They stood on the beach in front of the skeleton of their new boat. Samantha faced him and had him locked down with a glare clearly honed with decades of practice; a look that whispered of his immediate and agonising death if he uttered a single word out of place.

  Darren swallowed, his breath suddenly stuck in his throat. That look… he’d seen it before. It was the same look his mother gave him when they were alone.

  Wilson stood to the side, watching the exchange with interest, but little indication of intervening. Traitorous coconut.

  “Look,” Darren said carefully, “we all have pasts—”

  The hiss of steel on leather was barely audible above the sound of the surf, but Darren’s fear-heightened senses picked it up just fine. Samantha had her knife in hand, though she had the tip pointed down. That was a good sign. Right?

  He licked dry lips. “Please just listen, okay?”

  “Oh, I’m listening, young man,” Samantha said.

  The world muted around Darren as blood thundered in his ears. He squeezed his eyes shut. Young man… Bloody hell, she even sounded like his mother.

  Years of therapy and healing fled as those two words sauntered past every carefully constructed defence he’d put up and knocked on the door of Fight, Flight, or Freeze and said g’day.

  He froze.

  He hated himself for it, but he froze, even as he berated himself for his weakness. Why couldn’t he have been a fighter in these situations, instead of letting himself get cucked? Hell, he had no issue with going toe-to-toe with epic monsters. Why was he buckling now?

  Because fuck trauma, that’s why.

  And if he died now, there was no way he was getting back to his body. Whatever state it was in.

  In that moment, Darren made himself a promise: he’d overcome his weakness. He would find the mental fortitude to deal with any situation—regardless of how close to home it hit. He wasn’t going to let his life, whether physical or digital, be defined by his parents' abuse.

  Samantha studied his face for a long minute, then sheathed her knife and took a step back, the steel in her eyes replaced with curiosity. “You’re not like who we’ve been warned of, are you?” she asked. “You’re from their world, but you’re not like them.”

  “I…” Far out, the words were hard to get out. “I’m not anymore,” he managed in a whisper.

  “Something happened to you, something that made you a local.”

  “He died,” Wilson said. “Proper died.”

  Samantha frowned. “How is that possible? Your kind can’t die. They reincarnate or, at best, are banished by Themis.”

  Wilson continued to answer for Darren. “Themis tried to banish him, but she killed’m instead. His body in his world’s in a coma. Or dead. Poseidon saved him by turning him into a local.”

  Darren blinked back tears. “Not dead,” he whispered. “Can’t be dead yet.”

  The pity Wilson’s carved face managed to portray sickened him. Darren’s expression tightened to a snarl, and he turned and marched off, leaving the two standing by the boat.

  He cursed himself with every step, his self-loathing weaving lies into his soul. If he even had a soul anymore… He was nothing but a digital imprint of his physical form right now.

  In other words, he was nothing.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Fitting, he supposed. He’d managed to live up to his family’s expectations.

  ***

  Darren was sitting on the cliff overlooking the cove they’d shipwrecked on when Wilson found him half an hour later and sat beside him with his feet dangling over the edge.

  They sat in silence for awhile as dusk settled around them.

  “So…” Wilson said. “You wanna talk?”

  “Not really.”

  They lapsed back into silence. Listening to the chirp of crickets and the crashing of waves below them. Every now and then, the smell of fish and seaweed drifted up, mingling with the damp, earthy smell of the jungle behind them.

  “Look,” Wilson tried again, “sorry I didn’t cover for ya when Samantha realised you weren’t a Local.”

  Darren shrugged. “Wouldn’t have mattered,” he said, his voice dull. “She’s too sharp. She would have seen through any reason we came up with.”

  “So why the panic then? You looked proper terrified.”

  Darren didn’t respond.

  “Alright,” Wilson said, “Touchy subject. Noted.”

  “We should get back to camp before the light is completely gone,” Darren said as he stood.

  One step and it’d all be over… Darren’s stomach tightened at the intrusive thought, and he hurriedly backed away from the edge.

  Wilson joined him, and they walked back to the camp in silence.

  They were stumbling over every knotted root by the time they reached the camp in the dark.

  Samantha watched them approach and sit by the fire she had going with fish grilling above it. She didn’t pry and just handed Darren a stick of the fish once they were cooked.

  They ate, then Darren stood and headed across the stream to his own shelter, all too eager to put the day behind him.

  ***

  By the time the first rays of dawn pierced the leafy roof of Darren’s shelter, he was already up and stretching. He rubbed his bleary eyes. Wilson lay snoring in the corner. Darren shook his head, leaving the coconut as he extracted himself.

  He glanced over at Samantha’s camp. She was up and had a fire going, but he turned and instead headed down the stream to the beach and the boat.

  While he walked, he removed the piece of panther meat he still had in his inventory and munched a few bites, letting his food icon fill back up. Then he took a swig of water from his coconut shell and returned everything to his inventory.

  The jungle was alive around him. A plethora of birds cackled, twittered, and shrieked above him, while insects buzzed in the humid air. Despite the hour, sweat was already starting to prick Darren’s brow. It promised a sweltering day.

  At the beach, he threw himself into construction, getting lost in the rhythm of planking the twin hulls of the boat.

  Eventually, Wilson and Samantha joined him, continuing their work of harvesting lumber.

  Several hours slid by. The sun rose higher in the sky, and the promised heat settled on Darren like a blanket soaked in boiling water.

  Darren never let up, determined to finish today and get the hell off this island. While he felt mildly better than yesterday evening, the events had galvanised his desire to find out the fate of his body.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d do if he discovered his body was, in fact, dead. The questions plaguing him troubled him more than he could put into words.

  What he was certain of, though, was that he needed to find out. No matter what. And the first step was getting to Isla Cascadura and speaking to Poseidon. Though he didn’t know why the damned AI didn’t just talk here. Probably some limitation of programming or some BS.

  In short order, Darren had both hulls planked. The skill-up had indeed made the work easier. While he wouldn’t have called it effortless, his hands just seemed to know what they needed to do, and he didn’t have to spend so much time thinking about the next step.

  When combined with the base effect of the skill, where one motion produced far more work than it should, the boat came together quickly and just worked.

  He knew for certain that if he tried to replicate this boat IRL, it’d have been one hot mess.

  It was rather like how the mental stats worked. Intelligence didn’t make him artificially smarter than he already was; what it did do, though, was allow him to recall information far more easily. He only needed to read something once for it to be easy to recall. It also sped up his thoughts, so he could process events faster.

  Which had led to somewhat of an out-of-body experience yesterday when his trauma was triggered. Though he’d certainly had his share of those in the real world…

  Wisdom functioned in a similar fashion to Intelligence. It gave him a vague sense of whether ideas would or wouldn’t be a good choice. Best he could describe it was that it gave him the warm-and-fuzzies if a choice was a wise one.

  And naturally, the stats impacted the efficiency of different skills. Most skills had a stat requirement that needed to be met before they’d unlock.

  By the time he finished musing about the game mechanics, he also had the cabin built on the boat. Just the mast and sails left to take care of.

  But now it was time for lunch.

  He rolled his neck while he massaged his shoulder. The motion more a habit than a necessity. Already, he’d been hit with a level in Exhausted, which gave him some indication of how hard he’d been pushing himself.

  Samantha walked over, wiping a sheen of sweat from her forehead. “You’ve made good progress,” she said. “We’ll be able to leave on the morning tide.”

  “No. We’re leaving tonight,” Darren said, his voice flat. “I’m done waiting around.”