Watchers

Chapter 13: Never Overstay Your Welcome

Sasha spends the rest of the meal trying to convince Daniel and Jane to leave the shelter with her, but Jane keeps objecting, "I've been living on the street for longer than I care to remember, sleeping on the ground and doing what I have to for my next meal. It's a life that's barely worth living and I'm not going back to it."

For the most part, Daniel just listens, feeling guilty for even considering Nurse Benedict's offer. Sasha is right - testosterone is expensive and it's not right that the shelter would spend that much money on a single person's medical care, so there must be some sort of ulterior motive at play.

"With the amount of celebrity you have thanks to your dad," Sasha says, "you should never stop questioning what people want from you."

"That's cheerful," Jane says, rolling her eyes.

Daniel just thinks about this for a moment - he's so uncomfortable in his own body that he has been willing to forget about motives. After a minute, he says with a small smile, "If that's so, then why do you want me to come with you?"

Sasha shrugs, a more detached response than he was hoping for, and says, "Regardless of my motives, I'm sure they're not as sinister as whatever Father Gary wants with you. I don't trust him."

"You're paranoid," Jane says, then turns to Daniel and explains, "She's been on the street too long, gets her hackles up far too easily."

"And you've forgotten how to spot the enemy," Sasha shoots back.

"You should at least stay until morning," Jane says, patting Sasha calmingly on the back of the hand. "Get one more good night's sleep because there's no way that old Kia is still waiting for you."

* * *

After dinner, Sasha agrees to stick around for a little while and Daniel goes to take his evening shower. Part of him doesn't want to let her out of his sight, but he has to remind himself that he barely knows Sasha and Jane. Whether they leave should be of no consequence to him because they'd part ways soon enough on the street.

He has quickly discovered that early evening is a good time to shower - almost everyone else does so in the morning or right after the daily work has been completed, so he's got the restroom mostly to himself. Even though the scars from his top surgery have faded, Daniel has never felt quite confident being undressed in front of other people, and now that the testosterone is out of his system and his body is beginning to change again, he doesn't even want to see himself, let alone allow others to look at him.

The shower is empty, though, and he stands just outside the large, tiled room to take his clothes off. He takes his t-shirt off and is folding it to put down on a nearby chair when he hears a commotion in the hallway.

Pausing, he listens carefully and notices that it's Sasha's voice - he's almost certain - and it's rising into panic. Fear bubbles up in his own throat and Daniel darts out of the restroom, clutching his t-shirt to his chest.

"Sasha?"

She's standing in the hallway with one of the nuns, hands on her hips and demanding that the woman unlock the laundry room door. She glances at Daniel momentarily, then brings her attention back to the nun, demanding, "I need my coat."

"The laundry is closed except for work hours every day," the nun says, her voice calm and measured. "You may retrieve it in the morning."

"Why is the laundry room locked in the first place?" Sasha asks, the volume of her voice rising to a crescendo.

"There are dangerous chemicals involved in large-scale laundering," the nun says, and Daniel notices Father Gary and another nun rounding the corner from the great room into the hallway. He doesn't look very happy, and the nun beside him looks downright thuggish.

"I want my coat now," Sasha yells, and the way that Father Gary marches toward her sends unexpected terror up Daniel's spine.

The overtly friendly facade he always wears is gone, and Daniel has a sudden urge to wrap his arms protectively around Sasha. Instead, he steps forward and takes her hand, saying, "Come on, we'll get your coat later."

They start to back away from the laundry room door, and before they make it more than a couple of steps, Sasha narrows her eyes at Father Gary and says, "You're full of crap."

A blaze ignites behind his eyes and suddenly Sasha is pulling Daniel at a sprint down the hallway, saying, "You're in this with me now. Let's go."

Daniel's heart is racing and he drops the t-shirt as they flee. She yanks a door open at the end of the hall and he sees a set of stairs going down into a dark hallway that he very much does not want to be in, but behind them, Father Gary and his ghoulish nuns are giving chase. Daniel has no choice but to follow Sasha down the stairs.

"There's an opening in the wall of the recycling center," she's saying so fast that Daniel barely catches her words. "We can get out that way, but we'll probably have to swim through some garbage."

"That's fine," Daniel says.

They reach the bottom of the stairs and come to a long hallway - he's afraid to check to see how far away Father Gary is. Suddenly Daniel is sure that if he looks back, the priest and his nuns will have turned into monsters with long claws and glowing eyes - at least that's how he sees them in his mind as he runs after Sasha down the hall.

They pause in front of a large, steel door at the other end and Daniel hovers protectively close to Sasha, but just as she grabs the door handle, he hears a yelp behind him. Turning, he finds a second door just like the first.

"What's in here?" he asks, and Sasha's voice is panicked when she answers.

"I don't know," she says. "We don't have time for that."

The yelping sound is gone, taking on a dreamlike quality as time stands still for a second or two, and Daniel's almost certain it was a human sound. Just as Sasha pulls open her heavy steel door, he opens the other one.

The smell of rotting garbage hits his nose from behind, and straight ahead he sees a middle-aged man, naked and hanging from his ankles as blood pours into a drain in the floor from a wide slit across his neck. A hulking nun in a butcher's apron stands beside him, holding a long, thin knife.

"Jesus," Daniel says, feeling Sasha's hands on his shoulders, her fingernails digging into him in a way that might be painful if he could register it. She screams and beef stew rises into his throat, acidic and hot.

Not beef, he thinks, and then Father Gary is beside him, his elbow smashing into the back of Daniel's head.

Everything goes black.