Chapter 07: Through the Rift
Kira’s head was still spinning, her body protesting every movement as she tried to sit up straighter. The soft beeping of the ship’s emergency systems was the only sound in the otherwise silent cockpit. Her fingers dug into the seat beneath her, steadying herself as she tried to assess what had happened.
“We’re alive,” Kira murmured to herself, her voice hoarse, a weak laugh escaping her lips. “Somehow.”
Jaxon’s figure appeared in her peripheral vision, moving with the quick, assured steps she had come to expect from him. He stood by the control panel, his gaze fixed on the screens that flickered with unfamiliar data.
“Kira, are you okay?” His voice was calm, but there was an underlying tension, an edge of urgency in his words. “We’ve passed through, but… I don’t know where we are.”
Kira’s eyes focused on him as he turned to look at her, his face drawn with the weight of the unknown. “What do you mean? Are we still in the Rift?”
Jaxon glanced back at the control panel, his fingers skimming over the screen with quick precision. The ship’s systems were damaged, but nothing seemed catastrophic—not yet. His eyes narrowed in confusion as he scanned the data.
“I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “But we’re not in normal space either. This place… it’s different. Look at this.”
He turned the screen toward her, showing her a map of the surrounding space. The stars were arranged differently, the constellations distorted in ways Kira couldn’t comprehend. The area around them seemed empty—vast, and yet, not quite void. There were no familiar planetary systems, no known star clusters. The galaxy they knew felt distant, unreachable.
Kira frowned, leaning closer to the screen. “Where are we, Jaxon?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his voice low. “I’ve never seen anything like this before.”
For a moment, the two of them were silent, the weight of the unknown settling in around them. Kira’s thoughts raced. What was this place? What had the Rift done to them? And how were they going to get out?
The hum of the ship’s systems was the only thing that anchored her to reality. Jaxon’s hands moved over the controls, checking the ship’s status. The usual readings—speed, energy levels, communication systems—were all off, erratic.
Suddenly, a low hum vibrated through the ship’s hull, and Kira’s heart skipped a beat. It was subtle at first, barely noticeable, but then it grew louder, filling the room with a strange resonance. Her skin prickled with an inexplicable sense of unease.
“Do you hear that?” she asked, her voice tense.
Jaxon’s eyes widened slightly, his brow furrowing as he listened. The hum grew louder, more insistent, like some cosmic heartbeat that pulsed through the very air around them.
“What is it?” Kira asked, her voice rising slightly in concern.
“I don’t know,” Jaxon said, his hand hovering over the controls. “But we need to figure it out. That frequency—it’s not normal.”
Without another word, Kira stood up, pushing past the dizziness that still clouded her mind. “We need to check it out. I’m not sitting here while something’s messing with our ship.”
Jaxon nodded, though his expression was a mixture of caution and reluctance. “We need to be careful. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.”
He stepped back as Kira approached the ship’s hatch, pulling up the security screens and running a quick scan of the external environment. The data flickered for a moment, before a new set of readings came through. The readings were all within normal space parameters, but there was an odd spike—something solid, but not quite.
“Do you see that?” Kira muttered under her breath, pointing at the display. “Something’s out there.”
Jaxon walked over, peering over her shoulder. “That’s… not right. It looks like an anomaly—something’s distorting the space around us.”
The ship rocked suddenly, causing both of them to stumble. Kira’s heart pounded in her chest as she grabbed the sides of the console to steady herself.
“What was that?” she demanded, her voice sharp.
The hum grew louder, more intense, until it was vibrating through the very bones of the ship. A soft, eerie glow appeared on the scanners, surrounding them on all sides, just outside the ship’s hull. Kira’s breath caught in her throat as she realized what was happening.
“It’s a… it’s a field,” she said slowly, her mind trying to make sense of it. “A distortion field. But how…?”
“Whatever it is,” Jaxon interjected, his voice tight, “it’s pulling us in.”
Kira’s eyes widened as the field began to expand, closing in from all directions. Their ship was caught in its pull, drifting ever closer to whatever strange phenomenon lurked just outside the ship. The distortion seemed to swallow up the stars themselves, leaving only swirling light and shadow.
“We need to move—now!” Kira ordered, her fingers flying over the controls. “Full thrusters, Jaxon! We can’t stay here!”
But before they could react, the lights inside the ship flickered and then went out entirely. The ship was plunged into darkness, the hum of the distortion outside growing louder, more powerful. Kira’s heart raced in her chest as she scrambled to bring the ship’s systems back online, but it was no use.
The ship lurched again, this time violently, and Kira’s world tilted as the entire ship seemed to shake. She gripped the console tightly, trying to regain control, but the power was fading fast. Then, with a shuddering jolt, the ship was thrust forward, as if propelled by an unseen force.
A strange sensation washed over her—an intense pressure, as though the very fabric of reality was bending around them. It was dizzying, disorienting. Kira could feel the pull of the field, the crushing sensation in her chest as if the space itself was collapsing inward.
“We’re being pulled into it!” Kira shouted over the growing noise. “Jaxon, we need to—”
But her words were cut off as the lights flickered back on. The ship was no longer moving forward. Instead, it was suspended in the middle of a vast, surreal space—a space that seemed to bend and stretch, as if they were caught in a dream.
The distortion field was gone. In its place, something much more terrifying had emerged.
A massive, swirling vortex of energy, its core radiating a brilliant, ethereal light. Around it, dark tendrils of space seemed to twist and spiral like living things.
It was a gate. A portal.
Kira’s breath caught in her throat as she turned to Jaxon, who was staring at the sight before them in stunned silence.
“It’s real,” he whispered. “It’s… it’s real.”
And without another word, they knew that the key to their mission—everything they had been searching for—was waiting on the other side.
But what lay beyond that gate? What would it mean for them, and for the universe itself?
Their journey was far from over.
