Through Dust and Steel

"Cars aren’t built for rifts, but neither was I—and yet here we are."

Driving a car through a Portal is a bit like swallowing a golf ball. You know it’s technically possible, but every instinct in your body screams no. The Prado resisted the shift with a juddering shiver, the bonnet vibrating like it was trying to shake itself free from the madness, the whole machine thrumming with the indignation of something built for roads, not rifts.

Then, with a final lurch, we were through.

The transition cut sharp and clean. One moment Adelaide’s sky pressed low and grey, the taste of rain thick in the air. The next — the raw silence of Clivilius, broken only by the churn of the Prado’s engine. Tyres slammed down onto uneven dirt, the suspension groaning in protest, every bolt and spring announcing its disapproval. Dust erupted around the headlights in lazy spirals, golden motes caught in the angle of an uncompromising sun.

I let the Prado roll forward, slow, steady, the smell of warm bitumen fading, replaced by the dry, dusty tang that clung to this world like an inevitability. Heat radiated up through the floor of the car, ancient and impersonal.

I killed the engine.

Silence folded in like a heavy blanket. No hum of traffic, no background murmur of human life, just the quickening beat of my own pulse. For a moment I stayed put, hands fixed on the steering wheel, heartbeat ticking loud in my ears, louder than the world itself. Absurd, really. I’d stolen a car back from Adelaide bureaucracy and hand-delivered it through dimensions, like some kind of deranged courier service. In the rear-view mirror, my own reflection stared back — smug in the set of the mouth, tired around the eyes.

I lingered longer than I meant to, fingers drumming lightly against the wheel in a rhythm I couldn’t quite stop. Dust still swirled lazily in the cabin, little ghosts of Earth clinging stubbornly to the Prado, as though it hadn’t yet decided to belong here. For all Paul’s stoicism, this car had meant something to him. A tether. A reminder of before. And now it was here, yanked across the divide by me, carrying all that history like contraband.

The driver’s seat smelled faintly of leather and dust, familiar but already altered in this thinner air. Crumbs clung to the creases of the centre console — the trace of sandwiches eaten on some long drive, windows down, radio humming low. The imprint of quiet rituals, of a man who didn’t think in grand gestures but in small continuities. That’s what I’d brought back, more than just steel and rubber. A life, smuggled across worlds.

Movement outside snagged at the corner of my vision.

Paul was already there, waiting at the edge of the Drop Zone as though he’d been carved out of the landscape. Hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the restless wind. He wasn’t surprised — not exactly. He had that look of a man who’d stopped being surprised by improbable things a long time ago. But still, there was something in his frame that loosened, almost imperceptibly, the moment his eyes locked onto the Prado. A tether restored.

And I couldn’t help myself. A grin spread across my face, fierce and unapologetic, the kind that insisted on existing no matter how undignified.

I shoved the door open and stepped out into the dust, shoes crunching against the dry earth. “Paul!” My voice cut across the open space, light and irreverent. “Got your wheels back!”

He didn’t rush. He approached slowly, deliberately, his steps measured like he was unwilling to trust what he was seeing until he’d tested it up close. His gaze didn’t waver from the Prado, scanning it the way someone checks a scar: real, but needing confirmation. At the bull bar, he stopped, one broad hand settling onto the metal as though its solidness was the only proof that mattered. His mouth tugged sideways into a smile, reluctant but undeniable.

“Thanks, Beatrix,” he said at last, the dryness in his voice threaded with something softer. “I see you’ve been busy.”

“Busy’s one word for it.” I leaned back against the driver’s door, arms folding tight across my chest. The Prado’s warm metal pressed into my shoulder, grounding me. “You wouldn’t believe the adventure I had getting this thing here.”

Paul shifted his weight, folding his own arms in reply, and gave me that dry, measuring look he’d perfected. The look that could flatten three paragraphs of explanation into silence. “Do tell.”

I tilted my head, lowering my voice into something conspiratorial, as if I were about to let him in on state secrets. “Well. Let’s just say it wasn’t exactly where you left it.”

His eyebrow climbed, a subtle twitch of scepticism. “It wasn’t?”

“Nope.” I laughed, the sound cutting against the silence like a chisel. Shaking my head, I added, “When I got to the airport, your car was gone. Hauled off to an impound yard across town.”

He sighed then, long and heavy, but there was amusement buried in it. “So you broke into an impound yard to get my car back?”

“Not exactly.” I let the pause stretch, savouring the tension between us before letting my grin widen, wolfish. “I did something a little more… creative.”

His head tilted, eyes narrowing just enough to suggest both caution and curiosity. “Creative how?”

I studied him for a beat, enjoying the moment, then dropped the line with deliberate weight. “I might have convinced the bloke at the gate that I was a government agent. Said your car had a tracking device in it, linked to an ongoing national security case. Classified hardware. Needed immediate retrieval.”

For a second Paul just stared at me, as if waiting for the punchline. Then he barked out a laugh, sudden and loud, his shoulders shaking with it. It wasn’t the neat kind of laugh you give to humour someone — it cracked open from somewhere deeper, relief bleeding through in rough edges. He wiped at the corners of his eyes with the heel of his hand, still grinning. “You’re kidding!”

“Nope.” I let the smugness have its way, coating every syllable. “Best part? He believed every word. Signed me out, opened the gate, waved me off like I was bloody ASIO.”

Paul leaned back against the Prado, one palm resting on the bull bar as if the metal itself grounded him. His laughter ebbed into a slow shake of his head, eyes still bright. “You never cease to amaze me, Beatrix. Thanks for going through all that trouble.”

I gave a half-shrug, aiming for casual though pride burned warm and solid in my chest. “All in a day’s work. Just keep it out of impound yards in the future, yeah?”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, a low chuckle still caught in his throat. But his gaze lingered on the car, softening in a way that had nothing to do with amusement. Something gentler moved across his face — not quite joy, but relief so profound it pressed down into the bones. This wasn’t just a vehicle to him. It was a fragment of his past life, salvaged and set back into place. A thread woven once more into the tapestry he’d thought torn beyond repair.

I shifted my satchel higher on my shoulder, the strap digging into muscle. The weight was more than fabric and papers; it dragged at me with its own quiet gravity. Inside, Paul’s licence and documents sat neatly sealed in Luke’s meticulously labelled bag. His name, his life, zipped into plastic like a specimen, like evidence in a case file.

For a moment, I considered it. The urge rose sharp — to tell him, to unzip the bag and show him what I’d carried out, what I’d taken. Proof of him reduced to numbers and signatures. His identity, archived. My mouth even parted, words hovering like they were ready to leap free.

But I stopped.

The thought snapped shut as quickly as it had opened. He didn’t need to know. Not yet. Maybe not ever. The knowledge sat like a stone in my chest, but I forced it still, burying it beneath something lighter. I tipped my head and gave him a lopsided grin instead, my escape hatch.

“You’d have laughed yourself sick if you’d seen me,” I said. “Whole performance, straight face, the lot. Secret agent chic. I should’ve worn sunglasses.”

Paul smirked, one eyebrow lifting in that understated way of his. “And next time you’re on one of these secret agent escapades, let me know. I wouldn’t mind being part of the action.”

“Careful what you wish for.” I met his eyes, my tone playful but carrying a shadow under it, a warning stitched into the humour. “You might regret it.”

The wind stirred around us, restless, sweeping dust across the open, dry landscape. It scraped softly against my boots, rustled through the scrub. The Prado loomed between us, more than metal now — a relic, a burden, a piece of him returned. Paul’s hand smoothed across the bonnet, slow and deliberate, as though anchoring himself in its solidity. The smallest nod followed, a gesture so slight it might have been missed, but it carried the weight of everything he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud.

I turned slightly, my gaze snagged by the horizon beyond the Drop Zone’s boundary. The land stretched outward in raw defiance, a broad sweep of untamed hills and ochre soil, punctuated by the crude cairns of stone that marked its perimeter. The air out there seemed sharper, thinner, as though the world itself was holding its breath.

And in the back of my mind — unbidden, insistent, impossible to ignore — came the thought of Maggie.

Still out there. Somewhere in the vast sprawl, silent as a shadow, coiled like a spring. Lost or hiding, or perhaps both at once. The ache that accompanied her name pressed tight into my chest, a hunger to find her, to fold her back into something resembling safety. To make her safe again.

I glanced back at Paul. His hand still rested on the Prado’s bonnet, his attention anchored wholly to the car. He was lost in his own reunion, the relief plain in the quiet bend of his shoulders.

My decision was simple. Unavoidable.

I wasn’t heading back through the Portal. Not yet. Not with Maggie still unaccounted for, not with her ghost trailing every thought.

I adjusted the satchel strap where it bit into my shoulder, the motion brisk, decisive. Dust scuffed up around my shoes as I stepped away from the Prado, each step its own punctuation. “I’ll leave you to it,” I said lightly, disguising steel with casualness. “Car’s all yours.”

Paul looked up, surprise flickering in his eyes, quick and bright, but he only nodded, acceptance settling where questions might have been. “Thanks again.”

I gave him a half-smile, enough to close the moment without letting it linger. Then I turned toward the Drop Zone, the weight of choice settling solidly in me.

Time to go looking for a snake.