The doctor and her soldiers had no sooner left than a wave of nausea washed over Violet. Her body tried to double over and fold in half while she searched desperately for some sort of container in which to relieve the agony, but there was nothing in the room that might serve her needs.

She raced out the door hoping to find a bathroom or trash receptacle, only managing a few steps down the hallway before she realized she would never make it in time.

Stomach cramps racked her body, twisting her insides, and despite her best efforts to abstain, she projectile vomited all over the duracrete block walls of the hallway.

She felt the puke splash back and splatter her face and inhaled in revulsion, the smell of which caused her to retch all over again.

Despite her face and hair being wet with the contents of her stomach, she was grateful she had not had anything to eat recently so there were no chunks that she needed to pick out.

She braced her hands on her knees and waited for another wave of what she expected had to be dry heaving at this point—there couldn’t be anything left in her stomach by now.

Eventually the feeling passed and Violet dared to stand upright, hoping she was done being sick. As she regained her composure, she wondered whether or not the good doctor had poisoned her, or if perhaps this was just a side effect of the so-called tracker she had injected into her bloodstream?

Although, if what the doctor had said was true, and the GR had put a similar tracer in her system already…Violet didn’t recall being violently ill on board the Remus like she’d been just a moment ago.

Less than five minutes had passed since Dr. Silva and her contingent of soldiers had left Violet alone in the antique medical bay.

Her ears picked up on a low bass frequency that quickly grew in intensity. The walls and floor beneath her began to shake. She’d heard of some planets experiencing earthquakes and seismic shifts, but she had no idea if that’s what was happening.

No, it was closer to Tryptek station’s engine thrust, she thought. Probably a ship then, and close by. It felt like the engines were right on top of her, and maybe they were. She needed to figure out where the hell she was and sooner was better than later.

The rumbling intensified and Violet heard the windows of the medical bay shudder and threaten to shatter, but they held together, and in a matter of seconds the rumble lessened and then completely dissolved, the hallway filled with an eerie silence once again.

The quiet drew Violet back to the doctor's cryptic warning that the GR were not the good guys, but she struggled to make any sense of it.

The Galactic Republic had been the central governing force in most of the known galaxy for the last two centuries of human existence.

It was the only form of government that Violet had ever known.

The Republic spanned hundreds of planets and systems all united under the same governing force. A republic in name if not function…she’d heard her dad railing many times about the influence of Combine Corporations that all but owned several planets, and how they were buying political power and influencing the Senate to suit their own needs above the people’s.

In many systems, the Republic was the only force keeping any sort of peace or providing any sense of order. They kept potential pirates and warlords from overrunning the local populace and gave decent citizens a chance to live freely. Or so she’d always believed.

The communicator Dr. Silva had placed in her hand had fallen during Violet's sudden stomach illness. She saw it lying on the floor, several feet clear of the disgusting liquid she had spewed all over the floor.

What had felt compact in her hand, Violet now saw was, in fact, a necklace of some kind with a small pendant attached to it. From the outside it would look like an ordinary piece of jewelry to any suspicious eyes.

Violet eyed it with distrust, and for a moment considered leaving it where it lay, but in the end she decided to hold on to it until she knew more about what was going on. She picked it up off the floor and fastened it around her neck, her wrist coming away wet and sticky, nearly causing her to gag again as the fresh aroma wafted up into her nostrils.

She needed to find a place to clean up, and fast, before the smell made her sick all over again. She wandered down the hallway and turned left at the first door she found. It was an electrical closet of some kind—filled with ancient technology that had been replaced long before Violet was ever born.

She continued down the hallway which seemed to only turn in one direction. She made two more lefts and came full circle, staring down at the mess she’d made a few minutes prior.

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Her eyes crossed and she questioned her sanity. She must have missed the exit in her haste. She had expected to find a large set of doors that would take her out of the building, similar to the layout of Tryptek Station, but instead she received a reminder that she was a long way from home and not everything in the galaxy molded itself to the way Violet wanted it to be.

It only took half a lap before she located the access to the stairs that she’d missed on her first attempt to leave. Maybe it was the violent moment of sickness, or perhaps she just needed to pay closer attention to her surroundings… At any rate, if she was going to take her new profession in Military Intelligence seriously, then she needed to up her game. This wasn’t some rinky-dink, backwater space station—she was playing on the big stage. And if the last twenty-four hours had shown her anything, she was smack dab in the center of the biggest stage in the galaxy—and she was utterly clueless about the game that was being played out upon it.

She entered the stairwell and felt a draft blowing up the center of the shaft. She peered over the edge and got dizzy feeling as though she might be falling. The stairwell seemed to go down forever, though it was hard to tell because it lit only from several floors overhead where Violet now stood.

Glancing up and then down and then up again, Violet made her choice. She starting climbing up. It was an easy choice compared to the gloomy darkness that lay beneath her. Besides, there were only a handful of floors above her and she thought she knew what type of building she was in—an underground one. The kind of place humans on Earth built back when there were still nations instead of planets; and they thought they might just go and blow each other up at any moment with the nukes.

They called it a fallout bunker, she remembered from school. She also remembered her teacher, Mrs. Sinefal, explaining that in her opinion, “Humanity hasn’t changed all that much in the last thousand years… The scale has changed, the weapons have changed, but we remain animals ruled by emotion and the prehistoric programming for survival and replication. Certainly we dress the pig up in lipstick, hiding behind our shiny buildings and sprawling cities and galaxy-wide civilization, but underneath it all, we’re still controlled by our hearts and not our heads, despite how much we lie to ourselves about it.”

Violet remembered making fun of Mrs. Sinefal after that class with her best friend Becky and few other classmates. “The old coot’s really lost her marbles,” Becky had joked. And they all laughed and called Mrs. Sinefal names behind her back—but Violet was starting to believe that maybe the old coot wasn’t so crazy after all. Maybe Mrs. Sinefal knew the way the galaxy actually works.

At any rate, if there was an entrance or an exit to this place, it would be at the top.

The hum of the lights atop each half-level of stairs sounded deafening to Violet’s ears in the otherwise silence of the silo. Twice darkness seized the entire stairwell as the lights flickered off and then on again after the longest two seconds of Violet’s life. Ruled by our emotions, she thought, suddenly wishing she’d taken all of her teachers more seriously in school.

Five minutes later, she reached the top of the staircase and faced a large metal door. It looked ancient and heavy, the paint long since faded or scraped off; the rust had taken over, covering almost every inch of it.

She ran a finger over it like a mother inspecting the cleanliness of a bookshelf after dusting. A thin brick colored layer of dirt and rust covered her finger.

Instead of a handle, she found a large wheel which when turned extended several thick bolts, locking the door into place like a bank vault.

However, turning it was unnecessary. Dr. Silva’s team had left the door ajar and Violet slipped through to find a ladder that stood in the middle of narrow cylinder. The cylinder was about six feet wide and thirty feet tall.

High overhead, Violet saw a small crack of light peeking through the hatch cover and she started climbing, sensing her journey out of the underground maze was nearly at an end.

She reached the top and threw open the hatch. A blast of warm wind smacked her in the face, momentarily suffocating her as she felt like she was inhaling but no air entered her lungs. The feeling passed when she turned her head against the strong breeze and then it was the view that nearly took her breath away.

She was high on a mountain overlooking various peaks and valleys below. A few yards to her left she saw the indentations left by one of the doctor’s ship’s landing struts.

In the distance, she saw the upper halves of several large buildings, at the center of which stood four intertwined towers that meant she was near the capital city of the planet Logos—one of the last planets to join the Galactic Alliance. Logos was in the Outer Rim—weeks from Tryptek Station. Her journey from Tryptek to the Military Intelligence Academy had taken nearly a week itself, so even if the MIA lay in a straight line—how long had she been out?

The good doctor had left out anything about her missing several weeks of time. Violet had simply assumed that she’d been out for a few hours—a day at most—but if she really was on Logos then she’d just received many more questions than answers as to her situation.

She heard them before she saw them—three ships bobbing and weaving with the terrain below. They appeared to be flying from the capital, Niro City, heading straight for her.

The tracker.

Guess the doctor hadn’t been lying about that then.

As the ships flew closer they climbed to match her elevation and Violet saw the Galactic Alliance markings on their wings and underbellies.

There was only enough space for one of the ships to land and Violet tried to give it as much room as she could without falling off the side of the mountain.

When it had landed, the door opened and a ramp extended, bringing six armed GA officers wearing tactical gear with it.

“Are you Violet Weaver?” the lead officer asked.

Violet nodded.

The officer tapped his comm mic and spoke into his shoulder, “We’ve got her! Tell the Commander we’re bringing her in!”