I wake to the sound of Xenon calling my name… and the weird feeling of not remembering what we were doing in the real world because I was just being derailed about it. This person– Zaros– I feel like I must fix the wrongdoings but now this mission brings on a whole new meaning, and I must fight for what’s right. I’m still rubbing my eyes, but then I stretch to get out of bed…

  Xenon raises his voice, “You know, I’ve been trying to wake you up for 10 minutes now, but when I check your chip it’s in a state between being awake and asleep almost like how quantum bits work… are you okay?”

  Xersa’s voice lowers but because of the morning air surrounding him “yeah, just give me a second to wake up… actually… we must go right now!”

  Xenon shouts, “No! You must not go yet because we have a… mission ahead.”

  Xersa insists “We must go now, we’ve gone over our plans and by the time we get there I’ll be awake enough to start.”, but inside Xersa thinks about Zaros “That person, I can’t believe what I just heard but we must believe it’s true… still I feel in partial disbelieve while believing it.”

  Time would pass and they would walk across the surface of the planet… now covered by roads and different colored grass, as people decided their grass colors of what came out of a planet originally made of rock and now there’s glow in the dark neon grass simply just around people’s houses in this futuristic world. My heart races as it feels harder to breathe, but then we arrive…

  I look around to make sure nobody is in the immediate area, and I report back to Xenon “Coast is clear”, and Xenon replies “Make sure to whisper that too just in case.” I realize as he says this how truly high stakes this mission is. I looked up at the university lab, a smooth tower of glass and bio-steel. The lights were low, but the security felt palpable, stretching up past the atmosphere.

  I whisper, “The cameras on the building are easy. It’s the satellite feed I’m worried about.”

  Xenon replied, his voice a precise hum close to my ear. “Correct. The orbital AI monitors every fluctuation. If a single panel of this building changes temperature, it raises an alert. We have a total of two hundred seconds to get inside and neutralize the sonic sensors, but we only have five minutes of cloaking time.”

  I gripped the small, flat device Xenon handed me—the Temporal Spoofer, which felt cold against my palm. “Give me the signal. I’ll deploy the script now.”

  Xenon raised his silver arm, his purple visor momentarily brightening as he channeled his focus. “Code compiling. The Optical Cloaking Script requires my full attention to maintain stability. The moment I activate it, the satellite feed will see a continuous loop of an empty driveway. This is our window, Xersa. No sudden movements.”

  Xenon spoke sharply, “Script injected! Go!”

  I didn't need my chip to tell me my adrenaline was spiking. I broke into a low sprint across the manicured, neon-blue grass toward the main service door. My heart hammered against my ribs, convinced every second I was visible.

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  After thirty seconds, Xenon’s voice cut in, tense and strained. “Xersa, I’m detecting subtle interference in the feed. The script is holding, but it’s fragile. Get to the door. Now.”

  I reached the service door, fumbling with the manual override panel. I jammed the small data spike Xenon had given me into the port, and the light flickered from red to green. The door hissed open just enough for us to slide through.

  “We’re in,” I whispered.

  Xenon stated, a subtle note of relief entering his voice. “The script disengaged. Orbital surveillance is back to normal. We used sixty-five seconds. Now, the internal environment is our enemy. The Sonic Resonance Scanners are live.”

  As I looked down the halls I couldn’t help but feel like I’m doing something forbidden again as if being on the outside wasn’t enough, but now’s not the time to think about that… I slowly make my way across the floor.

  I ask Xenon, “How fast am I supposed to go exactly?”

  Xenon replies, “You’re going at about the right pace, but maybe slow down a little bit because you’re a little too close.”

  I then slowed down just a little as requested by Xenon, and as I tip-toed my way down the almost pitch-black hallway within the room I turned to the right, and right there was– only another 20 steps away– was the bright glow of the QLP’s housing room, and completely unguarded unlike in the day but with the 3 separate authentication layers intact like a holographic box surounding it.

  I relay the information to Xenon, “I’m at the QLP, and I’m ready to go, and we need to execute this perfectly…”

  Xenon responds “OK, in 3… 2… 1!”

  The forcefield closes and I immediately rush to the box and double scan my hand across the last layer with such precision it feels like half a second of delay, not just 3 seconds and I get to pull it out… but then the alarm bells start ringing…

  I shout into the microphone, “Um, Xenon! What do I do if the alarm bells start ringing?”

  Xenon responds with lighting speed, “The alarm bells? Get the hell out of there!”

  I run to the other side of the hallway, rushing from hallway to hallway to get out of the other side of the building until it feels like my breath is choking on cold knives, and then I see them. 3 figures are here to arrest me… but then, all the sudden I get this inexplicable feeling, and as they try to interrogate me, one officer tells me “Give me your ID!”, and the other 2 standing by his side I say it…

  I whisper “Turn intangible and let me fly!”. The officers stand there and laugh, another officer remarks “You really think you can just bend reality can’t you?!”... but then all of a sudden I turn completely intangible and fly out of the building through the walls. The officers immediately rushed outside with their ultrasonic boots. Meaning that they rushed to the other side where I stood about to go off the spacecraft.

  I thought, “I can’t believe this, this was supposed to be a hard mission but now we're gonna be wanted criminals… oh god! OH GOD!”

  Then as the spacecraft flies towards the air above as the officers start spraying bullets from below, and one of them hits me… I scream in pain as the door fully closes. It feels like an archipelago of agony was just thrusted into one spot of my body increasing like a Glissando. I scream “Make it STOP!!”, but the pain still shoots through my leg and up to my brain. Usually some unnecessary pain like this is nullified by your brain chip, but right now it’s definitely supposed to be necessary.

  I take control of the spacecraft, it’s a good thing growing up my father taught me everything about spacecrafts wanting me to follow in his footsteps with research and the use of them… but now I’m using one to escape a crime scene. I see Xenon somehow over in the distance and he’s starting to run away from it.

  I frantically report to Xenon, “I need you to come along with me, no time to explain.”

  Xenon simply says one word in a shaking voice, “ok…”

  I rush down to where Xenon and he rushes into the spacecraft… we fly up into space. First the stratosphere, then the exosphere, then deep space, and it takes a matter of 30 seconds… I yell “Make us completely invisible!”, and I check the outside camera, and we’re not just invisible to infrared or sight– or anything… I can't believe my eyes.