Carina had been running like a bat out of hell for several seconds now. Or had it been minutes? Hours? Even she wasn't certain, but she didn't care. She didn't care if she somehow ran all the way around the world only to find herself in Madagascar. She had to keep running. She had to get as far away from the madness as she could. None of it made any sense, and she was half-convinced it was just a nightmare.

Her breathing became more strained as she kept running deeper into the tropical forest. Carina rushed through the dense vegetation with unbelievable speed, the adrenaline surging throughout her body as she felt her pulse racing and sweat forming on her brow. She was so overcome with fear that she didn't stop for anything, despite her exhausted lungs telling her otherwise.

Eventually, Carina reached a point where she couldn't go any farther, and she came to a sudden stop and placed her hand against one of the palm trees in the forest. Breathing deeply, she felt the shakiness in her legs come to her, and she began to collect her thoughts on what just happened.

She keeps telling herself that what she saw wasn't real. It was a figment of her imagination, nothing more. It was probably the lack of sleep she had had the past couple of nights. Maybe it was nearly getting killed multiple times that had her on edge. Maybe Henry's ghost stories were starting to get at her. Or maybe she was simply going mad.

But what she saw, those ashen and broken men, that was real. Jack had shot that one ghost and he hardly even flinched. Those two that had walked onto the beach collapsed into nothing but dust. None of it made any sense to her whatsoever. Carina was a woman of science, of knowledge and facts and absolute truths, but this defied her own understanding of things. There was no basis in logic to support the existence of ghosts, but here they were, before her very eyes. Everything that Henry had said about the supernatural was right, and Carina realized just how wrong she was for doubting him.

"Keep it together, Carina," she tells herself, closing her eyes and continuing to pant, "Everything will be fine. You're not going mad, it's just... not making sense yet. Yeah, that's right."

Carina opened her eyes and began to take in her surroundings. Turning herself in a circle, all she could see were the palm trees, their bright green leaves indistinguishable from one to the next. She didn't know how far she had ran, which direction she had come from, or how to get back.

"Oh no," Carina uttered, realizing she was lost. She had no idea where Jack and Henry were, and she was in the middle of the forest on some island she didn't know the name of, being chased by ghosts, exhausted, and wearing nothing but her soaking-wet knickers.

A thought occurred to her, and she quickly reached down to the pouch tied to her leg to check the inside contents. Fortunately enough, the chronometer and the ruby were still safely inside, but Galileo's diary was missing. She had given it to Henry back on the Gull, and he probably still had it with him. Carina wouldn't need the diary any further to find the Trident, but she wanted it back. She wasn't prepared to lose the only thing she had from her father, aside from her name of course.

"Henry!" Carina called out, cupping her hands around her mouth to amplify her voice, "Jack! The stubby one and his friend with the glass eye whose names escape me! Can anyone hear me?"

She listened carefully, but she heard no response, not even faintly. Exactly how far did she run?

"Henry! Jack!" she continued to call out as she started to walk forward. Carina observed her surroundings further and saw nothing but endless green. Getting out of this forest would be almost impossible, and she couldn't afford to lose any more time. The pathway to the Trident of Poseidon would be gone in two days.

She continued to call out to Henry and Jack, but she didn't hear anything. After a few minutes of doing this, she stopped calling out to them and crossed her arms and started to rub them to keep warm.

After a few more minutes of walking, Carina came through a particularly dense piece of the jungle to come across an open clearing. It seemed odd to her because most of the way had been difficult to navigate with all the vegetation, but now there was a clearing in the shape of a large circle with dead leaves littering the ground.

Carina eyed the ground curiously for a few moments, but then decided that maybe she was just being paranoid and continued walking forward.

Suddenly, she felt something grip itself tightly around her right ankle, and Carina looked down to see that her foot had been caught in what looked like a snare.

"What the- AAAAAHHHHH!"

Carina felt the sudden jolt of the rope ascending, and she was lifted upward at a rapid rate until she was suspended high above the ground, dangling from one foot.

Feeling the blood rush to her head, Carina saw that the world had flipped upside down and started to panic.

"Henry! Jack! Anyone!" Carina shouted, "Somebody help me!"

But no one was there to hear her.

"Oh, this is perfect," she mutters to herself, "Just absolutely perfect. Could things get any worse?"

She turned her head to observe her surroundings, and she gasped when she saw that there was a skeleton that was also suspended by one foot dangling a few feet away from her. Carina figured he had to have been a pirate, for his attire suggested as much.

"Yep, things are worse," Carina remarked. How was she going to get out of this one?

"Carina!" Henry called out, holding onto the strap keeping his musket slung on his shoulder, "Carina, where are you?"

Jack had caught up with Henry and started to walk alongside him as they pressed deeper into the forest.

"Carina!" Henry shouted out again, and then he quickly glanced at Jack and asked "Where could she have gone?"

Jack merely chuckled at Henry's concern, and Henry, perplexed, asked him "What? What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing," Jack replied with a smile, "Only that if I had any doubts you were Will Turner's boy before, they're gone now."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Henry inquired.

"From when I knew your father, all he would do is go on and on about your mother. 'Elizabeth this' and 'Elizabeth that.' It was rather touching actually," Jack commented.

"What does this have to do with me?" Henry asked, to which Jack replied "Admit it, you're absolutely smitten with Carina."

"I told you before that I'm not," Henry argued, stepping over an exposed root in the ground, "We need her to find the Trident, and I need the Trident to free my father. Nothing more."

"Listen, mate," Jack said, putting his hand on Henry's shoulder and the both of them stopping in place. Henry turned to face Jack, and the pirate continued, taking his hand off the boy's shoulder and saying, "Your ambitions in life shouldn't be limited to breaking Will's curse."

"But he's my father. Why shouldn't I be trying to free him?" Henry asked.

"I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't. Believe me, I think it's grand that you're going to great lengths to save him," Jack elaborated, "But I don't think he would want you to waste away your life trying to do right by him and not doing right by yourself. He would've wanted you to pursue your own treasures, be a free spirit and such."

"Except I'm not selfish," Henry responded firmly, "I care about my family, not plunder and riches."

Jack chuckled again, seeing the classic Turner naïveté seeping through, and then responded back with "Like I told your father many years ago, not all treasure is silver and gold. I'm talking about the unscratchable itch."

"What? Love?" Henry inquired.

"No, scabies," Jack deadpanned, "Of course I'm talking about love. Your father loved your mother, just like you love Carina."

"How many times do I have to say it? I am not in love with Carina," Henry sternly replied, "What would you know about love, anyway? You're a pirate, right? Your love is the sea."

Jack tensed up for a moment, Henry's words stinging his mind.

"You're wrong about that, Henry," Jack replied, his demeanor turning serious for a moment, "I know damn well what love is. It's something that you never let go once you've grabbed hold of it. You'd do well to remember that, savvy?"

Jack turned away from him and kept walking forward. As much as he wanted to say otherwise, Henry knew that Jack was right to an extent. He did feel something for Carina, but he felt it could hardly be described as love. After all, he had only known her for a few days. That wasn't enough time to discern whether he actually cared for her or not. Still, Jack had a point. He's wiser than he appears, and he has this way of reading into people and understanding what it is they're thinking. And from what he had seen of Jack over the past few days, he seems to have been through a lot. Maybe when this was all over he could ask what was bothering him so much, and finally get some clarification as to what the old man aboard the Monarch meant about Jack being "long gone."

Henry, though concerned with whatever was on Jack's mind, dropped the subject and continued onward, calling out Carina's name some more. He hoped nothing bad had happened to her.

Carina had been hanging upside down for a few minutes, and there was still no sign of Henry or Jack. The blood rushing to her head was beginning to make her feel dizzy, and she knew she needed to find a way down soon. The rope was too tight for her to untie, so she tried to come up with other solutions.

"Okay, think Carina, think," Carina said aloud, trying to walk herself through her escape, "I can't untie the rope, so I'll need to cut it. But there's nothing I have that's sharp so-"

A thought popped into her head, and she turned over to look at the dead pirate hanging by his ankle. Carina looked closely at his belt and saw that there was a sword sitting in a scabbard attached.

"I can use that sword!" Carina exclaimed, her hopes shooting up. She wondered briefly why the pirate didn't attempt to cut himself down, but she looked at his bare skull to see a circular crack in his forehead, probably from a bullet wound.

Now Carina was presented with another problem. How was she supposed to reach the sword on his belt if she was strung up several feet away from him? She quickly found the answer when she began to shake herself in place and noticed the line of rope was loose enough to allow her to swing. That's it! She would use herself as a pendulum to swing over to the pirate, grab his sword, and cut the rope!

Carina, smirking at her own cleverness, wrapped her free leg around the one that was bound, and began to swing herself back and forth in the direction of the skeleton. She continued to do this, building up as much momentum as she could, until she felt she was close enough to start reaching for the sword. When she felt she had built up enough momentum, Carina outstretched her right hand so she could grab onto the sword's handle, but to no avail; she swung back the other way. She tried again, swinging back towards the skeleton with both arms outstretched, one to grab onto the body, and the other to grab onto the sword. This too failed, and she swung back the other way.

"You can do this," Carina tells herself. She had faith that she would get out of this.

She swung back towards the skeleton again, and this time she was able to wrap her left arm around the skeleton so she could hold herself in place, and she managed to grab onto the sword's handle with her right hand and drew it out from the scabbard.

"Yes!" Carina exclaimed, satisfied that now she had the sword in her hands. Her mother had always said that she was a clever girl. Now she could get out of this mess.

Her moment of victory was interrupted when she let go of the pirate's skeleton, and the rope holding him suddenly snapped and the body fell down onto the ground. While this came as a bit of a shock to Carina, she maintained a firm grip on the sword's handle and started to use the blade as a saw against the rope. While she was cutting through it, it never occurred to Carina that once the rope was cut she was going to fall onto the ground as well. When she had cut through enough rope and heard the remaining fibers snap, her eyes widened at this realization.

"Oh," Carina uttered simply, and when the rope broke she started to scream as she fell down onto the ground on her back.

Carina groaned for a moment, feeling the pain in her spine and the back of her skull. That fall must've been twenty feet at least. She considered herself fortunate she wasn't already dead.

"What is my life coming to?" Carina remarked to no one in particular.

Groaning, Carina got up off her back and fell onto her knees, placing her palms against the ground and breathing in through her nose for a moment. When she finished, she stood up and looked at the remains of the pirate lying on the ground next to her. What was odd was that even though the skeletal remains suggest he's been dead for a while, his clothes were still in relatively good condition (for a pirate). He had on a shirt that was white that was slightly tinted yellow, a dark brown vest, light tan pants, and plain black boots. From what Carina could tell, the clothes looked like they were small enough that they could fit on her.

Upon recognizing her own thoughts, Carina scoffed and turned away. It was a silly thought anyway. She wasn't about to put on a pirate's clothes, nevermind ones that belonged to a dead man.

But at the same time, she looked at herself and saw that she was still standing in her knickers. Her dress was most likely gone by this point. She felt a chill run along her spine from the water still on her, and Carina began to rub her arms again trying to keep warm.

She looked over her shoulder to see the pirate's remains and the clothes adorning it.

"Ugh, fine," she says aloud, walking over to the skeleton and removing the clothes from it. Once she had done so, Carina put on the pants, shirt, vest, and boots (which took a few minutes of struggling to get on) in order, and secured the belt with the scabbard attached to it to her waist. She picked up the sword from the ground and sheathed it, and then she fixed her hair before she set out again.

Carina inhaled through her nose, and her face scrunched up as the dead man's odor still lingered.

"It'll only be temporary," she says, trying to justify the stench to herself.

Pushing those thoughts aside, she continued onward through the forest. She eventually happened upon a spring, and Carina realized just how thirsty she was. She quickly darted over to the water and began cupping her hands and bringing the cool liquid to her mouth. She continued to do this until she felt her thirst had been satisfied, and then she stopped when she saw her own reflection in the water. Her hair was a mess, she had a scar beneath her eye, and she was wearing the clothes off the back of a dead man. Carina thought she looked absolutely ridiculous, almost like she was a pirate herself. Out of defiance, she splashed the water in front of her and watched the ripples distort her image. Once she saw this, she got up from where she was and continued on her way, hoping she could find Henry and Jack soon.

"Oi, where be Captain Jack?" Pintel asked Ragetti as they used their swords to cut through the thick forest, "Didn't he run in just before us?"

"Yeah. He must've gone ahead. Probably wants to get as far away from Salazar as possible," Ragetti answered, "You ever think about how many of these things we've done, Pin?"

"What do you mean?" Pintel inquired.

"Here we are again, on another adventure with ol' Jack, tryin' to find an item of great power while some form of cursed beings try to kill him. Seems a little repetitive at this point, dunnit?" Ragetti elaborated.

"You do have a point there," Pintel commented, "And we were on that side of cursed beings trying to kill him at one point, heh. God, does time fly."

The two friends laughed as they continued onward, but they stopped laughing when they heard shouts coming from behind them.

"Lieutenant! Have your men cover every inch of those forests! I want those pirates dead!"

Pintel and Ragetti froze in place, and gave each other nervous glances.

"Those don't sound like no Spanish to me," Ragetti gulped.

"No it don't. How's about we try to find the Gull a little quicker, eh?" Pintel suggested.

"Good idea," Ragetti concurred, and the two of them started to pick up the pace before the British spotted them.

Jack and Henry continued to walk forward, having moved on from their previous conversation to a comparatively lighter one.

"...and then they made me their chief," Jack finished. Henry was amused with Jack's ability to tell a story, but those feelings were cut off by the sounds of shouts and feet trampling from behind him. Henry turned around and saw at least a dozen Redcoats rushing towards them in the distance.

"Jack!" Henry called out, and Jack turned around to see the soldiers coming closer.

"How did they find us?" Jack inquired.

"They must've tracked us from St. Martin!" Henry shouted.

"Quickly! Find cover!" Jack shouted, and he and Henry took cover behind two nearby trees. As the Redcoats drew closer, Jack pulled out the pistol that he emptied on Salazar and began to load another cartridge, and while he did so he looked over at Henry, who in turn was looking right back at him. When he'd finished loading his pistol, Jack pulled out his other pistol and gave Henry a nod, and Henry knew that this was the moment Jack was talking about. He removed the musket from his shoulder and gripped it with two hands, his breath starting to pick up as he pulled back the hammer with his thumb. He had never killed anyone before, and now he was about to face off against his former comrades.

"Henry," Jack said, and Henry looked over at him, "You're going to be fine, you hear me?"

Henry nodded, but he wasn't sure if he agreed. He breathed deeply to get his nerves down.

Jack made the first move, stepping out from behind the tree and firing off his pistols, taking down two of the approaching Redcoats.

"Pirates in the treeline! Open fire!" a soldier shouted, and musket shots rang out and hit the wood of the trees that Jack and Henry were standing behind. Jack began to reload his pistols, and shot a glance over to Henry that said that he needed cover. Obediently, Henry quickly stepped out from behind cover, took aim, and fired his shot, hitting a soldier in his gut.

He fell down onto the ground screaming in pain for a few moments before he died, and Henry stood there in shock, realizing what he had done, time seeming to have frozen in place. He had just killed a man. He took his life with just a pull of the trigger. That was all it took as he reduced a man, somebody's son, to nothing more than a dead body. Jack was right; killing a man is not what he thought it would be like.

Time resumed, and Henry stepped back behind the tree, a shot narrowly missing his head. Quickly, Jack fired a shot off and hit the soldier that almost hit Henry.

"How're you holding up!?" Jack asked.

"I'll manage!" Henry said, his hands trembling as he struggled to reload his weapon.

"Listen, we can't stay here for long! We're gonna have to make a run for it! Once we've finished reloading, I'll fire off a shot and you take off running! Don't worry, mate, I got you covered!"

Henry didn't respond, preoccupied with ramming his ramrod into the barrel of the musket and the fact that he'd become a murderer. Once he'd finished, Jack fired off a shot from his pistol and Henry took off running, firing another shot that he wasn't sure hit anything. Jack fired his other shot at the Redcoats as he took off running after Henry.

A/N: Hey guys! Here's another chapter for you. I apologize in advance if it's not as long as some of the others. This is supposed to be a multi-chapter sequence, and I promise there's more action and intrigue to come. Until then, I hope you enjoy, and be sure to read, review, and share this story with others. Thanks for all the support!

-Spent