The Room, the Key, the Fall

“Sometimes, salvation looks like a locked room. Sometimes, it looks like running straight through the wall.”

"What the hell do you think you're doing, Beatrix?"

The words exploded from Sergeant Claiborne, each syllable laced with fury and incredulity. The sound reverberated in the enclosed space, amplifying the menace that rolled off him in waves. Then came the slam—his fist crashing against the wall with such force it rattled the air. The sharp, sudden violence of it made me flinch instinctively, my spine straightening like a drawn bowstring.

My heart hammered in my chest, thudding wildly against my ribs. Adrenaline surged through my bloodstream, sharpening every sensation to a fine point. The stale air, the faint buzz of a flickering ceiling light, the electric tension that seemed to pulse from the very walls—all of it pressed in around me.

I didn’t move. Couldn’t. My muscles were locked in a silent war between fight and flight. But I met his gaze, lifting my chin slightly in defiance, even as my insides twisted with unease. My lips stayed pressed tightly shut, a dam holding back a torrent of biting words that I knew would only escalate things. I didn’t owe him an explanation. Not here. Not like this.

But my eyes—my eyes refused to blink, refused to waver. They bore into his with all the heat and confusion bubbling just beneath the surface. What had provoked this reaction from him? Was it disappointment? Was it fear? Or something deeper—something far more dangerous?

The intensity of his stare bore down on me, unrelenting, probing. It was like standing beneath a spotlight, exposed and scrutinised, stripped of all pretence. I could feel the accusation in the air between us, thick and suffocating.

Then, something shifted.

The tension in his shoulders didn’t vanish, but it cracked, ever so slightly. With a frustrated huff, he broke eye contact and turned from me, as though facing me any longer might push him past some invisible line. His posture changed—a fraction less rigid, a shade less volatile. He wasn’t backing down, not entirely, but it was a retreat of sorts. A sign that whatever battle he was preparing to wage, he hadn’t yet decided how far he was willing to go.

And in that thin sliver of space, I exhaled quietly—still a prisoner, but not yet a casualty.

Seizing the moment, my eyes darted around, cataloguing the details of our surroundings with the cool efficiency of someone trained to see opportunity in confinement. The room was harshly illuminated, the overhead down lights buzzing faintly, their sterile glare stripping the space of any warmth. Every object within it was sharply defined—every angle, every edge cast in unforgiving shadow. The furniture, a mismatched collection of metal chairs and collapsible tables, had been stacked in clean, military fashion against the far wall, leaving the room feeling both clinical and claustrophobic.

My gaze flicked to the corner where several poker machines stood dormant, their garish colours dulled in the absence of life. They looked almost sinister in the silence, their usual melodies and whirring lights absent—as if they'd been decommissioned in anticipation of something far less innocent than a game of chance.

But then, something else caught my attention. My eyes locked onto it with immediate intent—a large, mobile whiteboard standing just off-centre to my right, its surface stained with the ghost of half-erased diagrams and notes. It was angled slightly towards the wall, as though recently wheeled out of place and forgotten.

Can’t be more than three metres away, I estimated silently, my mind already whirring into motion. Each step, each potential obstacle was measured in a blink, my instincts overriding the haze of adrenaline still flooding my system.

And then I remembered the weight in my hands.

The small device—my hidden salvation—pressed between my palms, once secreted away with quiet desperation, now shifted into position with deliberate care. The Portal Key. Its presence against my skin was like a spark in the dark, a sharp jolt of awareness. I curled my fingers ever so slightly around its edges, drawing it deeper into my grip, the cool metal grounding me in a reality where escape, once a fading hope, had returned as a tantalising possibility.

The air in the room seemed to still, as if it too were holding its breath, waiting to see if I would dare to act.

"I can't help you if you run," Charlie's voice landed with an unexpected weight, dragging me from the precipice of action, grounding me momentarily in the now.

My eyes narrowed, suspicion sharpening their focus into a glare that could’ve carved through steel. I studied him—really studied him—not just the man but the shifting shadow he cast over the room. Every detail of his stance, his tone, his calculated calm, reeked of contradiction. Skepticism coiled in my chest, thick and suffocating. My lips, though twitching with the urge to lash out, remained sealed—a dam holding back the deluge of questions and accusations thundering against it.

Does he really want to help me?

The question reverberated like a tremor through the halls of my mistrust. I could practically hear Leigh's voice behind it, warning me with his usual mix of cynicism and precision. What does Charlie know? Why the hell was Leigh tailing him? Not just watching from the shadows but tracking his every move like a predator does prey. If Leigh knew something—if he suspected something—

Would Leigh approve if I ran?

I didn’t need to answer that. Of course he would. He gave me the fucking device! That little piece of illicit technology now nestled between my palms, its cool weight burning like a brand. My only ticket out of this room, this trap. My lifeline.

"Beatrix, I can help you," Charlie said again, and this time his tone shifted—softer, more deliberate. His eyes weren’t just on me anymore; they were zeroed in on the barely hidden device cradled in my hands. And then he did something unexpected: he raised his hands, palms out in a pantomime of peace, even as he took a cautious step closer. The movement was rehearsed. It reeked of someone used to talking down frightened people, dangerous people. People like me.

"I can help you protect Luke."

The name hit me like a shot to the sternum. My breath caught. I felt it—my ribs cinching tight around my lungs, the air thinning in my throat. A gasp escaped before I could catch it, a sound too soft to echo but loud enough to betray me.

Does he know Luke’s a Guardian?

The question exploded inside my skull. It was no longer just about Charlie and me—it was about Luke, about the Guardians, about everything I’d kept buried behind careful lies and manufactured calm. The thought that Charlie might know—know the truth about who Luke was, what he was—was almost too much to comprehend.

And worse—far worse—

Does he know who is trying to kill him?

A flicker of memory intruded, vivid and uninvited: blood smeared on cold metal, limbs twisted in unnatural angles in the back of a delivery truck. The silence of death hanging heavier than any scream.

I swallowed, hard.

Does Charlie know about Joel? Does he know what I did?

The questions gathered like a stormcloud behind my eyes, and I blinked once, slow and deliberate, pushing the panic back into its cage. Charlie was still watching me, his expression unreadable.

And my fingers tightened around the Portal Key.

"I'm on your side, Beatrix," Charlie said, inching closer with each word, his voice low and coaxing, like a man trying to lure a stray animal from the shadows. His steps were measured, deliberate, but each one brought with it a fresh spike of dread.

With every advance he made, I retreated, my movements instinctive, driven by something deeper than logic—a gut-level instinct that screamed he was not what he seemed. It was a silent choreography of unease: one step forward, one step back. A twisted waltz of distrust and fear. My breath quickened, each inhale laced with panic. My hands, bound as they were, clenched around the device so tightly my knuckles ached.

My mind was a whirlwind of alarms. No, it hissed, an insistent warning reverberating like an electric pulse. No, no, no. If Leigh was watching him—tracking him—then there was a reason. A reason I hadn't yet seen, but one that I couldn’t afford to ignore. Charlie isn’t to be trusted. The thought became my anchor, the only constant in a landscape that was rapidly shifting beneath my feet.

My heart pounded, a brutal rhythm that threatened to deafen me. I could feel it in my throat, behind my eyes, in every trembling nerve along my spine. The room—stark and cold just moments ago—now seemed to shrink with every breath I took, the walls pressing in, the ceiling dropping lower. Claustrophobia set in, not from the space, but from the pressure—of choices, of time, of the weight of consequences crowding in.

And in my hands, the device pulsed with presence, not with light or sound, but with sheer possibility. It was more than just an object. It was choice. A line drawn in the sand. An escape for which there could be no reversal.

Its weight had changed—grown heavier, as if absorbing the burden of everything I couldn’t say aloud. Of the questions I had no answers to. Of the people I might yet lose.

Of the truths I was still too afraid to confront.

A sharp rap on the door shattered the tense atmosphere, a percussive knock that cracked through the charged air like a gunshot. The sound was jarring—so sudden, so out of place—that it jerked both Charlie’s focus and mine towards it, our heads turning in unison. My breath hitched in my throat. This was it. My moment.

Without another thought, I fumbled with the device Leigh had slipped into my hands, my fingers trembling with urgency. The Portal Key felt impossibly small now, almost insignificant in its weight, yet heavy with promise. I found the discreet button at one end, pressing it hard. A sharp sting pierced my fingertip, like the bite of an impatient wasp, and then the air itself seemed to split.

From the device sprang a small orb of light—brilliant, pure, and impossibly fast. It shot straight toward the whiteboard, the hum of its energy building as it neared. When it struck, it erupted in a blaze of pulsating colour, an explosion that painted the room in surges of violet, gold, and emerald. The whiteboard shimmered, then liquefied into a canvas of impossible light, a curtain torn open between this world and somewhere else entirely.

Charlie hesitated. That fraction of a second—torn between his urge to halt me and the call of duty at the door—was all I needed. He stepped back toward the interruption. The tides had shifted.

Our eyes locked one last time, an unspoken exchange suspended in that strange, surreal moment. Then I ran.

My body moved without conscious thought, driven by instinct, desperation, and the barest sliver of faith. The carpet burned beneath my feet as I lunged headlong into the cascade of colour. As I passed through the veil, the world around me dissolved into light and motion and a feeling that had no name—like being pulled through the centre of a breath held too long.

Then—silence.

But not silence. A voice emerged, not external, not carried by soundwaves, but pressed directly into the fibres of my being. “Welcome to Clivilius, Beatrix Cramer,” it said, not loud yet thunderous all the same. It was ancient and eternal, as though the place itself was greeting me.

I landed hard.

The ground met me with a dull thud, fine dust puffing up in small clouds around my crumpled form. My bound hands hit first, jarring my wrists with white-hot pain that lanced up to my elbows. I gasped, rolling slightly, trying to orient myself as the breath rushed from my lungs.

A wind swept past me—cool, dry with something faintly metallic, something utterly foreign. I lifted my face into it, blinking against the sting in my eyes, the pain in my body already secondary to the awe clawing at my chest.

Behind me, the Portal still swirled, casting ghostly colours across the strange terrain. It rose tall and defiant against the low, sloping hills, illuminating the cracked earth in washes of unnatural light. It was stunning—savage and beautiful. But everything else was… empty. Silent.

I barely had time to draw in the sight before, with sudden finality, the light was sucked away.

And darkness swallowed the world whole.