Ian's cheek was pressed against something that definitely wasn't his stained mattress.
The texture was wrong—rough bark digging into his skin, not the familiar synthetic blend of cheap bedding. His eyes cracked open, eyelids heavy with sleep, and instead of water-stained ceiling tiles, he saw branches. Actual branches, thick with leaves that filtered sunlight into fragmented gold patches across his vision.
What the fuck.
His voice came out hoarse, barely recognizable. He pushed himself upright, palms scraping against moss and decaying leaves. The air hit him next—crisp and earth-rich, carrying none of the stale humidity that usually clung to his apartment. No mildew smell. No exhaust fumes seeping through the broken window seal. Just... forest.
His heart kicked against his ribs.
The apartment. He'd been in his apartment. The radiator clanking, the water stain spreading across the ceiling. The mattress that smelled faintly of mildew no matter how many times he tried to air it out. He'd closed his eyes on that particular brand of urban decay, and now—
Now he was here. Wherever here was
"Okay. Okay." His voice sounded foreign in the quiet, competing with bird calls he didn't recognize. Ian scrambled to his feet, head whipping around to take in the towering trees surrounding him on all sides. Oak? Maybe? He didn't know shit about trees, but these were massive, their trunks wider than he could wrap his arms around, roots breaking through the forest floor like wooden veins.
He was still in his clothes from last night—wrinkled t-shirt, worn jeans, one sock missing. The ground was soft beneath his bare foot, damp with morning dew that soaked through immediately.
"This isn't-" He spun in a circle, searching for something familiar. Anything. A road sign. Power lines. The glow of a convenience store. "This isn't real."
But the bark had left an imprint on his cheek. He could feel it; the grooves still pressed into his skin when he touched his face. His fingers came away with dirt under the nails.
He tried to think but nothing came to him. No memories of transit, no fuzzy gaps that suggested Rohypnol or chloroform. Just sleep and then moss.
Drugged? Had someone broken in and—no, that made no sense. Who would go through the effort of hauling his lanky ass to a forest? And why? He had nothing worth stealing except a laptop held together with duct tape and a collection of instant ramen that was more salt than food.
His breathing came faster. The forest seemed to lean in, watching. Insects he couldn't see buzzed in frequencies that made his teeth ache. Somewhere distant, something howled—not quite wolf, not quite anything he recognized.
"Think." He pressed his palms against his eyes, trying to force logic into the situation. "There has to be an explanation."
But there wasn't. Nothing rational fits. He hadn't been drinking. Hadn't taken anything. Sleepwalking? He'd never done that in his life, and even if he had, his apartment was on the third floor. He would've noticed stumbling downstairs and traveling—how far? Miles? The nearest forest to the city was...
Ian's hands dropped.
He didn't even know where the nearest forest was. That was how little he interacted with nature.
The panic he'd been holding at bay crashed through. His breath came shorter, faster, chest tightening like someone had wrapped bands around his ribs and started pulling. He needed to move. Needed to find people, a road, something that made sense.
He picked a direction—arbitrary, meaningless—and started walking.
The forest floor was a nightmare on his bare foot. Twigs snapped under his weight, sharp enough to make him wince. Rocks pressed into his sole. He kept moving anyway, weaving between trees that seemed to go on forever. No paths. No trails. Just endless repetition of trunk and shadow and the occasional shaft of sunlight that made him squint.
Time became elastic. Could've been twenty minutes. Could've been an hour. His throat was dry, tongue starting to stick to the roof of his mouth, when the trees finally started to thin.
The change was gradual—more space between trunks, underbrush giving way to wild grass that brushed his knees. Then suddenly the oppressive canopy broke open, and Ian stumbled into a clearing that stretched wide enough to see sky.
He stopped, breath catching for a different reason.
The meadow spread before him like something out of a painting he'd never have the patience to look at. Wildflowers dotted the grass—purple and yellow and white, colors so saturated they almost hurt to look at after the forest's gloom. The grass itself seemed wrong, too green, too lush, moving in waves as wind he could barely feel rolled across it.
And beyond that, cutting through the landscape like a silver ribbon, was a river.
Ian's feet carried him forward without conscious thought. The grass was cool and wet against his skin, soaking his jeans up to the knee. As he got closer, he could hear the water—not the angry rush of rapids, but a steady, musical flow that suggested depth without danger.
The river was wider than he expected, maybe thirty feet across, the water so clear he could see smooth stones lining the bottom. It caught the sunlight and threw it back in shifting patterns, almost hypnotic. The banks were gentle slopes of clay and sand, marked with prints he couldn't identify—animal tracks, probably, though they looked too large for anything he'd want to meet.
The current moved at a lazy pace, heading south if he was judging the sun's position correctly. Downstream, the river curved around a bend where willows draped their branches low enough to trail in the water. Upstream, it disappeared into another section of forest, the trees pressing close on both sides like they were trying to drink.
He looked at the water happy to see anything that was not this forest he found himself in and was greeted by his own face.
The reflection showed exactly what two weeks of barely leaving his apartment had done. His hair stuck up in uneven chunks, brown strands going every direction like he'd been electrocuted. Longer than he remembered, had it been that long since his last haircut? The ends curled slightly where they touched his ears and forehead, greasy enough to clump together. Dark circles sat heavy under his hazel eyes, the kind that came from too many nights of shit sleep and not enough sunlight. His cheeks looked hollowed out, stubble shadowing a jaw that seemed more pronounced than it should be. When had he eaten last? Actually eaten, not just shoved ramen down his throat while staring at a screen?
The t-shirt hung loose on his frame, collar stretched and faded gray. He could see his collarbones jutting out where the neckline sagged.
He looked like hell. Looked like exactly what he was—some guy who'd given up on basic maintenance because he had better things to worry about.
The water also reminded Ian how much his tongue felt like sandpaper, just looking at the river made him realize that fact. His throat felt like he'd swallowed a handful of sand, each attempt to generate saliva only emphasizing how desperately he needed water. He dropped to his knees at the river's edge, the wet sand immediately soaking through his jeans.
He'd heard something once—a podcast maybe, or some documentary playing in the background while he'd been half-asleep—about how drinking from streams could fuck you up. Giardia. That was the word. Some parasites that would turn your intestines inside out for weeks. The kind of thing hikers worried about, the reason they carried those expensive filter bottles.
But his mouth was so dry. His tongue stuck to his palate, and the river was right there, clear enough that he could see every pebble on the bottom.
"Fuck it." The words came out cracked. If he was already wherever the hell this was, parasites seemed like a distant concern.
He cupped his hands and dipped them into the water. Cold. Sharp enough to make his fingers ache. He brought the water to his lips and drank.
It tasted clean. Better than clean—it had a mineral quality that made the tap water from his apartment seem like chemical soup in comparison. He drank again, deeper, letting the cold spread down his throat and into his chest. The relief was immediate, almost dizzying.
When he leaned forward for a third handful, something moved in the water. Fish—small ones, silver-scaled and quick, darting between the rocks in tight formations. They scattered as his hands broke the surface, reforming their school a few feet downstream.
At least the water had life in it. That had to be a good sign, right? Fish wouldn't survive in toxic waste.
He was reaching for another drink when light caught his eye. A flash, brief and metallic, coming from deeper in the river where the current had carved out a depression in the riverbed. The fish swirled around it, their movements creating shifting shadows that made it hard to focus.
Ian leaned further out, his weight shifting onto his hands. The water was maybe waist-deep there, the bottom visible but distorted by the current's movement. The metallic glint came again—definitely something solid, something that didn't belong among the river stones.
Metal meant manufactured. Manufactured meant people.
He didn't even think about it. He waded in, the cold water shocking against his legs, soaking through his jeans in seconds. The current pulled at him, not strong enough to be dangerous but enough that he had to brace himself. The riverbed was slick under his feet, stones shifting with each step.
The water reached his waist by the time he got close enough to see it properly. Whatever it was, sat wedged between two larger rocks, partially buried in silt. He reached down, fingers closing around something smooth and cylindrical.
It came free easier than expected, sending up a small cloud of disturbed sediment. Ian lifted it clear of the water and waded back to the bank, his focus entirely on the object in his hands.
It was a pole of some kind. Had to be. The main shaft was metal—not steel, something else, darker and heavier, with a hue that seemed to drink in light rather than reflect it. The craftsmanship was immediately apparent even to his untrained eye and he was surprised that there was no rust or grim on it given he found it in the water.
The shaft was maybe four feet long, intricate patterns were etched into the metal—not decorative, or at least not purely decorative. They followed the length of the shaft in spiraling designs that made his eyes want to follow them, made him feel like they meant something if he could just focus hard enough.
Ian turned it in his hands, water dripping from it onto the grass. The weight distribution was perfect, balanced in a way that made it feel natural to hold. When he adjusted his grip, it seemed to warm under his palm, conforming to his hand like it had been made for him specifically.
"It's a stick? Maybe one of those hiking poles people use" he muttered. Well, it's his now.
Whatever it was, it beat wandering around with nothing. Ian gripped it like a walking stick and started moving again, following the river downstream. At least the water gave him a landmark, something to orient himself by instead of endless identical trees.
The pole helped more than he expected. His bare foot still protested every sharp rock and hidden root, but having something to brace against made the uneven terrain manageable. The weight of it felt solid, reassuring in a way that eased some of the tightness in his chest.
He'd find people soon. Had to. Rivers meant settlements. That was basic geography, wasn't it? Civilizations are built near water sources. He'd stumble across a campsite, or a hiking trail, or some weekend warriors with their expensive gear and protein bars who could explain what the fuck was happening.
The sun climbed higher as he walked. His initial surge of energy—fueled by finding the pole, by having a plan even if it was just "follow the water"—carried him through the first stretch. But the river eventually curved away from open ground, plunging back into forest, and Ian had to choose between wading through water or fighting through underbrush.
He chose the forest. The trees here were different, thinner, with bark that peeled in papery strips. The canopy let through more light, dappling the ground in shifting patterns that made his eyes ache if he stared too long. His stomach had started making itself known, a hollow feeling that sharpened into actual hunger pangs.
Another clearing opened up, smaller than the first, ringed with bushes that were heavy with clusters of dark berries. They hung in bunches, nearly black, with a waxy sheen that caught the light. Ian's mouth watered just looking at them.
He approached slowly, the pole clicking against stones with each step. The bushes were wild, untended, branches sprawling in every direction. The berries were everywhere, some so ripe they'd split open, juice staining the leaves beneath them.
Ian reached out, fingers hovering over a cluster. His stomach cramped, demanding he just eat the fucking things. But something made him hesitate.
Poisonous. The word surfaced from some half-remembered nature documentary. Berries could look perfectly fine and still kill you. Or make you wish you were dead while your body purged itself from both ends. He'd heard stories about hikers who'd eaten the wrong thing, ended up hallucinating or seizing or—
"How the fuck am I supposed to know?" His voice was too loud in the quiet. The berries just hung there, mocking him with their abundance.
He could try one. A small one. See if anything happened. But how long would symptoms take? Hours? Minutes? And if they were toxic, then what? He was alone, wherever here was, with no idea how to get help.
His hand dropped. The hunger gnawed at him, insistent, but the risk—
The pole was still in his other hand. Ian shifted his grip and used the end to hook one of the lower branches, pulling it down for a closer look. Maybe there was something he could identify, some detail that would tell him if—
Green light flooded his vision.
The pole erupted with it, a luminescence that seemed to come from deep within the metal itself. Not just the surface—the etchings he'd noticed earlier blazed with the color, the spiraling patterns suddenly coherent, suddenly purposeful. The light traveled up the shaft like liquid, pooling where his hand gripped it before spreading further.
"Shit" Ian dropped the branch and stumbled backward, but the pole stayed in his hand. The light didn't fade. If anything, it intensified, washing across the berries he'd been examining, across the entire bush.
Ian stared in shock at the pole. The green light was gone. Just gone. Like flipping a switch, the luminescence had simply ceased, leaving him holding what looked like an ordinary metal shaft. His heart hammered against his ribs.
He dropped it. The pole hit the grass with a muted thump, rolling slightly before coming to rest against a tuft of wild clover. Ian backed up another step, his bare foot landing on something sharp that he barely registered through the adrenaline flooding his system.
"What the fuck. What the-" The words came out strangled. He couldn't look away from the pole, lying there innocent and inert in the grass. No glow. No light. Just dark metal with those spiral etchings that now seemed purely decorative again.
Maybe he'd imagined it. Heat stroke? Could you get heat stroke this fast? The sun wasn't even that intense, but his head felt light, disconnected. That had to be it. Dehydration playing tricks, his brain misfiring because he hadn't eaten since—when? Yesterday? The timeline of his last meal felt impossibly distant.
But the afterimage still burned behind his eyelids when he blinked. That specific shade of green, almost phosphorescent, like the glow-in-the-dark stars he'd had on his ceiling as a kid.
Ian crouched down, keeping his distance, and poked the pole with his foot. The metal was cool against his skin, completely normal. He nudged it harder, rolling it over. Nothing. No hidden battery compartment, no visible power source. The etchings caught the sunlight as it turned, throwing off ordinary metallic gleams.
"LED lights," he said to the empty clearing. "Has to be. Some kind of... pressure sensor? Motion activated?"
But he'd been holding it still when it happened. And LEDs didn't feel like that—didn't have that quality of light seeming to originate from inside the material itself, like the metal had become luminous.
His thoughts chased themselves in circles. There had to be an explanation. A logical one. He just wasn't seeing it because he was tired and hungry and his brain was running on fumes.
Slowly, like approaching a dog that might bite, Ian reached down and picked up the pole. His fingers closed around the shaft. The metal warmed to his touch again, that same sensation of it conforming to his grip. He waited, muscles tense, for the light to return.
Nothing happened.
He turned it over in his hands, examining every inch. The spiral patterns were intricate, definitely machine-made—had to be. The metal itself was seamless, with no joints or welds visible. Whatever it was made of had a depth to it, a hue that seemed to shift depending on the angle.
His mind drifted back to what he'd been doing when it lit up. The berries. He'd been looking at the berries, wondering if they were safe to eat, pulling the branch closer with the pole and then—
Green light flooded his vision again.
"Fuck!" Ian nearly dropped it a second time, but his grip tightened reflexively. The pole blazed in his hands, that same liquid luminescence racing up the shaft. The etchings came alive, the spiral patterns suddenly coherent in a way that made his eyes ache. The light pulsed, steady as a heartbeat, washing across the berry bush in front of him.
And this time he saw what it illuminated.
The berries themselves seemed to glow in response, but not uniformly. Some clusters lit up with the same green radiance. Others remained dark, almost absorbing the light rather than reflecting it. The pattern was clear even to his racing, panicked brain, the green-lit ones were safe, edible. The dark ones were poison.
He knew it. Not guessed, not hoped—knew it with the same certainty he knew his own name.
Ian stood frozen, the pole blazing in his grip, staring at the berries that were now neatly categorized into safe and deadly. His breath came short and fast. The light continued to pulse, steady and patient, waiting for him to accept what it was showing him.
"This isn't real," he whispered. But his hands were solid around the pole. The light was solid, painting everything green. The hunger in his stomach was solid, and the berries—some of them, the ones still glowing—were right there.
The light faded again the moment the thought crystallized. Ian's hands shook as he reached for the nearest cluster that had glowed green, plucking berries with fingers that felt clumsy and disconnected. They were cool against his palm, firm but yielding slightly under pressure.
He brought one to his mouth. Hesitated. The rational part of his brain—the part that had kept him alive through shitty neighborhoods and shittier landlords—screamed at him to stop. But the berries looked fine, and the pole had shown him, and he was so fucking hungry.
The berry burst between his teeth, tart and sweet simultaneously, juice flooding his mouth with flavor that made his apartment's instant meals taste like cardboard in memory. He swallowed. Waited. Nothing happened except the hollow ache in his stomach demanding more.
He ate another. Then another. His hands moved on autopilot, plucking the safe berries—he thought of them that way now, safe berries, like the pole's judgment was now gospel—and stuffing them into his mouth. The tartness made his jaw ache, but underneath was a sweetness that kept him reaching for more.
By the time his stomach stopped cramping, he'd cleared two entire branches of the green-marked fruit. Juice stained his fingers purple-black, and his tongue felt fuzzy from the tartness. He wiped his hands on his already-ruined jeans and stared at the pole lying in the grass where he'd set it down to eat.
The metal gleamed innocently in the dappled sunlight.
Ian's mind raced through possibilities, each one more absurd than the last. A sensor that detected chemical compounds? But how would it analyze them that fast, and why would someone build something like that into what looked like a walking stick? Some kind of augmented reality display? Except there was no visor, no glasses, nothing between his eyes and the actual berries.
He tried to think of a rational explanation. Something grounded in technology he just didn't understand yet. Advanced materials. Nano-something. Maybe the pole had been some kind of prototype, lost or discarded, and he'd just stumbled onto military-grade tech that—
No. That was bullshit and he knew it. Military tech didn't glow with inner light. Didn't feel warm and alive under his palm. Didn't respond to unspoken questions about whether berries would kill him.
Which left the irrational explanations.
Magic. The word sat in his head like a stone, heavy and impossible. Magic didn't exist. Couldn't exist. But neither could glowing poles that identified poisonous fruit, and he'd just watched that happen twice. Neither could waking up in a forest with no memory of how he got there, and yet here he fucking was.
His throat felt tight again despite the berries. If this was magic—if that was even possible—then what did that mean about where he was? About how he'd gotten here? The forest suddenly felt more oppressive, the shadows between trees deeper and more threatening.
Ian picked up the pole. The metal warmed immediately to his touch, that same unsettling sensation of it recognizing his grip. He stared at it, turning it over in his hands, examining the spiral etchings that had blazed with green fire.
Could it do other things?
The thought came unbidden. If it could identify edible plants, what else could it do? Find water? Detect danger? The possibilities spiraled out, each one more improbable than the last but somehow feeling more real after what he'd witnessed.
He looked around the clearing, suddenly aware of how exposed he was. How vulnerable. The pole was the only thing he had that might help him survive this… whatever this was.
"Okay," he said to the empty air, his voice rough. "If you can show me what's safe to eat..."
He felt like an idiot. Talking to a piece of metal like it could understand him. But he'd also felt like an idiot right before it had lit up and saved him from potential poisoning, so maybe feeling stupid was just part of the new normal.
"Can you show me where home is?"
The words came out smaller than he intended. More desperate. He gripped the pole tighter, waiting for that green luminescence to return, for the etchings to blaze with direction and purpose and show him a path back to his shitty apartment with its water-stained ceiling and broken window seal.
Nothing happened.
The pole remained inert in his hands. No light. No warmth beyond the usual response to his touch. Just metal and spiral patterns that refused to mean anything.
Ian waited, counting his heartbeats. Ten. Twenty. The forest sounds continued around him—birds he didn't recognize, insects humming their alien songs. The berry bushes rustled in a breeze he barely felt.
Still nothing.
"Come on." His voice cracked. "Please."
The pole didn't respond. Didn't care. Maybe it couldn't answer that kind of question. Maybe home was too abstract, too far, too impossible for whatever mechanism drove it to comprehend.
Or maybe there was no home to point to anymore.
The thought hit him like cold water. What if he couldn't go back? What if whatever had brought him here—magic, technology, a fucking coma dream— brought him farther than what should be possible? The apartment might as well be on another planet for all the good it did him standing in this clearing with berry juice on his hands and one shoe missing.
Ian's grip tightened on the pole until his knuckles went white. The metal remained stubbornly ordinary, offering no comfort, no guidance beyond its earlier gift of identifying which berries wouldn't kill him.
"Fuck." He said it quietly, without heat. The word fell flat in the clearing, inadequate for the situation but the only response his exhausted brain could produce.
The panic was creeping back in—the full weight of being stranded, alone, with no idea where the hell he was or what else might be lurking in these woods. His chest felt tight again, breath coming shorter. He was stuck. In the middle of a forest that shouldn't exist. With no way home. And no idea what else was out there besides berry bushes and too-clear rivers.
Stop. He pressed his palms against his eyes; the pole trapped awkwardly under one arm. Thinking about it wouldn't help. Spiraling wouldn't help. He needed to focus on something else. Anything else.
The sun had shifted while he'd been eating, dropping lower toward the horizon. How long had he been walking? Hours, probably. The light had that golden quality that meant afternoon bleeding into evening, and the shadows between trees were stretching longer, deeper.
Shelter. The word surfaced with sudden urgency. He needed shelter before night fell. The temperature was comfortable now, but forests got cold after dark, didn't they? And if there were animals—predators—he'd be completely exposed sleeping on the ground.
Ian looked down at the pole in his hands. It had shown him which berries were safe. That was specific, practical, survival-oriented information. Could it do the same for building something? Show him how to construct a shelter that wouldn't collapse on his head?
"Can you show me how to make a shelter?" The words felt stupid leaving his mouth. Like asking Siri for life advice. But he'd already crossed into territory where stupid was relative.
The green light erupted so suddenly he nearly dropped the pole. It blazed up the shaft in that same liquid rush, the spiral etchings coming alive with purpose. But this time the light didn't just wash over his surroundings—it concentrated, pulling his attention to specific elements of the clearing.
A cluster of young saplings at the clearing's edge glowed bright green. Then a section of fallen branches near the berry bushes. The light traced patterns in the air, ghostly geometric shapes that his eyes wanted to follow, showing him angles and connections that made sudden, perfect sense.
A lean-to. The pole was showing him how to build a lean-to.
Ian stared at the glowing suggestions, his brain trying to catch up. He'd never built anything in his life beyond IKEA furniture that came with instructions and still ended up lopsided. But the pattern the light showed him was clear—bend those saplings, weave them together, layer the branches at this angle to shed rain.
The light faded. The knowledge remained, sitting in his head like he'd always known it.
His hands moved before his thoughts fully caught up. He approached the saplings the pole had highlighted, young and flexible enough to bend without snapping. The pole was solid in his grip as he used it to hook one of the thin trees, pulling it down to test its give.
The moment he thought about needing to cut it free, the pole changed.
The transformation was fluid, seamless, like the metal had always been waiting to become something else. The shaft shortened in his hands, the top section reforming into a curved blade that caught the fading sunlight. Not quite an axe, not quite a machete—something between, perfectly weighted for the task at hand.
Ian's breath caught. He stared at the blade, then at his hands gripping what had been a simple pole seconds ago. The spiral etchings continued down the handle, still present, still purposeful. The edge gleamed sharp enough to make him instinctively adjust his grip away from it.
"Ok, that just confirms something." he whispered at the act of magic that just happen in his palms. His hands knew what to do. The knowledge the pole had shown him guided his movements as he positioned the blade against the base of the sapling and cut. The metal sliced through the young wood like it was paper, barely any resistance.
He cut three more saplings, each one falling with a clean stroke. The blade made the work effortless in a way that should have been impossible. By the time he had the materials he needed, his initial shock had dulled into something like numb acceptance.
The pole shifted again when he thought about needing to weave the saplings together. The blade melted back into the shaft, the end forming into something like a hook—narrow and curved, perfect for pulling plant fibers through tight spaces and coaxing the flexible wood into the pattern the green light had shown him.
Ian worked as the sun continued its descent. The lean-to took shape against a large oak at the clearing's edge, the structure emerging from his hands like he'd done this a hundred times before. The saplings bent and wove together, creating a frame. The branches layered across it, overlapping in a pattern that would shed water. His movements were efficient, economical, guided by knowledge he shouldn't possess.
When he needed to secure a joint, the pole became a mallet. When he needed to strip bark for binding, it formed a narrow blade perfect for the task. Each transformation was seamless, instantaneous, responding to his needs before he fully articulated them even to himself.
The shelter was crude but solid by the time the sun touched the horizon. Large enough for him to lie down in, angled to protect from wind and rain, positioned so the opening faced away from the prevailing breeze. Ian stepped back, the pole—returned to its original form—in his hand, and stared at what he'd built.
He'd made that. Him. The guy who'd needed YouTube tutorials to hang a curtain rod.
The knowledge was already fading, slipping away like water through his fingers. He could remember the steps he'd taken, but the certainty that had guided his hands was evaporating. If he had to build another one tomorrow, he'd need the pole's guidance again.
His legs felt shaky. Exhaustion crashed over him in a wave that made the clearing tilt slightly. How long had he been going? Since whenever he'd woken up pressed against that tree. No sleep beyond whatever had brought him here. No real food except the berries. His body was running on fumes and adrenaline, and the adrenaline was rapidly depleting.
The darkness came faster than he expected. One moment the clearing was bathed in the orange-gold of sunset, the next the shadows had merged and thickened into something solid. Ian crawled into the shelter, the pole clutched in one hand and pulled himself as far back as the cramped space allowed.
The structure smelled of fresh-cut wood and crushed leaves. His back pressed against the oak's rough bark, knees drawn up to his chest. The opening faced outward into the clearing, now barely visible in the gathering night. Shapes that had been distinct during daylight—the berry bushes, the far tree line—became suggestions, dark masses against darker background.
His situation settled over him like a weight. He was stuck here. Wherever here was. No phone, no GPS, no way to call for help even if he knew who to call. The pole rested across his lap, still warm where his palm touched the metal. The only thing he had that might keep him alive.
Tomorrow he'd need to find more food. The berries had taken the edge off his hunger but wouldn't sustain him long-term. Water wasn't an issue as long as he stayed near the river and hope that Giardia would not kill him, but what about protein? Could the pole identify which plants were edible? Could it help him catch fish, trap animals? His mind spun through possibilities; it should comforting but Ian just felt dread.
And underneath all the practical concerns was the deeper question he kept trying not to examine too closely: what if there was no way back? What if this wasn't a kidnapping or a psychotic break or some elaborate prank, but something permanent? The pole responded to his needs, showed him knowledge he shouldn't have, transformed itself into tools that defied physics. That suggested something far beyond the world he'd left behind.
A sound cut through his spiraling thoughts. Distant, somewhere deep in the forest. Not the bird calls that had accompanied his day or the insect drone that had become background noise. This was different. Lower. Almost melodic, but with an edge that made the hair on his arms stand up.
Ian's grip tightened on the pole. He strained to hear, every muscle tense. The sound came again, closer this time. Still not close—maybe a quarter mile away—but definitely moving. Not toward him, he thought. Hoped. The sound traveled parallel to his position, somewhere in the trees beyond the clearing's edge.
More sounds joined it. Rustling that was too deliberate to be wind. The snap of something heavy moving through underbrush. His breathing went shallow, trying to stay quiet even though whatever was out there was too far away to hear him.
The shelter suddenly felt inadequate. Branches and saplings wouldn't stop anything determined to get in. The opening gaped like a mouth, exposing him to whatever might be prowling the darkness. His back pressed harder against the oak, as if he could somehow merge with the wood and disappear.
His mind immediately went to the worst possibilities. Bears? Did bears make sounds like that? Wolves? He knew fuck-all about forest predators, had spent his entire life in urban decay where the most dangerous wildlife was rats and the occasional aggressive pigeon. Whatever was out there could be anything.
The pole remained inert in his hands. No helpful green glow to identify the threat, though his fingers ached from how hard he was gripping it.
Minutes crawled by. The sounds continued their path through the forest, never getting closer but never quite fading either. Ian's eyes had adjusted enough to make out the clearing's basic shapes, but the tree line remained impenetrable. Anything could be watching from those shadows.
His exhaustion warred with his fear. His body screamed for sleep, muscles trembling from the day's exertion. But his mind refused to let go, hyperaware of every sound, every shift in the darkness. The night felt alive around him, full of movements and noises he couldn't identify.
More melodic sounds drifted through the trees, further away now. Whatever it was seemed to be moving off. Ian's shoulders dropped slightly, tension easing by a fraction. Maybe it hadn't noticed him. Maybe the shelter's position at the clearing's edge made him less visible. Or maybe whatever was out there simply wasn't interested in him.
The forest settled into quieter rhythms. Normal sounds, he told himself. Just normal forest sounds. The chirp of night insects. The rustle of small things in the underbrush. Wind through leaves. Nothing threatening. Nothing hunting.
He tried to believe it. His eyes burned with the effort of staying open, but every time they started to close, some new noise jerked him awake. A distant crack that could've been a branch falling or something stepping on one. A sound that might've been an animal call or might've been something else entirely.
His thoughts drifted, unbidden, to his apartment. That shitty third-floor walkup with its water-stained ceiling and radiator that clanked like someone was beating it with a wrench. Right now, he'd give anything to be back there. The broken window seal that let in exhaust fumes. The mattress that smelled like mildew no matter what he did. The bathroom with its perpetually dripping faucet and grout that had gone gray years before he'd moved in.
All of it sounded like paradise.
He could've been lying on that stained mattress right now, staring at his phone until his eyes burned, the glow of the screen the only light in the room. The hum of traffic outside. The neighbors upstairs having another screaming match about something that didn't matter. The smell of someone's cooking seeping through the vents—usually something fried, usually at two in the morning.
Electricity. The word hit him with unexpected force. He'd had electricity there. Heat that worked most of the time. Running water, even if it came out rust-colored for the first few seconds. A door that locked. Walls that kept things out.
His thumb used to hurt from scrolling. That was his biggest physical complaint. Sore thumb from too much screen time, maybe a headache from eye strain. Not feet torn up from walking barefoot through a forest. Not muscles screaming from building shelters with tools that shouldn't exist.
The apartment had been a shithole, but it was a shithole with A/C, heating, electricity, running water, and all those other modern comforts Ian took for granted. Now he was in a shithole with none of that.
The pole stayed warm against his palm. That was something. Whatever else happened, he had this. The tool that could become other tools, that could show him how to survive. He'd made it through today. He could make it through tonight, and then tomorrow he'll figure out the next step.
But the darkness pressed in from all sides, and the shelter felt very small, and the sounds of this alien forest reminded him with every passing moment how completely, utterly alone he was. His last thought before sleep took him.