Atlas could almost watch the theoretical hourglass drain of sand as they built an escape plan. He could feel it in his bones and hear it in Ashe's shallow breathing when they huddled close together, speaking quietly as if Chaos couldn't eavesdrop whenever he pleased.

Atlas flipped his photobook to another page.

No new memories.

August had said memories would find him. And when they did, they'd appear here. Although it had done nothing to help him in the past, he knew now that it made for a great foresight tool. It remaining blank meant that Chaos hadn't thought of another surprise to throw at him yet.

"Still good?" Ashe asked.

He nodded. "Nothing yet."

He glanced at her face. She was stoic, but he knew she had to have been just as exhausted as him and in much more pain. He didn't have the guts to ask her what Chaos had done. He tried not to look at her injuries. Thankfully, she never brought it up.

So far, they had come up with a couple ideas. The longer he thought about them, the more he believed them, too.

Their exit items, like Atlas' photobook, were distractions to a more obvious escape.

Chaos didn't have reigning power over all people in the realm all the time.

It gave him the extra motivation to scratch out a plan. Half-baked, but a plan nonetheless. However now, they were faced with the hardest question.

"How do we get out?" Ashe asked.

He almost expected the skin to rumble below him with Chaos' laughter. A slew of childish taunts. But it never came. The air didn't prickle. He wouldn't let himself think that maybe he wasn't listening.

But the answer was clear. So far, everything in this realm had one purpose or another, even the absurd or random. He grimaced thinking about it.

They had nothing to do but try.

Atlas stood up, pressing a hand to his ribs like they might fall out otherwise. "This is horrible," he started, "but I think these slugs will work."

"Dude, no." Dizzee shook his head. He sat with his back against one of the magnified nose hairs, as far as he could from the corner of their cell that leaked chaos snot.

He felt like he needed to explain himself. "Well, they disappear before they get to the bars."

Dizzee threw his hands up to stop him. "No need to explain. You do whatever you want. But I'm not helping."

Like any child or teenager, Atlas had at one point found the one dollar Flubber barrels hilarious. And when he grasped the little slug-shaped droplets that slipped out from the ceiling, he almost expected it to feel like that. Something warmed by body heat. A strong plastic smell and an oily surface that left your hands soft afterwards.

But that wasn't the case. He was surprised that it felt like soap. Hair conditioner, perhaps. Cold and smooth. It squished through his fingers the same, too, making little plopping sounds as it landed on the ground.

Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. This felt like what had been flicked onto his face when he first awoke in the jail. Besides, he was in Chaos' realm. Anything was possible here.

Whatever boyish instinct he had made him sniff it. He recoiled immediately. That's why everything smelled sour and salty. He gagged.

"Did you just—"

The other boyish instinct he had was to immediately flick some into Dizzee's face. Ashe stifled her laughter, covering her mouth in a hand.

Atlas grinned as the fire fighter gave him a deadpan glare, wiping snot from his nose. Then, before he could change his mind or realize what he was doing, he smeared it onto the bars.

Immediately, toxic green light burned through the snot. It lit up like inside were hundreds of luminescent plankton. A scent of sour socks erupted through the jail, mingling like a smoke bomb with rolling white wisps of fog. Atlas covered his nose and mouth with an arm, squinting as the blinding light faded after long heartbeats and the goo was sucked into the bars like water up into a plant's roots.

The white smoke lingered.

Despite Atlas' best efforts, he couldn't keep the smell out. His stomach rolled on itself and his eyes watered and burned.

And then came thudding footsteps like pounding drums. His eyes widened. The metal hounds.

With one elbow still covering his nose, he strained against one of the hairs. It creaked but only budged an inch, leaving a nice shoulder indent. His idea worked!

"Help me!"

He didn't even need to say it. Grayson was already by his side, and Ashe pushed herself to her feet. She quickly pulled her jacket, once tied around her waist, over her nose. The rescue worker took two globs in large hands and slathered the bars. White smoke blasted out in mini geysers and soon enough, Atlas couldn't see anything except the occasional flash of green light.

"Atlas! What are you doing?"

His mother's voice rang out. And it had the tone.

Atlas had to remind himself that it wasn't her. If it had been his real mother he'd have frozen and stopped everything.

Grayson grunted as he slammed into the bar. The hair gave way, slapping onto the ground.

They were free.

Red, earthy scented sandalwood incense zigzagged through the blinding sour gas, granting brief moments of sweet relief or maybe just sensory overload.

He couldn't see. Footprints pounded in all directions. From his mother, or her dogs, perhaps. He could do nothing but rely on his sense of touch and orientation, slightly masked by whatever conditioner remained on his hands. It was so alike being pressed and uselessly aware that he was drowning when he tried to leave the Eye. Chaos had provided the way out last time, and seemingly this time, too, but that didn't mean it wasn't impossible to pursue.

Someone bumped his shoulder.

Before the moment vanished, he grasped onto them, clutching rough fabric in a sticky hand. He recognized the taller, lengthy runner build immediately. "Dizzee!"

The man returned the secure grip.

All he could think of were those strange chain-snakes that his mother had created like she was a sorceress. "Don't let the red smoke touch you," he said quickly, an elbow still pressed tightly against his face to keep out the smoke the best he could. It didn't help much, and he knew that if he didn't get to fresh air soon, he'd end up exactly like he did at the edge of the Eye.

"Got it," Dizzee said. "Now, follow me. I want you to get on hands and knees, 'kay?" To show his point, he dropped down to the ground. Atlas did the same, reluctantly letting go of Dizzee to place fingers onto the taut skin beneath him. "Grayson's going to Ashe. You can't see me so we need to keep talking so I know you're still here, got it?"

"Shouldn't we hold hands?"

"If you go down I don't want you taking me too! We don't know where those dogs are."

Atlas got the point.

"As soon as the smoke dissipates we run!"

Dizzee tugged briefly on Atlas' shoulder, and immediately they climbed forward. Atlas could feel the thumps of every foot or pawstep through his fingertips. Somehow he knew they were beyond the hair bars now. He heard his mother coughing to his right. If they wanted to get to Arrone, then they needed to go right!

"We need to get Arrone," he said. "They took him to the right."

"And get trapped here? No way! The bald man can wait!"

That took him by surprise. "You're a firefighter! You're supposed to save people."

"No point saving someone if we die too. First, we get out!"

Atlas didn't know why that felt wrong. When he first saw Arrone again, he was reluctant to be happy about it. But now that he'd found him, he didn't want to have to do the search all over again! He hadn't thought that when he left Dizzee and Grayson to the dogs, though.

Despite everything, guilt stabbed him in the stomach at the thought. Maybe it was just his ribs aching with each crawl forward. More likely than anything, it was probably his pride, because he finally had felt like he was doing something good, making up for what he had done.

"But that was our plan!"

"Well you didn't know chaos snot would spew smoke and call the guards. Plans change."

He didn't want Dizzee to be perfectly fine with Atlas' actions before at the oil slick. What he did was wrong. Yet Dizzee was saying it was right, inadvertently.

"And I swear to God if you leave me to get him I'll let those metal dog things eat you because I don't want my life to go to shit because I spent all my time getting cursed trying to save a dumbass from his weird ass mom."

As much as he wanted to, Atlas didn't argue with that. He bit down on his tongue, following Dizzee's voice as he kept talking.

The hourglass continued to drain sand. The seconds felt long, even though he knew the exit wasn't far away. But the smoke wouldn't let up. It circled around him, rough against his skin and thick and heavy in his lungs.

Eventually, he couldn't hear his mother anymore. But the pounding never dissipated. It grew in his ears until it was almost like he was the one conjuring it now. His head was starting to feel light. He couldn't see shifting clouds to indicate the dogs were still there. Grayson and Ashe may as well be gone, too. They never made a sound.

They were going in circles again.

Atlas stopped.

"Dizzee," he said. "We can't get out this way." He dropped his elbow, sucking in a deep breath. It didn't help. He coughed on the smoke. "We'll be stuck here forever at thi—" His vision flashed white when something heavy tripped over him, kicking deep into his bad rib. Pain lanced through his side as he hiccuped his last word. "—s rate." He barely heard the femininine scream and crash of metal.

But Dizzee did. In seconds, the firefighter was at his side, shoving him up to his feet.

He choked down gasping breaths. His eyes burned with water and smoke as he clutched his ribs.

"Go, go!"

They blindly ran into the smoke.

The chaos mother growled behind him, but Atlas couldn't register the words. Sandalwood incense darted through the opaque white like strikes of red lightning.

This wasn't going to change anything.

Atlas' mind told him to stop. So he did.

Dizzee promptly vanished into the fog. But he wasn't alone. He turned. Incense latched onto his arms and torso before he could even open his mouth to speak. He winced as they constricted him, digging into his injuries.

This won't be counterproductive, he told himself.

He squirmed in the chains as Cerberus picked itself back up. Somehow, the presence of the beast seemed to spread the wisps out, clearing the air just enough to see occasional glimpses of his surroundings. Skin still stretched beneath his feet, but the rest? The rest was weird. His mother stepped in front of him before his brain had time to process the all-too familiar glimmer that shrouded everything.

She was frowning. Her hand-on-hip form blocked his view, and he was forced to look at that frown.

But that was fine. He didn't know the way out, but she did. Even if it meant he was locked back up again, at least he would know the way out, and he could make a better plan.

He pulled his lips to keep himself from looking too confident. Smoke flitted before his face. It obscured his vision, but by now he could confirm that they were no longer in the nose. It made him wonder. If the Eye wasn't so impossibly dark beyond the wash of a yellow spotlight, would he have seen the same oil slick quality? Like light reflecting off of bismuth crystals? Like iridescent metal?

"What did I do wrong, hon?" his mother said, her voice teetering on the edge of barely restrained frustration. "You want me to die. You want to leave your comrades behind. It's like I never raised you! You're supposed to be a better person than this."

She grasped his jaw once more in her hands, fingernails digging into his skin. Her hazel eyes burned. Colors morphed in them and red incense blazed around her. Her fingers were hot against his face.

Atlas looked away, feeling dizzy. "Just lock me up again."

"Why?"

He flinched. That wasn't her voice.

"Why would I lock you away again? No, something worse needs to happen."

He slowly returned his gaze to his mother. She looked the same, but she sounded like Chaos now.

Cerberus stepped closer, its shadow looming over both of them.

This pressure felt different.

Smoke fled from its presence. It gave Atlas just enough distance to suck in hungry breaths of fresh air. His chest ached as the fog transitioned out of his lungs and he could almost feel something speed through his veins.

His mother squeezed tighter. Nails dug through his skin. He could feel the warmth of blood trickle down his chin. She pressed her face close to his, so close their noses almost touched.

Pure, raw panic rose in his throat as Chaos spoke once again.

"My first thought about you was right. You're a selfish—" his mother pressed tighter into his skin with every word "—lying, unimpressive human being."

Atlas struggled in the chaos mother's grip but the surrounding sandalwood chains held him firm in place. His face seared with hot pain. "I'm not," he managed. "And why does it matter, anyway? Morality means nothing to you."

"Why? Why, do you think? What do you think I've been trying to do for centuries? Leave. I've watched hundreds of creatures escape this world's binds. Even my own creations can leave. But I can't."

"I don't get it." He stilled, forcing himself to relax as much as he could in the vice-grip. He was close to getting out. He could sense it with every word Chaos said. That oil slick gleam really did mean something here.

"Is it not simple? I'm my own restraint. My own lack of knowledge about what makes creatures moral and ethical, virtuous and relatable, real and critical, is what keeps me here. But you—" his mother shoved him away. He thudded onto the ground in a tangle of chains with a gasp as low-lying smoke flooded back over his head "—you are not what I'm told should be able to leave this realm. Yet you almost did. Three times now!"

Atlas pressed his chin into his shoulder. The scratches on his face throbbed and his shirt became damp with blood. The pressure helped, but just barely.

"Cerberus! Grab him."

His mother glared at him, her voice once more returning to normal.

"We're going."