Violet raced to the holoscreen and swiped left, out of habit, for the station’s default 24-hour news station. All she got was a loading signal.

The ground beneath her vibrated again as another explosion went off, this one slightly smaller, like an aftershock. The lights in her apartment flickered and then shut off. Dim emergency lighting kicked on and cast her room in shadows.

“Ms. Weaver? Are you there?” Hector’s voice rang over her room’s intercom.

“Yes! I’m fucking here!” Violet responded. “Where else would I be?” She pounded on the comm screen that reflected her face in the dim red lights of the emergency beacon system.

Hector’s voice was calm and reassuring—obnoxiously so. “I need you to calm down, Violet. I know that you’ve been through a tough time, but I have to be honest with you. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.”

Violet thought her head might explode. She forced a deep breath and tried to relax, but the nervous energy built up inside her was too much. She punched the wall three times in rapid succession and screamed at the top of her lungs.

There, now she felt better. The release was almost orgasmic.

She waited for the pain to register in her knuckles, but when none came, she looked them over with a careful eye.

Not a scratch on them. She wiggled her fingers. They felt perfect. Next she looked at where she’d struck the wall.

To her astonishment, her fists had left several indentations in the permacrete.

“Violet? Is everything okay over there?” Hector sounded concerned.

“Sorry, I’m fine. Just needed to—I’m good.”

“No doubt you noticed the explosions that just rippled through the station,” Hector said.

“Yeah, I felt it. Kinda fucking hard not to…”

For the first time Hector was something other than calm and professional. “Jesus, kid, the mouth on you...”

“I’m not that much younger than you are, Hector.”

“Whatever, sorry. Listen—”

“I’m listening,” Violet interrupted.

She smiled as she heard Hector take a deep breath and exhale it, trying not to lose his temper. She couldn’t say why she was giving the guy such a hard time. He was only trying to be helpful.

To Hector’s credit, he regained his composure quickly.

“The explosions were caused by that lunatic who’s killed nearly everyone in your sector. Turns out he’s the kid of one of the station administrators and he somehow got ahold of their access codes. He launched several mining torpedoes and aimed them back at the station’s propulsion systems. Long story short, we’re now heading on a direct path of impact with a very large asteroid that the station was looking to mine next. If we can’t get the backup propulsion systems online, we’re going to crash into it.”

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Violet started working through the terrible news, starting with denial. “Don’t we have shields and shit so that something like that won’t happen?”

“It’s true that we have shields, but they aren’t designed to handle something that’s four times the size of the station. If this was just a minor asteroid, they’d be able to handle it, but it’s not, it’s—”

“Yeah, yeah… four times the size of the station. I heard you. Despite what you might think, I have been paying attention.”

Hector’s tone changed. Grave and serious. “Violet, listen to me very carefully. Are you listening?”

“Are you—? I just said that I was paying att—”

“Violet!” Hector cut her off. “We have a little more than twenty-five minutes before we cross the point where gaining back control of the engines will help us. After that, we’re fucked. Good and proper fucked. Listen, if there was anyone else who could help, I’d—” Hector stopped.

“Yeah, probably best not to finish that thought,” Violet said.

“That’s not how I meant it.”

“Whatever.”

“Look, you’re the only person we know of who is alive in your sector with the ability to help. I don’t want to freak you out, but the lives of everyone on this station are in your hands.”

Violet’s breathing grew more rapid as the reality of her predicament hit home.

Holy shit! This was really happening. What the hell had she done to deserve the last twenty-four hours of her life?

She fought down the panic threatening to take over control.

“Alright, Hector. Tell me what you want from me.”

“I’m sending the map layout of your sector and the access codes that you’ll need to your comm. Be sure you save them to local memory as I can’t guarantee the network will stay up with all the secondary explosions going on.”

“Then what?”

“Then you stay alive and get to the relay station. That’s basically it. The map will lead you right to the relay station. The control panel is clearly marked. Enter in the access code and select the reboot option. After that, the backup system will take over on it’s own.”

“Okay, got it.” Violet’s comm dinged with a notification that the transfer was complete. She saved the info to local memory and then pulled up the map to review the route. “Wait a second,” Violet said. “This route has me going through hallway 236…”

“And?” Hector replied. “That’s the shortest way to the relay station.”

“Yeah, that may be, but right now it’s shut down for maintenance. Any one of those hallway sections could be vented to open space outside. There’s no way that I can take that hallway. Even if I had a vac suit, I’d still need to get past the construction hatches.”

Several curse words followed by a long sigh came over the comm. “Well, I guess you’ll just have to do the best that you can, cause that’s all we’ve got at the moment.”

Violet felt her blood boil. Just who the hell was running the show up there? Didn’t they know anything that they were talking about?

“Well, that’s just great! Hopefully, I won’t get murdered by a zombie psychopath while I’m wandering around out in the corridors, looking for an alternate route to save everyone else’s ass!”

“If it makes you feel any better, we haven’t seen any signs of the lunatic lately.”

The image of the monster that was Zane Anderson flashed through her brain.

“Not really, Hector, no… it doesn’t.”

“Well, good luck, Violet, and time really is of the essence, so you know… get going.”

Violet thumbed off her comm and shot the blank screen the bird.