Lockdown Z. On the hour. If only I had more time. Nova holstered an extra blaster while Neo unhooked infodrives from his computer. "Where do they want us to go?"

"Central command." Neo shoved the infodrives in his coat pockets. "There's some irregularities in the western branch." He stopped, then glanced at her. "You don't have to come if you want to sleep for a little longer."

Nova listened to the capacitor hiss and turned on the safety. "I know." Her breath stopped at the edge of her throat at another distant alarm, a reminder of the unbending truth to the loop. "I need to make sure you won't get into trouble." The word again almost slipped past her lips, but she held it deep in her soul, to never burden him anymore than necessary, to never cause him the pain of his death. She expected him to quip with his usual 'how much trouble could I get into,' but he remained silent. Nova searched for his memory, to open the floodgates in the greys full of nebulous shadows.

He stopped, then tipped his head at her with a curious smile.

It didn't touch his eyes.

"Is something still on your mind?" he questioned.

But sometimes... I wonder... Nova folded her arms and huffed. "No, I think I got everything out. We should head out before something else comes up."

Neo nodded with a burst of energy. "Right." He gesticulated at his terminal, grasping air. "Um, is there anything else you need to take or talk about before we go?"

Nova eyed his desk. "Actually, yes. You wouldn't happen to still have the sample?"

"The sample? Oh!" Neo rifled through his pockets to overturn them. "I just put it somewhere, where is it?" He rifled through his belt and unclipped one of the phial capsules. "Gotcha. Here it is." Crimson liquid frothed inside and he held the sealed container to her. "Why do you want it?"

Nova rubbed her knuckle. "Thuni's got a certain alloy around his core which prevented it from being destroyed," she explained while Neo glanced at the phial with an insatiable, curious expression when he rolled it on his palm. "I think whatever the alloy was made of has some sort of... reflective property against the anomalous substance." Hope flew into her heart. "It might be the answer as to why the exoskeleton was wrecked, but their core wasn't."

Neo blinked in rapid fire. "Fractal reaction..." He wrapped his fingers around the phial. "Your droid wasn't made of the same material?"

Nova frowned at his quiet observation. "Maybe it wasn't destroyed because it carried the anomaly itself."

He put the sample back into the safety capsule. "That would make sense," he said and his cheerful grin returned. "I need to take a look at their core once we figure out what's happening in the western branch." Shuddered excitement lit up his face. "Do you think they'll let me poke it?"

Unable to keep up her own smile, she gave him a nod instead. "I'm sure if you explained yourself to Thuni he'd be more willing to cooperate with you." Nova pushed her hand into his shoulder and left the dorm. She tried to ignore the creeping tendrils outside the shuttered windows; the serrated, colourful jaws of the black hole before it swallowed the stars.

As she walked side by side with Neo, she hesitated at a new alarm. It whispered in her ear, an empty breath to rumble out of the event horizon. Goosebumps lifted her skin when she listened to the shift, the variable. Neo stopped at the edge of the transit station. "Nova?"

Voices whispered, a familiar inflection. Nova turned to discern the words. I... can't hear it. Nova caught up to Neo when the soft alarm continued to play in the back of her head. Am I hearing things? Is it the space station settling... or something else?

Neo's brow furrowed in concern, though he was the one who ended up dead every time. Her grief calcified the ice in the cracks of her heart. Out of tears and out of time, she stepped onto the tram to the center of the space station, where everything went wrong.

"Warning," an AI whispered to the rhythm of the voice. "—aggression confirmed within individuals exposed to the breach — cooperate with trained personnel — Lockdown A initializing into Z." It shorted into a burst of panicked static.

Nova swallowed at the familiarity, inside the reactor where the engineers attacked them and pushed her and Neo to their doom, which she narrowly escaped, but he never did. "Is that what they called you about?"

Neo frowned at the ceiling of the transit, then whipped out his datascroll to sort through tabs. "I wonder if the anomaly is causing this sudden wave of 'aggression'." He tapped his communicator and the transit screeched along its path. "I'm not getting anything. They're not answering me."

That isn't right. Central communications can't have fallen again. Did I just create another consistency? Nova faced the darkness ahead and continued along the course. Lights sent a wave of relief in her heart at the end of the tunnel, but she gasped when the transit slammed to a stop and almost sent her to her knees.

"Show your hands!" a familiar growl snapped. "Don't move!"

Blasters energized and trained on them.

Wait, what?

Neo raised his hands without argument.

Nova whipped out her blaster when a primer whirred outside the window, pointing it past Neo to the threat. "It's just us!" she yelled. "What is going on? Why have you stopped the transit?" Her heart leaped a thousand times when heavy, clawed footsteps approached from the darkness. Ready to do whatever it took, she frowned when Neo slipped his hand around her wrist, lowering her aim to point at the ground between them before shifting to stand in front of her.

"It's just us," Neo murmured when Admiral Mythrai's scales shuddered in the light, and he stepped into the transit with a duck of his head. "I got a call from Miss Zynaia to head to the labs due to a responsive fluctuation and reported aggression in the west."

He never flinched with all the blasters pointed at him.

But I can't trust it — trust them.

Admiral Mythrai nodded at the personnel, and the guns lowered.

"Yes, but there was a complication," he admitted. "Can you confirm the state of the eastern facilities? Has anyone acted strange?"

"Not from what I've noticed," Neo replied, and Nova let him talk, tucking herself against his back to steady her anxious spiral of a thousand eyes on her. "What do you mean by complications?"

"You can get off the transit. We'll escort you and explain on the way." He flicked his curled tail at Izerva, who stood outside. "Izerva, with us and keep an eye on the back. Everyone else, you may return to your posts."

Off the transit and onto the tracks, Nova kept behind Neo, with Izerva weaving through the void. "What's happening?" she asked, a sharp knife past her tongue. "Is it the anomalous breach we heard over the PA system?"

"We aren't sure," Admiral Mythrai admitted. "We lost contact with the western comms. Thuni and Ulin arrived from the transit, but from their account, something went wrong." He hesitated, then mumbled, "There were also strange sightings in Droid Bay A Mr. Horizol was uncomfortable with, so he took Fayzir through the west and stumbled on some sort of attack."

But the monster... didn't attack them?

"What happened in the west branch?" Neo pressed.

He stopped at the small ladder onto the platform proper. "I wasn't there to confirm this for myself. One of the men who escorted them claimed Habitation stopped responding, but their last message was this — people were turning on each other." His nostrils flared. "If either of you could get more information from Thuni or Ulin, I would be appreciative of more details." He let them climb onto the platform before following. "If not, getting them assured is a good first step. High stress never helps in these situations. If we're to subdue the aggression, I'd rather not resort to further violence, so I've shut down the transit system until we have a clearer understanding of the situation unfolding."

I don't understand. It was only the one time someone turned on us, I thought it was just a one off... but then again... I haven't seen the first monster in a while. It's been...

An empty, familiar voice.

Something isn't right, but if I think about it... is that what... he's hunting? He—It's always been around where the other one was. Manifested when it— Blood of the first soaked her hands when she stared into the void, but it came through for an attack. Teeth slammed down on its mass to spare her of death, to twist time into a repeat. ...the target isn't Neo — not supposed to be... if I'm correct... Nova squeezed her cheeks inward. Then why... why the attack from before?

Nova followed Admiral Mythrai, Neo, and Izerva through the corridors to the medical tower.

"Once you're done with Thuni and Ulin, Teimea, Miss Zynaia wished to discuss something with you," Admiral Mythrai said. "She'll be in the observatory. Izerva, you can escort them the rest of the way. Good luck." He sauntered off to check one of his personnel nursing a wound.

"This isn't right..." Nova mumbled.

Neo led her through the rest of the corridors to the entry of medical reception. "The anomaly was fine when I last left it," he echoed her confusion. "What did they do to agitate it and cause a chain reaction?"

Is this really the hearts doing? I know it's the center of this loop, but if what the admiral said is true... what's happening is separate. Nova clenched her fists, but stopped at the intense staredown Izerva had with Neo's back. Pupils thin, confusion twisted their muzzle when their tail swung side to side, and their attention drifted to somewhere on Nova's left, then westwards. Back to Neo, their fur stood on end.

"Izerva?" Nova asked, causing Neo to stop and turn.

"I must ask," they signed. "Scientist Neo, are you well?"

Neo blinked. "I'm fine," he said. "Why?"

Izerva's brow crunched and their ears flicked in further confusion. "You... seem scattered."

"Oh, that's normal for me." He laughed. "I'm a pretty scattered person."

Nova shivered at the dawning look of confused horror growing in their pupils. That's not what they meant, is it?

Neo shrugged and continued down the same track of all previous loops, but with a new, changed destination. Whispers intensified and touched the back of her neck. It continued to call out a name, but she struggled to hear who it tried to scream out to. Into medical reception, they hurried to the waiting room off to the side.

Ulin sat in a corner, swaying back and forth as Thuni stared at the wall. Nova raised her hands when the two of her glanced at her in one synchronised movement. "It's just us. Are you two okay?"

Ulin relaxed. "You two weren't who we were expecting."

Neo showed his hands in a non-threatening posture. "We just want to talk. Admiral Mythrai said you came from the west sector. What happened in the droid bay?"

"Are you okay?" Nova interrupted for an answer to her first question, before Neo could begin his barrage of questions built on his well-meaning curiosity.

Neither of them answered, until Ulin shook out their shoulders. "We're fine, physically, at least," they replied. "Spacyn, Thuni was saying there was something wrong with the droid bay—"

"I don't know how to explain it," Thuni finished. "We were being watched. Well—" He shrank into his broad shoulders to make himself smaller than he was. "I was, at least."

"Take a minute," Nova said to stop him. "Start from the beginning."

Leave nothing out, Neo begged her.

"After the briefing got stopped we headed to the hangar," Ulin reported. "I went to take out the core, but..." They eyed Thuni.

"I remember something strange... that I also don't remember, if that makes sense," Thuni admitted. "I decided to leave the core where it was to search around the bay, just to confirm I didn't lose my mind. Well, underneath one of the vents we found a similar substance to what was on our droid. Then there was a powersurge when they called the lockdown. Ulin and I left, but the eastern transit station was blocked with..." He rubbed the back of his head. "How do I put this...?"

Nova frowned, but let him continue.

"The entire station was covered in these... crimson sinew stuff," Thuni went on. "I didn't want to touch it, so we went through the west instead to get around, but when we arrived a worker from Habitation was twitching and raving. One of the guards posted nearby threw me and Ulin into the transit here, and..." Thuni went quiet.

"We heard screaming, or something," Ulin piped up with a shudder. "It was so unnatural. Do either of you know what's going on?"

I... I don't know anymore. Nova stepped forward. "So you didn't get your core?"

"No."

"If I head to the bay, can I get it?"

Thuni gazed at her. "Why do you want it?"

"For a little experiment of mine," Nova explained with a nod to Neo. "I need that sample."

"You can have it, but it's going to have to wait until after I've talked with Miss Zynaia," Neo pointed out. "You can wait here until I'm done."

Nova nodded and let Neo get out of her reach of safety. He passed Izerva, whose hair stood on end with his exit, a shiver descending through their tail when they shuffled on their feet. Nova motioned at them, and frowned when they signed, "Pressure."

Pressure?

Thuni pursed his lips and dug his fingers into his forearms. Nova asked, "Is there something wrong, Thuni?"

"Why do I remember us having a conversation about the core?" he whispered.

The loop bared its fangs and no longer made sense.