Tracks in the Dust

"I thought yesterday was bad. Yesterday was a pleasant memory compared to waking up feeling like someone had reassembled me wrong and forgotten half the screws."

The second dawn found me already awake.

I hadn't slept well. Couldn't have, even if I'd wanted to. Every time I'd drifted off, the pain had dragged me back—ribs throbbing where Nelson had kicked me, feet burning with the memory of every step I'd taken, muscles locked in positions that screamed when I tried to shift them. I'd spent most of the night in a kind of half-consciousness, aware of the hard stone beneath me, the cold air against my skin, the soft sounds of Nelson moving around our shelter.

He didn't sleep either. Or if he did, I never caught him at it.

Now, in the grey pre-dawn light, I lay on my back and stared at the rock ceiling above me. My body felt like it had been taken apart and reassembled incorrectly—all the pieces present, but none of them fitting quite right. The thought of standing made me want to weep. The thought of walking made me want to die.

Not literally, I corrected myself. You've already done the dying thing. It wasn't great.

The dark humour felt thin, worn. A defence mechanism running on empty.

I turned my head—slowly, every vertebra grinding against its neighbours—and looked toward the entrance of our shelter. Nelson was crouched there, silhouetted against the lightening sky, his posture radiating that constant alertness I'd come to associate with him. Even at rest, he was never still. Never off-guard.

Predator, I thought. Always hunting, even when he's not.

"You're awake."

His voice was flat, unsurprised. Of course he'd known. He probably tracked my breathing, my heartbeat, the subtle shifts in my posture that signalled consciousness. Nothing escaped those ice-chip eyes.

"Unfortunately," I said.

He didn't respond to that. Just stood, brushing dust from his trousers, and moved toward the rucksack.

"Eat," he said, tossing something in my direction.

I didn't catch it. Couldn't have—my reflexes were shot, my coordination somewhere between 'newborn foal' and 'drunk uncle at Christmas.' The package—another muesli bar, by the look of it—bounced off my chest and landed in the dust beside me.

I picked it up. Stared at it. The wrapper was crumpled, the bar inside probably more crumbs than substance by now. But it was food. Energy. The bare minimum required to keep this failing machine running for another few hours.

How many of these did he steal? I wondered. How many nights did he creep into the camp, helping himself while we slept?

The thought should have made me angry. Instead, it just reinforced what I already knew about the man I was travelling with. Nelson took what he needed. That was how he operated. That was how he'd survived.

And now he's taken me.

I unwrapped the bar and ate it, not tasting, just fuelling. The act of chewing was exhausting. The act of swallowing was worse. But I did it anyway, because the alternative was collapsing before we'd walked ten metres.

"Can you stand?"

Nelson's voice cut through my fog. I looked up to find him watching me, that familiar calculation in his eyes.

"Probably," I said.

"Probably isn't good enough."

"It's all I've got."

He studied me for a long moment. I could see him weighing options, running scenarios, deciding whether I was still worth the trouble. The assessment was clinical, impersonal. I might as well have been a piece of equipment he was considering whether to repair or discard.

"Then make it enough," he said finally. "We've got a long day ahead."

Getting up was an ordeal.

I'd thought yesterday was bad. Yesterday was a pleasant memory compared to this. Every muscle had seized overnight, locking into positions that resisted any attempt to change them. My legs felt like they'd been filled with concrete. My ribs screamed with every breath, every movement, every heartbeat.

But I got up.

Hands first, pressing against the cold stone. Then knees—both of them cracking audibly, sending bolts of pain up through my thighs. Then one foot, planted carefully, testing whether it would hold my weight.

It did. Barely.

The other foot. Standing. Upright.

The world tilted dangerously, grey spots dancing at the edges of my vision. I grabbed at the rock wall, rough stone biting into my palm, and held on until the vertigo passed.

Still alive, I thought. Still vertical. That's something.

It wasn't much. But it was all I had.

Nelson was already at the entrance, rucksack shouldered, ready to move. He didn't offer help. Didn't wait for me to recover. Just stood there, watching, his patience worn thin as paper.

"I'm coming," I said.

"I know."

He turned and stepped out into the grey morning light. I followed, because following was all I could do.

The landscape had changed again overnight.

Or maybe it was the same landscape, just revealed differently in the flat light of an overcast day. The sky was thick with clouds—actual clouds, grey and heavy and promising something I couldn't quite identify. Rain? I hadn't seen rain since arriving in Clivilius. Hadn't even thought about it. But looking at that sky, I could feel the moisture in the air. The sense of something building.

Weather, I thought. Even here, there's weather.

The observation felt profound in a way I couldn't articulate. Like finding a familiar word in a foreign language. A reminder that some things remained constant, no matter how far you were from home.

The terrain ahead was rougher than yesterday. More rocks. More ridges. The gentle slopes of the plains giving way to something that was beginning to look like foothills. And beyond them, dominating the horizon with their massive, indifferent presence, the mountains.

They were closer now. Close enough that I could make out details I hadn't been able to see before—the texture of the rock face, the dark shadows that marked caves or crevices, the way the stone had been sculpted by wind and time into shapes that were almost organic. They looked like frozen waves, I thought. Like the ocean had risen up and turned to stone at the moment of cresting.

That's where we're going, I reminded myself. Into those. Under those.

The thought should have terrified me. Instead, it just felt distant. Abstract. A problem for future Joel, whoever that poor bastard turned out to be.

Present Joel had more immediate concerns. Like putting one foot in front of the other without falling. Like breathing without making his ribs feel like they were being stabbed from the inside. Like staying conscious while his body did its level best to shut down.

One step at a time, I told myself. That's all you can do.

The words had become a mantra. A prayer. The only thing standing between me and complete collapse.

We'd been walking for perhaps an hour when I noticed the tracks.

At first, I dismissed them. Just marks in the dust—random patterns created by wind or erosion or some other natural process I didn't understand. The ground here was different from the plains, rockier and more varied, and I'd seen plenty of strange formations that didn't mean anything.

But these were different.

The more I looked at them, the more they resolved into something deliberate. Something purposeful. They were footprints—not human footprints, the shape was wrong, too wide and shallow—but footprints nonetheless. Something had walked here. Something with feet.

I stopped without meaning to, my eyes tracing the pattern of the tracks across the rocky ground. They came from the east, crossed our path at an angle, and disappeared into a cluster of boulders perhaps twenty metres ahead.

"What—" I started.

"Keep moving."

Nelson's voice was sharp. I looked up to find him watching me, his jaw tight, his posture suddenly tense.

"Those tracks," I said. "What made them?"

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"That's not an answer."

He was beside me in three quick strides, his hand closing around my arm with bruising force.

"I said keep moving."

There was something in his voice I hadn't heard before. Something that went beyond his usual cold pragmatism. If I didn't know better—if I hadn't spent two days watching this man remain utterly impassive in the face of everything—I might have called it fear.

I kept moving.

But I couldn't stop thinking about those tracks. About what could have made them. About what kind of creature walked these foothills on feet that weren't human.

The terrain grew more difficult as the morning wore on.

The rocks that had been scattered obstacles became constant companions, forcing us to navigate around, over, between. The ground tilted upward, each step requiring more effort than the last. And my body—my stupid, failing, resurrected body—was running out of whatever reserves it had been drawing on.

I stumbled more often now. Caught myself on rocks that tore at my palms. Felt my legs threatening to give out with every step. The grey spots at the edges of my vision were becoming more frequent, more insistent.

Not much further, I told myself. Just to that ridge. Then you can rest.

But the ridge came and went, and there was no rest. Just more walking. More climbing. More of this endless, punishing progress toward mountains that never seemed to get any closer.

Nelson had slowed his pace. I noticed it around midmorning—the way he'd shortened his stride, paused more frequently to check our surroundings. At first I thought it was for my benefit, and felt a surge of something that might have been gratitude.

Then I realised he wasn't watching me. He was watching everything else.

His head moved constantly, scanning the terrain in every direction. His hand stayed close to the knife at his belt. And every few minutes, he'd stop completely, standing utterly still, listening to sounds I couldn't hear.

He's nervous, I thought. Something about this place is making him nervous.

The realisation did nothing to calm my own frayed nerves.

We stopped to rest in the shadow of a boulder that jutted from the hillside like a broken tooth. I collapsed against it, my legs giving out the moment I stopped moving. The stone was rough against my back, uncomfortable, but I was beyond caring about comfort. I was beyond caring about anything except the simple, animal pleasure of not moving.

Nelson crouched nearby, his eyes still scanning. He hadn't sat down. I wasn't sure I'd ever seen him actually sit down—really sit, with his guard lowered, his attention relaxed. Even when he rested, part of him remained alert. Watching. Waiting.

What are you waiting for? I wanted to ask. What's out here that's got you so spooked?

But I didn't ask. Didn't have the energy for questions that wouldn't be answered.

Instead, I said something else. Something that had been building in my chest for two days, pressing against my ribs, demanding release.

"The house in Berriedale."

Nelson's eyes flicked toward me. Sharp. Assessing.

"What about it?"

"I want to know why." My voice came out rough, cracked. "I want to know why I died."

The silence stretched between us. I watched his face, looking for some crack in that mask of indifference. Some sign that my words meant anything to him at all.

"We were looking for something," he said finally.

"What?"

"That's not your concern."

"I was killed for it. I think that makes it my concern."

His jaw tightened. For a moment, I thought he was going to hit me—or worse, just get up and walk away, leaving me here in the shadow of this boulder to figure out my own survival.

Instead, he spoke.

"You died because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time." No apology in his voice. No guilt. Just statement of fact. "Collateral damage. It happens."

Collateral damage.

I hadn't been targeted. Hadn't been important. I was just... incidental. A loose end. A witness who'd seen too much and needed to be silenced.

You died for nothing, I thought. Your whole death was meaningless.

The realisation should have been devastating. Instead, it felt almost liberating. Like finally understanding a puzzle that had been tormenting you for days—not because the answer was good, but because at least now you knew.

"Story of my life," I said.

Nelson's eyebrow twitched. The closest thing to surprise I'd seen from him.

"What does that mean?"

I laughed—a harsh, broken sound that scraped against my damaged throat.

"It means some of us don't get to be important. We don't get to be the heroes of our own stories. We're just... background. Scenery. The people who get caught in the crossfire while the real players do real things." I leaned my head back against the boulder, staring at the grey sky. "I've been collateral damage my whole life. This was just the first time it actually killed me."

The silence that followed was different from the others. Heavier, somehow. Loaded with something I couldn't quite identify.

"You survived," Nelson said.

"What?"

"You died in that driveway. You should have stayed dead. But you didn't." He stood, adjusting the straps of his rucksack. "Whatever you were before—background, scenery, collateral damage—that's not what you are now."

I stared at him, not understanding.

"What am I now?"

He looked down at me, those ice-chip eyes giving nothing away.

"That's the question, isn't it?"

He turned and started walking before I could respond.

I sat there for a moment longer, his words echoing in my head. That's not what you are now. What did that mean? What had the lagoon done to me? What had the voice—that vast, patient voice that had claimed me in the water—turned me into?

You are mine, Joel Gibbons.

The memory surfaced unbidden, bringing with it a chill that had nothing to do with the overcast sky.

I pushed myself upright, ignoring the screaming protest of every muscle, and followed Nelson into the foothills.