Chapter 18:

As the seconds passed by, silence engulfing the room. The last words Chronos said to Luciel lingered within the minds of every person in the bridge as they questioned why he had said them. Nothing could've caused him to say it in such a manner that made it sound unfinished. As the group thought over it, the doors to the bridge slid open, a mechanical sound reverberated into the room as the one person they were thinking about entered.

"Why's it so silent?" Chronos asked as he took a seat on the cool floor at the back of the bridge.

Despite everyone wanting to ask him about his words to Luciel, they all knew he wouldn't answer how they wanted him to. The silence lingered on for a few minutes more, weirding Chronos out as he just sat there, a puzzled expression on his face as he glanced around the official crew members.

"Hello? Are we going to move or something?" He asked, which thankfully made Adrian snap out of his train of questions for Chronos.

"Yes, right." He stated, causing the others' to return to reality, "right, back to Earth."

Swiftly, the others prepared the ship to launch. Checking all the settings were right and ready. Despite the ship being slightly more advanced than the ones the group was used to, they did understand most of what they had to do and from the explanations, the trader gave them earlier, they were more or less ready to fly the ship back to Earth.

"Set the course for Earth," Adrian stated as Aria headed over to navigation to direct the ship towards Earth, "and then we launch."

After a few minutes, the ship was already up in the sky, heading directly for space in a smooth motion up. As it flew further and further out of the atmosphere, the group scanned the controls, taking a look at what the ship could and couldn't do compared to their previous ones. Chronos stood up, curious himself about the advancements this ship had compared to the Janus ship or the Athena ship.

"It seems like we could travel in light speed for longer in this ship," Adrian said, as he glanced over the controls, "I'm gonna check out the engines."

"I'll come with!" Kennie quickly said as he caught up with Adrian at the doors to the bridge, "there's something I want you to see."

The two engineers aboard the ship ventured down the wide silver corridors towards the back engine room. It was by far the largest room on the ship, taking up just less than half of the second floor's space as it was filled with motors, engines, wires, connectors and everything else that helped power the different areas of the ship.

Towards the centre of the room was an isolated rounded room that contained a single locked door to enter. The door had no windows to see what was inside and it was by far the most interesting thing that was in the room. Adrian and Kennie wandered up to the single thick white door, the keypad beside it glowing blue as numbers flashed across the square. The two engineers contemplated over whether they wanted to see what was inside, their technical curiosities overpowering their logical thinking as Adrian felt his arm move on its own to type out the numbers to unlock the door. Each beep that echoed after a number was pressed reverberated through the ears of Kennie Adrian. After six beeps, the door opened slowly and a bright light erupted from the isolated room.

"What's in there?"

The sudden voice caused the two guys to leap out of their skin as they turned around to see Chronos stood behind them, curiosity in his eyes as he glanced passed them at the thing within the round white-walled room.

"When did you get here?" Kennie asked, "I never heard you come in."

"I came through there." He pointed towards a vent entrance that was at the top of the wall, "I was checking out the vents and saw you both just stood there silently. Kinda creepy if you ask me."

"You know, watching us from the vents is creepier." Kennie chuckled lightly as they all turned back to the mysterious room in the centre of the engine room.

"So what's in there?" Chronos asked, glancing passed them to catch a glimpse of whatever was hiding within the room.

With Adrian leading, the three wandered into the room to see a large turquoise crystal floating between what seemed to be like a battery holder. It looked as if the crystal was powering something within the ship, but it's delicate outer layer shone heavily which led the three to believe that it was being used at the current moment.

"A crystal?" Chronos queried, "what's it suppose to do?"

"I think that trader mentioned it before," Adrian said, inspecting the crystal as he circled around it, "something about travelling through time and space."

"Like a wormhole!" Kennie exclaimed, "you don't think this powers it?"

"Wait- I thought that was hypothetical?" Chronos interrupted, "like it wasn't proven yet."

"It seems like Earth may have been behind in spacial advancements compared to the rest of the galaxy," Adrian said as he finished circling the crystal, "we could use the wormhole to travel back to Earth quicker."

That sudden statement caught Chronos off guard as he quickly thought of anything to shift the topic away from rushing back to Earth. However, he wasn't quick enough as Kennie instantly agreement with Adrian and the two rushed back to the bridge to try out the wormhole device. Leaving Chronos behind in the room, the door still swinging open from when the two dashed out. Sighing, he leant against the warm crystal before realising he had no chance at changing the group's mind once they tell them.

Just before he went to leave the room, his eyes caught a glimpse of a bit of a crack in the crystal. He didn't know whether it was important to let the group know about it but it seemed to be too late as he felt the ship jump into something other than light speed. Rapidly, he dashed out of the crystal's room and headed over to the bridge, just to see the ship exit into another area of the galaxy as quickly as it left the last area.

"Where are we now?" He asked as he arrived at the bridge, slightly hoping for it not to be the solar system.

Appearing behind Chronos, Skylar, with fear in her voice as she exclaimed, "we're not in the solar system."