Darren folded his arms. “I need to get to Isla Cascadura as soon as possible,” he said. “So we’re leaving tonight, and you’re going to help sail, unless you trust me to keep us alive all night.”
“You’re upset still,” Samantha said. “I understand. I’m not going to apologise. You lied to me about who you are, and I doubt you’re going to stop lying until you get what you want. However, if we leave tonight while everyone is fatigued, we’re going to—at best—end up shipwrecked on another island and having to rebuild. Again. Do you want to do that?”
Darren ground his teeth and glared at the pirate captain. “Fine. But we leave at dawn.”
Samantha ran a hand down her face with a groan.
“What, that too early for you, princess?” Darren asked.
“No, you weevil-infested idiot! The tide is coming in at dawn. If you want to make life far harder for us, then fine, we can leave at dawn.”
Darren threw his hands in the air. “Have it your way! We’ll have our beauty sleep tonight and a slow, leisurely morning before cruising out at some point. Now I’m going to eat my lunch.” He pulled out the panther meat and ripped off a chunk with his teeth.
The pirate captain’s eyes narrowed as she eyed the meat. “Full of surprises, aren’t you, Biggus?”
“The name’s Darren,” he said.
“Sure.” She left him by the boat and strode up to the shade of the trees and sat, removing some berries from her own inventory and eating.
Wilson picked his way down the beach and approached Darren. “You two still getting along smashingly, I see.”
“Shut it.”
“Look, Darren,” Wilson said. “I know you’re dealin’ with some crap—”
“No kidding.”
“—but you need to get a grip.”
Darren crouched down beside Wilson, levelling a scowl at the coconut, who saw his scowl and raised him a glare with his carved face. “Listen to me, Wilson. I don’t even know if I’m alive right now. I’m getting out of this world the minute I can and finding out what happened to me.” He wanted to scream that Wilson himself was nothing but lines of code, but at least managed to push that much down. “Are you going to help? Or are you going to get in my way?”
Wilson looked up at Darren, his tiny hands clenching and unclenching rapidly.
Darren knew, he knew, he should just let things roll off his back. But damn it all, it was too much. He scoffed and shook his head, standing and stalking into the surf to wash off.
The waves smashed into him, pounding against his skin, replacing the salt of sweat with the salt of the ocean. The rhythmic hammering soothed not only his overheated body, but also his mind.
What was going on? He felt out of control, lashing out at everyone around him. He hadn’t felt this unhinged since before cutting his mother out of his life. That constant sense of off-balance chaos was half the reason he’d left. Her unpredictability had driven him half insane. Every compliment had come with a hidden dagger—every smile with a hint of poison.
He felt right back in the middle of it, suffocating, drowning, while his family told him he was imagining things, his mother just loved him.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Enough. Enough!
He violently shoved every thought and every feeling back into its box, where it belonged. Where it could rot.
All he wanted to do was hit something, kill something. Instead, he took a breath and let it out.
Then another.
Then a third.
It didn’t do much to help the roiling of his insides, but it at least dulled the desire to punch a tree until his fist broke.
He waded back to the shore, rocking as waves splashed against the back of his legs, comfortable with the rhythm of his childhood spent on Gold Coast beaches.
Was the high INT score in-game contributing to the madness? It improved his memory, so was it bringing a new level of clarity to pain he’d thought processed and dealt with?
Or was this a byproduct of having his personality scrambled by an AI as it was taken from his digital scan and turned into something that could function without a human body?
Was any of this even the real Darren?
He felt the panic begin to rise again, and with effort, he squashed it. He had to get out of this place before it killed him or drove him insane. Or drove him insane and then killed him.
Wilson and Samantha both watched him as he reached the boat and began work on the mast. Darren ignored them, a mix of embarrassed and angry. He knew he should apologise, make things right. But he just didn’t have the energy to. So he focused on his work and let the details distract him.
***
The night around Samantha’s campfire was exactly as awkward as Darren expected it to be. No one spoke, letting the sound of the nearby waterfall fill the distance between them. It’d have been a relaxed scene if Darren hadn’t felt a knot of tension in his gut as he avoided eye contact.
He could feel Samantha and Wilson watching him, though. He knew they were waiting for him to break the silence. And, well… they were probably right. Finally, he sighed.
“Look, about the last 24 hours,” he said. “I ain’t ready to talk about a lot of things, but I shouldn’t have lashed out at you this morning, Samantha. Or you, Wilson. So… I’m sorry to you both.”
Samantha nodded slowly as she munched on her fish. She swallowed and said, “Let’s put things behind us for now and move on. We both have secrets, we both have a past. Bad things led to us being stuck on this island, and our tempers are running hot.”
Darren breathed out a sigh, feeling a weight off. He wasn’t inclined to dig into things, but also hated things sitting festering. So for now, yeah, he was more than happy to bury the whole mess and just move on. This was a game; ultimately, and he just wanted to get the hell out of here.
He finished his fish and wiped his hands on filthy pants as he stood. “Right. Now we’ve got that out of the way, I’m going to go crash for the night. See yous in the mornin’.”
Bone weary, he trudged around the clearing to his camp. Crickets chirped in the trees at the edge of the clearing, and a bat flapped overhead, silhouetted against the full moon. He reached the small stream running from the plunge pool beneath the waterfall and hopped over it, bare feet sinking into the soft grass on the far side as he landed.
He reached his camp, feeling lighter than he had in days. It was amazing how much a simple apology could help. He needed to be careful not to fall into the trap of being his mother, arrogantly pretending he was flawless and everyone owed him an apology for daring to be upset by his actions.
Then his camp exploded.
The blast caught him and threw him arse backwards onto the dew-covered grass, sending him tumbling head over heels.
He lay on his back, staring at the sky, blinking away the white and purple after-images. A flock of panicked birds squawked into the air in the jungle around him, and the startled yells of Samantha and Wilson carried over the pool at the base of the waterfall.
His health bar flashed, but he was still at 75%, not bad for being knocked back like that.
With a shake of his head, Darren pushed himself to his feet, backpedalling as he retrieved his axe from his inventory and scanned his surroundings.
Who the devil blew up his shelter? He’d worked so hard on it…
He was going to make them pay for that.
The after-images in his vision finally cleared, and, by the light of his still burning campsite, he caught sight of movement in the jungle.
Then the howling started.
It sounded exactly like the warcry of tiny… Oh man, not pigmies. Please not pigmies… He always felt so bad punting pigmies in games. It felt like beating up children.
A dozen figures broke from the treeline, cutting toward Darren.
Coconuts.
Coconuts with limbs and brandishing spears, arrows, and… grenades?
<<<<>>>>
Cocotribesman
These little monsters lack all the yummy sweetness of a regular coconut. If you replaced that with unadulterated rage and a passion for explosives, you’d come close to the Cocotribesmen, the world’s foremost experts in all things explosive.
-
Level: 5
-
HP: 45
<<<<>>>>
Darren turned and sprinted toward Samantha’s camp.
“Wilson,” he yelled as he cleared the stream in a bound, “your family’s here!”