Chapter 7: The Witnesses

The cabin in the hills became our sanctuary before the sanctuary existed.

It was small, just two rooms and a bathroom, but it had walls without cameras and a door that locked from the inside. It had windows that looked out on oak trees and wild grass, on a sky that stretched forever in every direction. It was quiet. The kind of quiet that wasn’t filled with fear.

We stayed there for two weeks.

Agent Chen visited every day, bringing food and news and the steady presence of someone who had seen the worst and hadn’t turned away. She sat with us in the evenings, on the small porch that overlooked the valley, and she talked about the future.

“The bill passed,” she told us on the third day. “By a wide margin. The governor signed it this morning. All indefinite service contracts are null and void. All permanent gear can be removed at the request of the contracted individual. The estate system is under review.”

She looked at us, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

“You did that,” she said. “You and Santa. Your testimony made the difference.”

I didn’t know what to say. The words felt too big, too important. I just sat there, holding Santa’s hand, feeling the weight of everything we’d been through.

“What happens now?” I asked.

Chen smiled. “Now, we are building something new. A sanctuary. A place where survivors can heal, where they can learn to live outside the system. I’ve already found the property. An old farmhouse in the valley. It needs work, but it has potential.”

She looked at us, her eyes searching.

“I want you to come with me,” she said. “Both of you. I want you to help me build it.”

I looked at Santa. Her eyes were steady, her expression calm. She trusted me. She always trusted me.

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll come.”

The sanctuary was a ruin.

The farmhouse had been abandoned for years. The roof leaked, the walls were cracked, the floors rotted. The barn was filled with rusted equipment and decades of debris. The fields were overgrown with weeds, the fences were broken, the well was dry.

But it had bones. Good bones. And it had space. Acres of land that stretched out in every direction, land that could be planted, that could be healed, that could become something new.

We started with the barn.

Santa was a natural with the work. She had a way with her hands, even through the mitts, that surprised me. She could clear debris, stack wood, and repair fences. She moved with a quiet purpose, her body finding rhythms that had been buried for years.

I worked alongside her. We cleared the stalls, mended the broken boards, swept out the dust and the dirt and the years of neglect. The work was hard, but it was good. It gave us purpose. It gave us something to do besides think about the past.