What Survives

"Survival sounds noble until you see what you're willing to do for it. Then it just sounds like an excuse you tell yourself while you're becoming something unforgivable."

The sun was trying to kill me.

It beat down with an intensity that felt personal, as if it had selected me specifically for punishment. Sweat poured down my face, my back, my chest — soaking through clothing that was already stiff with dust and old blood. Each breath dragged hot air into lungs that felt three sizes too small, and the landscape wavered before my eyes like a fever dream made solid.

My leg screamed with every step.

The wound had begun bleeding again somewhere along the way — I could feel the wetness seeping through the bandages, could see the fresh dark stain spreading across the fabric when I glanced down. But I kept moving. Kept putting one foot in front of the other, kept dragging my broken body toward the lagoon with a determination that had stopped making sense several dunes ago.

There has to be another way.

The thought circled through my head like a vulture, patient and persistent. Clive wanted me to bring Chris back to the water. Wanted me to be a conduit again, a bridge between the entity's power and a man who had done nothing wrong except show up in the same dimension as me. The demand felt like a chain around my throat, tightening with every breath.

I stumbled.

The sand betrayed me — shifting beneath my foot at exactly the wrong moment, sending me pitching forward onto my knees. The impact jarred through my wounded leg like an electric shock, and for a moment the world went white with pain. Dust billowed up around me, finding its way into my mouth, my nose, my eyes. I coughed and spat, trying to expel the grit that coated my tongue, but it clung with the persistence of everything in this place.

My dignity, I thought, hunching over in the sand like a penitent at an altar. My freedom.

The words tasted bitter, ashes and salt mixing on a tongue that had forgotten what clean water felt like. I'd already given so much to this world — my future, my family, my body. Now Clive wanted more. Wanted me to sacrifice someone else's autonomy on the altar of my own survival.

The image of Brianne surfaced without warning, floating up from the depths of my exhaustion like a message in a bottle. Her smile. The swell of her belly. The daughter growing inside her who would never know her father if I died in this wasteland with my leg rotted off and my soul sold piece by piece to an entity that saw humans as tools to be used.

I pushed myself upright.

My muscles screamed. My leg threatened to buckle. But I was standing, and that felt like a victory worth claiming.

"I can't lose my leg," I muttered, the words escaping into the hot air. "I can't."

The determination felt fragile — a thin shell around a core of terror and desperation — but it was enough. Enough to get me moving again. Enough to carry me up the next dune and the one after that, my bare feet sinking into sand that had been baked to the temperature of fresh concrete.

The lagoon appeared without fanfare.

One moment there was nothing but endless ochre waves of dust and dirt, and the next there it was — a stretch of crystal water nestled between rocky outcroppings, its surface glinting with a light that seemed to come from within rather than reflect from above. Beautiful. Inviting. A trap dressed up as salvation.

I hobbled closer, navigating the rocky terrain with the careful steps of someone who knew how easy it would be to fall and never get up again. The throbbing in my temples had intensified during the journey, building from a dull ache to a pounding pressure that made it difficult to think. The heat, the exertion, the blood loss — all of it combining to push my body toward limits I hadn't known existed.

With a mix of reluctance and desperate hope, I lowered myself onto the rocky edge of the lagoon.

The stone was warm beneath my legs, heated by hours of unrelenting sun, and for a moment I just sat there, breathing heavily, letting my body remember what it felt like to not be in motion. Then, slowly, deliberately, I slid my legs into the water.

The relief was immediate and overwhelming.

Cool liquid enveloped my wounded calf, wrapping around the torn flesh like a lover's embrace. The constant fire of pain that had been burning through my nervous system dimmed, retreating to a distant murmur rather than a constant scream. I let out a breath I hadn't realised I'd been holding, my shoulders slumping as tension I'd been carrying for hours finally released.

Then the other sensations began.

A surge of pressure built in my chest, constricting my breath, making it difficult to draw air past the tightness that had suddenly claimed my lungs. I gasped, my hands flying to my sternum, my eyes widening as the feeling intensified — and then a sharp zing of pleasure shot up my injured leg, electric and undeniable and completely unwanted.

The healing and the arousal came as a package deal. I'd known that. Had experienced it before, had felt the lagoon's waters turn my body into something I couldn't control. But knowing and experiencing were different things, and the reality of it still caught me off guard every time.

I fought against the pulses of energy that began their relentless march through my nervous system, trying to focus on something — anything — other than the pleasure that was building in my groin with the inevitability of a rising tide. My eyes fixed on my wounded leg, searching for some sign that the water was actually doing what it was supposed to do.

My brow furrowed.

A thin trail of fresh blood was seeping from the top of the gash, trickling down my calf and into the lagoon. The water around my leg turned cloudy, red diffusing through crystal clarity like ink dropped into a glass, a gruesome reminder that my body was still broken despite the pleasure signals flooding my brain.

I see you, Kain Jeffries.

The voice slithered through my consciousness, cold and familiar, and a chill raced down my spine despite the heat that pressed against my skin from all sides.

Clive. Of course. Watching, as always. Waiting for me to come crawling back to the water, to submit to whatever demands the entity chose to make.

Anger erupted from somewhere deep, a geyser of rage that had been building since the moment I'd first heard that voice in my head.

"I see you!" I shouted, the words tearing from my throat with enough force to spray saliva across the rocks. "What the fuck does that mean?"

The silence that followed was thick, suffocating, the kind of quiet that pressed against your eardrums and made you wonder if you'd gone deaf.

Kain, the voice finally murmured, soft and almost gentle. You must bring Chris to the lagoon.

My cock was achingly hard now, straining against my shorts with an insistence that bordered on painful. The lagoon's influence had been building throughout the conversation, the pleasure intensifying with each passing second, and I could feel myself being pushed toward a edge I didn't want to approach.

"Fuck you, Clive!" I screamed, the words erupting from some primal place that had stopped caring about dignity or self-preservation.

With a violent jerk, I yanked my leg from the water.

The sudden absence of the lagoon's touch was like having a blanket ripped away in winter — cold air rushed against my wet skin, and the pleasure that had been building cut off abruptly, leaving me gasping and shuddering on the rocks. My erection remained, throbbing with frustrated need, but I ignored it. Pushed myself to my feet. Prepared to turn my back on the cursed water and whatever healing it might have offered.

I was done. Done being used. Done being manipulated. Done letting an ancient entity treat me like a puppet whose strings could be pulled whenever it suited its incomprehensible purposes.

"Who's Clive?"

The voice came from behind me, and my heart stopped.

I knew that voice. Knew it with the kind of intimate familiarity that came from shared experiences you could never discuss, from moments of violation that bound two people together whether they wanted to be bound or not.

Chris.

My heels ground against the wet rock as I pivoted, my waterlogged skin catching against the stone with a friction that sent fresh pain shooting through my soles. And there he was — shorter than me, slightly soft around the middle, his expression curious and concerned and completely oblivious to the storm that was raging inside my skull.

His hand found my shoulder before I could react, strong fingers closing around the joint to steady me as my legs wobbled beneath me. The touch was meant to be helpful. Supportive. The kind of casual physical contact that people offered without thinking.

It felt like being branded.

It's too convenient, I thought, my eyes locking onto Chris's face and refusing to let go. He just happened to show up at the exact moment Clive demanded I bring him here? Just happened to find me at the lagoon, alone, vulnerable, desperate?

The coincidence was too perfect. Too convenient. Clive had done this. Had somehow arranged for Chris to appear at precisely the right moment, had orchestrated this encounter with the same invisible hand that seemed to control everything else in this dimension.

And I was so tired.

Tired of fighting. Tired of resisting. Tired of losing pieces of myself to forces I couldn't comprehend or control.

A fierce determination ignited within me — not the noble kind, not the heroic kind, but something darker. Something that felt like a bushfire building in my chest, ready to consume everything in its path. If Clive wanted me to bring Chris to the lagoon, then fine.

Fine.

I'd bring him to the fucking lagoon.

My hand shot out, fingers closing around Chris's arm with a grip that was stronger than it had any right to be given my condition. He barely had time to register surprise before I was pulling, twisting, using his own momentum against him as I attempted a manoeuvre that my screaming muscles should never have been able to execute.

Chris's body turned awkwardly, his feet scrambling for purchase on the wet rocks, his arms pinwheeling as he fought to maintain balance. And in that moment of vulnerability, I planted my palm against his chest and pushed.

Hard.

The squawk that escaped Chris's mouth as he fell backward would have been funny in other circumstances — a sound of pure, undignified surprise that belonged in a slapstick comedy rather than this nightmare I was living. But I didn't have time to appreciate the humour, because his hand found mine at the last second, fingers closing around my wrist with the desperate strength of a man trying to save himself from falling.

My wounded leg buckled.

The momentum I'd used to push him became the force that pulled me forward, and suddenly we were both falling — a tangle of limbs and terror, plunging toward the water I'd sworn I would never enter again.

The lagoon swallowed us whole.

The water was deeper than I expected.

It closed over my head with a force that felt almost sentient, dragging me down into crystalline depths that seemed to go on forever. My lungs burned with the breath I hadn't had time to take, my eyes stinging as I blinked against the underwater clarity, my limbs flailing in the sudden weightlessness.

And the pleasure — Christ, the pleasure.

It hit me like a freight train, a full-body assault that overwhelmed every other sensation. The lagoon's influence wasn't gradual this time, wasn't a slow build from toes to groin. It was instant and absolute, flooding every nerve ending simultaneously, turning my entire body into a single screaming receptor of ecstasy that bordered on agony.

I swallowed water. Choked on it. Felt it burn its way down my throat and into my lungs as the pleasure short-circuited my ability to do something as simple as keeping my mouth closed. Panic clawed at the edges of the sensation, survival instincts warring with the lagoon's influence as I thrashed toward the surface.

My head broke free.

I gasped, coughed, spat out mouthfuls of water that tasted like nothing and everything at once. The air hit my face like a blessing, and I sucked it in greedily, my chest heaving with the effort of staying alive while the pleasure continued its relentless assault on my nervous system.

Chris was already at the edge, his hands pressed against the rocks, his body half-lifted from the water as he fought to escape. Water streamed from his clothes, his hair, plastering fabric to skin and revealing the soft curves of a body that I should never have been looking at so closely.

"What the hell is wrong with you!?" he snarled, shoving my shoulder as he retreated toward the safety of the shore.

The question should have stopped me. Should have broken through the haze of desperation and rage and allowed reason to reassert itself. But I was beyond reason now, beyond rational thought, operating on instincts that had been corrupted by Clive's whispers and the lagoon's manipulation.

Your leg, something whispered in the back of my mind. Your daughter. Brianne. Everything you'll lose if you don't do this.

I reached for Chris again.

My grip faltered, my waterlogged fingers slipping across fabric that refused to provide purchase. I splashed forward clumsily, my wounded leg screaming beneath me, my arms churning through water that seemed to resist my every movement.

"Shit," I muttered, the word coming out garbled and desperate.

Chris's hands found the rock. His arms tensed, muscles straining as he tried to haul himself up and away from me, away from whatever madness had possessed the man he'd come to help. He was almost out. Almost free. Almost beyond my reach.

My fingers caught the waistband of his trousers.

I don't know what I was thinking. Don't know if I was thinking at all. My body was operating on autopilot now, responding to commands that came from somewhere outside my conscious control. I gripped the fabric and yanked — hard, desperate, with all the strength my exhausted muscles could produce — at the precise moment Chris made his second attempt to pull himself from the water.

The trousers came loose.

Chris's body lurched upward, his bare arse passing inches from my face as the fabric slid down his legs and tangled around his ankles. A sound escaped him — a moan, low and involuntary, the kind of noise that only the lagoon could force from a human throat. His knees slammed into the solid rock with a crack that made my stomach turn.

You're so close, some treacherous part of my mind whispered. Don't lose hope now.

Chris swore, his voice tight with pain, his back arching as his hands pressed flat against the stone. The lagoon was working on him now — I could see it in the tension of his muscles, hear it in the catch of his breath. Whatever immunity he'd seemed to possess before had been stripped away by full immersion, and now his body was responding to the water's influence whether he wanted it to or not.

The lagoon will heal his knees, I told myself, grasping for justification like a drowning man reaching for driftwood.

I took hold of his calves — strong, solid, still trailing in the water — and pulled.

The plan, if there was a plan, was to bring him back into the lagoon. To submerge him fully, to let the water do whatever it needed to do, to fulfil Clive's demands and be done with this nightmare forever. But Chris's body was heavier than I'd anticipated, his position more precarious, and my strength was almost completely spent.

He moved barely a few inches before his elbows buckled.

Time seemed to slow.

I watched — helpless, horrified — as Chris's forehead connected with the smooth rock. The sound was wet and wrong, a sickening thud that echoed across the water's surface and settled into my bones like a premonition of damnation. His body went limp, the tension draining from his muscles all at once, and he slumped against the stone with the boneless quality of a man who had just lost consciousness.

"Chris!" I screamed, panic obliterating everything else.

I scrambled out of the water, my wounded leg forgotten, my own pain irrelevant in the face of what I'd just done. Water streamed from my clothes as I hauled myself onto the rocks, my hands finding Chris's shoulders and rolling him onto his back with frantic urgency.

His face was slack. Eyes closed. A gash had opened above his brow, and blood was flowing freely — a crimson stream that traced its way down his forehead, across his temple, pooling in the hollow of his ear before dripping onto the stone beneath him.

"Chris!" I shouted again, shaking his unmoving body with hands that had started to tremble.

Nothing. No response. No flutter of eyelids, no groan of returning consciousness, no sign that the man I'd just assaulted was anything other than a corpse in the making.

"Shit," I hissed, the word catching in my throat. "Shit shit shit—"

What had I done? What the fuck had I done?

I'd come here to confront Clive. To demand answers, to negotiate, to find some alternative to the impossible demands being made of me. Instead, I'd attacked an innocent man. Had pushed him, pulled him, injured him — might have killed him, for all I knew. The blood continued to flow, painting Chris's face in streaks of crimson that looked almost artistic in the afternoon light.

Bring him to me, Kain.

The voice slithered through my consciousness, soft and satisfied, and I wanted to scream.

"Fuck you," I whispered, but there was no force behind it. No defiance left. Just the hollow acknowledgment that Clive had won, that I had lost, that whatever happened next was simply the price of my own weakness.

My eyes moved down Chris's body without my permission.

His shirt had ridden up during the struggle, exposing a soft stomach dusted with dark hair. His trousers remained tangled around his ankles, leaving him exposed from the waist down — vulnerable, unconscious, completely at my mercy. His feet still dangled in the water, the lagoon's surface lapping gently against his calves as if tasting him.

And as I watched, unable to look away, I saw his cock begin to harden.

The sight sent a wave of nausea through me so intense I nearly vomited on the rocks. The lagoon was still working on him. Still flooding his nervous system with sensations he couldn't consent to, still manipulating his body's responses while his mind lay dormant from the blow I'd inflicted.

You've come this far, a voice whispered — my voice, Clive's voice, I couldn't tell the difference anymore. It would be foolish to inflict so much pain and not ensure the deal was actually completed.

The logic was monstrous. I knew that. Knew that what I was contemplating was a violation beyond anything I'd imagined myself capable of. But the blood flowing from Chris's forehead reminded me of what was at stake. If I didn't complete the bargain — if Chris's release didn't find its way into the lagoon's waters — then all of this had been for nothing. The injury, the violence, the betrayal of everything I thought I believed about myself.

Yes, Clive whispered, the voice almost tender. Finish what has been started.

I stared at the task before me, and something inside me died.

The blood continued to drizzle across Chris's forehead, tracing crimson lines down his cheek like tears of accusation. He was unconscious because of me. Helpless because of me. Whatever happened next was my responsibility alone — not Clive's, not the lagoon's, mine.

I knelt beside him.

My hand was shaking as it inched toward his hardening cock, trembling with revulsion and self-loathing and a desperate, animal need to survive that had apparently erased every moral boundary I'd ever believed in. I closed my eyes, unwilling to watch myself become the monster this place demanded.

My fingertips touched warm flesh, and I winced.

The anger arrived without warning — a hot surge of fury that raced through my veins like liquid fire. I was angry at Clive for orchestrating this nightmare. Angry at Chris for showing up at exactly the wrong moment. Angry at the portal for existing, at Luke for pushing me through it, at every cosmic force that had conspired to put me in this position.

But mostly, I was angry at myself.

My hand wrapped around Chris's cock, and I began to stroke.

The motion was rough, graceless, driven by rage rather than any desire to provide pleasure. My grip tightened until I could feel the pulse of blood beneath the skin, my pace quickening with the tempo of my own mounting fury. This was violence dressed up as intimacy, assault disguised as salvation, and I hated every second of it with an intensity that burned holes in whatever remained of my soul.

Faster, some part of me demanded. Finish this. End it. Make it mean something.

Chris's body responded despite his unconsciousness, the lagoon's influence ensuring that his physical reactions had nothing to do with desire or consent. I felt him growing harder under my hand, felt the tension building in muscles that had no say in what was happening to them.

Then his eyes flew open.

The transition from unconscious to aware was instantaneous — one moment Chris was limp and unresponsive, and the next he was sitting upright, his hand snatching my wrist and wrenching it away from his body. A gasp tore from his throat, sharp and ragged, his eyes wild with confusion and something that might have been residual pleasure or might have been the beginnings of horror.

I scrambled backward, my hand still raised, my fingers still curved around the ghost of what I'd been holding.

Chris didn't look at me. His attention had focused inward, his hand finding his own cock with a grip that was desperate and involuntary. Whatever the lagoon had started, whatever I had built toward, it was cresting now — a wave that couldn't be stopped by something as insignificant as the return of consciousness.

He came with a sound that would haunt me until I died.

A groan that was half pleasure and half anguish, ripped from somewhere primal and raw. His seed arced through the air, catching the afternoon light as it fell, landing in the clear waters of the lagoon with a series of soft splashes that seemed to echo in the sudden silence.

It is finished, Clive whispered, the voice calm and satisfied.

I didn't wait to see what happened next.

Chris was still gasping, still shuddering through the aftershocks of a climax he'd never asked for, when I turned and fled. My feet slapped against the rocks, then sank into sand, then found the slope of the nearest dune. I hobbled with the desperation of a man escaping a crime scene, which, I supposed, was exactly what I was.

Behind me, the lagoon glittered in the sunlight.

Innocent. Beautiful. Hiding its secrets as it always did.

And somewhere in its depths, the precious cargo I'd just delivered began its journey toward whatever purpose Clive had in mind.

I scrambled until I couldn't anymore, until my wounded leg finally gave out and sent me sprawling into the sand. I lay there, chest heaving, eyes squeezed shut against tears that burned like acid, and tried to remember what it had felt like to be a good person.

The memory wouldn't come.