It only felt like seconds later, but Atlas felt himself float and hit the ground suddenly. His eyes shot open to see what had happened, but all he saw was the beginnings of a wispy blue sky. Clouds of light and dark blue filled wherever he was, the fog was thick, but he could still see some meters into the distance.

“Where...on earth is this?”

He sat himself up with an amount of haste and inspected the area. It was a vast, blue-toned room of sorts, an open plain whose sky was dark. It was hard to make out exactly where he was, but it seemed like some sort of limbo room with no exit.

He could see his breath cloud up in front of him and he sighed happily, finally seeing some sort of life within himself. Although, he figured this was a dream of sorts due to the otherworldly appearance of the room.

Suddenly, there was a sound of rushing water, as if the room had filled with waterfalls and rivers. He looked to his right side, seeing a white light pulsate into existence. It opened up in a circular pattern, sending a wave of water onto the ground like a spilled canister. He quickly jumped up to avoid it, being wary of unknown liquids. Yet again, more holes opened up, a total of five now surrounding him.

"What...on earth? Hello?"

He looked up to the dark sky, expecting to see someone standing there controlling these circular voids. But there was nothing of note to see besides the fog. He spun around, staring at these portal-like holes, his mind swamped in vast confusion. He took a few steps closer to inspect the one on his right-hand side.

From within the holes, images began appearing like faint memories. It was as if someone had seen into his brain, his house, his academy room and recorded the monumental moments in his life. But something felt strange about them.

Something was definitely off.

"I remember this...but it's almost like...something's changed. Are these like...alternate timelines or something? That was definitely something that happened last week but...that’s not what I saw."

He heard the conversations through the portals, conversations he remembered having, yet they all faded away after a few seconds. He laughed to himself quietly, placing a palm to his forehead.

"Okay, all of this is weird. I mean, I don't even believe in ghosts or time travel or whatever, so what is this? Man, am I going mad or what?"

As he said that and calmed himself down from his outbreak, the world began to fade. It was as if the trial was over, the brief taste he had of this strange world melted before him. He sighed, slightly disappointed that he didn’t find out where he was or why it happened.

Maybe this unknown power would become useful to him in the future.

Before he had time to conclude his thoughts, he was on his back again facing yet another sky. Black and speckled with stars, it was far more ordinary than the last. He could feel the crisp night air on his face and the night was silent. All he could hear was the gentle sparking of the electrical cords around his neck, so calm in nature compared to their last appearance.

Suddenly, he felt a tug on his arm. He immediately sat up, following the direction of the iridescent string on his wrist to its source.

Now seeing the scenery around him, he found himself sitting on what seemed to be a bridge with a rock paved road. Where it was in relation to the theatre was something he didn’t know. He was so unfamiliar with the area. Despite this, the direction the string led to had something catch his eye, causing him to jump to his feet with haste.

A few meters away from where he sat, Harper stood with her back to him, perched on the edge of the bridge railing. It was such a precarious position, and it only sent Atlas's nerves into a ferocious frenzy. He quietly spoke up, feeling that if he was any louder than the gentle night ambience, it would shatter like a delicate star-speckled vase.

"Hey Harper, what are you doing exactly?"

She looked back at him, a forlorn and gentle smile on her face.

“Welcome back, I’m just helping us both…I think?”

With a slight painful realisation, she turned back to the rocky depths below the bridge, like a curious child she stared into it blankly. Atlas wasn’t sure what she was doing at first, but it only took him a second to realise what was happening.

She took one last step and plunged into the unknown like a stone dropped into the depths of the sea.

“Wait! Harper!”

Atlas scrambled to grab her, but the fall was too fast.

He yelped as the string on his wrist cursed him with a terrible shocking pain. He was forcefully dragged forward where he collided with the railing of the bridge, headfirst. With all his strength he held himself there, his arm wedged between the railing poles and hanging over the side of the bridge. He was lucky he didn’t just phase through the material holding him there, the convenience this time was astounding.

However, the pain in his arm was so sharp and piercing, it felt like electricity coursing up through his nerves. He could feel a sickening cutting feeling at his wrist where the string connected, as if it were about to slide out on its own. He cried through clenched teeth at Harper below him as she hanged like a hopeless gallows’ victim.

"Harper!!! Grab my hand!! Quickly! I can't move! It hurts!! Come on, why did you do this??"

He hissed through his teeth at the pain and squeezed his eyes closed to try and focus on something else. He could feel the entirety of his system shutting down, all because of the overwhelming sensation. His body shook violently in a plea for the pain to stop; if he were to pass out again, it was the end for both of them.

“HARPER!!! Don’t do this, we can talk it out! Just hold my hand already, I’ll pull you up!”

Harper hanged there for a while longer, uncaring for his condition. He grunted, trying to grab onto the string between his fingers but it was hopeless. There wasn't a bit of slack he could grab onto, not with so much pain coursing through his body. He could feel the string pulling down on his skin, it had no elasticity to its quality, like a thin metal wire. The horrible suspension of the torment had his eyes filling with tears, he could barely see where Harper was or what she was doing.

“H-harper...please...please just...ugh.”

He placed his forehead against a metal pole, gritting his teeth together. He didn’t know how much longer he could take this torment. He felt that his arm would drop off at any second, feeling the tension on his skin and the tearing underneath. He would have rather if it did fall off because at least he could have said he tried to save the stubborn girl. Not that he would have anyone to tell. Nor did he know what would happen if she had perished.

“Harper…Harper this isn’t the way the story ends...it can’t end like this. You can’t just leave me now…”

He began to lose the energy to speak, and his final request was hushed and exasperated. He hated how selfish the girl was towards him, he couldn’t even bare to sympathise with her anymore.

Until finally, a gentle, cold hand was placed into his and it grabbed hold, with hesitation and without any haste. Once he felt the connection he sighed in relief. Maybe everything was going to be okay after all.

He felt the tension on his wrist ease a bit and he used his legs against the poles to pull Harper back up again. She made no effort to help, so Atlas had to use his own strength, despite how weak he now felt.

It was demanding work pulling a whole human up by a painfully delicate string, there wasn’t much to grab onto. Atlas would have argued that the pulling up action had felt worse than the drop, purely because of the effort he had to put in. He wasn’t particularly strong in his arms, but his leg strength made up for that.

After roughly a minute of struggling, he had finally pulled her up over the railing where she finally crawled up, grabbing hold of the metal bars. Atlas dropped himself to the ground as he watched her make the rest of the way up in her delicate dress. Certainly not something to be climbing in, he noted.

Exhausted, he laid down flat on the granite road of the bridge again, this time to inspect his wrist. It grew purple with bruises, and he could feel it pulse at the touch. Notably, he saw the stress in his veins as they had grown to be a dark red tone. He looked up at Harper, seeing the same effect on her exposed wrist.

He placed his head in his hands with a heavy sigh, twisting his fingers into his hair with frustration. He was relieved that the dilemma was over for now, but he was too tired to even continue a conversation with the girl. He’d had enough, and the tears clouding his vision were proof of that.

He heard Harper take a shaky breath to speak, it echoed into the quiet night with a soft reverb.

"Why...did you stop me?"

Atlas grumbled, thinking that the answer was quite obvious.

"I can't have you doing something like that. If you die, then I'll never have this issue solved. Only you know what happened to me, right? You caused all of this even if it wasn't your expected outcome."

He sighed and held up his arm for her to see. The fresh air against it stung, but he wanted to make a point.

"And this string, remember? We literally can't leave each other. That really hurt by the way, don’t do that ever again. I don’t want to have to be angry again...after what just happened."

Harper continued to stare at the ground, giving him a slight nod of agreeance, recalling the uncomfortable experience in the toilet block. She hid her expression for the time being. She had also been hurt by the drop, but she didn’t want to mention it, so she moved on with the conversation.

“I nearly…just did that, huh? That could have been bad for both of us.”

Harper exhaled with a weak chuckle. Atlas could see the parts of her mind falling away, her eyes were void of anything human now. He could only assume she had been hit by a wave of realisation, just as he had previously.

"So I guess you're only keeping me alive...for personal gain? Not because you care about my life? That’s why you saved me, right?"

Atlas looked up at her from the ground. From his view, he could see she was clearly in distress, tears streaming down her face as she cried softly. He felt somewhat pitiful towards her, thinking that maybe she wasn’t all that bad, just a little bit mentally unstable.

"Harper, you're a murderer and you should probably pay the consequences for that, but I do have a heart, you know? You're a bit messed up, but I’m sure there's a way you can redeem yourself. Both to me and to everyone else you’ve hurt through this, whoever they might be. I’m disappointed that it had to go this way, but you shouldn’t have read what I wrote in my journal. It wasn’t for your eyes. I guess it’s what I had coming for me though."

Harper lifted her eyes from the ground to look at him, her face shimmering with new tears. Her eyes shivered as if she was scared of facing the truth.

"I did something very bad, Atlas. I betrayed you, I can see that now. I'm asking myself, were we ever truly...friends? Was it all ever as real as I thought it was? I feel like my judgement was so terribly wrong. I acted too fast; I had all the signs wrong. But...the things you wrote, it pained me. I didn’t want you to stay around if you were hurting in the way that you described it. You had a very stressful life, but I shouldn’t have interfered, I shouldn’t have listened to my brain...I’m so sorry Atlas."

"Harper..."

Atlas breathed, unsure of how to approach the situation. She was so dangerously unstable and still so close to the edge of the bridge. He proceeded to answer with precaution, handling her condition like a bird with a broken wing.

"Look, maybe…maybe I was fine with dying. Maybe this is all okay with me. I suppose everything that I wrote was really from the heart."

Atlas avoided her gaze and squinted his eyes, trying to keep back the tears of his own. He wasn't sure where he was going with his point, but it affected him greatly just thinking about it. After all, this was about his life of all things.

"The relief of knowing I'll never have to face human expectations again. It's the most liberating feeling I've ever experienced in life."

He laughed quietly at what he'd said, knowing it was only somewhat true.

"Ironically, I should say."