How To Survive- Third Person Standalone -

Fifteen seconds.

Leo laughs. A small, broken sound. He looks at his scarred palm. He remembers the heat of a burning house, the way smoke curls under a door, the weight of an axe. That memory has weight. Lies are light.

Leo kneels. Puts his scarred hand on the child’s head.

He takes out his wallet. There’s a photo of Elena. He kisses it. Then he tears the photo in half. Not because he stops loving her. Because the sacrifice can’t be something he hates. That’s not honest. The honest sacrifice is the thing he wants to keep most. How To Survive- Third Person Standalone

“You were never a firefighter. You are a machine dreaming of flesh.”

At ninety seconds, a voice speaks. Not from a speaker—from inside his molars. A pleasant, genderless tone, like a GPS recalculating.

He stops walking. Not from panic. From understanding. The floor panel beneath him hisses—he’s been still for forty seconds. He resumes pacing. Fifteen seconds

“Your wife is already dead.”

He wakes up on a metal floor. Cold. The kind of cold that seeps through fabric and tells bones a secret: you are not meant to be here.

The child tugs his sleeve. “Are you gonna leave too?” He looks at his scarred palm

“No,” he says. “I’m a firefighter. I stay.”

The floor opens. He falls. He wakes on a different metal floor. Warmer. Above him, a sky with two moons and a sun the color of rust. The air smells of rain and salt. Someone is shaking his shoulder.

“You volunteered for this.”

His name is Leo. That’s the first thing he checks. Name, rank, birthday, mother’s maiden name. The checklist from some long-ago survival seminar. He is thirty-four. He is a former firefighter. He has a scar on his left palm from a broken jar when he was seven. Good. He is still a person.

Ten. Five.