The Fragile Thread

“Sometimes all that holds us together is no stronger than paper—and yet we cling to it as if it were unbreakable.”

The Drop Zone was deserted, and the emptiness pressed against me like a cold hand on the back of my neck. It wasn't just quiet; it was wrong. This place, usually the nerve centre of our fragile settlement—such as it was—had always carried at least the murmur of voices, the shuffle of boots on packed earth, or the comforting sound of Paul and Jamie bickering about something trivial. Their arguments had become a kind of background music I'd stopped consciously hearing, the way you stop noticing traffic noise after living near a road long enough.

Now, that familiar heartbeat was absent, and the silence echoed too loudly in my ears.

I stood at the edge of the clearing, box of dog supplies balanced against my hip, and felt the wrongness seep into me like cold water finding its way through cracks in stone. Where was everyone? Paul should have been here, fussing with the supply materials or measuring out the space for that concrete slab he couldn't build. Jamie should have been... somewhere. Brooding, probably. Nursing his wound and his grievances in equal measure. But not absent. Not both of them, not at once.

For a fleeting moment, I considered leaving Duke's toys and belongings where they were, stacked neatly in the Drop Zone as if in offering to whatever spirits governed this strange place. Just set down the box and return to Gladys and Beatrix. Yet the image of Duke's tail wagging furiously, his nose buried in the familiar comfort of his things, pierced that hesitation. No, these weren't just objects—they were fragments of home, lifelines for a creature who had no choice in being pulled into this fractured existence. His joy, when he saw them, would be real, uncomplicated, a balm against the dread seeping through me.

Duke and Henri hadn't asked to be here. They'd followed because that's what dogs did—they followed the people they loved into whatever chaos those people created. The least I could do was bring them their beds.

Adjusting the weight of the box in my arms, I pressed forward, each step sinking into the sandy earth with the slow inevitability of duty. The items felt heavier than they should have—dog beds, toys, the ragged remnants of normality—and yet they carried the burden of everything else I had left simmering on the other side of the Portal. Joel's body cooling in the truck. Gladys and Beatrix sitting on my sofa, wine in hand, waiting for my return. The blood-soaked clothes still twisted in my bathtub like evidence of something I hadn't done but couldn't prove I hadn't done.

The box was no longer just cargo; it was ballast, tethering me to both worlds at once, reminding me that I belonged fully to neither.

As the path curved into camp, the tent loomed into view. The stillness was oppressive, like walking into a theatre after the audience has left and the lights have dimmed, chairs empty, stage dark, waiting for a performance that might never come.

My gut clenched. The absence of sound—the absence of them—didn't just feel odd. It felt like an omen.

The large tent stood waiting, mute and deserted, an eerie sentinel in the midst of all this nothingness.

Upon entering, a sense of solitude wrapped around me like something physical. The air inside was still, unnaturally so, and the silence pressed against my ears until it became almost tangible. I paused just inside the entrance, letting the quiet seep into my bones, filling the hollows carved by the morning's accumulated horrors.

How odd, I murmured, the words barely escaping as more breath than sound, carried away into the canvas folds.

Henri, the lone occupant, lay sprawled across a corner of the mattress like a furry emperor who couldn't be bothered with the concerns of lesser beings. His chest rose and fell with unhurried rhythm, his indifference almost theatrical in its contrast to the turmoil that clenched my chest. Here I was, reeling from murder and betrayal and impossible choices, and Henri had apparently decided this was an excellent opportunity for a nap.

"Where is everyone, Henri?" I asked softly, half-expecting—half-hoping—that the dog might break from his stoic calm and provide the answers I could not find.

But, true to form, his eyes flicked lazily toward me before drifting away again, his disinterest a quiet statement of his detachment from human chaos. Whatever dramas we enacted, whatever blood we spilled or bodies we discovered, Henri would continue to exist in his own private universe of naps and treats and the occasional investigation of interesting smells. There was something almost enviable about that.

With a sigh that tasted of resignation, I shifted my focus back to the box in my arms. One by one, I placed the small beds and the toys along the back wall of the tent, arranging them with more care than the task strictly required. I moved slowly, deliberately, as though arranging them carefully might impose order upon the disorder clawing at the edges of my mind. It was such a small gesture, almost absurd given the gravity of everything else—a murdered boy in my driveway, a wounded partner who might be dying, a brother whose loyalty hung by threads I couldn't see—yet it was grounding. A touch of the familiar stitched into the fabric of an existence that unravelled more each hour.

Henri rose then, unhurried, his paws making only the faintest impression on the tent’s floor as he crossed to investigate. He moved with the solemn grace of a creature approaching something sacred, circling his new bed three times before lowering himself with a satisfied snort. It was a ritual older than either of us, an instinct uncorrupted by overthinking, untouched by betrayal or consequence.

"You are a strange one," I murmured, crouching to scratch him behind the ear, my fingers sinking into the softness of his fur. His acceptance was immediate, unquestioning. In that moment, I envied him with a sharp ache that surprised me with its intensity. To live in such simplicity, to find comfort without hesitation, to welcome what was given without fear of what it cost—Henri's world was enviably narrow, enviably safe.

But mine? Mine was wide and jagged, bristling with dangers both seen and unseen, and waiting just beyond the canvas walls of this temporary sanctuary.

My focus snapped away from Henri's steady breathing as Duke's bark tore through the silence outside the tent. It was no ordinary bark—loud, sharp, and echoing with a resonance that made the canvas walls quiver.

"Come here, Duke!" I called, my voice cracking the air in an urgent command, as much to reassure myself as to summon him.

But the reply I received chilled me deeper than the emptiness of silence ever could. Duke barked again, robust and defiant, but there was something else threaded through the sound: a low, guttural growl. It vibrated through me like a warning siren, the kind of sound he only ever reserved for moments of real threat. I'd heard it before—rarely, but memorably—when strangers approached our property, or when something in the night triggered instincts older than domestication.

Fear crawled up my spine, cold and insistent. Duke's growl was never wasted. It meant something—someone.

Then Paul's voice shattered any illusion of safety. "Jamie!" His scream carried raw urgency, a piercing note that sliced through the stillness and sent a pulse of dread hammering into my chest.

Jamie. The name hit me differently now than it would have this morning, before everything had happened. Before the confession about Ben. Before the shove in the desert. Before Joel's blood had soaked through my clothes. The anger was still there—I could feel it coiled somewhere beneath my ribs, patient and unresolved—but it had been joined by something else. Something closer to fear.

Duke bolted in the opposite direction of Paul's call, his body taut, purposeful, his paws tearing into the sand. His entire frame spoke of immediacy—ears flat, tail stiff, muscles wired for pursuit. I didn't need to question him. His instincts were sharper than my reasoning, and right now, instincts might be all we had left.

"Jamie!" Paul's voice rose again, closer now, frantic, its echo caught in the swirl of dust and distance.

Duke's barks became relentless, a staccato rhythm against the backdrop of the barren expanse, each one guiding me like a beacon through the haze. I surged into motion, legs pumping, sand dragging at my shoes as I jogged after him.

"I hope you're right, Duke," I muttered between breaths, my words swallowed by the dry wind.

The dog didn't falter, didn't hesitate. His urgency became mine. My heart pounded, not just with exertion but with anticipation, a frantic drumbeat echoing the rhythm of my thoughts. Every step carried me further from the tenuous safety of camp and deeper into the unknown—a place where shadows could conceal anything, where Jamie might have wandered to escape the tension between us, where his festering wound might finally have claimed what it had been threatening to take.

And yet, I followed. Always forward, always into whatever waited.

As I pushed through the wavering veil of dust and heat, the vague silhouette ahead sharpened into something grotesquely familiar. What had first appeared as little more than a pale smudge against the ochre landscape resolved itself into the outline of a body. The brutal sunlight struck hard against the scene, carving it into harsh relief—the paleness of skin against reddish earth, the unnatural stillness of limbs arranged by gravity rather than intention. My chest tightened as recognition sank its claws into me.

"Shit." The word slipped from my throat, ragged and hollow. My jog broke into a frantic run, each stride landing with the sick certainty of inevitability. "It's Jamie." The name was no longer a question but a declaration, as if saying it aloud could somehow anchor me in the reality unravelling before me.

By the time I dropped to his side, my body was already betraying me. My stomach twisted violently, a nauseous revolt rising in my throat, dragging me back into memories of blood and failure I had tried to bury—Joel's body, discovered barely an hour ago, the same stillness, the same absence of response. The copper tang in the air seemed to summon every past horror, every moment where I had stared helplessly at a body broken and bleeding.

"Jamie!" My voice cracked under the strain, the sound raw and unfamiliar to my own ears.

I fell to my knees, the unforgiving grit of the desert digging into skin and fabric alike. Dust clung greedily to the sweat on my arms, coating me as I bent low, ear hovering just above his lips. For a heartbeat that seemed to stretch into eternity, there was nothing. Just silence, just stillness, just the terrible possibility that I was kneeling beside another corpse.

Then—a whisper of breath, shallow, fragile, almost lost against the heat-warped air.

Relief surged through me, jagged and incomplete, tainted with dread. He was alive—but just.

I grasped his shoulders, shaking him gently but urgently, the tremor in my own hands betraying the desperation beneath my movements. "Jamie." His name came out softer this time, weighted more like a plea than a call. "Jamie, can you hear me?"

Silence answered me. Not even the faintest flicker of response crossed his features. The void of it pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating, as though the desert itself had conspired to smother hope.

Tears blurred my sight, unbidden and hot, spilling down my cheeks before I even realised they'd formed. I wasn't ready for this. Despite everything—the betrayal, the anger, the push in the dust earlier today—I wasn't ready to lose him. The complexity of what lay between us, the love and resentment tangled together like vines that had grown too long to separate, none of it mattered if he died here in the sand. All that would remain was absence, and absence answered nothing.

With a surge of resolve, I slid my arms beneath him, pulling his weight against me. He felt heavier than he ever had before, not in mass but in meaning—in what his limpness signified, in what carrying him back would demand of me. His head lolled against my shoulder, his breathing so shallow I had to stop twice just to confirm it was still there.

Each step back to camp became a duel between body and will. My muscles screamed at the burden, my stomach threatened to revolt again, but I pressed forward, jaw clenched, teeth grinding grit and determination together.

The sight of his chest, darkened and marred with blood where his wound had continued to fester, was a relentless reminder: here, life was paper-thin, fragile as the dust beneath our feet, torn open without warning. The infection had spread. Even from this angle, I could see the angry red lines radiating outward from the wound, could smell that particular sourness that meant the body was losing its fight.

Every stumble forward was a refusal to surrender, a desperate rejection of despair's encroaching grip.

This wasn't just a journey back to camp—it was an act of defiance, a battle waged against inevitability. My arms wrapped around Jamie's broken body, but my mind clung with equal ferocity to a sliver of hope: that somehow, against the odds stacked impossibly high, he might still be saved. That the four-fifteen appointment with Dr De Bruyn might still matter. That I hadn't killed him by waiting too long, by being distracted by Joel and Gladys and the thousand other crises that had consumed this day.

As the tent came into sight, my grip on Jamie tightened, as though I feared he might slip away even now, vanish into the dust like everything else that seemed to be dissolving around me.

Then—subtle, almost imperceptible—there was movement. His eyelids, clotted with grit and weighed down by exhaustion, began to stir. A faint flutter, the barest hint of life struggling against the void. When his eyes cracked open, their usual sharpness was dulled, clouded with pain and disorientation, but they were open. He was there.

A raw, rasping groan clawed its way up from his parched throat. The sound was hoarse, broken, but to me it was nothing short of miraculous. Proof that he was still tethered to this world, even if the cord looked dangerously frayed.

Relief surged through me, violent and unsteady, tempered instantly by the sight of his fragility. My steps quickened as I assisted him into the tent—our sanctuary, though now it felt more like a ward for the dying. The canvas walls seemed to sag with the weight of my dread. Inside, the air was stifling, thick with the faint odour of sweat, dust, and Henri's lazy breathing.

I brought Jamie onto the mattress with a gentleness that surprised even me, my trembling hands desperate to disguise their fear in the pretence of control. His body felt too light, too insubstantial, as though his life might drain away the moment I let go. I eased him down slowly, adjusting his head on the pillow, arranging his limbs with the care of someone handling something infinitely precious—and infinitely fragile.

Duke was the first to respond, claws scrabbling on the ground as he rushed to Jamie's side. His nose pressed urgently into Jamie's arm, tail wagging with frantic devotion. A whimper escaped him, half-question, half-demand, the dog's instinctive loyalty offering what comfort I could not articulate. Duke had always been Jamie's dog more than mine, had always followed him from room to room, had always chosen his lap over anyone else's. Now that devotion expressed itself in frantic sniffing and anxious whines, as though Duke could somehow diagnose what was wrong through scent alone.

"Shit, you really scared me there, Jamie," I muttered, my voice breaking through the silence, tinged with both relief and the residual terror that still throbbed in my chest. My words were too casual for what I felt, but they were safer than admitting the full force of my fear. Safer than saying I thought you were dead or I don't know what I'd do if I lost you or any of the other truths that hovered just beneath the surface.

Jamie stirred, cracked lips parting. His answer came as a gravelled croak, his denial barely audible. "I'm fine."

I bit down on my immediate retort. He wasn't fine—any fool could see that. The blood crusted on his chest, the pallor of his skin, the way his breathing came in shallow gasps that seemed to cost him effort. His stubborn refusal to admit weakness was infuriating, but it was also quintessentially Jamie. Too proud to yield, even as his body betrayed him. Even now, even here, he couldn't allow himself to be seen as vulnerable.

Part of me wanted to rage at him for it. Part of me loved him for it.

"What the hell were you doing out there?" I pressed, the words sharper than I intended, edged with the lingering sting of panic. "We thought you'd stormed off to the lagoon."

He gave no answer, no explanation—only the weary defiance of silence. His eyelids dragged shut, his expression a mask of exhaustion, as though the effort of breathing was burden enough without the added weight of my interrogation. The message was clear: leave me be.

I sat back on my heels, the unspoken clash between us thickening the air. Anger, fear, relief, and suspicion warred inside me, but beneath it all pulsed something colder: calculation. If he truly was slipping away, if this wound of his was worse than any of us dared admit, then his silence might not be obstinacy—it might be resignation. And that terrified me more than any words could have.

The absence of his shirt struck me with fresh force. Skin bare against the arid air, his chest was left vulnerable to dust, sun, and whatever unseen infection might lurk in the wound beneath. The gash looked worse than it had this morning—angrier, more swollen, the skin around it taking on that shiny, stretched quality that suggested fluid building beneath.

"And you've got no shirt on to protect your chest!" The words escaped sharper than I intended, my worry cloaked in frustration.

His answer was little more than a murmur, fragile as the breaths that carried it. He confessed intending to wade into the river, seeking relief in its cool embrace, as though that alone could soothe the damage festering inside him. For a heartbeat, I wanted to snap back—to demand how he could be so careless—but instead I bit my tongue, letting his confession linger between us.

"I'm probably just dehydrated," he added, his voice edged with stubbornness, as if reason could erase the peril. The simplicity of his rationale, its almost casual dismissal of his own condition, half-appeased my fear and half-infuriated me.

Just dehydrated. As if the wound on his chest didn't exist. As if he hadn't collapsed in the desert. As if I hadn't spent the last ten minutes convinced I was carrying his corpse back to camp.

Duty overrode the surge of emotion. I forced my tone brisk, businesslike. "I'll get you some water." I turned and left the tent, every stride a release of pent-up agitation. Action was safer than words. Action gave me something to do, something that felt like control when everything else was spiralling beyond my grasp.

When I returned, the scene that greeted me was jarringly incongruous. Jamie sat upright now, his gauntness momentarily disguised by movement. Duke, oblivious to the shadows that stalked us, wriggled with unrestrained joy as he nipped at Jamie's hands in a mock skirmish. Jamie's lips curved faintly in what might have been a smile, and for a fleeting second the world righted itself, pretending at normality.

I pressed the water bottle into his hands. "Here, drink all of it," I instructed, my tone more command than suggestion.

He obeyed slowly, each deliberate swallow a small triumph. I watched his throat work with every gulp, willing the liquid to knit back the strength that had been leached from him. His pallor shifted, ever so slightly, as the bottle emptied—just enough to suggest a fragile reprieve, a temporary stay of execution.

Only then did I allow my attention to drift. My gaze settled on the box I had brought earlier, still sitting where I'd left it against the tent wall. Amongst the jumbled comforts of dog toys and familiar belongings lay the envelope Gladys had entrusted to me. Plain. Sealed. Carrying whatever words she hadn't been able to speak aloud.

I retrieved it and held it out to Jamie, a silent exchange for the empty bottle. I caught the subtle shift in his face—the creased brows, the flicker of suspicion softening into curiosity. The transition was almost imperceptible, yet it played out like a shadow moving across his features.

"What's this?" he asked, his voice hoarse but no longer the fragile rasp of before. It had a trace of returning strength, though the effort of speaking was written in the strain of his throat.

"It's a letter from Gladys," I replied.

"A letter? Why did she write me a letter?"

"Well, that's what I first said," I admitted, shrugging slightly as if to downplay the strangeness of it. "But she's got a point. She can't talk to you. So, she decided a letter was the next best option."

Jamie's eyes widened, the spark in them suddenly sharper. "She believed my message then? Does she believe where I am?"

"Yeah," I said, forcing a steadiness into my reply that I didn't truly feel. "They're sitting on the couch at home now, waiting for me to return without the dog's beds and toys."

Jamie's brows arched in disbelief. "They?"

"Beatrix," I confirmed, the single name dragging a fresh complexity into the room. Saying it aloud tightened the coil of tension already wrapped around my chest. "Gladys didn't exactly leave me with much choice."

His answer came not in words but in sound—a scoff, sharp and derisive. For a heartbeat, the sound filled the space, a declaration of his stubborn independence even when bloodied, weakened, and on the edge. It was such a Jamie sound—dismissive, sardonic, refusing to be impressed or alarmed by anything as mundane as the expansion of our circle of knowledge.

And though part of me bristled at his casual dismissal of my concerns, another part almost welcomed it. That scoff was proof that Jamie was still Jamie: infuriating, unyielding, and alive.

"Have you read it?" he pressed, his eyes narrowing as he held the envelope like a challenge. His gaze fixed on me, testing, as though the fragile slip of paper contained more than words—it contained trust.

"No," I said firmly, meeting his stare without flinching. "It's for you."

Jamie studied me for a beat longer, then relented with a small, weary nod. "I'll read it later." His voice was flat, tired, but his actions spoke louder—he slid the envelope beneath his pillow with a casualness that belied its weight.

“Sure. I think Paul's out looking for you," I offered, shifting the conversation away from the letter and the intimacies it might contain.

"I know," he replied, the resignation in his tone heavy.

"He should be back soon," I said, pushing past the silence. Then, more firmly: "I have to go. Don't go doing anything stupid again. Stay in bed for the rest of the day."

I turned to leave, but not before stealing one last glance over my shoulder. Jamie lay there, chest rising unevenly, his strength paper-thin yet stubbornly present. He was a paradox—resilient and vulnerable, hardened and fragile, the man I loved and the man who'd betrayed me wrapped in the same damaged body. Watching him, my heart waged war with itself. Love wrestled against anger, fear clashed with duty, and somewhere beneath it all lurked an ache I couldn't silence.

This morning, I'd been ready to hate him. Now I was terrified of losing him. The contradiction felt almost absurd, and yet it was the truest thing I knew.

As I stepped out into the harsh light of Clivilius, the immediate crisis of Jamie's collapse gave way to the larger crisis waiting back on Earth. Joel's body. Gladys and Beatrix. The blood-soaked clothes in my bathtub. The doctor's appointment at four-fifteen that might save Jamie's life.

Strategy and speculation returned to fill the space his presence had occupied. The battlefield of my mind erupted once more, maps of survival overlaying visions of disaster. What path could we take? How long before the cracks widened too far to bridge?

Life sure knows how to be complicated, I thought bitterly, the words silent but sharp.

In that instant, an idea took root. New, untested, dangerous perhaps—but undeniably compelling.