The Fever

“Betrayal cuts deep—but love cuts deeper. No wound he gave me could ever silence the terror of watching him fade.”

As soon as we emerged on the other side of the Portal, my instincts flared like an alarm. The colours of transition still shimmered faintly in my vision, afterimages of impossible beauty that my brain refused to fully process, but urgency cut through any temptation to marvel. Survival first. Always survival.

With swift, almost automatic thought, I commanded the Portal shut, severing the fragile thread that connected us to Hobart. The kaleidoscope of light folded in on itself, collapsing into a faint tremor of air before vanishing altogether, leaving only the silence of Clivilius behind.

Somewhere on the other side of that now-sealed doorway, Glenda's phone sat on her desk—a device I'd promised to destroy, carrying Pierre's desperate warning. Somewhere, the Fox Order was closing in on a doctor who had already slipped beyond their reach. Somewhere, an ordinary Wednesday afternoon continued in a Tasmanian suburb that had no idea its reality had just been punctured by impossible light.

But here, now, there was only this: the ochre dust, the blue sky, and the weight of everything I'd set in motion.

The Drop Zone looked undisturbed. The groceries I'd brought through earlier were gone, presumably carried to the camp. No sign of anything amiss.

I forced my breathing to steady, corralling the panic into discipline. Control. Always control. Even here, especially here, I couldn't afford to let the mask slip.

When I turned, I found Glenda standing a few feet away, her body rigid, her gaze roving as though trying to tether herself to the reality she now occupied. The awe in her eyes was raw, unfiltered, almost childlike, yet beneath it trembled the disorientation of someone who had stepped too quickly from one world into another.

Gone was the antiseptic safety of her clinic, the familiar hum of fluorescent lights, the muffled sounds of patients coughing in the waiting room. Here, the air was sharper, laced with earth and distant woodsmoke.

Her posture betrayed the conflict within: part of her wanted to step forward, to explore, to embrace the wonder of what she was seeing. Another part seemed ready to retreat, to cling to the sanity of what she had left behind. The fracture of that uncertainty was written across her shoulders, in the way her hands clenched and unclenched at her sides.

I understood that feeling. I'd felt it myself, the first time I'd crossed over. The dizzying vertigo of realising that everything you thought you knew about reality was incomplete, that the universe was stranger and larger and more terrifying than you'd ever imagined. It could break you, that realisation. Or it could remake you into something new.

I closed the distance with deliberate speed, my movements outwardly brisk but inwardly calculated. She needed grounding, not indulgence. My hands found her shoulders, steadying her with a grip that was firm enough to reassure, yet strong enough to remind her of the gravity of where she stood.

"I'm here," I murmured.

Her breath caught, shallow, before she exhaled, and in that exhale I felt the faintest thread of trust beginning to form.

Trust. The currency of survival. I collected it wherever I could, spent it sparingly, and never stopped counting the coins.

Just then, Paul emerged, his approach purposeful, his eyes sweeping the surroundings with the same wariness I carried in my own bones. His presence carried with it a weight of reassurance I didn't quite allow myself to admit. For all our differences, Paul anchored me here.

I guided Glenda gently in his direction, steering her steps with a touch that suggested protection, though beneath it ran the undertone of possession. Every new ally had to be presented carefully, folded into our fragile structure in a way that reinforced our control. It was a manipulation, yes—but a necessary one. Leadership required these small orchestrations, these careful arrangements of people and loyalties.

"This is Glenda," I announced, my voice carrying a note of pride that I could not fully disguise. It was more than pride—it was relief, vindication. Against the odds, I had brought her through, and in doing so I had secured not just another body, but a resource, a lifeline for the settlement we were trying to forge.

"Glenda is a doctor in Hobart," I added, emphasising the word with careful weight, letting it linger between us like a promise. A doctor meant hope. It meant healing. It meant leverage. I wanted Paul to hear that, to see the utility as much as the humanity.

Glenda straightened, reclaiming her composure with the ease of someone accustomed to presenting a professional face regardless of circumstances. She extended her hand—a gesture so ordinary, so rooted in her old world, that it felt almost surreal here amongst the ochre dust. It was a bridge, a reminder that some customs could still survive the crossing between realities.

Her voice carried the tentative warmth of courtesy as she said, "It's a pleasure to meet you..." The pause was deliberate, an opening, a thread waiting to be caught.

"Paul," my brother supplied, his handshake firm, his presence steady. "I'm Luke's brother."

Recognition dawned on Glenda's face, softening her features. Her accent thickened as she spoke, her Swiss heritage colouring the moment with a quiet gravity. "Of course," she replied, a smile tugging at her lips. "I see the resemblance now."

The casual exchange, light with the ease of introductions, dissolved almost at once, giving way to a more urgent current that tugged me back into focus.

"Paul burnt his foot last night," I told her. I tried to sound composed, but the urgency seeped through, betraying the knot tightening in my chest. "He seems to be doing okay with it now, but I reckon a bit of medical attention wouldn't hurt."

Glenda's reply was immediate. "Sure," she said, her tone practical, stripped of hesitation. In that single word I could hear her pivot, slipping seamlessly into the role she knew best. "Show me your foot," she directed Paul.

He faltered, and I caught the flicker of hesitation in him—the proud man unused to being scrutinised in such a clinical way. For a heartbeat, his vulnerability hung in the air, and despite the urgency, a private smile tugged at me.

I knew my brother well enough to imagine his internal resistance to Glenda's no-nonsense manner. We had grown used to patching each other up with whatever was available—strips of cloth, antiseptic wipes from the first aid kit, stubbornness and denial. To now have a trained professional kneeling before him, examining his wounds with actual expertise—it was almost comical.

Still, he obeyed, lifting his leg for her inspection. The movement carried a grudging acceptance, as though he knew this was necessary but wasn't about to make it easy.

Glenda crouched with grace, her hands steady, her attention narrowing to the injury as though the world itself had contracted into the burned patch of Paul's skin.

But as her fingers reached closer, a sharp pull inside me tore my focus away from Paul. Jamie's face intruded on my thoughts—pale, drawn, etched with suffering that no burn could rival. The memory of his chest, slick with blood, clamped around me with such force that it eclipsed everything else.

The wound I'd caused. The shove in the desert that had sent him sprawling, that had torn open the injury he'd been hiding. The blood soaking through his shirt whilst I stood there, paralysed by my own anger and guilt.

Paul could wait. He was strong. He would endure. Jamie could not.

"Oh, no, no. Not yet," I cut in abruptly, my voice harsher than I intended, my hand lifting almost instinctively as though to physically stop her. The words spilled out before I had time to temper them, born of panic and love tangled together in a knot I couldn't begin to unravel.

In my mind's eye, Jamie lay before me again, fragile, fading. How bad was it? Had the infection spread whilst I was busy with banks and groceries and the careful orchestration of Glenda's recruitment?

"There is another man in far more need than Paul," I continued, the anxiety sharpening my tone until it cracked. My throat felt tight, as though speaking his plight aloud might make it worse, yet silence would be the greater betrayal.

Glenda straightened, her expression unreadable, though her eyes softened in the way a healer's do when they recognise the sound of genuine fear. She didn't question my urgency. She didn't even pause.

"Take me to him and I shall take a look," she said, the words carrying neither flourish nor doubt. Just readiness. Just duty.

That simplicity, that unquestioning willingness, struck me harder than it should have. For a moment I felt my defences falter—the paranoia, the calculation, all the scaffolding I built around myself—sliding away to reveal something far more fragile. Gratitude. And beneath it, the raw, aching hope that Jamie might still be saved.

Turning to Paul, I felt the question rise before I could temper it, sharper than intended, but necessary. "Where's Jamie?"

Paul's throat worked around a heavy swallow, his Adam's apple bobbing as though he were bracing himself for the truth he had to deliver. "He's resting in the tent. I think he has a fever."

A fever.

"Shit! What happened? I thought he was feeling better?" The words left me too fast, more demand than question, laced with panic. The knot in my stomach pulled tighter, my mind leaping through images of Jamie's fragile body, of the sweat already slicking his skin the last time I saw him.

Anger at the betrayal still lingered, raw and unresolved—the confession about Ben, the affair that had shattered something I'd thought was unbreakable. But it was swept aside now by something deeper, older, more stubborn: love, the kind that refused to let go even when wounded. The kind that made you fight for someone even when part of you wanted to walk away.

"He seemed much better when we ate, but soon after... He looks pretty bad," Paul admitted, his voice low and edged with worry. The sound of his concern mirrored my own escalating fear, and in that reflection I felt both comforted and undone.

Pretty bad. The euphemism cut through me. Paul wasn't one for understatement when it came to serious matters. If he said Jamie looked bad, it meant Jamie looked terrible. It meant the fever had taken hold, the infection spreading, the window for intervention shrinking with every moment I'd wasted on other concerns.

Before I could collapse into further questions, Glenda's voice sliced through the air, steady and commanding. "Take me to him. Now."

Her decisiveness steadied me for a heartbeat. It was a reminder that, whatever else lingered in the shadows of her past or my paranoia, here she was stepping into the very reason I had brought her. Not ally, not conspirator, not risk—but doctor. A healer who might be able to do what none of the rest of us could.

The fragile balance of introductions shattered in that instant, replaced by urgency. All pleasantries dissolved; we were no longer strangers testing one another's boundaries, but companions tied to the same fragile thread of survival.

I flicked my hand in a sharp gesture to Paul. Lead. Move. Now. He obeyed, turning quickly, and together we set out.

The ground stretched ahead of us in uneven waves, the earth worn into soft channels by our own footsteps, by the comings and goings of this improvised life. Dust rose faintly with each step, hanging in the air like a ghost of movement. A breeze traced over us, thin and cool. Yet for all the rugged beauty of the landscape, my pulse thudded with a brutal insistence. Each step forward felt too slow, as though distance itself conspired against me.

A storm churned inside me—fear, guilt, and something fiercer still. Anger at Jamie's betrayal, yes, the raw wound that had not yet scabbed over. The image of him and Ben together, the confession that had upended everything I thought I knew about our relationship. Part of me still wanted to rage at him, to demand explanations he'd never adequately provide, to make him feel the hurt he'd inflicted.

But alongside it, overriding it, was concern so visceral it bordered on desperation. No matter what he had done, no matter the fracture he had carved into the trust between us, he was still mine to protect. Still the man I had held through countless nights of fear and silence, still the soul tethered to mine by something far older and deeper than mere fidelity.

My heart clenched with the terrible truth of it: love does not dissolve when wounded. It bleeds, it rages, it cries out—but it remains, demanding care even when reason insists it should not.

I had been angry enough to shove him. Angry enough to watch him fall, to see the blood spread across his shirt, and to feel—for one horrible moment—something like satisfaction. That memory shamed me now, burned alongside the fear like twin flames consuming the same fuel.

If Jamie died because of that shove, because I'd torn open a wound that should have been healing, because my anger had outweighed my love in one catastrophic instant...

I couldn't finish the thought. Couldn't let it crystallise into words, even in the privacy of my own mind. Some possibilities were too terrible to name.

Glenda walked beside me, her stride matching mine, her face set with the determination of someone who had done this before—rushed toward crisis, stepped into chaos, brought calm where there had been only fear. I wondered if she sensed the turmoil beneath my surface, if she could read the conflict in my clenched jaw and rapid breathing.

Probably. Doctors learned to read people. It was part of their training, part of their survival.

But she said nothing, offered no comfort or platitude. Just walked, ready to do what needed to be done. And in that silence, I found something like peace—or at least its shadow. The waiting would be over soon. One way or another, I would know how bad things really were.

The tent came into view, its canvas walls rippling slightly in the breeze. Somewhere inside, Jamie was fighting a battle I couldn't see, against an enemy I couldn't touch.

I quickened my pace, fear and love driving me forward in equal measure, toward whatever waited on the other side of that thin fabric wall.