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Darkness. That was all he could remember each time. Sometimes he would reach out with his mind, groping for something, anything, but he could never seem to grasp anything but emptiness. Not yet. It was not yet time for him to awake. Yet it was the sort of advent darkness, not one of hopelessness but one of waiting, holding a breath, as it were, the end of the night, just before the first light of dawn glows on the horizon.
“Prince Xiah.”
He knew that voice from somewhere, a part of his memory just beyond the edges of the darkness of his mind. The name...ah yes, that was his name, wasn’t it? He tried to go towards the voice. It hurt. Something stirred within him, a powerful energy, slowly rising to the surface. The edges of the darkness began to burn, crumbling away into ashes, revealing memories: the war, the terror, the explosion, the ship, Jaejoong...that was who had called his name. He groaned as the pain spread. There was noise now, the darkness had always been silent. A piercing sound, a dull roar, distant rumblings all assaulting his sense at once. He tried to block them out, but was unable to move. This energy was consuming him, spreading throughout his body to every nook and cranny, as he writhed in pain, still enveloped by darkness.
“Xiah!”
He wanted so badly to open his eyes and see...wait...open his eyes? And just like that, the darkness was gone. Colors and shapes flooded his senses the second even the tiniest sliver of light was allowed in. He made a noise of discomfort and turned his head away.
“Changmin, turn the lights down.” Someone commanded. The voice sounded like honey. It was nice.
Slowly, he tried again, and this time, the light was not so bright as to be painful. He felt sluggish, like he had to struggle just to do this one simple task. After a few more tries, his eyes blinked open. He smiled. Finally. He was awake. The advent was over.
*******
Yunho stared, amazed and mesmerized by Xiah’s eyes. He had expected them to be like Jaejoong’s: solid black like bottomless pools. Jaejoong had told him their species had that sort of eye. But Xiah’s eyes were nothing like Jaejoong’s. His sclera was like the night sky, filled with stars and galaxies, but his irises were glassy opals that reflected rainbows of color.
He thought back to when they had first picked up readings of the pod on the radar. He and Changmin had kicked their feet up on the control board, Zalurian mixers in hand, ready for a slow night of joking and maybe a few rounds of Kushak. And then the scanners had picked it up. A ship, barely big enough to be more than an escape pod, with two organic life form signatures.
“Uh...Terran Command?” Changmin tapped the comms, “unidentified ship detected, two life signs. Advise please?....understood.”
He turned to Yunho.
“Command says bring her in, Captain.”
“Alright. Standby for lock on.” Yunho straightened his shirt and crossed quickly to his station, since it took two of them to man the tractor beam controls.
The small pod was easily brought on board, and after the decontamination process was complete, the two entered the pod bay to inspect it.
“Holy shit! Have you ever seen something like this? Hey computer? What’s this thing made out of?” Changmin asked, running his hand over the strange metal, and it’s engravings.
“Scanning now. This is an unknown material. Cross reference suggests it originated somewhere in the Sigma region.”
Yunho whistled.
“Damn. This thing must have been out here a long time.”
“Affirmed. Preliminary scans estimate this ship is about three hundred light years old.”
“Yeah, any way to open this thing?”
“One moment.”
A hissing noise and then the side of the pod separated into hundreds of small cubes, hovering in the air and making a hole in the side big enough for a man to walk through. The two of them looked at each other before Changmin shrugged and marched in before Yunho could stop him.
Dragging a hand down his face, Yunho ducked after his reckless second in command and entered the ship. As he passed through the doorway, he felt as if he were walking through a sort of gel, although his skin and clothes remained dry. The doorway stayed open, which was a relief, and the two found themselves in the small ship. The technology was like nothing they had ever seen. Expecting cold sleek metal, they were met with a small ecosystem of lush vegetation, and at the center, clusters of strange luminescent blue vines neatly winding around two tubes. The two were almost reluctant to move, afraid that one small step would wreak havoc, and yet as if it read their minds, a pathway lit up through the moss covered ground, leading straight to the pods. Hesitantly, the two followed it, barely daring to breathe, until Yunho reached out a shaking hand and pressed it against the cold surface.
Inside the pods, they had found two humanoid beings in cryostasis. They had debated for a while on whether to wake them up or leave them be until they arrived at command. Finally, Yunho had given in to his curiosity and told Changmin to wake them.
The one who later called himself Jaejoong responded much better and came out of unconsciousness fairly quickly. He was tall, and beautiful with sharp cheekbones and onyx eyes. His dark hair contrasted sharply to that of his companion, whose long silvery locks gently framed his soft features as he slept.
With the help of the universal translator, they were made to understand that Jaejoong and Xiah were from the planet Timanu, far away in the easternmost corner of the galaxy. Their planet was nearly destroyed by war and uprisings against the Nekal: or, as Yunho understood it, the royalty of the plant. Xiah was the last of the royals and in an effort to save him from capture and death, Jaejoong had escaped the planet, setting a course for the unknown and putting them both into cryosleep.
Attempts to wake Xiah had been difficult, Changmin was having a hard time bringing him out of cryo. The man had been in and out for a week now, vital signs almost strong enough to wake before dropping back down again.
Jaejoong merely shrugged when Changmin brought up his concerns.
“Prince Xiah is strong. He will be fine.”
Sure enough, a few days later, Xiah did wake up.
He was kind and soft spoken, matching his soft features, perhaps even cute. But, as Changmin confided in Yunho one evening after they had left the two Timanians alone,
“I dunno, something about him just seems off.”
“You're just paranoid, Minnie.” Yunho brushed him off with a shrug. “He's cute. And have you seen his eyes?”
He was always going on about the eyes.
“But hyung—“
Yunho had already disappeared down the hall.
Changmin stayed up all night, digging into the deepest recesses of the database, searching for something, anything, on this unknown planet. And finally, in the early hours of the beginning earth day, he found something. Yunho….he had to warn Yunho.
The alarm system for an unidentified vessel blared as he sprinted through the hallway, towards the bridge, where he hoped, prayed Yunho would be. The information he had weighed on his mind, making a slow panic rise in him.
“Captain!! Xiah, he—“ he stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he stumbled onto the bridge, Xiah’s eyes moving to look over at him.
It was like he was trapped in those eyes, immobile, as slowly, the Prince—no, warlord, turned towards him, an innocent smile on his face dripping with deception only Changmin could see.
“Yes, Changmin, please continue? What about me? Why don’t you tell Yunho here all about me?” The smile turned cruel as Changmin followed his gaze towards Yunho, who stood, strangely still, with his back facing Changmin, gazing out into the depths of space.
Almost robotically, Yunho moved, and Changmin would have fallen over in shock and horror if he wasn’t still transfixed like a stone. Yunho’s eyes were the same color as Jaejoong’s: black and dead.
“Kill him.” Xiah commanded, and then, offhandedly to Jaejoong, as Yunho lunged at Changmin, “And set a course for Earth.”
The smile never left his face, it was the last thing Changmin saw.
******
“Ah, Taeyong, I’m picking up an unidentified ship on the radar?” Johnny sat forward suddenly, excitement in his voice. This was the first interesting thing to happen in months.
“Scan it?” The leader leaned forward in his chair, tilting his head in interest.
“It appears to be from the Terran system!! Dates back centuries, judging by the material. Reading three life signs.” Johnny replied, reading the information the computer gave him.
“Standby to engage tractor beams.” Taeyong ordered. “Let’s bring it aboard.”
F I N