Dead Man's Grip

"I'd prepared explanations for a corpse. I had no contingency for the corpse having other plans."

"There it is!" Paul's exclamation broke through the rhythmic punishment of our footsteps, his finger stabbing toward the shape that the river was carrying with the indifference of water that had no investment in human tragedy. The current had quickened as we neared the lagoon's mouth, the body moving faster than our burning legs could match—a pale form tumbling in the crystalline shallows like something the river was eager to deliver.

"We're never going to catch up to it before it reaches the lagoon," I huffed out, each word scraped raw from lungs that had nothing left to give. My thighs burned with the particular agony of muscles pushed past their limits, the kind of pain that promised days of stiffness if I survived long enough to experience them. I wiped away a bead of sweat that had traced a stinging path down my forehead, the salt finding every micro-abrasion my earlier tumble had carved into my skin.

"What do we do?" Paul's question emerged between gasps, carrying both urgency and the edge of accusation that hadn't left his voice since my confession. Even now, racing toward disaster, he was still processing the betrayal I'd revealed.

"I'll run ahead. If Jamie is there, I can distract him," I declared, the plan assembling itself from desperation and necessity as the words left my mouth. There was nothing elegant about it, nothing clever—just the frantic improvisation of someone watching their lies collapse in real time.

"Distract him?" Paul echoed, scepticism threading through his exhaustion.

"Yes," I affirmed, my voice hardening into something that left no room for debate. "You need to make sure the body doesn't stop. It has to keep going downstream." The strategy felt paper-thin even as I articulated it, but paper-thin was all I had. If the current would just keep carrying Joel past the lagoon, past wherever Jamie had wandered, maybe—just maybe—I could buy enough time to figure out a better solution.

"Are you sure, Luke?" His voice was tentative now, probing beneath the immediate crisis to the larger question of what we were becoming through all this deception. "You know nothing stays hidden forever."

You're not wrong there, I admitted silently, the words landing with the weight of accumulated experience. Memories of Cody and the botched arrangements that were supposed to have prevented exactly this scenario gnawed at the edges of my consciousness like rats working at foundations. Cody had "taken care of it." Cody had assured me the body wouldn't be a problem. And yet here we were, chasing a corpse downstream while my partner's son floated toward an encounter that would destroy him.

But what other option do I have right now?

The question spiralled through my exhausted mind, finding no purchase on any answer that wasn't simply keep running, keep lying, keep hoping.

"Yes, I'm sure," I stated with a firmness I manufactured from necessity rather than conviction. The decision was made, the course set, and with a breath that felt more like a gasp, I prepared to face whatever waited at the lagoon—the weight of my secrets and the architecture of my lies pressing down on shoulders that were already trembling from exertion.

Duke's bark reached us before we crested the final hill—a sound that usually wrapped around my chest with comfort but now carried an ominous note that made my stomach clench. Paul and I pushed up the incline together, our legs screaming protest, sweat coursing down my back in rivulets that soaked into my already-damp waistband.

"Look, there's Duke and Jamie," Paul's voice carried relief and concern in equal measure as we reached the summit. Across the lagoon's glittering expanse, I could make out two figures—Duke's compact form animated with canine energy, Jamie's silhouette more languid, clearly enjoying whatever recuperation the walk had provided. From this distance, they looked peaceful. Untroubled. Existing in a bubble of ignorance that I was desperate to preserve.

"Shit, and there's the body," I muttered, my eyes catching the pale shape that the current had deposited at the lagoon's mouth. The water here was shallow enough that Joel had snagged on something beneath the surface—a submerged dune of silt and stone that held him in place like an accusation waiting to be discovered. He lay face-up now, the cruel wound across his throat visible even from here, a dark line against flesh that had gone the colour of old candle wax.

"Go!" My voice was firm, loaded with urgency as I shoved Paul toward the grim task. There was no time for further planning, no opportunity for the careful consideration that the situation deserved. Every second Jamie remained ignorant was a second I could use to figure out how to deliver the truth in a way that wouldn't shatter him completely.

Not wasting a moment, I shifted focus. "Duke! Jamie!" My call sliced through the tranquil air, loud enough to carry across the remaining expanse. My hands waved above my head as I moved along the hilltop, trying to make myself as visible and distracting as possible. The act felt absurd—a grown man windmilling his arms like a malfunctioning traffic controller—but absurdity was a small price for Jamie's continued ignorance.

Duke responded immediately, his small body recognising my voice even at this distance. His bark of acknowledgement was followed by movement, his legs carrying him toward me with the enthusiasm he showed anyone who wasn't actively threatening his humans. Good, I thought. Come this way. Bring Jamie with you.

I chose my position with the particular care of someone arranging stage blocking for a performance. The location was crucial—if I could draw Jamie toward me, following Duke's lead, his back would be to Paul and the waterlogged horror by the lagoon's mouth. He wouldn't see. He wouldn't know.

The plan was gossamer-thin, dependent on timing and luck and Jamie's willingness to follow Duke rather than his own curiosity. But it was all I had, and I clung to it with the desperation of someone who'd run out of better options.

Now stationed in my chosen spot, I waited. My heart hammered against ribs that ached from the run, my breath still coming in ragged pulls that I tried to smooth into something resembling normality. Sweat trickled down my temples, pooled in the hollow of my throat, gathered in the creases of my elbows. My wet clothes had begun to dry in Clivilius's warm air, leaving behind a film of river water that felt gritty against my skin.

"Duke," I called out with manufactured cheerfulness, my voice pitched to sound welcoming rather than frantic. The small dog was making his way up the slope, his progress marked by little puffs of dust that his paws kicked up. Behind him, Jamie followed at a more leisurely pace—not particularly enthused, perhaps, but moving in the right direction. That was what mattered.

"Good to see you are feeling better," I greeted Jamie as he crested the hill, bending down to offer Duke the expected pat on his head. The dog's fur was damp beneath my palm, his tongue lolling with exertion and heat.

Jamie paused at the summit. His hands found his hips as he worked to catch his breath, his chest rising and falling with effort that seemed disproportionate to the gentle walk he'd taken.

"Yeah," Jamie managed between laboured breaths, a hint of genuine improvement colouring his tone. "Duke and I had a nap in the sun. I seem to be feeling much better for it."

"A nap in the sun?" I echoed, forcing lightness into my voice that I was nowhere close to feeling. My eyes flicked involuntarily toward the lagoon's mouth, where Paul should have been managing the body, but I wrenched my attention back to Jamie before the gesture could become obvious. "Duke looks like he's soaked."

Jamie's gaze dropped to Duke, and a smile broke across his features with the particular softness he reserved for the dog—an expression of uncomplicated love that stabbed at something in my chest. "You're a funny boy," he addressed Duke, the moment of genuine affection breaking through the tension that clung to me like my sweat-soaked shirt.

I used the pause to assess Jamie's condition, my eyes travelling to his bare chest where the infected wound had been festering. The welt that had been angry and weeping now showed signs of crusting over, the inflammation visibly reduced. Glenda's treatment seemed to be working. Or something was.

"You really should keep your shirt on, though," I advised, letting concern creep into my voice. "It's warm out." The words sounded normal. Caring. The words of a partner who worried about sunburn and recovery, not a man desperately trying to keep his lover from discovering a murdered son floating in a lagoon.

Jamie's response came with a deep breath that seemed to carry the weight of genuine contentment. "I've only had it off since it got wet by the lagoon," he explained, his tone suggesting casual dismissal of my concern. Then something shifted in his expression—a flicker of puzzlement crossing his features. "It's odd though."

"What is?" My heart rate, which had finally begun to slow, kicked back into urgency. Every odd thing in this place could be a threat, every anomaly a warning of dangers we hadn't yet learned to recognise.

"I don't feel like my skin is burning at all." Jamie's observation hung between us, carrying implications neither of us was equipped to analyse. His fair skin, which should have been reddening after any significant sun exposure, remained pale and unmarked.

"Hmm," I mused, trying to mask my growing anxiety beneath a veneer of casual interest. "But I guess that would be a good thing."

"Perhaps the sun is different here," Jamie pondered.

"Perhaps," I repeated automatically, my mind too consumed by the unfolding situation to engage meaningfully with theories about Clivilius's solar properties.

And then a scream shattered everything.

"Luke!" The terror in the voice—unmistakable, blood-freezing, carrying the particular quality of someone confronting the impossible—sliced through the tranquil atmosphere. Paul's voice. Paul, who should have been managing the body. Paul, who sounded like he was fighting for his life.

My heart stuttered, dread coiling through my gut like something alive. I followed the trajectory of the sound, my eyes finding the scene at the lagoon's mouth, and what I saw defied every framework I possessed for understanding reality.

Paul was in the water. The body—Joel's body—was no longer passive. It had seized Paul's arm, gripping him with the strength of something that should have been incapable of movement, let alone violence. Paul was struggling, his free hand scrabbling at the grip, his legs churning the shallow water into chaos.

My mouth fell open, but no sound emerged. My vision began to blur at the edges, that particular tunnelling that preceded fainting, and I felt the world tilt beneath feet that had suddenly forgotten how to anchor themselves.

Am I seeing things? The question screamed through my consciousness, desperate for an explanation that would make the scene before me conform to natural law. Is this a hallucination? A side effect of Clivilius? Some fever dream brought on by exhaustion?

I shook my head hard, willing the vision to reset, to resolve into something that made sense. But when I opened my eyes again, the scene remained unchanged—Joel's corpse, its throat gaping with the wound that had killed it, gripping my brother with undeniable strength.

How is it possible that a corpse with a slit throat could take hold of Paul?

The question had no answer. The question didn't belong to any reality I'd agreed to inhabit.

Panic erupted through me with the force of something volcanic. My hand shot out, an instinctive but futile attempt to prevent Jamie from turning, from seeing, from having his world rewritten in a way that couldn't be undone. But time had stopped cooperating with my desperate plans.

"Luke," Jamie's voice cut through the chaos, cold and accusatory, his head already turning toward the commotion below. "What the hell have you done?"

The words struck me like a physical blow, accusations I couldn't answer because I genuinely didn't know.

"Oh, fuck," slipped from my lips, the profanity wholly inadequate to the magnitude of confusion and fear churning through me. "I have no idea," I added, and for once, the statement was entirely true. I'd been prepared to explain Joel's death. I'd been constructing scenarios for that revelation. Nothing—nothing—had prepared me for Joel's apparent lack of death.

I lunged for Jamie's arm in a desperate bid to prevent him from racing toward the scene. My fingers grazed his skin, the briefest contact before he was beyond my reach, his determination carrying him forward with the particular single-mindedness of someone who has just seen something that demands investigation regardless of consequence.

"Shit," the curse tore from my throat as I tried to follow and found myself immediately betraying my own body's limits. My foot caught on something—a rock, my own exhaustion—and suddenly I was tumbling down the slope, arms windmilling uselessly, the dusty earth reaching up to claim me with abrasive enthusiasm.

I hit the ground in stages—hip first, then shoulder, then my face coming dangerously close to stone before I managed to twist away. Dust exploded around me, coating my sweat-damp skin, invading my nostrils and mouth with the particular flavour of Clivilius soil. I could feel new scrapes joining the collection I'd already accumulated, fresh blood mixing with the grit that now decorated my exposed skin.

"Jamie! Wait!" My voice cracked with desperation as I struggled to my feet, but it might as well have been silence for all the response it generated. He was already at the water's edge, his attention wholly consumed by the scene before him.

"Shit, Luke! Who the fuck is that!?" Jamie's outcry carried across the lagoon, shock and horror evident in every syllable.

I stumbled toward them, my body protesting every movement, reaching the water's edge in time to witness Paul's terrified scramble. He'd managed to break free somehow, and now he was dragging himself across the soft, treacherous dust at the lagoon's margin, his movements desperate and uncoordinated. The terror on his face was unfiltered, the expression of someone who had just touched something that violated their fundamental understanding of how the world worked.

The air thickened around us, heavy with dust and fear and something else—something electric that seemed to emanate from the impossible scene we were witnessing. I could feel it prickling against my skin, raising hairs along my arms, making my teeth ache with a sensation I couldn't name.

"Holy fuck!" Jamie's scream shattered whatever remained of composed observation. "What the fuck is Joel doing here!?"

The question pierced me with its implications. Jamie knew. Jamie had recognised his son—the son he'd only recently learned existed, the son who should have been dead on Earth, the son whose murder I had concealed and whose memorial I had observed while Jamie remained ignorant. And now that son lay in alien shallows, apparently animate, defying every law of biology and death.

I tried to speak but found my voice had abandoned me. My mouth opened and closed without producing sound, my thoughts a chaotic whirlwind that couldn't settle into anything resembling coherence. For once, I had no lie prepared, no manipulation ready, no careful misdirection to deploy. The truth was, I was as lost as Jamie in this moment—I had expected to explain a death, not to witness an impossible survival.

Jamie moved before I could stop him, dropping to his knees beside Joel's form with the particular urgency of paternal instinct overriding all other considerations. Water soaked into his trousers, but he seemed not to notice, his entire focus consumed by the young man before him.

"He's still breathing!" Jamie announced, his voice cracking with something between relief and terror.

My heart lurched sideways in my chest. Breathing? I had seen the wound. I had seen the blood. I had watched Joel's body float face-down in the river, had touched the cold flesh when we'd rolled him over. There had been no breath. No pulse. No life.

And yet Jamie's voice carried conviction that couldn't be dismissed.

As Jamie positioned himself behind Joel's head, his hands reaching toward the young man's shoulders, something screamed a warning through my nervous system. The memory of Joel's arm seizing Paul—that grip from a body that should have been incapable of movement—flashed through my mind with the intensity of a struck match.

I moved on instinct, the kind of reaction that bypasses thought entirely. Adrenaline flooded my exhausted muscles, lending them strength they shouldn't have possessed, and I lunged for Jamie with every ounce of force I could muster. My hands clamped onto his shoulders, fingers digging into flesh with desperate intensity, and I hauled him backward with a violence that surprised us both.

We tumbled into the dust together, a graceless collision of limbs and desperation. The impact drove the air from my lungs, and for a moment I could only lie there, staring at the sky while dust settled around us and my body catalogued its newest collection of bruises.

Jamie recovered first. He rose to his knees, his face contorted with fury, and his hand arced toward my face with the particular velocity of someone who'd stopped thinking and started simply reacting.

Instinct saved me again. I rolled my head to the left, feeling the rush of displaced air as his fist passed close enough to brush my cheek, the near-miss sending adrenaline spiking through a system already overloaded.

"What the fuck did you do that for!?" Jamie's voice was thick with rage and confusion, his words accompanied by spray that hit my face with the force of his fury.

I scrambled to centre myself, facing him despite the exhaustion that wanted to pin me to the ground. "Take a look at his throat!" The urgency in my voice was a plea for him to see, to understand, to recognise the danger before he touched something that had already demonstrated impossible capabilities.

Jamie's attention pivoted back to Joel, his movements quick as he processed my words. I watched his face change as he registered what I'd been trying to tell him—the wound, that terrible gash that had emptied his son of life, now visible in undeniable clarity.

"What the fuck!" Jamie's exclamation was pure horror, but it didn't stop him from reaching for Joel again, his hands sliding under the body's shoulders in an attempt to drag his son from the lagoon's embrace.

"Jamie, stop!" My voice was firm, insistent, but I could already see it wasn't going to be enough. Paternal instinct had taken over, and no amount of warning was going to override Jamie's need to help his child.

"Uncle Jamie!" Kain's voice—unexpected, a disruption in the escalating crisis—called out across the water. I turned to see him approaching with Glenda, both of them jogging around the lagoon's edge toward our catastrophe. Relief flooded through me at the sight of reinforcement, however uncertain its utility.

"What the fuck have you done, Luke!?" Jamie's voice tore through the air again, a raw, agonising scream that resonated with everything I'd been dreading. His footing gave way as he struggled with Joel's weight, and he tumbled to the ground, the body falling with him in a tangle of limbs and desperation.

And then I saw something I'd rarely witnessed: tears streaming down Jamie's face. His usually guarded expression had shattered entirely, revealing a vulnerability he kept locked away from everyone—including me. The sight carved something open in my chest, a wound that had nothing to do with the physical battering I'd endured today.

"Help me take him back to camp," he pleaded, his voice quivering against its usual sardonic resilience. The plea struck somewhere deep, twisting guilt and empathy into a knot that threatened to choke me. Witnessing Jamie's anguish, his face contorted in grief for a son he'd only just discovered existed, was unbearable in ways I hadn't prepared for. All my planning, all my manipulation, all my careful management of information—it had been meant to protect him from exactly this. And I had failed completely.

"Wait," Glenda's voice cut through with authority. "Let me check him first."

I found myself nodding, almost mechanically, latching onto her intervention as a lifeline. Glenda knelt beside Joel with the particular economy of movement that marked years of medical training. Her hands moved across his body with confidence, checking pulse points, examining the wound, assessing breathing and response.

Time stretched with agonising elasticity. My heart pounded against ribs that ached from impacts and exertion, the rhythm so loud in my ears that I could barely hear anything else. I stood frozen, caught between desperate hope that Joel was somehow alive and the crushing certainty that what I'd witnessed in the river—the pallor, the stillness, the obvious absence of life—couldn't have been wrong.

"He's breathing," Glenda's voice cut through my internal chaos, her announcement striking me with the force of something physical.

I coughed, the news catching me so completely off-guard that I choked on my own saliva. My eyes widened beyond what should have been anatomically possible. Was it possible? Did I hear her correctly?

"But barely," Glenda added, her clinical assessment continuing despite the impossibility she was documenting. "I think he may actually be alive. But I don't understand how that is possible. His colour suggests he has lost so much blood that his circulatory system has collapsed."

She looked up, her eyes meeting Jamie's with the steady regard of someone delivering news she couldn't quite believe herself. "You're right," she said, aligning with Jamie's desperate need to act. "I agree we should bring him back to camp."

"What!? Seriously!?" My astonishment burst out before I could contain it. Everything I understood about medicine, about biology, about the fundamental rules governing life and death—all of it said that Joel should be corpse. The wound alone should have been fatal. The blood loss Glenda had just described should have been insurmountable. And yet here she was, endorsing the idea of rescue.

Jamie didn't wait for consensus. His hands slid beneath Joel with the urgent tenderness of someone trying to hold together something precious and fragile. I watched him struggle with the weight, with his own weakness from infection and recovery, with the impossible situation that had ambushed us all.

Something shifted in me. The part of my mind that was still calculating, still strategising, still trying to manage this disaster—that part went quiet. What remained was simpler: Jamie needed help. Joel might be alive. Whatever I'd done, whatever I'd concealed, whatever reckoning awaited—right now, there was only the immediate need.

I stepped forward, positioning myself opposite Glenda, and slid my arms beneath Joel's limp, wet form. The body was cold against my skin, far colder than the ambient temperature should have allowed, and the sensation sent revulsion crawling up my spine. But I held firm, adjusting my grip, preparing to bear my share of the weight.

"Ready. Lift," Glenda's voice was steady, a command that snapped us into synchronised action.

Joel was lighter than I'd expected—the slight frame of a nineteen-year-old who'd spent his life as a courier rather than an athlete. But the weight of the situation pressed down with an intensity that made every step feel laboured. We moved together, a strange procession navigating the uneven terrain around the lagoon's edge.

Kain appeared beside us, his hands reaching for Joel's body. He took Glenda's position seamlessly, his greater strength making the burden easier to bear. Glenda stepped back with a whispered "Thank you" that carried depths of gratitude disproportionate to the simple act.

I braced myself for Jamie's reaction to Kain's involvement—waiting for the scolding, the accusation, the demand to know why his nephew was here at all. But the rebuke never came. Jamie's attention remained wholly focused on Joel, on the son he was fighting to save, on the miracle or nightmare that had delivered his murdered child back to the realm of the breathing.

Glenda called across to Paul, and I followed her gaze to where my brother remained motionless at the lagoon's far edge. His stillness was wrong—Paul who was always moving, always thinking, always engaging. He sat hunched in on himself, a solitary figure who looked as though he'd witnessed something that had broken his understanding of the world.

Was he hurt? The question flared through my concern. Joel had grabbed him, had gripped him with strength that shouldn't have existed. What else had happened in those moments I hadn't seen?

"I'll meet you there soon," Paul's response drifted across the water, his voice lacking its usual vitality. He barely glanced our way, his demeanour adding another thread to the tapestry of unease that was weaving itself around this day.

I turned my attention back to the task at hand, refocusing on Joel's weight and the careful navigation required to transport him to camp. Each step kicked up dust that clung to my sweat-damp skin. Each breath brought the particular scent of Clivilius—mineral and strange and increasingly familiar. And somewhere beneath it all, questions multiplied faster than I could catalogue them.

How was Joel alive? What had the lagoon done to him? What had he done to Paul? And what was going to happen when we reached camp and Jamie had time to process what he'd discovered—not just his son's impossible survival, but my concealment, my careful manipulation, my decision to let him remain in ignorance rather than share the burden of truth?

The reckoning was coming. I could feel it building like pressure before a storm, inevitable and inescapable.