4338.210 · July 29, 2018 AD
Collateral Damage Doesn't Walk
Joel always thought resurrection was the hard part. Dying, coming back, clawing his way out of the void—that was supposed to be the worst of it. But the lagoon didn't give him a second life. It gave him borrowed time. And now, face-down in an overhang with legs that won't respond to any command, Joel is learning what happens when the loan comes due.
The tracks don't belong to anything human. Nelson won't say what made them, but the way his hand stays close to his knife says enough.
They keep walking anyway. Because stopping means dying, and Joel isn't ready to die—not again, not after everything it cost to come back. He asks the question that's been burning in his chest since Berriedale: Why did I have to die?
The answer is worse than silence. Collateral damage. Wrong place, wrong time. His death meant nothing.
That's not what you are now, Nelson says. But what he is now is a man whose body has finally stopped pretending it can keep going.
Joel wakes to legs that don't respond. No pain, no sensation, no connection at all—just dead weight attached to his hips by some cruel joke of anatomy. Two days of borrowed strength, spent recklessly, and now the debt collectors have arrived.
Nelson does the maths. Fifteen kilometres. Twenty days at crawling pace. No food, no water, no hope.
When I get back, I'll decide.
He leaves to scout. Joel lies there, waiting to learn if he's worth keeping alive.
