4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Where the Current Leads
Luke needs proof for Gladys—something only Jamie could know. The secret Jamie writes on a water bottle could shatter a family, but desperate times demand desperate weapons. Then comes the lagoon: impossibly beautiful, strangely intimate, sending sensations through Jamie's body that force uncomfortable truths to the surface. One careless step later, the river reminds him that Clivilius seduces before it kills.
Some secrets are kept because speaking them would cause more damage than silence. Jamie has carried Beatrix's confession for years—the truth about Brody's death, about choices made under pressure, about a sister who let a man die. Now Luke needs that secret weaponised, scrawled on a water bottle as proof that this message comes from someone who knows what only Jamie knows.
The cost of convincing Gladys might be destroying her family. Jamie pays it anyway.
The lagoon offers different currency. Its waters send strange sensations climbing Jamie's body, stirring responses he can't control and reflections he'd rather avoid. The green thong. The dying intimacy with Luke. The bathroom encounter with Ben that still defies categorisation. Standing in alien water, aroused and confused, Jamie confronts the fault lines in a life that no longer exists.
Then one step carries him from ankle-deep safety into churning darkness.
The river doesn't care about his revelations or his regrets. It simply tries to kill him—pulling him under, spinning him through depths that offer no purchase, no mercy, no second chances. He survives. Barely. But Clivilius has made its point: this world gives nothing for free.
