Steady Ground | ✔

14 | Where's the other guy?

Atlas woke up to a sudden, piercing pain in his chest. He gasped, eyes flying open.

He saw a blurry figure of a dark skinned man with braided dreads tied back beneath a hard helmet, and beyond him, he saw a black sky striped with movie film and spotted with gray and white flickering lights that moved with his vision.

Were they... doing CPR on him?

He was supposed to lean to the side and hurl water now, right? So why did he just feel fine right then at that moment? Except for the piercing ache in his chest.

Atlas shook his head and pressed a hand over the other man's. "I'm okay," he choked out.

His voice sounded rough even to him, but yet still it felt like his lungs were fine. Had he not breathed and swallowed down gallons of water?

The man above him started talking, grabbing Atlas by the arm and lifting his head up slightly, but Atlas just closed his eyes. He was exhausted. And now there was another person.

"What, you telling me he wasn't even drowning?"

"Ask him!"

"Hey, hey, are you all there? Does anything hurt? Feel off? Can you breathe okay?"

The slight movement on his torso as the other man leaned back reawakened the pain in his chest. He clutched his ribs. "No, and kind of?" Now, each breath nearly left tears in his eyes.

Thank God he knew that the pain wouldn't last long, not in Chaos' world.

Although it did seem to heal faster than it should have. Was what he breathed in even water?

Atlas sat up, still grasping his ribs. He was back on the face with the movie film above his head, of which he refused to look at. Thankfully, it must not have been rewinding the day he found his mother, because that horrible noise of him screaming, 'mom!' didn't echo.

All that struggle to just leave the Eye. If these people hadn't been there, would he have been stuck there? If anything, that made him worry even more for Arrone, whom he hardly had the time or space of mind to think about lately.

"Thank you," he said.

"My pleasure."

When he looked at the man who gave him CPR, he saw a lot of concern and perhaps some confusion and fear there.

"How long have you been here?" Atlas asked.

"Not long, man, not long. Are you one of those guys we're looking for? And are you sure you're okay? You're not acting like a man who just drowned!"

Atlas and the man, who he soon learned was nicknamed Dizzee, talked for what felt like a long time. The second guy with them, also dressed in the same uniform bottom and hard cap stood mostly in silence, looking around the land they currently occupied. His name was Grayson, and he had a bearish shape to him with a reddish round face and a large frame and the accent that Atlas would expect from Alaska. Already he knew Grayson wouldn't talk a whole lot. He seemed confident, but quiet.

He quickly learned that these people weren't apparitions created by Chaos. They were here because Ashe had called 9-1-1. They were actually here for him, and for Arrone.

Relief hit him just as hard as the underwater current.

This wasn't futile. Now he had other people there to show he wasn't insane. Not only that, but people who actually knew what they were doing—to an extent, because no one anywhere in the world would have the training to know how to face this upside-down world head on.