“You know what,” Manny said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”

Roland drained the rest of his mug, belched, and looked over at Manny. He looked unsteady, half-conscious. The chromed man put his left hand over Manny’s hand while it rested on his shoulder. He fixed Manny with his half-focused eyes and nodded.

“Fuck it,” Roland said, “I’ll fuckin’ help you. I’d be a dick if I didn’t. Sasha might do OK, picking up a gun. But you’re a damn bullet magnet. Can’t let that happen again.”

“Thank you,” Manny said with a nod. “I know–”

“Don’t say anything else, kid. I really don’t want to think about what I just promised to do.”

Manny found Sasha sitting around a fire pit, outside the city proper, deep in conversation with Donald Farris. Sasha sat on the ground, legs splayed out wide with her butt in the grass. Donald sat in a folding chair. It wasn’t cold outside, precisely, but it had cooled off a great deal from the heat of the day. The air held just the barest hint of winter. It was shaping up to be one of those odd September days where Texas seemed on the verge of an actual seasonal shift.

One look at Sasha’s face told him she was at least as unsettled as Roland. He didn’t want to crowd her so he squatted down on the other side of Donald.

“Emmanuel,” the old man’s voice was as smooth and rich as Manny remembered from the narration of his documentary. “It’s good to see you. Sasha’s been telling me her story. She actually just turned to the subject of you.”

“Yeah?” Manny asked.

“Yes, she was telling me how she met you and Marigold, and how you both helped her find her way free of the Kingdom.”

“Oh,” he said, and looked to Sasha. “I never really met Marigold. I didn’t realize you knew her well.”

Sasha shook her head. “I only knew her a little while. I was just supposed to be administering tests to her. But I couldn’t stop her from talking and…she made sense. She made more sense than what was going on out in the Kingdom every day.”

Sasha stared down into the fading embers of the fire.

“I feel stupid for ever believing in that place.”

“And what do you believe in now?” Donald asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It seems arrogant to decide that God doesn’t exist just because I let myself get taken in by a cult.”

“Mmm,” the old man nodded. “The good news is, you’re young. You’ve got plenty of time to figure things out again.” His cheeks turned up into a smile and his face blossomed with wrinkles.

“Now,” he looked up at Manny, “what have you been up to, my dear boy?”