Stan hated that it was still cold. The island was notably green—far greener than any of the tundra they had seen throughout the past couple of months—and he had assumed that would have meant that the weather might be tepid, if not warm. Must've been spoiled by all those other randomly-appearing, mysterious islands they'd encountered. He pulled his cap down, wrapped his scarf tighter, and followed his brother away from the Stan o' War II.

They trekked uphill. Ford, somehow, seemed not to notice, too enthralled with his tracker and the increasingly dense forestry. Stan had only the minor distraction of making sure neither he nor his brother tripped over any of the organic debris; at least, he consoled himself, the wind wasn't so biting through the trees.

Their boots crunched against the twigs and rocks, out of sync with each other and the persistent beeping of Ford's anomaly tracker. The device had gone haywire the moment they stepped onto the island; no matter where they walked, it beeped with the same intensity. It had done nothing to direct them so far. As Stan began to wonder why and how Ford was using the thing, his brother groaned.

"Useless." He huffed and clicked a couple of buttons, silencing the tracker's incessant noise. "I don't know why I haven't made a superior device in all this time."

"It's part of the adventure," Stan reminded.

"Ah, yes, well, perhaps some of that adventure must be sacrificed to avoid wasting our time." Ford finally looked up from the tracker. "Terribly inefficient. I suppose we'll have to rely on our natural pathfinding skills to find what we seek."

Stan shrugged. "Not the first time I've trekked through a jungle without much direction."

"Perhaps you'd like to take the helm, as it were?" Ford gestured vaguely to the surrounding forestry. "Which way?"

"Hm." Stan stroked his beard, momentarily distracted by the thought that he should shave. "If I were a weird thing, where would I be…?"

Ford snorted. "How utterly scientific."

"Did you want me to lead or not?"

"Go ahead, don't let my trepidation inhibit you." As he watched his brother mindlessly search their surroundings, he found himself wishing he'd spent more time exploring the rainforests of Deodato-85—or, really, any interdimensional jungles, just so he wouldn't have to rely on Stan's hapless guess. Then again, he didn't particularly relish the thought of dealing with the native cannibals any more than required.

"That way," Stan finally decided, pointing to his left. "I got a good feeling about this direction."

Ford acquiesced, making a passing note of the morning sun's position in the east before following his brother into the lush underbrush. Now that the responsibility for the adventure rested with his brother (who had a surprising grace in moving about the foliage), he found himself inspecting the flora with a far more critical eye. It was colorful. Bright. Vibrant. Tropical, even. The Arctic breeze that occasionally blew only served to make the displaced biome more curious.

"You know what the best part about this weird island being so cold is?"

"What's that, Stanley?"

"No mosquitos." Stan laughed. "I ever tell you how I nearly died of malaria once?"

Curiosity caught in his throat as Ford registered the full sentence. "Wait, what?"

"I think I was in Panama. Maybe it was Honduras? Or, uh, Belize?" Pausing in both his movements and his story, Stan rubbed at the back of his neck. "No, it was Nicaragua—well, it was Central America, anyway. South America? Definitely Central America. I think? Uh…"

"You were in the tropics, at any rate," Ford provided. "Somewhere, assumedly, where one could catch malaria."

"Yeah." Free of his hesitation, Stan plodded on, slightly akimbo to the path he had been on. "And this was early in my days working for Rico, so I was, what, twenty-three? Twenty-five?"

"You were young."

"Yeah. What was I doing? Smuggling something, probably. I think I was only smuggling pugs at that time." Stan shrugged. "Could've been drugs or guns or knock-off genuine alpaca ponchos—"

"You were involved with some sort of illicit trade."

"Yeah. I was getting eaten alive by those mosquitos—I must've been itching for a month solid. But, one day, I got real sick. Fever, vomiting, exhaustion, the works. I was just gonna ignore it, since I didn't have the time to 'relax' or 'get better' or whatever. Well, funny thing was, I couldn't move the next day, so I didn't really have the chance to ignore it."

Ford groaned. "Stanley, please tell me you saw a qualified medical professional, got the proper medication, and recovered in a healthy way?"

"Nah, but I had a dream that I did." Without checking to see if his brother followed, Stan wantonly shifted their route again. "I slept in a tree by the river until the fever went down enough that I could keep going. A bat almost knocked me out of it once."

"You're incredibly lucky to have survived."

Stan snorted. "Says the guy who had a metal plate installed in his head by some interdimensional Sherpa." He brushed aside another fern, revealing an expansive clearing. Ruins of an unknown civilization glistered in the midday sun.

Whatever the prepared reprimand was, it died before Ford could speak it. Instead, he gaped at the site with hushed awe.

"Told you I could find it, whatever it is," Stan gloated. He gestured for Ford to follow him. "C'mon, Sixer, let's go look for treasure."

The older twin trailed behind his exuberant brother. With the looming potential for treasure, giddiness overtook Stan and guided him helter-skelter through the glittering ruins. Ford lingered around the nearest structure, fascinated.

It was a wall—a piece of a wall, at least; despite towering over him, the wall appeared to be a small part of a much larger something, the rest of which might have become the unidentifiable structures scattered about the clearing. Thinly woven through the wall's degrading black rock was a coppery, goldish metal. The wire spiraled elegantly in some places and bent geometrically in others, exposing the rock as the cames would stained glass. Something about the metalwork reminded him of ancient mosaics.

Unconsciously, as he investigated the thing, he scratched at the rock, picking out crumbling pieces. When a sizeable chunk came out of the wall, he turned it over in his hand, rolling it between his fingers like a thirty-two-sided die. Flecks of light-colored sand rubbed off of it.

"Huh." Still toying with the strange rock (he'd have to run some tests to determine just what type of stone it was, perhaps obsidian?), Ford strolled to another nearby ruin.

Like the first, it was a wall, or, at least, had once been a wall. Metal wove through stone with similar grace and form, though the materials were different: instead of (potentially) obsidian, the stone was white; the metal was brass. When he picked at this structure, too, a chunk of marble popped out; the same light-colored sand rubbed off onto his hands.

"Hey! Sixer! Over here! I found something!"

Ford abandoned the pale wall, moving through the clearing toward his brother's voice. He eyed the other structures—pieces of walls, chunks of foundations, things that might belong on spires, all made of the steadily decaying stones and metal wiring—until he located the only full construction: a small, square building of red stone and grey cames. Through the open space where a door once stood and the places where windows once rested, Ford saw his brother kneeling beside something that, initially, appeared to be a simple box.

Of course, it was a box, surprisingly unmarred by the ravages of time, roughly one cubit long by one cubit wide by one cubit high. Large tiles decorated with faded mythologic episodes adorned the sides of the container. Visible between the cracks in the ceramic was the tin base.

Stan beamed up at his brother. "Treasure!"

The excitement infected Ford, too. "Open it!"

"What do you think I've been doing this whole time?" Stan attempted to pull the container open. When that didn't work, he searched his pockets for a thin blade; with it, he tried to pry the lid.

"Don't!" Ford grabbed his brother's hand. "Don't break it."

Rolling his eyes, Stan relented. He prodded at the lock experimentally and, when the box remained nonresponsive, he sighed. "I'll need my picks."

"You left them on the Stan o' War?"

"Why would I have brought them onto some uninhabited, magical island?" Stan pushed himself to his feet. "Look, Poindexter, we'll just bring it back to the boat. Then I can open it under your supervision so you don't freak out about me hurting it, okay?"

Folding his arms, Ford nodded. "Very well. I would like to study its exterior. Something about the artwork seems…off."

"If you say so." Stan grabbed the box, hefting it with a groan. "This thing is way heavier than it looks."

"It's not that far to the boat." Ford smirked. "Unless, of course, you're too old and feeble. I suppose I could see my way to assisting you, if you were to so require."

"I know exactly what you're doing, Sixer, and it ain't gonna work." After shifting the way he held the box, Stan trudged out of the ruin. "Now, unless you want to see what horrors this place has for us after dark, I suggest we head back." He continued toward the trees, reaching the edge of the clearing before his brother called for his attention.

"It's the other way, Stanley."

The trek through the lifeless jungle took only slightly less time than it had that morning. Ford swore they would have returned faster had his brother not been hauling around that hefty box; Stan claimed that his brother got lost and led them in circles for most of the afternoon.

"The island isn't big enough for it to take us hours to cross. Plus, we passed the same tree three times."

"You have no concept of the size of this island—you're the one who led us in an erratic, rambling path to the clearing in the first place. Aside, how can you even tell it's the same tree?"

"And that is why we were lost all day." Stan dropped the mysterious container on the cabin's desk. "There better be something good in this thing."

"I'm sure you'll manage to break into it quickly enough," Ford assured. "Before you get too comfortable with your treasure, we'll need to check the rigging on deck. Never know what sort of creature will mess with that sort of thing when you aren't looking. And, for much the same reason, it may be prudent to move the Stan o' War II a little further out from the island for our overnight surveillance."

"Yeah, sure." Stretching, Stan headed back to the cabin door. "The one time you wanna take precautions is the one time we haven't seen anything. Makes sense."

Ford followed. "The very fact that we haven't seen anything should put you on your guard, I would think."

"Maybe." Flicking on the flood lights, Stan glanced back at his brother. "But, y'know, some of us get to enjoy the luxury of total silence whenever we want." He tapped at the piece in his ear with a laugh.

While Ford had his doubts about how much silence his twin really enjoyed, he couldn't help but chuckle at the joke. "Perhaps that's the difference."

By this point, simple tasks—maintaining the rigging, adjusting the position of the Stan o' War II, anchoring her in place for the night, etc., etc.—had taken on habits that bordered on ritual for the twins. They had a way of moving about their work and each other that required no discussion, allowing for other conversation, comfortable quiet, or the occasional shanty (Ford acquiesced to joining Stan only after thorough convincing, and even now he insisted on pretending he didn't enjoy it). That night, over the shush of the unseasonably placid water and the hum of the weak wind, Stan whistled as he worked.

An old wives' tale said that whistling on the seas was bad luck, as it would summon terrible squalls. It was one among many of Stan's borderline blasphemous sailing sins. Ford picked his battles with his brother, and this was not one of them; aside, he often found that he quite liked it.

As he unbound the anchor, Ford imagined he heard a faint clicking beneath his brother's whistling. He checked the rope in his hand and the pulley on which it was wound, searching for any signs of weakness; finding none, he continued his task. He wound the winch, pulling in the anchor, and again heard the clicks. An investigation of the gear, again, yielded nothing.

"Where is that coming from?" Baffled, Ford glanced around the deck. Stan stood near the cabin, checking the trawl; as neither seemed to be moving, Ford surmised that neither had made any sound, beyond the continued whistling. "Stanley, what is that clicking?"

"What clicking?"

The pair paused, listening. Somewhere to his left, toward the bow, Ford was sure the noise originated. Now that he really listened, it sounded muffled. "That one!"

Stan shook his head. "I don't hear anything, Poindexter."

"But—"

"Did you hoist the anchor?"

"Yes, but—"

"Great. Then come check the rigging; I'm gonna move the boat."

"Not too far. I don't want to be looking through the binoculars all night again."

Stan waved off his brother's concern as he headed for the helm. "Wouldn't have that problem if you weren't staying up all night in the first place."

As his brother steered the boat away from the island, Ford moved toward the bow. The clicking noise was louder here, though still muffled, as if coming up from the depths. He considered that the sound might be some manner of cetacean; he could swear that it was still too early in the year for the mammals to have returned to northern waters, but perhaps he was wrong. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. For that matter, he wasn't even sure he really was hearing these sounds. If only it weren't so dark, he could just confirm such queries with his eyes.

"Hey, Poindexter, get ready with the anchor—"

"Are you sure you can't hear that clicking?"

Stan huffed. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"I swear, Stanley, if this is another of your hearing aid jokes—"

"If my hearing aid was off, I wouldn't be able to hear you talking to me."

Ford hemmed. "Ah…yes…I suppose so…"

"Now quit slacking off and do something, wouldja?" The remainder of Stan's disgruntled response became too quiet for Ford to hear far out on the deck.

Begrudgingly, Ford left the bow and returned to the anchor. He finagled with the winch, still perturbed by the unresolved clicking noise, when came a rumbling from beneath; far, far below their boat, down in the depths, something shuddered, and the whole ocean trembled. For a brief moment, Ford recalled the tales of an eldritch nightmare slumbering at the bottom of the sea, and true horror of the sound that had been haunting him all evening manifested deep within him.

It was further away than it had been when the clicking started; now, with an unearthly groaning and vicious quakes, the island descended into the waves. Caught in the wake, neither twin saw what exactly had pulled the island under.