Chapter Fourteen—Some Small Measure

“You know… I never knew—never thought something like this could happen,” Kelly said, wiping the tears from her face. “And he was so young. I guess I’m an idiot. Should have known better.”

“Being poor sucks,” Kyle said, putting an arm around her as they sat together on the wood decking of her trailer. “It changes things—makes you do things you might not otherwise do in a different situation.”

“Yeah,” he said, still wiping at her tears. They were flowing freely now. “He’s still not here. My baby boy isn’t coming back, Kyle.”

“I know,” he said, feeling an emotional pang that made him turn his head away sharply to watch the golden horizon. The sun had only just risen, but the morning was warming quickly. “You have nothing to blame yourself for.”

“Dan hasn’t been the same. Not sure he’s going to come out of it, either. He drinks a lot these days.”

Kyle wasn’t sure what to say about that.

“Listen,” he said, taking out one of the bonds in his satchel and folding it. “Take this. You can cash it in.”

“No,” Kelly said, “You don’t have to do that. Dan and I will manage.”

“I want you to take it, Kelly.”

It’s a stupid risk, but I don’t care.

She sighed heavily, then said, “Okay.”

“He handed her the folded bond. It was likely she didn’t even know what it was. She probably thought it was worth a few thousand dollars.

“When you cash this… make sure you leave Life City when you do it. Better yet, go off world.”

“Off world?” She asked, seeming confused. “How much is this?”

“It’s a million,” Kyle said.

“What? No, you can’t—“

“Shut up.”

She stopped talking.

“We’ve been friends for a long time. I still remember that time you patched me up when I had nowhere to go, you know. You saved my life.”

“That was before I even had Justin.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, I knew you were in trouble, but it wasn’t that much trouble was it?”

Kyle smirked. “Who’s to say? Past after all.” He put his hand over hers and clasped it over the folded bond. “Now you cash this in—off world, do you understand?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding.

“Good. And you leave this place.” He swiped his hand across the trailer park, across the festering pit of vapid entertainments and conveniences of Life City beyond the hills. “All of it.”

She nodded.

“Thank you, Kyle.”

He got up.

“I know it’s no real comfort, but maybe you’d like to know, those criminals on the nightly news—Max and Staxx?”

“Yeah?”

“They killed Ben Yates last night.”

Her eyes widened. “They did?”

“Yeah,” he said, nodding with a smile. “They did. Threw him out his own fuckin’ window. Maybe you’ll find some small measure of comfort there—knowing he won’t be playing social engineer anymore. That overlord—that wannabe-god, is dead.”

She stood, smiled. It was a smile of pain, but also of relief and satisfaction.

Something told Kyle that Kelly knew exactly who Max was, and somehow, had always known…