"Geomagnetic index below +20nT. Solar wind particle flux increasing incrementally."
The synthetic female voice sliced through the bridge of the *Guardian-17*.
Cloaked in full stealth mode, the quantum destroyer hovered over the ice sea, its optical camouflage blending seamlessly with the brooding sky.
Captain Jack Nickelson stood before the panoramic viewport, his thumb absently tracing the wedding band on his left hand.
Inside the ring, an inscription read: "To Claire, 2209.12.05"—the day his son Jake was born, the last day he'd seen his wife.
[Fifteen years since I left when Jake turned one... now, Almost home]
He should have watched his boy grow up. Should have heard him calling "Daddy."
But orders were orders, and the military had entrusted him with humanity's first quantum-class destroyer for the highly classified Doomsday Gate operation.
Fifteen years....
Four thousand nights without a single call, message, or even a grainy photo. The ache of it made his grip tighten around the ring.
"Captain?" His XO's voice yanked him back. "Fluctuations in the field monitor."
Jack Nickelson turned—just as an eerie blue glow ignited across the sea beyond the viewport.
Suddenly.
The coffee cup vibrated off the console. Brown liquid spiralled upward in defiance of gravity, twisting like DNA in zero-G.
"Gravity field anomaly!" The sensor officer's voice spiked in alarm. "Gravitational distortion detected beneath the ice shelf!"
Jack Nickelson lunged for the console as holographic data erupted across the display—a blizzard of numbers and warnings.
His pupils contracted, [The Bisolarans's spatial weapon?]
"Activate phase shields! Hard to starboard!!!"
The command died in his throat.
The ice plain *ripped apart*.
No explosion. No melt. Just space itself tearing like canvas under an invisible blade.
A three-kilometre fissure yawned open, its edges shimmering with prismatic light—a shattered kaleidoscope of reality.
Then the plasma came.
A two-kilometer-wide torrent of starfire vomited from the void.
The blinding fury vaporized entire cubic tons of seawater in an instant, reducing ice to its base hydrogen and oxygen atoms before scattering them into the vacuum.
All ship AI modules are all online and executing at full power.
The volume of data required for spatial analysis was enormous.
In such an unprecedented situation, even the destroyer's first officer would likely suffer fatal neural disruption on the spot.
But someone of Solar Rank like Jake merely paused for a moment before completing the entire process of data reception, analysis, and decision-making.
This was the rising military star Jack Nickelson. Humanity's youngest Rear Admiral.
"ABANDON SHIP!"
The order tore from his throat even as he triggered the automated escape protocols.
But he didn't move a inch.
Because he was the only one on the entire ship capable of receiving and processing such a massive volume of data in a short time and transmitting it back to Human Headquarters.
"Captain!" His XO grabbed his arm.
"Go! Now! That's an order!"
In those critical few seconds, Jack Nickelson regained his usual composure and authority.
His holographic projection in the metaverse addressed the first officer and the assembled senior commanders:
"This spatial rift emerged under highly suspicious circumstances. It is highly likely to be the new weapon system mentioned in Allied Intelligence reports—the one developed by the Bisolarans.
I've already calculated that, at its current rate of expansion, this destroyer has no chance of escaping."
"As the captain, I will live and die with this ship! It is my duty to fight to the very end and gather as much intelligence as possible for headquarters.
But I will not allow you to die here for nothing—not when you must return. Humanity cannot afford to lose the Bering Strait again!"
The first officer urgently began, "But Captain..."
Jack Nickelson cut him off with a sharp gesture.
"There's no time for debate. Every one of you is an elite, a bearer of mankind's future. Until we drive out the Bisolarans, I am merely taking one step ahead of you."
His voice hardened into command.
"Now, you will lead the entire crew to survival. That is an order."
The officers stiffened, eyes glistening, but not another word was wasted. As one, they snapped into a crisp salute:
"Aye, Sir!"
Captain Jack returned the salute, then turned away without another glance.
His eyes fixed on the rapidly expanding spatial rift as he began issuing a stream of commands through the neural interface to the ship's AI.
Evacuation protocols for over 2000 crew members. Offensive and defensive weapon systems. Radar and data processing. Captain's logs...
His eyes closed, every ounce of mental capacity poured into the complex directives.
But the destroyer was too vast, too complex—what normally required ten commanders working in concert with AI now fell to him alone.
Jack Nickelson was determined to use the ship's detection systems to gather critical data about the spatial anomaly.
This precious quantum destroyer would not be lost for nothing!
He could feel his mind approaching its absolute limit, face flushed crimson, twin trails of blood already seeping from his eyes.
Though he couldn't confirm this was a Bisolarans attack, he understood the devastating power of spatial shear forces—his ship could be torn apart at any moment.
He was racing against time and death itself! Yet he never noticed the wedding ring on his finger—"Echo of Time"—beginning to pulse with an ethereal light.
Amid the blaring alarms, escape pods launched one after another, streaking across the sky like meteors.
Yet Captain Jack Nickelson remained still as a mountain, inputting one final command.
If this was the end, he would at least bear witness to the enemy's true form!
As the spatial rift surged forward, engulfing the bridge in an instant, the ring his wife Claire had given him—"Echo of Time"—suddenly erupted with a violet radiance.
In front of him, the light wove itself into the shape of a hexagram.
And within the hexagram, a vast and blurred figure emerged, more divine than human, vanishing as quickly as it appeared.
Then another vision flooded Jack Nickelson's mind afterward.
A dark-haired boy standing in a classroom, holding a violet crystal pendant—the same six-pointed starlight shimmering in his eyes.
An unfamiliar face, yet a bond of blood unmistakably familiar.
"He's holding Claire's 'Tear of Time'… That's… my son? Jake?"
Then, space shattered completely.
------
A few minutes, Just before what happened to Jack Nickelson.
4,500 Kilometers Away– Sancturay-79, Third Municipal High School
The physics teacher-David, already aware of the situation from a message of the principal's secretary, glanced at Jake as he entered the classroom.
"Jake Nickelson. To the back row."
Jake was taken aback for a second, but quickly understood.
This was a harsh, pragmatic world.
Every row in this classroom was like a demarcation line for survival.
He knew that even his grades had slipped, he certainly didn't warrant banishment to the last row.
This was deliberate pressure from the school.
All to make him a prime candidate for the principal's manhood donner as well as a debtor of the school.
In a high school located in the outer city of a so-called sanctuary.
Jake knew the situation he was in, but he had no intention of going down without a fight.
He met the teacher's gaze directly. "Sir, I believe you've miscalculated. I should return to my original seat."
"Who's the teacher here, you or me? I said sit there. If you have a problem with it, have your parents come talk to me!"
Seeing Jake still standing his ground, the teacher's patience vanished. He decided to enforce his order physically.
A Baseline Human student was like a helpless chick in the hands of an adult Dymin like him. He took a swift step forward.
But before he could complete it.
Jake suddenly turned on his heel and strode toward the last row on his own.
The physics teacher, completely thrown off by the move, felt losing face, his blood pressure spike so hard he could practically hear it.
Just then, laughter erupted from the back.
"HA! Nice one, Jake! C'mon, take my seat, I'll just—" Two students in the last row started to offer, clearly about to suggest moving up a row.
Just about another word, they were cut off by the teacher's roar:
"You two! One of you—on the trash can. And you Peter—by the restroom door. Remote learning. NOW."
The laughter died instantly. "Wait, Sir, that's not—"
"Not' what? Since when are your grades better than Jake Nickelson's?"
the physics teacher snarled, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"From now on, the worst performer in this class will personally attend lessons from the doorway of the Toilet!"
His temper was already frayed, and he was convinced these two class clowns were laughing at him for being out maneuvered by Jake just moments before.
After a visible effort to rein himself in, he turned his furious glare directly toward Jake.
"And you, Jake. On your knees. Crawl slowly to the back row. Do not waste another second of my class!"
A dead silence fell over the room.
In this post-apocalyptic world, academic performance and strength were everything. Without them, you deserved nothing—not even basic dignity.
Having unleashed his rage, the teacher forcefully pulled out a quantum entanglement demonstrator, suppressing his anger as he mechanically began the lesson.
Within the holographic display, two simulated photons showing as visible level shimmered with blue light, separated by a vacuum chamber.
"Even across light-years, entangled particles can influence each other instantaneously…Jake!?"
The physics teacher saw Jake still not moving and he just about to shout.
Boom!!!his words cut off abruptly.
The demonstrator exploded.
But this was no ordinary electrical short-circuit. The entire device disintegrated at a molecular level.
Its metal casing flowed apart like grains of sand, while the photons within the vacuum chamber coalesced into a solid form, etching a shimmering hexagram mid-air.
The entire class stared, utterly dumbfounded!
Amidst the shock, a searing pain erupted in Jake's chest.
A violent beam of violet light shot from the pendant hidden beneath his shirt, lancing directly into the hovering hexagram.
As if in response, intricate silver patterns surged up from beneath the skin of his forearm, weaving together into an identical, blindingly brilliant hexagram.
The light it emitted was so intense it forced everyone to look away.
He raised a hand against the light—and for an instant, thought he saw a vast, majestic figure flash into view.
It's someone stranger yet familiar.
What Jake didn't know is that the figure was identical to the one his father, Jack Nickelson, had seen an instant before.
Suddenly, the space around Jake warped violently.
The outer wall of the classroom began to shear away as if carved by an invisible blade, the cross-section gleaming like polished glass.
Beyond the window, the alloy statue of Guardian Prime—humanity's legendary superhuman hero—stood crumbling on the sports field.
The hero's head tilted, then slid clean off, disintegrating mid-air into nanoscale metallic dust before it could even hit the ground.
Chaos erupted throughout the classroom.
Amid the screaming and confusion, Jake's temples throbbed.
He looked down at the pendant against his chest—the "Tear of Time" crystal his mother had given him was now flashing wildly.
At the same moment, the holographic stylus in the physics teacher's hand exploded with a deafening BOOM, transforming into a fireball.
He flailed wildly, beating at the flames, but they slithered up the sleeve of his suit like vengeant serpents.
Engulfed in fire, the teacher thrashed and screamed, his panic driving him on a frantic stumbling charge toward where Jake is.
Jake's first instinct was to lunge for the fire extinguisher in the corner.
But he froze mid-step—a hexagram composed of unfamiliar, glowing runes ,identical to the one from the projector, flashed across his retinas.
An unprecedented surge of power flooded his mind.
Visions exploded behind his eyes:
warships on a frozen sea, a man wearing a signet ring, a solitary figure standing defiant under a sky cracked with lightning... until it all crystallized into a pair of piercing silver-grey eyes.
An agony like nothing he'd ever known seared through his skull. Jake collapsed to his knees.
In the final second before darkness swallowed his consciousness, he seemed to hear two voices—one familiar, one utterly alien—emanating from the pendant around his neck:
"Survive..."
He tried desperately to scramble away from the burning teacher charging toward him, but the waves of crippling pain in his head rendered him completely immobile.
Suddenly, the 'Tear of Time' pendant resting against his chest erupted with a blinding, violent light.