The sound of the deadbolt retracting drew Violet’s attention to the door.

She thought back to every war movie she’d ever seen. If they had even a shred of truth to them, the assailants would open the door and toss in some kind of flashbang or knockout gas or maybe both—who knew? She supposed she might have learned the tactic herself if she’d actually made it to the Academy.

The handle turned slowly and then suddenly the door flew open.

Violet braced, waiting for the room to fill with blaster fire, but instead she saw a woman standing in the door frame, hands empty, palms slightly turned out as if to show that they held no weapon.

The woman was neither tall nor short. Her skin looked like she either spent hours a day at the beach or else had a mix of genetics that gave her the perfect tan no matter where she was. She wore glasses and little to no makeup. Her hair was straight, dark, and pulled back into a ponytail. She wore a white lab coat. Everything about her screamed nerd except for her natural beauty.

Violet felt a pang of feminist guilt. As an attractive woman who’d always done well in school, she knew better than to stereotype a good-looking woman by expecting her to lack intelligence, but nevertheless…

Behind the pretty in the lab coat, she could see the tension on the faces of the rag-tag fighters, their weapons still held ready, their eyes intensely searching for any reason to use them.

“I’m Dr. Silva,” the lab coat said. “And despite what it looks like with these soldiers behind me, I very much don’t wish to hurt you.”

She took a step forward into the room and one of the soldiers immediately reached out to stop her. “Ma’am,” he said, delivering the word as if it were a warning.

She glanced down at the soldier’s hand on her shoulder and it retracted as if its owner had just realized that it was touching the burner on a hot stove. The soldier remained silent after that and Dr. Silva entered the room alone, closing the door behind her.

Violet stood, crouched in the corner, her fingers still tight around the metal rod, ready for a fight, but not quite sure what she should expect from this unexpected turn of events.

A mixture of outrage and confusion spread across the soldiers’ faces outside—at least the ones not wearing helmets. One of them tried the door handle and then resorted to pounding on the door, yelling for the doctor to open it.

“Please, I was hoping that we could talk,” the doctor said, her hands spread wide, “woman to woman.” Her voice was a mixture of silk and sandpaper. It made her seem older than she looked. Which made Violet distrust everything around her even more.

“Why don’t you let me out of here and explain what the hell you want with me, and then maybe we can talk.”

The doctor smiled and gestured at the walls surrounding them both. “As you can see,” she glanced at the soldiers huddled around the window, blocking any view of the hallway outside, “or perhaps not, there isn’t really anywhere to go. All the same, you’re not a prisoner here.”

Violet sniggered. “Easy for you say now, but try waking up tied down to a bed having been taken against your will in the first place!”

“Merely precautions, I assure you. To ensure that you were not a danger to yourself or any of us.”

Violet opened her mouth to protest, but Dr. Silva cut her off with a raised forefinger. “I understand what it looks like and I know how I sound…if the circumstances were reversed, I would feel exactly the same as you, I have no doubt. Be that as it may, we are your friends here and we wish you no ill-will. In fact, you may even come to thank us for rescuing you from the Galactic Military’s grasp. But I realize that may be a tall order for your first day.”

Violet stood stunned, not really sure what to say about any of it. It was a lot to take in. Her logic circuits fired on overtime, trying to weed out the truth of Silva’s statement. Unfortunately, she had far too little information about what was going on to make any kind decision as to what was actually going on.

She lowered her makeshift club.

“There…that’s better,” Dr. Silva said with a smile and a flutter of eyelashes.

Violet felt a pang of attraction. Keep it in your pants, girl, she chided herself. She wasn’t normally into girls—she’d done the whole making out with her best friend thing, but nothing ever came of it except the thrill of novelty and experimentation—but this was different. There was something irresistible about the striking woman standing before her, and she didn't know what to make of it.

The doctor crossed the distance between them and Violet felt her face flush red.

“That’s close enough,” she said, her voice more whisper than warning.

“Don’t worry, uh…” It was the doctor’s turn to blush. “I’m afraid I don’t know what to call you…”

The corner of Violet’s mouth turned up in a half-grin-half-smirk. “My name’s Violet. And what do I call you, doc?”

“Doc is fine, but my mother called me Adeline.”

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“I’m sorry,” Violet said.

The doctor looked confused. “Sorry for what?”

“Your mother…you said called. I take it she passed away?”

A brief expression of sadness crossed Dr. Adeline Silva’s face before she wiped the slate clean, making her face unreadable. She nodded. “Going on five years now.”

“Like I said, I’m sorry. She must have been a wonderful woman.”

“Why do you say that?”

“To have raised someone like you—beautiful, intelligent, a doctor no less—she must have been proud.”

Dr. Silva laughed and a single tear squeezed out of the corner of her eye which she wiped away with her middle finger. “Yes and no.”

Violet waited with an expression that demanded more of an explanation.

Adeline gestured around to their surroundings. “She was proud of my choice to become a doctor, but she was less than approving of the rest of my life choices.” She stopped, looking as if more tears might come, but then she recomposed herself. “The last time I saw her we fought…I never got the chance to make things right between us.”

Violet extended a sympathetic hand on Adeline’s shoulder, wanting to pull her into an embrace, but resisting, knowing it would be a mistake.

The doctor tilted her head ever so slightly toward Violet’s hand on her shoulder, and then, as if remembering they were being watched by the soldiers outside, she stiffened and pulled away. “We’ve gotten a little off track. I apologize.” She patted the top of the gurney. “Please have a seat, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions that you might have.”

Violet glanced at the gurney where the busted straps still dangled.

“Don’t worry. I promise you there won’t be any attempts to restrain you,” Dr. Silva said. “Believe it or not, they were just there for your protection. We needed to sedate you in order to bring you here. And much to my surprise, we needed quite a bit more sedative than usual. With such a high amount of medication, seizures are not uncommon. I wanted to be sure that you wouldn’t harm yourself or fall off the bed.”

“How very kind of you,” Violet said dryly, but she did as the doctor requested and sat on the gurney, turning to face her.

As the doctor began checking her vitals and listening to her heartbeat, Violet couldn’t help but catch a whiff of her floral-scented hair. It was like the perfect spring day (or so she assumed, having never experienced the seasons of a planet growing up on a space station—but she’d seen plenty of vids and tried several VR experiences that were supposed to replicate the feeling).

Once the doctor finished, she removed something from her pocket and depressed it against Violet's arm without warning.

Before Violet could react, she heard the hiss of the pneumatic needle as it injected her full of some foreign substance that caused her arm to feel as though it were on fire. The burning sensation spread throughout her body, snaking its way along her veins and arteries until her entire being felt as though she might burst into flame at any moment.

Her infatuation with the woman ceased immediately.

“What the hell was that?” she asked with a wince.

“A tracking agent so we can find you again,” Dr. Silva replied, as though it were the most natural and obvious thing in the world.

Violet saw red and shoved the doctor away—harder than she meant to. Dr. Silva flew across the room, her feet leaving the ground as though shot out of a cannon. She slammed into the far wall.

Violet heard the breath as it was forcefully expelled from the beautiful woman’s lungs by the impact.

The doctor sank to her hands and knees, doubled over, gasping for air. When she’d managed a few breaths, she uttered, “I'm sorry I should have told you first. But—”

Outside, the soldiers tried the door handle, jiggling it once, then twice to no effect. The door remained locked. Several loud bangs followed as one of the soldiers lowered his shoulder and rammed the door, trying to force it open by any means necessary.

Dr. Silva stood and held up a hand. “Don’t! It's fine… I'm all right. She won’t hurt me!”

One more heavy bang and then the soldier stood down—not liking it, but obeying her all the same.

Violet, still enraged, stepped closer to the doctor not sure what she intended to do to the woman.

The doctor stood tall and braced herself for whatever punishment Violet might hand out, but Violet stopped short.

Maybe it was the look of fear in the eyes of the woman that only moments earlier she had been infatuated with, but Violet couldn’t bring herself to further harm the suddenly frail woman in front of her.

Violet stepped back and allowed Dr Silva to pass by.

Silva walked to the door and opened it. She stopped and turned back.

“I know you won't believe me right now and perhaps you're not even capable of it at the moment. If I were in your situation, I don't know that I would believe a word I said either, but I hope that in time you will grow to trust what I'm about to tell you—”

“Ma'am we really have to go,” one of the soldiers interrupted.

“I’m afraid we’ve run out of time, Violet,” Dr. Silva said. “When we rescued you from the Remus, we injected a masking agent into your blood that blocks the signal of the tracker Military Intelligence injected into you when you first came on board. It's wearing off now, and soon they will locate you and send a strike team to extract you.”

“What do you mean? They never injected me with anything!” Violet protested.

“I don’t have time to prove it to you, and I don’t know when they delivered it, perhaps while you were sleeping—but trust me, it’s there… You're very important to them, Violet, but you must listen to me. They are not the good guys and we are not your enemy.”

Violet sniggered with a small roll of her eyes. “I don't even know who you people are!”

Dr. Silva’s expression was a mixture of pity and kindness. “And I wish I had time to explain it all to you, but it will have to wait. Here…” The woman pressed a small object into Violet's palm. “When you are ready to learn more, you can contact me with this and we will come find you.”

“Ma'am! Times up! We have to go. Now.”

“I’m sorry, Violet.” Dr. Adeline Silva squeezed Violet’s hand tenderly in her own. “Until we meet again.”

Then the doctor turned and hastened down the hall, her contingent of armed soldiers following after her; and Violet stood alone, shocked and wondering once again what the hell kind of shit-storm she’d ended up in the middle of.