Jordyn

The high-pitched noise starts to fade, and I open my eyes, leaving my chin resting on Sam's shoulder. The monkeys have retreated, but several dead bodies litter the shore. Their cries are nothing more than an annoying buzz in my ears.

"Are you okay?" Sam says to me. His eyebrows turn down in concern. I only nod as he begins to walk out of the water.

"What in the world was that?" Kaia yells, digging her fingers into her ears. She shakes her head as Neil rubs his temples.

Sam lowers me into the dry sand, and I stumble away from him in a deafened shock.

"It sounded like an alarm," he yells back.

"How in the world did a bunch of monkeys make that horrific sound?" Kaia asks.

Sam and Neil both shrug. I walk away from their conversation to inspect the body of a nearby monkey. Sam follows, looming behind me protectively.

I lift the tiny body up and cradle it in both hands.

"It's so light," I whisper. My hearing is almost completely back by now.

"What?" Sam yells in my ear. I cringe and glare at him.

"Stop yelling," I mumble. "I said it's really light."

He crouches down beside me and reaches for another body.

"What in the world," he says in awe. In one swift motion, he draws his knife out and sticks it into the center of the tiny animal's stomach. He jerks the knife downward through the fur. I expect to see blood and organs, but nothing comes out of the huge gash. Sam furrows his brow further and pulls the stomach of the animal apart like double doors.

"It's a machine," I say, wide-eyed.

Mechanics make up the bulk of the animal. Gears, beams, and wires surround a metal box in the center. Sam reaches his hand out and pulls out the box. In the process, he snaps several of the wires causing sparks to fly. He winces as the tiny embers meet his open skin.

"Murano Industries," I read off the side of the box. Sam turns the thing over in his palm. "Wait- what does that side say?"

He turns the box again to reveal a series of white, neat letters printed on the side opposite the first set.

"Surveillance Device 77201," Sam reads. His eyes go just as wide as mine.

"They're security cameras," we say at the same time.

Sam puts the monkey back into the sand and shakes his head.

"I knew we were being watched, but this a new level."

"What did you expect from The Island? Everything's fake, remember?"

"Are we even on a real island?" Sam asks, running a hand through his hair.

I don't answer, because the Kaia and Neil walk up behind us. I had thought we were to begin with, but maybe...

"You're kidding!" Kaia says angrily. "All that, and we don't even have food?" She kicks a sand mound and storms away. Her hands knot themselves in her hair.

Neil sighs.

"I'll go into the jungle and get us some fruit," he mumbles with a glance back at the girl.

"We'll go with you," Sam says, standing up.

Neil shakes his head.

"It's better if I go alone."

"You're kidding right? After what just happened? You can't go into the jungle alone!"

"I'll be fine, Samson," Neil says, taking another step towards the treeline. "I've been in alone a few times since we got here. I know the way. I don't need a puppy to guard me."

Sam shakes his head.

"Whatever, man. I was just being nice. Good luck in there."

Neil nods and disappears into the trees.

Sam offers me his hand, and I take it. He pulls me up out of the sand and brushes the sand off my shoulders.

"Where did freakin' Neil go?" Kaia yells from the alcove mouth.

"To get some fruit," Sam says. Together, we walk over to join her.

"And you didn't try to stop him?" she snaps.

I open my mouth to tell her to shut up, but Sam sighs and cuts me off.

"I offered to go with him, but he was pretty adamant about going alone. The way I see it, any chance of us getting food is worth someone wandering into the woods."

"Now isn't the best time to be letting people wander around, Samson!"

Sam looks at me in confusion, and I shrug.

Kaia points behind us in exasperation and groans.

"You two need to stop gazing into each other's eyes and look around for once! The people controlling things decided it was time to go to bed."

We turn slowly to see the sun has nearly set. Oranges gather along the fake horizon, crawling like ants towards the ends of the dome. Pink tips the farthest reaches of the sunset.

"You let Neil wander into the jungle at dark, idiot!" Kaia says through her teeth. I look back at her, and she throws her hands up. "He's pretty hard to be around, but he's my partner. If he gets killed by a horse-lion, I'm strangling the both of you."

With that, she turns and stomps into the darkness of the alcove. I turn back towards the sunset, where a small white speck has appeared above the copper red circle.

"What's that?" I ask Sam.

"A moon, I think?"

"Isn't it coming up on the wrong side of the dome?"

"It's all fake, remember? Who knows."

Sam shrugs and turns his back to the unnatural scene.

"Better get that fire going," he mumbles as he walks past me. "The temperature is going to start dropping soon."

I nod and follow behind him.

Minutes later, the three of us sit around a raging fire. Night set in soon after I got it lit, leaving us shivering in the early night. Sleep evades us all, even after the exhausting chase. Kaia stares out into the darkness with her arms wrapped around the knees she's pulled up to her chest.

Sam inspects the metal box. He stares at it with the intensity of someone trying to make it explode with their mind. The words 'Murano Industries' should ring a bell in my head, but they don't. Does he remember something?

Instead of asking, I poke at the fire with my spear and watch the ways that the embers dance at my touch. The ballerinas of fire twist and skip away, running from an unknown enemy. They dance towards their eventual death in the cold sand.

I jab at the middle of the fire with my stick and the center collapses, throwing embers everywhere. Sam jumps at the hissing sound that results, and Kaia glances at me with a scowl.

I glance at both of them and grimace.

"Sorry," I mumble, but then I hear the slow hissing of a fire being extinguished by water. I look back at my precious fire to see it is half gone, washed out by the inky water that has crept into our hide-out.

"What in the world?" Sam whispers as he crawls towards the water on his hands and knees. Kaia sits up, too, scooting to sit beside me.

"High tide," I say, but the words rush out in one strangled breath. "The moon, Sammy."

Sam glances back at me in shock. Realization sets into the lines between his eyebrows, and he sits up on his knees.

"We have to move," he says in a diplomatic voice. I smirk. He's acting like the boss again. It softens the fear I feel building up in my chest.

"What? Why?" Kaia asks. "It's just some water. It isn't going to hurt us."

I hold my breath. How's he going to explain this one? Will he tell her that I'm scared pantless at the very idea of being trapped under a rock with the water edging towards me with every passing second?

"Maybe so," Sam says, holding Kaia's intense stare, "but as that tide continues to rise, we're going to be trapped here. Like a fishbowl." Goosebumps rush up over my arms. "With that water comes the fish, sharks, and other animals. If we don't drown while we're sleeping, we'll be eaten alive."

I wrap my arms around my body and force myself to stare at the faint fire before us. He managed to put all my fears into four sentences.

"If that's your logic, we aren't much safer outside the alcove," Kaia says. "It'll keep rising until it gets to the tree line. I've seen it before."

"Then, where do we go?" I ask.

Kaia shrugs as she looks over at me.

"Into the jungle, I guess. We could stay in the clearing."

I nod.

"That's fine. Anywhere but here, Kaia."

As if she can see how terrified I am, she reaches out and picks up one of the clumped up sections of my hair and smiles gently. The action doesn't calm me down, though, because at her touch, I'm underwater again. She's pulling me down, and I can't breathe.

Sam finds my hand and gives it a squeeze. I realize I've began to pant as panic nestles deeper into my chest.

"Let's go," Kaia says as she stands up. "It's going to be cold in there without the rock to block the wind, though. Just so you know."

Minutes later, we sit back to back in a protective triangle in the clearing. Kaia shivers behind me like an earthquake, unable to control her body movements. My teeth rattle against each other as the bitter wind cuts through our huddle. Sam buries his face in his arms, and his snoring tells me he's asleep.

Soon enough, Kaia's asleep to. Her shivering comes to a stop, and her chin falls forward onto her chest. Whether their sleepiness is caused by the cold or sheer exhaustion, I'm still alone.

The moon provides a little light. It breaks through the trees and casts eerie shadows across the prickly grass. The unnatural yellow light catches on the leaves still damp from the storm only hours ago. Dozens of eyes blink at me from the shadows, but the jungle is silent around me.

I shove my hands into my pockets and fiddle with the rock that I pocketed before we left the alcove.

Wait- why didn't we start a fire?

I pull the rock out and hold it out in front of me.

I have everything I need right here. What's stopping me?

Starting a fire is a terrible idea, Jordyn...

I scowl at the voice. Like I'm going to trust it. It's been trying to get me to kill Sam for two days.

You'll burn down the jungle.

No, I won't. That's insane.

I push away from the other two and lean forward to pile stray leaves together. A sturdy stick and several minutes later, a pile of embers glow in the stack of underbrush. I relax back into the group as the flames grow.

It's slow at first. I smile and relax my shoulders. My eyes drift closed, grateful for the warmth of the fire.

Then, a red light erupts on the other side of my eyelids. I open them suddenly, sitting upright.

Everything around me is engulfed in flames.