Exactly 2.5 years had passed. The criminals now knew how strong my enhanced body was. Even though I looked slender or calm, they knew how dangerous I could be. Because of this, I now had my own territory. In the mess hall, filled with eccentric people, I had secured a private table for myself. This table was even directly across from the television screen, which constantly broadcasted news. Normally, it was a channel that only showed simple advertisements. A news item would usually only pop up by chance in between two commercials.
But on that day… On that day, an unusual piece of news came on. In fact, the news was so massive that even the guard with the remote control dropped his weapon in shock and turned the television volume to max. Those arm-wrestling in the back, those wrestling with each other, those playing cards, and many others… They nudged each other and came toward the television screen. The headline read: "Damon Weisshafen is dead!"
"This is impossible!" I muttered. My hands were trembling violently. It was not possible for this man, who was the devil himself, to die. No family, no government had the power to kill him. The Hyperion ship could stand against entire planets on its own.
I couldn't hear the journalist's sentences due to the pounding of my heart, triggered by my rising blood pressure. Journalists usually talked nonsense anyway. So I scanned the text on the screen with my eyes. Those small captions told the whole story.
Terrorist attack, one place read. What kind of terror could destroy the untouchable Hyperion ship? But it looked real. A funeral ceremony was being held, and Ironcloud was relaying condolences via an audio recording. Pieces of the shattered Hyperion ship covered a planet's atmosphere. If these images were computer-generated, they wouldn't be shown on the official channel.
"These images are real…" said a man with mechanical eyes, in a fearful tone. "…If they were artificial, my eyes would notice it," he added, pointing to his own eyes with his fingers.
I scanned the small captions for a while longer. The entire Hyperion fleet was destroyed. The planet's name was kept secret, but people would probably figure out the planet's name from the images eventually. Then, a small caption beneath the news… The Weisshafen family heirs will gather on Jolkien.
My nobility had been revoked by my father, Damon Weisshafen. Since Damon Weisshafen was dead, my nobility was being restored. Not just mine, but the nobility of everyone who hadn't willingly left was being reinstated. A massive chaos would instantly erupt within the family. "Does a great war await the Weisshafens?" the text read. I swallowed. I was now officially considered an heir, even without my family name. Any heir could not be held captive until the family election was over. The SWR showed this tolerance to the Weisshafen family. Besides, it was unlikely for a criminal Weisshafen to win the family election. So, the moment I arrived on Jolkien—which was quite a short distance away—I would no longer be considered a criminal until the election was finished. Perhaps during that time, I could follow the clue Marcin Grom left me, but... But I had forgotten one thing. My family was the Weisshafen family. And I was, regardless of everything, a candidate for the family head. Just like thousands of other candidates. And an easily locatable candidate at that…
When I lifted my head, I could see all the prisoners looking at me with fear. Looking at the prisoners for a while made them back away. One of the prisoners stepped in front of the guard, pointed at me, and started shouting. "This man is a Weisshafen!" he said. "This man being on the ship is now a danger to us!"
"Yes!" shouted another. "Guard, please do something!"
"Stop talking nonsense! We are in a huge convoy, kids! We are surrounded by 4 J4-U units and we have very strong energy shields. No one is brave enough to attack the Republic's officials."
Before those sentences were even finished, the angry shouts of the crowd had begun. The guards plunged into the prisoners with their electric batons. They were trying to keep me away from the prisoners, trying to protect me. They, too, knew that I could no longer be considered a mere prisoner, but an heir, when…
A massive whiteness… The entire hull of the spaceship blew up with the whiteness, while the other spaceships had already exploded. As the J4-Us were maneuvering to avoid the massive laser beams, our spaceship was split in half right down the middle. Before everyone's lungs could even fill with the air of outer space, another explosion… and another explosion… Screams and countless other things did not spread in the vacuum of space. If they had spread, we would have heard the footsteps of the apocalypse there. I was being thrown into the vacuum of space. We were surrounded only by metal debris and human corpses. Another explosion happened very close to me, and everything suddenly went dark. Even if I was an heir now, I was the heir of a dead galaxy.