In a dark, freezing cold room in an unknown place in deep space, a young woman was screaming. She had just awoken after an indeterminable time unconscious and was not where she expected herself to be. Her eyes darted around the small room even before her mind resumed rational thought. There was little visual information to improve the situation for her. The room was bare except for a metal desk in one corner. The only light was supplied by a single bluish neon fixture on the far wall, a light that flickered and threatened to extinguish itself at any moment.

The girl gulped down the frigid, stale air around her and brought herself to a tight, almost feral crouch. She held her bathrobe tight around herself, a garment that was rapidly becoming useless against the cold. Her eyes met the figures of two other people in the room, lying motionless on the floor. She gasped as she recognized them as her parents, and rushed to their side. Afraid to speak, she shook them both for a few moments and received no reply. Indeed, they were as cold as the metal deck on which they lay. Her eyes welled up with tears, but before grief gripped her completely, the moisture on her face reminded her that the room was far too cold for wasting any time. Her hands were already becoming numb, and her bare feet and knees were in considerable pain. The girl fumbled with the bodies of her parents, searching once more for any sign of life. It was a futile effort.

Pushing back the awful temptation to give in to her sadness and join them, the girl instead stripped off her father’s heavy Air Force N3B parka and put it on. The voluminous jacket came down all the way to her knees, but it would not be enough. She stripped her mother of her wool sweater, jeans, wool socks, and galoshes, and painstakingly added them to her own body. The girl discarded her bathrobe after this effort, and buried herself in the parka. She drew the fur-rimmed hood tight over her face and plunged her hands deep within the pockets. There were some objects in the pockets, but identifying them would have to wait until feeling returned to her fingers. She jumped up and down in place for a minute, and found her warmth returning to her at last.

The girl stood in silence for several minutes. The parka was doing an excellent job. She opened up the hood and let it rest lightly on the top of her head. The air was no longer such a threat to her. She withdrew the objects in her pockets. In her left hand was her father’s metal-bodied torch, and in her right was his Colt .45-caliber pistol.

Her last moments of consciousness returned to her in a flash. She remembered the freezing Romanby night, the terrifying light in the sky, and her father’s warning to stay inside the house. She remembered her mother running after him, pleading with him to come back inside himself. There was nothing further after that.

The girl hiked up the hem of the parka and checked the pockets of the jeans. She found a disposable lighter and her mother’s cigarettes, maybe half a pack remained. She transferred these items to an exterior pocket on the parka. Withdrawing the torch, she turned it on and pointed it around the room. As bright as it was, it wasn’t enough to reassure her. Neither of her parents had been wearing gloves, so she withdrew her hand into her sleeve and grasped the torch with her palm. It was awkward, but warm.

The room was in fact empty save for the desk, which was a simple table with one open drawer, also empty. There was one door, and the girl considered whether or not to open it. If she had been kidnapped, her abductors might not appreciate her emergence. On the other hand, proving that she was alive and well could work to her benefit. She took a deep breath and moved forward. The door had a long lever set into a recess, with markings in an unknown language around it. She moved the lever down with some difficulty, and the door unlatched. She slid it to the side, which created quite a racket, and peered past the threshold.

She was standing at the top of a dual curved staircase, each path leading down into darkness and forming an open oval in the center. To her left was another such staircase, about ten yards down, and to her right was a metal wall. The room itself was immense; her torchlight had no hope of reaching the opposite end. The ceiling was vaulted, and alternated panels of glass with some sort of gleaming black material. Through the glass she could see thousands of stars and the swath of the Milky Way, which looked more brilliant than anything she remembered from Romanby.

“I’m not so much worried about where we are, Miriam,” she said to herself, her breath condensing before her, “but who the bloody hell took us here.”