The day started as they always did.
Leon awoke to the sound of his alarm going off, his lovely wife by his side. He reached out and brushed her hair out of her eyes as she awoke. Muttering a brief ‘I love you’ he leaned in for a passionate kiss which she returned and then rolled upright, his legs swinging over the side of the bed.
He rubbed his eyes and then turned as he heard Natalia rise as well. He watched her and smiled as she blew him a kiss and disappeared into the bathroom.
He shook his head, wondering as always how he had ended up with such a beautiful and remarkable woman.
He stood and stretched, his back crackling in protest as he let out a satisfied groan. He scratched an itch and proceeded to the bathroom after Natalia. He heard the shower turn on, the low flow sonic shower acting as a far more efficient version of the more contemporary showers he had used back on Earth.
She took only a minute before stepping out onto the bathmat nude. He gave her his best leer and she giggled before grabbing a towel and drying the last vestiges of water from her body.
Leon chuckled in response as she berated him jokingly, “Why Leon? I thought you were a gentleman.”
He just shook his head as he stripped out of his own clothes and stepped closer to her. She moved to the side but he followed her, their bodies nearly touching. He could feel the heat of her body on his skin, his hair prickling as the electric presence of her body brought pleasurable memories of their love to his mind.
He smiled and leaned towards her but she just laughed and pushed him towards the shower. “Ew! No way caveman, you stink. Go wash yourself, you barbarian.”
He stumbled towards the shower, not really in any danger of losing his balance but playing along. He hunched himself and uttered in a gurgling voice, “As my lady commands, so do I obey.”
She threw her towel at him and he treated himself to one last lingering look before he laughed again and got in the shower. The door swung closed behind him, its privacy glass bubbled and nearly opaque. The device was quite simple, just a set of three knobs in front of him to control the temperature and frequency.
The leftmost would adjust the heat and the right would make it colder. He set the heat to medium and felt his skin tingle as the warm mist enveloped his body. After a moment allowing it to wet his skin evenly he activated the sonic scrubbers and immediately felt his entire body tingle as the tiny vibrations vaporised the water on his skin. This lifted away dirt and oils, dead skin cells and other grime. He turned in a slow circle with his arms up, allowing the water to clean every part of him, after a minute he turned off the machine and stepped out of the shower.
He shook his hair, his skin tingled slightly still as it made contact with the cooler air in the bathroom. Leon dried himself and stepped back into the room with a towel wrapped around himself just in time to see Natalia open the door to leave.
Leon gave her a small wave. “Don't forget to hunker for the jump, it's in about two hours.”
She nodded. “I will, thanks for the reminder. Don’t work too hard up there, my big strong captain.”
He smiled wide and bade her farewell as she exited the room, the automatic door closing behind her with a mechanical sigh. The soft click of the latch engaging the only sound in the room as he was left alone.
It didn't take long for Leon to get himself dressed and ready for the day. He exited the room and made a pitstop in the mess hall for breakfast. As he had plenty of time before he was needed on the bridge, he decided to go with some of last night’s leftovers and some fresh leafy greens and tomatoes. He added a meaty looking mushroom to the mix and made a halfway decent salad that he topped with their closest approximation of balsamic vinegar.
Dr. Kimathi and Myung had been developing ways of adding healthy probiotics and antioxidants into their diets to compensate for the somewhat limited variety of food options. So far they had come up with a few decent options, the pseudo-salad dressing was one of them.
As Leon chewed his selection of healthy dietary fibers, he looked around the room. He wasn't alone however. Terry and Taylor sat at the end of his table with their heads close together, the couple seemed nearly inseparable. They seemed to be whispering to each other excitedly, as he watched, Taylor shook his head. He smiled as he noticed Oliver sitting at another table, the rough looking man was laughing to himself as he teased Max with a slice of tilapia. The small snake-like alien seemingly mesmerised by the erratically moving morsel. Then like a flash she struck out and picked it right out of the man’s fingers, much to his delight.
His happy grumbling chuckles filled the room and caused Taylor and Terry to cease their whisperings. It was good to see that morale on the ship was still good. One of the fastest ways to bring any mission to a screaming halt was to allow morale to be sapped to nothing. Once apathy started to kick in it became incredibly difficult to restart that drive.
Luckily he hadn’t noticed any major issues with that recently. Not since the grey star incident. He winced slightly as he recalled the events that had transpired after that entire debacle. Samuel’s voice was still little more than a hushed whisper and he himself seemed to have changed in some minor ways too. He felt somehow more attuned to shadows and the dark, the light making him feel exposed or slightly vulnerable. He couldn't explain it expressly, and he had tried twice. Once to Natalia and then again with her to Dr. Kimathi. Both of them didn’t seem to see anything different about him or notice any changes, but that didn’t mean that he was incorrect.
He finished the last of his meal and deposited the dirty dishes in the proper receptacles. He wanted to hit the gym for a bit before going to the bridge, nothing too strenuous. Maybe just some weights.
As Leon was leaving the room, Chris walked by the door and halted jerkily as if he hadn’t been expecting to see Leon. “Oh, Leon. I was actually just coming to look for you, I figured you would be in the gym or track.”
Leon gestured to continue. “I was about to be.. come. What can I do for you Chris?” he asked the man with as little torpor as possible, but he was not really in the mood to discuss the various grievances of the older man at the moment.
Chris either didn’t notice Leon’s apathy or he didn’t care as he continued to blaze ahead. “Well, do you remember when you told me to just restart my experiments?” Leon nodded tiredly, he did indeed. While he was genuinely interested in what Chris might find, he was a little tired of the constant long winded updates that made little sense to his beleaguered mind.
Instead of telling the man that however, Leon just gestured for him to continue, to which he did enthusiastically.
“Well, I'm no biologist..” He began, to which Leon nodded in agreement. Chris hesitated, and this gave Leon a bit of pause. He didn’t normally hesitate over anything. The man was generally very self assured, he decided that whatever it was Chris was about to say may in fact be more important than the rest of his ramblings.
After this slight moment of hesitance Chris continued, this time his voice was more measured and slower. As if he was feeling out the words, words that sounded a bit off even in his own mind. “Well, I was able to get them to grow again on another sample. Like you suggested. And this time they got big enough for me to take a sample of one. And, what I discovered with a bit of help from Aden is nothing short of mind bending…” the man stopped once more as the pair of them entered the gym.
Chris looked around quickly as if he was making sure they were alone. He continued, his voice becoming an almost conspiratorial whisper making Leon’s frown deepen again. “They have DNA Leon, that’s what we discovered.” Chad stepped back as if to give Leon some breathing space.
Leon just cocked his head. “Yeah? That’s it?”
Chris seemed taken aback by Leon’s lack of reaction. “They have DNA Leon, just like you and me. Like every creature discovered on Earth!”
Leon still wasn’t getting the point. Of course they had DNA, they were living things right? All living things must have some small subsystem of maintaining their genetic information. Sure most of the time he had heard of it referred to as XNA, but Chris had likely just used the wrong term as he was, as he stated, not a biologist.
Leon pointed this out, “Yes. Everything has DNA or XNA or some other manner of genetic information storage, it has to. It is wonderful to be proven right about the whole thing..” He was cut off by an even more frantic Chris.
“Noo.. no no no. That's not what I meant. They don’t have XNA. they have DNA, just like ours.” Chris gave him another look, this time Leon felt a prickle in his mind. The slightest inkling of an idea that something was wrong.
He froze and reiterated for the older man. “Just like ours?”
Chris nodded excitedly, happy to see that Leon was finally starting to get it. “Just. Like. Ours.”
Leon looked around and then sat at a nearby bench press. He scrubbed his left hand through his hair and muttered the phrase to himself again. He looked up at Chris, “Are you sure, I mean.. How close?” Maybe it was some manner of fluke, if there were any discrepancies then it would be a simple matter to weed out the truth.
Chris shook his silver haired head and took a seat on the bench across from Leon. Instead of answering the question he told a short story. “You know.. back in the early 500s BCE there was a Greek philosopher named Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras had many theories of the universe and life in general, one of which received widespread debate that would far outlast the man itself was the idea of panspermia. The idea that the universe was full of life containing seeds, and that these seeds would travel the universe till they alighted upon the surface of a world and brought life from the dead cosmic void.” The man paused for breath. Leon’s frown had now deepened. There was no way Chris was suggesting what he thought he was suggesting.
Leon put up his hands and stood, “Wait wait wait.. what? You can’t possibly be suggesting that these things are the so-called seeds of life.”
Chris propped his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. He shook his head slightly. “I don’t know what to think right now Leon. Aden spent a considerable amount of time on this to make absolutely sure. And I’m not saying that these are for sure things that seeded life on Earth. For all we know this is just the only possible way that life can develop.” Chris spoke quickly, but he didn’t sound very convinced of his last comment.
Leon shook his head. We can’t dwell on it right now. I want you to get more concrete evidence. Not just speculation and conjecture, try to do a genome map or something that proves without doubt that they are similar.” He wasn’t sure if anything he said made sense, but then again Chris wasn’t a biologist either and so he just nodded.
Leon paced back and forth a bit. What the hell was he supposed to tell the rest of the crew? How would they handle this new potential news, how was he handling it? He stopped, taking a deep internal look at his most long held internal beliefs, he smiled. No, it made a strange kind of sense actually. If god had created the universe, then why would they not fill it with life?
He didn’t want to go down that rabbit hole and so tried to look at it more objectively. If life formed in the void it would make sense that it would eventually spread out and multiply. At which point they may sometimes fall to the surface of worlds hospitable for the formation of life.
It was crazy, far too crazy an idea to be true. “It's not possible, not probable.”
Chris stood as well now and put out his hands in an almost apologetic manner. “I don’t know what’s probable anymore Leon, not after the things we have seen on this trip.”
Leon shook his head again. “I don’t want this leaking out to the crew until we know more. Can you promise me that Chris? Please?” He implored the man desperately, he would beg him if he had to.
Luckily it wouldn't have to come to that as Chris nodded in understanding. “Alright Leon. But I can’t promise Aden will agree. I need to go, I have many new things to look into.”
Leon watched the man leave in silence. He stood there still for several seconds even after the man had left and the doors had closed. He stood there thinking about the potential ramifications for the discovery, it would counter hundreds of years of understood principles and theories. It might even shatter the foundations of the scientific community and give rise to another era of great debate.
He slowly walked over to one of the mechanical resistance training machines and started to do his morning exercises. But all the while he was still thinking. What if life had been created by these cosmic seeds, the things drifting through space for eons before making contact with something habitable. Did that mean that all other forms of life in the galaxy were also related to them in the same manner?
He shook his head, there was no way that it could be true, part of him rejected the idea outright even though he tried to remain unbiased. He shook his head once more and turned his attention back to the solid weights in his hands. At least he could well understand the value of a hard day’s work.
**********
Leon closed his eyes as Samuel counted down the time to warp translation. As the count reached zero he was subjected to an infinity of glowing fractal symbols that looked remarkably like the password to his elementary school computer terminal from when he was a child. But before he could even fully comprehend what he was seeing it was gone. The strange vision seemed to burst like a soap bubble around him, reality suddenly reasserting its control over his senses.
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It took only a moment for him to readjust. He was getting relatively used to the strange manifestations by now and had hardly even screamed this time. The amused look that Joice was shooting him told him that he might have shrieked at least a little bit.
He looked forward to avoid her smirk and stopped. His mouth opened slightly and he gasped softly. His gaze focused past the bright console in front of him, the buttons on the keypad outlined in light blue tones to better help them be seen. He looked past the other members of the crew in the stark white voidsuits. Far past even the small partition that edged off the front of the bridge from the shuttered main windows. The windows were not what had caught his eye though, it was the main viewscreen just above them.
The screen was large, large enough to be easily seen and understood even about ten meters from where he was seated. On the screen was the most awesome sight he had ever seen in person, but he stopped. He wasn’t seeing it in person, and he needed to.
That sudden need overrode his brain and he punched in the override sequence to the main blast doors that shuttered the windows. He half expected Joice or at least Terry to complain, he was met with that same awed silence.
The windows opened up upon a scene of terrible cataclysm. That beautiful omnipotent destruction that signifies the death of the most potent, and the birth of the second most powerful thing in the known universe. A supernova remnant.
All at once the activity on the bridge ceased, all minds immediately captivated by that scintillating aurora of beatific chaos. The bridge suddenly illuminated by the shimmering brilliance of the endless sea of roiling, seething plasma.
Outside the ship it must have been deadly, the charged gas interacting with the negatively charged skin of the UNSS Leif Erikson by pulsing in and out almost as if alive. Tiny arcs of electrical charge forked off occasionally, causing a corresponding coruscating ripple of brilliant colors to pass through the ionised gasses that enveloped the ship.
Leon remained speechless as he gazed out into that intoxicating phantasmagoria. He wasn’t the only one similarly affected either. Everyone on the bridge also stared, their attention drawn like a moth to a flame. He had to shake himself to get at least some control back over his senses.
He coughed and then spoke loudly, “Alright, enough sightseeing. Terry? A report if you would.” His startling comment roused the bridge crew, many of them blinking rapidly or scrubbing their faces as they forcefully tore their eyes from the impossible vista.
Terry let out a long breath, she amongst all of them was likely the most hypnotised by the spectacle. Her background in astrophysics and astronomy making her uniquely qualified to study the remains of a supernova in such immaculate detail.
She spoke softly, a reverence in her tone that Leon noted as being significant. She was clearly deeply moved by the sight, they had known that the targeted system had gone supernova before they arrived. That was why they had stopped more than half a light year from the center instead of their usual twenty four light hours. But still, he had been totally unprepared for the sheer magnificence of what lay now before his sight.
The shimmering blue and purple light that filled the bridge made it look as if they were under water to his stunned mind. His thoughts taking him to an ancient memory from his childhood when his parents and him had visited one of the drowned cities of the old world. The shimmering blue colors and bright exotic fish always seemed to sooth and calm him. The memories of a different time. A simpler time.
“Whoaw..” Sabine said, summing up Leon’s thoughts in that single awed utterance.
Samuel nodded, his horse voice full of the same wonder, “You can say that again. This is, unbelievable.”
Terry transferred her console screen to one of the main monitors. “Molecular density readings are all over the charts. There are incredibly dense pockets of gas the size of oceans out there, we should avoid them. I'm not really sure how the ship’s rings would react to them.” Leon shifted at the mention of the dense pockets.
He nodded towards the screen. “What is holding them together? Shouldn't they have evaporated off into the surrounding nebula by now?”
Terry responded, “Yes, by all accounts they should not be there. But they are, and that is all I can tell you at this time. If I had to wager a guess though, I would hypothesise it has something to do with the nature of the gas. Maybe the dense pockets have a different or neutral charge that causes them to condense? I don’t know.” She admitted with a bit of a crestfallen tone.
She had likely been looking forward to this moment for the last few weeks, ever since they originally discovered the nearby supernova. She was likely a bit miffed that she was unprepared for the realities of the subject material. He understood the way she felt.
The ship continued to move through the ionised medium, slowly at first then gaining a little speed until the gentle ripples had become a bow wake of sparkling gasses that seemed to crackle and fizz with their own stored potential energies.
As he looked out the main window he thought he saw something move in the distance, but as he did a double take and squinted it looked like a mote of bright dust. The brilliant purple hue blending in quite spectacularly with the background kaleidoscope of colors that were constantly on display all around them.
Leon shook his head. It was indeed a most incredible sight. He got on the ship’s intercom and relayed an open message to the ship’s crew. “General announcement, we have arrived in the system of the supernova remnant. It is a most spectacular sight, I recommend that everyone take a few minutes and view it from the observation deck. You will not be disappointed.”
He didn't know what else to say to get their attention. Not that s was a big deal, as long as they did not discover something dangerous in the system they had planned to spend several days there to study the expanding gas and dust around the supernova remnant. Who knew what things could be gleaned from such primordial cosmic soup.
Leon shook slightly as his overstimulated mind reeled at the sheer density of information it was coping with. He squinched his eyes, trying to shut out a measure of the overload. It worked, sort of. Instead of seeing the entirety of the miasma at once, he now only saw a narrow and slightly fuzzy band in front of him. It was while he was looking through this narrow field of view that he saw something outside the ship move again.
His eye’s shot bolt open again, but no sooner had he done so than the strange phenomenon was gone again. Leon looked around, but in all of the purples, blues and other coruscating colors he couldn't hardly tell which way was up or down, much less pick out a single moving speck amongst all the other visual cacophony.
Instead he tried for another tactic. Leon pointed in the general direction he had seen the speck and exclaimed loudly, “What in the world could that be!?”
Like a charm cast upon the unwary it drew all of the others focus immediately upon the spot he was gesturing to. He still couldn't make out anything particular about the slowly swirling gas and dust. But after a moment he saw Samuel squint and then jerk backwards.
The pilot sprung away from his console, had it not been for the restraints holding him in place he might have gone careening around the room like a ping pong ball. “Whaat! I just saw something too!” the man exclaimed in his coarse whispering voice, sounding at once mystified and terrified.
Everyone looked between Samuel and him. Leon just shrugged, if they couldn't see it then maybe it was just a figment of the swirling gasses and shifting kaleidoscope of colorful ions. Leon shook his head and then looked again, this time at a different part of the sky.
He froze. He saw it again, this time it was more than a hallucination against that ever shifting backdrop of chaotic swirling color. It moved steadily towards the ship, something about the way it seemed to ebb and flow was distinctly organic and completely unfakable. He watched, transfixed as it made its way closer.
He heard a gasp from Terry as she noticed the phenomenon too. “What is that?” She pointed to the approaching thing.
The rest of the bridge crew leaned from their seats as whatever it was made its way closer then dived out of view under the ship. He had only gleaned the impression of vibrant purple wings before it had tracked out of sight.
“That looked alive.” Was all he could think to utter. His hair prickled on the back of his scalp as he felt a sort of elated joy creep through him. He wasn’t sure where it had originated, but it provided a sort of dull glow inside his mind.
As he relished the feeling he was forced to jerk once more in astonishment as the thing gilded once more into view. It looked decidedly alien yet distinctly familiar. He racked his brains and then remembered an extinct species of creature from Earth’s pre-collapse seas. It bore striking resemblance at first glance to an ocean ray, the flat diamond of its body tapering out into what looked like shimmering wings of purple fire. The body seemed more dense and from it trailed two long tails of shimmering light. These trailed out behind it like the streamers of a jet airliner, twin plasma contrails that shimmied and spiraled as the creature frolicked in front of the ship.
Presently, two more of the shimmering delights swept up from somewhere under their view. The three creatures clearly playing and dancing with each other.
He felt himself smiling and then laughed. “Well, this reminds me of those old sea movies. You know, the ones where dolphins would ride along ship’s wakes.” Taylor looked confused, but Sabine and Samuel nodded in understanding.
Terry seemed more transfixed than her husband, though no less focused on her duties. “I think you are right Leon. Look, they seem to be dipping their tails into the energy barrier created by the ship’s bowshock.” Indeed as he looked closer he could see the strange creatures doing exactly that.
Leon watched, enraptured as the largest of the three ray-like things looped over its two smaller companions. It trailed just ahead of the ship, its twin tails dipping ever so briefly into the crackling energy that coruscated along the front of the ship as it plowed through the clouds of ionised gasses. As it did so a small tremor seemed to ripple through it, the mass of its body glowing almost imperceptibly brighter, as if it had absorbed a measure of the energy into itself.
Leon saw Samuel, the younger man transfixed by the sight. “Incredible..” he heard him say, his voice only just audible due to the silence that ensnared the bridge.
It truly was, Leon felt a pang in his chest. Like a spike that impaled the cold circuitry of his cybernetic heart. But it wasn’t painful, instead it was as if he was experiencing the world for the first time. The joy causing a smile of true delight to crack his lined face, a boyish chuckle bubbling up from deep inside his chest. Truly it had to be the most incredible sight he had ever seen.
Sabine reached out towards the main window of the ship. “They look like plasma, trapped in a self sustaining magnetic bottle.”
Terry glanced at her and Leon smiled as Samuel chuckled hoarsely. “Trust you to take the enchantment out of the situation. How do you think they do it?” the man asked her. It was a question that had been dancing on his own tongue, though he himself had not yet garnered the courage to say it aloud.
Sabine shook her head, her auburn ponytail whipping about in the microgravity. “I haven't the foggiest idea of what you mean. How they do what? Eat? Move? Reproduce?”
Samuel grunted before coughing painfully. He didn’t like to talk much anymore, Leon suspected that his injury still hurt him. The pilot made a gesture towards the enchanting movements of the three creatures that still danced along their path like butterflies made of shimmering purple light. “Their movement. Tails maybe?”
He watched in silence as she shrugged. “They might, they do seem to leave some manner of contrail behind them that cools. Maybe there is some sort of low level fusion going on inside their bodies? Their tails could act as some sort of magnetic particle accelerator. Though the mechanics of how that could even be made possible are light years beyond my understanding.”
Leon didn’t understand what she meant by that exactly, but if it was possible then it was probable. It was a big universe after all and he had learned over the course of the mission not to take things he thought he knew for granted. He knew he shouldn't be as surprised as he was. They had encountered several different types of void based life, including some with impossible genetics, he remembered a bit darkly. But it was still a shock to him. That these creatures could be so graceful in such an inhospitable environment, it made him wonder if they were native to the system or if they had come from someplace else. The supernova remnant was eons old after all, they could have been there for tens of thousands of years.
“It makes it all worth it, doesn't it.” Samuel uttered as he turned to look at Leon specifically.
He was compelled to nod in agreement. This sight, combined with the newly discovered creatures that called it home. Well, it was a near indescribable experience.
Terry gestured to the window. “I am picking up a unique emission band from them. I think Sabine may be right about some manner of fusion activity going on inside them, though how that is possible is beyond my understanding as well.” She slumped back into her seat, Leon knew she hated not knowing things. Taylor knew it too and leaned over to cheer her up with some quietly muttered comment that did succeed in making the women smile slightly.
Leon smiled. It seemed that despite all the carnage and death that had likely enveloped the system when its star had died had ultimately led to new life. He wondered briefly if there were other strange creatures to be discovered in that endless rainbow of shifting gas and dust. There very well might be, but they could search the rest of their lives and never truly make a dent in the immensity of the nebula. It was just too big.
Leon perked up, the situation serving as a sort of impromptu stress relief. Especially after the last few months.
Terry pointed and made a noise that sounded halfway between a gasp and a laugh. “Look! There are more of them.”
Leon looked and true to her word more of the strange void creatures approached. “We appear to be the most popular kid on the block it seems.” He chuckled. That same feeling of mild euphoria filling his middle.
He couldn't explain it. The whimsical nature of these beasts seemed to spark something deep inside his psyche, relieving stress and relaxing his mind. “I feel, good. Anyone else feel that?”
Joice nodded from next to him. “Yes, I noticed it too. I feel a strange sense of.. I don't know. Joy, happiness? It began as they came.” She gestured towards the shining purple entities. There were five of them now.
Sabine was smiling wide too. She let loose a tinkling laugh, the pure sound making Leon join in as soon the entire bridge seemed to be riding on the wave of glee. Maybe it was because of the creatures, maybe it was just the profound relief of finding something beautiful after so much darkness. Either way he didn’t care at that moment, it just felt good to laugh.
Leon held his middle as the feeling washed through him, tears of joy sparkled in the microgravity near him as he cried lightly. He felt warm, the strange hollow that had gripped his insides seemed to evaporate away. Peeled from him as the happiness settled about him like a warm blanket. Taylor made a joke and everyone laughed all the harder, Leon having to wipe his eyes through blurry vision.
The glittering purple aliens were still there. ‘Were they shining brighter than before?’ He wondered, but he found that he didn't truly care. All he cared about in that moment was the feeling of warmth that filled his middle. A feeling that he had only before felt in the close company of his beloved. Fear could be as addicting as any narcotic, the depression and darkness consuming the mind and soul. But here there seemed to be only happiness, and Leon smiled. He smiled so hard that his cheeks started to hurt.
He could stay here forever, basking in the warmth. But a part of him understood that it was only temporary. Sooner or later their journey would take them far away from here, and the joy would seep away.
Desperate to cling onto the feeling he began a recording of the creatures as they frolicked and played. The slow beat of their fiery wings was mesmerising, his eyes following the contrails that looked like lines of purple light. It was an awe inspiring moment, and Leon was desperate to capture it forever. Bottling it away as one might store sweet honey for the darkness of winter.
He sat back as the console confirmed it was keeping a backup of the data. His smile didn't waver, but in the back of his mind he felt the tiniest worry, the nagging sensation never fully eradicated no matter what he did. The dull ache of it is like a thorn lodged under the skin. He shook his head, sandy hair fluttering in the microgravity of the bridge. He wouldn't let the pinprick take away from this moment. He refused, and the worry seemed to shrink as if in fear of his brazen defiance.
His smile never wavered. But still he felt the darkness. That everpresent feeling of being watched prickling the hairs along his spine. He resisted the urge to look behind himself, there was nothing there. Despite the fact that he knew in his heart that there was something else on the ship with them, it wouldn't dare to show itself in the presence of source unfiltered positivity.
His skin prickled again and he risked a glance to the rear of the room. There was nothing there.