Close Enough to Touch

"Three days ago, someone welcomed me to this nightmare. Now I'm the one doing the welcoming. That's how fast you go from victim to furniture around here."

I found a rock the right height to prop my leg against and lowered myself to the ground with the kind of care usually reserved for handling explosives.

The movement still hurt. Everything hurt. But at least in this position — my wounded calf elevated, my back supported by a small dune, my body arranged in the least agonising configuration I could manage — the pain dialled down from screaming to a dull, persistent roar. Progress, of sorts.

The camping equipment Beatrix had deposited lay scattered around the portal like offerings at some technological altar. Sleeping bags and tarps, stoves and lanterns, folding chairs that promised comfort I hadn't experienced since falling through that fucking portal. The sight of it all — so normal, so mundane, so achingly familiar — made something twist in my chest.

This was stuff from home. From Earth. From a world where shadow panthers didn't exist and ancient entities didn't whisper in your skull and your biggest worry was whether you'd make it to work on time.

I needed crutches. The thought had become a drumbeat in my brain, constant and insistent, drowning out almost everything else. Crutches would mean mobility. Freedom. The ability to do something other than sit here like a broken ornament while everyone else dealt with the endless crises this place seemed to generate.

But crutches required Luke, and Luke was absent, and my options for the foreseeable future consisted of waiting and hoping and trying not to think about the debt I still owed to the voice that lived inside my head.

Make yourself useful, I told myself. Do something. Anything.

My hands found the nearest sleeping bag and began the work of sorting.

It gave me purpose, at least. A task to focus on while my leg throbbed and my thoughts circled like vultures over carrion. Items destined for camp went to my left — the practical stuff, the survival gear, the things that would keep us alive another night. Items bound for the Drop Zone went to my right — extras, duplicates, things that could be stored for later use.

The rhythm of it was almost soothing. Reach, assess, sort, repeat. My fingers moved through the equipment with a focus that kept the darker thoughts at bay, cataloguing and categorising in a way that made me feel slightly less useless.

If only we'd had this stuff last night, I thought, examining a large camping lantern that would have turned night into day. If only we'd been prepared.

But we hadn't been. Couldn't have been. You can't prepare for the impossible.

Movement at the edge of my vision pulled my attention from the sorting. Paul was making his way back from camp, his face set in that expression of grim determination I was beginning to associate with him. He'd been making these journeys alone for a while now — back and forth, carrying and ferrying, doing the work of three people without complaint.

"Hey Paul, why aren't Karen and Chris helping you?" I called out as he approached.

The question came out more curious than accusatory, but something flickered in Paul's expression before his smile smoothed it away.

"Oh, they're busy with something else. Don't worry, I got this."

The smile didn't reach his eyes. I'd seen enough fake smiles in the past two days to recognise another one, and Paul's had the same hollow quality as all the rest — a mask worn for my benefit, a reassurance that wasn't quite true.

I wanted to push. Wanted to ask what could possibly be more important than the basic work of survival, what task had claimed both Karen and Chris when every set of hands was needed. But some instinct held my tongue.

Chris.

The name landed in my stomach like spoiled food, turning everything sour. Whatever Karen and Chris were doing, keeping my distance from the man who'd touched me at the lagoon — who'd been used by Clive to touch me, I reminded myself, though the distinction felt academic — seemed like the wisest course of action. The less I saw of Chris, the less I'd have to think about what had happened. What might happen again.

"Right," I said, returning my attention to the sorting. "Let me know if you need help carrying anything."

The offer was hollow and we both knew it. I could barely walk, let alone carry supplies across the dunes. But it felt important to say, to maintain the fiction that I was still a contributing member of this strange little community rather than a burden to be accommodated.

Paul nodded and continued his journey toward camp, leaving me alone with the equipment and my thoughts.

The sorting continued.

I found myself wondering about the origins of these supplies, the journey they'd taken to arrive here in this impossible place. Uncle Jamie had told me stories about Beatrix's resourcefulness, about her ability to acquire things through means that didn't bear close examination.

Some questions were best left unanswered, I decided, pushing aside a sleeping bag that still had a store's security tag dangling from its zipper. Whatever Beatrix had done to obtain these things, whatever laws she'd bent or broken on the other side of the portal, I wasn't in a position to judge. Not here. Not now. Not when my own moral compass had been spinning wildly since the moment I'd arrived.

The sorting was nearly complete when the portal came alive.

The colours erupted without warning, swirling and pulsing with an energy that made the air itself seem to vibrate. I jerked upright, my heart slamming against my ribs, my eyes fixed on the shimmering display that had transformed the blank screen into something alive and hungry.

Beatrix? Luke?

I waited for a familiar figure to emerge, for someone who could answer my questions or provide the help I so desperately needed.

The seconds stretched.

No one appeared.

The portal continued its light show, colours dancing across its surface like aurora borealis trapped in glass, but the screen remained empty. Unpassed. A door standing open with no one walking through.

Intrigue crept through my veins, replacing the momentary spike of hope with something more dangerous. The portal was active. Right there, within reach, pulsing with the same energy that had brought me to this dimension in the first place.

Could I go back?

The thought arrived with the force of revelation, electric and terrifying and impossible to ignore. The portal was open. If I could just reach it, just touch it, just step through before anyone stopped me—

I was moving before the conscious decision had fully formed, my body responding to the desperate need that had been building since the moment I'd arrived. My wounded leg screamed in protest, but I pushed through the pain, dragging myself toward the shimmering screen with a determination that bordered on madness.

Home. Brianne. My daughter. My life.

They were right there, just beyond that swirling barrier, waiting for me to come back to them.

My hand rose, trembling fingers reaching toward the dancing colours. The light played across my skin, warm and inviting, a promise of escape from everything this world had inflicted upon me. Just a few more inches. Just one more step.

I never made it.

Something slammed into me — a force like a freight train, solid and fast and completely unexpected. My body went airborne for a split second, a brief flight that ended abruptly when the ground rushed up to meet me. I landed hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs and sending a fresh supernova of agony exploding through my injured leg.

For a moment, I couldn't think. Couldn't breathe. Could only lie there in the dust, my vision swimming with stars, my leg shrieking obscenities at me in a language made entirely of pain.

Then I blinked, and the world slowly reassembled itself around me.

There was a man.

He was sprawled in the dust a few feet away, his limbs tangled at awkward angles, his face wearing the same expression of shocked confusion I'd probably worn when I'd first arrived. Dark hair, maybe mid-thirties, dressed in work clothes that suggested a job involving physical labour. He was already trying to rise, his movements stiff and jerky, his fingers trembling as they brushed dust from fabric that had no business being in this dimension.

Another one, I realised, the thought cutting through the fog of pain. Luke's brought another one.

The man's eyes darted around the landscape, registering the clear-blue sky and the endless dunes and the portal still shimmering behind him. I could see the panic building in his expression, the same dawning horror I'd experienced when the reality of my situation had first become clear.

"It must be Luke," I muttered, the words tasting bitter on my tongue.

I remembered my own arrival. The disorientation. The terror. The desperate need to understand what had happened and how to undo it. Luke had pushed me too — had shoved me through the portal without warning or consent, had dumped me into this nightmare like garbage being disposed of.

He does enjoy pushing people a little too much, I added silently, a flicker of resentment kindling in my chest.

The man completed his circuit, his gaze landing on the portal with the desperate intensity of a drowning man spotting land. He took a step toward it, his hand rising, his fingers reaching for the colours that still danced across its surface.

"You can't go back," I called out, the words carrying more certainty than I felt.

He froze. Turned. His eyes found mine, and I saw the questions there — the confusion and the fear and the desperate need for someone to tell him this was all a mistake, a dream, something that could be undone with the right combination of words or actions.

"What do you mean? Where am I?" he pleaded, his voice cracking on the final word.

I pushed myself into a sitting position, ignoring the fresh wave of agony that accompanied the movement. The man needed answers. Needed someone to explain the unexplainable, to welcome him to a world that didn't want any of us here.

"Didn't you hear the voice when you came through?" I asked, my curiosity threading through the sympathy.

He paused, his brow furrowing as he seemed to rifle through memories that were probably still too fresh to process clearly. "I think so," he finally admitted, the words coming slowly, reluctantly.

I'd heard the voice too. That cold, ancient whisper that had greeted me on arrival, had informed me in no uncertain terms that I was now property of this place, subject to its rules and its whims and its endless, hungry demands.

Extending my arms in what I hoped looked like a welcoming gesture, I forced myself to my feet. My leg nearly buckled, but I locked the knee and stayed upright through sheer stubbornness.

"Well, there you go," I said, attempting a lightness I didn't feel. "Welcome to Clivilius."

The man's disbelief was a living thing, twisting his features into configurations that spoke of a mind struggling to process the impossible.

He turned away from me, his shoulders hunching inward like a man bracing against a blow, and reached once more toward the portal's shimmering surface. His fingers trembled as they extended toward the dancing colours, toward the promise of escape that hung just beyond his grasp.

I understood that need. Felt it like a phantom limb, still reaching for a home that no longer existed in any direction I could walk.

"I told you," I called out again, my voice carrying the weight of experience I wished I didn't have. "You can't go back."

"No!" The word exploded from him as he whirled to face me, his eyes blazing with the kind of fierce denial that could only come from someone who hadn't yet learned how futile resistance was in this place. His head shook with vehement insistence, a stubborn refusal to accept what stood before him. "There must be some mistake."

There's no mistake, I thought, but the words felt too cruel to speak aloud.

There was never a mistake. Luke chose his victims with care, selected them for skills or knowledge or simple convenience, and once chosen, there was no appeals process. No customer service line to call. No manager to complain to. Just this — endless sand, alien sky, and a future that stretched forward into uncertainty while the past receded into inaccessibility.

A pang of sympathy twisted in my chest, unexpected and unwelcome. This man — whoever he was — had been living his life just minutes ago. Had probably woken up this morning with ordinary concerns: work deadlines, family obligations, what to have for dinner. The mundane architecture of a normal existence, now demolished without warning.

I knew how that felt. Was still reeling from my own demolition, still trying to find solid ground beneath feet that kept slipping.

Forcing my lips into something approximating a smile — a lie told with muscle and skin — I extended my hand toward him.

"I'm Kain," I said, attempting a warmth that felt foreign on my tongue.

He stared at my outstretched hand for a long moment, his eyes flickering between my face and my fingers as if searching for some trap, some trick hidden in the simple gesture of greeting. The suspicion was warranted, I supposed. In a world where nothing made sense, why would a handshake be any different?

But something in him seemed to decide — or perhaps just surrender — and his grip closed around mine with unexpected force. His fingers dug into my flesh, squeezing with a desperation that bordered on pain, as if by holding onto me he could anchor himself to something real in a world that had suddenly gone liquid.

I understood that too.

The handshake broke, and his gaze immediately returned to its restless scanning of the landscape, searching for something I knew he wouldn't find. Escape. Explanation. Any scrap of logic that might make this nightmare comprehensible.

"So, where's Luke?" he asked, the question carrying an edge of accusation.

Luke. Of course. The man would want answers from the person who'd thrown him through the portal, who'd ripped him from his life and deposited him in this wasteland without so much as an explanation. I'd wanted those same answers when I'd arrived. Had demanded them, in fact, with all the righteous fury of someone who didn't yet understand how pointless fury was in this place.

"I'm sure he'll be here very soon," I reassured him, the words feeling like a gamble.

But even as they left my lips, the portal erupted again — colours swirling and pulsing with that otherworldly energy that seemed to vibrate in my teeth. Light cascaded across the dunes, and I found myself holding my breath despite knowing better.

I reached for the man's arm, my fingers closing around his bicep with gentle insistence. "It's best if we don't stand too close," I advised, already pulling him back from the shimmering screen.

The memory of my own collision moments ago was fresh enough to make the warning genuine. Whatever came through that portal next, I didn't want either of us caught in its path.

"Shit," he muttered, his eyes widening at whatever he saw emerging from the light.

I followed his gaze.

A green ute materialised through the portal, its appearance so sudden and so complete that my brain struggled to process the transition. One moment there was nothing but swirling colour, and the next there was a vehicle — dust plumes rising from its tyres, engine rumbling with the familiar sound of internal combustion, chassis rocking slightly as it completed its journey between worlds.

The sight of it hit me harder than I expected. Not fear, not surprise, but something closer to homesickness. That was an Australian ute. A proper one, with a tray back and mud flaps and a bullbar that had clearly seen use. It could have come straight from a work site in Tasmania, from the kind of job I'd been doing just three days ago when my biggest concern was whether the concrete would set properly before the rain came.

Three days. It felt like three lifetimes.

The driver's door opened, and Luke emerged.

"Luke!" I exclaimed, relief and frustration tangling together in my chest.

He was here. Finally here, after all the waiting and the missed encounters and Beatrix's endless repetitions of "you'll have to ask Luke." The man who could provide the crutches that would give me back some semblance of independence.

But even as the relief washed through me, a thought surfaced that demanded voice.

"Why is he here?" I blurted, gesturing toward the newcomer.

The question came out sharper than intended, edged with the bitterness of someone who'd been on the receiving end of Luke's recruitment methods. This man had been dragged from his life just as I had, dumped into Clivilius without consent or preparation or any of the courtesy that one human being owed another.

Luke's response was casual, almost bored, as if kidnapping people and dumping them in other dimensions was simply another item on his to-do list.

"Nial owns a fence construction business," he said, already moving toward us with that purposeful stride that suggested he had places to be and couldn't be bothered with minor concerns like traumatised newcomers or crippled survivors.

Nial. The name finally attached itself to the face, giving form to the stranger I'd been trying to comfort. And his profession — fence construction — suddenly made a terrible kind of sense. After last night's attack, after the shadow panthers had poured from the darkness and nearly killed us all, fencing should probably jump to the top of everyone's priority list.

We needed protection. Nial could build it. Therefore, Nial had been taken.

The logic was cold and practical and completely inhuman, and I found myself nodding despite the revulsion that coiled in my stomach. "Makes sense," I heard myself say, hating how reasonable the words sounded.

Luke had reached us now, and I noticed the jingling set of keys dangling from his hand — Nial's keys, presumably, seized as part of whatever acquisition process Luke employed when recruiting unwilling participants to his dimension.

"Do these include your office keys?" Luke asked Nial, holding up the jangling collection of metal.

Nial's expression shifted from confusion to wariness, his eyes tracking the keys with the focused attention of someone watching a predator. "Yeah," he replied, the word coming out slow and uncertain.

"Where's your office?" Luke pressed, his tone carrying that same casual indifference that seemed to define his every interaction.

The questions were landing in Nial's consciousness like stones in mud, each one sinking in and leaving holes of unease. I could see him trying to understand the implications, trying to figure out why Luke would care about his office keys, what use they could possibly serve in a dimension that shouldn't even exist.

"It's a home office. Why?" Nial asked, the final word carrying an edge of challenge that I recognised from my own early hours in Clivilius.

Luke's face broke into a smile. "Great!" he exclaimed, the enthusiasm landing somewhere between genuine pleasure and calculated performance.

I watched Luke move toward the portal, watched him prepare to step through and vanish, and felt the desperate need for crutches rising in my throat like bile.

"Luke, wait—" I started, but he was already speaking over me, his words directed at Nial rather than acknowledging my plea.

"The key is still in the ignition," Luke said, gesturing toward Nial's ute. And then, without another word, without a backward glance, without so much as acknowledging that I existed, he stepped through the portal and was gone.

The colours faded. The screen went blank.

And I stood there, crutches request still lodged in my throat, staring at the empty space where my best hope for mobility had just disappeared.

"Fuck," I whispered, the word inadequate to the frustration that burned through me.

Nial was still processing, his gaze moving between the blank portal and his ute and me in a triangle of bewilderment that I remembered all too well from my own first hours. He looked lost in a way that went beyond geography, adrift in a sea of implications he couldn't fully grasp.

Movement from the direction of camp drew my attention. Paul was approaching, his face set in that expression of grim determination that seemed to have become his default setting. He moved with purpose, his steps eating up the distance between us, and I felt a small measure of relief at the sight of him.

At least I wouldn't have to handle Nial alone.

"You've just missed Luke," I informed Paul as he drew near, unable to keep the sarcasm from bleeding into my tone.

Paul's reaction was immediate — a furrowing of the brow, a hand rising to his forehead in a gesture of frustration that left a smear of dust across his skin. Whatever he'd wanted from Luke, he wasn't going to get it right now.

"But this is Nial," I added quickly, seizing the opportunity to pass the torch of responsibility. Turning to Nial, I continued with a rush of words that bordered on desperation. "Paul is our camp leader. He's the one who keeps us organised and safe."

The description surprised me even as I said it. Did I believe that? Did I really think Paul was capable of keeping any of us safe in a world where the darkness itself seemed to hunger for our flesh?

Maybe not. But the words felt necessary — a framework of normality to offer a man whose normal had just been shattered beyond recognition. If believing in leadership and organisation helped Nial cope, then I would paint Paul in whatever colours served that purpose.

Paul stepped forward, his hand extending toward Nial in a gesture that mirrored my own from minutes ago. "Nice to meet you, Nial. I'm sorry you got caught up in all of this."

The apology was genuine — I could hear it in Paul's voice, see it in the lines around his eyes. Whatever else Paul might be, he wasn't indifferent to the suffering that Luke's recruitment methods inflicted.

Nial hesitated, that same wariness I'd seen earlier flickering across his features. But Paul's sincerity seemed to reach him, and after a moment, he grasped the offered hand with a grip that was firm but exhausted.

"Yeah, me too," Nial replied, his voice barely above a whisper.

The exchange was brief, perfunctory, but it felt important somehow. A ritual of greeting, of acknowledgment, of tentative trust being extended between strangers who had nothing in common except the misfortune of finding themselves here.

I watched them, these two men I barely knew, and felt the weight of my own arrival pressing down on me. I was still grappling with the impossible, still struggling to comprehend the workings of this place. My memories of those first few moments remained fresh — the terror, the confusion, the desperate need for something solid to hold onto while the world dissolved around me.

How long ago had that been? Two days? Three? The time had blurred together, measured not in hours but in traumas, each one stacking atop the last like bricks in a wall that threatened to crush me.

I pressed a finger against the trickle of blood that had begun seeping from my leg again, the wound aggravated by my collision with Nial, by my desperate scramble toward the portal, by the simple fact that this body had been pushed past its limits and refused to stay within them.

I needed care. Needed rest. Needed things I couldn't get from standing here at the portal's base, waiting for a man who'd just demonstrated how little he cared about my needs.

"Kain, let's load Nial's ute with the remaining camping supplies that need to be taken to camp and the three of us can return to camp," Paul suggested, his voice carrying the quiet authority of someone accustomed to making decisions.

The proposal was reasonable. Practical. Exactly the kind of sensible thinking that should have guided my actions from the start.

But the thought of leaving — of abandoning my post at the portal, of giving up my vigil for crutches that might never come — made something in my chest clench with reluctance.

You can't stay here forever, I told myself. And your leg won't heal itself.

"Yeah, that's a good idea," I admitted, the words heavy with resignation. "My leg is getting too painful to walk."

Paul's expression softened with something that looked like genuine concern. "You need to rest your leg," he said, his voice dropping to a gentler register. "And you really should consider going to the river or lagoon to put some water on your wound. I'll return to the Portal because I need to speak with Luke and I promise you that I will ask Luke to get you some crutches."

The lagoon.

The word landed in my stomach like a swallowed stone, cold and heavy and impossible to ignore. The lagoon, where the water did things to my body that I couldn't control. The lagoon, where Clive had manipulated me into acts that still made my skin crawl when I thought about them. The lagoon, where I'd paid a price that hadn't been enough and might be asked to pay again.

But Paul didn't know any of that. Couldn't know. And the suggestion was medically sound — the water did have healing properties, whatever else it might do to a person who touched it.

"Thanks, Paul. I appreciate it," I said, forcing gratitude into my voice that I didn't entirely feel.

Paul and Nial loaded the ute in relative silence, Nial moving through the motions with the mechanical quality of someone operating on autopilot. The camping supplies went into the tray — sleeping bags and tarps and all the gear that might make our survival slightly less miserable.

When the last item had been secured, we climbed into the cab. The engine coughed to life, the sound achingly familiar, and we began the short journey back to camp.

I stared out the windscreen at the passing dunes, and tried not to think about what awaited me at the lagoon.