Fantastic, Nova. Great job. I am an idiot.

"LOCKDOWN A INITIATED. PLEASE REMAIN CALM."

You just pushed him away. You just pushed him away when all he was doing was asking questions. Something he has to do. He has to ask questions. I'm the one who isn't asking questions.

Every loop brought a new, changed experience — something to force her to change the approach. Neo never returned after his previous proclamation to get to the bottom of her time bound cage. If I don't get out of here, he isn't going to come back out at all. Plants shone green in the dimness of light. And if Habitation does fall... they'll die. As with the fluttering holograms of flowers and butterflies mocking her, she sat on the bed and groaned.

But Neo could be the one to figure this out — if he can live that long.

And then... he asked if I wanted to be alone... and I couldn't give him a straight answer. Resentment for her inability to change his fate smothered her lungs. Is it better to keep distance if I know he's going to die? Would that even make it easier? It was no better than allowing him to rush into the black hole, stuck in the event horizon where time stopped.

Nova sprawled across the cushions and listened to the distant alarm. Too many variables and not enough consistency. Lockdown started. If Thuni or Ulin didn't listen to me... they either got away or weren't fast enough. I think it's the waiting I hate the most. Waiting for everything to happen all at once. Her exhaustion worsened with the pass of the loops. I have to rest when I'm able, as much as I can before I do this all over again. Nova burrowed into the cushions and blankets as the voices outside faded. But... Now that I think about it, it's the eastern branch hit last — but that could change too. Everything can change in an instant.

She shut herself from the cruel universe and into the void of her own creation. Starlight tugged a string of dark matter around her throat to block her crying scream. Tick. Tick. Tick. Bright stars disappeared into the grey-coloured eye of the universe. Nova jolted out of her doze at approaching, heavy footsteps. It dragged when it came closer to her door, and she sat up, ready for a fight.

Who now? Who's come to judge me? I know it's not Neo, he doesn't drag his feet.

A choke drove into her throat when Thuni shuffled into the room and let the door shut behind him. "Spacyn."

Caution revved into her nerves, but she lowered her guard when Thuni expressed nothing more. "You weren't who I was expecting. I thought you'd have..." Died, or who the hells know anymore. Nova released the tension in her lips. "What are you doing here alone?" Another question begged for an answer, and she was no better than Neo when it came to it.

Thuni folded his arms and glared at her. "It's about what you said," he said. "I won't mince words with you. What you told us sounds unbelievable." He grimaced, and went pale. "Well, I'll tell myself that for now for my peace of mind. I went on the transit to search my droid, but it was like this nagging feeling screamed at me to not go." He scowled at the holographic lies. "I sent Ulin back to their room, but I wanted to come to talk to you before doing anything... possibly life-altering." He rubbed his arms. "I had deja vu, Spacyn."

Nova lost all her strength at his words. He what?

"So, as hard to believe as what you said is, I am not willing to throw it to the side," Thuni explained. "Which is why I'm baffled that the research team did just that and threw you in here. You don't strike me as the type to pull practical jokes on a scale like that — and I doubt Teimea would joke about that. From the way he was practically fighting a dozen people to get to you tells me there is a lot more going on than I am capable of grasping. So." He sat down on the chair Neo once occupied. "Let's have a chat that they didn't let you finish."

Nova leaned against the wall. "I'm going to be honest, you're the last person I expected to convince. Neo is better at this sort of thing."

"I wouldn't discredit yourself," he said. "I'm going to have Ulin disconnect our core when we get the chance. They got a response from it, which means whatever happened to our droid, the core was undamaged."

"I don't have access to my droid infodrives," Nova murmured. "I doubt they'll let me out with the lockdown."

"About that." Thuni narrowed his eyes. "If time really is looping like you say it is, how many times have you lived this, Nova?"

Nova opened her mouth to reply, but long lost count of the truth. Back against the wall, she slid down it with a soft groan. "I don't know." Her fingers went to her scalp.

Thuni's brow furrowed. "I'm assuming you know most of what happens by now?"

"So... you do believe me?"

Thuni shuffled his feet. "I don't know. I'm an engineer. Lots of things I don't know, and some I do. Ask me about time loops and space-time continuum bullshit, I couldn't say. " He shook his head. "But, I won't deny that there is something weird going on that only you can remember." He tapped his temple with a frustrated grimace. "It feels familiar. It's obviously anomalous, and you don't need Teimea's education or genius to figure that out."

"He'd..." Nova sniffed at his words. "He'd be flattered to hear that from you."

Thuni grunted. "I don't like this, Nova. I can't say I don't believe you because nothing else explains it. We're in the dark and you aren't." He blinked, then looked around the room. "Has Teimea not come to see you?"

Nova hugged herself. "He did. Did you see him on your way here?"

"For a moment," Thuni admitted. "He was heading onto the transit to central command. I was going to head over there myself to alert the senior staff about the possibility that you aren't wrong. Then something drew me over here instead, as strange as that sounds."

Nova sucked in a breath. "I feel like if I focused more on action instead of words something might've been different," she whispered. "I was hoping someone remembered. I can't clone myself to be in several places at once." Hands against her eyes, her fingers threatened to dig into the sockets. "You said he was going to central command?"

"Yes. Does that mean something to you?"

No, please no. Not again. Nova bit down on a sob. "I hate this. I hate watching everyone die around me." On her feet, she scowled. "It's him. He always dies." Tears flowed through her fingers as Thuni's eyes widened in shock. "Every single time. Every single time central command wasn't safe for him. I pushed him away." Pain drove a past injury into her thighs, but she refused to fall again. "I'm stuck in here and he's over there, all alone." Lost in her grief, she whispered, "Can you pass a message for me? They took away my compearl and... and I didn't get to say what I meant when Neo left."

Thuni blinked. "What do you want me to tell him?"

"Tell him I changed my mind." Her heart broke against her ribs. "Tell him I don't want to be alone."

I don't want him to be alone when it happens.

Thuni frowned, then shoved his hands into his pockets. "I can try to get to him." His compearl chirped, and he tapped it. "Communications are fading."

"That'll be the communication stations failing around the station," she said dully, crushed by constants. "It doesn't matter. I need him to know. If you can get that to him, I'll be grateful."

Thuni nodded, then headed for the door. "Take care, Spacyn."

"You too." Nova chewed on resentment when the door shut on her and all her chances were taken away. Back in her personal field of flowers and butterflies, she slumped into bed. One more variable. Thuni listened, and remembered something. Something intangible in the form of deja vu.

More than Neo was recalling.

The power flickered and shifted into the dark. Nova observed the seconds escape. Every second for both monsters to move, and ravage everything in its path.

Seconds of silence passed into distant screaming alarms.

Nova lifted herself out of the bed when the seconds stretched. Into nothing. If this takes longer then I don't know what might happen. Usually the first lockdown lasts for an entire shift. Her clock beeped, and she shut it off with a huff. What's happening?

Something wrinkled and hissed, and she investigated the sound.

Leaves shrivelled like slugs underneath salt. Ashen stars fell off the edges to stain the dirt. Lights flickered and the holograms shattered. Nova frowned, but gasped when the alarm's piercing scream flowed into her ears and through her throat. Knives sliced her head into ribbons as she tried to shake out the agony out of her ears. Music tore it apart and crimson splattered the remains of the holographic butterflies. Roars and screams echoed outside, and she slipped against the wall when the pain ebbed through her brow.

Her head screamed in the event horizon, and she drove her fingers into her temples to rip out her brain.

Her breath caught in her throat when it ended in an instant. Too quiet. Too static.

Wh-what?

Her breath caught in her throat when the plants wilted and died, passing through lifecycles in a moment.

Nova hugged the corner at the pounding pressure in the air. Lights cracked to pieces, and she tucked her feet back when the glass scattered over them. Bile rose into her throat when the half-winged butterflies disappeared into the layer of grey mist seeping from underneath the door.

It went silent.

Nova held her breath, though her heart and mind echoed through the chamber when tendrils inched through the frame of the door. One slithered and fell along the wall, and she found her voice lost in space when the door disappeared into the maw of a black hole. It stretched into the room, and went still. Several heartbeats joined the lonely solo when it expanded, sluggish, dragging itself to shatter the rest of the hologram.

A low, creeping rumble left the void.

It coiled and scattered with a strange, uneven formless solidity.

Nova trembled when the stars it swallowed appeared to peer at her from in the depths.

Its maw stretched with a cold breath of nothing.

Fuck! This is it! Nova froze in the vacuum, waiting for death.

It stared.

She stared back.

"...va?" Its voice tore through her mind, but the soothing inflection eased out the pain in her head. Its formless being came closer, and she recoiled from the nebulous tendrils raising off the floor to poke at her skin. Biting cold and burning hot. Nova tried to melt into the wall, to escape its grasp, and she frowned when the grey tendrils hesitated, before scattering into further clouds around the room. "Why... do you... hi...de? are...ok...ay ...here."

What.

Its voice. Its inflection and tone. Familiar, and unchanging. The stars rippled, and the maw closed. Further silence made tears slip down her cheeks, trapped in space with nowhere to run. Fatal fear slammed into her bones when it showed razer teeth in the maw, a formless snarl. Her heartbeat pounded with the other one pressurizing the air, and she shook when it drove its monstrous, evershifting teeth into the frame of the door. Metal cracked and an alert rang out in the medbay. Its teeth tore a part of the wall with it, and the bars to her cage disappeared. Its teeth returned to the formless void before roiling through the corridor it came from.

Nova released her breath.

It left her an escape. It stared into her soul and recognized her. Nothing more than a deliverance of time's song she heard the moment Neo touched the anomaly and gave her a static shock.

It... said my name... and asked why I was hiding... Nova flattered her legs against the floor and circuitry sparked from the panels outside. Stars. Stars, why do I know that tone of voice? It sounded so wrong but so... familiar. Why is it familiar? Why am I having deja vu now? Music trembled through her head in an off-key beat. Stars. Stars, it looked at me and I thought I saw—

Nova waited for everything to go silent before racing to the washstation attached to the room to puke the bile in her throat.