The Voice That Answered

"You can scream at the universe all you like. Just don't expect it to care—and definitely don't expect it to talk back."

The sun pressed down on my shoulders like a physical weight, heat soaking through my shirt and into my skin. My jeans had dried to a stiff, uncomfortable crust, the fabric chafing with every step. Sweat trickled down my temples, mixing with the dust that seemed to coat everything in this place, turning my face into a grimy mess.

I walked without thinking, letting my feet find their own path across the dunes. The terrain rose and fell in gentle waves, each crest revealing more of the same — brown and red and yellow, an endless palette of desolation that stretched to the horizon and beyond. The silence was oppressive, broken only by my own laboured breathing and the soft crunch of dust beneath my boots.

My mind wouldn't stop.

It kept circling back to the same thoughts, the same images, wearing grooves in my brain like a needle stuck on a scratched record. The lagoon. Joel's eyes snapping open. Jamie's casual revelation about the glow, about what it really was. The feeling of my body betraying me completely, doing things I hadn't asked for, hadn't wanted, couldn't control.

And underneath all of it, the constant drumbeat of one question: How do I get home?

Brianne would be worried by now. Mum too. I'd left for Jamie's place this morning — was it still this morning? Time had gone slippery, hard to hold onto — and I hadn't come back. Hadn't called, hadn't texted, hadn't given any sign that I was alive. They'd be imagining the worst. Car accident. Assault. Something terrible but explicable, something that fit within the boundaries of normal life.

They wouldn't be imagining this.

No one could imagine this.

I crested another dune and stopped dead.

The portal loomed ahead of me, maybe twenty metres away, rising from the dust like something that had no business existing. I'd seen it before — briefly, when I'd first arrived, when the colours had still been swirling in its surface — but I hadn't really looked at it. Hadn't had the chance, between the panic and the confusion and the endless stream of impossible things demanding my attention.

Now I looked.

It was massive. Easily five metres tall, maybe three metres across, a rectangular slab of... nothing. That was the only word for it. The surface was translucent, like frosted glass, but there was no frame, no structure, nothing holding it up. It just stood there, anchored to the dust by forces I couldn't begin to understand, its edges sharp and clean against the hazy sky.

I had to crane my neck to take in its full height, my eyes tracing the outline from base to top. The thing was enormous, dominating the landscape, making everything around it seem small and insignificant. Including me.

This was it. The barrier between me and everything I'd lost. The door that had swallowed me whole and refused to spit me back out.

In a few months, I'd be turning twenty-four. The thought surfaced unbidden, carrying with it a cascade of images I couldn't block out. Birthday cake at the manor, Mum insisting on too many candles. Brianne beside me, huge with pregnancy, her hand resting on her belly. The baby — our baby — maybe already born by then, a tiny bundle of new life that I was supposed to be there for.

Instead, I was here. Standing in front of a giant screen of nothing, surrounded by dust and emptiness, with no way back.

The unfairness of it hit me like a fist to the chest.

"I want to go home!"

The words tore out of me before I could stop them, raw and desperate, echoing across the barren landscape. I drove my boot into the ground, dust exploding around my foot, a pathetic attempt to vent the rage building inside me. The impact jarred up through my leg, accomplishing nothing except making my ankle throb.

You are home, Kain Jeffries.

The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. Cold, flat, completely devoid of emotion — like someone had taught a computer to speak but forgotten to give it a soul. It sliced through the air, through my thoughts, through whatever thin membrane of sanity I'd been clinging to.

My legs buckled.

I went down hard, my knees hitting the dust, the impact sending a jolt of pain up through my thighs. All the anger drained out of me in a rush, leaving behind something hollow and cold. Something that felt too big to contain, too heavy to carry.

"Fuck you, Clivilius."

The curse came out as barely more than a whisper, choked and broken. Not defiance anymore. Just... defeat.

The tears started before I could stop them.

I crouched there in the dust, head bowed, shoulders shaking, and I cried. Really cried — the kind of crying I hadn't done since I was a kid, the kind that comes from somewhere deep and doesn't care about pride or composure or any of the walls you've built to keep yourself together. Tears cut tracks through the grime on my face, dripping onto the pale earth below, leaving dark spots that the dust quickly swallowed.

I cried for Brianne, who didn't know where I was. For the baby I might never hold. For Mum and Dad and my sisters, who would spend the rest of their lives wondering what happened to me. For the house Brianne and I had been saving for, the future we'd been planning, all the ordinary things I'd taken for granted until they were ripped away.

I cried for myself, too. For the bloke who'd woken up this morning with nothing more serious on his mind than checking on his uncle, who'd walked into Luke's kitchen expecting a cup of tea and a quick chat, who'd had no idea that his entire life was about to end.

The portal stood silent before me, offering nothing. No colours, no swirling light, no doorway back to everything I'd lost. Just that blank, translucent surface, reflecting the empty sky.

I don't know how long I stayed there. Time had stopped meaning anything, measured only by the ache in my knees and the gradual slowing of my tears. The sun continued its arc across the sky, indifferent to my grief. The wind whispered across the dunes, carrying nothing but dust.

Eventually, the tears ran dry.

I stayed crouched for a while longer, staring at nothing, feeling hollowed out and strange. Like someone had scooped out my insides and left just the shell behind. The despair was still there — I could feel it lurking at the edges, waiting for its next opportunity — but for now it had retreated, leaving behind a numb exhaustion that was almost worse.

Slowly, I wiped my face with the back of my hand. The fabric of my sleeve came away wet and dirty, leaving smears across my skin that I couldn't bring myself to care about. I pushed myself to my feet, my legs trembling slightly, and turned away from the portal.

The Drop Zone was just ahead, marked by those two small piles of stones I'd seen earlier. Supplies were scattered across the area — boxes, building materials, all the things Luke had been bringing through. I needed to find the tent pegs. That was why I was here. That was the task Glenda had given me.

One foot in front of the other. That was all I could manage right now.

I trudged toward the supplies, my boots dragging through the dust. The sun had shifted while I'd been falling apart, dropping lower in the sky, painting everything in warmer tones. Late afternoon, maybe. A few hours of daylight left, if this place followed anything like normal rules.

Then I saw them.

Three of them, bundled together near the edge of the supply pile, their carry straps coiled neatly on top.

"Sleeping bags."

The word came out with more enthusiasm than I'd expected, a sudden spark of something that might have been hope cutting through the numbness. Basic comfort. Something soft to lie on tonight instead of bare ground. Something that connected to normal life, to camping trips and sleepovers and all the mundane experiences that suddenly seemed impossibly precious.

"Luke must have left them here," I murmured, bending down to grab the first bag's strap. The coarse fibres dug into my palm, rough but solid. Real.

I glanced up at the sky, squinting against the warm glow of the sinking sun. The blue had softened into something gentler, oranges and pinks bleeding along the horizon where distant mountains — or maybe just larger dunes, hard to tell — broke the line between earth and sky. Beautiful, in a way that felt almost cruel. This place had no right to be beautiful.

The fading daylight meant I didn't have long. A few hours, maybe less, before darkness fell and whatever passed for night in Clivilius wrapped itself around us. The sleeping bags would be needed. One small thing I could do right, one small contribution to survival.

I hefted the first bag over my left shoulder, the weight settling against my back. Then the second, draping it across my right shoulder, the strap digging into muscles already sore from the day's exertions. The third I positioned behind my neck, letting it rest against my chest, bouncing slightly with each breath.

Three bags. One trip. Not efficient, exactly, but better than coming back twice.

In my haste to adjust the load, I twisted too quickly. My body protested the sudden movement, and the bag on my left swung out, catching a small rectangular box perched on the edge of a larger container. The box went flying, hitting the ground with a metallic clatter that echoed across the empty landscape.

"Ah, the tent pegs."

Right. That was the whole reason Glenda had sent me here in the first place.

I bent down to retrieve the box, my movements awkward with all three bags draped across my body. My fingers closed around the cardboard, and I straightened with a slight wobble, the sleeping bags shifting and bouncing as I tried to find my balance.

"Hey Kain."

Luke's voice came from somewhere behind me, warm and casual, like we were mates meeting up for a beer instead of two people trapped in an impossible situation with a complicated history of betrayal between them.

I turned, feeling the heat rising in my chest, already bracing myself for whatever complication came next.