4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
No Right to Stillness
The leather couch remembers a different life—lazy Sundays, coffee and newspapers, Jamie laughing at Luke's attempts to fit furniture through doorways. Now Luke lies on it like a man who's forgotten how rest works. The refrigerator hums. A car passes outside. Everything is so unbearably normal. And somewhere across dimensions, in a tent made of canvas and desperation, the people he loves are still fighting. His body won't move. His guilt won't stop.
Luke steps through the Portal into his Hobart home and collapses onto the couch. Not because he's earned rest, but because his body has simply stopped taking orders. Two days of crisis have wrung him dry—Portal crossings, police chases, stolen supplies, Jamie's fever-bright eyes and desperate grip.
The house is quiet. Normal. Obscenely, impossibly normal. Running water, electricity, a refrigerator full of food he hasn't yet brought through. All the comforts of a life that feels like it belonged to someone else, someone who didn't know about Portal Keys and alien dimensions and the weight of other people's survival.
Behind closed eyes, the images won't stop. Jamie's wound, swollen and leaking. Glenda's steady hands. The receptionist's voice—I'll keep him distracted. The boots in the corridor. Every fragment plays on repeat, sharp-edged and merciless.
He thinks about the people in Clivilius—dealing with dust and heat and fear whilst he lies on leather that cost him three years ago at a warehouse in Moonah. The guilt is physical, pressing down on his chest.
There has to be a better way, he whispers to the empty room. It sounds like a prayer. It feels like a plea.
