Steady Ground | ✔

22 | After the earthquake

Atlas spent what felt like eternity reigning himself back in. He sat on the ground, the smoke filling his lungs with each breath, his eyes burning with its presence in the air. It didn't seem as bad now. It didn't feel suffocating or smell sour, like it had after they conditioned the cell bars.

Although he ached, he tried his best to cling to that thought. It was grounding. He was safe for now. It was okay if he took his time walking again.

He shoved himself back up to his feet. Exhaustion lingered in every fiber of his being but it was okay, he told himself. Cerberus had yet to find him. He had succeeded in that regard!

He clung to that slight encouragement, and pressed forward with a hand pressed tight to his ribs and a limp in every small step.

The smoke shifted idly around him as he walked, but not like it did around the metal beast. Was it the metal that repelled the smoke?

He continued to count his footsteps, eyes shifting in random directions as he tried to spot even the faintest glimmer of the oil slick colors.

Atlas hit almost two thousand footsteps before he heard something.

His body stilled. He held his breath. The sound came again, though he couldn't identify what it was. It was faint. A susurration between the stark white clouds around him.

Mouth sandpaper dry and throat scratchy enough to make him cough, he followed after it. The best he could, anyway, with his disorientation and weakness. He couldn't tell if he was going in the right direction, either, and as his breaths picked up again, he could hardly hear it over his own sound.

Six hundred steps. It was six hundred steps before he heard it again. Six hundred steps of him sinking in his own self doubt and terror, of him looking behind his shoulder for the faintest sign of Cerberus and knowing that he wouldn't be able to run again if it showed up.

"Atlas!"

His breath caught in his throat.

"Shit, I don't want to go in there after him."

"We might have to."

Atlas pressed a hand to his face. Thank God!

He tried to limp forward a little faster. "I'm right here," he tried to say. It came out scratchy and quiet, but it was all he could muster at that point.

And then the fire fighters came into view. Dizzee's head stuck out into the smoke, his body vanished from sight. The rainbow glow peeked out between wisps of smoke.

He made it out.

~ 

Atlas and the crew stepped out into two feet of hot water. It immediately inhabited his boots, warming against his swollen ankle.

They weren't out yet, though. They still had to get out of the tunnel.

Dizzee prodded Ashe. "Girl, we're out," he said. He jarred her shoulder, and then stopped, propping her up against the wall. Half of her body disappeared in the water they trudged through. "Do we have more of our equipment in the truck?"

"Maybe. I'll look."

"The wall's collapsed up there," Atlas said.

"I think that's the last of our worries," Grayson responded.

Atlas watched him continue down the maintenance-tunnel like crevice.

Twenty-five minutes later, they were out. Chaos hadn't even bothered leaving Ashe's mind until the last second. Atlas could feel the ground rumble beneath their feet with his frustration.