A Bleeding Sky

"Breakfast was a stolen muesli bar and a sunrise that looked like the sky was having a medical emergency. Still better than the void, I suppose. Low bar, but I'll take it."

I didn't sleep so much as lose consciousness.

One moment I was lying on the cold stone floor of Nelson's hollow, staring at the darkness pressing against my eyelids, and the next I was somewhere else entirely. Not dreaming—not exactly. More like drifting through a void where time and space had lost their meaning, where the only constant was the dull throb of pain that seemed to emanate from every cell in my body.

Mum used to say that sleep was the body's way of healing itself. When you're sick, Joel, the best thing you can do is rest. Let your body do its work. She'd said it when I was seven and had the flu, when I was twelve and broke my wrist falling off my bike, when I was seventeen and came home from my first week at the depot so sore I could barely walk.

My body had a lot of work to do tonight.

The void shifted. Colours bled through the darkness—not the warm oranges and pinks of a Tasmanian dawn, but something stranger. Deeper. Purples that seemed to pulse with their own heartbeat. Greens that whispered at the edge of hearing. A voice that might have been the wind, might have been something else entirely, murmuring words I couldn't quite catch.

You are mine, Joel Gibbons.

The memory surfaced like a bubble rising through dark water. The lagoon. The moment of return. That voice—vast and patient and utterly certain—claiming me as I clawed my way back from death.

You are mine.

I jerked awake with a gasp, my heart hammering against my ribs, my hands scrabbling at the stone beneath me as if searching for something to hold onto. The hollow was still dark, but not the absolute darkness of deep night. There was a quality to it now—a softening at the edges—that spoke of approaching dawn.

For a long moment, I just lay there. Breathing. Feeling the cold stone against my back, the ache in my muscles, the raw throb of my damaged throat. Cataloguing the evidence that I was still alive, still here, still—

Still what? Still Joel Gibbons? Or something else now?

The question had been lurking at the back of my mind since the lagoon. Since I'd opened my eyes and found myself in a tent instead of whatever came after death. Since that voice had spoken words that felt less like a statement and more like a branding.

I pushed the thought away. Filed it in the same mental drawer where I kept all the things I couldn't afford to think about: Mum's disappointment when I dropped out of school, the bills I'd been juggling for years, the quiet desperation of a life that never quite added up to what I'd hoped it would be.

Survival first. Existential crisis later.

I turned my head—slowly, every vertebra in my neck protesting—and looked toward where I'd last seen Nelson.

He was already awake. Or maybe he'd never slept. He sat against the opposite wall of the hollow, his posture alert, his eyes fixed on the narrow gap that served as our entrance. In the pre-dawn dimness, he was little more than a shape—a suggestion of angles and shadows—but I could feel his attention. The weight of his awareness, constantly scanning, constantly calculating.

Predator, I thought. That's what he is. A predator in human form.

The thought should have terrified me. It did terrify me, somewhere beneath the exhaustion and the pain. But there was also something almost comforting about it. Predators were predictable. They followed rules—hunt, kill, survive. As long as I understood those rules, as long as I stayed useful, I could navigate this.

Useful. The word sat heavy in my chest. That's all I am to him. A tool. A resource. Something to be used and discarded when its purpose is served.

"You're awake."

Nelson's voice cut through my thoughts. Not a question—a statement. He'd known the moment I'd stirred, probably. Had been tracking my breathing, my heartbeat, the subtle shifts in my body that signalled consciousness.

"Yeah," I said. The word came out rough, scraping against my damaged throat like sandpaper. "I'm awake."

He didn't respond. Didn't move. Just sat there, watching the entrance, as the darkness continued its slow retreat.

I lay still and watched the ceiling of the hollow emerge from shadow. The stone was rough-hewn, irregular, marked by patterns I couldn't identify. Were they natural? The result of geological processes I didn't understand? Or had someone carved them, long ago, for purposes I couldn't imagine?

You're in another world, I reminded myself. The rules are different here. Everything is different here.

The thought was both terrifying and, in a strange way, liberating. Back home, I'd known the rules. Known my place. Courier driver. High school dropout. Son of a single mother living in a two-bedroom house in Glenorchy. The boundaries of my life had been drawn in lines of money and class and the quiet, grinding limitations of being nobody special in a world that only noticed the special.

Here, none of that mattered. Here, I was just... alive. Improbably, impossibly alive. And whatever came next, whatever Nelson had planned for me, at least it was something. At least it was new.

Listen to yourself, I thought bitterly. Trying to find the silver lining in being kidnapped by your own murderer. Mum would be so proud.

But Mum wasn't here. Mum was back on Earth, probably sitting in the dark because the power had been cut off, wondering where her son had gone, why he hadn't come home, whether he was ever coming home at all.

The guilt hit me like a physical blow. I'd been so focused on my own survival—on the pain and the fear and the desperate, moment-to-moment calculus of staying alive—that I'd almost forgotten about her. About what she must be going through.

She thinks I'm dead. Or missing. Or worse.

The possibilities spiralled through my mind, each one more awful than the last. Mum calling the depot, asking why I hadn't shown up for my shift. Mum calling the police, filing a missing persons report. Mum sitting by the phone, waiting, hoping, slowly losing hope as the hours turned to days and the days turned to...

Stop it. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block out the images. You can't help her from here. You can't do anything from here. All you can do is survive and try to find a way back.

A way back. Was that even possible? I'd come through a Portal—that swirling wall of colour that Nelson and his people used to travel between worlds. Could I go back the same way? Could anyone?

The questions multiplied, breeding like rabbits in the dark corners of my mind. I didn't have answers to any of them. Didn't know if answers even existed.

One moment at a time, Mum's voice whispered. That's all you can manage. One moment at a time.

I opened my eyes. The hollow was lighter now. I could see the texture of the stone walls, the rough shape of Nelson against the far side, the narrow slit of sky visible through the entrance.

The sky was changing.

Dawn in Clivilius was nothing like dawn in Tasmania.

Back home, sunrise was a gradual thing. A slow brightening, the darkness fading by degrees, the world emerging gently from the night like a photograph developing in solution. There was a peace to it. A sense of the universe taking its time, allowing you to adjust to the return of light.

This was different.

The sky didn't brighten so much as transform. One moment it was the deep purple-black of late night, and the next it was alive with colour—not the soft pastels I'd expected, but vivid, violent streaks of orange and crimson and gold that looked less like a sunrise and more like the sky itself was bleeding.

I watched it through the entrance of the hollow, transfixed. The colours shifted and swirled, never quite settling, as if the light itself was uncertain what it wanted to be. And beneath the spectacle, creeping up from the horizon like a fire spreading through dry grass, came the sun.

The sun.

It was wrong. I knew that immediately, with a certainty that bypassed thought and settled directly into my bones. The colour was slightly off—more orange than yellow, with a reddish tinge that reminded me of bushfire smoke. And the size... was it bigger than Earth's sun? Smaller? I couldn't tell, couldn't calibrate my sense of scale in a world where everything was unfamiliar.

But it was a sun. A star. A nuclear furnace burning hydrogen into helium millions of kilometres away, pouring light and heat across the void to warm this alien world.

Not so different after all, I thought. The physics is the same. The process is the same. Just... shifted. Slightly off-key, like a song played in a different tuning.

The thought was oddly comforting. I'd spent so many nights as a teenager lying on the roof of our building, staring up at the stars, trying to wrap my head around the vastness of the universe. The distances involved. The sheer improbability of it all—a thin film of life clinging to the surface of a tiny rock hurtling through an incomprehensibly large void.

This was just more of that. Another rock. Another sun. The same fundamental forces playing out in a different configuration.

You're still made of carbon, I told myself. Still held together by the same electromagnetic forces. Still a pattern of matter and energy that somehow learned to think about itself.

The philosophy wasn't helping with the pain in my legs, but it was something. A thread to hold onto in a world that seemed determined to tear everything familiar away from me.

"Up."

Nelson's voice shattered my reverie. I turned to find him standing over me, his silhouette backlit by the bleeding sky.

"We leave imminently," he said. "Eat something."

He tossed a package at me—a muesli bar, the wrapper catching the dim light. I caught it clumsily, my fingers stiff and uncooperative, and stared at it. Choc chip. The packaging was familiar—something you'd find in any supermarket back home.

"Where did you get this?" I asked.

"Your camp has a supply point. Things come through from Earth." He said it flatly, without a trace of guilt or hesitation. "I helped myself."

Helped himself. While we'd been rationing, worrying about supplies, trying to figure out how to survive in this place, he'd been creeping in after dark and taking whatever he wanted. The thought should have made me angry. Instead, it just added another layer to the picture I was building of the man who'd kidnapped me.

He took what he needed. That was how he operated. People, supplies, lives—all just resources to be acquired and used.

"Eat," Nelson said when I didn't move. "Or don't. But we're leaving either way."

He turned and walked toward the entrance, leaving me to contemplate the muesli bar in my hands—stolen goods, taken without remorse from people who were probably wondering where their supplies had gone.

Getting up was a process.

It started with a mental inventory of all the things that hurt—which was, essentially, everything. My legs had stiffened overnight into something that felt less like functional limbs and more like wooden posts attached to my hips. My back ached from sleeping on stone. My feet were a mess of blisters and raw patches that throbbed with every heartbeat. And beneath it all, running through everything like a bass note, was the bone-deep exhaustion of a body that had been pushed far past its limits and was only now beginning to tally the cost.

Three days ago, you were dead, I reminded myself. Cut some slack.

But the slack wouldn't help me walk. Nothing would help me walk except actually walking.

I started with my hands. Pressed them flat against the stone floor, testing their strength, their willingness to cooperate. They trembled—fine tremors that ran up my wrists and into my forearms—but they held.

Next, I drew my knees up. Slowly. Carefully. The muscles in my thighs screamed in protest, but I ignored them. Pain was just information. Pain was my body telling me what was wrong, not what was impossible.

One step at a time, Mum's voice reminded me. One movement at a time.

I got my feet under me. Bare feet on cold stone, every blister and abrasion announcing itself with sharp, distinct clarity. The soles felt like they'd been sandpapered and then set on fire.

Should have looked for shoes, I thought. Should have asked. Should have—

Should have doesn't help you now.

I pushed myself upright.

The world tilted. For a terrifying moment, I thought I was going to pass out—grey spots dancing at the edges of my vision, my balance completely shot. I grabbed at the wall, rough stone biting into my palm, and held on until the vertigo passed.

Standing. I was standing. Not well—swaying like a sapling in a gale, my legs threatening to buckle with every breath—but standing.

Achievement unlocked, I thought grimly. Basic human functionality restored.

I ate the muesli bar while leaning against the wall, not trusting my legs to hold me without support. The chocolate chips had gone slightly waxy and the oats were stale, but my body didn't care about quality. My body cared about calories, about fuel, about the raw materials it needed to keep this broken machine running for another day.

I chewed. I swallowed. I thought about where this bar had come from—someone's supplies, brought through from Earth, stolen by Nelson in the night. How many other things had gone missing from the camp? How many times had people blamed each other, or assumed they'd miscounted, while Nelson watched from the darkness and helped himself to whatever he needed?

That's the world you're in now, I reminded myself. Take or be taken from. Survive or don't.

I finished the bar. Dusted the crumbs from Jamie's borrowed shirt. And walked—shuffled, really—toward the entrance of the hollow.