“A..n,” Huh, what’s going on?

“A.n.a, Ay..” Why is everything muffled?

“Ayana. AYANA!” I bolt awake, squinting at the light burning into my eyes, and the rest of my body screaming at me to lay back down. I lean over and puke from the pain and promptly pass out again.

“We’ll try to calmly wake her up first. Things like shaking, lights, or sound. If that doesn’t work, then well try shocking and pinching.”

“Well there isn’t any need doc,” Said an older. Gruffer voice. “She’s coming too.” I finally open my eyes. I’m staring up into the LED lights of the sick bay and laying on a fluffy medical bed. The doctor of the station is looming over me with a flashlight looking into my eyes.

“Uh… Why am I here?” I ask.

“Ah. Temporary amnesia.” Said the doctor. “Chief, just remind her of what happened.”

“Hmm. I was going to wait for the briefing, but I guess it can’t be helped. Ms. Ayana Wright, at 1300 this afternoon the botany dome was hit by an attack from the enemy forces of the Gemini,” Now it comes back to me, the dome cracking, the airlock, the plants…

“PLANTS! The plants! I need to... NOW!” I bolt up and try to get out of the bed, but a.) I’m attached to several machines by needles, and it hurts trying to rip them out and b.) My vision wavers, and I fall back to the bed dizzy, holding back my fears that the plants- no, they can’t be. They just can’t.

“Well get to that part, Ms. Wright, but let me continue my story.”

“Oh. Yessir. Sorry, sir.” I say with an abashed mumble.

“It’s okay. You’ve been through a lot. I’ll let this one slide. Anyway, we had a tip-off that this attack would happen. The only problem is that we didn’t know who, where, or when. In the light of knowing that an attack could happen at any point, and we wouldn’t know what it would be like, we wanted to get the latest data on all of the experiments going on at the station before it happens.”

“Ah, so that’s why you bumped up inspection.”

“Yes, that is correct. We are sorry for any inconvenience.”

“What about the plants?” I ask hoping that my worst fears wouldn’t be confirmed, that we had found a way to get them to survive in a total vacuum.

“We are sorry to say, but it appears that the experiment is put back a few months.” I feel dead inside and fall back on the bed. The thing I feared the most had happened. I lost years of research. Wait, hold on did he say, I pull myself together a bit, sensing light at the end of the tunnel.

“H… hold on. You say, sorry, said months?”

“Yes, ma’am I did. We were able to retrieve the Oak ‘Heart’.”