CAT Chapter 4: At The Heart of the Vortex (4)

“Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about me?”

The Last Supper hadn’t even begun when disaster struck.

The ship unceremoniously jerked. Lucia’s projection had vanished without a trace, while a warning sound rose.

“Tilin effect has been detected. Departing from the boundless bathochromic-shift plane, departing from the boundless bathochromic-shift plane. Activating Lindis protective field. Alert: approaching the singular ring. Approaching the singular ring.”

The singular ring was the endpoint of time and space. To enter it was to embrace eternal silence.

“Unknown error. Protective field activation failed.”

After the first jolt, the spaceship abruptly veered at a sharp right angle, tilting dramatically. Several young crew members tumbled into a corner, clinging to each other.

Lin Si swiftly got up and pulled Ling Yi aside, away from the table edges that could cause injury.

The turbulence didn’t subside, it worsened. The ship bucked and shook wildly, tilting steeply and flipping over multiple times. Lin Si reacted instantly, grabbing Ling Yi and flipping them both. His back slammed against the ceiling with a loud thud.

Ling Yi raised up his head from his chest, but Lin Si shoved it down. 

“Hold on to me,” said Lin Si calmly.

The spaceship came to a sudden halt, then began spinning uncontrollably, its direction changing chaotically. The metal walls and ceiling groaned under immense pressure, warping and emitting a piercing screech.

Lucia’s frantic warnings echoed, “Unable to deploy Lindis field. Approaching singular ring. Spaceship destruction countdown: 7, 6, 5, 4…”

Clutching Ling Yi, Lin Si rolled into a relatively safe corner and steadied his breathing. “Lucia!”

“I’m here, sir.”

“Ninefold warp speed. Target the singular ring.”

The countdown stopped. Every remaining ounce of energy was consumed without reserve. The curvature engines, occupying a quarter of the ship’s mass, roared to life.

The curvature engine was last century’s greatest invention, bending the spacetime around a ship to break the unbreakable limit of light speed. Along with advanced materials and subspace navigation, it revolutionized interstellar travel. 

After a distant hum, all sound vanished, like the sea pulling back at low tide. The spaceship plunged into the vacuum of silence.

At this point, if someone had the ability to look down on the spectacle inside the black hole from a higher dimension, they’d get a view of the nearly shattered ship with layers of intense ripples in space-time, and had charged towards a mourning, temporal and spatial tomb, seemingly as if the stream had surged towards the overhanging cliff. 

The moment that it was about to descend into the bottomless chasm, it had evoked a torrenting splash! 

Ling Yi clung to Lin Si, his vision filled with a blinding white light.

Lin Si wasn’t much better off. 

A crushing dizziness and nausea overwhelmed him, as if his body were compressed into a single point and then explosively scattered across the spaceship.

Only Lucia’s voice came through steadily. 

“Detected violet shift radiation. Entered white hole singularity.”

“Lindis protective field deployed.”

“Commencing recharge.”

An invisible force field enveloped the spaceship, shielding it from the immense force of the white hole. Streams of blue energy flowed along the ship’s hull, converging and surging into the engines. The faltering curvature engines roared back to life.

Ling Yi was in Lin Si’s embrace when he opened his eyes. Before him was a ruptured and a fathomless labyrinthine world that was beyond description, and would make people nauseous and light-headed. 

“Shut your eyes!” His ears rang with the sound of Lin Si’s chilly command, and then he felt his arm being pinched heavily. It was very painful. 

He was suffering, and subconsciously held Lin Si without the intention of letting go, incapable of utilizing his strength. He instinctively gaped his mouth and ruthlessly bit hard, his consciousness then increasingly turned fuzzy. 

When he awoke, he was still in Lin Si’s arms. The spaceship’s turbulence had subsided considerably.

Lin Si touched his neck and found his hand covered in blood.

“Little ingrate,” he muttered, smearing some of the blood onto Ling Yi’s face.

Ling Yi wriggled out of his arms and scurried to another corner, curling up silently.

On the other side of the ship, the young crew members had regained their footing, stumbling around before spotting the view outside the portholes. They froze, their eyes wide, stammering, “Did we… make it out?”

Gravity returned, oxygen levels rose, and the temperature gradually increased. Lin Si shrugged off his coat, discovering that his shoulder was soaked with blood. As he treated the wound, he said, “I figured if a white hole is the inverse of a black hole, we might as well crash into the singular ring. Lucia, compile the data for submission to Zone One when we return to the mothership.”

Unexpectedly, colliding with the singular ring had triggered the white hole’s opening. Narrowly escaping death, the crew’s legs felt like jelly as they exhaled deeply, their relief transforming into euphoric joy. They exchanged excited hugs, overcome with the thrill of survival.

Ling Yi hugged his knees and sat in the corner, as if he was a misfit in this joyful atmosphere. 

He then heard footsteps approaching him. 

Just hearing the uniformed tempo, it was surely that detestable Lin Si. Even his footsteps were dislikeable. 

Remembering how much blood he’d caused Lin Si to lose, Ling Yi was sure he was about to be scolded even more harshly!

The little thing had shrunk itself further on the corner.  

Once the footsteps had ceased, only the man’s steady breathing could be heard. Surprisingly, he hadn’t moved at all. 

A little while after, Ling Yi heard Lin Si lightly say, “Raise your head.” 

His heart had been filled with apprehension and resistance, yet still lifted his head up despite being uncomfortable. The first thing that had caught his attention wasn’t Lin Si, but rather the porthole directly opposite him. He suddenly froze. 

Lin Si saw the little thing with kitten-like features. With eyes still wide open filled with tears, he glanced at the window lost in thought. The corners of his mouth slightly raised. 

The endless sea of stars had burst forth cosmically outside the round porthole, vaguely concealing the beautiful, chasmic, large nebulae. Myriad starlights had twinkled gently, vastly different from the dark and deathly still black hole. 

Lin Si asked abruptly, “Do you remember your parents?”

Ling Yi blinked in confusion. His mind was blank, filled with a nagging familiarity he couldn’t quite grasp.

“Daddy…” he murmured softly, “Where’s my daddy?”

The teenager’s voice hadn’t yet experienced change, pronouncing the word “Daddy” with a natural milky voice. 

Lin Si stared at the deep cosmos beyond the window. “Everyone on Earth is gone.”

Whether Ling Yi understood or not was unclear. He stared blankly outside.

Lin Si ruffled his hair carelessly, but his vision blurred into a kaleidoscope of colors—a precursor to fainting.

The youngsters had put him on the bed with great hurry and bustle, only to discover he had already fallen asleep.

“Dr. Lin has been piloting the ship with Lucia these past few days and hasn’t slept at all,” Seth said as he administered an injection. “Let him rest for a while.”

The group left the room, leaving only Ling Yi behind.

Ling Yi cautiously approached the bedside and observed him quietly for a while. Once he was certain the man wouldn’t wake up, he sneaked to the other side, scooped up the dirt scattered on the ground, and shoved it into a beaker along with the half-wilted cat grass, which he stuffed in viciously. Then he poured in a generous amount of water and ran out of the room with quick, light steps.

Lucia’s mechanical voice echoed through the hall, “Current coordinates: Rose Galaxy, Cygnus Arm II, Schwarzschild coordinates 24789-78558-67865. Destination: Cetus TN-III asteroid. Distance: 8,700 light-years. Energy status: sufficient. Preparing to enter Tier-3 subspace. Estimated travel time: 67 hours and 26 minutes.”

Lin Si slept for ten full hours. Subspace travel carried no safety risks, giving him ample time and energy to study his experimental subject.

Ling Yi, who had developed a sliver of goodwill toward him during the flight incident, lost it entirely after being pinned down twice for blood draws and having a tissue sample taken. He angrily ripped out the cat grass that had barely shown signs of revival in the beaker.

Amidst the constant chaos, their subspace voyage came to an end.

Zone 6 circled the asteroid’s atmosphere until the massive, dark silhouette of the Voyager appeared on the horizon.

Lin Si sent a “request for docking” message to the Voyager.

The connection opened, and an image of Zheng Shu, the head of Zone 5, appeared on the light screen before Lin Si.

Zone 5 was a humongous area where a wide variety of projects were conducted, and was also responsible for the ship’s navigation and maintenance. “Lucia” was Zone 5’s fruitful achievement, but Zheng Shu wasn’t the leader of that project. His expertise was on machinery――and also weaponry. 

He was a handsome, gentle-looking fellow, his age roughly thirty years old. When he caught sight of Lin Si, he was incredulous at first, then surprised. 

Lin Si said, “Zeng-ge.” 

“Lin Si,” Zheng Shu exclaimed, shaking his head with a smile. “We all thought you were a goner. How did you manage it? It’s a miracle.” He added, “Then again, you’ve always been extraordinary.”

Lin Si, “The voyage logbook is very detailed. It will be sent to you when I return.” 

Zheng Shu still couldn’t believe his eyes. “It’s simply unbelievable that you could survive from a back hole.” 

“Not happy to see me?” Lin Si folded his arms.

“Thrilled to see you,” Zheng Shu said. “Tang Ning was thinking about you just yesterday. After you disappeared into the black hole, we held a grand memorial for you. Madam Chen was heartbroken. Marshal Sius, on the other hand, seemed quite pleased—he reportedly had an extra glass of wine to celebrate.”

“Oh,” Lin Si responded, “Then he’s probably going to be too dismayed to eat today.” 

Zheng Shu guffawed then sighed, “In any case, welcome back. Let’s meet up and talk.” 

The image disappeared, and the Voyager began to move slowly, preparing to dock with Zone 6.

Having grown somewhat familiar with Lin Si over the past few days, Seth curiously asked, “Doctor, do you and the Marshal have some sort of conflict?”

“The Marshal has always suspected that the ship harbors one or more terrorists trying to sabotage the Voyager’s great mission,” Lin Si said, watching the massive ship’s hull. “And he believes that if anyone has a reason to hate this ship, it’s me.”

Seth scratched his head. “But you’re a good person.”

Lin Si gave him an unperturbed glance. “Do you have some kind of misunderstanding about me?”