He pondered, tapping his finger on the steering wheel, staring down, “A home. A life. There’s something there that I can’t ignore. I’m not just going to turn my back on it.”

“You’re not.”

“I will be. Hayden, I have to go back.” His eyes begged me to understand. “I can take you there. There’s nothing stopping me.”

“Something will,” my conscious spoke for me. And it sunk so low that I knew it was the truth.

Kohl pursed his lips, “I want to see the Universe try.”

Kohl:

Hayden shook me awake when the ping from another ship appeared on one of the screens on the third day. I brushed the energy bar off my shirt I was in the middle of eating, mumbling and confused for a second on the bed we shared.

“Are you sure it’s not a planet?” I asked, yawning.

“No, it’s not, get up,” Hayden made room for me to see once I obeyed, getting back into the pilot seat with nothing on but my underwear. Hayden was the same.

The ping was a very large dot that was promising to reveal itself in a matter of seconds. Deja vu. Unlike the mammoth, it was already starting to look twice the size.

It appeared from our right below, the size of a planet by the time Hayden spotted it. It was alive and bustling with ships coming in and out, out scaling Morgan’s by a long shot. Along it’s narrow body were windows shaped like those found in cruise ships, for decor and observations. It’s wings curved from the top, reaching its sides with massive engines to keep it going through the void. Solid--it looks so unbreakable. Asteroids bounced off of it as if they were just dust passing through.

“Blue Bird,” Hayden translated the words on the side, though I could’ve guessed from the bird circling the text.

So this was it, the Rebellion.

Hayden was glued to the glass in his hunt for an entrance.

“Excited?”

“Hardly,” he dismissed.

I wondered how long it would take for them to notice something so small like us. I was answered when a voice came through the communicator of the spacecraft. And by the sounds of it, he wasn’t so happy.

Hayden:

“State your business!” The voice shrieked. “Do so, or we’ll shoot you down where you fly! I warn you, I’m a good shot!”

“We’re here by the request of a friend,” I reply, “Who goes by Ren? He told us to--”

He hangs up on me.

Kohl arched a brow, “Did he just..”

I nodded with a sigh, about to say more when a beam of light cut me off. It blinded us, covering the whole space in pure white that was nothing but painful. Gods this was awful.

“Are we being abducted?” It was also loud, as if someone was screaming a note in our ears.

“I think so,” I shouted over the sound. I felt Kohl scramble to the area behind us, throwing our clothes at me.

“Get dressed!”

“I can’t, I’m blind!”

Somehow, he managed to complete the impossible, presentable the moment I was able to find pants to slip into.

He shoved the “Save the Planet” over my head to complete the look of tourists who looked lost in space.

The sound grew louder, ringing in my ears until something made it stop, numbing every sense I had.

The landing was the worst.