The Deal

“Sometimes a deal isn’t an agreement. It’s a surrender disguised as strategy.”

“Are you sure they can be trusted?” I asked, my voice tinged with scepticism and concern as Sarah pulled the car into a quiet suburban driveway lined with overgrown shrubs and a neglected garden bed. The house was modest, its windows dark, a narrow porch light casting long shadows across the brickwork. The decision to go to a private place was necessary, but I couldn’t help questioning her choice. My fingers tightened slightly around the Portal Key, now safely tucked back into my coat pocket, as I peered through the windscreen, assessing the place like it might somehow reveal its secrets to me.

“It's my house,” replied Sarah, her tone clipped, a no-nonsense edge hardening her words as she flung the car door open. Gravel crunched beneath her boots as she stepped out into the cool night air. “Get out,” she instructed, not even glancing back. There was no room for argument, and the tone in her voice made it clear she wouldn’t entertain one.

Silently, I obeyed. The realisation that Sarah had her own place hadn’t crossed my mind until now—somehow I’d always imagined her as a fixture in sterile police stations, crashing on office couches between cases, surviving on caffeine and stubbornness. The alcohol in my system dulled my surprise, fogging it over like breath on cold glass, and I didn’t bother unpacking the assumption further.

My legs felt unsteady beneath me as I stepped out into the night, the effects of the wine now mingling with nerves and adrenaline. Sarah was already unlocking the front door by the time I reached the steps, her shoulders squared, her movements brisk and precise.

Inside, the air was warm and stale, filled with the faint scent of lavender cleaning spray and something unidentifiably sweet—perhaps the remnants of a candle long since burned out. The hallway was narrow, cluttered with shoes by the door and a coat rack straining under the weight of winter jackets. She didn’t speak as she led me through, flicking on lights as she went, their amber glow chasing away the shadows that clung to the corners.

We wasted no time on pleasantries or tours. There were no cups of tea offered, no awkward jokes to bridge the tension. The urgency of the situation guided our actions with a quiet intensity as we found ourselves standing side by side in the living room.

The space was small but lived-in, mismatched furniture arranged around a low coffee table, stacks of old case folders shoved into the corners. A pair of cat-shaped bookends propped up a row of well-worn paperbacks on a shelf that sagged slightly in the middle. It was more homely than I expected, oddly intimate, but the weight of the conversation we were about to have made it impossible to settle into the comfort it might otherwise have offered.

Sarah stood with her arms crossed tightly over her chest, her eyes fixed on a point just past me—unwilling, or perhaps unable, to meet my gaze yet. Her jaw tensed, a small muscle pulsing just beneath the surface. She was holding something in. Rage? Grief? Fear? Probably all of it.

“Show me again,” Sarah demanded, her gaze now fixed on the unobstructed grey wall like it had personally wronged her.

I hesitated, the weight of the Portal Key in my palm suddenly heavier. The thought of using it again stirred a visceral reaction in me—a cocktail of awe and dread. But I knew I had no choice.

I extracted it from my pocket with a slow, deliberate movement. A flick of my finger against the end button sent a pulse of light from the device, and almost instantly, the living room wall ignited into a swirling canvas of impossible colour. Blues and violets rippled outward from a searing white centre. Sparks cracked and hissed softly in the air. It was like watching reality bend to an unseen rhythm.

Sarah took an involuntary step backward.

I swallowed hard, my voice trembling as the words fought their way out. “I need to take Cody,” I said, my voice breaking with a sniffle. My composure, so hastily stitched together, almost gave way. “His children want him back.”

The words came out small, aching. Fragile.

“Through that?” Sarah asked, her eyes wide as she stepped forward slowly, her disbelief battling with reluctant wonder. The portal’s colours danced over her face, casting strange shadows across her cheeks.

“Yes,” I replied, finding a sliver of strength in the single word. I looked her squarely in the eye. “It’s the only way.”

“What... where is it?”

“Clivilius,” I said, the word like a weight on my tongue. It was bitter. Foreign. And yet, all too real.

“Is that where Karl is?” Sarah’s voice softened. There was something in it—something achingly human. Hope. Pain.

I nodded, the motion barely perceptible. “Yes.”

She didn’t hesitate. With a sudden, urgent burst of motion, Sarah darted forward, making a break for the vibrant portal with reckless desperation.

“No—wait!” I cried, but it was too late.

Reacting on instinct, I willed the portal to close. The colours vanished in an instant, like a flame snuffed out. With a sickening thud, Sarah collided full force with the now-solid wall. The sound of it was enough to make me flinch.

She recoiled, staggering back. Her face flushed red, a mix of pain and fury. Her eyes locked onto mine.

Then she lunged.

Her hands clamped around my shoulders and shook me violently. “What the fuck did you do that for!?” she screamed, voice ragged, eyes wild with rage and grief. My balance slipped, and I had to brace against the coffee table to stay upright. I felt the tears break loose, flowing unbidden now.

“He's not there. He's not there!” I screeched back, trying to push her off me. My hands trembled from the adrenaline, and from the images—Cody’s broken body, the smell, the silence.

“You just said he was!” Sarah’s voice cracked on the final word, as if the pressure of it had snapped something inside her. She turned and punched the wall. The sound of flesh and bone meeting plaster was followed by a sharp grunt of pain. Blood trickled from her knuckle, and little fragments of plaster dust floated down like grim confetti.

I took a few careful steps back. She was spinning out.

“Sarah, listen,” I said, voice low, coaxing. “Karl is in Clivilius, but in a different location.”

“I don’t understand.” She began pacing, her hands pushing through her hair, her boots thudding against the wooden floor with each frantic step.

“Portal Keys,” I said, holding up the small rectangular device again. Its surface caught the lamplight. “They open different locations in Clivilius. Each one is tethered to a single point there. Doesn’t matter where you are on Earth when you use it.”

Her eyes locked onto the Portal Key like it was the answer to everything and nothing all at once.

“Mine… and Cody’s,” I paused, bracing myself. “Ours open in Belkeep.”

“And Karl isn’t in… Belkeep?” she asked quickly, clinging to the sliver of hope, that there was still a way forward.

I shook my head. “No. Luke took him to Bixbus.”

Sarah stopped in her tracks. The air shifted slightly, as though her body were absorbing the information and physically reacting to it.

“Then I want to go to Bixbus.”

“You need Luke for that.”

She stepped toward me, urgency flaring in her eyes. “Then take me to Luke. You must know how I can find him.”

A strange calm washed over me then. Like the calm just before a storm levels everything in its path. The tears had stopped welling behind my eyes, but the grief lingered in my chest like embers.

“Help me get Cody's body,” I said quietly, but firmly. “If I take him to Belkeep, nobody on Earth will ever know what you did, Sarah. The evidence will be gone forever.”

The room was silent. The kind of silence that comes with heavy decisions and irreversible consequences.

Sarah blinked, jaw tightening. She was calculating, reassessing, trying to find another way. But there wasn’t one.

“I want Luke Smith,” she said again, this time with a slow, deliberate weight to her words.

“Help me get Cody's body, and I will get you Luke Smith,” I promised. My voice was low, almost hoarse.

The air between us felt like it had thickened, congealed with the weight of what we were conspiring to do. Neither of us moved. The room held its breath, as if the walls themselves were reluctant witnesses to our agreement.

A few minutes of silence passed as we each processed our thoughts, retreating inward like two survivors on the edge of something irreversibly wrong. I closed my eyes. The wine settled heavy in my blood, dulling the jagged edges of panic, offering a brief, traitorous warmth. My fingers wrapped tight around the empty bottle, white-knuckled, like it was the only thing keeping me tethered to the moment.

In the quiet, I could see it—see the plan, or something like it. It had no grace. No elegance. But there was clarity in it, a single, focused beam of purpose slicing through the fog of my grief. A vision of success. A narrow, brittle thread to hold onto. I didn’t trust it. But it was all I had.

Sarah broke the silence. “How the hell am I supposed to get Cody’s body?” Her voice sliced through the quiet like a scalpel, sharp and clinical, as if dissecting the absurdity of the question might somehow make it vanish.

I met her eyes and didn’t blink. “You’re going to cremate him.”

Sarah gasped loudly. Her entire body jolted with the sound, like it had struck her in the chest. “Gladys, you’re insane.”

She wasn’t wrong.

Perhaps, I scoffed silently inward. I didn’t offer a denial. What was the point? The label didn’t offend me. I wasn’t clinging to sanity anymore—I was clinging to something else entirely.

“I’m in love,” I admitted, my voice barely a breath, yet it filled the space between us with the stark honesty of it. There it was. The raw, unfiltered truth. Spoken out loud, it sounded both ridiculous and immovable.

Something softened in Sarah’s expression. The tight set of her jaw relaxed. Her eyes—those detective’s eyes, trained to see through masks—glinted now with unshed tears. And in them, I saw the mirror of my own sorrow. Of love unravelled by death. Of impossible choices made in grief’s cruel wake.

She nodded once, slowly, and the first tear fell.

“Fine. You’ve got a deal,” said Sarah, her glistening eyes never breaking from mine.

A pulse of something like relief rippled through me—but it was short-lived. Because the truth was, while I didn’t really want to have Cody cremated, I had no choice. It was the only viable lie. The only way to reclaim his body without raising alarms or suspicion. The only way to take him home. The irony of that word—home—bit the inside of my cheek.

My mind surged into motion, already breaking the task into a dozen logistical pieces. Times. Locations. Cover stories. The crematorium. The ashes. Or lack thereof. The moment Sarah signed whatever she needed to sign, the moment the body went into the facility, I’d have to act fast—before the irreversible became reality. I had one shot. No backup plan. No second chance.

Sarah turned from me, reaching for her phone on the coffee table, her thumb already hovering over the screen. Her breath hitched once. Just once. Then she exhaled—long and slow.

I watched her, this woman who had every reason to walk away, now walking directly into a crime for me. For love. For her own answer. Her own grief.

“Thank you,” I said quietly.

She didn’t respond.

She just picked up her keys from the bowl near the door and said, “We’ll need gloves.”

I almost laughed. The absurdity of it. Gloves. For a body that had already been dead for days. But she was right. Of course she was right.

And somewhere between love and consequence, we’d cross a line we could never uncross.