Chapter 2

Dawn came fully, and the sea went quiet. The waves shrank down to a gentle roll.

We were still on the same strip of beach we’d crawled onto last night. The tide had pulled farther back, leaving a wider stretch of shallows. If it weren’t for the salt crust on my skin and the exhaustion on everyone’s faces, the place might have looked almost beautiful: fine sand, clear water, pale blue sky in the distance, and behind us a wall of trees with a canopy so thick it hid the island’s interior.

But we weren’t here on vacation.

The tide had brought in plenty of debris—mostly cracked suitcases and waterlogged backpacks. Not much was usable, but it was better than nothing.

Someone found a first-aid kit. Most of the packets inside were still sealed, and people immediately sat down in the sand, tore them open, wiped cuts with alcohol pads, then wrapped gauze around them in rushed, uneven loops.

There were plenty of injuries from the capsize—scrapes and gashes on arms, knees, ankles. No one wanted an infection on top of everything else.

Noah crouched beside me and dumped a soaked backpack upside down on a rock. Its contents spilled out with a wet slap: a towel, half a pack of crackers, a notebook swollen from seawater, and a black device.

The moment he saw it, his eyes lit up like he’d grabbed a real lifeline.

“A satellite phone.” He looked up at me, excitement pushing through his fatigue. “I almost forgot I brought it.”

The casing had clearly taken on water, saltwater still seeping from the seams. Noah didn’t hesitate. He pried off the back cover, pulled the battery, and wiped everything with the driest part of his clothes until his fingertips turned red. Then he laid the battery and the handset separately on a flat stone, leaving them in the sun.

“If we can make one call, we get rescued.” He said it, and it sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as me. “Even if we can’t call, we can hang on for a few days. At least we’re not completely cut off.”

I nodded, then glanced toward the treeline. The green looked calm in the sunlight—calm in a way that made me uneasy.

We needed fresh water. We needed to figure out if there was anywhere to shelter at night. And we needed to know whether the island had dangerous animals.

“I’m going to check the edge of the woods,” I told Noah. “Use the bathroom, see if there are any edible berries. Don’t leave this rock. Watch the phone.”

I picked up a hard wooden stick I’d grabbed last night—part cane, part weapon—walked around a stretch of reef, and headed for the trees.

Between the beach and the forest edge was a strip of rough grassland. The soil was damp and sank slightly underfoot. The shade under the trees was cooler, the air thicker, smelling of leaves and wet dirt.

I planned to take care of business quickly and maybe find a few bushes with fruit to bring back.

But after only a dozen steps, I spotted a color that didn’t belong.

Blood.

Not a few scattered droplets—this was a drag mark, broken in places, like something wounded had been pulled along the ground.

The red was dark, not fully dry, its edges still glossy. It wasn’t old. With no sea breeze reaching this far, the smell of iron was stronger under the trees.

I crouched and didn’t touch it with my hands. I used the tip of my stick to nudge leaves aside.

The trail led deeper into the woods, like a silent path.

I stood and followed it.

Every few yards there was another smear, another shallow groove. Now and then there were small pieces mixed in: a bit of plastic, half a snapped cord, even a button ground into the mud.

I went around a cluster of brush and stopped short.

A body lay under the shrubs ahead.

The clothes were almost torn to rags, strips of fabric hanging off flesh like they’d been ripped away by force. From the chest down to the abdomen, the meat was chewed into a mess. Ribs showed through, their edges ringed with jagged bite marks.

I stayed where I was. I didn’t take another step.

My heartbeat filled my ears, loud and steady, like someone tapping knuckles against a drum.

I tightened my grip on the stick until my knuckles went white, my body slipping into its old reflexive posture: eyes scanning the gaps between trunks, ears straining for anything that didn’t fit, even my breathing forced shallow.

The woods were quiet—quiet enough that I could hear insects crawling against the underside of leaves.

That kind of quiet wasn’t normal.

As I stared at the corpse, a memory slammed into my head without warning.

Not school. Not the beach.

A room so white it hurt to look at it.

Cold lights. The sharp scent of disinfectant.

I was small. My hands and feet were strapped down to a table. Someone in gloves spoke fast, like they were discussing equipment instead of a child.

Yes—I lied. I wasn’t an ordinary orphan. I grew up in a lab whose purpose I still don’t fully understand. I only knew that every day there were people standing over me.

They gave me injections. They fed me pills. They ran tests. They trained me.

I watched someone in that lab turn into one of those things, and then they locked me in a room with it and forced me to fight.

As I got older, I began to understand what they were doing: they weren’t raising a kid. They were shaping a weapon.

Later I escaped. I crawled through ventilation ducts, found chemicals in a storage room, and set the place on fire.

The flames spread fast. Alarms screamed. People ran and shouted.

The fire brought the police, and they dragged me out through the smoke. In that moment I thought I’d finally left that world behind.

But now the smell of blood, the pattern of those bites, pulled me right back into it.

I stared at the wounds and forced myself to observe instead of react.

The bite marks were dense, overlapping, chaotic. Not the clean tear of one animal’s jaws—more like many mouths at once, feeding without rhythm, without restraint.

And the way the flesh was shredded along the edges matched what I remembered, perfectly.

I didn’t want to remember it. But I knew exactly what it meant.

I didn’t stay.

I turned and headed back to the beach, cold sweat rising across my back until my clothes clung to my skin.

When I returned, Noah was still by the rock. The satellite phone’s parts were laid out neatly.

The moment he saw my face, he stood up. “What is it? You didn’t find any fruit?”

I lowered my voice and kept it blunt. “There’s blood in the woods. And a body. It was bitten.”

Noah froze. His throat worked. “Bitten… by what? An animal?”

“I’m not sure.” I looked him in the eye. “But we shouldn’t go into the woods. At least not alone.”

Noah’s fingers tightened without him noticing, the joints turning pale.

He was about to say something, but a voice cut in—loud on purpose.

A boy named Leon had come up without us noticing. He’d clearly caught the last part.

He dragged the words out so everyone could hear. “Hey! Did you hear that? Marlow says he found a corpse in the woods!”

It hit the group like a stone thrown into water. Heads snapped toward us.

The two girls who’d been digging through bags paused. Blake looked up too, a faint, unfriendly smile pulling at his mouth.

“A corpse?” someone muttered, frowning. “Don’t make stuff up.”

“I’m not making it up,” Leon said. “Marlow said it himself.”

Blake stood, brushed sand off his shorts, and walked over.

His voice wasn’t loud, but every word came with that practiced edge. “Marlow, what now? Trying to scare everyone with ghost stories so you can play leader?”

It was obvious he still resented how I’d shoved life jackets into people’s hands last night. In his mind I’d taken his spot.

I met his eyes and didn’t step back. I hadn’t planned to hide this.

“I saw a body. There was blood. It was fresh. I don’t know what did it, but we shouldn’t go in there.”

Blake snorted and looked back at the others. “You hear that? ‘Fresh.’ He says it like he’s sure.”

One of his buddies laughed on cue and lifted his chin. “Then take us to it. Don’t just talk.”

The two girls chimed in too. “Yeah. Stop freaking out.” “We’re not kids.”

For a second it felt like a school hallway again—same crowd, same noise, same stupid game.

Blake took another step closer. “You said there’s a corpse? Fine. Take us there. If you’re right, we’ll listen to you. If you’re lying, you stop stirring people up.”

I could feel Noah behind my shoulder, breathing faster.

He wanted to defend me, but I raised a hand to stop him.

I knew arguing wouldn’t solve this. Blake wasn’t after the truth. He wanted to shut me down in front of everyone and keep them following him.

I looked him straight in the eye, kept my voice steady.

“Fine.”