Nova lugged the resonating bomb to the transit station, where guards cleared out long before she arrived. Her footsteps echoed with the dead as she stood on the platform, timing her heartbeats. Closer to the western tram, she frowned when the lights flickered over her head. Things groaned and rumbled, but she ignored it to slap the call button.

It clicked.

Another hit.

Another click.

Nova scowled when the station dimmed. "I have other ways, you know."

Grey nebulae twirled at her feet, but without the solidity, she shuffled her way to the maintenance tunnels. Keypass locked into the panel, she opened the hatch to slide down to the bottom of the abyss. Her mind screamed for a change, a chance, tearing knives through her temples as she kept the bomb tucked closer to her side and pushed through the pain, no matter the cost. Her boots echoed off the metal, and the shadowed tendrils followed around the width of the tunnel.

The echoing stopped the deeper she went into the dark.

Stars swept into a weaving abyss when the pressure intensified, and she stared into the black hole.

"You can't stop me," she mumbled, ignoring the sense of doom and dread on her shoulders. "I need you to understand that I have to do this. If anything, this is going to make your job easier." Nova made the abyss stare back. "You're hunting the original breach, aren't you? Neo isn't even your target."

Stars vibrated and burst, only to return after a moment of sucking light. A plume of grey left the formless maw to tangle at her feet.

"If I do this, it'll force it out of hiding, right? I'll die, but..."

The nebulous clouds trembled.

"You can't stop me," she repeated, and headed inside. It screamed against her head with the oppression of atmospheric pain, but her steps continued, and continued.

And continued.

Nova frowned when the darkness subsided, only to find herself face to face with where she came from. Turned around in the black hole, she scowled and whipped around. "I'm doing this because I have no other choice," she bit, returning to its event horizon when the stars shimmered into a blinking way. "Let me do this. Let me try. You can't get it like this, you know that. We have no other choice in the matter." Tears fell down her jaw. "I'm doing this for everyone. So this can stop and we don't have to deal with this anymore."

I can stop remembering.

Another grey plume.

"Look, you can either get out of my way, or help me," she whispered. "Either way, I'm going. I'm going, and you can't change that." Her fingers dug into the carrier. "You can't change everything. Everything led up to this, that's just a fact."

The knives in her head slipped out.

It swirled into a bright event horizon, a flutter of starlit wings.

It went dark again when something clinked against metal.

Nova followed the source of the noise to tangle a chain in her fingers, standing back up to clasp it in her closed hand. It swung on a pendulum, and she rubbed her thumb across the broken surface.

I have to look. I have to turn back and look. I have to.

Nova looked at her hand and opened her fingers.

In the shape of a butterfly, glass cracked and filled with starlit seams to keep the wings together down its middle. Dark blood filled the edges of the wings and splattered it across the chain. Her breath escaped her as she rubbed her thumb against it, the butterfly necklace, a supposed good luck charm.

'I won't let them be erased,' Neo whispered into its wings.

You were right there.

All the rage.

You were so close.

Nova brought it closer to her brow and sobbed. "You were remembering all along, weren't you?" she rasped. "But still, why? You knew, but that never stopped you. If your goal was the breach, why did you attack?" Butterfly safely in her pocket, she rushed along to the other transit station.

Crimson sprites danced in the air as she ran against the clock, and ignored the desolation around her. It collected into grotesque piles, shifting with intent and devouring the bodies it left. Nova rushed into habitation at its endless moan.

Until the black hole silenced it.

He silenced the noise.

Nova scowled when the entrance behind her disappeared into the tendrils of the abyss. "You don't give up, do you?" she asked and set the bomb on the floor.

Stars vibrated, and the grey nebula swirled at her feet, the center of space. Nova chewed on the rage in the air, reflecting off the starry expanse. "I hate this," she growled. "I hate this because for some reason I have to be the one to change it. I have to be the one that remembers, but there is nothing I can do against that thing!" Her collected screams left her throat. "Why? Why did you do that?" On the edge of the horizon, she needed an answer from him. Necklace in her hands, she held it out. "Why did you do this to me?" It left a shattered cry, and she shook when it vibrated. "I could've stopped it! You didn't have to do that to yourself!"

It rippled with energy and concentrated on the bomb.

"You don't want me to do this?" Nova gasped and pointed at the bomb. "Then do something about it. Kill me, because if you don't, I will." Nova came closer to the raging abyss. "You... You're impossible sometimes. I told you that it was dangerous, but you're the one that touched that anomaly. I didn't ask for this!" Nova drowned in rage. "I didn't ask to be the one that remembers? For all I care, I might've been happier not knowing! Not knowing how you would die! But no, it had to be me. I have to remember all of it! I have to be alone wondering what it will take to make this stop because you never think past your questions. They come with consequences, Neo! Maybe it was better for us to never know the fate of the D.S Butterfly!"

Teeth shifted into a formless smile, but never lunged out to kill her.

"But that's the only thing that mattered to you in the moment," she hissed. "That one question, and that one moment changed everything. So, Neo, I don't care if you don't want me to do this. I will do it because I have no other choice! You didn't give me one if I wanted to save you!"

His snarl formed into a wild, endless grin.

"I'm sorry," a different voice whispered behind her.

Neo stood there in disbelief, arms limp at his sides as the crimson sprites collected behind the field of nebulous tendrils, trying to chew its way inside.

Her heart turned to horrified ice.

"I knew I did something wrong," he whispered and played with his anomaly scanner, heading past her to face himself. "I thought it was strange, you know?" He held out the datascroll. "It was a heartbeat we've been hearing, but for the life of me, I couldn't figure out where the host's body was." He sucked in his lips, and she frowned when tears fell down his face. "I've made a mistake."

"Neo, I—"

Neo looked up at the black hole, and matched its grin, but there was something sad to his. "I just wanted to... make sense of this," he admitted and turned to her and the black hole stopped smiling. "I want you to humour me for one more minute, if you can tolerate me for that much longer."

"What, Neo, I don't—?"

"You said we're looping," he interrupted. "But, it's like you said. I'm the one that touched it. You never had direct contact with it. It finally came to me," his voice came out breathless and relieved. "I finally get it. And because I get it, I need to ask you a question." He came closer, wide-eyed and full of desperation. "You have it all wrong, you aren't a constant. You're the variable."

Blood slipped between the black hole, and it shook.

Nova shrank. "I-I don't understand."

"I'm not the one remembering," he said. "If these loops have so many constants, when does it start."

"I already told you, it starts when you touch the anomaly."

Neo shook his head. "No, I mean, what do you first remember?"

"In the briefing," she whispered, and the black hole closed in when teeth cracked through.

"You remember at the start of the briefing?"

"Yeah?" Nova frowned. "You believe me?"

"I do."

"Even about the part about you dying over and over?"

His victorious grin fell. "I do, I'm sorry... I believe those things happened to me," he whispered. "I'm sorry I hurt you and put you in this position." He cringed. "I can't take it back, because... I'm going to do it again."

"What."

"I need to trust me, just for one more moment," he said and stepped over the bomb. "I touched the anomaly, but you're filling in the blanks I can't remember." He twisted back to the black hole. "That heartbeat you've been hearing coming from the anomaly? It's mine."

"It is?"

"Yes, and that also tells me something else," he said without taking his gaze off the abyss. "You dying here won't stop the loop."

"You don't know that."

"I deal with the uncertainty," he threw her words back at her, he reached out to hold her hands. "I'm sorry. Your plan is sound and on the right track, but it wouldn't fill the piece you're still missing in your head. You have to fill in the fractured gaps, like I told you in the droid bay."

Nova swallowed on tears. "Neo, what are you saying?"

"Why would it restart in the briefing? If anything, it should 'reset' before that."

"I... I don't know, I never thought about it."

"Do you remember anything before the briefing?"

Nova tried, but it came up a blank abyss. "No... do you?"

"Yes." He smiled. "In this room, we have at least three pieces of the puzzle, but Nova, you aren't an anomalous frequency to be matched. You're not an anomaly."

She heard an unspoken, 'I am.'

Nova clutched his shoulders. "I can't let you do this. I'll just be forced to redo this."

Sludge slipped past the event horizon to swallow it.

"You're right, it will probably loop again," he admitted, "and I won't remember but you will. You aren't asking the right questions, Nova... but I can't be trusted with mine. So, I'll give them to you instead. Just remember them." He squeezed her hands when nebulous tendrils fed into the bomb at his feet "For me? I can't tell you how I know that this will make sense soon... but I have a feeling."

"You don't know," Nova rasped.

"Why would your death change it?"

"Because it's not you, this time, it's me."

Neo sat down in front of the bomb, and his shadow expanded in the black hole. His necklace shone in the mist. "That's the blank you're working with," he said with an accepting smile. "You know, don't you? I didn't until I checked my own heartrate with the scan of the anomaly." He tipped back to indicate the black hole. "Me and the anomaly aren't separate in this instance. The heart stopped at the reset. It stopped when... I died."

"So, what, you're just going to die again?" Nova snapped, "Neo, what if this doesn't work?"

Neo loosened the tension in his shoulders. "It's just a theory."

"I don't want you to die."

His smile softened, and the black hole blurred. "I just... I want you to know that I do not blame you, and I'm sure the previous iterations never did either. I wouldn't have faulted you if you gave up on me, but you didn't. You didn't fail me, Nova. So, just let me make it right, for just one loop. Let me do something right, for once. If this doesn't work—"

The monster gurgled and the black hole slammed its teeth against the walls to stop its advance. "Neo."

"The situation is messed up either way, but you've been through so much that I can't remember," he whispered. "I can do something for you, though."

"Such as?"

"I'm going to try and change the frequency of the loop. You're going to have to find out after and tell me how it went."

"You're not going to have any idea what I'm talking about."

"Nope." He beamed through the black hole, and a star blazed to life at its center. "I'm an anomalous scientist, though. Uncertainty is what I play with, but... you're the one that deals with the certain... and I won't let you be erased."

Nova gasped when he shoved her past the doors, with a lance of nebulous light piercing the beast outside to give her room to escape. Tendrils launched forward to drag it into the black hole, but time slowed down when Neo leaned for the bomb, to release the pure energy of time.

He took out the blaster when it lit up, and aimed it at the panel.

One last smile.

It rang with a blaster shot.

Another whisper of light, and the nebulous mist slammed the doors closed.

In another agonizing ripple of space and time, the entire station screamed.

A large shock wave knocked the wind out of her lungs. Bones cracked in her ears. Nova rolled over to cover her head, unable to get through the rustic taste in her mouth. She coughed it up with the music, and found herself unable to move in the embrace of space-time coiling around her.

Nebulous grey stars evaporated with the crimson sprites.

Her world darkened when she tried to get off the floor. Her breath escaped her and the song intensified — dissonant and unforgiving.

Everything stretched when the alarms burned into her retinas.

The black hole swallowed her into its embrace.