Saving Them

by Rebecca Royce

  There was always the possibility Keith had been wrong altogether.

  Yet, in my gut, that I was now trusting completely for the first time in my life, I knew this was right. They were here. Garrison had wanted his boys back. It had been clear he wasn’t going to get that. So he’d taken the two he had and was going to abuse them into submission. The sad truth was that as much as he liked Keith out there representing the Sandler name and Clay winning in court, he really wanted Quinn and Tommy more.

  Well, he couldn’t have them. All four of them mattered to me. We were going to leave here together, all of us.

  Clay rubbed his forehead. “Your disguise is so effective I want to put you in the med machine, demand you sleep for weeks, and call Ari to see what he thinks is wrong with you.”

  “Probably helps that I’m still so skinny.” I looked better with my natural curves at my normal weight. “The shop we stopped at on the Blurred Space Station kept telling me these were too big on me. That was the point. Possibly sick, mourning widow. It works?”

  Keith nodded. “It does. Good luck. You know we’re here, loving you, missing you, and believing in you.”

  That had been the perfect thing to say. I kissed him square on the mouth, letting him hold me to his body for a second before I turned around and did the same with Clay. I would remember this moment for the next few weeks, months, whatever it took. I knew they’d be here. Nothing would keep me from getting back to them.

  Artemis, Landed on Sandler One

  * * *

  Keith Sandler

  I watched her leave through the screen in the comm room. Clay stood by me for a second before turning to go figure out ways to fix the ship. He wasn’t particularly handy. Out of the whole group of us, he did the least manual labor, not from lack of interest but lack of ability.

  I liked to imagine something in my head then see if I could create it in real life, too.

  Paloma was heading off into the unknown like it was the most natural thing in the world. She wasn’t the girl we had first met. Well, she would always have those qualities, too, but I doubted she’d show up on our doorstep now after a bombing. She would more likely go find who had bombed her home and take care of them herself.

  I sighed. That wasn’t true. She’d still have to come to us. I’d still get to hold her on my lap until she stopped shaking, but then rather than feeling unwanted, as her years in the Sisterhood had done to her, she would get up and figure out how to take care of business.

  I’d loved her instantly. So much then. And unbelievably, because I wouldn’t have thought it possible, more now. She was so many things. Smart. Funny. Clever. Loyal. Brave. Fierce. Protective. I could have gone on and on. She was mine.

  I wasn’t terrified of her going off to do this. I wasn’t thrilled about it, but the day she’d gone to rescue Clay, I’d barely been able to stop myself from rushing after her. Something had changed, and it wasn’t me. I hadn’t mellowed. If anything, my need to take care of all of us had doubled. No. Paloma had changed.

  Somewhere along the way, she had become a Sandler—in body and spirit, not just name—in the ways that made us good, not in the ways that made us weak. She was everything we were supposed to be. By the universe, I really loved her.

  There was nothing I could have done in this situation that she couldn’t have done better, so as much as I would worry, I trusted her to do what she said she would.

  When had she become so self-sufficient? So capable of managing whatever came her way? Slowly and then all at once. She survived more than I ever had. The bombings, multiple times. The abduction by the bounty hunter. All of the hell her father put her through. The Sisterhood of the Universe and the beatings. She needed some help with anxiety, but after all that, who wouldn’t? No, it was the time she’d spent on my father’s ship that had done it. It was those months—of which she’d spent alone almost the entire time—that had changed her into the woman who would crawl out of bed, wander a new place until she found a screen, and watched what looked like the deaths of her husbands because that was what she needed to do.

  That was when she had changed.

  And there had been so much chaos, so much running, so much fear that I hadn’t noticed it until we were together on Artemis. I wasn’t a person who gave into flights of fancy, but Sterling had told me before we’d left their farm that Artemis was magical. I didn’t think he was the type to use phrases like that either.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe we would get our family back and leave on this ship. That would be some of kind magic for sure.

  Paloma passed out of my view. There was nothing to do but wait and convince the authorities they didn’t want to board us. We’d disembarked fast enough that no one should notice. Maybe I would see if Clay needed help.

  8

  Daddy Dearest

  Four Months Earlier

  Somewhere in Sandler Space, Earth Standard Time

  I rubbed my aching neck. Small aches and pains weren’t concerning to me. I’d gotten pretty good at keeping myself calm. The guards who came delivered my food then left. No one spoke to me except Waverly, when she could manage to come. She had responsibilities, which seemed to be helping an elderly doctor patch up the crew after they nearly been killed doing whatever Garrison told them to do. I hadn’t met the man himself.

  She took my messages to my guys and repeated what they said back to me. The most recent ones had been…

  I love you… Quinn

  I’m sorry… Tommy (this had been the message from him the last five times.)

  You can see me in the water but I never get wet. What am I?… Clay.

  Stay Strong… Keith.

  * * *

  I would send back through Waverly:

  Quinn… I love you, too.

  Tommy… Stop apologizing. This is not your fault. We all made this mistake together.

  Clay… A reflection. Surely you have something harder than that.

  Keith… I’m plenty strong. How are you holding up?

  * * *

  According to Waverly, they were a floor directly above me. They had similar cells, but the cellblock was filled, not just with them, but two hundred deserters who had been captured. There were some very sick people, and Waverly had actually found she could be helpful. Waverly was only supposed to be helping those her father deemed worthy, but she took care of everyone, anyway. She hated the restrictions put on her.

  I was sympathetic, but seeing as I was stuck in this cage, there wasn’t much I could do about it. The guys were healthy, although she didn’t know if they’d stay that way much longer. Garrison was getting tired of talking.

  He wanted action. Beatings might come next.

  I cringed at the thought. If he was like Sister Superior from the Sisterhood of the Universe, he was going to have them beaten, fix them in the med machine, and do it again. I hoped I was wrong. We had to get out of here.

  “Waverly.” A loud boom of a voice sounded in the room, and she flinched before she rose to her feet.

  “Father.” Her eyes stayed on the floor.

  I touched the plastic. My thinking about our situation changed. It wasn’t the guys he was going to have beaten. I kept my voice low. “Remind them I’m a survivor. No deals.”

  If they could be strong and brave, so could I.

  She nodded, once, to indicate she’d heard. If Waverly was acting, then she was the best performer I’d ever seen. Her body visibly shook as her father approached.

  I stared at the man. I’d seen him several times on news reports on Mars Station when I was young, but like most things back then, I hadn’t particularly focused on things that didn’t directly concern me. If Garrison Sandler wasn’t coming to visit, I didn’t worry about him. Turned out, he had been trying to get me married to Tommy but that was neither here nor there at the moment. It wasn’t that he’d had some affection for me; we’d never met. No, at the time he’d wanted my father’s money and influence.

  He didn’t need those th
ings anymore.

  The next time I’d seen Garrison was on a screen when I’d been tied to a chair in a bounty hunter’s ship and he’d told the awful man to kill me. Instead, the bounty hunter had tried to sell me off on the Dark Planets and that had become my ultimate worst-case scenario.

  I wished I could say Garrison was ugly, that somehow the outer shell matched the inner filth. But he wasn’t. At least I couldn’t call him that. My husbands looked just like him. Maybe Quinn was the closest in appearance. He was probably what they would all look like, sort of, in twenty-five years. Blondish-brownish hair. Garrison’s version had gray on his sideburns now. Sandler-blue eyes. Tall. Fit.

  Only, where my husbands looked wounded in their hidden gazes, this man was simply cruel.

  “I wanted to check on her. Make sure she wasn’t getting sick.”

  He shoved at his daughter’s shoulder. “No one asked you to be here. Get out.”

  I hated him so much. I had one more thing to say to Waverly, and so I tempered down my fury. “It’s the chin and the lips. I tried so hard to figure out what it was about you that seemed so familiar.” I pointed to my own chin. “Your chin, your lips. Your smile. The same as my guys. That’s a Sandler trait. Even if you don’t get to do it often.”

  Waverly paused, raising her head to look at me for a second before she ran off. I hoped she would be okay. I didn’t change my posture at all because of Garrison’s presence. He didn’t scare me. Little did anymore.

  Beneath my feet, something seemed to shift. I looked down, unsure of what that was. It wasn’t the ship—it flew steady through space. Probably one of Tommy’s designs, and they were pretty solid. But something else… I wasn’t sure. For a second, I could have sworn I felt the universe move.

  That was, of course, ridiculous.

  “Hi, Dad. How are you?”

  A muscle ticked in his jaw. Sometimes his sons did that, too. It was cute on them. I pointed at him.

  “You might want to get your blood pressure checked. Look a little stressed there.”

  His nostrils flared. “I heard you are sassy. That is what people who know you say about you.”

  “Who knows about me?” I was genuinely interested.

  He waved his hand in the air. “That is neither here nor there.”

  “No, seriously. Who do I know who knows you? I would like to not know them anymore.”

  He pounded on the plastic. “Shut up, girl. I heard you have a mouth. You and I are going to strike a deal.”

  We were not. “I don’t think so.”

  “I will kill them. One by one. You will do what I want.”

  I was glad to be standing. This time I wanted to be on equal footing. “If you were going to kill them, you would have by now. You may not know much about me except my so-called sassy mouth, so let me edify you for our future dealings, Dad. I am used to crazy fathers. I swam in the pit of crazy for so long I am an expert at navigating the currents.” Those were words I’d learned on Earth living in Oceania. On the space station, currents were for space, not water. The analogy wouldn’t work that way though. “Let’s stop bullshitting each other.”

  “You’re right. I had hoped threatening you might make you compliant. I see that’s not the case. I might be impressed if you weren’t going to be such a pain in the ass to deal with. My sons aren’t scared enough. For some reason, all these years with you—”had it been that long? I supposed it had when it came down to it. We were always running from one place to another. It was hard to keep track of the timing exactly—“have made them believe everything will be okay. They can’t think that. It gets in the way of my plan.”

  “Which would be what? Just out of curiosity. Do you really think the people of Earth are going to sit back and let you invade?”

  He narrowed his gaze. “Do you know anything about the history of Earth? Do you know how frequently one people conquers another? Most of the time without anyone even noticing. They’re suddenly conquered. I have been taking over Earth for years. When I get there, no one—not even your prime minister—will stop me. There is going to be a new regime. And they will all worship me.”

  “I won’t.” I held up my chin. “I’m one person. Maybe it doesn’t matter. But I will never worship you.”

  He practically snarled, and I had to wonder if there was something medically wrong with him outside of the obvious narcissistic tendencies and believing himself to be deserving of worship.

  “I wanted you to comply. To convince them. I would have offered you power.”

  I shrugged. “Any power you could give me, I wouldn’t want. And if you kill me, they’ll never do as you say. What will you do about this?”

  There was that feeling beneath me again. This time it really did feel like the universe stretched out beneath my feet. As though I floated right where I was supposed to be.

  “I have no choice. I will question their resolve. I can’t kill you. But I can hurt you, and no mere beating will do for my daughter-in-law.” He called out behind him. “Open the cage.”

  The plastic folded upward and my father-in-law grabbed me, yanking me down the hall. His grasp on my arm hurt. It would leave a mark, but I didn’t react. Another thing I’d learned at the Sisterhood. Who’d known those years would come in handy so much today?

  I didn’t know what he’d do exactly, but it wouldn’t be good. The lights in the hallway blinded me before he shoved me into the lift. I’d spent so much time in half-light that the glare pained me. We went up, and as the lift moved, Garrison hit a button. “Tell my daughter she’s going to be want to be on floor fifty-five.”

  “Wow, pretty big ship, huh? That means I’m on fifty-four.” I was saying inane things to fill the quiet. I didn’t like being this close to Garrison. Like pain meds, he made me want to vomit.

  We arrived on what had to be the guys’ floor. Garrison shoved me through the doorway, and I fell onto my knees. He might not be planning to beat me, but he wasn’t going easy either. Between my arm, my eyes, and now my knees, I was going to be a bruised mess.

  “P?” Quinn called out first. I raised my head to drink him in. The sight of him was such a relief. They hadn’t given me light or day sensors. I’d lost track of time. He was the closest to me, but quickly, my other three were also on their feet in their various cells. Their placement was smart. They weren’t close enough to each other that they could converse without talking over others.

  Who knew how many spies he had in here in addition to his surveillance equipment? He’d obviously not been all that focused on me, or he would have known Waverly spoke to me.

  “I’m okay.” I called out, knowing it wouldn’t just be my Sandlers hearing it, but the whole dang room of people.

  Garrison dragged me to my feet by my hair. “For now she is.”

  I really hoped they’d believed Waverly when I’d told her over and over to tell them I was a survivor. Otherwise, they were going to give in to this, and we couldn’t have that.

  “But you’ll have to ask yourselves, how long can she live without the antidote to this?”

  He held up a needle. “This is close to the stuff that destroyed your mother. Oh, you didn’t think I knew that boys? I did. She’s alive. Good. Let her suffer.”

  He stuck me with the needle, and I cried out. The room tilted sideways.

  Garrison laughed. “You might survive this. If Waverly hurries her fat ass up here to save you.”

  I breathed through my nose. “Death doesn’t scare me.”

  “Who said anything about dying?”

  Five Months Later

  Sandler One, Earth Standard Time

  * * *

  The household buzzed with energy, but none of it was from happiness. The only reason I’d gotten inside to cook and clean was because Garrison Sandler was in residence. They needed extra staff. Claudette, who hired me, was a fifty-year-old woman who looked exactly as I pretended to be. She was a widow and had perpetual dark circles under her eyes.

  She wasn’t
kind or gentle, but she’d assured me no one would bother me in the Sandler household. They didn’t want widows. They prized virgins.

  I almost choked. My husbands hadn’t gotten that with me, and they hadn’t seemed to complain. Still, I nodded and played my role which involved cooking and cleaning. The first couple of days, no one spoke to me and I stayed in the kitchen making bread. I wondered if we’d made a terrible mistake. I wasn’t going to get to this underground dungeon if I couldn’t get out to where people might be talking.

  I fell into my bed every night and listened to the sounds of the house in a room I shared with four other maids. There were constant noises—someone seemed to be awake all the time. Sometimes footsteps hurried and sometimes they were slow and steady.

  I was here, in the same place as my husbands and they had no idea.

  I’m close, guys. Whatever is happening, hold on.

  When exhaustion hit, I let it take me.

  After a week of seeing no one, Claudette sent me from the kitchen. She wanted me to clean up from a meeting that had taken place in the living room.

  “The Master’s not in there anymore, so you should be fine to go in.” Claudette sounded the way Keith had pretended to sound.

  The Master. I almost choked on the thought. Garrison Sandler. I wondered if he’d recognize me if he ran into me in the hall. I doubted it. He’d tried to destroy me and had my loves locked up here, but I’d hardly warrant a spot in his memory. If he thought I was dead, he wouldn’t give me a second glance.

  I didn’t mind that in the least.

  I made my way to the living room and stopped at the door. Inside, someone cried, which was why I halted. That wasn’t a sound I was used to hearing in this place.

  A man sat on the couch, his head in his hands. He wept openly. I should’ve probably turned around and walked away. Instead, I entered on quiet feet. “Excuse me, sir, are you okay?”