When I finally regained my senses, everything was dark. Utterly and horribly dark. Almost immediately I started to feel claustrophobic.

  That same fear that I had felt with that dark stuff that Austin had been using started to overwhelm me. It took all my willpower to not stop screaming again because of the evil that I felt around my head.

  I sat there for maybe ten minutes when I heard voices.

  "The other ships are closing in," Austin said, talking over what I presumed was a radio of some sort. Then another voice started to speak.

  Hearing this voice was one of the most powerful things I had ever heard. The voice felt almost foreign to me, so foreign that I don't really know how to describe it. Still, I will try to describe what it sounded like.

  First, when the voice came through the speaker on the space ship, it sounded like a man's voice to my ears. When this voice spoke a feeling of darkness, despair, horrible evil came upon me so powerful I wanted to fade into nothingness and let the darkness carry me away. If I thought the presence of Dark Matter was bad, multiply that sensation a hundredfold and you would understand what I felt in that moment. The other thing that happened was that I felt something else echo through my brain. A presence of some sort with very clear emotions and intentions so that I could FEEL what the voice was trying to communicate.

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  "Don't let them catch up to you," the voice said over the speaker and into my brain via emotions. "If you let that boy get away from you, I will give you a consequence worse than death."

  As the evil force said the last line I felt what it meant to have a punishment worse than death. My entire body felt like it was on fire, needles felt like they were pressing into my body, hopeless despair went through my brain, I felt something tearing me apart, and then something crushed me to pieces. I wanted to die. Death was better than what I was feeling.

  As the words passed the feeling was over. I cried out in pain, drawing Austin's attention.

  "I have to go now, lord," Austin said aloud. "The One is awake."

  I shuddered as I heard a grunt through the speaker. Something beeped and a voice said the connection was severed. It was over.