Chapter 2

The moment Abigail stepped under the canopy of the forest, the world changed. The oppressive heat of the pyre was instantly replaced by a damp, chilling cold. Sunlight vanished, blocked by a ceiling of leaves so vast that a single one could have served as an umbrella. The scale of everything was wrong, monstrous.

A sharp, stabbing pain shot up her leg from the burns. She gritted her teeth, tore a long strip from the hem of her already ruined tunic, and knelt to bind it tightly around the worst of the injury. It was a crude bandage, but it would have to do to stop the bleeding and keep the dirt out.

Her stomach cramped violently, a hollow ache that reminded her of the brutal truth: before she could find food for a tribe, she had to find it for herself. She was running on nothing but adrenaline and pain.

She pushed deeper into the woods, her small, multi-tool scalpel-the only piece of tech that had miraculously survived in her pocket-serving as a makeshift machete to cut through thorny vines. The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and strange, alien blossoms.

Then she caught it. A subtle shift in the soil to her right, a particular softness to the earth, accompanied by a faint, slightly bitter scent that was achingly familiar.

She dropped to her knees, pushing aside a thick carpet of decaying leaves. There, sprawling across the ground, was a plant with heart-shaped leaves and creeping vines.

Her internal bio-database, a repository of xenobotanical knowledge from a hundred surveyed worlds, flashed with a match. It was a variant. A wild, overgrown cousin of Solanum tuberosum. A potato.

A surge of pure, unadulterated joy shot through her. It was so intense it almost brought her to her knees. These things, if they were like their Earth counterparts, were packed with starch. They grew in abundance. They could feed an army.

She began to dig, clawing at the rich, dark soil with her bare hands, the scalpel a clumsy shovel. Dirt packed under her nails, but she didn't care. The promise of calories, of survival, was all that mattered.

About a foot down, her fingers hit something solid and coarse. She worked it loose, pulling with all her might, and unearthed a tuber the size of a football. Its skin was rough and brown.

With a trembling hand, she used the scalpel to slice off a small piece. She sniffed it, then cautiously placed it in her mouth. The taste was clean, earthy, with a distinct starchy sweetness. No bitterness. No alkaloids. It was safe.

Tears of relief pricked her eyes.

To prove the yield, she followed the vine, digging with a frenzied energy. In less than half an hour, she had excavated more than a dozen of the massive tubers from a small patch of land. This was it. This was the miracle she had promised.

As she was excitedly bundling them together with a tough vine, a sound cut through the forest quiet. A low, heavy breathing, coming from the bushes just behind her.

Every muscle in Abigail's body went rigid. The hair on her arms stood on end. Slowly, deliberately, she turned her head.

Two blood-red eyes stared back at her from the shadows.

A beast emerged, a boar of impossible size, as large as a small car. Vicious tusks, long and yellowed, curled from its snout, dripping a foul-smelling saliva. It pawed at the ground, a low growl rumbling in its massive chest. It saw her as an intruder. As prey.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. Don't run. The first rule of wilderness survival. You can't outrun a predator.

Her hand closed around the sharpest rock she could find on the ground. Her other hand tightened its grip on the pathetically small scalpel. She backed up against the trunk of a giant tree, creating a defensive position.

The boar let out a deafening squeal and charged.

Its bulk was terrifying, a runaway tank of muscle and fury. At the last possible second, Abigail threw herself to the left, rolling hard across the forest floor. The boar's tusks missed her by an inch, slamming into the tree with a sickening crunch.

The impact shook the entire tree. Wood splinters flew. A searing pain flared across Abigail's shoulder where one of the tusks had grazed her, tearing fabric and skin.

The boar shook its head, momentarily dazed, then turned, its red eyes locking onto her again. It lowered its head for a second, fatal charge.

Abigail scrambled to get up, but a sharp, agonizing pain shot through her ankle. It had twisted in the fall. She collapsed back to the ground. A wave of cold, absolute despair washed over her.

The boar charged again, its gaping mouth a blur of teeth and fury. The stench of its breath hit her like a physical blow. Instinctively, she threw her arms up to shield her head and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the end.

A shadow fell over her.

It wasn't the boar. It was something from above. A massive, black-and-yellow shape that dropped from the tree canopy like a bolt of lightning.

A roar shattered the air, a sound so powerful it felt like it could crack bone. The shape, a predator of immense size, slammed into the boar's back, driving it to the ground with bone-crushing force.

The sickening snap of the boar's spine echoed through the silent forest, followed by a final, gurgling cry. Then, silence.

Abigail, trembling, slowly opened her eyes. Through the gaps in her fingers, she saw it.

Standing atop the boar's carcass was a tiger. A saber-toothed tiger, impossibly large, its muscles rippling under a striped pelt.

It slowly, gracefully stepped off the dead boar. It turned its massive head. And its eyes, a pair of deep, piercing blue vertical slits, fixed on her. The pressure of its gaze was a physical weight, the absolute, suffocating authority of an apex predator.