The beach was narrow enough that Adam could see the trees from the rafts.
At dawn Harlan brought them in through the gap he had picked between two rocks.
Adam had covered both purifiers for the landing.
Sand scraped under Chloe’s raft first.
Adam stepped into water below his knees and held the three rafts while Harlan pulled his oars clear.
The island was low and roughly two hundred metres across.
Thin palms rose from the middle, with shorter trees Adam did not recognise between them.
There was a strip of firm sand above the water, then dark ground under the trees.
More rafts were coming toward the northern beach.
He counted eleven before people and their sails or shades hid the rest.
“Go,” Harlan said.
“I’ll keep these off the rocks.
Bring the first bags back here.”
Adam and Chloe took the two empty cloth sacks.
The storage crate stayed aboard, ready to be emptied if they found more soil than the sacks would hold.
Chloe left her three bottle plants in Harlan’s shade.
He moved the bottle behind a plank to keep it upright and waved her away when she checked the angle of the sun again.
The first ground beyond the sand was mixed with pale grit.
Adam dug into it with the flat end of his knife and brought up only damp sand.
Farther under the trees, fallen leaves had made a layer of dark soil.
He tried to lift a handful.
It held together for a moment, then crumbled through his fingers.
Nothing like it existed on the raft.
He filled one sack while Chloe held it open.
Leaves and small roots went in with the soil; they could sort it later.
The full sack weighed about five kilos.
The second filled from the same patch.
The System called both Soil, five kilograms each, without offering a recipe or telling him what had grown there before.
[Soil: 10 kg.
Two containers.]
They carried the sacks back before doing anything else.
Harlan tied them under Adam’s shade, away from the repaired corner.
The raft sat lower, but its edge stayed above the water.
Adam marked the soil patch with a fallen palm leaf so he could find it again.
Chloe asked whether they should make a third bag now.
He told her they could decide after seeing the rest of the island.
She kept the knife rather than putting it away.
“There’s wood past the tree line,” Harlan said.
“Let me take the knife.
I’ll see what I can cut.
Stay near the rafts till I get back.”
Chloe passed him the rusted knife.
Adam showed him the patch where they had found the soil and asked him to leave any roots he had to cut through.
Harlan wanted wood, but the thin living trees might be worth more standing if the island stayed above water.
He said he would take fallen limbs first and moved inland with his bad knee stiff after yesterday’s rowing.
Chloe had found fruit under one of the shorter trees.
It was soft and dark purple, about the size of a fig, with a split at one end.
She opened one in front of Adam.
Small seeds lined the inside.
She waited while he checked it.
The System labelled it edible and gave no warning.
They shared it.
It was sweet.
They found seven more sound fruit and ate a second split one.
Chloe saved twelve seeds from the two they had opened and wrapped them in a paper fold from her tin.
The seven intact fruit would bruise if left under the boards with the wood, so she kept them in a shallow space in the crate.
She wanted to look for another tree.
Adam asked her to wait until Harlan returned so one of them could stay with the rafts.
By then a line of people was forming under the trees.
Someone had found water.
A narrow trickle came from a hollow near the island’s centre and ran through a cut in the ground before disappearing into the sand.
Two people were filling bottles where the trickle pooled.
Others waited behind them with buckets and pots.
Adam emptied the jerrycan into their bottles.
Harlan drank the last of it when he brought his first wood back.
Adam carried the empty container toward the spring.
Frey stood beside the line, talking to survivors as they arrived.
Up close he was broad and sunburnt, with a rope wound around one wrist.
He said he could keep people from crowding the hollow if they formed one line.
Most did.
A wiry younger man with him was directing rafts away from the rocks on the north side.
Frey called him Sam.
When the man answered, someone farther up the line called him Pryor.
Adam heard both names without knowing what the younger man had done before the island.
“Take what you need and move aside,” Frey told a person filling a cooking pot.
His voice carried without shouting.
“We can all get through.”
The person stepped away.
Frey saw Adam’s ten-litre container and glanced at the empty bottles in the hands of those behind him.
“That’ll take a while,” he said.
“The flow’s steady,” Adam said.
“I’ll wait.”
“I’m keeping the line moving.”
“So am I.”
Frey let the matter go.
Adam stood behind two people with smaller bottles.
When his turn came, he held the jerrycan under the stream until it was full.
Frey sent Sam to help another raft in the shallows while Adam closed the lid.
Adam followed the trickle to its start, a stone hollow a few paces uphill.
Water came out beside a pale shape half-buried in the ground.
At first he took the shape for a rock streaked with white mineral.
Then sunlight reached it through the leaves.
White lines inside the stone brightened, and a label appeared.
[Island Core (Tier 0) — Unstable.
Removing this will collapse the formation.]
The stone was about the size of a football.
Adam did not touch it.
Chloe came up behind him carrying the wrapped fruit seeds, followed by three survivors who had left the water line.
He read the label aloud.
One of the survivors asked whether the System meant the island would sink.
Adam said it said collapse; he did not know how fast or what else would happen.
Another survivor tried to see the label from a step away and got the same words.
She repeated them to the people waiting for water.
Frey heard and came through the trees with Sam.
Adam stepped aside so they could look without anyone crowding the spring.
“A core,” Frey said.
“Now there’s something useful.”
“It says removing it will collapse the island,” Chloe said.
“I can read.”
Frey crouched close enough to read the label.
He did not lift the stone.
Sam looked from him to the people at the spring.
Adam carried the full jerrycan away.
Harlan had cut fourteen Wood by the time they returned to the beach.
Some came from fallen branches, but most was green wood he had taken from thin trees away from the spring.
It was heavier than the dry planks Adam usually gathered.
Harlan put six pieces on his raft beside the eight Adam had moved there yesterday.
The other eight pieces lay above the tide line, ready for another load.
They counted thirty-four Wood between what Adam had brought and what Harlan had cut.
“No more on mine,” Harlan said.
“It’s sitting low.”
Adam moved the jerrycan to his own raft and left the two soil sacks under the shade.
Chloe handed Harlan one of the fruit they had found.
He ate it standing beside his raft.
More people landed through the morning.
Frey’s eight rafts occupied the northern end, where his men helped pull two late arrivals through the shallows and then started cutting trees.
Others spread along the sand.
Adam counted close to thirty rafts before he lost track of which ones had come in together.
A few people had heard the warning at the spring and stopped to ask what the core was for.
Nobody knew.
Adam told Harlan about the warning.
Harlan asked how long the island would take to collapse if someone removed the core.
The label had given no time.
Frey stayed near the hollow and sent Sam to fetch two of his men.