Chapter 1 
A Daring Escape 

We find ourselves in a long dark metal hallway lined with locked doors, each one having a single bared window. While it seems to be empty, one lone girl runs through the halls wearing nothing more than a white gown. She has shoulder length wavy auburn hair, sky blue eyes, stands five feet and five inches tall & appears to be seventeen years old. It is apparent by the look on her face that she is scared, yet it is unclear as to why she is scared, as there is no one chasing her at the present moment. 
"Catherine," says a familiar female voice. The girl stops in her tracks to see a girl poking her dirty freckled face out of a nearby barred window. She had long curly black hair, bright green eyes and is five feet & four inches tall which means she's standing on a chair to look out the window. 
"Melissa," Catherine says and walks over to her door. 
"Catherine, how did you get out?" Melissa asks. 
"I don't know...in fact, I don't remember a whole lot of stuff," Catherine says, putting a hand to her head. 
"They must have experimented on you like the others," Melissa says. 
"Experimented?" Catherine says, blinking twice in confusion. Melissa starts to open her to explain but an alarm goes off, cutting off her words and making the two girls jump as Catherine moves away from the door and Melissa nearly falls off her chair. 
"Catherine, you have to get out of here before they find you," Melissa exclaims. 
"No! I'm not leaving without you," Catherine says, just as the sound of running footsteps can be heard. 
"If you found a way out then I can find a way out as well, now go!" Melissa says. 
"All right, our secret code when you get out is our star colony," Catherine says reluctantly and finally left Melissa who watches her vanish into the shadows just as guards come running by. 
Please, help Catherine to escape, Melissa silently prays. Meanwhile, Catherine was keeping to the shadows as she tries to find her way out of whatever place it was she was in. Once out of the hallway of cells, Catherine found herself confronted by a seemingly dead end of pipes. She quickly looked around and began to squirm her way through the jungle gym of pipes as the guards caught up with her. Catherine hid in the maze of pipes till she got to the other side of the building where the personal area was. Catherine quietly snuck around in the shadows until she found an unlocked room. Once inside, the first thing she saw was the black star filled windows. 
'We're still in outer space,' Catherine thought as she walks over to the window and gently touched the cold glass. 
"Attention, the Space Bus to the Mars colony will be leaving in five minuets," says a male voice over the intercom. Catherine quickly checks the closet for cloths, changes into white scrubs and left the room. Trying to act as normal as possible, she follows the signs to the Bus Port and silently boards the space the mediums size bus with the others. Thankfully, she didn’t have to pay a boarding fee and Catherine sat in the back of the bus by herself and quietly waits with her arms crossed. Finally, the driver turns on the engines and flies off out of the space lab. Catherine held her breath as the bus departs from the space lab and didn't breathe again till they were a good distance from it. 
Catherine slowly releases her breath and watches the stars fly by as she listens to the faint music playing over heard and the people talking about what they were going to do while on leave. Catherine thought it was odd how ordinary people could have been conducting experiments on her...she didn't feel like she had been experimented on. She hadn't seen an cuts or stitches when she was changing her cloths...yet she didn't remember much after her Star Colony had been attacked. 
Catherine thinks back to that day, when these black vessels attacked Star Colony Virgo, cutting off their communications with the other colonies as they rounded up people into their ships. The most horrible part of the whole ordeal was being torn away from her parents and best friend Melissa. 
At least I know now that Melissa is all right...but what about my parents? Catherine thinks as the Space Bus enters the Mars Colony spaceport. Catherine looks up when the bus lands shakily and begins to leave with the other passengers when she saw that another Space Bus was going to land soon. Catherine quietly follows the group through a tunnel that leads from the Space Port to the actual colony. Catherine finds it’s early evening in the colony as the group disperses. Catherine walks around alone, looking at the Asian themes to the colony. 
I must be in the Neo Japan Colony...I'll be able to find Jin Ru then, Catherine thinks and soon finds herself on an familiar brightly lit street lined with blooming Cherry trees. Catherine smiles at the sight of them and deeply breaths in their sweet scent. Catherine loved the scent of the Cherry Blossoms so much that she even wore a perfume with the same scent. It was then that Catherine figure that she was in the lab a while because her perfume wasn’t one her skin any more... unless they bothered to bath her. The mere thought of being naked in front of strangers like that makes Catherine blush fiercely. 
It doesn't take Catherine long to find her destination, a white apartment complex. Catherine silently climbs the steps to apartment 24B and presses the doorbell. She doesn’t have to wait long as she soon hears footsteps come near the door and an Asian man in his thirties dress in slacks and white button up shirt answers the door. 
"Catherine?" the man asks, sounding very surprised to see her. 
"Jin," Catherine says before embracing him as she finally breaks down and cries for the first time since her escape. Jin Ru began to sooth Catherine as he leads her into the living room and goes to the kitchen to get her a glass of water as she sits down in a lounge chair. 
"I heard that your colony was raided," Jin says as he came back with a tall glass of water. Catherine nods as she takes the glass and drinks a little water. 
"What happened?" Jin asks. 
"I'm not even sure myself Jin. One moment I'm in school listening to the teacher drone on about Shakespeare and the next there were explosions as men in space armor began to raid the colony, gathering up people into these strange black space carriers," Catherine says with a shiver as the images flash back from that horrible day. 
"They were gathering up people? Why? Where did they take you?" Jin asks. 
"To experiment on us...at least that's what Melissa said that last time I saw her," Catherine says, taking another sip of water. 
"Do you know what kind of experiments?" Jin asks, Catherine just shakes her head. 
"No. I don't remember much...it's like the between when I first got there and when I escaped has been erased," Catherine says, running a hand through her hair as she rests her head in it. Jin looks on with concerned as she says this. 
"I see. Catherine, I'm going to let you stay here for the time being. In the morning, we're going to go to my lab and see exactly they did to you, ok?" Jin asks. Catherine nods and looks up at him. 
"But what about Melissa, my parents and the other people in that awful place. We have to help them somehow," Catherine says. 
"We will Catherine, but we have to bide our time till those people stop looking for you and when we find someone who can help us get in and out of there alive," Jin says. 
"I see, I'll lay low then," Catherine says as she finishes her water as Jin smiles. Afterwards, Jin fixes Catherine a some dinner, fishes her out some pajamas and preps the guest room for her before bidding her goodnight. As Catherine lays in the dark, she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take for her to be with her parents and friends again as she drifted off into a dreamless sleep…