Chapter Text
Pen shoved her pajama pants down and pinned her underneath himself, pressing her face into the mattress. Saya grit her teeth, gasping at the sudden force he used. After he was done, he rolled onto his side and got out of bed. Shaking, Saya pulled her pants back on. Suddenly there was a faraway bang that shook the walls and floor and made tiny grains of concrete rain down on them.
She sat up, then Pen was on her and got the sedative into her neck. She fell back onto the bed, collapsing into his arms. Pen took out some handcuffs from the bedside cabinet and cuffed her to the bedpost.
‘Stay.’ he said. Then he bent over her and kissed her on the lips, administering another dose of the sedative into her arm.
Saya lay there while the ceiling started to melt: gray globs swirled above her like waves and slowly came down to smother her. Breathing was hard, like she had to do it all by herself. Pen put on his cape and struck a pose, then he was off, leaving a streak of red and green where he’d stood before. The shadow people came out of their walls, they gathered around the bed, standing in a circle. Even though they had no faces Saya could feel them looking at her. She was sinking into the bed while they morphed into one giant shadow wall around her. Tendril hands came out of that wall of black, reaching for her, pushing her further down.
The door opened, and a soldier came in. ‘Saya!’ He reached down to her, touching her face, looking into her eyes. Stev.
‘Oh Light,’ he said. ‘Let me find the key!’ Then he wrestled her out of the pit and tried to get her to stand. Her legs were gone, all she could see was her own skeleton and ravaged meat hanging from the bones. ‘The shadows people,’ she heard herself groan, ‘they ripped them to shreds.’
The black wall was after them while he dragged her through the hallways, a solid blackness following them, eating up the light. If it touches me again I’m going to die, she knew.
Stev shouldered her, forcing her ravaged legs along. ‘Please don’t die. Please don’t die on me.’
They went into a side room and there he eased her onto the floor, busting the lock of a cabinet stuck to the wall. Meanwhile, the darkness seeped into the room, the shadow hands were searching for her, closing in around her.
Stev knelt at her side. ‘This will help,’ he told her, holding a syringe over her heart, then he jammed it in.
Saya shot upright with a gasp, the needle still stuck inside her. Stev grabbed it and ripped it out. ‘We have to move, now!’
Her legs were back, and she could stand.
They ran through the hallways, Saya barefoot and breathing fast. It felt like she could jump up and float away; she was that light. Stev grabbed her arm and guided her through the maze-like structure of the base. Sirens went off up ahead, incredibly loud. That’s when the shadow people came back. They ran in front of them with their too-long limbs and tiny heads, into a large, cavernous room. It was on fire. Debris littered the floor and there was fighting going on. Geeglers, armed and snarling, fought the Duvos soldiers around them.
That’s when she saw him. Logan, fighting Pen. He had his shield with him and it blocked a charged space punch to his face. I made that shield, she thought. It’s keeping him safe, Andy. It really works. Her knees gave out, and she hit the glass covered ground with them.
Stev dragged her upright. ‘You’re almost there!’ he yelled over the noise. ‘Saya, Saya fight it!’
Her eyes rolled back, and a convulsion took her. When she got out of it she was sweating and her body felt like it was on fire.
‘There she is!’ Someone yelled. It was Grace, dressed in combat black. ‘We found her!’ something fast and red was suddenly at her side. Xena, armored up, dropped her sword and picked her up.
Saya grabbed Stev’s arm, dragging him along. ‘He’s a… builder.’ She made him run to where Xena was taking her; the immense window above the double doors. It had been shattered and she could see an airship though it, hovering close. They’d built an actual airship to come and get her.
Justice was there, guns in hand, and he whistled loud and hard. This made everyone retreat into the same direction, back to the airship. Logan fought Pen back with his daggers, then shot him in the chest, forcing him to his knees and coughing up blood.
He shot him again, then ran back towards her. Saya could see his bloodspattered face. He came for me. They all came for me.
Xena sprang onto a lowered platform, just as the others caught up. Stev still in her grasp, they were lifted into the air.
Logan was there, he held her tight, releasing her to look at her over and over. ‘You’re alive, I knew we’d find you. Grace came through! She really did!’
Saya managed to stand and that’s when she saw Pen, half stooped below, he aimed a rifle at Logan and she pushed him to the side. She didn’t even feel the bullet enter her.
Lights out.
The shadow people had taken her to their world. Saya could hear them breathing around her as one big blackness. The walls were made of them and so were the piles of things, stacked around her. They were the abandoned warehouse and she was trapped there inside them. It was dark and cold and she could only see faint outlines in the darkness.
‘I miss you,’ someone said. ‘I don’t even know who you are and I miss you.’
The words were swallowed up by the void and she was left in silence again.
‘Saya, when you wake up I’ve got to teach you this recipe. I know you’ll love it.’ Mabel. Saya looked around for her but couldn’t find her.
‘Butler Kitty’s big adventure,’ Jasmine said, ‘It was a Tuesday and it so happened to be that Butler kitty found himself in a spot of bother…’ These words were eaten too, but she had caught a sense of direction from them.
‘You have your sedimentary rocks, your igneous rocks and then there’s metamorphic ones, but let’s not talk about those. Maybe when you’re awake again, if you really want to know.’ Saya headed for the sounds of those voices, more and more of them, familiar and warm. With each snippet she could see more outlines, feel more warmth. Until the heartbeat in the walls filled her up and she could open her eyes.
Herbs, hanging from the ceiling. I’m back in the clinic again, she thought. Great. Then a wave of tiredness washed over her and she had to fight to stay present.
Someone grabbed her hand. ‘She’s awake! Fang!’
Cool hands steadied her face, and she looked into Fang’s serious eyes. ‘Back from… the dead,’ he said.
It felt like it. It felt like she’d waded through death itself to wash back up on shore.
She tried to sit up, her chest hurt and there were bandages wrapped around it. ‘He shot me,’ she said.
The door opened and Logan came in. He made it to the bed then collapsed over her, taking her hands in his. Saya sat there feeling nothing, then the tears burst into her eyes.
‘Logan… they— He, I…’
There were tears in his eyes too when he looked at her. ‘Later, rest now. Rest.’ She laid back on the pillow and nodded. Then sat back up again. ‘Take it off!’ She groaned, wringing her hand. Logan took the ring off her finger, then flung it away.
She slept after that. People came by to look after her and there was always someone sitting by the bed. Even Cooper, whose monotone drawl kept her safe from the shadow people.
Stev came to visit her. He looked different without his visor and uniform, dressed in overalls and a hat. ‘They made me a builder,’ he told her.
She reached for him, and he gave her his hand to squeeze. ‘Thank you,’ she told him.
‘I told them some of what happened to you, I hope you don’t mind.’
She shook her head.
Andy fell asleep at her side, having climbed the bed to be close to her. He’d kept apologizing and crying and she ended up hugging him, saying it was okay now, until he dozed off.
‘Do you feel ready to go home?,’ Logan asked her one day.
She nodded.
It was surreal to stand back in her workshop. She leaned on Logan, who kept close to her the entire time. ‘I’m never leaving you again,’ he said. ‘Not even for a second.’ She hugged him and he held her. That night there was a celebration at the Blue moon. Saya’s hand shook, holding a tall glass of yakmel milk. It was fresh and delicious and she drank it down with gusto. The people cheered around her, all of Sandrock was happy to have her back. I am back. They came to get me. They really want me here.
Things had changed in Sandrock. Sandstorms were a thing of the past and a green sheen had come to freshen up the town. The trees they’d planted had grown into a forest wall. Grass now grew in places and the air smelled fresh. One afternoon, when she felt strong enough. Mi-an and Nia took her up to mama tree. She was somehow familiar to her, with her newly green branches spread out across the blue sky.
‘We did this,’ Mi-an told her, gesturing at the green oasis below. She had been on the air-ship too, having been one of the main forces that built it. They had to give it up to the alliance after their “test run” and so far nothing bad had come of it.
Nia took her hand. She was also living in Sandrock now, always close by.
Andy and Logan ended up moving into her home, with a spare room for the boy and a bigger bed for them. Logan proposed to her not much later, and they were married in the church by Burgess. Walking down the aisle, she could see all the smiling faces sitting beside her and they didn’t play the organ at her request. She said yes this time and felt a weight lift off her heart when she herself could place the ring on Logan’s finger. I love him, this is real.
Their honeymoon was in Portia, with Andy staying with Jasmine for that time. It was there, sitting under a tree by the harbor where the wind played through the tall grass that she suddenly felt like herself again. With that came the shock of everything that had happened to her. She ended up crying in Logan’s arms, telling him until late into that night what had happened. About the torture. About Pen. He cried with her. It was going to take a long time to heal from, she suspected.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t kill him,’ he told her with a heat in his voice.
Saya looked at her hands and they were steady. ‘I’ll do it,’ she heard herself say without a tremor in her voice. ‘If he ever tries to hurt me again, I’ll be ready.’
‘I won’t let it come to that.’ They kissed after that, slowly, careful, claiming back the love that was theirs, one touch at a time.
She also talked to Grace, on how to track down a missing person. She was going to find her brother and reunite him with her and their mother. She owed it to herself.
Back home, Saya was slowly getting a commission done; she had to take her time or the shadow people would sneak back into her life. It was there that Catori approached her fence. Catori was bashful at first, but then got fired up while she spoke.
‘It’s going to be the biggest, most fun place in the entire Eufaula, Saya, and I need your help to build it.’
Saya felt herself nodding while the woman talked. A theme park, a big project, something to get lost in again. She felt that familiar excitement come back to her, making her hands tingle with anticipation.
‘Count me in, I’ll help.’
‘You’re amazing Saya, simply incredible! I’ll send you the first diagrams in the mail!’
Saya nodded. Together with Mi-an and Stev, they could truly make Sandrock into a place like no other; a jewel of the desert. Not much later Andy came home from school and Logan picked them up dinner from the Saloon. It was somehow even better than they’d pictured it together; it was perfect, and it all belonged to her.
