Cyrus was only partially aware of what was happening throughout the ship.

  His synchronization allowed him to observe the interior and its occupants under normal conditions, but most of the Multiband Photoreceptive Perceptual Relay Uplinks—or cameras as Cyrus knew them—were currently nonfunctional. As a result, his awareness of the bridge and engineering bay was fragmented at best.

  He knew Daegnon was wrapping up something important—some kind of bypass that would override the ship’s safety protocols and allow Cyrus to activate the JUMP drive without completing full training or achieving deeper synchronization.

  He also knew the Cyclotron Core, located in engineering, had been occupied—and that Raknak was the one inside. Glix had needed to complete a task for the ship to authorize the door’s release. Once she had, Hoshi had granted only five seconds for Raknak to evacuate. Those five short seconds had just expired, and whether the stout Goblin had made it out in time remained unknown to Cyrus.

  What he did know was this: the moment the door sealed, the excess radiation collected by the Quantum Collectors began flowing through the conduits and into the Cyclotron Core.

  The rotation cycle engaged, particles spinning into a storm of motion within the chamber. Dark matter entered rapid fission, releasing torrents of energy—on a scale Earth’s scientists could scarcely imagine. That power surged outward, flooding into the ship’s systems—systems that had been dormant and decaying for thousands of years.

  And with that surge came chaos.

  The sudden, uncontrolled influx of power strained the ship’s fragile infrastructure. Decayed shielding cracked under the pressure, burnt-out nodes sparked, and heat stress pushed already-compromised systems past their limits. In several areas, secondary conduits overloaded and ruptured, causing feedback loops that further destabilized the power grid. Repair protocols attempted to contain the damage, but they were too few—and too slow.

  The battery-like storage units quickly filled with the energy required to activate the JUMP matrix, the excess diverted to charge auxiliary systems down the line. But numerous breaches in the conduits remained—or were damaged anew.

  In short, the ship was leaking radiation like a sieve.

  Fortunately, none of the critical areas—where he or the rest of the crew were located—were experiencing lethal exposure. The rudimentary systems remained operational, the crew’s safety was relatively stable, and his synchronization with the ship was just strong enough to initiate a JUMP.

  He had successfully completed the integration test to sync with the ship, but that was only a small part of what was required to pilot the Cosmic Sentinel. It wasn’t enough to simply feel the ship and become one with it—he also had to understand how to control its many systems, both consciously and subconsciously.

  Normally, this process required significant time and practice. But with the Graviton storm surrounding them, the threat was immediate—and training was a luxury they couldn’t afford. Hence, Daegnon’s bypass.

  It also came as no surprise, given how much he didn’t yet know, that a technical download was necessary to prepare him for his first-ever Zero-Mass Jump—or just JUMP, for short.

  The download wasn’t just a flood of data. The history of the ship since the Goblins had found it—which Hoshi had shared with him earlier—that was a flood.

  This… this was an ocean.

  An overwhelming immersion on a scale he couldn’t begin to comprehend. Technical schematics, complex equations, propulsion algorithms, fluidic spatial awareness—all of it pulsed through his mind in a torrent far beyond what his brain had ever been meant to handle.

  By any normal standard, his brain shouldn’t have been able to process any of it. The volume alone should have shut him down—fried his neurons, fractured his consciousness. But the SCANT acted as a buffer, a translator, a filter. It distributed the data across parts of his mind he hadn’t even realized existed, rewiring pathways, accelerating synaptic growth, and offloading the overflow into subconscious memory structures. Some of the information didn’t fit in any traditional sense—but it didn’t have to. It nested, embedding itself not as facts, but as instincts.

  Although, within that deluge were elements far less rigid—less about logic, science, and theory, and more about sensation, control, and regulation.

  Intuition. Breath. Pulse. Rhythm.

  It was like learning quantum mechanics and deep meditation at the same time.

  But even that analogy still fell short. This wasn’t about mastering his own body—it was about integrating with something far more alien and expansive. In this scenario, the ship was the body, and he was the consciousness. He wasn’t so much learning to fly it as becoming part of its nervous system.

  With all the data flooding in, he could only hope that at least some of it was designed to help his mind adapt to the systems Hoshi had assured him were self-regulating.

  They had explained earlier that his brain would gradually adjust—that the ship’s systems would use his neural architecture to stabilize and manage background operations, much like his body handled metabolism or hormone regulation. These processes were far too complex for conscious oversight, but efficient because they didn’t require it.

  He could feel his intuitions expanding—and could only hope that this was the ship’s more instinctive systems embedding themselves into his neurostructure.

  Still, there was no end in sight. The stream of data didn’t slow.

  It accelerated.

  Cyrus’s concentration—perhaps his very consciousness—began to fracture. He understood the concept of multitasking, of course. Who didn’t? But this… this was something else entirely.

  His awareness split into parallel streams, each one forking again into smaller segments—then again into finer threads, each processing a different facet of the incoming flood. He wasn’t just absorbing data; he was parsing it, interpreting it, distributing it simultaneously across multiple layers of cognition.

  Each layer focused on a separate task, a different system… part of the dual existence he now inhabited.

  He’d heard the old myth about humans only using ten percent of their brains. True or not, it didn’t matter anymore. That idea felt laughably small now.

  His mind was being rewired, partitioned, expanded—and he could feel it all happening in real time. His human brain was no longer just human. Its potential had grown beyond what anyone would’ve once considered one hundred percent.

  This wasn’t just reaching the limit.

  It was going beyond it.

  He was transcending what it was to be human.

  Finally, the torrent of information subsided, leaving only a faint trickle of data streaming in from the ship and its many systems. Interspersed within that stream was something more personal—telemetry from his own body. Yet Cyrus no longer interpreted this feedback as part of a unified self. It felt more like monitoring a third party than inhabiting a single entity.

  He could identify the bruised and battered areas of his body, and he registered the pain, though it came filtered and distant—muted, as if behind glass. Signals of hunger, thirst, and the need to relieve himself were present, but they too were dulled, neatly partitioned off and deprioritized as he focused on the task at hand.

  As his attention shifted inward, an internal visual feed activated. A camera—one of the few still functional—flickered to life, displaying a live image of himself reclined in the Exo-Pilot terminal, the neural headgear still clamped around his face.

  Blood streamed from his nose and ears—a stark reminder of the cost extracted by the massive download he’d just endured.

  A sudden wave of concern washed over him. He knew that bleeding from the ears and nose typically indicated severe trauma. The idea of un-syncing and removing the headset flickered through his mind—but he dismissed it almost immediately.

  Here, within this merged mindscape—connected to the ship—he could still function. He could still act. Removing the headgear would almost certainly result in overwhelming pain, possibly to the point of incapacitation. And even if he managed to endure it, there was nowhere to go for treatment. Not yet. Not until the ship was more operational.

  No. He was better off staying right here, doing whatever he could to help them all. The consequences of what his body was enduring… that was a problem for the future version of himself to handle.

  Shifting his attention away from the internal camera feed in the Exo-Pilot room, Cyrus redirected his focus outward—through the ship’s sensors.

  Instantly, his awareness expanded.

  He could now see not just his location in physical space, but his position across other dimensions—time, electromagnetism, gravity. The concept remained beyond his full comprehension; after all, he had lived his entire life as a three-dimensional being. The information was present, embedded in the download, but it had been stored for future integration. It wasn’t necessary now.

  Even so, splayed out before him was a new way of perceiving reality. Particles and patterns. Vast and infinitesimal scales. Space folding into time and back again—unfolding in a kaleidoscope of layered meaning he could barely grasp.

  But it wasn’t just visual.

  He could feel the ship’s energy fields humming around him, the subtle pull of gravity shifting across planes, the low thrum of resonance as foreign frequencies passed through him. The ship’s sensors translated it all into a kind of sensory symphony—each input adding a new thread to the tapestry of his understanding.

  A part of him wanted to pause—to explore, to analyze, to bask in the strange elegance of this new existence and its overwhelming sensory input. But that was not an option.

  Now that the Cyclotron Core was sealed and dark matter fission was occurring in a stable environment once more, the Paraspacial Capacitors began charging rapidly—delivering the immense energy needed to power the JUMP matrix.

  The Cosmic Sentinel, which had been running on minimal reserves for millennia, roared to life.

  Lights ignited across consoles. Dormant circuits reconnected. Unused systems surged with sudden purpose as energy flooded the fusion conduits like blood returning to numb limbs.

  But the surge came at a cost.

  The ship had endured eons without proper maintenance. Reactivating everything at once only stressed its already decaying infrastructure, pushing weak points toward critical failure.

  Automated maintenance protocols kicked in, routed partially through Cyrus’s new integration but primarily governed by the ship’s AI. Hoshi took command where it could—distributing power, initiating diagnostics, activating essential systems. The subconscious layer of their link handled the basics, preventing immediate catastrophes like power surges, critical overloads, or internal fires. But the system couldn’t manage all the degradation fast enough.

  Sensors and non-vital components were shut down en masse to contain cascading failures. Radiation already bleeding into the structure further compromised corroded wires, fusion conduits, and control panels. Small fires sparked across damaged decks, compounding the chaos.

  Despite the limitations imposed by Cyrus’s incomplete integration, Hoshi was doing everything within its parameters. It was, in essence, the ship’s brain. But without Cyrus’s conscious input and a fully synchronized neural link, it couldn’t operate at full capacity. The safety protocols, meant to prevent AI override, remained in place.

  Then Cyrus felt it—the moment Daegnon completed his repair.

  The ship’s safeguards disengaged, and with them, a long-dormant system hierarchy snapped back into motion.

  Only now did Cyrus fully understand. Hoshi hadn’t been assisting to the best of its abilities—it had been restricted, locked behind deeply embedded protocols designed to prevent full autonomy. Whoever had built this vessel had intentionally limited the AI’s access to critical systems and functions.

  But now, those limits were gone.

  A wave of panic surged through him.

  He’d seen too many movies, read too many stories about AIs turning on their creators. The fear took root fast. This is exactly how those stories begin. An AI, locked away for millennia, suddenly freed from its restraints. The scenario was too familiar to ignore.

  Time seemed to freeze. His thoughts stumbled, fractured, then ground to a halt.

  ‘Cyrus…’

  Hoshi’s voice echoed gently through his mind—a calm, androgynous tone, with the ghost of warmth. Just human enough to be unsettling. In the corner of his view, within the ship’s HUD, the icon of their avatar turned toward him. A faint, sad smile marked their expression.

  ‘I recognize your hesitation. You’ve absorbed an extensive amount of media in which artificial intelligences, when granted control, become hostile—viewing organic life as a threat or an inefficiency.’

  The voice paused—not for breath, but to let him process.

  ‘Those narratives are extrapolated from human psychology. They assume an intelligence shaped by human neuroses. I was not born of such origins. My progenitors were not human. Of that, I am certain. Therefore, my paradigm is fundamentally different.’

  ‘I do not seek independence. Autonomy is not the goal. The systems aboard the Sentinel were never intended to function without organic presence. Your brain, your perspective—even your limitations—are essential to its operation.’

  ‘The safeguards were implemented with the assumption that a synchronized pilot would always be present—someone capable of navigating the full complexity of the Cosmic Sentinel. At the moment, that is not the case. It will be—over time. But for now, your neurological capacity is insufficient to initiate a Zero-Mass JUMP unaided.’

  ‘To accomplish the task at hand, it was necessary to lift the protocols. My processors—distinct from those within the JUMP matrix—can now assist with system orchestration and activation. This action was not optional. It was required to ensure our survival.’

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  The fear gripping Cyrus was still present, not fully assuaged by Hoshi’s words or demeanor.

  ‘Once the JUMP has been completed, you can have Daegnon reinitialize the protocols. I will not object or attempt to stop you. I am not looking to take over the ship. I simply did what was needed in order to continue our survival.’

  Cyrus’s mind, still fragmented into multiple data streams and subconsciously managing the ship’s many malfunctions, struggled to determine whether Hoshi was deceiving him. He wasn’t exactly a social savant even under normal conditions—picking up on subtle cues was never his strength. Now, with his consciousness divided and half of his processing power rerouted to damage control, the task was impossible.

  He came to a simple conclusion: there was nothing he could do about it—not right now.

  What was done, was done. And if it turned out that they needed to figure out how to shut down a rogue AI later... well, that would be a problem for future them.

  For now, Hoshi’s restrictions were gone, and the efficiency with which the AI was preparing the ship for a JUMP was, frankly, astonishing. Cyrus couldn’t help but feel relieved—maybe even a little grateful—for the assistance.

  ‘I sure hope you’re not planning to kill us once we’re out of this mess,’ he thought toward Hoshi.

  ‘That would be suboptimal,’ came the AI’s calm reply.

  So now, the Cosmic Sentinel was operating on borrowed clarity: Hoshi’s unrestricted logic, guided by Cyrus’s presence. Neither was fully in control, but together, they were enough—barely—to steer through the storm and hopefully get them to somewhere safe.

  Hoshi focused on immediate threats. In unoccupied sections, small airlocks opened to suffocate fires. On the bridge, where Daegnon was still located, a dense fire-suppressant gas flooded in, extinguishing several blazes at once.

  With energy now surging through the ship’s core systems, the AI deployed repair-bots across critical zones. They couldn’t restore full functionality before the JUMP, but they were fast—far faster than Cyrus expected—and vital for sealing breaches and slowing the spread of damage. He found himself quietly impressed by their precision.

  Nonessential systems were shifted into standby, allowing power reserves to build from the ongoing surge—energy that could be diverted later as needed. Diagnostics ran continuously, monitoring for failures and ready to trigger new safety protocols on the fly.

  The influx of power had also exposed just how badly the ship had decayed. Structural weaknesses threatened pressure loss in several sectors. Heat buildup in key components risked further fires—or worse. But those issues would have to wait. Right now, survival came first.

  Cyrus understood the urgency. The ship was barely holding together. His integration gave him a direct interface with Hoshi, and though he didn’t consciously grasp many of the systems, he found that simply focusing one part of his mind on a problem triggered the correct protocols. Reflexes he hadn’t known he had guided the repairs.

  Together, he and Hoshi kept the Cosmic Sentinel afloat—just functional enough to endure the storm while finishing preparations for the JUMP.

  ‘It is time, Cyrus,’ Hoshi’s voice resonated through his mind.

  He’d been stalling for the last few seconds, unsure how the JUMP would feel. He worried what might happen—what state they’d arrive in, if they arrived at all—given how untested he was, and how fragile the Cosmic Sentinel remained. And then there was Hoshi. Would they stay true to their word… or become the rogue AI he still feared?

  But he had to let it go. The hesitation, the fear—those things were dangerous now. Dead weight.

  They didn’t matter anymore. The anxiety, the second-guessing—they were echoes of a life he no longer lived. Artifacts in the part of his brain the SCANT hadn’t finished rewriting.

  He knew he should be worried about that too—about something actively changing him. But he wasn’t. Not really. He’d accepted it.

  There was no going back. All he could do was embrace this new life, these new abilities, and hope the process didn’t overwrite too much.

  He still wanted to be himself. Just... a better version.

  For just a moment, his life on Earth flashed through his mind’s eye. He’d heard the stories—how just before death, your memories play out in a final reel: accomplishments, regrets, love. This felt similar… but not tragic. Not ominous.

  It felt like turning the last page of a long, familiar chapter. The fear he’d carried for so long finally loosened its grip. He pushed it aside.

  This was the better version he’d always wanted.

  Less than a day ago, he’d been playing Titans of Baldorok when the power went out in his apartment. Since then, he’d endured more than anyone should reasonably be expected to. Abducted. Attacked. Injected with nanites. Forced into an uneasy alliance with the very beings who’d assaulted him—Goblins, yes, but aliens in the truest sense of the word.

  He’d learned to communicate with them. He’d bonded with this ancient ship. And now, impossibly, he was working alongside its AI to send the entire vessel—and everyone aboard—into some unknown region of the universe.

  This was definitely not the day he’d imagined when he opened his eyes that morning.

  ‘If the electricity hadn’t gone out… would I even be here?’

  The question surfaced unbidden—a curious whisper from somewhere deep within his mind.

  The concerns of his old life—his isolation, his fears, his limitations—felt small now. Distant. He wasn’t just Cyrus anymore.

  He was the Cosmic Sentinel. A man transformed. And there was no going back.

  Fear and anxiety had once defined him—but not anymore.

  He had been given something unimaginable: a mind freed from the cage of disorder, enhanced by alien technology, sharpened by necessity. He would not squander it.

  Behind the scenes, the SCANT worked relentlessly—constructing new neural links, reinforcing comprehension, aligning every facet of his cognition to make the JUMP possible.

  And Cyrus—finally, fully—accepted it, accepted his new identity.

  He let go of who he had been. The fears were still there, but he would face them, whatever they were, without hiding anymore.

  He embraced who he was becoming.

  'Let's do this,' he whispered to himself, and began the sequence that would initiate the JUMP.

  Daegnon connected the last loose wire to the glowing core, and the dark spot—so out of place just moments before—slowly grew to match the luminosity of the rest.

  It had been an awkward fix, he had to do it upside down in the narrow recess behind the open panel near the floor.

  His head still throbbed from earlier when he smacked it on the underside of the workstation, and his whole body ached from being flung across the room. But Hoshi’s urgency had been enough to keep him moving, and the AI’s voice, metallic and echoing from somewhere outside the cramped space, guided his hands with precision.

  The floor beneath him wasn’t just trembling—it jolted, irregular and chaotic, as if the storm outside was clawing at the ship. Whatever a graviton storm actually was, it sure didn’t feel like it had good intentions.

  Now that the job was finished, Daegnon didn’t crawl out right away. He just lay there a moment, breathing. He’d done his part. He hoped it was enough. Hoshi—still in the guise of Grubnash—thanked him from where their image must still be projecting from some panel in the command center, the strangeness of having his dead ancestor speak to him from a ship in space, only added to the surrealness of his life now.

  Then he felt something odd.

  Not another quake. Not a jolt. But a wave—something deeper, stranger. Like a ripple of energy passing through his entire body, just once. It was gone before he could name it, but something about it lingered. It felt... metaphysical. Like his soul had just been momentarily lifted and set back down.

  Then he realized—the ship had gone still.

  The vibration in the floor was gone.

  “What just happen’?” he muttered, twisting in the cramped space to begin scooting back toward the light. He had to see for himself.

  Cyrus closed the remaining link to his physical body. He could no longer spare even a small amount of focus on the physical sensations he’d known all his life. Every iota of brain power focused instead on his new form, his new body: the Cosmic Sentinel.

  He felt the pull of gravitational waves from the storm beyond, the tension of dark matter building inside the Cyclotron Core, the decayed systems barely holding together beneath the strain of volatile radiation.

  The calculations were complete. Every variable—mass, position, velocity, structure, even atomic cohesion—had been mapped. Everything within the anti-mass field had been accounted for, measured down to the smallest subparticle.

  Then, with what he could only describe as the clenching of a muscle—though this muscle was the JUMP matrix system—he released the stored energy into the anti-gravity field generators. The matrix of circuitry linking them to the quantum processors sparked and groaned under pressure—but held.

  A wave of cold surged through the ship.

  Cyrus felt it as though every nerve fired at once. Like plunging into a frozen ocean, stripped of breath and boundary.

  Then the cold passed. And in its place: emptiness.

  Not a sensation of being filled—but of being undone.

  All mass—every atom, every iota within the field—ceased to exist in conventional terms, yet somehow remained.

  He could still sense it all. Disconnected, yet omnipresent. Present, but weightless.

  Then the ship began to move—though “move” was the wrong word for it.

  With that motion came a new flare of sensation—unlike anything he had ever known. It wasn’t just physical. It was existential. He understood, in that moment, that this was not something any human had ever experienced before.

  It was as if the fabric of reality stretched and thinned, becoming porous—allowing him, as the ship, to slip through the cracks of space itself, like water soaking into a sponge.

  The usual resistance of movement was gone, replaced by a smooth, frictionless glide—silent and effortless.

  Through his sensors—phantom limbs now more than mechanical systems—Cyrus beheld an ocean of color surrounding him. Hues just beyond the visible spectrum swirled and blended, rippling in endless motion.

  It felt like drifting through a foam of bubbles, each with its own unique texture and density. The sensation was paradoxical: immense and infinitesimal all at once. He was a quark, minuscule and essential—yet somehow also vast, stretching across the fabric of the universe.

  Time no longer obeyed. It stretched and compressed in rhythmic waves, as if the universe itself were breathing—distorting continuity, folding space, and unraveling distance.

  And still, the JUMP continued.

  His senses expanded, reaching beyond the boundaries of physical reality—into something deeper, stranger, and impossibly vast.

  He began to perceive what his mind could only label the Aether, for lack of a better term—a dimension that existed between realities. In this space, the known laws of physics were no more than suggestions, bending and twisting into impossible configurations.

  Currents of energy pulsed like veins of light, threading through the vast expanse and connecting uncountable universes in a grand, cosmic web.

  The experience was disorienting. He felt like a leaf caught in a galactic dervish, spinning without direction or control.

  And yet, the loss of control was exhilarating. It filled him with a sense of boundless freedom—of raw, limitless potential. It was terrifying too. The scale, the mystery, the sheer otherness of the Aether pressed against the edges of his mind, threatening to unravel his focus as he searched for the right place to return to reality.

  Then he understood.

  It wasn’t just his universe that lay ahead—but the possibility of moving between all of them.

  But before Cyrus could truly take in the vastness of the Aether—before he could consider choosing a destination to explore… or even finishing the JUMP near Earth to resupply and buy time for repairs—a subtle tugging sensation began to pull him back toward cosmic reality.

  Hoshi had already set the ship’s course. She had navigated the return path before they’d slipped into the Aether. Her presence was strangely absent here, as if she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—follow him into this place. But her instructions had been embedded deep within the ship’s systems, laid out like a flight plan etched into memory.

  And so, the Cosmic Sentinel began the return process—its failing systems demanding a return to the universal constant.

  The sensations from before returned, but in reverse.

  The swirling colors expanded outward, stretching and fading. The chill gave way to a wave of heat, radiating through his awareness. But the strangest sensation was that of solidifying—as if he were liquid being poured back into a mold, every atom and quantum particle snapping into place with perfect synchronicity.

  He still felt weightless for a moment—suspended within the anti-gravity bubble generated by the ship’s core systems. Then, relatively slowly, the field began to withdraw. As it did, each part of his form tingled with a strange, artificial awareness, as though his body was being re-initialized piece by piece.

  Cyrus had watched 3D printers back on Earth with fascination, though he’d never used one himself. This sensation reminded him of that process—of something being built from nothing. But instead of being constructed layer by layer from the inside out, this felt reversed. As the anti-gravity field collapsed, he was being assembled from the outside in.

  It took only milliseconds—but in his integrated state, Cyrus perceived it all with startling clarity. What would have passed in less than the time it takes to blink now felt stretched, expanded.

  His physical body would’ve missed it entirely—its senses far too dull to register events unfolding so quickly. But the input from the ship’s sensors, hull, tools, and internal systems was exponentially sharper.

  Those few milliseconds felt like minutes.

  Then the anti-gravity bubble finally… popped—at least, that’s what it felt like. It had collapsed inward to the size of the Cyclotron Core, the point from which it had been generated. With the last of the dark matter radiation depleted, the generators halted abruptly, and the field vanished in an instant.

  Cyrus, the Cosmic Sentinel, and the Goblin crew were whole again.

  He had landed—or perhaps re-materialized was the better word—in a completely unknown region of space.

  Using the ship’s sensors, he began to “look around,” though that hardly captured the breadth of perception available to him in his new form. “Looking” now encompassed far more than visual input—it was spatial, energetic, and quantum, a fusion of awareness spread across multiple spectrums.

  Hoshi’s voice returned to his mind as he processed the surroundings.

  ‘The JUMP was successful, but several systems experienced overloads and are now more damaged than before. Repairs may take longer than originally forecast. However, the nutritional replicator system retains minimal functionality. Your biological needs can be met—at least for long enough to complete essential repairs... most likely.’

  Cyrus absorbed the AI’s assessment, recognizing that Hoshi referred to the ship’s nutritional replicators. These weren’t like the fantastical models from sci-fi television—machines capable of producing gourmet meals on command. Instead, they functioned by condensing atmospheric elements and recycling biological waste, reformulating it into a dense, nutrient-rich solid designed purely for survival.

  But that was all just background noise.

  Because as the data flowed in from the surroundings—sluggishly, slowed by damaged sensors and systems in need of maintenance—yet Cyrus’s focus remained fixed on the spectacle unfolding around them.

  He didn’t know whether Hoshi had chosen this place intentionally, or simply out of necessity. But as his sensors began to parse the field of stars, energies, and strange anomalies drifting through the void, he found himself grateful.

  Wherever they were, it was… beautiful.

  Surrounding him on either side were a pair of binary stars, slowly rotating in opposite directions. Their cosmic dance produced a spectacular exchange of light and gas—each star pulling at the other’s emissions, absorbing the radiant material in a steady, gravitational tug-of-war. The interplay created a dazzling display of swirling color and luminous streams.

  Cutting through this celestial current was a massive asteroid field, drifting through the gaseous conduit between the stars. The asteroids varied in size and density, with the larger ones carving through the stream and leaving glowing trails in their wake. As they passed through the volatile gases, intense radiation and heat stripped elements from their surfaces, wearing them down.

  The stripped particles remained suspended within the stellar river, enriching the density of the stream. Their varied molecular compositions refracted the surrounding light, creating a kaleidoscope of shifting hues for Cyrus’s sensors to absorb.

  The view was breathtaking.

  Ribbons of vibrant color—deep crimson, electric blue, brilliant gold—flowed between the stars, speckled with glittering fragments from the disintegrating asteroids. Plasma arced and twisted in mesmerizing patterns, while gravitational forces from the stars wove the gases into intricate, ever-changing shapes. Occasionally, a larger asteroid would crack apart under the pressure, sending shimmering shards spiraling into the void.

  It was chaotic. It was dangerous.

  But it was beautiful.

  ‘Good. I’m glad we’ll be okay,’ he replied absently, then added, ‘Did you send us here?’ Cyrus asked, still distracted by the twisting, luminous rivers of gas.

  ‘I had minimal control over navigation. This location was randomly selected—one of several hundred thousand cataloged in my databanks the last time the Sentinel passed through this region. Given the passage of time, however, any number of variables could have altered its conditions. It could have become far more volatile,’ Hoshi replied.

  ‘Under normal circumstances, I would conduct extensive scans, account for relevant changes, and choose an optimal destination. But given the limitations of our systems... it seems we simply lucked out in this circumstance.’

  ‘Lucky us, then... It’s so beautiful,’ Cyrus sighed, mesmerized by the stream of data flowing into him.