4338.207 · July 26, 2018 AD
The Favour He Couldn't Refuse
Kain came to check on his uncle. Twenty minutes, tops—confirm Jamie was fine, grab pastries for Brianne, smooth things over at home. Simple. Except Jamie's partner answered the door looking like he'd crawled out of a nightmare. Except the dogs were silent. Except the lies didn't quite add up. And except that when Luke asked for help moving a TV cabinet, Kain said yes—because he'd never learned how to say no to family.
Luke woke from a nightmare about asphalt seas to a knock at the door. Jamie's nephew stood on the porch, sent by a worried mother and a frantic grandmother to check on an uncle who hadn't answered his phone in days. The truth—that Jamie was in another dimension nursing an infected wound—wasn't an option. So Luke lied. Badly at first, then better, then with the kind of desperate creativity that comes from recognising opportunity in crisis.
Kain had exactly what Bixbus needed. Strong arms. Construction skills. A body capable of the labour the settlement couldn't survive without. The moral calculus wrote itself in Luke's mind before he could stop it: one man's autonomy weighed against a community's survival.
The coffee jar that shattered across the kitchen floor wasn't planned. The sliding door that opened onto impossible colours was.
Kain's instincts told him something was wrong. His manners told him not to make a scene. When Luke asked for help moving furniture, Kain agreed—because refusing would have been awkward, because his mother had raised him to be polite, because he couldn't have imagined what waited behind that door.
The push came from behind. The fall lasted forever.
