The gagged yuanjian the foot of the telescope tries to stand. He falls back down almost immediately as the sharp weapon stabs him in the chest, drawing blood. The masked assailant yells something inaudible as, the camera pans on him, bringing his eyes into focus.

"His eyes are glowing!" Zhang exclaims. "He must be from the royal family. Do you know of anyone with this kind of gift? What does it do?"

By now, Zhang knew almost everything there was to know about Yuanjian physiology, thanks to YiHuang. It had led him to wonder why even though he was human, he had adapted like he was one of them. 'You are an anomaly.' The crown prince's words ring in his ears, 'Could they be human, like me...from my Earth?'

YiHuang ignores his words. 'I am the only one whose eyes glow like that. How is he connected to us? How did he enter the facility?' He muses. "I will try to open a subchannel. It will let us hear them." Catching Zhang's eyes, he adds, "It's a two-way channel."

Zhang gives him a thumbs-up, places a finger on his lips, and mouths, "Understood."

YiHuang types a few keys, opening the channel, and the two observe the sequence of events unfold on the screen.

The masked intruder shakes his head. He crouches next to the Hu Kwan and pulls out the gag."Please, stop resisting."

"Let my people go!" The man growls, "I am the one you want." He blinks furiously. "What did you do to my eyes?"

"Sir, please calm down. It's only temporary." The masked man glares where his weapon had wounded the old man and moves his hand over it. "Please, endure it for a few moments." The intruder requests humbly, confusing both YiHuang and Zhang.

A split second later, a gut-wrenching scream revibrates through the room. It's the Professor.

As suddenly as it had started, it ceases; the professor's shoulders and head slumps, and his eyes close.

The assailant stands. He turns his attention to the equipment that the facility had failed to hide and eyes it wearily. He looks between his hostages and the unconscious Hu Kwan and approaches the former. He slaps a random one awake. "Where do you keep the master data?" He leans in and whispers, "Trust me, I don't want to hurt you, but I will if you pick loyalty over your life."

The man trembles under the calculating gaze. But instead of giving in, he shakes his head. "None of us will talk!" He bites out confidently.

The assailant crouches next to him, "Yes, I have been where you are. I can tell that you won't talk. You have a sick, motherless child at home, don't you? I can heal him."

"That's impossible!"

The assailant leans in and whispers something inaudible in the man's ear. His eyes widen; he lifts a trembling hand and points at a wall. "Only the professor's handprint can grant you access." He informs, glancing at the unconscious man.

'No!' YiHuang exclaims and types in a few commands, shutting off the two-way channel. Then, keeping one eye on the screen, he plugs a device into his primary unit and starts typing furiously.

"You don't have enough time to take back up." Zhang deduces, "We need to create a distraction to buy time."

"If I touch anything, our cover will be blown."

"Can you change the access code? Put another shield to protect the data?"

Understanding what Zhang was suggesting, YiHuang modifies his tactics. "Creating a shield will buy us at least a few more minutes. I will back up the priority data first and erase it."

"No. Don't. We don't know what this person is planning to do with it. If he checks it and doesn't find what he expects, he will know something is wrong. I suggest you modify the key inputs. That way, they will not suspect anything, at least initially."

YiHuang proceeds accordingly. Meanwhile, the intruder unties Hu Kwan and starts dragging his deadweight towards the wall. Setting him next to the wall, he unties the man who had betrayed his peers; he hurls him towards his superior, points at him, and barks an order.

An instant before Hu Kwan's palm comes in contact with the wall, YiHuang successfully executes the plan and continues taking back up. He opens the two-way channel as well.

*"Why is it still blocked!?" The assailant yells, irritated, "How dare you lie to me?"

"I didn't. This should have worked."

"Do you want me to kill you...all of you?" He grabs the young man's collar.

"I did not lie. If it's not working, then Professor Hu must have placed an additional barrier to protect the data."

The assailant flings the latter aside. His eyes glow yet again. He turns to the wall and places his palm over it. A split second later, tremors rock the facility, making the wall crumble, revealing giant machinery hidden on the other side. He pulls out the sword and plunges it into the heart of it. The machinery catches fire as the weapon exits it.

A second later, the connection YiHuang has with the facility goes up in smoke.
The screens go blank.*

For minutes, none of them speak.
"Were you able to salvage anything?"

Zhang's question pulls YiHuang out of his thoughts. The second prince nods. "I don't know if I could save enough." He replies, teary-eyed. "Zhang, he didn't even look at the data...he just destroyed it."

Not sure how to comfort the distressed man, Zhang wraps him in a tight embrace, "I am sorry, Ah-Huang."

The prince leans into the touch returning the embrace. "He just destroyed it." He repeats. "Whoever it was, knows what we were doing there. He doesn't want to expose us; he just wants us to fail." The fact that a Yuanjian could do something so monstrous was beyond him. "How could anyone do such a thing!?" he wonders aloud.

Zhang nods into YiHuang's neck, "I know, Ah-Huang. Did you notice the way the screen kept glitching every time it panned on his face?" the human enquires. The latter nods, "Do you think there is something more to it than equipment malfunction?"

"Maybe... " Zhang sighs; leaning away, he wipes the latter's cheeks, "You can't afford to dwell on it right now. We have to make do with what we have."
YiHuang nods; Zhang continues, "Right now, our priority is to stop the wormhole from stabilizing. We need to launch the Intex manipulator into its vortex. How were you planning on doing that?"

YiHuang hangs his head.  His shoulders slump. "We were working on a pod that would be able to deliver the equipment right into the vortex. But now, with the facility compromised, I don't know if we will be able to draw power to launch it without alerting father. I don't think we can..." The words hang between them...incomplete, heavy.

"Isn't there a pod you can get your hands on? You are a prince, after all."

"No, there isn't one. Since the beginning, the royal family has forbidden travel outside the solar system." YiHuang walks to the window, "At the heart of it, we are more primitive compared to the land dwellers. We still believe that a solution to all our problems will fall out of the sky and save us. My father has bet the life of our race on the words of The First."

Zhang tries to recall if he had read anything about the words of The First, but he draws a blank.

YiHuang continues, "None of our levitation vehicles can leave Earth's orbit. Thus, Professor Hu was working on it in secret. Even if I can acquire the resources, which I can't at such short notice, without alerting the ministry, I am not well versed in aero technology. It will take me weeks to get it done. We don't have that much time."

The Yuanjian opens the virtual file, and a holographic real-time image of the wormhole pops up. He points at the codes below it. "The wormhole will stabilize in less than a week. Once it does, we will be at their mercy."

A millennia ago, Yuanjians had escaped from their home planet due to a war that had broken out between the two races: the XudianJi and the Yuanjian, that cohabited it.

The XudianJi were more powerful, more gifted; alas, their gifts made them greedy and ruthless, unlike their more intellectual counterparts, the Yuanjians, who desired peace. After centuries of peace, the treaty broke because the former wanted to travel far and wide to invade and plunder other lifeforms in search of riches in a bid to prove their superiority. The reigning Emperor at the time was a hybrid. The first of the mixed races; his mother was a Yuanjian and his father, a XudianJi.

Having inherited a milder temperament from his mother, he was overpowered by his stepbrothers and luckily escaped execution by a hair's breadth. Luckily the gift of sight warned him of the imminent future: a future that signaled the end of Yuanjians.

Stealing the DST (dimensional-space-time) device, which the XudianJi had pinned their barbaric plan on, the Emperor, along with ten thousand Yuanjian men, women, and children fled.

The day before, YiHuang had told Zhang how the Yuanjians had landed on Earth searching for a new home. Unfortunately, due to unfavorable climatic conditions on the ground, they had settled on sea beds instead and built their cities underwater. He had, however, omitted to tell Zhang the other reason for this decision: they wanted to avoid detection by the XudianJi on a small change that they had followed them.

However, YiHuang didn't know that Zhang already knew about it. He had seen glimpses of the past and the future. When YiHuang had narrated their history to them, the human had connected the dots.

When Zhang goes silent, a faraway look in his eyes, YiHuang calls, "Zhang, there is something I need to tell you...something I didn't before."

{Author's Note:- Word count: 1686

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