Safe

"History belongs to whoever bothers to write it down. The rest is just things that happened to people no one thought worth remembering."

The wardrobe door rumbled along its worn track as I slid it open, the sound filling the quiet bedroom like distant thunder. Jamie's side of the wardrobe stood empty now—bare hangers swaying gently from the motion, their wire frames catching the dim light and throwing it back in small flashes. They clinked against each other softly, an almost musical sound in the stillness.

Jamie's clothes were in Clivilius now. Along with Jamie.

The thought arrived and departed in the same breath. I had work to do.

"Where are your clothes?" Beatrix asked, and I could hear the raised eyebrow in her voice without needing to turn around.

"They're on the other side of the wardrobe." I stretched onto my toes, reaching for the top shelf, my fingers grazing the rough timber. The wood was coarse against my skin, decades of dust settled into its grain, and I had to work my hand along its surface until my fingertips found the cold metal I was searching for. "Got it."

The key clinked against the shelf as I worked it toward the edge, then dropped into my palm with the familiar weight of something I'd handled many times before.

Beatrix reached for the keys as I turned. But I was already lowering myself to my knees on the plush carpet, my attention fixed on what came next. The carpet was soft beneath me, and I found the seam without needing to look, my fingers knowing exactly where the edge lifted.

I pulled the shoes from the wardrobe floor first, setting them aside in neat rows, clearing the space. Then I peeled back the carpet section, the fibres whispering against each other as the hidden surface beneath came into view.

The safe's metallic face gleamed up at us, catching the light from above us.

"You have a safe buried in your wardrobe floor?" Beatrix lowered herself beside me, disbelief colouring her voice.

"Of course." I couldn't help the grin that spread across my face. The safe had come with the house—a discovery that had delighted me from the moment we'd found it.

The key slid into the lock with satisfying precision, the mechanism turning smoothly beneath my fingers. I paused for just a moment—the anticipation of revelation never quite lost its appeal—then lifted the lid.

The interior was arranged exactly as I'd left it. Rows of zip-lock bags lined the safe's depth, each one labelled in my handwriting, each one containing the essential fragments of someone's former life. The organisation was important. When you were managing resources for an entire settlement, you couldn't afford to waste time searching for things.

"Here's Paul's," I said, extracting the correct bag without hesitation. I knew exactly where each one sat, could have found any of them in the dark. The plastic crinkled as I placed it in Beatrix's hands.

Through the clouded material, the contents were visible—phone, wallet, scraps of paper folded into careful packets. She turned the bag over, examining it with the particular attention of someone trying to understand a system they'd just been introduced to.

"Is there a bag for everyone?" The question was natural, inevitable really.

"Yeah. I figured keeping things grouped by owner would be the best way to manage." It just made sense. Each person's belongings in one place, clearly labelled, easily accessible when needed. The alternative—loose items scattered throughout the safe, impossible to track—would have been chaos.

"Probably—" she began.

"Oh, apart from this one." I reached back into the safe and produced another bag, larger than the others, its contents pressing against the plastic in distinctive rectangular shapes. The laminated faces of driver's licenses stared up through the material, a dozen of them collected together.

Beatrix's eyes narrowed. "Why keep all the driver's licences separate?"

I returned the bag to the safe without answering, tucking it back into its designated spot. Some organisational choices didn't require explanation. The licenses served a purpose, grouped together like that. Several purposes, potentially. But Beatrix didn't need those details, and I wasn't inclined to provide them.

She let the silence stretch for a moment, then turned her attention back to Paul's bag, accepting that the question would go unanswered. The zip-lock opened with a soft tearing sound, and she extracted the scraps of paper inside, unfolding them to reveal my handwriting—dense columns of numbers and letters, codes and passwords and access information.

"What's all this?"

"It's the notes I've been making for Paul. It includes all the important stuff like the codes to unlock his phone and access his bank accounts." I felt a small flush of pride at the thoroughness of it. Gathering this information hadn't been easy—it required observation, careful questions, sometimes educated guesses that needed testing. But the result was worth it. Everything Paul might need to manage his affairs, documented and preserved.

I reached for Paul's keys and jingled them near Beatrix, drawing her attention to the small tags I'd attached to each one. "Even the keys are labelled."

She examined the tag bearing Paul's name, her expression unreadable.

"Feel free to access the safe whenever you need to," I told her, settling into the rhythm of instruction. "Leave the key at the back of the top shelf."

"Of course."

"And only turn the mobile phones on when you need to use them."

Her brow furrowed slightly. "Why's that?"

"I don't know whether police really can track our exact locations from a phone when it is turned on, but I'd rather not take any chances to find out." The paranoia might be excessive, but excessive caution had kept me ahead of complications so far. Better to assume the worst and be pleasantly surprised than the reverse.

Beatrix shrugged—neither agreement nor disagreement, just acknowledgment.

"And don't reply to any messages or answer any calls unless they are from me." The instruction was important. Uncontrolled communication created unpredictable variables. A message sent to the wrong person, a call answered at the wrong moment—these were the kinds of small mistakes that cascaded into larger problems.

She nodded quickly, and I could see her absorbing the rules, fitting them into whatever mental framework she used to navigate this work.

"Oh," I added, "use the cash sparingly and be sure to make a note of any bank transactions on the relevant paper."

Her nod this time was slower, weighted with understanding. Beatrix knew better than most how quickly money disappeared when you were trying to build something from nothing.

"Finances don't go too far. I'm really not sure how we're going to keep up paying for supplies and materials to help them build the new settlement." The worry had been building for days, and there was no point pretending otherwise. Not with Beatrix.

Her lips pressed together, her expression shifting into something thoughtful.

"I think we're going to need to get creative," I said, the words half-suggestion and half-plea. Creative meant unconventional. Unconventional meant risk. But conventional approaches weren't going to bridge the gap between what we had and what the settlement needed.

Something sparked in Beatrix's eyes—a light that hadn't been there a moment before, an idea taking shape behind her expression.

"What is it?"

Her smile unfurled slowly, curling at the corners with the weight of secrets forming. "I know how we can get more cash." She paused, letting the statement settle. "Lots of cash."

"How?" The question emerged sharper than I'd intended, hope and wariness tangling together.

But Beatrix was already shaking her head, her hand slipping Paul's keys into her pocket as she rose to her feet. The motion was decisive, final—a door closing on further discussion.

"Never mind about the detail. I think the less you know the better. Leave it to me and Jarod."

"Jarod?" The name landed wrong, triggering an unease I couldn't immediately explain.

"Just trust me on this one, Luke." Her grin remained fixed, confidence radiating from every line of her posture. Before I could formulate a response—a question, a caution, anything—she was already moving, striding out of the bedroom toward the living room with purpose in every step.

"Beatrix." I followed, her name emerging as something between a call and a plea.

She stopped before the portal, its colours already swirling to life against the wall—purple and blue and green dancing in patterns that never quite repeated. The light painted her features in shifting hues, transforming her into something almost otherworldly as she turned to face me.

My brow furrowed, concern pressing against my chest. "Please be careful."

"Well, I can't promise that one." Her laughter was light, dismissive, the sound of someone already half-departed from the conversation.

Then she stepped into the swirling colours, and they swallowed her whole. The portal's vibrancy faded in her wake, collapsing inward until only the bare wall remained, leaving behind an unsettling stillness.

The silence pressed in from every direction.

I stood alone in my living room, the echo of her laughter still hanging in the air, and felt the particular discomfort of a situation I couldn't monitor, couldn't guide, couldn't control.

Whatever Beatrix and Jarod were planning, I would have to trust them to execute it.

The thought sat uneasily in my chest as I turned back toward the bedroom, toward the safe that still lay open, toward the careful organisation that was the only kind of control I could reliably maintain.

The silence settled over the house like dust after a disturbance.

I stood in the living room for longer than made sense, staring at the wall where the portal had swallowed Beatrix. The paint looked ordinary again—unremarkable, giving no hint of what it had been moments before. The transition always struck me as strange, that instant shift from impossible to mundane.

Jarod. The name circled through my thoughts, refusing to settle. Beatrix trusted him, clearly. Trusted him enough to cut me out of whatever they were planning. The logic was sound—plausible deniability had its uses—but the not-knowing gnawed at me in ways I couldn't entirely justify.

I shook the feeling loose and turned back toward the bedroom.

The safe still lay open, its contents undisturbed by Beatrix's visit. The zip-lock bags sat in their careful rows, each one a small archive of someone's former existence. Paul's bag was gone now, transferred to Beatrix for whatever purposes the settlement required. The others remained—waiting, patient, organised.

I knelt beside the safe and began the process of closing it up. The carpet section folded back into place, the seam disappearing into the pile as though it had never been disturbed. The shoes returned to their positions, arranged just so. The key went back to its hiding spot on the top shelf, my fingers memorising the exact placement so I could find it again without looking.

Order restored. Everything in its place.

But as I slid the wardrobe door closed, my thoughts drifted elsewhere—to Bixbus, to the settlers, to the tangled web of connections and dependencies that grew more complex with each passing day. The settlement was taking shape, physically at least. Fences erected. Caravans arriving. People learning to coexist in conditions none of them had chosen.

The people themselves, though—they remained a puzzle I hadn't fully solved.

I crossed to the bedside table and retrieved the notebook I'd been keeping there. The cover was plain, unassuming—the kind of thing you'd walk past in a stationery shop without a second glance. Inside, the pages told a different story.

I settled onto the edge of the bed, the mattress dipping slightly beneath my weight, and opened the notebook to where I'd left off. Sketches and diagrams covered the pages—rough maps of the settlement's layout, lists of resources and their locations, inventories of supplies. But woven between the practical notations were other entries. Names. Relationships. Skills and backgrounds and the particular circumstances that had brought each person to Clivilius.

Karen and Chris. Conservationists. Arrived by accident—the portal activation that had started everything. Expertise in sustainable living, permaculture, wildlife management.

Nial. Builder's labourer. Arrived through deception—he still didn't know the full truth of how he'd ended up here. Strong back, stronger work ethic. Knows Adrian from somewhere in Hobart.

Adrian. Builder. Arrived under duress—the car chase, the toilet block, the desperate measures of a desperate morning. Skilled tradesman. Currently resentful. Will need careful management.

The list continued, entry after entry, each one a thread in the larger tapestry I was trying to weave. Some entries were more detailed than others. Some included information the subjects themselves might not realise I possessed. All of it was necessary.

You couldn't build a community without understanding its components. Couldn't allocate resources effectively without knowing who needed what. Couldn't anticipate conflicts without mapping the relationships—the old grudges, the unexpected connections, the fault lines that might crack under pressure.

I turned to a fresh page and let my pen hover above the paper, thinking.

The notebook was useful, but it was also incomplete. Scattered. A collection of observations rather than a coherent record. If something happened to me—if I was captured, or killed, or simply lost in the vast indifference of this dimension—all of this knowledge would vanish. The settlement would lose not just a Guardian, but the institutional memory I'd been accumulating since the beginning.

That couldn't be allowed to happen.

The idea arrived fully formed, as though it had been waiting in the wings for its moment to step forward. Not just notes. Not just sketches and lists and scattered observations. Something more comprehensive. More permanent. A proper record of who we were, what we'd built, and what we'd sacrificed to build it.

"This needs to be more than just a sketch," I murmured, the words breaking the silence of the empty bedroom.

I flipped through the notebook's pages, seeing them differently now. Each entry was a seed—the beginning of something that could grow into a fuller account. Karen and Chris's expertise could be documented in detail, their knowledge preserved for future settlers who might need it. Nial's skills could be catalogued alongside the projects he'd contributed to. Even Adrian's reluctance would be worth recording, if only to remind future leaders that not everyone arrived willingly and that resentment required careful handling.

"A record of who we are, what we bring, and who we've left behind."

The phrase felt right. Complete. It captured the scope of what I was imagining—not just a census or an inventory, but something more human. A chronicle of lives interrupted and lives begun, of the world left behind and the world being built.

I closed my eyes for a moment, letting the vision crystallise. The settlement as it existed now was fragile—a handful of people clinging to survival in an indifferent landscape. But it wouldn't always be this way. If we did this right, Bixbus would grow. Would thrive. Would become something that mattered, something that lasted.

And when it did, the people who came after would want to know how it started. Would want to understand the foundations upon which their lives had been built. Would want to know the names and faces of those who had sacrificed everything—knowingly or otherwise—to make their existence possible.

They deserved that record. We all did.

The notebook felt inadequate now, its plain cover almost insulting given the weight of what I was planning. This would need something better. Something worthy of the undertaking. A proper binding. Quality paper. The kind of document that announced its own importance.

The Book of Kin.

The title arrived unbidden, settling into my mind with the certainty of something that had always been true. Kin. Family. The bonds that tied people together, whether by blood or by circumstance. That's what we were building here—a new kind of family, forged in the crucible of displacement and survival.

I opened the notebook again and began writing, not in the scattered style of my previous entries but with deliberate intention. Headings. Categories. The skeleton of a structure that would eventually contain everything worth preserving.

Origins. How each person came to Clivilius. The circumstances, the choices, the accidents of fate.

Contributions. What each person brought to the settlement. Skills, knowledge, labour, leadership.

Connections. The relationships between settlers. Who knew whom, who trusted whom, who had history that might help or hinder.

Losses. What each person had left behind. Family, homes, careers, the lives they'd been living before the portal changed everything.

The categories multiplied as I wrote, each one opening onto new possibilities. The scope of it was daunting—this would take months, possibly years, to complete properly. But that was fine. Important work deserved time. Deserved care. Deserved the kind of meticulous attention that separated meaningful records from mere scribbles.

My pen moved across the page, filling it with the architecture of the project to come. The evening light had begun to fade, shadows lengthening across the bedroom floor, but I barely noticed. The world outside this room—the house, Tasmania, the dimension I'd called home for most of my life—felt distant, irrelevant. What mattered was here, in these pages, in the vision taking shape beneath my hands.

"This will be my legacy," I said quietly, testing the words against the silence.

They felt true. Felt right. Whatever else happened—whatever complications tomorrow brought, whatever crises demanded my attention—this would endure. Long after the fences rusted and the caravans crumbled, The Book of Kin would remain. A testament to what we'd built. A monument to the lives that had made it possible.

I set down the pen and looked at what I'd written. The page was covered in my handwriting—neat, organised, deliberate. The framework of something larger than myself.

The house was quiet around me. Empty, but not lonely. I had work to do.

Important work.