Sunny. 15mph winds blowing east. Seventy-five degrees fahrenheit. Clear weather for the coming days.
Endless research followed the discovery of the Magna virus. Excavations in Nur's soil—and most other places on the planet—yielded a mysterious specimen of virus deep in the earth. It was, through microscopic observation, determined to be the long-sought Magna virus.
But mysteriously, despite existing beneath all of Manim's surface, it had only infected a few people. The virus remained dormant, awaiting its moment. There were no fatalities or even symptoms—it was just sitting there, infecting without hurting.
And more importantly, it wasn't able to be extinguished.
No modern medicine would kill the virus. No organism was able to fight the virus. When infecting a cell, the virus wiped the DNA of the cell clean, replaced it with its own, and then reproduced. It was stubbornly resilient to all forms of attack, leaving the public no choice but to keep a wary eye on it despite inflicting no real harm. Only a day after the virus was discovered and brought to the attention of Zystinian authorities, a planet-wide quarantine was announced, barring any interplanetary travel on Manim to or from inhabited planets.
Fall break had started at the Battle Academy, a long break at the beginning of every long season on Manim. Every student had three months of break before school resumed again, and in Azer and Grif's grade, many were taking advantage of that opportunity. Their classmates and friends had gone away, their parents taking them on vacation elsewhere on Manim, but Azer and Grif were stuck. They had no parents to take them anywhere.
"We have no way of telling how much time we have left!" Dr. D pressured. For over two years, with the help of the Zystinian government, Team Virga had been hard at work developing a cure. The lab was filled with every book and research paper even tangentially related to the Magna virus, from reports of the deadzone planets to accounts of The Shades. Delvin was even reading old Nova Noctis records. Azer and Grif were toiling away too, turning on centrifuges and studying chemicals. Grif's right eye was bruised from looking into the microscope so often, and Azer's fingers ached from managing complicated equipment for so many hours. And at the end of each and every day of stress and work, Azer and Grif would always say the same thing to each other:
"We need a break."
Dr. D looked between them with a pained expression, conflicting emotions swirling behind his white eyes.
"I know, but-" Dr. D started.
Grif interrupted, "We can hardly focus anymore. School was hard enough before the Magna virus, and then we had to fight the librarian and all of that, and then we had to deal with the stress of having to come up with a cure before this planet ends up like the others we saw in the second relic. I've found myself glazing over even my work on the cure now, and I can hardly tell the difference between an amoeba and a bacteriophage. Please, we just… we need a break."
Dr. D looked even more pained for a moment. He looked behind at the rest of Team Virga, hard at work on the virus. Mrs. Korca had taken off her glasses and was rubbing her eyes, Delvin was looking through a series of microscopes and was pinching tweezers, and Okta was typing away on a computer, eyes even more sullen than usual. Dr. D looked back at the two boys, looked down and closed his eyes.
"I… I know. I'm sorry. I've been too caught up in the work, and we don't even seem to be making much progress."
Delvin turned around from his microscope and added, "We're making no progress. This thing seems… unkillable. It doesn't have any weaknesses. It's perfect."
"Exactly. Azer, Grif… I apologize. I've apparently been too shocked at the discovery of the Magna virus to use good judgment. I just felt… I just feel like, considering my actions in my past life, I want to make a proper effort this time. I wanted to redeem myself. It just seems… it seems that I've been going too far. Of course you two can have a break."
Azer and Grif turned to each other, elated.
"But," Dr. D shot, "I have a homework assignment for you. And it's not school this time; it's about the Magna virus. All I want you to do is to look for some possible ingredient for the cure. I remember… in my recollections of my past life, there was something to the cure that let it work. I have no idea what it was, but… I know it's there. Wherever you go, whatever you do on your break, however long you need… I just want you to look for that. It doesn't have to be major, just keep the cure on your minds. Alright? There are lives at stake here."
# # #
On their first day off, Grif had come to Azer, who was sitting on his bed reading a book.
"What's up?" Azer asked.
"I was thinking about what Dr. D said yesterday—about us looking for the secret to the cure. It made me think about, well…"
There was a moment of silence. Grif looked apprehensive.
"Go on," Azer urged.
"The answers to the stuff we've been looking for our whole lives haven't been pretty," Grif said. "I mean, if you think about it, we would have been better off not searching for that Haise girl and never knowing what really happened during The Shades."
Azer's memory flashed to their encounter with the storm, the paralyzing fear of realizing they had been left behind and the endlessly deep eyes of The Shades themselves. The image had been burned into his mind.
"Do we even want to know the secret of the cure?" Grif continued. "Or our pasts? Somehow, we're connected to this, and I'm not sure if I'm going to like it, the way things are going."
"But we still have to explore," Azer said seriously. "What's the point of all this without learning? We can't go on without knowing who we really are. I'd pay any price to find that out. Wouldn't you?"
Grif thought about this, eventually steeling his look.
"Yeah. You're right. Whatever the truth is, we can face it."
Azer couldn't smile, but Grif got the point anyway. "You bet your ass we can."
# # #
The doorbell rang, and Azer answered it to see an unexpected face. It was Saa, her split-colored face beaming.
"Hey, is Grif here? I wanted to ask you guys something."
"Uh, yeah. Grif!"
Stomps were audible through the house with growing volume, until Grif could be seen running up to the door by Azer.
"Hey, what's up?" he greeted.
"So, my older brother Erril just got his space license and we were planning on going to a beach trip on an uninhabited planet called Kular, he said I could invite a few people. So I wanted to invite you guys!"
Azer and Grif looked at each other.
"This won't violate Manim's quarantine, right?" Azer asked.
"No, of course not. It would if we were visiting an inhabited planet, but this one's as barren as you can get."
"Then hell yeah!"
"Alright, bring everything you'll need. We plan on staying for a week. We're going to camp out on the beach. It's pretty habitable. We won't have to worry about alien bugs or diseases or anything. This weekend, come by our house at dusk and Erril is gonna take us!"
# # #
Azer and Grif arrived at Saa's comfortable-looking house at dusk, the sun setting behind their roof. The door was answered by Erril, a handsome and well-dressed young man who looked a few years older than Azer and Grif. He had a short mustache and sported longer hair than his sister, Saa, with dark bluish-green dreadlocks. He had the overwhelming presence of simply looking cool.
"Hey guys!" he exclaimed. Erril looked like the textbook definition of a chill college student. He ushered Azer and Grif inside.
"I invited some people of my own; they should be in the living room. We're heading out in just a bit. I just have to pack up the rest of my stuff first."
They stepped further inside the medium-sized house and made it to the living room, warmly colored and nicely furnished. On one of the couches facing the TV, Azer saw a wiry-haired girl he didn't recognize, and with her was-
"Copycat?! What the hell are you doing here?" Grif exclaimed.
Copycat whipped towards them, wide-eyed, and the other girl stayed trained on the TV.
"Why are you here?! Erril never said anything about you two coming!"
"Saa invited us!" Grif responded.
And, right as Grif said this, Saa came into the room, assessing the situation.
"What's going on? You guys know each other?"
"We have… history," Azer stated bluntly.
"History, as in he's tried to kill us more times than we can count on our hands," Grif added.
"Kill you?! Excuse me? I have never tried to kill you."
"What about the time when you were chucking rocks at us in the scrapyard? What about the time when you literally trapped us during The Shades?"
"I wouldn't have trapped you if you two weren't so goddamn slow to leave the school-"
"Don't you DARE put that blame on us! It was a hundred percent you who got us stuck there!"
"Well you two didn't seem to hate it so much since you gave your heroic survival speech about it to the entire town and left any mention of me out of it!" Copycat argued.
"You should be glad we left you out of it, because it probably won't be good for your fragile self-image if we mentioned that you were the one who stuck us there!"
"Alright, guys, stop!" Saa yelled. "It's been seconds since you got here and you're already at each other's throats! Just stop for a moment!"
Grif and Copycat glared dangerously at each other, the girl next to Copycat still idly watching the TV with a glazed look on her face, only occasionally turning around to the source of the commotion. Erril had entered the scene, watching the arguing boys with an apprehensive look. He looked lost for words.
"Just- not everybody here knows each other. Can everyone just introduce themselves? Without fighting? Please?" Saa asked.
An uncomfortable bout of silence followed.
"Alright, I'm Azer."
"I'm Copycat. Erril invited me."
"I'm Erril. I'm gonna be flying all of you tonight, and I invited Copycat."
"I'm Grif. Saa invited Azer and me."
"I'm Saa. Erril is obviously bringing me along. Also I invited Grif and Azer."
Everyone then expectantly looked at the other wiry-haired girl, but she still seemed to be engrossed in the TV.
"Oh…" she gasped softly. "I'm Rena. Copycat invited me."
And then she went back to watching TV.
"Yeah," Copycat added, "I brought her along. She just gets distracted easily. It's alright if she comes, right?"
Everyone else in the living room looked between each other awkwardly.
"I suppose it's fine," Erril concluded.
"Sweet. So when are we heading out?" asked Copycat.
"In just a sec," Erril replied, leaving the living room, "I have to finish the boot-up sequence and stuff. Just hang tight here, alright?"
# # #
Some time passed while Azer and Grif caught up with Saa, recalling occurrences and talking about the journey to come.
"So Milo's not coming?" Azer asked.
"Nope," replied Saa. "He's already on vacation with his own family. He said he really wanted to go, though."
"It's been a tick," Grif commented. "Haven't talked to him in a while. Been too busy with finding the cure and all."
"I never asked, how is that going? You and… Team Virga, right? You all are working pretty hard?"
"'Working hard' isn't the right word for it," grumbled Grif. "See this bruise on my eye? That's from staring into a microscope all day, and it's already healed some. It used to be a lot worse than before."
"That sounds awful."
"Worse yet, we're making precisely zero progress," Grif continued. "So far all we've discovered is that the Magna virus is the closest thing there is to the perfect lifeform. Radiation does jack shit, it's immune to disinfectants and alcohol, and worse yet, there's no way to actually make a live vaccine for the thing. Any amount of Magna in the body just multiplies and spreads, and it's not as if we could damage the virus enough to weaken it anyway. All modern medical science has been completely rendered moot."
"And to add insult to injury," Azer added, "it's coming at the cost of Team Virga's sanity. Delvin and Dr. D will sleep in the lab sometimes and skip meals for days at a time. Delvin especially hasn't been well since he came back from prison. He's been… off. I'm not sure how much longer we can hold out."
"Except," Grif added, "Dr. D did tell us to try and look for a 'secret ingredient.' Apparently when he died before, he remembers there being some kind of trick to the cure that let it work and brought him back to life."
"Wait, died?" Saa repeated. "Brought him back to life—what? I don't remember this at all! When did this happen?"
"Oops, probably said too much."
Erril's face popped into the room, his dreadlocks swinging by his head.
"Ship's ready! Everyone on!"
# # #
A large spaceship roughly the size of a small house, sleek and edged but not without obvious signs of use and wear, obscured the view of Saa's neighborhood. Its shape resembled an upside-down yacht. Lights in the cockpit and windows glowed, illuminating the front yard and cul-de-sac. The engines on either side of the spaceship's slim shape were wide and deep, like a strange and alien distortion of a jet engine. Awe struck Azer at the sight.
"Look at this beaut, eh?" Erril said, moving his arms in a comical display of showing the ship off.
"Oh, shuddup," Saa groaned. "This is mom's old ship. Don't act like it's yours. And it's super outdated at this point anyway."
"Hey! Don't diss Stormbreaker!"
"Diss what? What did you just call it?" Saa asked.
"Stormbreaker. And she's not it, she's a she! Respect your spaceships! All ships are 'she,' everyone knows that!"
"Why the hell is it named Stormbreaker anyway?"
"'Cause it's an awesome name."
Azer could hardly take his attention off of the ship. He didn't care about its name or how old it was—he was dying to get inside and experience a taste of space travel for the first time.
"E- Erril? What's space travel like?" Azer asked, trying to get Erril's attention away from his bickering with Saa.
"Hm? Oh, it's dope. You'll just have to see when you get on, I don't wanna spoil it for you."
Erril boarded the Stormbreaker on a set of narrow steps to the interior, Saa following not far behind with her own luggage. She stopped and turned to Azer.
"It is pretty cool, I won't lie," she added before stepping inside.
Everyone else began to board, including the strange girl, Rena. Azer grabbed his backpack and climbed the steps.
The extendable staircase onto the spaceship was, as Saa had described it, old and creaky. It was made of tough metal that felt hard beneath his shoes, and small rows of rubber dotted each step to provide traction. As he climbed, the light from inside the ship was bright enough to obscure the interior, but once in he could make out the details of the ship.
The main cabin was sleek and beautiful, but aged. The metallic walls were no longer the pure white they had once been, and the brand-new look was long gone, now sporting the occasional stain, scratch, and dent. Still, it was still a sight to behold. It was spacious, with eight seats along the walls. Rather than a constant, flat surface, the walls and ceiling would occasionally dip or jut out smoothly to achieve a more modern and futuristic look. The smooth walls converged sharply to a point towards the front and back of the ship, each a few dozen feet from his position, with doors visible on either end, blocking the view of anywhere but the cabin and the world outside. Erril was by the door towards the front of the ship.
As he followed Erril, Azer ran his hands over the cabin walls and felt the smooth ridges of the metal, in awe at the craftsmanship. It gave him a rush of appreciation for the people who had built it.
Erril pushed open the creaky door and then turned around towards Azer.
"I know you want to explore the ship, but sit down for now. The ride's gonna be a few hours. I promise there'll be plenty of time to tour it soon. First, you're gonna see what it's like to get off this planet."
Azer didn't need much more convincing to sit down.
# # #
After a drawn-out pre-flight systems check, Azer sitting as patiently as his excited self could, the Stormbreaker was ready for launch. His seat was ever-so-slightly rumbling and he was focused on the window outside. In the window's reflection was Grif, giving him a wide grin and a thumbs-up. Azer returned the gesture enthusiastically.
"Hello, hello, this is your captain speaking," they heard from the ceiling of the cabin. Through the intercoms, Erril was doing his best impression of a generic flight captain, but even an idea like that went over Azer's head. He hadn't been in the sky at all before, much less space.
"Tonight we have clear skies, but we don't really care about that. More importantly our path to the planet Kular is nice and asteroid-free, and we're going to reach max hyperspace, putting our trip at around 3 hours. Buckle up and enjoy the ride."
Just after these words, Azer felt the ship jerk underneath him, and before he knew it, it was rising up into the sky, and the lights of the neighborhood were beginning to shrink.
A faint rumble was audible all around the ship thanks to the ship's roaring engines. The lights of the neighborhood were very quickly shrinking into yellowish specks on a velvety black landscape, and the occasional car could be seen moving slowly beneath.
"Hold on tight, we're accelerating to escape velocity. Don't lose your lunch!"
And without a moment's notice, Azer felt his body increasingly shoved into his seat with frightening force. It was uncomfortable at first, but the cushiony seats lessened the effect. They had been skillfully made to comfort passengers during space travel.
As the Stormbreaker accelerated, the whir of the ship's engines grew to a higher pitch. The uncomfortable sensation of being pushed into his seat continued and then, all at once, it stopped. He hadn't even been paying attention outside during the acceleration, and took the opportunity to turn to the window again.
And what Azer saw left a strong imprint on his mind.
All he could make out from the window was a wide curve, a hazy glowing atmosphere separating inky blackness from inky blackness, each void of dark dotted with its own lights. One was Manim, with its own little oasis of light representing the town he'd lived his whole life in. Past the veil of the blurry blue curve was space, dotted with innumerable stars. It was an unfathomable sight, watching the curve that was the roundness of his own planet slowly fall away into the darkness of space.
The next thing Azer realized was that he was completely weightless. His arms, which had only moments ago been gripping the rests on his seat, now floated by his side without any resistance or care. His insides did a funny flip, adjusting to the lack of gravity, but he quickly acclimated and the nausea was drowned out by overwhelming awe. The intercom clicked on again.
"This is the million dollar view, folks. Enjoy it while you can. I'll give you all a moment to look at the planet while I prepare Stormbreaker for warp drive."
Azer's mind could hardly comprehend the view. He turned around in his seat, scanning the cabin, double-checking what he knew was real: The cabin and walls around him were real— he had touched them himself only half an hour earlier. Grif was real—he was laughing to himself at his weightlessness, throwing a coin into the air only for it to keep rising and bounce lazily off the ceiling. Saa, Copycat, and Rena were real, too—all of them were reacting to the sights and sensations of outer space.
But it was so hard to believe!
Azer continued taking in the "million dollar view." Though seeing his own planet's atmosphere curve away before him was unbelievable, he took it in, appreciating to his core the sight of Manim in its whole, in its purest form he'd never seen or dreamed of before.
And then, Azer felt his guts settle back into his body and his hands fall back to his side, the ship's artificial gravity turned on. A strange-pitched whirring was audible from the back of the ship as it prepared for warp drive.
"Particle accelerator calibrated. Man, that's fun to say!"
The whirring in the back of the ship grew louder.
"Measuring dion particle wavelength…"
The whirring grew louder still.
"Charging ship to particle wavelength…"
Azer felt a small static shock from all around him. Grif's hair was standing up on end, which amused him.
"Warp drive begins in ten seconds… nine…"
The whirring took on a different pitch, and Azer took his final chance to admire the planet from space.
"Six… five…"
Azer's heart dropped into his stomach as he realized he had no idea what warp drive would feel like. He gripped his arm rests anxiously and tensed all the muscles in his body.
"Two… one. See ya, Manim."
If Azer's mind had not been completely blown from seeing his own planet from space, this would certainly have done it. White streaks whizzed by the window at incomprehensible speed, and with a sickening jolt of shock, Azer realized that the white streaks were entire stars. The window now resembled the static of a malfunctioning television, displaying a haze of innumerable colors that were nebulas, planets, and solar systems, flashing by for nanoseconds at a time.
It looked as if the universe itself was rushing by.
And then as soon as it started, it stopped. For Azer, it felt as if he hadn't moved at all. The stars, which had previously been abstracted to blinding streaks in the window, were now still and unmoving as ever, a new set gazing down upon the ship.
"And we're here. We'll be cruising for another two and a half hours as we get into orbit and slow down onto Arcus Island. Sit tight and we'll be there soon."
Azer didn't know what to exclaim first. They had already arrived? They had been in hyperspace for less than ten seconds! Not to mention the lack of g-forces he felt during the warp, and the unimaginable speed of everything flying by—he was too astounded to form a sentence.
"Pretty weird, right? I haven't even gotten used to it yet," Saa said, unbuckling her seatbelt and rising from her seat. "Hyperspace never fails to be awesome."
Grif was as dumbstruck as Azer. His jaw was dropped, and he seemed to be having a similarly hard time forming words. Saa turned around towards the boys.
"Aren't you going to get up? You don't have to sit in those chairs for the next two and a half hours. The gravity's on."
# # #
Orbiting above Kular, Azer could make out with surprising clarity the details on the surface. It was mostly a water planet, great greenish-blue seas dotted only by great white clouds above Kular's surface. Tiny islands hid beneath the clouds. When the Stormbreaker orbited to the night side of the planet, Azer was surprised to see no lights whatsoever. But, this made sense in a way—Saa did say it was uninhabited.
And, right on cue, Saa approached him.
"You know, it's technically illegal for us to be here. The Zystinian government hasn't really explored this planet yet."
"It's illegal? Why? This isn't a deadzone planet, right?"
"Didn't you pay attention in school? Well, for better or for worse, Zysti doesn't want people visiting uncharted planets without a colonizer's license or Planetary Explorer's license. The colonizer's license you have to get from your planet or country if they want to expand, and the Explorer's license is a title you have to get from the Zystinian government. And no, this isn't a deadzone planet, we're not quite that stupid."
"Why can't we get an explorer's license? Sounds like it'd be better than running the risk of getting arrested."
"Eh, not really. Getting an Explorer's license means you actually have to apply to be part of Zysti's government, which is a whole ordeal, and we're not even old enough yet to do that. Erril could have, but no way he's doing that. Waaaay too dumb to pass the entry exam."
The intercom clicked on, and Erril's voice said:
"I can hear you, you know. No trash-talking the captain."
Saa made a rude gesture towards the intercom in the ceiling and turned back to Azer.
"And besides, everyone does it, anyway. It's harder on Manim because you gotta avoid the deadzone planets, but we're by no means the first ones to do some illegal spacefaring. Zysti can't patrol the galaxy everywhere at once. If they caught everyone who illegally visited another planet, half the galaxy's population would be in jail. Besides, they just don't want you to contract some alien disease or die in an unexpected volcanic eruption. If you're smart about it, there's hardly any risk at all."
"Are we sure this planet's safe?" Azer questioned. With the state of his own planet and the virus on it, he felt doubtful.
The intercom clicked on again.
"Don't worry, dude. I personally scanned and visited this planet, and there's nothing here but lush foliage and crystal-clear beaches. No other aliens, no crazy diseases, nothing. This planet even has an almost identical day-night cycle and seasonal pattern we have on Manim. Just relax a bit, you're on vacation."
"See?" Saa assured. "It's fine. He's not taking us anywhere crazy."
Azer shrugged and sat back into his chair, examining the planet again. Maybe he was just worrying too much. It was his vacation week, after all.
# # #
The Stormbreaker touched down on the coast gracefully despite its enormous size. Almost immediately, Azer felt strangely lighter. Erril entered the main cabin from the cockpit and, observing the bewildered passengers, addressed them:
"I forgot to mention, but gravity is lighter here. This planet is 80% of the mass of Manim. Sorry about that."
"Yeah, you should have mentioned that sooner, and I could have brought nausea medication. This and zero gravity make me a bit queasy…" Saa groaned.
"You guys don't like this?" Grif exclaimed. "This feels awesome!"
"How aren't you nauseous? Everyone gets nauseous when going into different gravity," pointed Azer.
Grif was jumping up and down by his seat, jumping surprisingly high with each leap and falling uncharacteristically slow.
"Guess I just adjust quickly. You guys can stay nauseous. I think feeling this light is pretty nice. It feels more natural."
"Well, anyways, once you guys are feeling well enough for it, I'm gonna put up the staircase and start setting up the tents," Erril finished. "Come on out whenever you're ready."
Azer was feeling well enough, though thoroughly tired, and proceeded to follow Erril through the hatch outside.
He was disappointed to step outside into almost complete darkness. The galaxy shining above them was far brighter than any of the land in front of Azer, and the only visible patches of this new planet were illuminated by the lights of the Stormbreaker. All other features above the horizon were reduced to black silhouettes on a starry sky.
"Darker than I thought," Erril remarked. "It'll do. I brought a flashlight, anyway. Azer, would you mind helping me set up the tents?"
"Sure."
Erril hurried back inside the ship, returning with an oversized flashlight which he handed to Azer. Others were beginning to come outside as well, surprised at the inky darkness of Kular at night. Azer, stepping into the sand alongside Erril, hoped he'd get to see the planet properly once it turned day.
"We won't be able to get too much sleep tonight," Erril said, hammering a metal stake into the sand. "It's past midnight on this planet already. But like I said, the day-night cycle here is the same as Manim, so we should adjust quickly enough."
Azer helped Erril finish setting up the tents, and after properly unfolding and raising the supporting poles he realized just how large they were. Each of the two tents reached over a dozen feet into the air at its peak, and there was ample room to sleep and live.
"For sleeping, the guys are getting a tent and the girls are getting a tent," Erril announced to the group, "but there's no restraints or requirements to where you want to be during the day. We got a whole planet to ourselves, guys, we'd better enjoy it while it's ours."
The boys slowly congregated into their tent and the girls into the other. By the time Azer was inside, Erril was already setting up small portable gas stoves and pulling out blankets for the rest.
"Tomorrow," Erril said, now straightening out his own sleeping bag, "I think we'll go for a hike. Explore the new scenery, y'know?"
"Sounds good," Grif said.
Copycat was setting up his sleeping bag now, in a corner of the tent as far removed from Azer and Grif's as possible. Azer's heart sank again at the idea of having to spend his vacation week with his worst enemy.
Azer got into his own sleeping bag and readjusted his pillow.
But, Copycat seemed to be keeping his distance. Maybe Copycat felt the same way, and wanted to stay as far from Azer as Azer did him.
His consciousness began to drift away. Who knew…?