Roads Between Worlds

"Every lie buys you time—but the road always finds a way to collect the debt."

Pulling the motorhome over to the side of the road, I felt the weight of its momentum settle into stillness, the engine’s gentle purr dwindling into a final, reluctant hum before fading out completely. The sudden quiet was almost jarring, broken only by the soft click of cooling metal somewhere beneath me.

In my hand, the phone lay inert, a slab of glass and circuitry holding far more weight than its size allowed. My fingers hovered over it, twitching with indecision. One call to Charlie could mean clarity—or it could reopen a door he’d just slammed shut. One call to Gladys could pull her back from whatever cliff-edge she was dancing on—or it could shove her closer to it.

The indecision stretched taut, my breath hitching slightly as I weighed each possibility. Then, like choosing a card in a rigged deck, I committed. Gladys.

I tapped her contact, pressing the phone to my ear as the dial tone filled the space, each ring sounding longer than the last.

"Beatrix." Her voice finally cut through, crackling over the speaker like it had travelled too far too fast.

"Gladys, listen to me," I said, my own voice pitched higher than I wanted, urgency threading through every word. My hands had started to betray me, trembling in tiny, traitorous shivers that travelled from the wheel to the phone. Panic was creeping in—not loud yet, but steady, inevitable. "The police know it’s you in one of those cars, and they’re at the Owens’ property now."

"How do you know that?"

How much do I tell her? The thought snapped through me instantly, dragging with it a rapid, brutal calculus of risk. What she needed to know. What she couldn’t. What I could live with if this conversation became Exhibit A.

Opting for caution, I went with a veiled truth rather than laying everything bare. "I have a contact that has an informant in the Hobart Police, and they’ve just called to warn me." The sentence slid out with practised ease, every syllable measured. I’d told enough half-truths in my time to know how to make them sound unvarnished. The trick was to lace them with just enough plausibility that no one bothered tugging at the loose threads. In our world, honesty was a luxury—and one I rarely kept stocked.

A heavy pause followed, stretching out between us. It wasn’t dead air; it was the weighted kind, thick with unspoken questions and fears neither of us wanted to voice.

"I’m at the property now. Don’t come here," I instructed, the lie settling into my voice like it had always belonged there. I pitched it low, authoritative—something Gladys would instinctively push against, but not without hesitation. The words were as much armour as warning, a barrier between her and the mess that was already unfolding.

The line went silent a beat too long before I ended the call.

For a moment, I just sat there, staring at the black screen in my hand, feeling the faint vibration of the motorhome’s idle through the seat beneath me. There was a flicker of recoil in my chest—not guilt exactly, but the strange, metallic aftertaste that always came with deception. And yet, the logic was unshakable: a lie was a shield, and shields kept people alive.

I slid the phone back into the console, my jaw tightening as my focus shifted. Whatever Charlie thought, whatever danger Gladys was already in, I knew where I was headed.

The Collinsvale property.

Not to stand in the doorway like some harbinger of doom. No. I would go as I always had in moments like this—quietly, deliberately—as a seeker of truths, and, when the moment demanded it, a protector of blood.

With a determined turn of the key, the motorhome’s engine rumbled back to life, the low, steady thrum wrapping around me like a heartbeat I could control. Outside, the light had shifted—brighter in some places, murkier in others—casting the road ahead in alternating bars of clarity and doubt.

My mission had sharpened into two clear points: find a secluded pocket of nowhere to activate the Portal and move the motorhome into Clivilius without a trace, and, just as importantly, consider what to do about Sergeant Charlie Claiborne. The idea of having an ally buried within the police force was more than just a tactical advantage—it was a pressure valve in a system I’d always assumed was welded shut.

The thought that there might be others—that Charlie could be only the most visible thread in a much larger weave—flickered in the back of my mind. There were Guardians who had a way of being everywhere and nowhere at once, their influence threaded into places even Leigh might not have mapped. If that network extended further into Tasmania than I’d guessed, it could be the difference between a clean getaway and a name on a charge sheet.

I shifted in my seat, straightening my spine as I guided the vehicle along the winding stretch ahead. My eyes moved constantly—checking mirrors, reading the rhythm of the traffic, measuring the distance between me and any watchful gaze. The motorhome’s bulk no longer felt like a liability; it was an asset, a mobile wall between me and the world’s prying questions.

The ease with which I’d taken it now felt almost trivial against the broader landscape of what we were doing. Stealing a motorhome was small potatoes compared to shifting the fate of a settlement.

Maybe Charlie can help erase any trace of my involvement from the police records, I thought, the notion sliding into my head with all the dangerous comfort of a drink I knew I shouldn’t take. The possibility ignited something in me—optimism, sharp-edged but intoxicating.

A grin spread across my face, unbidden but unrestrained. It wasn’t the polite smile you give to strangers—it was the real one, the kind that came when you felt the game tilting in your favour.

In a moment of whimsy—and perhaps a quiet craving for something human in all this calculated manoeuvring—I rolled down the window, letting the world bleed into my stolen little cocoon. The breeze found me instantly, quick and knowing, like an old friend who didn’t bother knocking. It was playful but insistent, curling around my face, teasing at the edges of my composure. There was a bite of city air in it—warm concrete, faint exhaust, the trace of some far-off bakery—and beneath it, the faint metallic tang of the motorhome’s own momentum.

It tangled through my silver hair, pulling errant strands loose to brush my cheeks in feather-light passes. I didn’t tuck them away. The tickle was worth it, a petty discomfort I’d allow in exchange for this brief, indulgent reminder that there was a world beyond strategy and escape routes.

Then—movement in the periphery. My gaze caught on a patch of anonymity: the blank, windowless back wall of a supermarket. Functional. Unremarkable. Perfect. I eased the wheel over, coaxing the motorhome into its new path. The vehicle’s weight shifted like a reluctant animal as we climbed the curb, the suspension responding with a lurch sharp enough to snap me forward in the seat.

The jolt worked its way up through my body and out in an involuntary sneeze—an entirely human interruption to a train of thought that had been running on nothing but precision and intention.

By the time I’d straightened again, my attention was back on the prize—except the prize had already changed. The flat, washed-out grey of Adelaide’s sky dissolved, almost like a stage set peeling away, giving way to the impossible blue of Clivilius. Vibrant, almost too vivid, the kind of colour that felt like it was being forced on your eyes.

The shift was instant and jarring, a gut-pull between worlds that always caught me off guard no matter how many times I’d done it. The ground beneath the tyres changed texture, sound, temperature—reality tugged sideways.

"Shit!" The word ripped from my mouth before thought could form. My foot slammed the brake, the pedal meeting me with stubborn resistance before giving way under the weight of my panic.

The motorhome lurched forward in protest, the force dragging everything in me forward before shoving it back again. Brakes shrieked, high and raw, the sound clawing at my ears while the seatbelt caught me sharply across the ribs. Dust exploded around the front end, curling up in thick, choking plumes, a shifting veil that swallowed the horizon.

Through it—stillness. A figure, prone, unmoving, laid out directly in my path.

The hammering in my chest synced with the vehicle’s cooling engine ticks, each beat landing heavy and loud in the suffocating pause that followed.