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Heather yelped as the lights overhead blinked out. “Not now. Lights on.”

Nothing happened.

“Illuminate.” Heather waved a hand in the air, even though she knew the lights didn’t operate on sensors.

“Lights. Switch on. Light up.” Heather groaned. “Please. I don’t like the dark.”

Using the illumination from her tablet, she eased herself off the couch and hurried to the comm panel on the wall.

“Heather Roberts to engineering. I have a problem with my quarter’s lights. Can you send someone to fix them?”

No response came back. In fact, the whole panel was unnaturally quiet. Heather always had a newscast in one corner, plus the weather chart—there was weather of sorts in space, but not as she knew it from Earth. It was more solar storms, meteor warnings, and space debris alerts. She also had a few bloggers she kept up with. All that information was missing.

“Engineering, please respond.” She sighed and rested her head against the wall. The panel was also malfunctioning. It wasn’t sending her message.

“Maybe it’s not just me with this problem.” Heather turned toward the door, just in time to see it slide open. The light in the corridor seemed gloomier than normal as if set to emergency power.

“Hello. Who’s there?” A shiver of unease ran down her spine. “Ernie, was that you opening the door?” She turned her tablet toward the couch. Ernie still lay in his prone position, his lights off.

Sliding her tongue across her dry teeth, Heather saw the door slide shut again. “Is somebody in here?”

There was no response.

Of course, if it was someone coming to attack her after tripping out her lights, they’d hardly announce their arrival. She shook her head. No one would do that.

Heather forced herself to remain calm. It could be another system glitch. If the lights were misbehaving, then so could the door access panels. It meant nothing. She’d watched too many spooky movies and was getting jumpy for no reason.

Those thoughts took away none of the shadowy panic inside her.

Heather turned back to the panel on the wall. “Vegas, are you there?”

There was no reply.

“Prodigy, show me Vegas Munro’s location.”

The panel hummed but didn’t bring up the station’s map or location of Vegas.

“Computer, respond.”

Heather spun around, convinced she’d heard something shift across the floor. “I know you’re in here. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but it isn’t funny. I have a laser. I know how to use it. Don’t think it’s set to stun. I always shoot to kill.” She had no laser. They were banned on the station. If you blasted a hole through the protective shield of the station, you risked getting sucked out into space. Nobody wanted that.

Feeling light-headed from forgetting to breathe, Heather sucked in a deep breath. “Calm down,” she whispered to herself.

She crept toward the door. She’d go to engineering and see what was wrong. Chances were, her comm panel was simply playing up. It wouldn’t be the first time. When they’d first arrived at the space station, only fifty percent of things worked, and that was on a good day.

There had been a week when there was no fresh water or food. They’d had to live off freeze-dried ration pouches used by astronauts. It had been kind of cool until it all started tasting the same, and she missed her breakfast waffles with syrup.

Heather jumped as something brushed across the back of her leg. “Ernie?”

It couldn’t be him. He took at least five minutes to reboot. From the way he’d reacted, that code had messed with his system. He might be down for hours while he made his internal repairs.

“Stop freaking out.” Her hand went to the panel to open the door, her fingers shaking as she touched it.

As the door slid open, several strong shackles wrapped around her calf and dug into her skin.

Heather yelped. “Holy mother of stars.” She crashed out of the room and landed on her hands and knees. More metallic shackles wrapped around her wrists and yanked her, so she fell flat on her face, her nose squashing into the ground.

The lights in the corridor were on an emergency setting, giving just enough light to see what was attacking her.