<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/thumb/7/72/Sophie_Beauchamp.jpg/450px-Sophie_Beauchamp.jpg)</div>At 3:48 AM, Sophie, unsurprisingly, was dreaming.  She was strolling casually through a lovely park, someplace she'd never been before, and yet, as was the way of dreams, she knew that the park was impossibly large.  Even if she strolled all day and all night, she still wouldn't reach the end of it.  But that was all right, since -- again with the bizarre logic of the subconscious -- she also knew that waiting outside the park for her was something dark and terrible, something indescribable.  But inside the park, she was absolutely safe, surrounded by beautiful flowers and large shade trees.  Everything was all right here.<br/><br/>Then something started clanging quickly and rhythmically in the distance, and her dream-self frowned, trying to ignore it.  That plan might even have worked, except then she heard her name being called out among the metallic clanks, and the next thing she knew, she was awake and painfully aware that real life had gone completely to hell.  "<em>Merde</em>," she muttered into her pillow, then sat up in frustration as both the clanging and the calling went on relentlessly.  It was impossible to recognize the echoing voice, but she knew who it belonged to just the same.  "Winter," she said, biting back the urge to scream at him.  That would only wake up anyone who had so far managed to sleep through this 'musical' performance, and certainly wouldn't get him to stop.  Besides, at this point she'd prefer to be in a position to smack him around anyway.<br/><br/>So she scrambled out of bed and into a pair of coveralls, wrestled her feet into her boots, and grabbed her glasses on the way out.  She didn't really need them -- she was a bit farsighted, and she primarily used them to help with the close-up work she often had to do in the lab  -- but she felt they made her look more intimidating, and she would want that.  Officially, they'd all been told to follow their usual routines as much as possible, but unofficially everyone on the station was panicking to one degree or another, and Sophie had only been asleep for a couple of hours.  And she was not normally a night owl, so she was, admittedly, easier to annoy than usual at the moment... though it was always easy to be annoyed at Winter.<br/><br/>As she hurried down the hall, more than one angry coworker stuck a tousled head out into the corridor and demanded to know what all the racket was about.  With a string of whispered apologies trailing behind her, Sophie quickened her pace.  Reaching the sector door at last, she slapped the panel to open it so hard her hand stung, barreling through while it was still sliding open.  Looking around, she quickly spotted Winter, utility key in hand, and stomped over to him.  "Stop it!" she hissed, her accent growing stronger, as it always did when she was upset.  "Everyone's angry enough as it is, what's going on now?"