Awakening

Thirty-one years ago, during the Battle of Biko, Elena Zaytseva had fled the planet on a ship without a functioning slipspace drive, leaving behind her home and daughter to the fight. Drifting on the edge of the system, the surviving passeners of the Indigo set up a distress beacon and placed themselves into cryotubes, awaiting the day they were to be awoken. For Elena, this is that day.

Elena was running, a front of heat and flame encroaching on her back, tingling her skin as it drew nearer and nearer. Energy surged through her body, fueled by adrenaline, yet even still, the flame closed the distance, inch by inch. Smoke filled her lungs, choking her as she ran, clouding her vision. That heat on her back enveloped her body in its whole, her skin blistering and searing. And then she was falling, her world turned upside down. Yet, just as she escaped the flames raging above her, Elena hit the cold, dark water below.

Her eyes flicked open to a hiss and a cloud of fog, a piercing, blinding beam of light hitting her eyes, forcing them shut again. As she tried to breathe, she felt a fluid in her lungs for a split second before her body was wracked by coughing, a pale, slimy fluid escaping her mouth and clumping as it floated forward. Drawing in stale, dusty air with her first true breath, Elena's lungs were on fire just as much as her blistered skin, her head spinning and her stomach twisted in knots. As she pushed herself from the gel surface below her, feeling it peel off of her clothing and skin, Elena found herself floating forward towards the light that pierced through the thin skin of her eyelids and almost burned into her retinas, before coming to a halt, feeling arms around her, barely making out a chorus of voices.

'' "She's awake, I've got her."   "Get that light out of her face!"   "Let's get her back to the ship... She doesn't look too good." ''

Her vision grew dark once more, as the voices slowly faded back into buzzing. Shifting in the arms holding her, Elena weakly grasped onto whatever hold she could find on her rescuer's clothing. As she felt herself being carried off through the cold, stale air, her head continued swimming, until she eventually faded into unconsciousness.

• • •

'' "...one of the most severe cases of freezer burn I've ever seen." ''

Elena slowly blinked her eyes open once more, no longer met with a blinding light, but instead a fuzzy white image of a room laid out in front of her. Looking towards the source of the noise, she could barely make out a rough shape of someone sitting down at a desk, talking to themselves. Squeezing her eyes shut and then open again a few times, Elena was met with a clearer image of the room around her, some sort of medical facility, yet became acutely aware of the throbbing in her head and a searing pain all along her body, almost like being pricked with thousands of needles at the same time. Turning forward and looking down at her arms resting on top of the blanket covering her, Elena was shocked to see just how pale and boney they looked, and at the blisters that had formed in pockets on various parts of her skin. As she blinked her eyes a few times, she heard the same voice from earlier speak up once more, much more clearly, turning towards the man.

"Ah, you're awake already. I'm honestly surprised you got up so quickly," the man stood up from his chair and walked over, holding a datapad in front of him, "How do you feel?"

"Terrible..." Elena's voice croaked out, almost a whisper, surprising her into a brief silence before she continued, "My skin is on fire, my head is pounding, and I can't move my arms or legs..."

The man typed on his datapad, a soft smile on his face. "All nothing to worry about, I assure you. You were in cryo for quite some time, and the people who rescued you had to thaw you out quite quickly. Your physical symptoms should pass with time and therapy. Do you remember why you went under?"

Elena blinked, memories slowly creeping back into her mind. Ferocious... creatures that had descended on her world, bolts of fire flying through the air. She remembered running to an evacuation ship as Marines fought behind her. As her daughter fought behind her. "I was on Biko... Some sort of... aliens attacked us, and I barely managed to make it to an evacuation ship, but the slipspace drive... Please, sir, my daughter. She stayed behind to fight. Did anyone else make it off alive?"

She felt her heart sink as the doctor sighed, his voice only making it sink further, coming out with a sympathetic tone, "I'm sorry ma'am, but if you were on Biko when it was attacked... It's been thirty-one years. and a lot has changed..."

Closing her eyes again, Elena sank back into the pillow, barely even registering the rest of the doctor's words. Her whole body was on fire, her head pounding, her muscles weak. Yet it wasn't the physical pain that struck her the hardest from her time in the cryotube, but the emotional, piercing her heart each passing second as she heard the doctor speak of what had become of her home and her family.