Watchers

Chapter 15: A New Hope

Sasha wakes up with a jolt.

She's in a strangely specific bedroom, pink and nicely decorated. She's laying under a cozy comforter with watercolor flowers printed across it, and Daniel is laying beside her.

His eyes are closed and for a moment Sasha is certain that he's dead.

Did Father Gary do this? Did he bring them up from the shelter basement and tuck Sasha into bed with a dead man?

"Daniel," she whispers urgently. "Wake up!"

He's not cold or stiff, and even though he doesn't wake up when she puts her hands on his shoulders, she sees the soft rise and fall of his chest and a wave of relief washes over her.

"Daniel, wake up," she says, then she looks around at the rest of her surroundings.

It's a perfectly ordinary bedroom. The walls are hung with artwork that matches the bedspread. There's a bookshelf and a dresser, and a shag rug that looks soft.

Sasha hasn't been in a room like this since she was a girl. She certainly never had anything this nice in her apartment.

There's a door on the wall near the foot of the bed, but it's closed and - at least for the moment - they're alone, so Sasha turns her attention back to Daniel.

She wonders if he's been drugged, or if he's hurt, and for a second her mind flits back to the scars on his chest. He looked so vulnerable laying on the shelter basement floor and the pink scars across his chest terrified her because it looked like he'd been gutted.

She realizes now that they were from his gender confirmation surgery, but in the basement they had given her quite a scare. She shakes Daniel by the shoulders, a little harder now, and says his name a little louder.

Finally, he rouses, his eyelids fluttering and his eyes opening sluggishly. "Sasha?"

"Yeah," she says, relieved - she didn't have a backup plan if he really had turned out to be drugged.

Daniel puts his hand to his head, squinting at the light on the ceiling, and asks, "Where are we?"

"I don't know," Sasha says. "The last thing I remember is Father Gary driving his knee into my chest and knocking the wind out of me."

Then she glances under the comforter. She'd been naked the last time she was awake, and now she's wearing a green and blue summer dress. She's not sure whether to be comforted or disturbed by the knowledge that someone put clothes on her while she was unconscious.

"The last thing I remember is-" Daniel starts to say, but he doesn't finish the sentence, and Sasha can guess the reason.

She knows exactly what he'd been looking at the moment that Father Gary smashed him over the head. She sits up and puts her hand on his shoulder in what she hopes is a comforting gesture, and before she can stop herself from adding her own trauma to the moment, she says, "I know. They tried to kill me, too."

Her voice is wavering and she turns her ankle out to show Daniel the place where the butcher's hook sliced into her skin. Someone had taken the time to cover it with a bandage, probably while they were putting her in this silly, off-season dress.

Daniel grabs Sasha's wrist and pulls her abruptly into a big bear hug. It's almost too tight but Sasha doesn't complain because for the first time since she arrived at the shelter - heck, for the first time in years - she feels like she's not alone.

After a minute, he releases her and she asks, "What do we do now?"

"We get out of here," Daniel says. He gets out of the bed, wincing at the change in elevation. Father Gary hit him pretty hard and Sasha imagines his head must be pounding, but he turns around and holds out his hand to help Sasha off the bed.

Whoever dressed her also put him in a t-shirt and a crisp pair of shorts.

"Do you think we're still in the Haven?" he asks.

"It doesn't feel like it," Sasha says. "We must have been out for at least a couple of hours for someone to move us here, right?"

Daniel nods and adds, "None of the convent bedrooms were this big. Wherever we are, we're getting out."

He goes over to the bookshelf and grabs one of the bookends - it's a large chess piece, a bishop - and he takes a couple practice swipes at the air in front of him, fighting an imaginary opponent. His reach isn't great, but it'll work in a pinch.

The books on the shelf fall over and Sasha glances at them - they're the complete works of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

"I've read every single one of these books when I was a kid," she says in awe.

"Weird," Daniel says. He doesn't give it any more thought as he takes her hand and they go to the door.

Sasha's pulse is racing as Daniel turns the knob. The door opens easily and they step into a long hallway. It's stark white, with many doors along both walls. On the door directly across from them, there's a laminated name tag.

Erica.

Sasha counts the other doors - twelve in all - each with its own laminated name tag. She nudges Daniel as a chill runs through her. "Look."

He does.

On their door, there's an identical laminated tag. Sasha and Daniel. Not Sarah, not the false name she'd given to the nuns at the shelter, but Sasha.

How could they know her name?

Daniel clutches the bookend a little tighter in his fist and steps into the hall. Sasha sticks close behind him and the door swings quietly shut behind them.

At one end of the hall, there's a set of stairs and Sasha can hear voices at the bottom. She clings to Daniel's arm and he nods to show that he hears them, too. They sound conversational and casual - not threatening, and not like Father Gary.

Daniel puts his finger over his mouth, warning her to be quiet, and Sasha mouths, "Bad people?"

"I don't know," Daniel says as quietly as he can manage. "I'd love to find a way out of here that doesn't involve meeting them, though."

Daniel creeps down the hallway, pointing to a camera overhead. Sasha holds onto the back of his t-shirt as they inspect the rest of the doors.

"Think the people downstairs are the owners of these rooms?" Daniel asks, putting his hand on the knob of a door that says Taylor.

"Don't," Sasha whispers, but he turns the knob anyway and Sasha's heart starts racing again.

The room is unoccupied, furnished with the same set of bed, end tables, bookshelf, and dresser but decorated in a black and white theme.

They open a few more doors - a light yellow room, a blue one, a room decorated with band posters that reminds Sasha of a dormitory. They're all unoccupied, and they're all just bedrooms.

"We're going to have to take the stairs," Sasha whispers as Daniel no doubt comes to the same conclusion.

"Are you ready?" he asks, holding the bookend at his side as they approach the top of the stairs again.

"No," Sasha says with a weak laugh, then slips her hand into Daniel's.

The stairs creak as they descend, and by the time they reach the bottom, every single set of eyes in the room below has turned to them.