Q lay on the cold, grassy field. A mild dampness moistened his skin, but he lay there nonetheless, his body still, his hands behind his head. His eyes stared into the endless night, at the bright stars that were sprinkled through the darkness, as though they were a galactic decoration on the Universe’s infinite canvas.

He felt like he could forget about everything around him if he just lay like this. His mind couldn’t even sense the presence of the mighty skyscrapers all around him. His patch of nature made him feel like he was no longer at Aliea Academy. All he could feel was the fresh midnight field, and the ever glowing stars. Nothing else. 

“You seem to be having quite the time,” a girl’s face moved into his vision. She smiled, her electric-blue eyes shining warmly.

He smiled back, “Hi, Taylor.”

She lay herself down and snuggled up next to him, her head resting on his shoulder, her arm over his chest. Q’s face flushed deep red, but he lay still, cozying up in her softness.

“They’re beautiful aren’t they?” Taylor asked, her face just a warm breath away from his.

Not as beautiful as you are, he thought, but the words never came out his mouth. He glanced at her, at the moon-silver earrings glistening against her elven-white

skin, at her golden-blonde hair glow in the gentle moonlight.

“What?” she asked, an embarrassed smile on her face. 

“Nothing,” he smiled and turned back to his favorite jewels in the sky. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been able to just relax like this and watch the stars. It seemed like it had been forever. He smiled, realizing that Aliea Academy had changed him so much as a person.

“Q,” Taylor began. “I was-”

Q felt a wave of energy pass right through him. It was quite faint, but it was far too abnormal for him to not notice. The stars flickered for a moment, and their brilliant white light turned a shade of blood red. The dark night sky changed color, shifting from its infinite black and white, to a chaotic red.

“What the hell is that?” Taylor jumped onto her feet, and looked around at the sky.

Q sat up, his thoughts racing in every direction possible. The black sky now had a glow of red, as though a transparent wall of red light had blocked off the entire Academy from the sky.

Oh my god, his eyes widened, realizing what was going on.

“It’s down,” Taylor whispered.

“How in the world is that possible?” he asked quietly, unable to fathom what was going on.

“We need to get to the Demon Riser right now,” she

said, her voice anxious.

Q nodded. He focused his mind, concentrating on the ocean of energy that rested inside him. He channeled it into his body and into the air around him. A glow of white covered him almost as though he were wearing a suit made out of moonlight. He looked at Taylor, and saw a similar glow around her, only hers was not moonlight white, but night-sky dark.

The two of them jumped off the ground, lifting into the air and shooting through the night.

Q glanced around him, at the tall dark skyscrapers that rose high into the sky. A massive structure in the horizon caught his attention, a tower that was easily ten times higher than every other skyscraper below them. A line of bright, neon red glowed from tower’s base and ended in a massive circle at the top.

The Demon Riser, he thought. It was Aliea’s main command center, the place that housed the most important operations the Academy undertook.

“Q, look,” Taylor pointed to the sky, her voice turning anxious once again.

He glanced up, and felt a sense of chaos once again. The red had disappeared from the stars, and the sky had returned to the black and white that Q knew it to be.

Taylor bit her lip. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Q mumbled, a certain unease growing within him.

They began to descend just as they reached the Demon Riser, and landed right in front of the front door. Q heard voices from the people around him, hushed whispers no doubt, about the two people who had just flown down from the sky.

Q put on a smile and politely nodded at them before heading into the tower. He and Taylor took the elevator up to the topmost floor. It took no more than a few seconds for the double-door to slide open, revealing to them the only door that existed on the entire floor.

Q and Taylor made their way out the elevator. A red laser extended from the top of the door and shone onto them. It stopped as quickly as it had started, ending in a characteristic beep.

“Welcome Sorcerer Q and Sorceress Taylor,” a mechanical female voice said.

The door automatically slid open and they walked in. The room that served as Aliea’s main council room looked exactly like what it was meant to be. The walls were a dark-grey, almost black. A large table was placed in the center, its shade slightly darker than the walls. A row of chairs lined up on the longer side, and a single larger chair sat on either of the shorter sides. A line of light blue light shone on the edge of the table, giving it that futuristic look.

The larger chair on the far side of the table turned around. Aliea’s Commander sat in it, a brown-haired man with serious look on his face. “That was fast,” he

said. “The two of you were outside?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Q nodded. “The fields.”

He sighed, “Well, I guess you saw the red sky then?” he asked and gestured them to take the seats next to him.

“Carlos,” Taylor said as she sat down. “Is it what I think it is?”

“Well, if you thought that the red sky was caused by the force field shutting down then yes, it’s exactly what you think it is.”

Q twiddled his thumbs, nervous that the situation he had thought of was actually true.

Aliea Academy was a military center on the distant planet Zygrade. Now being a military center, and a really good one at that, Aliea was under constant threat. The force field was its best line of defense. It was a dome-shaped wall of pure energy that cut off everything within it from everything else. No one could really see the field since it was transparent. But when abruptly shut down, the field’s energy would change to an unstable red color, thus coating the entire sky red.

“But we saw the sky change back to normal,” Taylor said.

Oh yeah, Q had almost forgotten the second transition that had happened.

“That’s because I asked Burke to set up a mass hologram,” Carlos said. “We’re projecting a normal night sky over the red one. We didn’t want the whole

Academy to panic after looking at a red sky. Burke was quite quick to set it up I have to say.”

“It wouldn’t be Burke if he wasn’t quick,” Q smiled.

Burke was this insanely talented researcher that Q had met before on one of his previous missions. Currently, he was Aliea’s lead researcher, which basically meant he was the head of everything that was science or technology. The guy was so into making new things that he sometimes spent days researching in his lab without food and sleep.

Wait a minute, a sudden, unrelated thought popped into Q’s head. He turned to Carlos, “A force field shouldn’t be too hard to reboot, especially since we’ve got an abundance of spare parts,” he said. “It’s odd that you would choose to display a hologram rather than actually fix the field.”

Carlos sighed, “You know, sometimes I hate the fact that you’re my little brother,” he chuckled and Q smiled in return.

“Wait, so what are you saying?” Taylor asked, a look of concern on her face.

“The force field hasn’t only been shut down,” Q said. “It’s been tampered with.”

She turned to Carlos, desperately searching for the answer.

“I really hate it when you know about things before I want you to,” Carlos sighed, and turned to Taylor. “But yes, the force field has in fact been tampered with.”

Taylor froze. “I didn’t even know that was possible,” she said quietly, completely shocked,

“We found an unidentified signal quite close to our planet,” Carlos said. “You know what? I’ll just let Burke do the explaining,” he said.

A section of the wall behind Carlos opened up and a large screen emerged. It turned on, displaying another brown-haired man, only this one looked quite clumsy.

“Hi guys,” Burke waved at them, his coat slipping on his shoulders, his lab goggles slanted, his hair completely ruffled up.

“Did you just explode or something?” Q chuckled.

“Haha, very funny,” Burke said sarcastically. “This is my new look,” he grinned. “I call it ‘The Scientist’.”

“Well, you look like your baking soda volcano just blew up.”

“Guys?” Taylor glared. “The force field is down. Do you seriously think this is the time to be joking around?”

“No, ma’am,” both of them said sheepishly.

“Now Burke,” Carlos said. “Explain the situation to them. Properly.”

“It’s quite simple to be honest,” he said. “A few minutes ago Aliea’s scanners picked up a faint signal, and quite an abnormal one to be honest. At first it seemed like the signal was caused by a malfunctioning scanner. But just moments later, the signal spiked into high radiation levels, and the force field seemed to shut down immediately in response to that.”

“A space anomaly,” Q mumbled.

Taylor turned to Carlos, her face concerned, “It’s like the anomaly from last time?” she asked.

He shook his head, “We cross checked the data,” he said. “This one seems very different from that.”

“To be honest,” Burke said. “We don’t have all the data though.”

“Did our scanners actually malfunction then?” Q asked.

“To get more specific data we need to be closer to the source.”

“Well, you should have sent out a probe then.”

“I did,” Burke looked right at Q. “But it didn’t come back.”

***