The silence on the bridge of the Icarus was heavier than the vacuum of space outside. It was a silence of profound, crushing disappointment. For three hours, Jack had run every deep-space scan imaginable: gravimetric, spectroscopic, tachyonic. The answer was always the same. Nothing.
"The star chart was a ghost story," Ivan said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that filled the quiet bridge. "A final, desperate prayer from a dead people. There is nothing here. We have failed."
"The data doesn't lie," Jack snapped back, his frustration making his voice sharp. "My sensors can detect a sparrow farting in the Oort cloud. If there was a structure here, physical or energetic, I'd see it. We're at the right coordinates. The coordinates are empty."
"Perhaps," Amira's quiet voice cut through the tension, "we are looking with the wrong eyes."
She stood before the main viewscreen, which showed only the cold, indifferent starfield. "When I was in the High Priest's mind, the Proving Ground was not a memory of a place. It was a memory of a state. It wasn't hidden. It was... out of phase."
Jack turned from his console, a skeptical frown on his face. "Out of phase? Amira, that's theoretical pseudoscience."
"Is it?" she countered, turning to face them, her eyes burning with a new, fierce conviction. "Sakura can fold space. Diego can speak to the very life force of the planet. Are we really going to be limited by your current understanding of physics, Doctor?"
She walked to the center of the bridge. "The Proving Ground is here," she said, her voice a declaration of pure faith. "It is in this exact space. But it exists on a different resonant frequency of reality. It is a song being played on a channel we cannot hear. We are not looking for a key to a door. We are looking for the right notes to tune our instruments."
A new, impossible hope began to dawn on the faces of the crew.
"The key," Amira continued, her gaze sweeping over each of them, "is not a technology. It is a harmony. A combination of unique, A-Class energy frequencies, broadcast in a specific sequence." She smiled, a small, tired, but brilliant smile. "The key... is us."
They gathered in the heart of the ship, the engine room. The Icarus's power core, a marvel of fused human and Vulture technology, hummed with a contained, steady power. Jack had reconfigured it, creating a direct-input conduit that would allow them to channel their own bio-energies directly into the ship's main emitter array.
"The sequence is a guess," Amira warned, her eyes closed in concentration as she felt for the faint, phantom vibrations of the sub-space lock. "A feeling. I will guide you."
She nodded. "Diego. You are first. The foundation. The note of Life." Diego stepped forward, placing his hands on the conduit. A warm, emerald light flowed from him, and the ship's core hummed with the vibrant, powerful song of the Earth.
"Ivan. The structure. The note of Order." Ivan placed his hands over Diego's. A cold, precise, and brilliant blue light joined the green, and the core's hum sharpened into a clean, crystalline chord.
"Sophia. The balance. The note of Harmony." Sophia's gentle, golden light flowed into the mix, a soothing, harmonious melody that bound the first two notes together, turning a simple chord into music.
"Jack. The mind. The note of Logic." His own energy, a sharp, silver-white crackle of pure intellect, added a complex, intricate layer to the song.
"Sakura. The path. The note of Connection." Her power was not a color, but a distortion, a filament of pure space that wove through the other energies, connecting them, amplifying them.
"Me," Amira whispered. "The vision. The note of Spirit." Her own golden, ancient energy became the central, guiding melody of the anthem they were creating.
The core was now a blazing symphony of light and sound, a perfect, six-note chord of impossible power. But the lock did not turn. "It's not enough," Amira grunted, the strain of holding the connection immense. "It needs one more thing. It needs the spark. The fire!" She looked at the last member of their circle. "Lin Feng! The final note! The note of Power!"
Lin Feng stepped forward. He placed his hands on the conduit and unleashed the storm. A torrent of raw, furious, and perfectly controlled violet energy, the Annihilation Fire, slammed into the core. It was not a harmony. It was a crescendo. It was a roar.
The core screamed, a single, perfect, reality-bending note of seven fused, divine energies.
And outside the ship, in the cold, empty void of space, the universe began to answer. The starfield before the Icarus began to waver, to shimmer, like a reflection in a pond that had just been touched by a stone.