"Breaking news! The Pioneer expedition party has been reported to have returned from their 10 year long expedition outside of the Milky way galaxy!"
The moment Alex and Mira returned back to reality, their silence was broken by the sound of the news channel playing on the TV in Alex's living room.
"You can let go of me now..." Mira spoke, breaking the tense, emotional moment the two of them had.
Considering they had just been through a whole ordeal of revealing secrets to each other in their own private dimension, they looked rather unfazed by their situation.
But they had each been through some weird things during their time since becoming an awakened, so it would take more than just that to surprise them.
"This just in, the federation has confirmed the sightings of the expedition party's ship, and have released a statement regarding their return."
Meanwhile, the news anchor on the TV continued reading her reports.
"What's this about an expedition party? And why is every news channel reporting on it?" Alex asked, completely unaware that this boldly named 'Pioneer Expedition party' even existed before this moment.
He flicked through each channel, but they were all playing the same thing.
"What's so important about these guys?" Alex asked once again.
His confusion only led to more confusion as the images of their ship were literally plastered across the screens of every TV channel he changed to.
Their ship didn't look very special either, it just looked like the typical federal military destroyer, carrying at max 1000 crew members.
Such a thing would look intimidating in the pictures, but in reality it was only used mostly as a people carrier.
The weapons mounted aboard could only damage a C+ rank awakened at most, and that was if they were only Ordinary class.
"It says here that they are the only expedition party crazy enough to leave the confines of the Milky way to go explore the void beyond. Their first target was Andromeda, the nearest galaxy to our own." Mira spoke.
She had searched their name up on her communicator, digging for information about them, as she too was clueless about who they were.
But it made sense that they hadn't heard of them before.
They left the milky way 10 years ago, when they were just kids.
There was a lot of news and hubbub surrounding this topic around that time, but after that point, it was practically radio silence.
There was something blocking the Pioneers from sending and receiving signals when they left the confines of the Milky way, so humanity didn't even hear a single peep from them over the last 10 years.
His monologue continued as trillions sat watching the broadcast in silence, utterly shocked by what they were seeing.
The chat box had even abruptly stopped as everyone was too focused on the broadcast itself to engage in any idle chatter.
"We are not alone..."
The broadcast abruptly cut off.
'What the fuck just happened..?'
Alex didn't know whether Ciril Sarjak had ended the stream himself, or if someone from the federation of the broadcast company intervened to end it short.
However, they were too late, as Ciril's last sentence still made it through.
"We are not alone... What did he mean by that?" Alex muttered his thoughts aloud.
Mira was also thinking the same thing, but before she was able to let out her wild guess of what Ciril could have possibly meant by saying that, the TV crackled with static, bringing both of their attentions back to it.
The broadcast, which had been abruptly cut off, had somehow booted back up again and was streaming live.
This time though, it skipped any intermediaries, and was broadcasting directly to every TV, communicator, radio etc in the federation.
Even if the federal officials wanted to cut it off again, they couldn't.
The scene of the deck opened up once again, for all viewers to see.
But this time, they were greeted by a gruesome sight.
Ciril Sarjak was no more one whole person, but two...
As he had been split in half from the abdomen.
His lifeless eyes looked helplessly at the camera, many viewers were creeped out as they felt like he was staring directly into their souls as the last light of his life blew out.
The most shocking thing of all though, was that Ciril was not alone in the room.
There was a figure standing above him, hunched over.
A figure that wasn't human...