You got kidnapped again, Adam. Well, at least it's fancier this time around.
The thought came to him the moment he stepped down from the plane, greeted by unfamiliar scenery. Well—it wasn't that different. Sky was still the same. Same trees. Perhaps the difference lay somewhere else.
Is this… the ocean?
He paused at the bottom of the steps, breathing in deeply. The air tasted different here—cleaner, somehow. Saltier?
Adam had glimpsed the beach before. Miami, he thought. Inside the bus during one of the scavenging runs, Jefferson had taken them close to the coast. He'd caught a whiff of it then—rotting fish, garbage, waste mixing with the brine.
It didn't smell nice at all. He'd always wondered why people even swim in it.
But this… this smell was what he'd imagined when Grace described the beach to Samantha. When she'd told her daughter about waves lapping at white sand, about the way the sun turned the water golden at sunset.
It smelled peaceful, in a way. It—
