Sylvi woke up feeling like she had slept for an eternity. She tried to open her eyes but failed. She realized that she couldn't control her body.
She could hear her heart pounding so loudly in her chest as she tried to keep calm and think of what her next move should be. Her memories were still groggy.
She wondered how long she had been asleep. Her head felt like it was about to split open when she tried to force herself to remember.
In fact, her whole body felt like it was on fire. She moved her hands slowly, even though it felt like the sting of a thousand needles pierced through her skin at the slightest movement. She soon realized that she was floating in this glue-like liquid, and her head was connected to a respirator.
She was inside a cryo-chamber.
She remembered what it was. Her mother said it would keep them safe on their journey.
Mother.
Her heart pounded loudly again at the thought of her mother.
'Where is she?' Sylvi thought.
Her mother's words echoed clearly in her mind reminding her to check that everything was intact once she awoke. With all the strength she could muster, she pressed the glowing button on the side of the chamber, just a few inches above her head. It was created as an emergency button should Sylvi woke up first before her parents.
The chamber opened slowly, and the loud cranks of the machine alarmed her. She managed to lift her legs off the sticky sac from the cryo-chamber and carefully placed it on the floor.
She looked at her arms and legs and tried to move them as gently as she could. Looking at her torso, she knew she had grown. Her suit was now a couple of inches above her ankle. She wondered if that was even possible in a cryo-chamber.
Fortunately, there wasn't anything painful apart from the splitting migraine she's currently having.
The silence bothered Sylvi so much. Her mother would have greeted her by now. She promised Sylvi she would be the first face she'd wake up to once they arrived at their destination.
'Was this their destination?' Sylvi wasn't so sure.
An empty feeling suddenly formed in the pit of Sylvi's stomach. She knew something had terribly gone wrong.
She wobbled her way out of the machine and walked towards the control center. The sticky liquid from the chamber dripped onto the floor. She didn't mind, she'll clean that up later.
Or her mother could.
'Mother' Sylvi thought. 'Where was she?'
The ship looked dilapidated and rusty. This wasn't the same silver ship she had boarded a year ago. Seeing the state of the once bright SS Pacific, Sylvi knew years had already passed--the exact time of which, she did not know.
"Hello?" she said out loud. "Mom?" Sylvi shouted hoping her mother's cheery voice would call back to her.
"Dad?" Sylvi's father would have came running towards her by now.
Silence.
Sylvi held in a whimper. Amidst the confusion, she held her head upright in an attempt to still make her mother and father proud. She looked around and tried to look for clues as to what exactly happened to their ship. Surely, her parents, Maria and Gideon Hartmann, the most brilliant scientist of the National Space Exploration Team would not make such a fatal mistake. She refused to believe that she was utterly alone in a strange place possibly light years away from Earth.
She continued to walk around the ship to assess the damage.
Sylvi might have been young, but she was the brightest ten-year-old the National Space Exploration Team has known. Judging from the sudden growth spurt she had noticed when she awoke, she believed she was not ten years old anymore.
The entire ship was in disarray. She dragged her body towards the next room where her mother and father's cryo-chamber pods were supposed to be.
Supposed to be.
To her horror, the entire room was meticulously clean, wiped off its existence.
As she stood solemnly, she felt the overwhelming sound of silence. She was completely alone now. She felt a panic attack coming in real quick but Maria and Gideon did not raise a weak daughter. Sylvi tried to ground herself by breathing in and out to the sound of the beeping of the cryo-chamber.
The constant beeping of the now defunct cryo-chambers had oddly calmed her down.
She needed to know what happened and where her parents had gone. When she had calmed down enough, Sylvi stood up and looked through the window of the ship and saw familiar terrains.
Right outside was a jungle.
Sort of.
Tall and gigantic plants stood outside. 'It looked a lot like trees from back home,' Sylvi reminisced. It did look quite like Earth trees, although it was far taller and thicker. The circumference alone measured about six meters.
Where am I?
Sylvi knew she had to go outside and look for her parents and the other missing crews, but she wasn't sure what might await her there, let alone risk dying should this planet be devoid of oxygen.
When Earth started deep space exploration, it didn't take them long to discover that they weren't the only organism in the universe. In fact, they weren't the only planet in the solar system that cultivated life.
The first rover to Mars brought more than just data on the planet's terrain, it had evidence that the red planet was home to spider-like creatures far more advanced than humanity was at the time. The government hid it from the public, fearing that it could lead to an intergalactic war.
Humans were taught that the 20th century was the start of humanity's greatest downfall. However, the global pandemic proved nothing but their resilience. Nature couldn't heal faster than people discovering the vaccine. The efforts to stop human activity for a year were cut short. The scientists weren't too happy about it, but they couldn't let the others know that the death of millions was part of a bigger plan.
In the control room, Sylvi looked at her reflection through the broken computer screens. She looked like she had grown a foot taller. She felt like an alien in her own body. If she had to guess, at least six years had already passed. The cryo-chamber was equipped to supply her with the necessary nutrients for ten years and when she woke, the monitors on it indicated usage of sixty percent. This wasn't the sweet sixteen she had in mind, but she knew the risk of space travel.
Sylvi took another glance outside. She had to regain her strength first before she could explore. She doesn't know what lurks out there.
Suddenly, loud chants can be heard from the distance. It was getting closer and closer to Sylvi. She was weak and still groggy. There was no way she could fend off whoever or whatever it was that was fast approaching her. Not even a moment later, the loud chants stopped all at once replaced by a loud crash. The ship's door had been opened forcibly.
Sylvi uttered one last prayer to the heavens as she looked at the ship's main entrance.
The universe must have heard her prayers. Much to her surprise, standing outside the ship was a group of what appeared to be humans.
Was she hallucinating this?
They looked at her with utmost curiosity. Sylvi immediately noticed that these 'humans' weren't quite human after all. They were all oddly tall and muscular with extremely pale skin. She estimated they must be almost seven feet tall. There were five of them with different colored hair. They all looked like they could be mismatched members of boy groups Sylvi used to obsess over back home.
They looked way too perfect to be human.
They all looked attractive, but their eyes had an odd shine to them that she couldn't quite place. It almost seemed like their eye colors changed when the light hit them. If Sylvi's life wasn't on the line, she might think that these 'men' were handsome but the butterflies in her stomach weren't because she was attracted to them, it was fear.
Primal fear. These 'men' were hunters and she's a helpless prey.
She remembered that Earth had a term for this sense of foreboding danger when humans meet someone who seemed human but also not.
Uncanny valley.
Sylvi was holding her breath for what seemed like an eternity. The 'men' were also just staring at her like she was a specimen – like an animal kept in a zoo.
One of these men was brave enough to take the first step to break the silence. Sylvi stood her ground, but she was vigilant. If this man ever tried to hurt her, she knew which body part to attack first.
Out of all the things Sylvi thought this silver-haired alien would do to her, this was one thing she had never imagined.
Not in a million years or in her wildest dreams.
The silver-haired alien with deep electric-blue eyes kissed Sylvi.