The silence in the Dauntless’ cockpit was heavy as Avery, Kasandra, Jasmine, and Liesel watched the baffling sight before them.

"The viewscreen is working properly, right?" Kasandra asked.

Just like the other three, she was having a hard time believing what she was seeing.

The only plausible explanation for it not being real though was that the Dauntless’ cameras were malfunctioning or their system had been hacked somehow.

Except, a quick diagnostic proved that they were fully functional and displaying what was going on outside without any issues.

"I know that there are plenty of inexplicable things in the universe, but how is this even happening here?"

Jasmine confused question as met with no answers.

No one onboard understood what was going on. Probably the only people that once knew were the intelligent species that had once lived in the system and created these space monsters in the first place.

"I’m going to use my ability right now. Hopefully I can figure out what they’re up to if I do." Avery said, taking a deep breath to prepare himself.

Already knowing that sometimes Avery could lose himself to his own power, Kasandra and Jasmine got up and stood right next to him.

If he went out of control or something seemed to be going wrong, they planned on restraining him and snapping him out of it.

Their worry was well-founded in this instance.

As the moment Avery activated his extrasensory perception, he immediately lurched forward and threw up.

His entire body felt sick all of a sudden even at just the slightest glimpse of the foul energy he had witnessed.

It was far stronger than anything he had ever seen before and at the same time maddening.

Avery needed almost an entire minute to recover from the backlash of what he had seen.

He found it impossible to truly find the words for what he had witnessed, but the closely thing he could think of was malign.

"Do you need to go to the sickbay?" Kasandra asked when she noticed him starting to come back to himself.

Wiping his mouth, Avery shook his head and said, "No, but we need to get out of here. Whatever that thing is, it’s more dangerous than we could possibly imagine. That’s not something that we can fight." 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

While it had caused him no small amount of distress and perhaps even hurt his sanity a bit, Avery now had a far better understanding about what was going on.

The giant asteroid was not some secret weapon or repellent. It was a seal.

Before, whatever was inside must have been completely inert. Explaining why Avery had not noticed it until now.

When he had glimpsed at the glow of energy, he had noticed that the Fluem were draining a sickly power from within the asteroid. Which was what had given Avery the vile feeling the first time he had looked at one of the creatures with his ability.

As for the monsters that resembled spike balls, their entire body was being absorbed as part of the rock to create an even denser outer layer around the thing that was trapped inside.

All of this was being done at the direction of the two remaining commander types, both of which Avery had noticed were fully exerting their own psychic powers around the asteroid.

There had been many questions surrounding this system. One of which was what the six types of space monsters that had been clearly manufactured had been created to fight.

A lot of speculation had been tossed around, but Avery was now certain of what it was.

Inside the asteroid that the space monsters normally tried to avoid was a malevolent presence unlike anything else Avery had experienced or even heard about before.

Judging from their actions right now, their purpose had been to seal away this entity and prevent it from ever escaping.

Realizing this, Avery knew that everyone would be in danger if they stayed.

"Full retreat. We’re leaving. Head back to the rest of the fleet."

Avery sent his order to everyone that had accompanied him.

There were some that were confused since as far as they knew, they had not yet found out what the monsters were up to.

What was happening in front of them was clearly abnormal.

A few thought that they should attack now since their enemies were vulnerable right now.

If they could kill the other two commander types, then all of the space monsters would go out of control and make it more advantageous for them.

However, Avery knew that this would be the worst course of action that they could take.

He only knew what he had seen, but to him it seemed that the commander types were using their psychic abilities to keep whatever sort of being was trapped inside of the asteroid inert.

With the death of one of their kind and two others being injured, that had disrupted their efforts.

"Are you sure? We haven’t accomplished our mission yet." Burke responded, speaking for the rest of the team.

To everyone but Avery, all they had done was arrive and now they were leaving before discovering anything or even attempting to put a stop to the space monsters’ plans.

"No, we’re done here. I’ve already learned everything that we need to. I’ll explain to Zefield when we get back. Turn around and prepare to jump to light speed."

There was an edge in Avery’s voice this time that offered no room for any further arguments.

Unfortunately, even just the short period of time the rest of the team had spent hesitating soon proved to be a fatal mistake.

Despite the best efforts of the system’s space monsters, a crack began forming through the enormous, dark purple asteroid.

With a breach in the seal that kept the being inside contained, its energy began to leak out and affect everything around it. Including Avery and the people that he had brought with him to investigate.