Chapter 3: Tortuga Calling
Two days.
That's how long it took me to reach Tortuga.
Two days of stealing food when I could, hitching rides on farmers' carts when they'd let me, walking through jungle paths when they wouldn't. I avoided towns. I avoided people. Every time I saw a group of sailors, my stomach clenched with the memory of a knife sliding between my ribs.
The jungle was hot, wet, and full of things that wanted to bite me. I discovered that my danger sense—I'd started calling it that in my head—worked on more than just human threats. Twice it warned me away from snakes coiled in the underbrush. Once it made me freeze just before I stepped on a nest of something that looked like the unholy offspring of a wasp and a scorpion.
I learned to trust it.
I also learned its limits. The tingling gave me maybe a second of warning, sometimes less. And it only triggered for immediate physical danger—not for bad decisions, not for long-term consequences, not for the kind of slow poison that came from contaminated water.
I learned that lesson the hard way.
On the second night, I drank from a stream that looked clean enough. An hour later, I was vomiting into bushes while my guts tried to turn themselves inside out. The sickness passed by morning, but it left me weak and shaky.
Note to self: dysentery kills more soldiers than bullets. Watch what you drink.
I kept moving.
Walking gave me time to think. Too much time, probably.
I sorted through what I knew about the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Four of them—no, five? My memories were frustratingly incomplete. I remembered the big set pieces: the cursed pirates turning to skeletons in moonlight. The Kraken dragging ships to the depths. Something about a fountain of youth and Spanish conquistadors.
But the details escaped me. Names, dates, the precise sequence of events—all fuzzy, like trying to recall a dream after waking.
Jack Sparrow is the constant. I remembered him clearly. The swagger, the genius hidden behind apparent incompetence, the uncanny luck that kept him alive when everyone around him died.
The compass that points to what you want most. The deal he made with Davy Jones for thirteen years as captain of the Black Pearl.
That deal. Something about it nagged at me. Jack had been given thirteen years, which meant at some point those years would run out. When that happened—
My thoughts stuttered.
When that happened, Jones would come for him. The Black Spot. The Kraken. Death and the Locker.
And I need to be nowhere near that when it happens.
Common sense. Stay away from the main characters. Don't get involved in the plot. Find a quiet corner of the Caribbean and live out my strange second life in comfortable obscurity.
But that pull was still there. That sense of connection. Something was tying me to this world, to this specific time and place.
I didn't know what it was yet.
I intended to find out.
Tortuga appeared through the jungle like a fever dream made real.
I'd seen it in the movies—the chaos, the debauchery, the complete absence of anything resembling law or order. The films hadn't done it justice.
The smell hit me first. Rum and sewage and unwashed bodies and cooking meat and something that might have been perfume if perfume could rot. It rolled up the trail in waves, announcing the town long before I saw it.
Then the sound. Music—if you could call it that—competing from half a dozen taverns. Shouting, laughing, fighting. The occasional gunshot. A woman's scream that could have been terror or pleasure or both.
Finally, the sight.
Buildings sprawled across the harbor without any apparent plan. Some were stone, leftover from whatever legitimate settlement had existed here first. Most were wood, thrown up fast and cheap. Signs hung at crazy angles, advertising entertainment I was better off not thinking about.
And everywhere, everywhere, people.
Pirates, sailors, merchants, whores, thieves, con artists, dreamers and desperados from every nation in the world. I saw African faces, Asian faces, European faces, faces that defied any attempt at classification. Tortuga didn't care where you came from. It only cared about the color of your coin.
I stood at the edge of it all and felt something I hadn't expected.
Relief.
This was chaos. This was danger. This was everything I should be afraid of. But it was also familiar. I recognized this place from the movies. I knew its shape, its rhythms, its rules.
For the first time since waking on that beach, I knew where I was.
[MARTHA THE INNKEEPER]
The young man who walked into Martha's establishment looked like death warmed over.
Thin. Exhausted. Clothes that didn't fit him right. But his eyes were sharp—too sharp for someone who looked like he'd just crawled out of a shallow grave.
"Work," he said. "I'll do anything for a meal and a place to sleep."
Martha looked him over. Lean muscle under the ill-fitting shirt. Callused hands. Sailor's build, though he moved strange—like someone remembering how to use their own body.
"Can you carry barrels?"
"I can learn."
"Not an answer."
"Then yes. I can carry barrels."
She put him to work in the cellar. He was weaker than he should have been—something wrong there, sickness or starvation or both—but he didn't complain. Didn't slack. Carried barrel after barrel up from storage until his arms shook and his legs trembled.
When he finished, she gave him bread and stew and pointed to a corner.
"Sleep there tonight. Tomorrow, we'll see if you're worth keeping."
He ate like a man who hadn't seen food in days. Maybe he hadn't. Martha had seen that look before—the desperate hunger of someone running from something.
Tortuga was full of men running from something.
At least this one earned his keep.
The stew was thin and the bread was stale, but I ate every bite.
I'd gotten a job. A place to sleep. The first steps toward something like stability in this insane new life.
But as I lay in my corner of Martha's inn, listening to the chaos of Tortuga through the walls, I couldn't stop thinking about what came next.
I needed to understand my powers. The danger sense—Combat Precognition, I was calling it now—was useful but unreliable. The resurrection was comforting but terrifying in equal measure. I had no idea what other abilities might be lurking in this body, waiting to manifest.
I needed to find out what year it was, precisely. 1720, the barkeep had said, but I needed more specifics. Months mattered. Days mattered. If the first movie's events were about to begin—
The tingling hit me like a wave.
Not the sharp, directional warning I'd felt before the stabbing. This was different. Deeper. A pull rather than a push, drawing my attention toward... something. Someone.
Somewhere in this town, something important was happening. Or about to happen. Or needed to happen.
I sat up, my heart pounding.
What the hell was that?
The pull faded, leaving me breathless and confused. I lay back down and stared at the ceiling.
More mysteries. More questions without answers.
Tomorrow, I'd start looking for them.
But tonight, I was alive. I was fed. I had a roof over my head and work waiting in the morning.
Small victories.
I closed my eyes and let the sounds of Tortuga carry me toward sleep. The last thing I heard was someone shouting about a captain—something about Sparrow and a ship and the fastest vessel in the Caribbean.
My lips twitched into something that might have been a smile.
Soon, I thought. But not tonight.
Tonight, I would rest.
Tomorrow, I would begin to understand what I'd become.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them . No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1