, feather light.
Then she pulled back. “This still doesn’t mean anything, okay?” she whispered, and even though he couldn’t make out her expression, Watt could picture it—her brow furrowed in stubborn determination, and fierce pride.
“Of course. It means nothing,” Watt agreed, knowing full well that they were trading lies.
CALLIOPE
CALLIOPE STOOD AT the base of the Tower’s famous climbing wall, an enormous vertical structure that began on the 620th floor and spanned almost thirty floors upward, along the Tower’s north interior. She glanced at the clock that glowed constantly in the top left corner of her vision: she never turned it off, preferring to give a minimum of verbal commands to her contacts. There was nothing romantic about muttering “clock” during a flirtation.
Almost five p.m. Calliope tried to resign herself to the fact that Atlas wasn’t coming. When she’d casually flickered him this afternoon to let him know that she was climbing, she’d thought it was a brilliant plan. She remembered how much Atlas loved rock climbing—or at least, he used to. But she was starting to realize that New York Atlas had less in common with Tanzania “Travis” than she’d expected.
She adjusted her aeroharness and brushed her hands together before reaching for the first handhold, then the second. It might clear her head, climbing alone for a while.
“Starting without me, Callie?”
Calliope closed her eyes, allowing herself a brief self-satisfied grin. She stayed clasped where she was on the wall, only a few meters above Atlas, arching her back just so as she looked down at him. “I’m glad you made it,” she called out.
Atlas smiled in that lopsided way of his, lifting only one corner of his mouth, as if he hadn’t fully committed to the decision to smile. He stepped into an aeroharness and lifted a strap over one broad shoulder. “Sorry, it wasn’t easy for me to escape work.”
Calliope let go of the wall and the aeroharness caught her just a few centimeters into the fall, suspending her in midair. She pushed the soles of her shoes against the wall and spun lazily about, her black artech pants showing off her long, lithe form. “Your boss sounds unnecessarily strict, given that he’s your dad,” she pointed out.
Atlas gave an appreciative laugh. He yanked on a pair of gloves, fastening the second one with his teeth even though there was an auto-fasten setting. “Piece of advice, don’t ever take a job for your mom. Because it really sucks, working for a parent.”
You’d be surprised. Calliope wondered what Atlas would say if he knew the deadly efficiency with which Calliope and Elise worked together.
Atlas pushed a few buttons on a screen, setting his handholds to orange—Calliope’s were already colored her signature bright fuchsia—and started up. She waited until he was close before spinning around to regain her handholds and join him.
The wall was almost empty right now. There was a trio of climbers in the distance, but Calliope could barely hear them, let alone see them. It felt like she and Atlas were alone on some remote desert peak. The sun streamed in through the massive windows behind them.
There was something so soothing about climbing, Calliope thought as they crept beetle-like up the sheer, exposed face. Find handhold, find new foothold, pull yourself up, repeat. The motions were clean and uncomplicated, but they required focus, leaving no room for her mind to wander. She loved the rush of adrenaline in her stomach as she climbed ever higher, her body contracting a little in instinctive fear that she might fall; though of course the aeroharness wouldn’t let that happen. Her shoulders began to ache with a pleasant soreness. She would definitely need to use a massage pillow in the hotel tonight.
Next to her Atlas was swinging wildly, like a creature let out of hell. He took huge, leaping jumps, missing hand-and footholds, scrabbling desperately for purchase. More than once Calliope saw him fall, only to be caught in midair. Then he would grit his teeth and start the furious climb again.
“You know that aeroharness is a safety device, not a toy. This isn’t a race.” Her tone was deceptively lighthearted. What was Atlas so worked up about?
“You’re only saying that because you’re losing,” Atlas called out from several meters above.
Calliope stifled a smile and tried to move faster, her footholds slightly less sure, her hands burning beneath the high-tech supergrip gloves. This high up, the rock face was covered in tiny ice crystals, to simulate climbing Kilimanjaro or Everest. Against it, Calliope’s pink handholds stood out as particularly ludicrous. She marveled at how the light turned the ice almost blue, little swirls of color sparking off it each time she brushed it.
When she reached the summit, Atlas held out a hand to pull her up and over the top. She kept her palm in his for a moment, absorbing the unfamiliar but pleasant feel of it clasped around her own. When he let go, she felt a surprising pang of disappointment.
The ceiling soared overhead, its solar panels a robin’s-egg blue, with little wisps of cloud darting across them. Despite the ice crystals, it was comfortably warm up here. Calliope plopped down on the gravelly surface and took a sip of water from her pack, her legs stretched out before her.
“So,” Atlas asked, “what do you think of our man-made mountain?”
“A better climb than the one in the Singapore Tower, and definitely a better view than Rio,” she replied, just to remind him how worldly and well-traveled she was. “But not as nice as the real thing. After all, it’s not Africa.”
Atlas was leaning back on his elbows, his heather-gray shirt damp with sweat. Expressions darted across his face too quickly for Calliope to make sense of them all. She wished she could snatch his thoughts from the air with her hands and take them to some lab to analyze. How did he really think of her—as a stranger, a travel buddy, a mistake? Or as someone he wanted to get to know?
He’s just a mark, she chided herself. It didn’t matter what he thought of her, as long as she could figure out how to get something of value from him.
“No, it’s not Africa,” Atlas agreed, with a note of something like defeat. “But nothing ever is.”
“Don’t you want to go back?”
“Do you?”
Calliope hesitated. A month ago she would have said “maybe someday,” the way she always spoke about the places she’d already been. The problem was simply that there were so many places in the world, so many corners she hadn’t yet seen, and Calliope felt a deep, primal hunger to taste them all. Which was why she always spoke about the familiar with a touch of impatience.