The raft rocked gently beneath him.
Jason woke with salt drying on his lips and sunlight burning through his eyelids. He cracked one eye open, squinted at the white glare overhead, and groaned as he stretched. Every muscle in his body complained. His shoulders were stiff, his back ached, and one calf tightened hard enough to warn him not to push it.
"Another day in paradise," he muttered.
His voice sounded rough.
He sat up slowly and waited for the brief rush of dizziness to pass. Then he reached for the knife and the little mirror with the worn wooden handle.
For a moment, he just stared at his reflection.
He looked thinner every day. His face had narrowed. His hair, once kept short, hung around his ears in uneven waves. A patchy beard shadowed his jaw. Too much sun, too little food, and not enough sleep had carved him into someone he only half recognized.
"Wow," he said softly. "Really thriving."
He set the blade against his cheek and shaved with careful, practiced strokes. The knife wasn't meant for this. It dragged more than it cut, and it nicked him twice. He wiped the blood away with his thumb and kept going.
It was pointless, really.
That was why he kept doing it.
There weren't many routines left from his old life. A few scraps, that was all. If he let those go too, he wasn't sure what would be left of him besides hunger and reflex.
When he finished, he checked the mirror one last time, then tossed it aside.
"Engineering was easier."
The fishing line lay coiled near his knee. He checked the hook, fixed a strip of bait to it, and dropped it over the side. Then he settled into stillness and waited.
The ocean spread in every direction, flat and bright under the morning sun. No land. No boats. Nothing but water and the faint creak of the raft beneath him.
He watched the line vanish into the blue.
This had become his life so gradually that sometimes the absurdity of it took him by surprise. He used to worry about deadlines. Lab reports. Group projects with idiots who vanished until the night before submission.
Now a good morning meant maybe catching breakfast before the heat got bad.
The line jerked.
Jason grabbed it at once and pulled. Something fought hard beneath the surface, sending a spray of water across the raft. A silver body flashed in the sun, twisting, then landed at his feet with enough force to slap his wrist.
"Got you."
He pinned the fish and killed it quickly. By the time he cleaned it, the raft smelled of blood and salt and scales.
He ate sitting cross-legged near the center, chewing slowly to make it last. The fish was fresh, which helped. Fresh did not mean good anymore. It just meant less bad.
He swallowed the last bite and looked out over the water.
"I would commit crimes," he told the horizon, "for a vending machine sandwich."
The breeze carried the words away.
After that, he worked.
He checked the ropes first, pulling each knot tight and retightening anything that had loosened overnight. Then the patched sections of the raft, pressing down to test the weak spots. After that came the desalination devices. He cleaned the filters carefully, checked for damage, made sure nothing had clogged.
Routine kept him alive.
That was the simplest truth out here. Not hope. Not grit. Not some grand speech about survival. Just routine. Notice the problem early. Fix it before it grew. Do the same thing tomorrow.
"Ropes, patches, filters," he said under his breath. "Try not to die."
His hands moved almost automatically now. He had hated that at first. The speed with which disaster could become habit. Now he was grateful for it. Habit left less room for thinking.
Thinking could get ugly.
Still, his mind drifted sometimes. It always did.
Back home, he'd thought practical skills meant knowing formulas, building prototypes, surviving exams. Out here, practical meant knowing how long a rope would hold after three days of salt and sun. It meant recognizing the difference between thirst and the kind of dehydration that made your thoughts go soft around the edges.
He snorted.
"Excellent résumé builder."
By late afternoon, the light had changed. The hard white glare had softened into gold. Jason sat back on his heels and scanned the horizon.
Nothing.
He didn't expect rescue anymore, not in the way he had at first. Hope had narrowed over time. Now it lived in smaller things. A fish on the line. A patch that held. Rain in the right amount.
The wind shifted.
He felt it before he saw the clouds. A sudden drop in temperature. A different smell in the air. He turned west and shaded his eyes.
A dark bank of cloud sat low on the horizon.
Jason went still.
"That's not ideal."
He reached for the empty can and wedged it into place where it could catch rainwater without tipping. Then he checked the gear again, faster this time. He tied down the loose items, secured the knife, stowed the mirror, and moved the desalination devices to the safest spot on the raft.
When he picked them up, he held them carefully, almost gently.
"Not losing you," he said.
Another gust hit, colder than the last. The raft shifted harder beneath his feet.
The clouds thickened as they rolled closer, swallowing the last stretch of clean sky. Sunset tried to break through for a few minutes, streaking the edges of the storm in bruised orange and pink, but it didn't last. Gray won quickly.
Jason tested the knots one more time.
The wind shoved at him hard enough to make him stumble. He caught the edge of the raft, swore, and forced himself to breathe.
Rain was coming. He could smell it now, sharp and metallic. The sea had changed too. The long, easy swells were gone, replaced by choppier movement that slapped at the raft from different angles.
He moved to the center and crouched low, one hand braced on each side.
This was the part he hated.
Not the work. Not even the storm itself.
The waiting.
That stretch of time when the sky darkened and the sea turned mean and all he could do was sit there and wonder how bad it was going to get.
"You've been through worse," he told himself.
The words sounded thin even to him.
He let out a short laugh. "Maybe not, actually."
The first raindrop struck his shoulder.
Then another.
Then a scatter of them across his arms and neck.
Jason adjusted the can and hunched lower as the wind rose. The raft pitched sharply, then steadied, then pitched again. He tightened his grip until his fingers hurt.
Above him, the sky had gone nearly black.
His heart was beating too fast now, but his mind had settled into that cold, narrow focus he'd learned to trust. There was no room for panic yet. Panic came later, when things broke.
A curtain of rain swept toward him over the water.
Jason lifted his head and stared straight into it.
"Come on then."
He knew he shouldn't taunt Enigma. If the thing watching him was real, it probably didn't appreciate sarcasm.
But sarcasm was all he had.
So when the first full wave of rain hit and the raft dropped hard beneath him, Jason bared his teeth into the storm and held on.