4338.212 · July 31, 2018 AD
The Morning After Maggie
Beatrix woke curled against a crate in the Drop Zone, grit in every seam, Maggie's absence still raw as an open wound. The sensible thing would have been to walk to camp, report in, let Paul heap his errands onto her shoulders. Instead, Beatrix aimed for Broken Hill—chasing Luke's offhand promise of an Adelaide Airport shortcut, telling herself it was practical. Telling herself avoidance wasn't the same as running. Almost believing it.
The night had been long and the ground unforgiving.
Beatrix woke with sand worked into places sand had no business being, her spine protesting the angle she'd chosen and her mind still circling the dark. Maggie was gone—swallowed somewhere between the Portal's collapse and the Clivilian dust. Jarod was alive but laying low, his terse message offering nothing resembling explanation. And somewhere beyond the dunes, Bixbus was stirring, its campfires guttering into morning smoke, its people beginning the slow shuffle of another day in exile.
She should have walked to camp. Should have found Paul, accepted whatever task he'd prepared, let herself be useful in the way Guardians were supposed to be useful. But the thought of his questions—of anyone's questions—sat like a stone in her chest.
So she didn't.
Instead, she fixed her thoughts on Luke's throwaway comment about Adelaide Airport, on the possibility of a shortcut that might spare her the fluorescent purgatory of check-in queues and security theatre. Broken Hill first. Paul's errands could wait.
It wasn't running, she told herself. It was strategic redirection.
The distinction felt thinner than she'd have liked.
