August's discomfort immediately told Atlas that this was a place Atlas shouldn't have gone to, but yet he was never stopped.

Instead of its eeriness making him feel scared, he actually felt a little proud of himself. Maybe a little worried that he might drown if he walked too far. With each step, it started to feel like he was trudging through shallow water.

"Do you think this is where I can leave the Eye?" Atlas asked. His voice came out muffled, like he was indeed below water. He had no trouble breathing, though. It wasn't unlike a summer day before a thunderstorm: thick and humid air that clung to your face and neck and fogged up your glasses.

Little darkness bubbles rose, radiating a black aura within their personal spotlight. Even they, he knew, weren't water. They simply passed through their bodies and rose into the air until they were consumed by the liquid black around them.

August sighed, hands tucked into his hoodie. "What makes you think that?"

Atlas was starting to get sick of the not-answers, so he said nothing.

He continued walking forward. With each step, the humidity seemed to grow thicker until he could almost see it, and the black bubbles raged upward with more ferocity. And then, his light aura shortened.

He flinched, stopping short in his tracks.

August had stopped walking. He looked behind him, and his friend had vanished. The light only continued the distance of an outstretched arm before it abruptly stopped. And once more, the darkness seemed a whole lot scarier.

"August?"

"Sorry, man, I can't go with you."

"Why not?" The question left Atlas' mouth before he really thought about it. August made no attempt to come where they could see one another. It made him feel far away.

"You already know!" August said. "Stop asking dumb questions."

There was a shuffle of feet on clay, a wet, sticky sound.

August couldn't leave the Eye, could he? Chaos was going to do that to him. It only made sense. If he left, he wouldn't see August or his mother again.

Somehow, the later was more okay with him.

"Come back here for a moment."

Atlas tightened his jaw. "Okay."

He walked back. With each step the darkness bubbles grew milder, calmer, and then his field of vision expanded.

His friend stood there still with his hands in his hoodie pocket, looking at the ground. Something about it looked sad, and for whatever reason, he felt guilt for it. The young man in front of him was fake, but that didn't mean a whole lot anymore.

"What's up?" he asked.

August sighed, and after a long minute looked up at him with a shrug. "I guess since this is it, I'll tell you some things. Doesn't matter. He can't do anything about it now."

~

Ashe clutched the walkie-talkie in both hands, hoping, begging that the two rescue workers came back up before they continued any further.

The temperature seemed to drop as she stood there. A few minutes, and then ten passed. The sun was starting to travel down, the sky darkening in ombre increments. How long had it been, now, since Atlas and Arrone vanished into the crevice?

There was nothing around to cast shadows, yet the snow seemed to darken around her.

She looked over her shoulder. Her coworkers were huddling near the tent still, occasionally sending glances her way.

What was she supposed to do now?

Her stomach knotted with the realization that four people might have vanished because of her stupidity yesterday.

Ashe swallowed, and taking the walkie-talkie with her, she made slow steps to the SUV. She ignored her coworkers' gazes, especially Levi's who left a small miniscule of anger in her chest when she looked at him.

Arrone had a tendency to keep everything in his briefcase. Emergency contacts for all of the employees were sure to be in there.

She opened the right passenger door, and climbed inside. Somehow, it managed to be colder in the car. She placed his briefcase on her lap, and although it felt slightly wrong, she opened it and began digging through the papers, occasionally looking out the tinted windows and across the thin layer of snow.

The rescue workers hadn't climbed back out yet.

The scratching of paper filled the vehicle, and she felt her face grow hot.

Was she seriously thinking of calling their families?

Why would she? When it was her fault?

She crossed her arms over the briefcase and squeezed it closer to her. Did her coworkers care? Was she alone in this? What was she supposed to do?

Her vision blurred. Instinctively, she turned away from the window when the first tears fell. She zeroed in on the leather seat beside her, squeezing the briefcase so hard her breaths came out in hiccups around it.

Should she call 9-1-1 again? Was there a point? Should she tell her coworkers? Go down into the crevice herself?

Ashe squeezed her eyes closed, leaning her head against the cold window glass.

She must have sat there for an hour before her breathing returned to normal and her arms fatigued. The briefcase slid down her lap against the front passenger seat and she did nothing about it, watching it in vague interest, wondering if it would fall and scatter Arrone's neatly organized papers all over the SUV floor mats.

A phone buzzed beside her.

She flinched at the vibration. Looking to her left, she saw Atlas' phone resting face-down on the backseat.

Ashe picked it up. There were three images from someone named Leia.

She clicked on the notification, only to turn the screen off when it prompted a password. She held it in her hands. Would this person be an ICE contact for him?

It felt wrong yet again to be digging through other people's stuff. She clicked the emergency button on the lockscreen. For whatever reason, Atlas had filled out the emergency information. Allergies: none. Medications: none.

And someone she assumed was his father was listed as an emergency contact at the very end.

Ashe looked outside. The emergency crew still had yet to return, and her coworkers left her to her own devices, casting worried looks in both directions.

She held her breath and clicked on the emergency contact.

The least she could do is let him know what was going on.

~

The photobook seemed to weigh down Atlas' lap like a chunk of concrete. He sat cross-legged beside August within their little spotlight, surrounded by nothing but also everything. Yet, it felt like his friend was far away right then as everything sunk in.

He knew a lot was wrong with this world; he knew that something was going on. But the fact that those were only confirmed without being answered left a horrible feeling in his stomach and an uncanny pressure to get out.

Atlas clenched the cover of the binder, almost expecting Chaos to come and strike his friend down right then for saying anything.

But, nothing happened.

Silence and peace ensued.

"Sorry you have to go through this," August said after a while.

He shook his head. "Nothing I can do though."

"Nope."

His face felt numb. He could feel the photobook grow cold in his hands. Did that mean he was already losing one of his two memories?

How even was he supposed to do this? It was impossible.

Atlas stood up, patting the sticky backside of his pants down to dislodge patches of orange clay. He didn't remember when the ground once again changed, but guess that didn't even matter now.

"Alright."

"Alright," August copied. "Well, I'll see you on the other side one day perhaps."

Atlas didn't know whether to laugh or cringe at the thought. He grabbed August in a short, tight hug, and said his farewell.

Once again it felt so real. It felt like he was losing his skinny, acne-faced, hoodie-wearing best friend all over again.

Somehow, over his time of being there, he had learned not to breathe in deep. Because if he did, sandalwood would overwhelm every sense in his being. But right then he couldn't help it. He had to to stay sane, to keep everything calm.

He let go.

"You going to go?"

"Yeah."

"Then why are you just standing there?"

Atlas tightened the photobook against his ribs. Why was this so hard for him?

He didn't have anything worth saying, so he turned, and he continued walking until the bubbles started creeping into his spotlight, until his spotlight suddenly narrowed, and August vanished into the darkness. His footsteps grew heavy and the terrain seemed to grow more slippery, the air pockets turning from a gentle upward flow into a rapid rage not unlike boiling water.

Soon, they rose so swiftly and chaotically that he couldn't see his feet.

Would you rather me be dead?

Atlas couldn't take another step. Pressure built up in his throat. He pressed his palm into his eyes.

Were the consequences worth it? Were they worth it when he knew, now, that his life above ground would turn upside down the moment he escaped?

"Bye, man."

August's words were so silent over the loud rage of boiling air around him. But it was enough to make him lose it.

He crouched, squeezing the photobook close because he had nothing else to hold onto anymore. He buried his face into it and cried.

Bye.

~

It was a long time before Altas regained enough strength to keep walking despite knowing that those were August's last words. All he could do right then was focus on the oddity around him and ignore that feeling of aloneness, and that feeling that the Eye was so much bigger and more filled with the unknown than he would ever want.

What other friends and monsters would he have met, and would have to leave behind, if he decided to stay? He couldn't stay, but that thought still plagued him.

Soon, his boot hit something firm.

He stopped. He caught small black patches of algae in between brief windows of forward vision. It was slick, and much like the wood of the doc that threw him into the whole mess.

That thought made him pause. He could almost feel the splinters in his arm and the dizzying rush of wind against his face when the deck had sprung to life and flailed him around the area.

Of course not even a scratch or scar remained on the forearm he had shoved through the breaks in the wood panels. Actually, now that he thought about it, they probably had healed by the time he sunk to the bottom. He had no memory of the pain past that point, but maybe he had been too unnerved to notice.

Instinctively, Atlas backed up. Surely there had to be a safer way to go about this. He didn't trust the dock to not grow hands and grab him like an excited toddler and throw him back into the depths, where he'd have to do everything all over again.

So, he went right.

He walked at a hopefully-safe distance from the wood, quietly counting his footsteps in the roaring dark around him. Somehow his thoughts still sounded loud in his head. It was easy to focus on counting numbers.

When he hit fifty steps, he was still walking alongside the algae smothered wood. Unable to see beyond his feet didn't help the feeling that he could very well be making walking motions but be absolutely unmoving.

I'm not walking up that dock.

That was probably his most firm resolve since he wound up down here.

Atlas lowered his head and kept walking, because that was all he could think to do. The landscape remained flat, and the wood remained beside him, and the raging darkness bubbles never relaxed. It trapped him in his own cage, away from anything he couldn't immediately touch.

Arrone had been the first to fall into the lake. Was he facing his own memory apparitions? Or had he already beaten him to escaping?

His thoughts seemed to become more focused as he walked toward nothing. It was starting to seem as if in order to leave the Eye, he'd had to walk up the plank. Why did that seem so reversed and weird?

The thought almost got him to laugh. Here he was, alone and thinking weird things again, comparing the Eye dock to a pirate ship.

Atlas took to walking in what he assumed would be wide arches. He'd walk to where the bubbles slowed, where the clay became less slick, and the air less humid, and then he'd walk back up, only to once more find the dock once more.

Who knew how long he walked like this, trying to use the mystery and the counting to keep him focused.

He was at possibly two thousand and something steps now. Of course, his mind had lost focused, and he in result lost track of where he was. Sometimes he'd start over at the nearest ten that he could remember.

But, nonetheless, there were about two thousand steps in a mile. In an entire mile, he hadn't achieved any distance.

Atlas stared down at the wood by his boots. He really wished he could look up, and watch it rise into the distance, look at the shore. But he saw nothing but inky bubbles and black that he could not feel. It was like being submerged in an isolation tank, as even his steps seemed to feel far away at times.

His skin prickled down his fingertips and his hair clung to his face after being in the warm humidity for so long. At least he had that.

He was going to have to climb it, wasn't he?

~

Ashe was surprised that Atlas' father didn't immediately pick up. From her eavesdropping, she noticed they would call every day at least once during the trip. So, she called again. By the third call, he finally picked up.

"Hey, Atlas," the father continued on before she could say anything. "I'm sorry for not picking up. I can't really talk right now—I feel like I've been saying that to you a lot lately but I promise nothing is wrong this time! Is something going on on your side?"

He sounded like a sweet man, and suddenly she clammed up.

"Hello?"

"Um, hi," she said finally. Just those two sounds left her chest shaking. "I'm afraid I'm not Atlas. I need to talk to you about him."

The line went dead silent. She shuffled in her seat. She could only imagine how scary that would sound to him. No, she could imagine it, because she was going through it too.

She took a deep breath.

"Is he okay?"

Ashe found herself shaking her head as if he could see her. "We're looking for him right now. I'm his coworker; my name is Ashe and I'm currently waiting for the search and rescue team to get back in contact with me." Somehow, she couldn't get herself to be honest. She had to hold the phone with both hands against her ear, looking far out the window as if she could see this man on the other side of the continent and the distraught in his eyes.

Ashe heard some quiet talk and the jingle of a glass door on the other side. She waited patiently as the father undoubtedly excused himself from whatever he was doing.

"I'm sorry," the man said. "I'm trying to, you know, process what you just told me. He's missing? This isn't a joke? Something happened to him?"

She swallowed nervously, and then she told him what she knew. She couldn't get herself to say anything about the oil slick, about the sirens, but the rest she said with a quiet voice that somehow sounded way calmer and more level-headed than she felt.

Atlas' father waited patiently for her to finish. Maybe patiently wasn't the right word. He didn't interrupt; he was completely silent, and her imagination still painted him the same, an older man with white hair staring at his feet with eyebrows drawn back, a shoulder pressed against the wall for stability.

She finished.

Her mouth felt dry and she blinked her eyes to refocus on her surroundings. Levi was beginning to walk up to her. She watched him stand from his crouch and head over with a few short words to another coworker.

"I didn't realize this trip could be so dangerous," the father said. He, too, was more level than he should have been, at least at first. "Please keep me updated. The moment you learn anything new, tell me as soon as you can. I'm taking care of my mother right now. I can't... go up there. I don't know what I would do if I did. There's nothing I can do, is there?"

"I don't think there is." She held her finger up when Levi tapped the door she leaned against.

Their call ended after more silence and grief. She wished she could have seen him for real. She could've emphasized better. She could've been comforting. But over the phone all she was able to do was stay as clear as possible, and not give promises.

She rubbed her face.

Levi carefully opened the door. "Did the..." he trailed off. "Are they not coming back?"

Ashe shook her head.

Once more, the urge to go down there herself resurfaced. But she shouldn't. What would happen, if she just ended up like them?

"What should we do?"

"I don't know."

~

Ashe ended up returning to the crevice with the walkie-talkie in hand. She didn't find Arrone's phone or any contact information for him in his briefcase or in the SUV. Which made a little sense – he always had his phone on him, clipped to his belt.

The rescue workers still had yet to return. She never learned their names, either. In a place like Alaska, where the population was so spread out and so little in comparison to the other fifty states, would there be anyone she could call to rescue the rescue workers? How did things go from here?

It was so out of her scope of reality.

All she knew was that somehow Arrone had broken her and Atlas' first succumbtion to the siren call of the oil slick.

Why did she want so badly to recreate that, and go down there just to see if that's what happened?

That's kind of what her expertise was, anyways. Figuring out what caused something to happen. Wasn't that what a seismologist did?

So, she sat down once more in the snow, and thought. She didn't necessarily have to follow through with it if she did come up with something, right? So it was harmless.

At least that's what she told herself right then when she had nothing to do but wait and worry and feel the guilt pile up onto her shoulders.

She likely sat there for over thirty minutes. Over the time, her coworkers had one by one or in pairs came up and voiced their concerns, and asked if she had heard anything. Of course, they all got the same answer as well.

But, in between the short periods of time where she could tune out the chill of the melting, compact snow beneath her, she came up with an idea.

No, that wasn't right. She decided on an idea. A mix of curiosity, guilt, and a strange sense of obligation led her to the rescue truck.

Surely they had some kind of first aid kit? Because she needed bandaids. Or maybe tape.

Ashe let her coworkers think whatever of her as she rummaged through the state-funded vehicle, mostly likely illegally. But at that moment, she didn't care. And thankfully, it didn't take a whole lot of time to find a heavy-duty gray box, red cross right in the middle. Actually, she found four of them, lined neatly against the wall of the vehicle, with an empty space beside it. Had she not noticed one of the rescue workers taking one with them?

She grabbed the closest one. It was surprisingly organized inside. Trauma dressings, ABD pads, Insta-Glucose, and what seemed like a hundred more items were inside, labeled with short-hand stickers for quick selection.

Why did she expect bandaids in an emergency rescue truck?

She was quickly disappointed to only find a roll of first aid tape, but that would work too. She grabbed it out, and began cutting strips of it. To test out the adhesive, she pushed up her sleeve and placed a strip right over the middle of her forearm.

One, two, three...

She winced when she ripped it off.

Yeah, it would work.

She balled it up and tossed it on the floor, and then worked to cut up enough strips to tape all the way up her forearm. Hopefully she could keep her mind enough to rip one off whenever she felt lulled by the oil slick.

Tossing the tape and shears back inside, she snapped it closed and hefted it up. It'd probably be a good idea to take it with her, too.

Why did she almost feel excited walking up to the crevice again?

Ashe tossed the kit down, and climbed after it, not bothering to take the walkie talkie. She already knew its fate if it came with her. Warm water sloshed into her boots, and shadows crossed overhead as the more jagged spots of the land's edge hid the evening sun from view.

Time to see if her plan would work. And if it didn't, well, at least karma would return the favor.

~

Atlas took a deep breath. He squeezed his eyes closed and braced himself as he took his first step onto the algae-slickened wood of the dock.

He paused. Nothing happened. Peeking an eye open, he took another step. Then another, up until he was perhaps a meter away from the orange clay floor behind him. He balanced awkwardly on it, as the wood sloped slightly upward.

Would this end up like those videos of people trying to walk up icy steps?

He subconsciously rubbed his jaw as he took a few more steps. Already, his boots began to slide slightly. And he immediately began doubting this whole idea.

This was stupid. But what else could he do? Wander in circles again?

With limited options, Atlas continued forward.

It very quickly turned upright. He had to squeeze his fingertips into the wood and scrabble with his feet to pull himself up an arm-length at a time. And then, his hand hit a ledge. He almost sighed in relief when he grasped onto it. With a few more kicks, he got his elbows secured, and a couple more had him swinging his legs over.

The moment his boots reached the ledge, intense yellow light burst through his barrier of bubbles.

He covered his face, his head pounding at the sudden brightness.

And then he couldn't breathe.

Water crashed down on him with the force of an undercurrent, flinging him to the side. It flooded his mouth, tasteless and ice-cold, and his eyes burned. It thundered in his ears.

He was going to drown.

But he had thought that last time, too, didn't he?

Atlas choked, squeezing his eyes shut. He frantically kicked water, but once more he felt as if he wasn't even moving. The undercurrent pressed on, tumbling him flat against the dock that tilted up again like a wooden drop-off.

His lungs begged and ached for air. It took almost all of his focus to hold a desperate breath in as he frantically clawed for a grip on the wood slots above his head. Yet, the current was relentless. It pounded against his body and exposed skin with bruising force. The weight of his clothes and boots anchored him down. There was nothing he could do.

He was going to drown. And for real, this time.

No, no. He wouldn't let that get to his head!

His body was sluggish and uncoordinated as he tried to kick his boots off. If he didn't move fast enough, the dark and fuzziness would take over. That urgency didn't help his case.

He felt weak. He grasped the wood behind him like it could keep him focused, like it could distract him from the searing in his chest and the splitting whistle and thunder in his head. It drowned out all other sounds. His thoughts, the voices above; he heard nothing.

Finally, he kicked off one shoe.

But it really was too late. Water flooded his mouth as he was forced to inhale. Pain and panic flooded through every inch of his system. And then everything went silent.