Although he tried, Sam could not sleep.
The crushing reality of his situation—trapped in a bizarre, multiversal game so impossibly far from home—kept his mind racing.
He managed a maximum of two hours of restless sleep, spending the remainder of the night staring blankly at the unfamiliar ceiling.
Finally, after several hours of tossing and turning, he gave up.
He rolled out of bed and decided to head back to the cafeteria, hoping a warm meal might help him relax.
“Good morning, Sam!” Alice cheered, waving enthusiastically from a new table near the centre of the cafeteria.
Naturally, she was already eating.
This time, her tray was loaded with something deep-fried and golden, drenched in a glossy red sauce that burned a bit brighter than the one on her burgers from yesterday.
“You didn’t sleep well?” Alice asked, her cheeks stuffed with food as he slumped into the chair across from her.
“That obvious?”
“You’ve got massive bags under your eyes.”
Sam didn’t even have the energy to argue.
His gaze drifted to a cup resting near her tray.
“Is this water?”
“Yep…?”
Without a word, he snatched the cup, splashed a handful of water onto his face, and let out a long sigh.
“Hey! I was drinking that!” Alice shrieked, swatting at his arm.
“By the way,” Sam muttered, aggressively rubbing his eyes.
“What did you mean yesterday when you said you were doing me a favour?”
Alice didn’t answer immediately, deliberately taking her time to chew and swallow her food.
“Well, you know how everyone is currently out to get the number one player? Which, unfortunately, happens to be you.”
Sam felt his stomach drop.
He threw a frantic glance around the room.
“Could you please say that a little bit more quietly…?”
“Don’t worry! No one is going to think you’re him after that display in the hallway,” Alice dismissed with a grin.
“Everyone is expecting the number one player to be some super-strong, intimidating monster. Why would they ever suspect you? You’re just a weak human who gets easily dragged around by someone like me!”
What she said was technically true, but Sam still believed it would have been better if his presence had stayed completely under the radar, rather than being a public spectacle.
“Oh no!” Alice suddenly screamed, her eyes widening in sheer horror.
Sam nearly fell out of his chair.
“What?! What happened?!”
“I ate all my food! And I forgot to offer you some…” she whined, her shoulders slumping as she hung her head in shame.
“Yeah… you really don’t need to worry about that,” Sam muttered, a cold sweat breaking out as he remembered the agonising, tongue-melting experience of eating her food yesterday.
Snap!
Reality violently inverted, and every vibrant colour bleached into a stark, blinding black and white.
Sam squeezed his eyes shut to stave off the sudden wave of motion sickness.
When he finally forced them open, the cafeteria was gone.
He found himself standing before the massive holographic leaderboard once again, surrounded by Alice and the rest of the surviving contestants. This story is hosted at g.com.
This could only mean one thing…
“Hello, contestants! I sure hope all of you rested well!”
Nexis materialised before the leaderboard, hovering effortlessly above the crowd.
“I think it’s time we begin preparations for the second game!”
I didn’t even get a chance to eat breakfast…
Sam thought to himself, his stomach letting out a timely, pathetic growl.
“This game is called Survival Island!” Nexis cheered, spreading his arms wide.
“You will be dropped onto a massive island featuring a highly volatile environment and deadly wildlife for exactly seven days! The game will not end under any circumstances until those seven days have concluded. Points will be awarded based on various factors, such as how you choose to survive, what you manage to discover, or what you kill. However, the exact scoring criteria will remain entirely confidential!”
This trial already sounded far more challenging and unpredictable than the first.
And this time, given the seven-day time limit, crossing paths with other contestants would be completely unavoidable.
Sam could only hope that whoever he met would be even half as reasonable as Alice.
“Alright! Let the games begin!” Nexis exclaimed.
With a sharp, resounding clap, the world dissolved into a blinding light.
In an instant, the contestants were scattered to random corners of the unknown island.
When the blinding light faded, Sam found himself completely alone, swallowed by a vast and dangerous wilderness.
His heart hammered against his ribs as he began scanning his surroundings.
He was trapped in a dense forest of tall trees with ghostly white bark and vibrant yellow leaves that blocked out most of the sky.
With no landmarks and absolutely no idea where to go, he picked a direction and began walking, praying every step would bring him closer to something that might improve his chances of surviving the next seven days.
“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” an unfamiliar voice chimed from the shadows.
Sam spun around, his breath catching in his throat.
He found himself face-to-face with an elf who looked as though she had stepped straight out of a fantasy novel.
She wore a deep green robe, and a polished wooden bow was gripped firmly in her left hand.
“I’ve already come across someone,” she purred, her eyes locking onto his.
“Someone easy to kill.”
With a fluid, practiced motion, she notched an arrow until it was aimed squarely between Sam’s eyes.
“Hold on a second,” Sam stammered, his hands flying up as he slowly took a step backward.
“You don’t have to do this. How about we just… talk this out?”
“Sorry, but I really need to win that wish,” she said, her focus shifting entirely into a cold, deadly gaze.
The bowstring snapped forward.
Sam did not hesitate.
He threw himself to the side, the arrow whistling past his ear so close he could feel the wind of it.
He scrambled to his feet and sprinted blindly into the woods, frantically swerving between the ghostly white trees and using their trunks as physical shields.
The elf pursued him with terrifying speed, loosing arrow after arrow as she weaved effortlessly through the trees.
Fortunately, the dense, overlapping trees made it impossible for her to get a clean angle.
Sam refused to look back.
Lungs burning and heart hammering, he focused entirely on putting as much distance between himself and the archer as possible, desperately praying for a place to hide.
Suddenly, the dense line of trees gave way, and he burst into a small clearing.
A rushing river cut across his path.
If it were not for the elf psycho hunting him down, he would have started celebrating the discovery of a water source.
With the river blocking his path and nowhere else to run, Sam plunged into the cave.
He had no idea what waited inside, but he knew the elf behind him would kill him if he stayed.
“Trying to hide, are we?” the elf’s voice echoed from the entrance, her silhouette cutting through the dim light as she quickly stepped inside.
As she ventured deeper and deeper into the cavern, the absolute darkness swallowed the remaining daylight.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to see.
The elf paused, starting to question if this chase was even worth the risk, especially with the threat of unknown predators lurking in the shadows.
Just as she was about to turn back toward the entrance, her foot struck something on the cavern floor.
She looked down.
Click.
A searing beam of white light burst from the darkness, erupting directly from Sam’s right hand.
He was wielding a tool possessed by almost every human of his modern era: a smartphone.
Utilising the device’s high-intensity flashlight feature, the blinding beam slammed straight into the elf’s dilated, night-adjusted pupils.
She shrieked, completely blinded, and stumbled backward over her own feet.
Sam lunged.
His fingers scrambled blindly across the cavern floor until they wrapped around a heavy, jagged stone.
With a surge of pure panic, he swung it upward, smashing it directly into her head.
The elf collapsed to the ground with a cry of pain.
Disoriented, she tried to push herself back up, but Sam threw his full weight onto her, forcing her back down.
Driven entirely by raw survival instinct, he brought the rock down again.
And again.
And again.
Finally, his chest heaving, his fingers slipped from the blood-slicked stone.
It clattered against the cave floor.
Sam froze, staring through the stark beam of his phone’s flashlight at the unmoving body before him, the absolute weight of what he had just done crashing down on him.
He tried his absolute best to fight the rising bile, but he couldn’t.
Sam collapsed to all fours and violently retched, puking onto the cave’s floor.
As he wiped his mouth with a trembling sleeve, hot tears began streaming down his face.
He wiped and wiped at his eyes, but the tears just would not stop.
I had to, he desperately reasoned with himself, his mind spinning into a panicked loop.
I had no choice.
She was going to kill me.
She gave me no choice.
He stared at her motionless body, illuminated by the harsh white beam of his phone’s flashlight.
The silence in the cave was deafening.
Completely numb, he forced himself back onto his feet and staggered out of the cavern into the open air.