Escape Velocity

“Hope isn't the absence of fear. It's what you carry when fear refuses to leave.”

As I made my way towards the front reception desk, the echo of my footsteps felt unnaturally loud in the subdued corridor. My body moved on autopilot, guided by the ritual of habit, though inside I was still adrift—carrying the remnants of the emotional tempest that had erupted barely moments ago. My limbs were stiff, each motion deliberate, as though I were re-entering a world that no longer fit quite the same.

Michelle didn’t speak. She didn’t need to. Her face held a careful neutrality, but I saw the flicker of concern behind her eyes, quickly masked. With a steady hand, she passed me the next patient’s file—no words, just that quiet, efficient exchange that was so often our form of communication during long days on the floor. That silent gesture, so small, anchored me. A thread of normality to cling to.

I glanced down at the file. The label stared up at me, plain black print on a white tab. Luke Smith.

Recognition rippled through me before I’d even turned the cover. Luke was a familiar case—adult, early thirties, prone to seasonal ailments, the occasional cold. Nothing alarming, nothing complicated. Just an ordinary man still finding his rhythm in adulthood.

And for a fleeting moment, I felt the tide of chaos recede.

His name, his case, offered me a foothold—something stable, something I could manage. In a day that had veered wildly from the expected, this was a pocket of predictability, a breath of fresh air in a room that still smelled faintly of antiseptic and tension.

I drew a breath, slow and measured, and gathered myself. My expression fell back into its familiar place: professional, attentive, composed. The mask I wore wasn’t false—it was necessary. It was how I held myself together when cracks began to show.

I walked to the front of the room, each step smoothing the edges of my inner disquiet. My voice, when I spoke, was clear and steady.

"Luke Smith."

The name cut neatly through the low hum of the waiting room—pages turning, a child fussing softly, the distant ring of a phone in the admin office. At the back, Luke looked up. His eyes met mine with a flicker of apprehension—just enough to register the unease that came with waiting. Not fear, exactly. More a quiet bracing. The question that always sat on the tip of a patient’s tongue: What will I be told today?

"This way please," I said, my tone balancing warmth and formality, the cadence I’d honed over years of practice. Gentle but not soft. Clear but not cold. I watched as Luke rose. He moved with the hesitancy I recognised so well—a kind of reluctant submission to the process of being examined, assessed, exposed.

I led him down the hallway and opened the door to the same examination room I had only recently vacated. The air inside hadn’t changed. It still carried the weight of what had happened, though no visible trace remained. The clinical lighting, the neat tray of instruments, the laminated posters on the walls—they all stood in silent defiance of the emotional residue clinging to the space.

Luke stepped inside, and I followed, closing the door with the softest of clicks. A seal. A new moment. I smiled, brief but sincere, and gestured towards the visitor’s chair.

He sat, adjusting his posture in the quiet, trying not to fidget. I watched him with a physician’s eye but also as someone who’d just lived through something unspoken and unspeakable in this very room. And there it was again—the sense that the walls still remembered Mr Thompson. That his presence hadn’t entirely gone. That the decisions made here just minutes ago had left something behind. Not visible. But deeply felt.

I forced myself to set it aside. I had to. Compartmentalisation wasn’t just a coping mechanism—it was survival. Especially on days like this. Luke didn’t know the history of that chair. He didn’t feel its weight. And it wasn’t his burden to carry.

Now, he was mine.

And I would show up for him, fully and without compromise.

As I prepared to engage with Luke, to draw the lines between symptom and solution, I felt the familiar weight settle across my shoulders. Not the stethoscope, but the duality I carried every day. To the world, I was a doctor—measured, methodical, steady-handed. A compassionate listener. A healer.

But beneath the white coat, I wore another uniform. One less visible, yet far heavier. In the quiet folds of the Fox Order, I was something else entirely—an observer of patterns, a seeker of truth buried beneath bureaucratic rubble and institutional lies. I lived between two realities, each demanding, each inescapable.

Still, in this moment, with Luke seated across from me, his shoulders tense beneath the worn cotton of his hoodie, I had to be one thing, and one thing only.

Present.

I drew in a quiet breath, silencing the thoughts that clawed at the back of my mind, and folded my hands on the desk between us. "What can I do for you this time, Mr. Smith?" I asked, my tone steady, even, the kind of professional cadence that patients found comforting. The title added a respectful distance, though I’d called him Luke in passing more times than I could count.

But instead of the usual litany of symptoms—sinus trouble, a sore knee, maybe stress headaches—he said nothing.

The silence lengthened.

At first, I thought he hadn’t heard me. I tilted my head slightly, observing him with renewed focus. His eyes were fixed—not on me, but somewhere just over my shoulder, as if calculating something. The shift in the atmosphere was subtle, but unmistakable. The air felt thicker. My spine straightened.

"Mr. Smith?" I prompted again, more gently this time, though a note of concern had crept into my voice. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being drawn into something carefully orchestrated.

Then, without warning, Luke leaned forward. Fast. The movement was fluid, too sudden for the casual uncertainty of a nervous patient. I flinched instinctively, but stilled myself before reacting further.

His eyes met mine, and in them was something I hadn’t expected—urgency. Determination. Fear.

Then came the whisper, tight and low, the words shaped not for drama but discretion.

"Tell me, Glenda, what do you know about 'The Testing'?"

The bottom seemed to drop from the room. My blood chilled. Time slowed.

For a split second, I did nothing. Just stared.

Then instinct kicked in.

"Shh," I breathed, barely a sound, but sharp with warning. My hands moved without thought, covering both our mouths in a reflex born of too many briefings, too many warnings, too many disappearances. The gesture was absurd, but necessary. I needed the walls to believe we were still just patient and practitioner.

"How do you know about that?" I whispered, barely audible, my voice tight with alarm. My mind spun—how had he heard that term? Had someone slipped? Had something been intercepted? Was I compromised?

Luke didn’t blink. He leaned in even closer, our foreheads nearly touching, his voice now no more than a breath against my cheek.

"I can get you to a safe place."

For the first time in weeks, the word hope stirred within me—not as an idea, but a pulse. Tentative. Fragile. Dangerous.

"Really?" I whispered back, and even to my own ears I sounded hollow with disbelief. My voice trembled, caught somewhere between yearning and mistrust. "Is there such a place?"

The question hung between us like smoke, curling in the silent space. A whisper of a dream too long buried under duty, secrecy, and fear.

A safe place.

Could such a thing truly exist?

Then, as if to answer my silent prayers, Luke opened his hand.

There, resting in the centre of his palm, was a small, rectangular metallic device—sleek, featureless at first glance, yet unmistakably designed. The sterile light from the ceiling panels glinted off its brushed surface, throwing faint reflections across the curve of his fingers. It didn’t look like much—no wires, no obvious interface—but something about it tugged at the edges of memory. It was too quiet, too still, yet it radiated intent. Like an object that knew it was not meant to be seen.

"Yes," he confirmed softly, the word barely a breath, yet it seemed to settle over the room like a shroud. His voice carried something beyond conviction—a weight. Secrets wrapped in hope. Possibilities hidden beneath risk.

I leaned forward, all caution momentarily forgotten, drawn to the object as if gravity itself had shifted.

"What is that?" I asked, my voice dropping into a whisper, curiosity breaking through the veneer of my usual composure. It came from somewhere raw and immediate—the same part of me that still clung to the belief that there had to be more to this world than surveillance and silence. The part that had always wanted to know what lay beneath the surface.

The device, with its unassuming simplicity, seemed absurdly out of place in this examination room. A place meant for stethoscopes and blood pressure cuffs, for consent forms and hand sanitiser. Yet here it was—something potentially monumental, resting in the palm of a patient’s hand like a talisman from another reality.

I barely noticed the way my body shifted towards him, my whole frame leaning into the mystery. The sterile walls, the laminate desk, the humming light fixture above—all of it faded. The room was no longer clinical. It was something else now. A cocoon. A quiet refuge suspended between fear and revelation.

"I'll show you," Luke said, and there was something different in his voice now. Not just resolve—but clarity. As if he’d rehearsed this moment in his mind a hundred times, waiting for the exact alignment of trust and timing.

"Are you sure we're alone?"

I blinked, suddenly aware of my own heartbeat again. "I can't be certain," I admitted, and the truth of it hollowed out my breath.

I never could be.

Not with the Commander still somewhere in the building. Not with Bruce—even Bruce—still a question mark in the ledger of loyalty. The Testers haunted the periphery of my mind: their gloved hands, their military precision, the blank finality of their orders. The cold logic of their intrusion had left something behind in me—etched deep and indelible.

I scanned the corners of the room as if seeing them anew, each object a potential observer, each silence a void that might be listening. The walls had held secrets today already—what more might they be hiding?

Still, I didn’t move. The impulse to flee never took root. Instead, I found myself rooted to the spot by something older and stronger than fear: the need to know. That dangerous, driving curiosity that had carried me through medical school, through nights at Pierre’s side, through the tangled whispers of the Fox Order.

Luke rose with quiet purpose, his every movement deliberate. The hesitancy he’d carried into the room had fallen away, replaced by something methodical. Focused.

He pushed the chairs to the side, clearing the floor space in a manner that was strangely reverent. There was no chaos in the gesture, only intent. His hands were steady, his gaze fixed. He moved like someone about to reveal something sacred.

It was a strange ballet, surreal in its quiet grace.

The room—once just a container for routine, for vital signs and coughs and minor ailments—was transforming before my eyes. The everyday clutter receded into the background, each shift in the furniture drawing us closer to a threshold I hadn’t known was there.

Something was coming.

And I wasn’t ready.

But I wanted to be.

As Luke approached the wall, something shifted. Not just in his expression, but in the very atmosphere of the room. The air seemed to thicken, charged with anticipation, vibrating with the low hum of something about to break open. I felt it instantly—a tremor of energy that prickled across my skin, making the fine hairs on my arms rise. My heart began to race, but not with fear. It was something else. Recognition. As though some long-dormant instinct within me understood what was coming before my mind had caught up.

Luke held the device with a kind of reverence, his earlier urgency now replaced with solemnity. His fingers moved with assured ease, as if this wasn’t his first time. He pressed his thumb to a faint seam along the edge of the metal, and the moment his skin made contact, the transformation began.

A soft pulse of light radiated from the device—a breath, almost—and the wall before him shimmered. What had been solid moments before now undulated like water catching sunlight. The sterile surface dissolved before my eyes, and in its place bloomed a breathtaking explosion of colour. I couldn’t move. Could barely breathe.

The wall was gone.

In its place, a living curtain of light had taken form—a portal, vibrant and vast, swirling with impossible motion. Colours I had no names for danced and clashed and embraced one another: bold azures streaked with molten gold, spiralling through emerald waves and bruised amethysts. The whole thing breathed, pulsed, as though it were alive. It didn’t just glow—it radiated. Light fell across the examination room in dazzling refractions, reframing the mundane in otherworldly hues.

Luke stood before it, his face half-lit in those shifting tones, and for a moment, he looked like something conjured from a dream. The metallic edge of the device caught a beam of gold, and it flickered like a flame in his hand.

I could only stare.

Every rational part of my brain struggled to make sense of what I was seeing—every lecture, every principle of physics, every lesson in biology and chemistry whispered their protest. This shouldn’t exist. Couldn’t. But it did.

It was.

I watched, entranced, as the colours twisted into spirals and constellations, forming shapes that were gone before they could be fully grasped—like fragments of memory, just out of reach. It wasn’t just visual. I could feel it in my bones. The pull. The call.

And it was beautiful.

Beautiful in a way that both soothed and unsettled. There was wonder here—true wonder—but it was threaded with risk, humming with the quiet promise that stepping through might change everything. Or lose everything.

Still, it called to something deep within me. Something old. Something that had always been there, hidden beneath layers of logic and responsibility.

"Shall we?" Luke asked.

His voice was calm, but it held challenge. An invitation, yes—but also a test. He extended his hand to me, palm open, fingers steady. A bridge between the life I’d known and the world unfurling before me. Between certainty and the unknown.

I rose from my chair without thinking.

Drawn, not dragged. Moved by something I didn’t yet understand. The glow from the portal bathed the room in surreal luminescence, casting the shadows of the desk and chairs into strange, elongated shapes across the floor. But I no longer saw them as furniture. They were relics of the life I was preparing to leave behind.

Awe coursed through me, a feeling so overwhelming it threatened to knock the breath from my lungs. It wasn’t just the sight—it was what it meant. Possibility. Escape. A future not shaped by fear, but by choice.

My steps were slow. Measured. Each one peeling me away from the caution that had ruled me for too long, and pulling me closer to the edge of something other.

"I have heard my father speak of a Portal before, but never seen it with my own eyes," I whispered, barely believing the words as they left me. Gebhardt’s stories—half-riddles, half-fables—rose up in memory like smoke. I’d never known how much I’d believed them, not truly. But now…

Now, I knew.

"It is more beautiful than I ever imagined."

"It is beautiful," Luke agreed softly.

His words were quiet, but they grounded me—reminding me that I wasn’t alone in this. That whatever this was, it was shared. For a moment, we stood in silent accord before the swirling cosmos on the wall, bound by awe, by risk, and by a shared leap into the unknown.

I stood on the threshold, breath shallow, limbs taut, as the portal’s swirling, colliding colours played across my vision like some celestial symphony. The wall that had once defined the limits of this examination room now pulsed with shifting hues—violet flames twisting into gold, emerald ribbons slicing through sapphire skies. It was hypnotic, impossibly beautiful. And yet, I couldn’t move.

The light reached out to me, casting my shadow across the floor in fractured shapes, beckoning with the promise of something greater—something freer. A siren call not of sound, but sensation. My skin prickled as if the very molecules of the air had changed. The room behind me felt distant, like a memory I was about to leave behind. Still, I hesitated.

The allure of the portal tugged at something ancient and instinctive within me, but the anchor of my present—of duty, of fear, of love—held me firm. For all the weightlessness the portal offered, I was tethered to this world by the people I could not leave behind.

"What's wrong?" Luke’s voice sliced through the shimmer, a sudden, almost panicked thread of reality pulling me back.

I turned to him, heart in my throat. The question rose from me unbidden, raw and aching. "Pierre. What will happen to Pierre?"

His name fractured the moment. My husband—my partner through endless nights and quiet battles, through laughter and secrets and whispered warnings—my anchor. I couldn’t bear the thought of him left behind, of waking one morning and finding the bed beside him cold, not from time, but from abandonment.

Luke didn’t flinch. "I'll bring Pierre for you and your parents," he said with quiet conviction, his voice soft yet solid, a bridge between the impossible and the hoped for.

But even as the promise fell from his lips, something inside me twisted.

"I lost my father many years ago," I replied, the confession catching on the edges of my breath. The words felt strange in the room, heavier somehow. Perhaps it was the way the light hit them, casting memory into colour.

Gebhardt. His stories. His warmth. His disappearance that had defined the landscape of my grief. That wound had closed, but never healed. And now, with the echo of the portal humming in my ears, I felt his absence like a hand on my shoulder—guiding, perhaps. Or reminding me what I stood to lose if I faltered.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Luke’s words landed gently, like cloth over a bruise. Not hurried, not perfunctory—genuine. That kind of empathy had become rare. His sincerity slipped past my defences before I could brace myself, and I felt something inside me steady.

I met his gaze, searching it for deception, for doubt. I found none.

"When?" The question was quiet, but urgent. Hopeful. The portal shimmered beside us, casting a pulsing rhythm across the floor like the beat of some otherworldly heart.

"As soon as I can. I can't promise I'll be quick," Luke admitted, and though his words didn’t offer certainty, they carried something far more important—effort. Intent. He wouldn’t forget.

I nodded. "Thank you."

It was all I could say. Simple words, but full. Sincere. My eyes remained locked on the portal, its light still playing across my skin, illuminating me from within as much as without. I drew a slow breath and stepped forward.

It wasn’t just a physical movement.

It was a surrender. A decision. A crossing.

I felt the weight of everything behind me—my patients, my colleagues, Pierre, even Bruce—and yet, with that single step, I also felt a strange clarity take root. Not relief, not resolution. But resolve.

"I'll be right behind you, Glenda," Luke said.

His words steadied me, anchoring me not to the past, but to the moment, to the path unfolding ahead. He wasn’t just a Guardian in title—he was something more. A constant in a world suddenly too fluid to trust.

The portal surged before me—colours brightening, rhythms intensifying. It wasn’t a doorway. It was a reckoning.

And I was ready.

For danger. For freedom. For the unknown.

For the fight that would follow.

In that suspended moment, with the light wrapping around me and the floor trembling faintly beneath my feet, I felt a strange, exhilarating calm. The fear remained, yes—but it walked hand in hand with purpose. And as I prepared to pass through, I understood something I hadn’t until now:

This was not an escape.

It was a beginning.

The sudden vibration of my phone on the desk was like a jolt from another world—a harsh, discordant sound that snapped me back from the precipice. One moment I stood before the Portal, entranced by its kaleidoscopic brilliance, my senses absorbed in the pull of possibility. The next, I was yanked violently into the sterile familiarity of the present, where danger didn’t shimmer—it struck.

The Portal’s light dimmed in my periphery, as if my shift in focus had lessened its hold on the room. I turned reluctantly, each step away from it feeling like a betrayal of something sacred. The vibration continued, persistent, insistent, until I reached the desk and picked up the phone. The screen lit up with a single message.

Pierre’s name.

I tapped the notification, and the words appeared like a blade:

We've been compromised. Run!

Time fractured.

A sharp gasp escaped me, unbidden. My hand flew to my mouth, as though I could push the panic back in, contain it before it swallowed me whole. The breath caught in my lungs, shallow and urgent. My fingers tightened around the phone until my knuckles burned white.

The room shifted. The solid floor seemed to tilt beneath me. My thoughts spun—Where was he? Was he safe? Had they found him already? Was it me? Had I been followed? Tracked? The fear was no longer hypothetical; it was here, reaching through the wires and signals of the ordinary, collapsing the illusion of safety.

"What is it?" Luke’s voice, sharp with concern, cut through the haze.

I turned towards him, phone in hand, its screen still glowing like a cursed relic. It suddenly felt poisonous, a beacon screaming my location to unseen forces. Everything I had spent years guarding—every layer of discretion, every carefully coded exchange, every moment of surveillance paranoia—was now undone by a few words on a screen.

Without another thought, I pressed the lock button and stepped forward, my hand outstretched. The phone was heavy now, absurdly so, as though it carried every decision I had ever made.

"Luke, you must destroy this phone for me, please," I said, urgency tightening my throat. The words came out quickly, an imploring edge to them. It wasn’t just a device—it was a liability, a threat. The connection to my old life had to be severed completely.

"I will," Luke replied, his voice calm, unwavering. "You have my word."

There was something in his steadiness that grounded me for a moment—just long enough to breathe, just long enough to turn back to the Portal with purpose. Its hypnotic light had not waned, but now it beckoned not only with the promise of wonder, but with the gravity of necessity.

I crossed the room with urgency, no longer hesitating. The colours surged and swelled before me, as though sensing the shift in my resolve. I was close now—so close—my breath catching in anticipation.

And then, I stopped. Again.

"Oh, Luke. I nearly forgot," I blurted, the words tumbling out faster than I could shape them. My voice trembled, high with adrenaline and the edge of panic.

"What is it?" His reply came quickly, tinged with impatience, but not unkind.

"In my top drawer, you'll find my hospital ID and keys. I have a high enough security level that will get you into almost any part of the Royal. You may find them very useful later."

The words were rushed, but deliberate. I knew what I was giving him. Not just access—but leverage. Possibility. In the right hands, they could open doors no one else could even knock on.

"Indeed. I am sure I will," Luke said, and in his voice I heard understanding. Not just of the items’ value, but of the trust behind them. His acknowledgment felt like an unspoken contract between us—our roles now fully entwined.

His next words came like a quiet push from behind, a nudge past the point of no return.

"Move forward."

I drew a deep breath, but it barely touched the panic still fluttering beneath my ribs. Nonetheless, I stepped forward.

Through the light.

Through the veil.

Through the very fabric of everything I had ever known.

The moment my foot crossed the threshold, the sensation changed entirely. Gone was the linoleum bite of the examination room floor. In its place, something soft, unfamiliar, warm. Brown dust cushioned my step, rising gently in a faint swirl that shimmered with specks of gold. The air smelled different—earthy, sweet, and tinged with something ancient.

Then it happened.

Without sound, without breath, without voice, I was spoken to.

The message wasn’t heard, yet it filled me.

"Welcome to Clivilius, Glenda De Bruyn.”

The words weren’t sound—they were sensation. They moved through me like music I’d forgotten but instantly recognised. It wasn’t just language; it was knowing. A resonance. A greeting from something vast and aware. As though the very ground, the sky, the air had acknowledged me.

I stopped breathing for a moment. Just to feel it fully.

The world I’d left behind had grown loud, desperate, unrelenting.

Here, in this strange, dust-soft place of light and silence, I was something more than a fugitive.

I was a welcome guest.