Pallid Cargo

"Rivers don't care about your secrets. They only know one direction, and they're infinitely patient about getting there."

The scene unfolding before me seemed torn from some nightmare I'd forgotten to finish—the kind that follows you into waking, leaving its residue on everything you touch. Henri stood at the river's bank, his small body rigid with canine alarm, barking furiously at Paul in that particular pitch that meant something had gone terribly, fundamentally wrong.

Paul was hunched at the water's edge, his back curved like a question mark I didn't want to answer. He was leaning over something—someone—a body that lay face down in the crystalline shallows, its limbs moving with the gentle persuasion of the current in a rhythm that mimicked life but wasn't. The water here ran clear enough to see individual stones on the riverbed, clear enough to see the pale flesh of arms floating with unnatural buoyancy.

My heart thudded against my ribs with the particular violence of recognition arriving before conscious thought could process it. That body. That shape. The way the current cradled it with the indifference of natural forces that cared nothing for human significance.

"Jamie," I whispered, the name escaping my lips like a prayer, a plea to whatever governed this impossible place that I was wrong. My body tensed with the coiled readiness of someone preparing to receive a blow they've seen coming for years. Every muscle locked tight, bracing for the impact of loss that I'd always known would arrive eventually—just not like this, not here, not with my hands still dirty from pushing Kain through the Portal.

"Help me!" Paul's scream shattered whatever fragile equilibrium I'd been maintaining, his voice cracking with an urgency that stripped away his usual composure. "Hurry. He needs help!"

"Paul, what's going on?" My voice sounded foreign to my own ears—thin, stretched, belonging to someone younger and more frightened than I wanted to admit I was. My legs had transformed into something unreliable, muscles refusing to carry me the final distance to the riverbank with the same confidence they'd carried me running from the Portal just minutes ago.

As the fear of losing Jamie wrapped itself around my chest—the man whose laughter could illuminate the darkest corners of my heart, whose presence had become so integral to my existence that I couldn't quite remember how I'd navigated the world before him—I felt something inside me simply give way. My legs buckled. My knees struck the damp earth opposite Paul with a force that would bruise, the moisture seeping immediately through my clothes, grounding me in the grim physicality of the moment when everything else felt like it was dissolving.

Paul, with a determination that was both terrifying and admirable in its single-mindedness, reached out across the water, his hands shaking as he attempted to push the body's waist in an effort to roll it. The river rose to his hips as he slid further in, the current tugging at him with greedy fingers, trying to claim him as its own even as he fought to reclaim whatever lay in its grasp.

"Help me roll him," Paul instructed, his voice carrying that particular blend of command and desperation that emerges only when someone is operating beyond their capacity, running on reserves they hadn't known existed. His eyes met mine across the expanse of churning water, and in them I saw something that might have been recognition—of danger, of necessity, of the particular horror that connected us to whatever floated between our hands.

In that moment, the world narrowed to an aperture so tight that nothing else could enter. Just the river. Just the body. Just the overwhelming need to know if Jamie was gone, if I'd already lost him whilst I was busy manipulating his nephew, busy playing architect of other people's fates whilst the man I loved slipped away unnoticed.

The cold water enveloped me as I joined Paul. It bit into my thighs, my waist, as though the river itself was testing my commitment. Our combined efforts focused on one singular, desperate goal—to turn the body, to see the face, to know.

"Go," I directed, my voice emerging steadier than anything inside me felt, trying to infuse some semblance of control into chaos that refused to be managed. "I've got him."

"Three. Two. One. Roll," Glenda commanded with a calm authority that belied the gravity of what we were doing. She had positioned herself on the bank, squatting low with her medical training evident in every line of her posture—someone who had seen enough death to function in its presence, to impose order on moments that wanted to spin apart.

As we rolled the body, a collective effort that felt both urgent and terrifyingly delicate, Glenda's hands worked swiftly to free the feet from the entanglement of rocks that had sought to anchor the corpse to the riverbed. The water swirled around our efforts, indifferent to the human significance of what we were uncovering.

"Who the fuck is that?" Kain's outcry sliced through the heavy air, his voice carrying the particular cocktail of confusion and terror that I recognised intimately—the sound of someone whose reality was being rewritten in real time. His words resonated with my own pounding heart, confirming at least one thing: it wasn't Jamie. It wasn't Jamie.

But the relief lasted only the space between heartbeats.

Because I knew who it was.

The body turned fully, revealing the young man's face, and recognition hit me like a physical blow. Familiar features, hauntingly still in death, staring up at the cloudless sky with eyes that saw nothing. The current cradled him with obscene gentleness, that same water that had seemed so welcoming during my explorations now holding something brutal—the violence marked by the gaping wound across his throat, a cruel gash that had emptied him of life before depositing him here.

I bit down on my lip hard, a futile attempt to quell the rising tide of panic that threatened to swallow me whole. My heart hammered with a ferocity that seemed to drown out the river's constant murmur.

What the fuck is Joel doing here?

The question screamed through my mind with the force of something trying to escape confinement. Joel. Jamie's son. The boy we'd mourned with whiskey and candlelight just last night. The body that Cody had supposedly "taken care of." His absence here—now—was meant to be permanent, meant to be managed, meant to be one less thing I had to navigate in a situation that was already impossible.

And where was Cody? Where was Jamie? Their absence pressed against my awareness like a void, filling the air with tension so thick I could have choked on it.

"No idea," Paul's response came soft, almost a whisper. His words seemed to float, momentarily suspended above the river's murmuring before sinking into the reality we were all slowly processing.

"Is he breathing?" Glenda's question pierced the temporary lull.

"I don't think so," I replied, my voice a reflection of the resignation settling into my chest like sediment in still water. The finality of the situation was becoming clearer with each passing second—the pallor of the skin, the stillness of the chest, the wound that no amount of medical intervention could reasonably be expected to repair. The hope of rescue had faded before it ever properly formed.

As I brought my attention back to the group, the reality of our discovery anchored itself in my mind with the weight of something that wanted to drag us all under. The river, with its relentless current, seemed a grim metaphor for the events unfolding around us—carrying us toward destinations we hadn't chosen, pulling us into narratives we were all reluctant to follow but couldn't escape.

"Quick, bring him to shore," Glenda's voice cut through the heavy air, her directive laced with urgency yet tinged with a despair she was trying and failing to mask.

"No," Paul's reply was terse, his voice saturated with a kind of resignation that chilled me more deeply than the water ever could. His eyes, wide and reflecting the turmoil we all shared, were fixed on the young man's lifeless form with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"What?" Glenda's shriek, laden with disbelief and rising panic, pierced the sombre atmosphere.

"I don't think it will help," Paul murmured, his voice soft yet carrying a weight that seemed to press down on all of us. "His throat has been slit." The finality in his tone, the acceptance of the grim reality before us, sent a shiver through my spine.

"Fuck!" Kain's exclamation was raw, a visceral response that resonated with the shock and horror clinging to the air like smoke from a fire no one had lit.

Glenda's gasp was audible, a sharp intake of breath that seemed to draw the gravity of our situation into her very lungs. "We should bring the body in anyway," she insisted, her voice shifting into that particular register of medical authority that demanded compliance regardless of circumstances.

"What good will that do?" My own question felt hollow, echoing the turmoil churning through me. As far as I was concerned, we needed to let the body go. Let the river carry it wherever rivers carried things—away from here, away from us, away from the possibility of Jamie discovering what I'd been hiding.

The thought of his reaction loomed large in my mind, a storm building on the horizon that I could see approaching but couldn't prevent. If Jamie found Joel—if he recognised his own son in that still, damaged face—the fragile structure of lies I'd constructed would collapse entirely. And then what? His grief would be compounded by betrayal, his loss poisoned by the knowledge that I'd known, that we'd mourned without him, that I'd been protecting him from truth rather than trusting him with it.

"If he's been murdered and someone comes looking for him, perhaps we shouldn't be the ones caught with the body," I argued, the words tumbling out in a rush that blended logic and fear into something I hoped sounded like reason. Part of me knew how callous it sounded—talking about Joel as "the body," as though he hadn't been a nineteen-year-old boy with a mother who loved him and a father who'd never known he existed. But sentiment was a luxury I couldn't afford right now. The priority was containment. The priority was keeping Jamie in the dark long enough for me to figure out how to bring him into the light without destroying him.

"I'm with Luke," Kain's alignment with my perspective offered a small comfort, a shared understanding in the midst of chaos that at least suggested I wasn't entirely unreasonable. Though even as he spoke, I recognised the irony—the man I'd pushed through a Portal without consent now siding with me against the people who'd been here longer.

Strange alliances formed in strange circumstances.

"Yes," Paul's voice held a solemn conviction as he looked up at Glenda, his eyes earnest with something I hadn't expected from him. "Regardless, he deserves a proper burial."

"Proper burial!" The words tumbled out of me with a scoff, frustration and fear combining into something sharper than I'd intended. "You don't even know the guy." The hypocrisy of the statement burned as I said it. I knew the guy. I knew who he was, whose blood once ran in his veins, how his death would devastate the man I loved. And I was arguing against retrieving his body like it was just another logistical problem to be solved.

What the fuck was I becoming?

"If we bring him in, I can do a rough autopsy," Glenda interjected, her tone clinical, yet underscored with a resolve that was hard to ignore.

"Is that really necessary?" I countered, my voice rising with a mixture of exasperation and something approaching panic. "I think it's pretty obvious what happened to him." I gestured at the wound, that horrible gash that had emptied Joel of everything that made him human. Evidence enough, surely. Evidence that required no further investigation, no deeper digging into questions I desperately needed to remain unasked.

Paul spluttered, his reaction visceral, as if the gravity of our conversation had suddenly struck him with physical force. His hands shot up, covering his mouth, a barrier against the horror that was threatening to overwhelm him. His face had gone the particular shade of green that preceded certain biological events.

"A rough autopsy might be able to tell us more of a story of how he met his fate," Glenda continued, her voice steady, trying to inject a sense of medical purpose into a scene that felt increasingly beyond anyone's control.

Just shut up, Glenda, the thought screamed through my head, a silent plea for respite from the escalating situation. The last thing I need is you digging into it. Every question she asked, every investigation she proposed, brought us closer to truths I needed to remain buried—at least until I could figure out how to exhume them on my own terms.

"I'm just saying..." I began, attempting to voice something, anything, that might steer us away from the course she was charting.

But before I could complete the thought, Paul's grip on the body loosened entirely. His composure crumbled with the sudden violence of someone whose stomach had made a decision independent of their brain. His head turned abruptly, a reflexive response as his body rebelled, vomit ejecting from his mouth in a violent arc that splattered across the water's surface.

"Ouch!" The exclamation escaped me as Paul's foot, flailing in his loss of balance, connected with my kneecap with the particular precision of accidents that somehow find the worst possible target. The sharp pain was a jolt, sending me tumbling backward, the river's cold embrace swallowing me whole.

Submerged, the world above became a muffled, distant reality—voices reduced to bubbles, light fractured through shifting water, the body somewhere nearby but invisible in the sudden chaos. The shock of full immersion drove every other thought from my mind. Just cold. Just water. Just the burning need for air.

Reality reclaimed me as I surfaced, gasping, the cool water streaming down my face, mingling with something else—the adrenaline and fear that coursed through me with renewed intensity. I blinked the river from my eyes, oriented myself to the bank, to Paul still retching, to Glenda staring at something I couldn't see, to—

"Where's the body?" Paul's voice, tinged with surprise, cut through the cacophony of my own racing thoughts.

I stared down at my hands. Empty. The hands that had clutched at death just moments ago were bare, fingers spread wide as though they'd forgotten how to grip, unintentionally releasing Joel into the river's indifferent embrace.

For a single, shameful heartbeat, relief washed through me—a temporary reprieve from the weight of Joel's discovery, from the impossible conversation I'd been dreading. The current had solved my problem. The river was carrying my secrets downstream, away from here, away from—

Downstream.

The thought struck with the force of revelation.

Where is Jamie?

"Shit," the word echoed off the riverbanks, a chorus of frustration and dismay from Glenda and Kain simultaneously.

"Where's Jamie?" The question burst from me with a sudden surge of panic that sliced through the fog of my shock. The hope that Jamie was oblivious to our current predicament, safely ensconced in the tent's sanctuary, clashed with the oddity of Duke's absence amidst all this turmoil. Duke was never far away from Jamie. If Duke wasn't here...

Paul's gaze narrowed, probing, searching my face for something—understanding, perhaps, or confirmation of the fear that was spreading through us all like contamination.

"He went for a walk to the lagoon," Glenda's voice provided an answer but no solace.

"Lagoon?" My voice barely concealed the rising tide of anxiety, each syllable weighted with dread that was rapidly becoming impossible to contain.

"Downstream," Paul's reply was succinct, yet it carried the weight of implication—a single word connecting Jamie's whereabouts to the now-missing body with the horrible logic of rivers that flowed in only one direction.

"Shit," the curse slipped from me again, this time laden with new urgency that had nothing to do with logistics and everything to do with consequence. My eyes locked with Paul's, wide with the dawning realisation of what we'd just set in motion. The body was floating toward Jamie. Joel's face, Joel's wound, Joel's unmistakable evidence of violence and loss—all of it drifting toward the one person who must never see it. "We need to retrieve that body. Now!"

"But... but you just said," Paul's words faltered, confusion evident in his voice.

"Forget what I said. You were right. We are better off keeping the body," I said, scrambling back to the riverbank with a desperation that left no room for dignity. My wet clothes clung to my body, weighing me down, but I was already moving, already calculating the distance, already understanding that every second of delay brought Joel closer to Jamie.

And then I was running.

Sprinting with a desperation I hadn't known I possessed, following the river's winding path as it carried its terrible cargo downstream. The urgency of the chase pulsed through my veins, a frantic race against time and current and the consequences of my own choices. Each footfall sent up sprays of water from my soaked clothing. Each breath burned with the particular fire of exertion pushed beyond comfortable limits.

I didn't think about what I would do if I caught up to the body. Didn't think about how I would explain any of this to Jamie if I failed. Didn't think about the growing list of lies and manipulations that seemed to multiply with every decision I made.

I just ran.

Toward the body. Away from the truth. Into the consequences that were gathering downstream, patient and inevitable as the river itself.