This fic is something of a taster. I have a full length (c. 100,000 words) fic roughly planned that would use this as a prologue or first chapter, but as Tory isn't exactly the most beloved of characters, I'd like to know if there would be interest in reading such a story before I get stuck in! There's nothing more demoralising than spending hours and hours on something, and getting little or no response. I welcome concrit, so please feel free to point out errors, bloopers, or OOCness - although in the latter case, give examples and state why you think this is OOC. I can't fix it if I don't know why you think as you do!

Otherwise, enjoy.

Like everyone else, Tory Foster was devastated when the worlds ended.

Victoria Foster, on the other hand, was secretly relieved.

After all, she'd been on the run.

When the bombs started falling, Victoria was in her car, trying to escape Caprica City's traffic-logged roads. Every muscle, every nerve, every sinew, in her body was tense, for she was expecting her boss to call her and say: you frakked up good. The stocks are in free fall and people are gonna start jumping out of windows and it's all your fault and with those few words he would destroy her and she'd never have a chance of achieving her political ambitions. Especially after leaving the Fed Party the way she had.

"There's gotta be some way outta here," she muttered, as she swerved to avoid the driver of a garish white limousine who seemed to believe that the traffic laws didn't apply to him. "Frakking celebs," she added for good measure. The car's auto-nav was good ninety percent of the time, but it couldn't compensate for human error or idiocy.

She tensed up all over again as her earpiece gave the distinct series of beeps that indicated an incoming call, and considered not taking it. That thought did not last long; Victoria liked to think of herself as a mature adult and that included taking responsibility for her own actions - and mistakes. She blew out a sigh, and said, "Call accepted. Victoria Foster speaking."

"Vic, you're done," her boss began, just as she'd expected him to. "You did a good cover-up there, my girl, but not good enough. When Teddy Adar finds out about this, all hades is gonna break loose-"

"It's not entirely my fault," she said defensively. "I only did what everyone does."

She could hear her boss's snort over the line. "Yeah, but they do it right and they don't get caught. And they choose their moments. You've managed to pick quite possibly the most frakked-up moment in Caprica's economy since before the War!"

"Oh," Victoria responded, feeling stupid and hating herself and him for it. Of course, he was right - she'd played and she'd lost. She should have paused to study the implications of her stock massaging, but a colleague had given her what seemed like a great tip at a sensitive moment, and she'd most uncharacteristically taken the plunge without stopping to think.

She opened her mouth to try to say this, to explain somewhat, when the skies opened and death and chaos thundered down, and Victoria's last thought before something hit hard was, at least I can't be blamed for this!

Victoria whimpered as she returned to consciousness and the most agonising, gut-churning headache she'd ever had in her life. She blinked and opened her eyes cautiously, and the part of her brain that was functioning normally was surprised to find that apart from a significant dent in the roof, her car wasn't the write-off she'd suspected it might be. She moved her head just enough so that she could peer through the cracked windscreen, but clearly the explosion, whatever it was, was too much for the city's pollution cleansing systems, for all she could see was a mist of yellow dust and eerily floating pieces of debris. And it was too quiet, for a city that was notoriously never still.

Now I understand what they mean by deafening silence.

She tried to slide from the driver's seat to the other side, where the dent was less severe and there was more room to move, but the slightest shift in her position caused pain to lance through her head, making her gasp for breath and her vision turn fuzzy. She lifted one shaking hand and ran her fingers through her hair, seeking the origin of the pain.

Thank Kobol I left it loose, she thought as her fingers searched through the black strands. Usually her rebellious hair was kept in a tight coil, but two days before she'd finally given in to an old temptation and had the curly mass chemically straightened. It had been expensive, and wouldn't even last for very long - the hairdresser had estimated six to eight months - but right now it was worth every cubit as her hair felt silken smooth and sleek to her touch, making her quest for her injury easier than it might have been. She moaned as the pain struck again, and took her hand away. Something viscous and warm clung to her fingers and she shuddered and wiped them on her black skirt without even looking. She'd always been queasy about blood, her own or other people's.

She jerked involuntarily when something loud went off, breaching the heavy silence, and her hands clenched as her senses swam and her tummy turned a series of somersaults. Yet even through the fog of headache and half-consciousness and nausea she made a decision: she had to get out of here, or die. There must be some kind of terrorist attack, she thought fuzzily, and they're targeting all the important parts of the city. Wouldn't be the first time, after all, and Caprica City's status as the administrative centre for the Colonies made it an easy target. She tried the door and groaned when it failed to open.

"Frakkin' safety features. Never work when they're needed and ... work when it's ... inconvenient," she panted as she tried a second time. The door refused to budge, and Victoria wiped her forehead. It was a warm day to begin with, and since her car had so shockingly stalled, the temperature inside it had climbed relentlessly.

She bit her lip against anticipated pain, and stretched over to the other side of the car, the rising need to escape from her metal prison overriding everything else. As she had expected, that door was also jammed, and she gave a sob, surprising herself in the process. Tears were alien to her, as alien as Caprica City itself had become.

Panic rose with the tears, twisting and coiling deep in her belly, and from somewhere she mustered the energy to bang the window in frustration. The force caused another jolt through her head, and this time she lost was little was in her stomach, and being in the car went from unpleasant to unbearable as the stench of her own sickness rose around her, threatening to precipitate another bout of vomiting. Frankly crying from a mixture of shock and disgust, she wiped her mouth and forced herself to concentrate, to find the manual override that would allow her to open a door, or at least a window.

Finally, finally, she found it and the door slowly creaked open, the sound trailing icy fingers along her spine. She sobbed again, out of sheer relief, and crawled out of the car, wincing as the exertion brought more injuries and aches to light. Once she was safely out, she gave a long exhale and went bonelessly limp, sinking into the ground beneath her as if it were the softest of beds instead of unyielding stone.

That's one obstacle sorted, she thought blearily as the noxious yellow air invaded her mouth and nose and lungs, causing her to choke and her body to be racked with cruelly hacking coughs. Now what? The obvious solution was to continue moving, but the air was turning dark and sparkly, and movement remained no more than an idea as everything around her faded to black.

Another explosion jarred her back to alertness, the shockwaves trembling through the ground and causing every part of her abused body to ache with the vibration. Groaning in protest – for a few moments there, she'd actually relaxed and everything had been blessedly normal – Victoria forced herself onto her knees. The constant pounding in her head warned her that standing was probably a bad idea, and when visibility was so poor, she'd almost certainly be safer on all fours anyway.

Two more booms, sounding terrifyingly near, propelled her into action, and she began to inch forward, wincing as her hands and bare knees encountered shards of glass and metal and more. I hope there's a doctor wherever I'm going, she told herself with a touch of grim humour, 'cause I'm gonna need one at this rate…

After a time that seemed endless but in reality was short, Victoria decided that crawling was not helping. Her hands and knees were increasingly sore and becoming slippy with blood, and the careful, fastidious part of her nature was shuddering at the thought of all the germs and bacteria that could be entering her body through her lacerated extremities. And the pounding in her head had dropped from excruciating to merely agonising. Besides, it wasn't as if she had a choice in the matter.

Slowly, she got to her feet, staggering a little as she recovered her equilibrium. Focus on the future, she told herself as she gritted her teeth and took an unsteady step and then another. Get through this. Get through today.

She cast her mind about in an effort to think of something pleasant to distract herself from pain and fear, and almost at once her upcoming leave popped into her head. Despite everything, she managed to smile. In two weeks – two weeks! – she would take her annual leave and the plan was to take the Colonial Heavy spacebus to Picon to visit her foster-sister. Livia had been married for nearly four years now, and her little girl was nearly two-and-a-half – old enough, Livia had promised Victoria, to be a proper little oonversationalist. Victoria, her foster-sister knew, did not cope well with children at the messy, loud stage. A toddler who was becoming a real personality in her own right was something else, however, and Victoria found herself to curious to see the child who was her namesake.

Tory, the child called herself, according to Livia, 'Victoria' being rather beyond the oratory powers of a two-year-old, and Victoria had agreed it was a good diminutive. Better than the 'Vicky' which was the most common abbreviation for her name, or the more pretentious 'Toria'.

A wind picked up, blowing dust and fumes into her face and causing her to cough again, but in between choking and spluttering she saw something that gave her a shred of hope. For just a few seconds, the enveloping yellow smog had lifted and she caught sight of a familiar landmark – the shining dome and gleaming columns of the Rotunda, the main presidential residence on Caprica, and Victoria felt a surge of optimism swell within her. For surely, the Rotunda was a natural meeting point. If only she could get there, she could find out what was going on, and perhaps even find a way out of the hell that Caprica City had become…

I can't be that far away, she reasoned, as she headed in the direction of the Rotunda, but her careful calm shattered all over again when she tripped over an object that was solid and soft and unmoving, and she froze before recoiling, violently, as she realised what it was.

There's no point in checking, she told herself as she backed away, almost falling over again in her haste to escape. I'm no medic and I can hardly see what I'm doing. If they're alive, there's nothing I can do for them.

Resolutely, she focused on her own journey, and tried to ignore the images her mind insisted on generating. Images of death and destruction and shattered flesh and blood and bone … images that Victoria had certainly never seen with her waking eyes, but vaguely remembered from nightmares. She stumbled again, and her fall was broken by something that gave a metallic clang when she knocked against it and had sharp edges that added to her growing collection of cuts, bumps and bruises. And all the time the pain in her head continued, making it hard to think

Just a few more steps. Then I can stop.

Victoria never knew how long it took her to reach the Rotunda, and her first indication that she had achieved her goal came when she stumbled (or floated, or crawled … by that time she was no longer sure how she was moving) into something warm and solid that was – for the first time in what seemed like forever – perpendicular and all too clearly alive, for it gave vent to a muffled scream.

"This is the Rotunda, isn't it," Victoria said, the uplift in her voice almost turning it into a question as her eyes struggled to catch sight of pillars and domes through the ever-thickening ochre mist.

"Yes, but you are the first person I've … met," came back to her, and Victoria thought how strange it was, to be able to feel and hear someone but not see them. This is what being blind must be like. The voice was deep but unmistakably feminine, and it spoke with a careful enunciation that told Victoria that the speaker was not of Caprica.

"We need to keep moving," the voice said, sounding strained. "The nukes are … still falling." As if to give point to her words, the ground beneath their feet buckled and rumbled, but Victoria's mind had come to a shrieking halt at the word 'nukes'.

"Someone's throwing nuclear bombs at Caprica City?" she repeated, incredulous. She shook her head; her ears were ringing and surely she'd heard wrong.

There was a long pause, and Victoria turned light-headed from fear. What if her unseen companion had collapsed? What if she was on her own again? She'd lived a solitary life by choice for a while, but she'd never been physically alone for any length of time. The seething mass of humanity had always been within easy reach, but now after what seemed like hours fumbling along in silence through a yellow void, she found herself wondering if no-one else had survived, if it was just her and this other person…?

Frantically, she reached out, and almost sobbed in relief when her clutching fingers found the other – woman's? - warmth again. "Are you okay?"

"Sorry," the voice panted. "Just … getting harder to breathe, in this. We've been nuked," she went on, sounding stronger. "Picon first, then…"

Victoria stopped listening. Every cell in her body had jumped at 'Picon' and stopped; suspended by disbelief. "Picon," she repeated, almost robotically.

Her companion did not seem to have noticed her pause, but then, why should she? If Victoria could not see her, then she could not see Victoria.

"…making for the hills," the woman said, and Victoria blinked.

"Why?" Somewhere at the back of her mind, she knew the question was stupid and its answer obvious, but sensible thought was beyond her. All she could think was Picon, Picon, Picon…

"They're … targeting the cities," the voice told her. "Before the feeds went, the advice was to get out and try to lie low."

"On Picon?"

"And here. Ooof…"

"Are you okay?" Victoria asked again, the query automatic, coming from some part of her that was conditioned to respond to distress.

"I got … a little banged up." The voice trailed off a little then, leading Victoria to think that 'a little' might be an understatement. Her head throbbed in reminder of her own 'bang' and she fought down panic again. She – they – had a new goal: get out of Caprica City.

"Do we know where we're going?" she asked, struck by the thought that injured and disorientated as they were, there was a very real chance that they were simply walking in eternal circles.

Another bomb – nuke, Victoria reminded herself – went off, and the new clouds of dust made her bend over, hacking desperately in an attempt to get the debris out of her lungs. Beside her, she could hear the other woman doing the same, and it gave Victoria the spur she needed. She put her hand around her companion's elbow – at least, she thought it was an elbow – and pulled, forging ahead with all the strength and force she could summon.

A gust of wind blew, and she blinked, wishing for something to cover their heads with, anything to shield them from the traitorous residue of the detonation. And blinked again, as she caught sight of something that might … might that they would survive.

"The wind's with us," she shouted at her companion. "Look, you can see it's blowing the dust and debris away from us – over there, you can see a tiny patch of sky!" Victoria felt almost dizzy with exhilaration.

"Yeah… it's spreading!" the unknown woman called back raggedly, and Victoria thought she sounded as if she was crying. An amorphous shape appeared in front of Victoria's face, and she instinctively lurched back, ignoring the roughened laugh in her ear, followed by the words, "It's clearing … I can see my hand!"

Victoria blinked again as she realised the truth of that statement. The shape that had materialised in front of her was indeed a hand, a shape that clarified with every step they took. She looked to her right, and found herself grinning widely when she saw a distinctively humanoid shape next to her.

Now that she could see, somewhat, Victoria began to pay attention to what her other senses were telling her. The silence was no longer oppressive; unidentified sound prickled at the edge of her hearing, interspersed with ominous booms. The ground beneath her feet felt firm, but not the hot, sharp hardness of exploded concrete.

And as the yellow dust began to thin, she saw something else: people. Small groups of people, lurching together, moving away from the inferno that Caprica City had become, and she could not repress the gasp of relief that escaped her lips. Not alone, not alone, ran in a recurring mantra through her head.

A muffled sob beside her told her that her companion felt the same, and Victoria turned to look at her, squinting her eyes in order to make out features that were presently only slightly obscured by nuclear fog. She saw a figure that was shorter and stockier than her own, with dark skin and eyes and hair and teeth that flashed in a white beaming smile.

"We're alive," the woman murmured. She threw her arms around Victoria, and Victoria stiffened in the sudden embrace, but only for a moment as her senses absorbed the feel of smooth fabric and the smell and warmth of another living body, and her arms closed around the other woman convulsively.

"We're alive," she echoed, and closed her eyes tightly. They were filling with water, but Victoria refused to cry, told herself that the tears were caused by shock and irritation from the newly polluted atmosphere.

And suddenly she found that she was almost too exhausted to walk another step. The pain in her head reached a brain-shattering crescendo, and she faltered.

"Okay there, ladies?"

Victoria hung on to her companion, who was hanging on to her, and tried to focus on the speaker: a young man in his twenties with spiky hair and torn jeans. Apparently her lack of response was answer enough, for the young man let out a clear yodel that summoned a small group of men and women who looked battered, but otherwise in a much better state than Victoria.

"These here ladies look like they could use some help," she heard the first man say. "Give 'em a hand – or an arm – and we'll take 'em to the others."

She leaned gratefully on the arm that went around her waist, and peered woozily up into kind brown eyes. "There are others?"

The spiky haired fellow grinned down at her; this close, she could see that he was not as young as he had at first appeared. "Yeah, there's a crowd of folks on up that got out of the city almost at once. Some of 'em have blankets and coffee and biscuits that someone had the wit to steal before everything completely went to hell –"

"He's being too modest – he did the stealing," another man yelled, and Victoria nodded. In all honesty, she was too tired to care.

By the time they arrived at the small encampment in the hills, they had escaped the worst of the dust cloud that lingered mushroom-like above Caprica City, but everything was still tinged a sickly shade of yellow, giving the whites of everyone's eyes a jaundiced cast. Victoria and her companions were welcomed with soft murmurs and given wrappings – coats, blankets (one was of soft baby pink and she winced), even dust tarpaulins clearly dragged from car boots. But there was no chatter. They huddled together, seeking reassurance from human warmth, and watched in despair as the air mushrooms above their city continued to grow, the booms sporing more and more.

As she drifted into uneasy, uncomfortable sleep, Victoria's last thought was one of resignation: as least they would not die alone.

"It's a raptor!"

"Everyone, wake up, move – rescue's come!"

"Miss, lady, wake up, we need to go – frak, woman, open your eyes!" The last words were accompanied by a shake, and Victoria mumbled, only half aware. "Frak it," she heard someone complain, "she's got one hell of a knock on the head. Who was the moron who let her sleep?"

"'M okay," Victoria slurred. "'S only a knock."

She groaned as she felt hands literally lift her to her feet and slap her cheeks a little. "What was that for?"

"You need to wake up," the man with the brown eyes was telling her patiently. There was a tightness to his grip on her arms and a feverish light in his eyes that made Victoria's befuddled mind clarify. "Someone's just spotted a raptor. We think the Fleet has sent rescue-"

She straightened up and moved away, swaying only a little as she peered into the sky on her own account. "One raptor?"

He urged her along, over the grass covered hill. "One, but once they know we're here they'll send more."

But what if the raptor's the only survivor? Victoria asked herself as she followed him, tripping over the grasses and the uneven ground and her own feet. Has anyone thought of that?

Her heart sank as they approached the crowd of people clustered around the raptor. A dark haired young woman was shouting, whilst a man held a cocked gun, his pose making it clear that he would not hesitate to fire. They both wore the uniform of Colonial Fleet pilots, but their wary posture combined with their obvious dishevelment convinced Victoria that they had not, in fact, come to the rescue. They looked as if they needed rescue themselves.

She only half listened as the survivors argued and bargained; her body jumped when the pistol was fired out of reflex and nothing else. And then someone said something about the children, please take the children, and she forced herself to pay attention just as the young woman told them that they'd have a lottery for the five remaining places, once the pitifully few kids had been helped into the small ship.

Numbly, she accepted the slip of paper she was handed with the number twelve written in a bold black hand, and she stared at it until it seemed to wriggle and squirl around the grainy paper. Numbers were called out, but Victoria ignored them, until everyone went suddenly quiet and she heard, "Twelve, if you're there, get your frakkin' ass up here or I'll move on-" and her arm jerked upward, almost of its own volition.

"Twelve, I'm twelve, that's me," she called out, and told herself to ignore the soft groans of disappointment from the people standing near her. They'd all had an equal chance, after all; it was simply the luck of the draw. She pushed through the crowd, brushing past old people, and young people, frantic people and calm people. One dark man with a narrow face and oddly intent gaze made her look again, for he seemed momentarily familiar, but the female pilot was clearly getting impatient, so she went on, clambering into the raptor with the help of the male pilot whose set jaw was becoming more set by the second.

In the dark interior of the raptor she sat very carefully and precisely, her torn skirt beautifully arranged and her hands laid gently in her lap, to ensure the least friction against the cuts and scrapes. Children whimpered and cried around her, calling for their parents. One little girl sat opposite her, curled with her knees to her chest and a frighteningly blank expression on her face. Victoria felt a distant sort of pity for her, but it took every ounce of energy she possessed to sit in calmness herself. She had nothing to spare for anyone else, even the youngest. She paid hardly any attention as her companion from that walk out of hell climbed in, and even less when a young woman her own age sat down beside her twitchily, nervous excitement emanating from her in waves. She nodded briefly when an elderly woman was helped in, her wavy hair lying in disarray on her shoulders. The narrow faced man Victoria had thought familiar came aboard, and Victoria blinked, struck again by the niggling feeling of I know him from somewhere, but she did not pursue it. Nothing mattered, although she did admit a pang of sadness when her spiky-haired helper did not appear, but even that pang was blunted.

She put her head back against the bulkhead and let the world roll away. She was only distantly aware when the raptor door slid shut, only vaguely conscious when they lifted off. She could hear cries and sobs and someone – perhaps it was the twitchy woman next to her – asked about coming back to Caprica, but she didn't answer, even supposing the question was aimed at her.

Later, she could never remember the precise details of that journey into the unknown. When pressed, she found she could recall the sickening, disconcerting sensation of the space-jump and the lurch as they Caprica. She could summon to memory the bangs and scrapes with which they arrived on their new home, which made the children scream and the woman next to her clutch her arm so tightly that Victoria would later discover bruises, but true clarity did not descend until the raptor door swung open once again and a tall man in a pilot's uniform welcomed them and told them that his name was Captain Lee Adama.

Everyone started talking at once.

The narrow-faced dark man kept demanding to be told about the president.

The elderly lady seemed fixated on the loss of her glasses.

The nervous woman next to Victoria kept asking, "Captain, do you know if the Columbia has survived? Do you know where my husband is?" and Victoria dug her once well-kept nails into the fleshy part of her hands and repressed the desire to slap the irritating female into silence.

And Victoria looked on in approval when Captain Adama bellowed "Silence!" and the rumpled, distraught group of people in the raptor obeyed out of pure shock.

"Thank you," Adama said, and Victoria thought his voice was tinged with relief. "I know you've all got questions, and I promise we'll find a way to answer them at some point, but let's all just focus on getting settled, shall we? Kids first," he added hastily as everyone tried to surge out of the raptor at once.

Victoria was content to wait. The elderly lady was followed by the narrow-faced man, and Victoria thought A-ha when she heard Adama ask if he was Gaius Baltar. Then the woman who wanted to know where her husband was pushed past, and Victoria mentally shrugged. Let her go first, it hardly mattered.

Then Lee Adama's hand was extended to her, and she allowed him to help her down, followed by the lady from Caprica who seemed as numb as Victoria herself; they did not even look at each other.

"This is Billy," Victoria heard through a fog. "He's going to take your names and then lead you to you new quarters – all except Dr Baltar. The president would like to see you."

"The president?" she heard Baltar ask, his voice high-pitched with sudden excitement. "Richard Adar is here?"

There was a long pause and Victoria forced herself to pay attention.

"President Laura Roslin," Adama corrected awkwardly. "She was the only survivor of Adar's cabinet."

Victoria could see Baltar's response in the way his entire body sagged, but there was no time to think of him any longer, for the man – boy, really – named Billy had started to talk to the adults. As she waited her turn, she tried to remember why the name 'Laura Roslin' was familiar.

"What's your name, ma'am?" Billy asked the dark woman next to her, and Victoria's head jerked around as she realised that she and this woman had saved each other's lives, and yet they did not even know that much.

"Sarah. Sarah Porter," the woman said. "I was part of the Quorum delegate from Geminon," she added.

So that's why she speaks with an accent.

"I don't know how many delegates have survived," Billy told her, "but I know the president would like to talk to you. Could you stand with Baltar and we'll take you to her?"

Victoria saw Sarah's calm begin to falter. "Was – was Geminon hit? I only heard about Picon, and then Caprica –"

Billy's young face paled, and his eyes went frantically to where Captain Adama stood, talking to the female pilot who'd flown them. "All the Colonies were hit," the young man explained after a difficult pause. "All of them." He turned away from Sarah then, as if he could bear to say no more, and Sarah threw Victoria only the briefest of glances before she moved away towards Baltar.

"Who did it?" Victoria blurted when the young man's attention turned to her. "Was it – was it Cylons?"

Billy's eyes met hers and then dropped. "Yeah. They blew up the armistice station first, and – and then Picon –" He stopped she saw him swallow. She guessed he had connections on Picon, and once, in another lifetime, she might have asked, might have shown some compassion, but now she could only stand in silence and wait for him to recover his composure.

She was not waiting long. Billy took a deep breath and gave her a false smile that looked wrong on his almost-adolescent face. "What's your name, ma'am?"

Victoria stared at him as memories and images rushed through her mind in a confused morass of phone calls, mushrooming explosions, blood, debris, pale-hued grass and warm brown eyes. Nothing will ever be the same again.

She forced a smile to curve her lips and decided to shape her own fate. "My name's Tory. Tory Foster. I'm in public relations and I was captain of the Federalist Party in Delphi until – until last year."

Billy's young face split in a grin. "Great. We can do with more people with political and media experience around here. If you can go and stand with Ms Porter I'll bring you to your new quarters once we've settled everyone else."

Victoria – or Tory, as she supposed she now was – obeyed. Her old life was gone forever. It was time to begin anew – and maybe, just maybe, in this new world Tory could succeed where Victoria had failed.

TBC?

It's up to you. If you would like to see more, hit the button below!