Violet showed up at the med bay early. They hadn’t let her see Trace last night after her debriefing, but she wanted to check on her, first thing. Pushing open the door with trepidation, the sterile smell of antiseptic and the soft hum of medical equipment enveloped her as she scanned the room. It was then that she noticed Trace wasn't in one of the beds. Violet's heart sank. Had something gone wrong?
“Can I help you?” the nurse on duty asked as Violet walked in.
“I’m here to check on Trainee Bingham, she was brought in yesterday.”
The nurse searched for the name at her data station. “I’m sorry, she was released last night.”
Violet swore and then quickly apologized, nodding her embarrassment to the nurse. “Guess I’ll go find her then.”
“Might be best if you just let her rest,” the nurse said with a dismissive tone, her head down, staring at some paperwork.
Violet couldn’t tell if the woman didn’t like her or she was just always a bitch.
“Thanks, I’ll take that under advisement.” Violet gave her a mock salute and then turned and left without another word.
She fumed on the walk back to her bunk. If she’d thought to check Trace’s room before trekking to the other side of the asteroid, she might have saved herself the entire trip. The white panels of the medical corridors gave way to the plain gray walls that decorated the rest of the asteroid base as she neared the trainee crew quarters.
Several others from her class were leaving their rooms as Violet arrived at Trace’s quarters. Marcus Jensen was one of those. He saw Violet and a wicked sneer crossed his face.
“Come back to finish her off, Weaver?” he said, and then turned and walked off toward the mess hall, not waiting for a response.
“Piss off,” Violet muttered, more to herself than anyone else. She shot her middle finger at his back as he walked away and then knocked on Trace’s door before opening it.
Trace’s head lifted off her pillow as Violet poked her head into the room. She’d been asleep.
“Hey there,” Violet said. “How’s our favorite patient?”
Trace smiled and lowered her head back down on her pillow. She shifted underneath the blankets to get more comfortable. “Doc said it’s not too bad, considering. I’ll be out of PT for a few days, but that’s it. They gave me some kind of stem serum that’s supposed to speed up the healing.”
“That’s good. I went over to the med bay to check on you and when I didn’t see you there, I thought the worst.”
Trace laughed. “And what’s the worst to you, Violet Weaver?”
Violet shrugged. “I don’t know… death?” She smiled and shrugged again. “No, you know, I thought maybe you’d been sent home or washed out or something. I couldn’t have dealt with being the cause of you not making it.”
Trace’s expression grew serious. “Listen to me, Violet. I’m a big girl. I make my own decisions. And this one just happened to take me out of action for a few days. I shouldn’t have taken the bait. This is nobody’s fault but my own… and you know, maybe Marten’s.”
Violet giggled a little. “Okay, well I guess I’ll let you get back to healing up. I’ll see you in tactics after lunch, though, right?”
Trace nodded. “Wouldn’t miss it. I’m sure we’ll cover psychological warfare and how to deal with the taunts of your enemy.”
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Violet laughed. “Well, I’m gonna go grab some breakfast then, before morning PT.”
“Give ‘em hell,” Trace said, and then rolled over, closing her eyes.
Violet backed out and closed the door.
As she walked through the corridors toward the mess hall, Violet’s breath suddenly caught in her chest. She felt flush. The events of the last few months flooded to her forethoughts, and she could not banish them, no matter how hard she tried. The monster, Zack Andersen, on Tryptek station; her best friend, Becky, dead, at the hand of the monster; being murdered, and returning again, somehow; new found strength and vitality coursing through her veins, only to be stripped from her again; being beaten to within an inch of her life; everyone hating her, save for Trace; wounding her only living friend in the galaxy–where was she going in this life? What was her purpose? All of it came flooding through the feeble gates of her mind and she couldn’t fucking breathe.
Breathe!, she screamed internally as she knelt in the corridor. Just fucking breathe!
A part of her knew it was all in her head, but her body wasn’t in the loop. Her body was threatening to shut down and collapse on the floor in a pile of shit and pity and self-wallowing.
The body is a fickle thing. The mind as well, sometimes.
A group of three trainees crossed the intersection of the corridor, talking amongst themselves. They took no notice of Violet, none she could tell anyway. And with that brief interruption, Violet managed a deep breath of air. Like a spell being broken, the panic subsided.
She took a few more breaths and did her best to calm her frazzled nervous system. And then she continued on to the mess hall for breakfast.
Violet passed bulkhead after bulkhead in the corridor, all of them mass-produced and identical in nature. The uniformity of the production and the modular, repetitive nature of the construction reminded her of Tryptek Station.
She was struck with a sudden melancholy and longing for home. She’d been gone for less than a year, and if you’d asked her as she was leaving if she’d ever miss the place, her response would have been a resounding ‘fuck, no!’, but everything that had happened to her since leaving had tempered the brashful naivety of her eighteen years.
She allowed the feeling to wash over her, but she didn’t dwell on it. Instead, she turned her attention to her present circumstance. It was clear that she was under threat at the Academy. Whether the threat was from a lone mastermind or a larger group, wasn’t immediately clear to her. Sure, there was the thing with Marten and his crew, but that had only started up recently. This threat, this hidden menace, had begun before her arrival on Cerebrus–her abduction on board the Remus, and her short time on some backwater planet with Dr. Silva, only to be let go and picked up by the GR and brought to Cerebrus to begin her training. There was a larger threat afoot than her squabbles with Marten, but she was at a loss as to what it entailed. All she could do was focus on her training, develop the hard skills that would enable her to be the best operator she could be, and prepare herself to deal with whatever threats rose against her when they finally revealed themselves.
She arrived at the mess hall with breakfast already in full swing. She took a tray, entered the chow line, and took what was offered. Today it was eggs, ham, and a biscuit with gravy. She found a table by herself in the corner of the room and sat down.
The scrambled eggs were lukewarm, but tasty. The ham was tough and chewy. The biscuit was soggy from the bland white gravy. After tasting each, she scarfed the eggs and was halfway through the ham when a finger appeared in her gravy, sloshing the contents of her plate onto the table.
“Gonna eat that?” It was Marten’s voice.
Without looking up, she answered. “Well, not now.” She didn’t want to mention that he’d probably done her a favor anyway.
“Anybody sitting here?” He sat down, uninvited, along with three of his other goons, their names escaped her. Violet pushed her tray away, her appetite gone. “You look like you could use some friends.”
“I’m all set, thanks.” Violet stood to leave.
“Probably just as well,” Marten sneered. “The way you treat your friends, we’d all end up bleeding in the med bay or dead by the end of day.” He laughed and his cohorts joined in.
Violet thought of Trace lying in bed and couldn’t stand the sound of those imbeciles laughing at her. She picked up her tray and dumped the remaining slop on top of Marten’s food.
“Here, you can have it.”
The laughter stopped.
She turned to leave but paused as she heard Marten’s voice.
“Not the smartest move for someone without any friends to watch her back… We’ll see you shortly in the training yard, Violet.”
And with that the laughter started once more.
Violet stormed off with a pit in her stomach, wondering why the hell she always seemed to kick every hornet’s nest she came across. Suddenly, growing old and bored to death on Tryptek Station with her parents didn’t seem like such a dreadful thing anymore.