Roughly six years later
Sara Kahlreina clocked out, finding a secluded area way outside the headquarters, peeling off her Service outfit and replacing it with her civilian clothes. Service members were not allowed to neither exit nor enter the main headquarters in their civilian clothes; instead, they had to wear their outfits, complete with masks.
She hated the masks. Like the outfits, they were made of skin-hugging latex and were suffocating, despite eye-ear-and-mouth-holes. She had been a Service member since her fourteenth birthday, the legal age someone had to be to join the organisation. Now she was twenty-three, almost twenty-four – still young on the outside, but years in the Service and with her fiancé had left her feeling double her age.
She brushed her long, thick chestnut hair and tied it back in a simple ponytail. She was no hairdresser and never had been, but it didn't matter, especially not to Yuhmer Vigerevich Krazak. It didn't matter what she wore, who she was or what she did; he would still take his fists to her, especially when she'd been drinking. Their relationship was not an equal or loving one; he was a guard and she was his prisoner and punchbag, serving life for an unknown crime.
Sara looked at the time. Nineteen hours. She had an hour to reach the Naughty Ottsel all the way back in Haven. With a sinking feeling of desperation, she knew she wasn't going to make it. Kicking dust and clay behind her, she sprinted across Senzanome and into the city that hid it, running down streets and alleyways, searching for a teleporter ring.
Eventually, she found one that went to Spargus, and borrowing the Tough Puppy, she drove as fast as she could to the transporter ship that perennially waited just outside the Spargan gate. Her stomach churned; she hated driving and if there was somebody else more capable, he or she would normally do it, but today she had no choice. She reached Haven in quicker time than expected, the unsettled atmosphere so overwhelming she felt herself aging. She cursed her Allabinan heritage for that extra-sharp woman's intuition.
She looked at her watch; nineteen-forty hours. She had twenty minutes to get there or he would punish her, and not in a good way, either. Her heart raced as she spotted a single-seat Zoomer. Hopping onto it and attempting to avoid Krimzon Guards, she took off at a high speed towards the Ottsel. Upon reaching it, she swung one leg over and pressed herself against the wall, dark eyes scanning her field of vision for him, her work-induced instincts taking over. Upon seeing he wasn't there, she returned to the street, straightening her back and glancing at her watch.
Nineteen-fifty-eight hours. Two minutes more and she would be figuratively dead, or in Yuhmer's case, literally.
"Good evening, Sara."
There he was, at least vocally, his crisp, clear voice recognisable from the first syllable. Where had he appeared from, she wondered dimly as she turned to face him, his cold blue eyes cutting her like glass; much like his voice.
She swallowed. "G-good evening, Yuhmer,"
He grabbed her wrist, fingers locking around it like a vice, making it burn. "So nice that you finally turned up!" he hissed, cold tone replaced with that of hot fire.
Her throat went dry with terror. "But I'm right on time – "
He yanked her, interrupting her. "Don't you get cocky with me, Sara." Turning to face the Ottsel, he dragged her inside, sitting her down at the table and almost ordering for her.
The rest of the night followed just as she expected – the usual stone-cold silence, the wrenching back to his place, the verbal abuse followed by the physical, then the sexual abuse when she couldn't defend herself any longer. As she lay on the floor as he carried out the body-and-soul-destroying abuse, her mind remained on the unborn child inside her womb, hopefully safe, tucked away between her hips.
She closed her eyes and saw the child's father, his eyes a deep blue, holding her own dark ones that night not long back as they moved together, much gentler and more beautiful than his method right now.
A tear slipped out from under her eyelid as she felt herself slip into unconsciousness.
I'm sorry, Saldam...You...
You were right.