Despite his predilection to solving crime and generally contributing in a positive way to humanity, Atlas wasn’t fond of most people. In fact, being in their presence was a bit draining and worrisome. It had been half a century since his last episode and he had no intention of losing control ever again: avoiding people was an important catalyst in that. Plagued by nightmares that only seemed to get worse upon coming to Fallcrest, Atlas considered himself lucky if he got a couple of hours of sleep each night.
The hours where he couldn’t sleep made his living quarters feel as if the walls were beginning to close in around him. Currently staying at the Radcliffe, Atlas left the hotel shortly before dawn with the intention of getting into the office early enough to plug through the mountain of backlogged information he still wanted to get through. It was no big surprise that mysterious deaths and disappearances were a trademark here, but if he could identify accurate causes of deaths that weren’t chalked up to generic ‘animal attacks’ then Atlas might be able to identify a pattern.
Instead however, Atlas found himself wandering a bit, finding his way to a particularly scenic body of water as he watched the sun slowly rise over the waters. He stood at the water’s edge, looking out into the distance and tried to work through the barrage of images his nightmares plagued him with. Violence. Violence. Violence. It was ever-present, and yet here in this moment Atlas could feel a distant tug of tranquility: some light at the end of the tunnel. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Atlas posed, suddenly aware through the sound of falling footsteps that someone was lingering close by, perhaps drawn by the same sight he saw now, “the dawn promises hope for a new day, too often I think I take it for granted.”
Georgia was barely awake when she stumbled into work that morning. Her shift at the desk had started at 5, and she was already falling asleep. One too many late nights drinking to relax, and all of a sudden, she’d screwed over her sleep schedule again. So, when the Sherriff offered that she go for a coffee run and a break, she was more than willing to snatch it up. She had wandered down to the water’s edge, hoping the fresh and crisp air would wake her up. Watching the sunrise, she noticed someone around the corner from her, someone familiar as he spoke.
“Definitely,” she said, eyes wandering from the lake to him, watching him analyze the view. “I’m sure I take it for granted, too, I’m just always too busy to even realize that, I feel. A product of the world we live in,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Atlas, right?” she asked.
