Rough Landing

"I've learned that 'welcome to Clivilius' hits different when you've just been chased by police, zapped by a portal, and nearly flattened by a motorhome."

The ochre dust billowed around the ute as it skidded to a halt, the sudden stillness of Clivilius pressing against my eardrums like a held breath. My hands remained locked on the steering wheel, knuckles bloodless, the phantom sensation of rain-slicked roads and screaming sirens still reverberating through my nervous system. The transition from Tasmania's winter storm to this—this vast, sun-bleached emptiness—felt less like travel and more like waking from one dream directly into another.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

The heat announced itself first, seeping through the ute's windows with predatory patience. After the biting cold of Tasmanian rain, the temperature shift was visceral—my damp clothes beginning to steam slightly, sweat prickling along my hairline before I'd even opened the door. The air here carried no moisture, no scent of eucalyptus or petrichor. Just dust and distance and the particular blankness of a world that had never known cities or forests or anything resembling home.

Adrian sat rigid in the passenger seat, his breathing shallow and irregular, his eyes fixed on the windscreen with the thousand-yard stare of a man whose mind had simply stopped processing input. Whatever chemical buffer his earlier high had provided seemed to be failing him now, leaving him exposed to the full weight of impossibility.

The ute's engine ticked as it cooled, each metallic sound too loud in the silence. Beyond the vehicle, the landscape stretched to every horizon—ochre plains broken only by the occasional outcrop of rock, the sky a washed-out blue that seemed closer than it should be. No buildings. No roads. No evidence that humanity had ever touched this place except for the Drop Zone which was slowly taking a more distinguishable form.

I opened my door and stepped one foot onto the dust.

"I'm sorry, Adrian." The words left me in a quiet exhale, inadequate against the magnitude of what I'd done. Whatever I'd intended when this morning started—a simple recruitment, a conversation about construction skills, perhaps a demonstration of the Portal if persuasion failed—it hadn't been this. Kidnapping a man at high speed through an inter-dimensional gateway while fleeing from police wasn't a plan. It was a catastrophe wearing the skin of necessity.

The guilt sat heavy in my chest, tangled with exhaustion and the residual adrenaline that made my hands tremble when I released the steering wheel. I'd told myself the settlement needed builders. Told myself Adrian's skills were worth the risk. But sitting here now, watching him struggle to comprehend a reality that had swallowed him whole, the justifications felt hollow.

His hand shot across the cab, fingers clawing for my arm, trying to drag me back into the vehicle before I could escape. I pulled away sharply, stumbling out onto the dust as his grip closed on empty air.

The passenger door flew open. Adrian climbed out on his side, and we faced each other across the ute's roof—the expanse of sun-warmed metal the only thing separating us.

An unspoken challenge hung in the space between us—his fury against my certainty, his confusion against my desperate conviction.

"But we need you here."

The words sounded thin even to my own ears. A recruitment pitch delivered to someone I'd effectively abducted. Adrian's expression shifted through several emotions in rapid succession—disbelief, rage, something that might have been grief—before settling into a kind of exhausted hostility.

He wiped at the sweat already beading on his forehead, the Clivilius heat attacking him with the particular cruelty it reserved for newcomers. His shirt—soaked through with Tasmanian rain just minutes ago—had begun to dry in patches, the fabric stiffening as the moisture evaporated.

"Fuck, it's warm," he muttered, his voice caught somewhere between complaint and hysteria. His fist slammed against the ute's roof, the impact ringing across the empty plain like a bell struck underwater. The action seemed to release something in him—a valve opening on pressure that had built too high.

I watched him, maintaining my position on the opposite side of the vehicle, as he took a step back and surveyed his surroundings properly for the first time. The dust swirled around our feet, disturbed by our movements, settling slowly in the windless air. His gaze tracked across the horizon—the emptiness, the complete absence of anything familiar—and I could see the moment when denial stopped working, when his brain finally accepted the evidence his eyes had been providing.

He turned toward the Portal.

The screen, now dormant, behind the ute—still wrong, still a wound in reality that refused to heal. Adrian moved toward it with the desperate purpose of a drowning man spotting shore, his feet kicking up dust with each stride.

A sigh escaped me, born of weariness and a bone-deep familiarity with what came next. I'd seen this before. The denial, the rage, the futile attempt to undo what couldn't be undone. Every new arrival went through some version of it, their minds cycling through the stages of grief at varying speeds. Adrian would pound on the Portal. Would scream at it, possibly. Would eventually collapse into the dust and face the truth that his old life was over.

Another lost soul.

The thought carried no judgment, only tired recognition. Adrian's situation wasn't unique—just another life derailed by forces beyond understanding, another person thrust into a reality they'd never chosen. The settlement was built on displaced lives and broken expectations. Mine included, once, briefly. Before I'd learned to do the displacing myself.

It wasn't his fault, this unforeseen detour into Clivilius. None of them ever asked for this, except for perhaps the Ironbach siblings, to some degree at least. But watching him now—his fists pounding against the vacant Portal screen—I couldn't afford to let guilt paralyse me. Bixbus needed resources. Needed skills. Needed people who could build something lasting from the nothing that surrounded us.

The Portal flared suddenly, its colours intensifying with an energy that made the hairs on my arms stand upright.

Someone was about to come through.

Paul's voice cut across the distance, sharp with urgency. "Get out of the way!"

I spun toward the sound. Paul was sprinting from the direction of the settlement, his figure small against the vast landscape but growing rapidly, desperation evident in every line of his body. He was shouting something else, words lost to distance and the blood suddenly pounding in my ears.

"Adrian—" The warning died in my throat.

The Portal erupted.

A bright burst of energy sparked the instant Adrian's flesh made contact with the screen—his fist mid-swing. The discharge hit him like a physical force, his body snapping backward, limbs flailing against physics that had momentarily turned hostile. He landed hard, his back striking the packed dust with a sound that made me wince, his momentum carrying him several feet further before friction finally won.

Then the motorhome emerged.

It burst through the Portal like a creature breaching the surface of a lake, massive and unstoppable, its brakes already screaming. Dust exploded around it in a choking cloud, ochre particles billowing outward in waves that obscured everything for a heart-stopping moment. The vehicle's tyres fought for purchase on the unfamiliar terrain, but momentum cared nothing for physics.

Adrian's prone form lay directly in its path.

The sound was wrong. Not the crunch of bone I'd expected, but something duller—the heavy thud of a body being rolled rather than crushed, the screech of brakes finally finding grip, the motorhome shuddering to a stop with its front wheels somewhere they shouldn't be.

"Adrian!" The scream tore from my throat as I ran, my feet churning through the dust, Paul's footsteps somewhere behind me. The motorhome blocked my view of where Adrian had been lying, and for three endless seconds I was certain we'd find something unspeakable on the other side.

We reached him together. His head and torso protruded from beneath the motorhome's chassis—visible, intact, not at the angles that would have indicated catastrophic injury. Our hands found his shoulders simultaneously, gripping with strength born of desperation, and we pulled. The lingering wetness of his clothes mingling with the dust, made everything slippery, coating Adrian's skin, filling my nostrils with its dry mineral taste.

He slid free. Dazed, his eyes unfocused, but moving. Breathing. Alive.

The motorhome's door banged open.

Beatrix's voice reached us before her feet hit the ground, the words tumbling out in a rush of genuine horror. "I'm so sorry. Are you okay?"

I knelt beside Adrian, my hands moving with a precision I didn't feel, checking for wounds, for fractures, for any sign of the damage that should have been there. His skin was scraped raw in places, dust ground into the abrasions, but the catastrophic injuries that I’d anticipated were somehow absent.

"I don't see any blood," I said, the relief loosening something in my chest that had clenched tight enough to hurt.

Paul leaned in, his concern manifesting in immediate action. "How many fingers am I holding up?" He thrust three fingers into Adrian's line of sight.

I couldn't suppress the eye roll. After everything that had just happened—the Portal discharge, the motorhome impact, Adrian's prone form beneath the chassis—a finger-counting test seemed almost absurdly inadequate. But Paul's concern was genuine, his need to do something visible in every line of his body.

Adrian barely registered the question, his response muted and delayed, his eyes still carrying that glazed quality that had nothing to do with head trauma.

"He's high," I informed Paul, catching his gaze. "And most likely a bit dehydrated. You'd better take him back to camp."

The settlement needed to absorb Adrian, to give him water and shade and time to process. Every moment he spent here at the Portal site was another moment for his confusion to curdle into something more dangerous—panic, or despair, or the kind of denial that made people do stupid things.

"Everything okay?" Nial's voice came from somewhere behind me. I turned to find him and Kain approaching through the dust—Kain moving slower, balanced on aluminium crutches.

Good. He was up and moving. The leg must be healing properly. I'd wondered whether the crutches would be the right height, whether he'd even accept them given the circumstances of how he'd ended up here. But he was using them, putting weight on them, making his way across the difficult terrain with the particular determination of someone who refused to be sidelined.

Paul seized on their arrival with visible relief. "Can you two take him back to camp?"

Nial's gaze dropped to Adrian's face, and something shifted in his expression—recognition, sharp and immediate. His whole body went rigid, the casual concern of a moment ago replaced by something more personal.

"Shit! Adrian. What the hell are you doing here?"

His hand found Adrian's cheek—a few quick pats, the kind you'd give someone drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to bring their focus back to the present. The gesture spoke of familiarity, of history, of a connection that predated this moment by years.

"Not surprising," I said. "Hobart's a small place."

Tasmania's population compressed relationships, overlapped social circles, made coincidences inevitable. Of course Nial knew Adrian. Of course their paths had crossed somewhere in the tangled web of island life. The universe seemed to take perverse pleasure in these connections, these reminders that the people I brought here weren't really strangers to each other at all.

Nial gripped Adrian's shoulders, hoisting him toward vertical. "Let's get you to camp."

"We'll come back," Kain added, adjusting his grip on the crutches.

I caught his eye and nodded at the aluminium supports—a silent acknowledgement of the gift and its receipt. Something passed between us, too complex to articulate. He'd understood the gesture for what it was. Not kindness, exactly. More like investment. I needed people functional, mobile, useful. The crutches were as much for my benefit as his.

Paul nodded silently, and a sombre air settled over the group as they began to move away. Adrian stumbled between Nial's support and Kain's slower, crutch-assisted pace, three men navigating the dust in an awkward procession of injury and intoxication.

Beatrix rounded on me before they'd gone ten paces.

"What's going on, Luke? Why the hell is Gladys in a bloody car chase with the police!?" Her eyes burned with an intensity that made me want to step backward.

"Things didn't go quite according to plan with Adrian," I began, carefully choosing my words.

"Clearly," Paul said, and Beatrix rolled her eyes—a unified front of exasperation that made me feel about two inches tall.

"We chased after him when he took off," I explained.

"You couldn't just let him go?" Beatrix's question carried the weight of everything that had gone wrong.

A commotion from the departing group drew our attention momentarily. Adrian had broken free from Nial's grip and was lurching toward his ute, his movements carrying the desperate energy of a man grasping for any scrap of control.

"I'm just getting the rest of my gear," Adrian snapped, pushing Nial away.

"He'd already seen the Portal," I said, redirecting Paul and Beatrix's attention back to me. "I know he's high, but I didn't think it was wise to let him go. Who knows—"

"Wise?" Beatrix scoffed, her voice cutting through the charged air. "You didn't think it was wise to let him go, yet you had no qualms with racing through the streets and attracting the attention of the police?"

I fumbled for words, my mouth opening and closing without producing anything useful. She was right. In the cold light of aftermath, every decision I'd made that morning looked progressively more reckless—a chain of escalating disasters, each one justified in the moment and indefensible in retrospect.

"And how did you finally get him here?" Paul inquired, his eyes probing for an explanation that might somehow make this better. It wouldn't.

"We came through a wall of the toilet block at Myrtle Forest," I replied, the image flashing through my mind—the swirling colours against the wall, the ute's bonnet aimed at the impossible, the moment of commitment when there was no turning back.

"And my sister?" Beatrix's sharp gaze intensified, drilling into me with the particular fury reserved for people who'd endangered someone she loved.

My face reddened, heat flooding my cheeks that had nothing to do with the Clivilius sun. "I told her to run," I admitted.

"Fuck's sake, Luke!" Beatrix's movements were swift, decisive, carrying her toward the Portal before I could form a response. The colours erupted at her approach, swirling to life in a riot of purple and blue and green.

"Where are you going?" Concern coloured my voice despite everything—or perhaps because of it. "It's too dangerous, Beatrix. The police were right behind us."

Her response was wordless and emphatic: a middle finger thrust in my direction, held for a deliberate moment, before she stepped through and vanished. The Portal's vibrancy dissipated in her wake, colours folding inward until only the empty shimmer remained.

The silence that followed felt heavier than before.

"You're not going after her?" Paul asked.

I shook my head. "She'll be back pretty quick."

The bickering near Adrian's ute had reached a crescendo. A door slammed shut, the sound sharp across the empty landscape, and the engine roared to life—its growl a declaration of intent that made my stomach clench. Nial positioned himself at the front of the vehicle, hands braced against the bonnet, a human barrier against Adrian's determination to flee. Through the dusty windscreen, Adrian's expression was unreadable—anger and confusion and chemical impairment all warring for dominance.

"Ridiculous," Paul murmured, the word carrying resignation and exasperation in equal measure.

The standoff continued for several more seconds before something shifted. Nial moved around to the passenger side, pulled the door open, and climbed in beside the man he apparently knew from another life. Kain stood alone near where the confrontation had played out, balanced on his crutches, watching the ute accelerate toward camp with its unwilling driver and reluctant passenger.

I grabbed Paul's shoulder as he turned to leave, spinning him back to face me. His eyes met mine, questioning, wary.

"They'll be fine," I said, my fingers pressing into his shoulder with more confidence than I felt.

Paul frowned, disbelief evident in his expression.

"Wait here for her, won't you?" More directive than question.

"And you?" Paul's nod carried reluctant acceptance.

My brow furrowed as I mentally catalogued the day's disasters. Adrian would need settling—Nial could handle that, assuming the man didn't actually crash the ute somewhere between here and camp. Kain had placed himself on standby, limited by his injury but present, useful in whatever capacity his crutches allowed. Beatrix had gone after Gladys, and either she'd find her sister or she wouldn't. Nothing I could do about that now.

But the fence order.

The delivery that had been arranged yesterday—the fencing materials the settlement desperately needed for security, for agriculture, for any hope of building something sustainable. That was supposed to arrive at the Owens' property today. A truck full of posts and wire and hardware, paid for with carefully hoarded resources, scheduled with precision that assumed I wouldn't be fleeing from police when the time came.

The police were probably still there, processing whatever chaos my arrival and departure had created. But the delivery was coming regardless, and if I wasn't there to intercept it, the materials would either be confiscated as evidence or returned to the supplier—lost either way to the bureaucratic machinery of a world that no longer concerned itself with my needs.

"I need to go back to the Owens'. The first delivery of that fence order you and Nial made yesterday is supposed to be delivered today." The words came out steady despite the knot forming in my stomach.

Paul stayed rooted where he stood, concern cutting through his exhaustion. "Is that safe?"

"I don't have a choice. You need that delivery."

The logic was simple, even if the execution would be anything but. The settlement couldn't afford to lose those materials. Couldn't afford to wait for another order, another delivery, another opportunity that might never come. Whatever risk I was walking into, it was worth taking.

Paul sighed—that particular exhale of reluctant acquiescence I'd heard from him too many times now. The sound of a man who disagreed but couldn't articulate a better option.

"Be careful, Luke."

"Always," I responded, forcing a grin that felt more like a grimace.

I turned toward the Portal, its colours already beginning to stir at my approach. The swirl felt almost welcoming now—familiar in a way that the world beyond it never would be again. Behind me, Paul's concern radiated like heat from cooling metal. Ahead, the Owens' property waited with its police presence and its fence delivery and whatever consequences my morning's recklessness had set in motion.