The Safe and the Secret

“Trust isn’t always given freely—it’s locked in safes, sealed in plastic, and handed over with conditions.”

The wardrobe door, its white paint chipped into a constellation of tiny beige wounds, groaned on its track as though protesting the disturbance. The motion disturbed the still air inside, sending a faint breath of lavender sachet and stale dust into the room. A sparse row of empty hangers—spindly, wire-thin—swayed from the rail, their faint metallic chime oddly forlorn, like wind through a distant flagpole.

"Where are your clothes?" I inquired, my voice edged with confusion that I made no effort to disguise. The question wasn’t just curiosity—it was the absurd practicality of it. Clothes were the easiest thing to leave in one place, especially when Luke had the luxury of coming and going between worlds as freely as most people popped to the shops. And to wash them, my thoughts added dryly, because Clivilius wasn’t exactly known for its convenient laundrettes.

Luke, stretching onto the balls of his feet, reached toward the top shelf, his back briefly to me. His shoulders shifted beneath the fabric of his shirt with that subtle strain of someone aiming for just an inch more reach than comfort allowed. "They're in the other side of the wardrobe," he stated, his tone carrying an edge of obviousness—as if I’d missed the memo about the secret annex.

I winced slightly at the sound of his fingers grazing the dusty timber, a faint rasp of skin on wood that echoed in the otherwise still room. The air seemed to thicken with that dry, slightly sweet scent of neglected furniture.

"Got it," he declared, a flicker of triumph curling around the words as something metallic gave a small, distinct clink against the shelf. I caught the subtle shift in his weight as he rocked back onto his heels, his movement measured, like he was pulling more than just an object down from an inaccessible corner of his life.

My hand moved instinctively towards the jingling keys in Luke’s grasp, the faint metallic rattle like a lure pulling me closer. But before I could close the distance, he shifted his focus entirely, as if the handover had never been on his agenda. Without a glance in my direction, he lowered himself to his knees, the movement deliberate, purposeful.

I held my ground but kept my gaze fixed on him, tracking the way he reached into the shadowed base of the wardrobe. His hands emerged with several pairs of shoes—lined neatly, almost ceremoniously—before being set aside in ordered rows. The faint, dusty tang of leather and old polish drifted upwards, mixing with the lingering scent of lavender from the wardrobe’s interior.

A flicker of doubt crossed my mind, quick and sharp. The keys. Were they even Paul’s? The thought carried with it a jolt of nervous excitement, the kind that makes the air taste slightly metallic. Whatever this was, Luke wasn’t treating it like a simple retrieval. This had the energy of a reveal.

His movements slowed, narrowing in precision. Those meticulous fingers pressed into the carpet, feeling along the fibres as though the floor itself had seams only he could sense. I leaned forward slightly, caught between curiosity and the quiet electricity of intrusion, as he began peeling back the carpet in a slow, careful sweep.

The fabric folded away like a curtain, exposing a smooth, gleaming surface beneath—unexpected, deliberate, and entirely out of place.

"You have a safe buried in your wardrobe floor?" My voice came out tinged with awe and disbelief, the kind reserved for finding a trapdoor in an otherwise ordinary room. I lowered myself beside him, knees brushing the edge of the carpet, my curiosity now fully uncontained.

The key, now secure in Luke’s steady grip, slipped into the lock as if the two had been waiting years to reunite. He paused there, the metal teeth seated but unmoved, letting the moment breathe. A thin strand of anticipation stretched between us, humming with the kind of weight that makes the air feel closer.

"Of course," he replied, the words carrying that infuriating mix of confidence and mischief. His grin was wide and unrestrained, the kind that belonged to someone about to pull back a curtain and show you something they knew you’d never forget.

The turn of the key was decisive, deliberate, the mechanism inside yielding with a low, satisfying click—a sound that hit somewhere deep in the spine. Luke’s hands moved with ease as he lifted the lid, hinges sighing faintly.

I leaned in instinctively, drawn into the narrowing space between us and the open mouth of the safe. My breath hitched, suspended in the moment before my eyes could truly take it in.

Inside was no random stash. The interior was neatly regimented, lined with rows of zip-lock bags swollen with their contents. Each bulged with the taut, almost brittle look of items pressed in haste or hidden with careful intention—either hurried packing or meticulous secrecy, I couldn’t yet tell. The faint scent of cold metal and stored paper wafted up, a whisper of the lives this collection had been removed from.

"Here's Paul’s," Luke announced, his voice light, almost offhand, as though plucking a particular truth from a sea of others. His hand closed on one bag without hesitation—no riffling, no second-guessing—like a man who already knew exactly where each secret was filed.

He handed it over with a casualness that didn’t quite match the anticipation curling in the space between us. The thin plastic gave a dry, papery crinkle under my touch, the sound at odds with the quiet charge of the moment.

Through the cloudy film, my fingers found the familiar, recognisable shapes—a phone with its cool, flat surface; the soft, yielding edge of a wallet; the jagged contours of various scraps of paper, folded and re-folded into stubborn permanence. Ordinary things. Everyday things. And yet here, retrieved from a hidden compartment beneath a man’s wardrobe, they had weight.

Each item felt like a fragment of a paused existence, sealed away until someone—me—was deemed fit to carry it forward. The weight in my hands was more than physical. It was trust, implied but unspoken. And trust was always a currency, especially here.

A faint shiver threaded its way along my spine, not entirely from the coolness of the plastic. This wasn’t just a transfer of property—it was entry into a private world. A world that had been deliberately locked away, pressed flat into zip-lock bags and entombed under carpet and timber. And now, that sealed history was mine to deliver. Or disturb.

Questions jostled for position in my head, each one pressing at the back of my teeth, impatient to be spoken. But the one that rose first, buoyed by its own urgency, slipped out before the others could crowd it back down.

"Is there a bag for everyone?" My voice was casual enough to pass for idle curiosity, but underneath it, there was a sharper note—an awareness of what it might mean for someone to catalogue lives with such meticulous neatness.

"Yeah. I figured keeping things grouped by owner would be the best way to manage," Luke replied without pause. The words were practical, matter-of-fact, underpinned by the quiet confidence of someone who already knows the system works. That same confidence was impressive… and a little unsettling. There was something almost clinical in the thought of reducing people’s lives to labelled plastic pouches.

I was halfway to nodding—ready to concede the sense in it—when he broke the rhythm. "Oh, apart from this one," he said, his hand producing another bag like a magician revealing a trick he wasn’t sure he wanted the audience to see.

My eyes narrowed of their own accord, instinctively honing in on the contents. A cluster of driver’s licences, their laminated faces catching the light in uneven flashes, gazed up at me from inside the cloudy plastic. The effect was faintly eerie, as if all these tiny, frozen expressions had been corralled together for reasons no one had yet volunteered.

"Why keep all the driver’s licences separate?" I asked, the question slipping out in a tone that mixed genuine confusion with the kind of intrigue that was already knotting threads together in my mind.

Luke’s answer—or rather, the lack of one—came in movement instead of words. His hand closed over the bag with a quiet decisiveness, reclaiming it before I could tilt it or examine the faces more closely. Without meeting my eyes, he slid it back into the safe, the zip-lock making a faint rasp as it rejoined its companions.

The silence that followed was not empty—it was weighted, thickened by whatever reason he had chosen not to share. The kind of silence that told you the truth was there, just out of reach, and Luke had no intention of handing it over.

Choosing not to pry further into the peculiar hierarchy of Luke’s organisational system, I let the mystery of the driver’s licences slide—for now. My attention drifted back to the zip-lock bag in my lap, the one heavy with Paul’s possessions.

"What's all this?" I asked, breaking the thin thread of silence between us as I sifted through the bag. My fingertips moved over the uneven landscape inside—creased slips of paper, their edges soft from handling, each scrawled with dense jumbles of numbers and letters that seemed to hum with quiet significance.

"It's the notes I've been making for Paul. It includes all the important stuff like the codes to unlock his phone and access his bank accounts," Luke explained, his voice warm with a hint of pride, as though the orderliness of it all was a form of armour he’d built against chaos.

His answer shifted something in my perception of him. I’d seen Luke’s resourcefulness before, but this… this was different. There was method here—meticulous, deliberate. He was a man who thought about worst-case scenarios, who kept the strings tied in a world where most people had long since let them tangle. In Clivilius, that kind of foresight wasn’t just admirable. Not even simply survival—it was, perhaps, visionary.

I knelt there, scraps of paper in hand, the ink faintly smudged in places, thinking about the quiet weight he must carry. It wasn’t just responsibility—it was the knowledge of every lock and key in someone else’s life. That kind of knowledge could save you… or ruin you.

A sudden clink broke through my thoughts. Paul’s keys dangled in front of my face, the metal glinting even in the dim light. Each was meticulously labelled in Luke’s precise, almost architectural handwriting. The tag bearing Paul’s name caught the glow, its neat lettering almost soothing in its certainty. In a world that thrived on disorder, this level of preparation felt almost… comforting.

"Feel free to access the safe whenever you need to. Leave the key at the back of the top shelf," Luke instructed. His voice was steady, but there was something in the cadence—measured, deliberate—that lent the simple directions the weight of a ritual. It wasn’t just a procedural note; it was an initiation, a quiet passing of the torch.

"Of course," I replied, meeting his gaze just long enough to let him know I understood. This wasn’t merely about opening a lock—it was about guarding the things behind it. The safe was a container, yes, but more than that, it was a vault of trust, of carefully guarded secrets, each one bound to threads of mutual dependence.

"And only turn the mobile phones on when you need to use them," he added, the tone shifting—slightly lower, a shade more serious.

"Why’s that?" I asked, my nose instinctively wrinkling in thought, as if trying to catch the scent of the answer before it arrived.

"I don't know whether police really can track our exact locations from a phone when it is turned on, but I'd rather not take any chances to find out." The words came with a candour I didn’t often hear from him—a rare admission of the limits of his certainty.

I gave a small shrug, the movement slow and deliberate, a silent echo of his caution. The world had made me wary of many things, but technology and surveillance sat firmly in the realm of mysteries I’d rather not test. If the choice was between ignorance and danger, I was happy to keep the scales tipped in ignorance’s favour.

Luke’s guidance didn’t taper off—it tightened, each word another stitch in the net he was weaving around us. "And don't reply to any messages or answer any calls unless they are from me." His tone had an edge of finality to it, the kind that closed the door on questions before they could form. It wasn’t just a rule; it was a boundary line, bright and unmissable.

I nodded, the motion quick and clipped, a small physical contract that sealed my understanding. Each instruction felt like another thread in a larger web—one designed not to trap, but to hold us together against whatever was prowling outside its edges.

Then came a subtle shift in his voice—a faint tightening, like a rope drawn through the hand just before it’s tied.

"Oh," he added, the word a quiet interjection that sharpened my focus. "Use the cash sparingly and be sure to make a note of any bank transactions on the relevant paper." His eyes locked with mine in that way people do when they want to be certain you’re hearing not just the words, but the stakes behind them.

I nodded again, slower this time, the gesture weighed down by thought. My mind was already running ahead—counting out coins in hypothetical situations, imagining the neat columns of figures on whatever “relevant paper” he had in mind. In a world where supply was a fragile thread, every cent was oxygen, and letting it slip away without care was as reckless as holding your breath for too long.

As Luke’s thoughts spilled out, the tone of his voice shifted—less the clipped precision of instructions, more the unguarded edges of worry slipping through.

"Finances don't go too far. I'm really not sure how we're going to keep up paying for supplies and materials to help them build the new settlement," he admitted, the vulnerability in his words quiet but undeniable, like a crack forming in a load-bearing wall.

My lips pressed into a thin, unmoving line, the gesture instinctive, as though I could hold back the implications simply by refusing to give them space to breathe. This wasn’t just Luke’s burden—it was all of ours. The settlement wasn’t built on stone and timber alone; it stood on the fragile currency of trust, labour, and whatever scraps of cash we could pull together. If the money faltered, so would the foundations of the world we were trying to stitch into place.

Luke’s voice threaded back into my thoughts, pulling me from the quiet spiral. "I think we’re going to need to get creative," he mused, his gaze drifting somewhere past me, into that middle distance where ideas are still unformed but already dangerous.

The words lingered in the space between us, charged with both risk and possibility. They found a foothold in me, sparking a tangle of apprehension and resolve. In this new world, creativity wasn’t the optional flourish it might have been on Earth—it was survival. And survival, I knew, rarely came without a cost.

An idea struck—sharp and sudden, like the spark off flint—and I felt it shift me from the inside out. My posture loosened, my features softened, and there was a flicker in my eyes I couldn’t have hidden even if I’d wanted to. It was the sort of change you feel before you fully understand it yourself.

"What is it?" Luke’s voice cut through his own financial fretting. He’d caught the change in me, and I could feel his attention narrowing in.

A slow, deliberate smile unfurled across my face, curling into something that was neither entirely innocent nor entirely reassuring. I leaned into the weight of the idea, letting it fill my voice.

"I know how we can get more cash," I said, my tone light but threaded with intent. The corners of my mouth lifted into a knowing smirk. "Lots of cash."

His head tilted slightly, suspicion and hope warring behind his eyes. "How?" he pressed, his voice coloured with equal parts scepticism and the faintest whiff of relief at the possibility.

I shook my head, letting a playful kind of secrecy take the reins. The moment felt lighter than it probably should, the shadow of our financial strain momentarily eclipsed by the lure of the plan forming in my mind. Slipping Paul’s keys into my pocket, I rose to my feet, the metal clinking softly as they settled against the fabric.

"Never mind about the details. I think the less you know the better. Leave it to me and Jarod."

"Jarod?" Luke’s voice snagged on the name, a small crack in his composure betraying the spike of panic in his eyes. He stood too, almost reflexively, his movements quick and edged with tension. The mere mention of Jarod had clearly struck a match to his apprehensions.

But my grin held fast, undimmed by the heat of his worry. "Just trust me on this one, Luke," I said, the confidence in my tone perhaps more armour than truth. Without granting him the chance to circle back with warnings or demands, I turned on my heel and stepped out of the bedroom, the shift in air from cool to cooler carrying me down the hallway. My stride lengthened with each step, the living room ahead pulling me toward movement, toward action—toward whatever this was about to become.

As I activated my Portal Key, the air in front of me fractured into motion. The living room wall bloomed into a kaleidoscope of buzzing colours—electric blues bleeding into molten golds, sharp streaks of crimson darting between them like live wires. The hum of it pressed against my skin, a vibration that seemed to bypass sound entirely and settle somewhere deep in the sternum. This was the threshold, shimmering and impatient, a living invitation to step through.

"Beatrix." Luke’s voice followed me, threading itself into the low thrum of the portal. Concern roughened the edges of it, urgency stretching the syllables like he was trying to reach me before I disappeared.

I turned, the whirl of light casting shifting patterns across his face. His expression was a knot—fear tangled with something quieter but heavier: the plea for me not to do exactly what I was about to.

"Please be careful," he said, the words low, his brow drawn tight in a way that made the lines there look older, deeper.

A small laugh escaped me—more reflex than amusement. "Well, I can't promise that one." The lightness in my tone skimmed over the surface of what I felt; the truth of it was knotted in my chest, where the thrill of risk tangled with the weight of what I was about to set in motion.

The portal’s pull was magnetic now, the colours flaring and folding in on themselves. Eager to reach Jarod, I let the urgency sharpen my focus. Pulling out my phone, I tapped out the message quickly, each word landing with the precision of a thrown knife.

Beatrix: I'm coming for Maggie.

The send icon flashed, and in that instant, the plan was no longer an idea—it was in motion.