Jack had been tailing the two brats since the moment they clambered off that oversized squirrel-thing they were riding. He kept his distance, boots silent against the ash-gray pavement, sticking to the shadows like second nature. This school—was warped now, but still familiar. He could walk it blindfolded. The eldritch twist that had reshaped it during the eclipse hadn't erased its bones. If anything, it made the place more honest. Less pretense. More like him.
The kids looked like siblings. Both had round, youthful faces, small blue eyes, and sun-warmed skin dusted with freckles across the bridge of their noses. They wore nearly identical brown cloaks thrown over rough-spun shirts and pants—clothes meant for travel, not fashion. And their hair—dyed green, obviously. No way that was natural. Jack knew better.
He was a leucistic—born pale, stripped of pigment like the moon was stripped of warmth. He had to dye his own hair black just to look like something human again.
Still, they were his ticket off this floating island. The only one he'd found since waking up in this nightmare world. He could jump, sure—take a swan dive into the void and pray the bottom came quick. But Jack wasn't about to Kurt Cobain himself like that. He didn't lose everything he'd known back on Earth just to fold like a coward. No. He'd get off this rock. He'd claw his way back to something real. Even if it meant using these two clueless runts to do it.
So he watched. Studied. Waited.
They were cautious, but not professionals. The girl—Nari, he overheard—was older, sharper, and moved with a predator's patience. She carried herself like someone who knew when to strike and when to wait. The boy, Duri, was louder. Younger. The kind of kid who ran toward danger with a grin, and Jack had no doubt he'd be the first to bitch out if things went sideways.
They both carried knives. The girl had a bow, too—handmade, probably. Their voices echoed in some dialect of American—thick with regional twang, but close enough for Jack to catch the gist.
Scavengers. That was obvious. Their eyes lingered on anything intact—books, devices, shelves full of dust-covered junk. They weren't stuffing anything into their packs yet, but they were clearly assessing value. Weighing what to take. Jack recognized the signs. He'd done the same, back when he first started shoplifting.
He bided his time. Harder than it sounded. He hadn't had a smoke in hours, and his fingers twitched with the craving. He nearly muttered aloud a few times just to kill the silence. But he held fast.
Then, finally—luck. The pair stepped into a ruined classroom. One entrance. No windows big enough to jump through. Perfect.
Jack moved quickly, planting himself in the doorway like a living blockade. He kept his right arm hidden just behind the wall, fingers curled tightly around the haft of his fire axe. The blade was dulled and scratched from too much use, but still heavy. Still effective.
He grinned down at them.
Duri reacted first—predictably. The brat whipped out a knife and leveled it with all the threat of a kitten trying to roar. Jack barely blinked. A vein pulsed at his temple as he stared the kid down. He'd *answered* their dumb question, hadn't he? And this was the thanks he got?
*Maybe I should beat some goddamn sense into him,* Jack thought, lips twitching.
But then the girl—Nari—stepped in front of her brother and shot her brother a glare that, for all her fear, still had teeth. She pulled Duri back and dipped into a deep bow.
"I'm Nari, and this is my younger brother, Duri," she said quickly, voice level but tense. "We didn't know anyone still lived here, sir."
*Sir?* Jack blinked.
Now *that* was new.
She kept going. "We're on an expedition from our village. We're scavenging for goods to pay this season's tithe. We're short on Gaus. Please forgive the intrusion, sir!"
She yanked Duri into a matching bow. The boy looked like he wanted to protest, but Nari held him down with quiet strength. The sight of the two of them prostrating themselves in front of him—Jack—was too much.
He burst out laughing.
Not just a chuckle—a full, belly-deep laugh that echoed off the cracked walls. They looked *so* pathetic. But also… kind of endearing. Nari's tension, Duri's confusion. The whole scene was ridiculous. Jack hadn't smiled like this in days.
"Oh, relax, you two," he managed between laughs. "I'm not pissed. I was just messing with you!"
He let go of the axe slowly and let it rest against the wall behind him, making sure they didn't see. His grin sharpened as he straightened up, shoulders rolling with renewed ease. "But I do have an offer."
**Hook.**
"What kind of offer?" Duri asked, too fast, too eager.
**Line.**
Jack turned the charm on just enough. "You need that tithe money, right? Well, I know this place better than anyone alive. I can help you scavenge it top to bottom, squeeze every bit of value out of this dump. In return, you take me back to your village. Deal?"
He paused, then added, casually, "I'll be keeping my fair share, of course. I *am* the rightful owner, after all."
He directed the pitch at Duri. He could tell—this kid was impulsive. Not like his sister. Less prone to suspicion. Easier to sway.
"Deal!" Duri shouted before Nari could stop him.
**And sinker.**
Jack clapped his hands, delighted. "That's what I like to hear."
As Nari turned slowly toward her brother with a face full of silent fury, Jack leaned against the doorway and grinned. The game was on. And Jack—selfish ,opportunistic , stranded Jack—wasn't about to lose.
He never lost.
*skip*
Tearing apart the school with the two broccoli-head siblings turned out to be… more fun than Jack expected. Not that he'd *ever* admit it out loud—hell no—but there was something oddly satisfying about it. The chaos. The rhythm. A kind of cathartic destruction.
Not that it wasn't a *weird* partnership. For one, they were obsessed with all the wrong shit. Nari especially—girl had the eyes of a hawk for scraps of paper and ink. Duri wasn't much better: wide-eyed and weirdly excited over textbooks, glass, and random bits of metal. Jack didn't know what kind of economy they came from, but he'd had to stop them from electrocuting themselves *multiple times* after showing them where the copper wires were hidden in the walls.
"You know copper's only worth something if you live long enough to sell it, right?" he'd grunted, yanking Duri back by the hood as the kid reached for a handful of wires.
But once they got past the learning curve—and Jack gave them a very necessary crash course in looting priorities—they hit a groove. He showed them where the *real* valuables were stashed: jewelry, high-end watches, rings that still had their shine. Lockers were a goldmine if you knew how to break them open. Desk compartments too. He remembered how Elle used to stash all her good stuff in there. The memory twisted something in his gut, but he shoved it aside.
No time for sentiment. They were on a roll.
Duri was a menace once he got into it—no restraint whatsoever. Together, they tore through what was left of Mother Mercy's like a pair of gremlins on meth. They busted cabinets, cracked open vending machines, and even started a competition over who could strip more wire from the walls without getting zapped. Jack won, obviously—he knew to switch the power off—but Duri had enough energy to light the place up on his own.
Nari, for all her big-sister sighs and scolding, kept them grounded. She smacked Duri upside the head when they cracked open the old nurse's office and started chucking pill bottles at each other.
Jack had pocketed a few for later too.
"You're going to get absolutely *nothing* done in this place," she muttered, snatching a shattered bottle from Duri's hand.
Jack had just laughed and kept digging.
Eventually, even she joined in—organizing the loot into neat little piles, estimating value using that strange currency of theirs. "Gaus," she called it. Some kind of imperial coin. According to her, if they managed to haul all this back, they'd be sitting on nearly two million Gaus. *Plus* some spare change.
And that didn't even include Jack's cut.
"Two million?" he whistled. "Sounds like a lot."
"It's more than that," Nari said, tying off a satchel. "We'll be able to pay off the tithe and keep this year's harvest."
"Tithe?" Jack raised a brow. "That some kind of tax?"
She gave him a look like he'd just asked if the sun was hot. "Every village leader has to pay it once every five years. If they don't, the conscription age gets lowered."
Jack blinked. "That's… worse than the damn IRS."
"Yeah, well, so is dying on the front."
Fair point.
As the sun blinked out—literally blinked, like someone flicked off a switch—the island shifted into night. The heat vanished. Cold seeped in through the busted walls. Jack rubbed his arms and muttered about freezing his ass off, but Duri just laughed.
"You'll get used to it," the kid said, tying his cloak tighter. "At least it's not raining."
"Yet."
They made their way back to the central atrium—what used to be the school's gathering hall. The glass ceiling was half-collapsed and strangled with vines, but some pale moonlight still managed to slip through. Jack dragged a few intact desks into a half-circle and built a fire on the stone floor. Not the safest move—his granddad had taught him how fast fire could spread—but screw it. He needed warmth.
The flames crackled to life, shadows dancing up the stone pillars. Jack slumped down with a grunt. His shoulders ached. Fingers raw. But it was a *good* ache. Earned.
Nari and Duri were still outside with Gaeam, loading the last of the loot. Jack could hear their voices through the windows—Nari's calm instructions, Duri's exaggerated whining. He didn't move to help. For once, he felt like he'd done enough. He leaned back and stared into the fire.
He took a drag from someone's candy-flavored vape—tasted like chemical ass—and blew a lazy smoke ring.
He still didn't know how long he'd been stuck here. Not just *in* the school—that was easy to count—but *here*, as in *not-Earth*. He never had a great memory. That's why he was failing most of his classes. Well… except the physical ones.
Not that it mattered anymore.
Elle was gone. Tank, too. Manson. Just *gone*, like they'd never existed. The place still looked mostly the same, but it *wasn't*. No people. No signs of modern life. Just silence, overgrowth, and the bones of a school frozen in time.
And then the two broccoli-heads had shown up on their oversized squirrel-thing, poking around like they owned the place.
Jack chuckled to himself, shaking his head. "Still don't know what the hell I'm gonna do," he muttered, watching the sparks dance. "But that's nothing new."
Tank would've figured it out. He always did. Smart, strong, and the best damn guy Jack had ever known. Elle? She'd have ended up rich somehow—legal or not. Manson probably had a plan too. He always thought ahead.
Jack's half-assed approach, though? Yeah, no blueprint for that.
The broccolis returned eventually. Nari came first, silent as ever, placing her bags by the wall. Then Duri, tripping over himself and announcing, "Gaeam's secured and *definitely* not gonna eat the bags this time, promise."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "That a thing?"
"Only twice!" Duri said.
"Three," Nari corrected.
They shared a meal of dried rations and what looked like salted root. Jack munched on his stash of snacks—offered Duri a sour patch kid. The kid's face trying to process that flavor was something else entirely.
They talked a little—mostly small stuff. Duri had questions about the school. Jack answered vaguely. He didn't want to admit it had been a place for screw-ups. He didn't care what they thought of him—but he *did* want to leave the right impression. That's what Tank or Elle would've done.
He asked about their village. Nari said it was called Sailor's Knot—on a stable island where trade ships came every fortnight. She didn't say much more, but Jack filed the name away.
"So," he said finally, once the fire had burned down to embers and the night had gone still, "how do you navigate if the islands float around all the time?"
Duri lit up. "The stars!"
Jack blinked. "Seriously?"
"Yup. According to the old songs, the First Mage fixed the stars in place to help people find their way. Doesn't matter how the islands move—the sky stays the same."
"And you just… memorize constellations?"
"Kind of. There's tools, too—sky compasses, charts. But yeah. That's how we find our way."
Jack looked up. The moon hung full and pale above them. The stars shimmered like powdered diamond dust. He wasn't much of a stargazer—Manson was the one into that—but even he could tell they didn't move.
"Huh," he said. "Cool."
"It is," Nari said softly.
Silence settled. Jack stood, brushing off his pants.
"Well," he said, stretching with a grunt, "we've got a hell of a haul. You two stick to your end of the deal, and I'll make sure you get back without trouble."
Duri grinned. "You mean *we'll* make sure *you* get back."
Jack smirked. "Semantics."
Nari didn't smile, but she gave a small nod. "We leave at dawn."
Jack gave her a mock salute. "Aye aye, boss."
They slept lightly, taking turns on watch. Jack doubted anything else was out there, but habit kept his fingers near the axe even as his eyes drifted shut. The ruins of Mother Mercy's loomed around them, half-buried in shadow and silence. Full of memories that didn't belong anymore.
He didn't know what waited in Sailor's Knot. Didn't know if he'd ever get back. Or if *home* even existed now.
But for the first time since waking up here…
He wasn't completely alone.