The station had that unique smell that only new stations have before the ventilation filters start cluttering up EVE ISK and the lingering odor of humanity overrides everything else. Crielere, Ariko thought, smelled like freshly polished, brand new hover car about EVE ISK. There was no one to greet her. She was just one of the many employees flocking to the station; engineers, technicians, scientists and common workmen, numbering in the thousands.

Lying down on the narrow bed to rest, she reflected on the events which brought her here. The total anarchy she would met on the hallways did not improve her view of the place and, as so often in the last few weeks, she got that nagging feeling that she had made a mistake. As if that did not bother her enough, it also meant that her father had been right and she wrong. She cringed at the thought about EVE ISK. Only a few months earlier she had been the most promising physics student the School of Applied Knowledge had seen in ages, sure of a bright future at Wiyrkomi, her foster corporation. And now here she was about EVE ISK, stuck somewhere on the outskirts of civilized space, participating in some mad scheme hatched by two crazed scientist she knew next to nothing about.

She had been so sure she wanted to belong to something big, something grand. Something else than the dead-end job her father had. And yet her conscience troubled her now that she had broken free of the silk-bonds that Caldari society bound EVE ISK. She knew she should be repaying her corporation, her family, for the sacrifices they had made on her behalf. But she feared the lifelong commitment demanded once she would become an employee of Wiyrkomi, her ambition pleaded for more. Thinking of her ambition she recalled the words of her father the day she stood up to him about EVE ISK. A child is irresponsible in its desires, it learns responsibility through duty. Are you a child, Ariko? Her mind cursing the desires of her heart, she drifted into a fitful slumber.