He was gasping for air, his lungs burning as he struggled to breathe. His body was submerged in something cold and salty, liquid pressing against his skin from all directions. He kicked, thrashed, fought toward the surface, his survival instincts overriding his confusion. His hands clawed through water, his legs drove him upward, and finally—
Air.
He broke the surface, coughing, spluttering, his chest heaving as he drew in great greedy breaths. Salt water stung his eyes, ran down his face, filled his mouth. He wiped his eyes, blinking rapidly, trying to see through the haze.
The storm still raged, but the sound was different now—muted, distant, as if he were hearing it through water. His vision swam, colors bleeding together. Shapes moved around him—human shapes, struggling to shore.
"Isaac!" someone was shouting. "Isaac!"
Leo pushed himself up, sand cascading from his hair and clothes. The pain was everywhere—ribs, arms, head
He found the boy a few yards away, lying face down in the sand, the water still lapping at his motionless body.
"Isaac!"
He rolled the boy over. Isaac's face was pale, his lips blue, his chest not moving. Not breathing. No pulse.
He didn't think. He didn't hesitate. His body knew what to do.
Tilt the head back. Clear the airway. Pinch the nose. Seal the mouth over the boy's. Breathe.
Once. The chest rose slightly, barely visible.
Twice. The boy's chest rose more clearly.
Chest compressions. One hundred beats per minute, keep the rhythm, don't stop, the protocol doesn't care about despair, it only cares about saving lives. Breathe. Compress. Breathe. Compress.
Around him, Leo was distantly aware of the others. Hardin was dragging himself up the beach, his uniform in tatters, one arm hanging at an unnatural angle. Smith was crawling through the sand, clutching his leather case like a lifeline. Thomas was already at Isaac's side, his large hands hovering, ready to help if needed.
"Come on," Leo muttered between breaths, his arms burning with effort. "Come on, Isaac. Don't you give up on me now."
Another breath. Another round of compressions. And then—
The boy convulsed, coughing, seawater erupting from his mouth and nose. His eyes opened—wide, terrified, blue—and then squeezed shut again as he continued to cough up the last of the ocean.
Leo sat back on his heels, his chest heaving, his arms trembling. He watched Isaac take his first real breath, watched his chest rise and fall on its own, watched the color slowly return to his pale face.
Alive. The boy was alive.
"Thank God," Thomas whispered, his voice thick with emotion. The Black sailor reached out and touched Isaac's shoulder, his large hand careful and gentle. "Thank God."
Leo looked up at the others. Hardin had collapsed onto his knees, his good hand clutching his injured shoulder, pain etched across his weathered face. Smith had managed to sit up, his spectacles askew, the leather case still clutched to his chest as if it contained something more precious than his own life.
They were all alive—they'd survived.
Leo looked at his own hands, calloused and unfamiliar, and thought about the system interface that had calculated their survival probability at 12.7%. The numbers had been wrong. Or maybe they'd been right, but something else—something beyond calculation, beyond probability, beyond the system's ability to measure—had intervened.
Cooperation. Solidarity. Shared humanity.
The system could calculate physics. It could model trajectories. It could predict outcomes based on variables and parameters and data points. But it couldn't calculate the will to live. It couldn't model the determination of five strangers to survive together. It couldn't quantify the courage of a Black sailor who'd positioned himself as a shield for a boy he'd just met, or the desperation of a journalist who'd risked his life to save a leather case full of instruments, or the military discipline of a soldier who'd followed orders even in the face of certain death.
These were things that couldn't be coded. Couldn't be simulated. Couldn't be reduced to algorithms and data points.
And maybe—just maybe—that was the point.
Leo looked up at the storm-wracked sky, at the dark clouds that still roiled above them, and wondered what this place really was. A simulation? A different reality? Something else entirely?
He didn't know. But for the first time since waking on this balloon in this storm, he felt something he hadn't felt in years.
Hope.
Not hope of returning to his old life—that life was gone, whether by crash or reboot or something else entirely. But hope for this new life. This chance to build something real, something lasting, something that mattered in a way his virtual worlds never could.
Hope that maybe, just maybe, this was what Origin was supposed to be all along. Not a game about civilization, but civilization itself. Not a simulation of cooperation, but the real thing.
Leo pushed himself to his feet, his body aching but functional. He looked at the four survivors—Hardin, Smith, Thomas, Isaac—and saw not just strangers, not just fellow castaways, but the beginning of something.
The beginning of civilization.
The beginning of Origin.