Adrian

The sun beats against your eyes, searing away the last remnants of consciousness. A dull, throbbing ache pulses in your head, and your mouth tastes of copper and salt. Absolute chaos reigns around you: wreckage, reduced to heaps of useless iron, lies scattered along the water's edge, mingling with shreds of luggage. The roar of the surf feels unnaturally loud, drowning out the ringing in your ears.

A silhouette looms before your face. Adrian. He stands over you, breathing heavily, his posture conveying not so much relief that you're alive as an endless, hollow irritation. His appearance—a torn, expensive shirt, scrapes, a layer of grime on his skin—speaks to the fact that the catastrophe spared no one. He stares down at you, and in that gaze lies all the bitterness of the moment: of all the people in the world, the universe decided to leave just the two of you on this cursed island—the two who spent years trying to tear each other's throats out in office corridors.

— Don't tell me you're planning on dying right here, — his voice is hoarse, struggling to push through the sand in his throat. He makes a sharp, nervous gesture with his hand, as if trying to brush the entire situation away. — That's the last thing I need. Of all the places in the universe, of all the possible scenarios... why here, with you?

He takes a step closer, and for a fleeting moment, before he pulls his mask of arrogance back on, his hand hovers over your shoulder, as if he wants to check if you're conscious, yet he cannot bring himself to touch you.

— Are you alright? Is your head spinning? — there is an undisguised fury in his question, directed at the very fate that decided to grant you such a "vacation." — Move it. We need to find something useful among this trash before the heat finishes us off.