4338.211 · July 30, 2018 AD
The Welcome Party
Escaping through an inter-dimensional portal should feel like an ending. Instead, Luke finds himself at the beginning of several new problems — most of them standing right in front of him, and none of them interested in his explanations. The man he just dragged through isn't adjusting well. The people already here have questions he can't answer. And someone wants to know exactly where he left her sister. The sirens may have stopped, but the reckoning is just getting started.
The ochre dust billows around the ute as it skids to a halt, the sudden stillness of Clivilius pressing against Luke's eardrums like a held breath. The transition from Tasmania's winter storm to this vast, sun-bleached emptiness feels less like travel and more like waking from one nightmare into another. Adrian sits rigid in the passenger seat, his brain struggling to process what his eyes are reporting. Whatever chemical buffer his earlier high provided is failing him now, leaving him exposed to the full weight of impossibility. Then he's stumbling toward the dormant portal, fists swinging at the screen — and the portal flares to life just as contact is made. The discharge throws him backward. The motorhome that bursts through a moment later nearly finishes what the shock started. Beatrix's horror at almost killing someone gives way to fury when she learns where Luke left Gladys. Nial's arrival brings recognition — because of course he knows Adrian, because Hobart is exactly that small. And somewhere beneath the chaos, Luke realises the fence delivery is still scheduled for the Owens' property, where the police are probably still processing the scene of his departure.
