Twenty?four hours later
Los Angeles City Hospital
Beep.
Beep, beep.
The sound echoed softly through the intensive care ward, a measured pulse drifting through the stillness. It mingled with the low hum of machines, the faint hiss of circulating air, and the clean, stinging smell of antiseptic. The rhythm remained steady and unfeeling, marking time without concern for the fragile life bound to its signal.
A man in a tailored suit stood beside one of the beds, his brown eyes fixed on the patient with quiet intensity. He appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. His gray hair was cut short and combed neatly back with gel, exposing a broad, disciplined forehead. He stood very still, hands folded behind his back, as though movement itself might disturb the fragile balance keeping the man in the bed alive.
Black hair lay loose and lifeless against a white pillow. An oxygen mask covered the patient’s face, its plastic surface fogging faintly with each shallow breath. Thin wires trailed from his body to a bank of monitors, their green and blue lines tracing heart rhythm, oxygen saturation, blood pressure. Proof of life reduced to light and sound.
A doctor appeared quietly at the doorway and crossed the room.
“Mr. Zhao.” He offered a thick file. “This is Mr. Yan Qing’s admission record. I’ve worked in oncology for twenty years, and I’ve never seen a case like this. The cancerous growth is nearly systemic.”
He hesitated, brow tightening.
“Are you certain Mr. Yan Qing has never had any form of cancer before?”
The older man shook his head as he accepted the file. Fatigue edged his voice. “Kids these days never tell me anything.”
Zhao Zhengyan: his emergency contact, his late grandfather’s old friend, the man who paid his tuition. Once, he’d been set to become family. That future had ended quietly a while ago.
Under the circumstances, Zhao Zhengyan was displeased but clear?eyed. Yan Qing’s decision to delay the wedding had not come without reason. It had been Zhao’s own daughter who strayed as the date approached, leaving him little ground for righteous anger.
He flipped through the file and exhaled slowly. “I never imagined he would fall so young.”
“Yes,” the doctor said, his jaw tightening slightly. “Something isn’t right. It looks as if his entire body was exposed to an extreme level of radiation. His hormone levels are all over the place too. It could be related to the cancer, but…” He hesitated, then exhaled. “To be honest, I can’t say for sure.”
“Is there any way to save him?” Zhao asked, even though the answer had already settled heavily in his chest.
The doctor shook his head gently. “There are still documents that require your review. If you don’t mind, please come to my office.”
Zhao nodded and followed the doctor out of the private room.
The corridor beyond was busy, footsteps overlapping in uneven rhythms. Somewhere nearby, a gurney rattled past, and voices murmured in low, exhausted tones. As they walked, a man in military uniform hurried by in the opposite direction, a child keeping pace at his side. Zhao glanced back out of habit, found nothing worth remarking on, and continued after the doctor.
Since the earthquake, the hospital had become a crossroads of urgency. Soldiers, civilians, aid workers moved through its halls shoulder to shoulder, bound together by circumstance rather than purpose. A soldier accompanied by a child was hardly enough to draw attention.
“Here.”
The child stopped short before a door and pushed it open without hesitation. The soldier followed him inside.
Lanice had signed in as a friend and the staff here were too overwhelmed to argue.
“Yan Qing.”
The soldier’s bronze?toned face tightened as he leaned over the bed, his eyes scanning the unconscious man with unmistakable concern. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I’m not medically trained. I can’t diagnose,” the child said quietly.
His golden eyes moved through the room, taking in the machines, the still body beneath the sheets, the soft glow of monitoring lights. Then his gaze fixed on the bedside table.
He reached out and lifted a necklace. The gold chain caught the dim hospital light, flashing faintly as it slipped through his fingers. The staff had removed it during emergency treatment, setting it aside with the patient’s belongings, unaware of its significance.
At the chain’s end, a red crystal pendant turned slowly, as if alive, a muted glow pulsing from deep within.
“Kculeanstho,” the child whispered, disbelief threading his voice. “A royal token.”
“Lan?” The soldier lifted his head, confused. “What did you just say?”
“Nothing.” The boy denied it at once.
Then his expression sharpened, sudden and severe.
“We need to contact Alpha Centauri. I have to take Yan Qing back.”
“What?” The soldier frowned. “Yan Qing is one of ours. Why would you take him to your planet?”
Lanice had long felt that speaking with this child was like being forced into a riddle game where the rules changed without warning.
The day before, a strange pillar of light had appeared over Los Angeles. Lanice had traced it from its origin until it led him here, to this hospital, and to Yan Qing.
The boy pressed his lips together, then opened his hand to reveal the device on his wrist.
“I don’t know the full situation,” he said, voice quieter now. “But this is a token reserved for our royal line. Yan Qing was carrying it.”
“That means…?”
“It means Yan Qing accepted Sullanta,” the boy said. His voice was steady, almost too calm. “He comes with us now.”
“Huh?” The lieutenant stared at him, disbelief flashing across his face. “Wait. Hold on. You mentioned this before. Sulen… something. Whatever it’s called. What is it, exactly?”
“Our ritual.” The boy looked away, shoulders turning slightly as if to shield himself from further questions.
Before the lieutenant could press him further, the boy raised his wrist and tapped his multifunction bracer. The soft activation tone cut cleanly through the silence.
“This is Lan,” he said quietly, no room for argument left in his tone. “I have an urgent matter to report to Chen.”
At the same moment, deep within the Eagle Nebula.
The main screen burned with static light as the Kaes positioning system continued its relentless operation. Thirty?six Earth hours had passed, each one drowning the sensors in violent electromagnetic turbulence shed by the nebula’s churning clouds. Data scrolled endlessly, most of it noise, interference, deception.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
Thirty?six hours of vigilance would have broken an ordinary crew.
But nothing aboard this warship was ordinary.
The figures stationed across the bridge were members of the Royal Guard, the blade held closest to the heart of Teleopean civilization. In their universe, their arrival alone was enough to still entire star systems. This was the army commanded directly by the Teleopean Emperor.
And now, they were hunting.
The Fenreigans’ propulsion systems were crude by Teleopean standards, reverse?engineered using Earth technology. And like all imperfect machines, they leaked. Electricity bleeding through human wiring left microscopic losses, invisible to most, but unmistakable to those who knew how to look. Those losses were signatures. Fingerprints smeared across spacetime.
That was what the Kaes system had been peeling away, layer by layer.
A red point flared into existence on the projection.
Sharp. Sudden. Alive.
The bridge tightened in a single breath.
“Pilot,” Chen said as he rose. The motion was fluid and restrained, precise enough to appear calm. Only Xiao noticed the fracture beneath it, a flash of tightly leashed impatience, irritation pressed flat by discipline.
“Bring us to that coordinate,” Chen continued. “Quietly.”
Xiao exhaled through his nose, a sound only he heard. In the end, even their Emperor was not immune to something so terribly ordinary.
Attachment.
Once, Xiao had believed Chen was colder than the High Chancellor himself. A ruler who could look upon annihilation without blinking.
He had been wrong.
“Stealth protocols,” Chen added calmly. “Upon contact, disable the engine room. Do not breach the central hull. The ship must remain intact.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The pilot’s hands moved at once, switching to manual control. Systems obeyed instantly. “Spatial jump initialized. Three star?ring seconds to transition. All personnel, prepare. Time?dilation adjustment set to zero point three two. Warp output at twenty point nine seven six percent.”
Green indicators blossomed across the console.
The pilot placed his palm against the rotating electro?optic control, muscles taut beneath the uniform.
“Jump sequence,” he announced. “Three.”
The ship’s hum deepened, a predatory vibration crawling through the hull.
“Two.”
Space ahead warped, bending inward like a wound preparing to tear.
“One.”
The pilot twisted the control sharply.
“Jump.”
Spacetime screamed.
A jump was not movement. It was violence. A deliberate rupture in the fabric of reality, a forced passage through places no vessel was meant to touch.
And so, when the Fenreigans’ sensors finally registered a foreign energy spike, it was not a warning.
It was a death sentence.
They had been found.
The Teleopean warship had dropped its masking shell and opened fire at once.
The gamma-ray cannon locked on. In the next microsecond, a white high-energy beam tore through space at light speed, annihilating the Fenreigan engine room and disabling every weapon system.
Chen did not intend to destroy them.
Not yet.
Not before he had Yan Qing back.
“Open communications. I want to speak to the Fenreigan King.” Chen’s fists tightened as he issued the order, his face expressionless.
On the Fenreigan ship, chaos reigned. Ruptured cables spat sparks. The air reeked of scorched metal, thick enough to choke. Red alarm lights pulsed violently.
On a half-shattered main screen, the Teleopean Emperor’s face appeared—beautiful, precise, and utterly without mercy.
[ Fenreigans. Your primary engine has been damaged. Your weapons have been disabled. You have nowhere to run. Return him to me. ]
The Fenreigan King’s mismatched eyes fixed on the screen. Then he laughed, sharp with contempt.
“Teleopean Star Emperor. You will never find him.”
The calm face on-screen sharpened into something ruthless. The next words were spoken slowly, deliberately—each one a threat.
[Chris. Surrender Yan Qing. If you fail to comply, your ship will be boarded. I will execute your crew one by one. You will watch.]
“And if I give him to you,” Chris asked, as if he had finally decided to stop pretending, sinking back into his chair with a strange ease, “you’ll spare us?”
[ If you hand him over, I will. ]
On?screen, the faint rise and fall of Chen’s chest was just visible, shallow and precisely measured. His jaw remained locked, shoulders squared, posture immaculate. Only the slight delay between each breath betrayed the effort it took to remain still, as if something volatile were pressing hard against the inside of his ribs, waiting for permission to break free.
“A tempting offer.” Chris lowered his gaze to the console, to something unseen. “No engines. Emergency power will run out in three star weeks. You ‘spare’ us—meaning you leave us to die.” His smile widened, bitter. “We were fooled by your kind of pretty words once before. Do you think I’ll fall for it again?”
He looked up again, still smiling, and his fingers found a button on the control panel.
He pressed it gently.
“Sorry. You lose.”
The self?destruction system engaged.
The ship tore itself apart from the inside out. Fire, heated to thousands of degrees, surged through the corridors in a single violent instant, devouring metal and flesh alike. Pressure split the hull open, ripping it into fragments that scattered outward in brilliant arcs. The shockwave followed, driving debris and ash deeper into the surrounding darkness.
And yet, within the cloud of cinders, a fragment of the ship remained. So small it was nearly imperceptible, it flashed once, then slipped silently into the void and was gone.
Thud!
“Chris—”
The name broke from Chen like a fracture.
His fists came down on the console, metal shrieking as the surface buckled beneath the blow. The impact reverberated up his arms, but he did not move away. He stayed there, braced over the wreckage, shoulders rigid, head lowered, as if whatever weight had collapsed inside his chest had pinned him in place.
“Chen.” Xiao stepped closer, cautious.
There was no response.
Chen’s grip tightened, knuckles whitening against twisted alloy. His breathing was shallow, uneven, each inhale dragged in as though air itself resisted him.
“Chen,” Xiao said again, nearer now.
The next instant, Chen straightened violently, motion snapping sharp enough to startle the bridge. His head lifted, eyes blazing, and the sound that tore from his throat was raw and unrestrained.
“Get away from me!”
The command platform froze.
Teleopeans halted mid?motion, hands hovering over controls, conversations dying on their lips. Heads turned, disbelief rippling outward as they stared. No one spoke. No one dared.
They had never seen their Star Emperor like this.
The light in Chen’s eyes swelled, gold flooding outward until it consumed the dark entirely, luminous and unstable. The air around him felt tight, compressed, as though something vast and violent were pressing against its limits.
Xiao’s pulse hammered, but he forced himself to speak, words tumbling out in a rush.“Chen, my lord—Yan Qing is not on the Fenreigan ship. He’s on Earth.”
The name landed.
Chen blinked. His stance wavered for the briefest instant, the fire in his eyes faltering as disbelief slipped through the glare like a fracture in glass. “How…it’s impossible.”
“Lan sent the message,” Xiao continued quickly, seizing the moment. “Yan Qing is in a hospital in Los Angeles. His condition is critical. He needs treatment immediately.”
Silence followed.
Not the calm of control, but the brittle stillness before something breaks.
Chen said nothing more.
He lowered himself back into the command chair with deliberate control, every movement precise, economical. His face smoothed into stillness, the familiar mask settling back into place as if nothing had cracked at all.
Around the bridge, no one moved.
Crew members kept their eyes fixed on their stations, hands hovering just above their controls. Conversations that had not yet resumed died before they could begin. Even the ambient hum of the ship seemed to recede, as though the warship itself were holding its breath.
Only the fingers resting against the armrest betrayed him.
They trembled, barely perceptible, a fine vibration carried through rigid muscle and iron discipline. The grip tightened, eased, then tightened again, leaving faint stress marks in the alloy beneath his palm.
No one spoke. No one dared look for long.
“Coordinates,” Chen said at last.
The word cut cleanly through the silence.
“Kc 1492, Ne 220,” His voice was even, steady enough to deceive anyone who did not know him intimately. “We’re going to Earth.”
For half a heartbeat, the bridge remained frozen.
Then the crew moved as one.
Commands were acknowledged instantly. Consoles lit up. Navigation data cascaded across the displays. The Royal Guard responded with flawless precision, but beneath it ran a current of unease, sharp and unspoken. They had heard that tone before, but only in records. Only in histories.
No one questioned the order.
No one needed to.
