Eastern sector fell quiet.

Nova rushed through the corridors when alarms rang out and the PA system called out the difference in times.

"DESTABILIZATION IN PROGRESS."

We have nowhere to run.

Nova twisted around a corner, but screeched when the station rippled apart. Her eyes boiled in flames when she found herself on the ground. Fast images of tendrils and blood metal seeped through her vision. Nova drove her fingers into her temples to pull it out, but it roared, never willing to die.

Back on her feet, she pushed forward through two overlapped realities. Into silence. Into an explosive supernova. Through everchanging space.

Everything trembled. Everything fell still.

Everyone screamed, but no one spoke.

People died, but walked.

Time continued, and stopped.

Shots rang out to echo slamming doors. Nova pushed one open with a grunt when her knees threatened to give out. Blood sprayed the walls, but fell into clarity. Wait, our room? But I was heading to the medtower! Why am I here?

Music rang in her ears and the flames of a distant star seared into her head. She stumbled when another shot blasted right beside her eardrum. It rang and shuddered the station with her gasp of white-hot pain ripping her scalp. Her fingers raised to graze the source of agony, but when she drew it back, no blood oozed between her fingers.

Nova scrambled from the door when it almost shut on her feet. Her back hit the wall, and she used the stinging reminder to force herself up. He's... I don't think he's where I left him. Nova stumbled her way in the direction of central transit. Every voice joined the chorus of space, except for hers and Neo's.

He mentioned how he heard it calling to him, so there's only one other place he'd go. Stars, all you had to do was stay put for once. A sob escaped her throat with the collected pain all across her body as she punched the button to activate the transit. Time and space crumbled at her touch. It repeated letters. It repeated time. It repeated space. Nova tripped onto the transit as it closed behind her, refusing to bend to any force but time itself.

I have to go.

Nova held on tight to the railing when it barrelled through the darkness with its own echoed screech. Questions burst in her mind, but she straightened herself out when the pain subsided though the universe no longer made sense and the loop entangled her in its whim. Any answer it gave led to more questions. It slammed into the central platform as people screamed in the distance, but she no longer knew if it was a time long past, the phantom of the D.S Butterfly, or the broken present.

Or both.

Cosmic energy ripped through the hull of the station when she pushed herself forward. Red stars guided her to her destination; to the only other place Neo would go. Death followed in his wake, but time froze. "Neo," she called out, trying not to cry out from the intense pressure gathering in her skull, and she leaned against the wall when a wave of nausea slipped into her nose. She tripped on bodies yet to be there. Over what the monster left behind. Her bones cracked with the arrays.

We're in the jaws of the nebula, and now it's biting down.

Nova wiped sweat off her brow as she stumbled on top of the Z lab terminal and shoved Neo's keypass inside. It responded with the same words, the same variation of numbers and letters with no meaning to her. Grey tendrils forced the doorway open, and she broke through the first death. Her knees buckled, but she refused to falter.

"Neo," she whispered at the shape coming closer to the eye, and the containment opened to reveal a black pupil. "Can we not do this again?"

He came to a stop.

"It all ends someday. Galaxies. Us. The universe even, will end," he mumbled with a thousand voices before. Each step he took caused tendrils to lick across the room. "It was always a singular, unchanging fact. The stardust which encompasses everything... it will all fade." He never turned back to her.

Nova kept going. "Neo, you know you can't handle this. If you do this, you'll die." The pupil bulged and twisted with a metallic groan. Neo stiffened, and didn't turn to her in full. Cosmic colours filled his eyes, and the pupil behind him blinked. Nova stopped at the edge. "You know that, don't you? I think I have another way."

"You still need the coordinates, don't you?" he whispered. "And you can only have them if I read them. I had a question, and this is how it answered me. All I wanted to know was if the D.S Butterfly could be saved, but you were right, Nova. You were right to call me out on the danger back then. At the time, I just thought you couldn't... see the importance of it, but I was wrong about that too." His shoulders shook with a stifled sob. "We're not the first to attempt this. We're not the first to try and break through his blanket that's been here longer than we have."

Everything burned when he turned away once more.

"Neo, you don't have to do this for the D.S Butterfly," she rasped.

He stopped. "Who said I was? I'm not doing it for them. I have seen their phantoms too much, I know I can't do anything. But what I can do is peer closer, to save this fleeting moment," he said, his voice clear and no longer weak. "It was the cost of the truth."

The entire world went aflame. The universe screamed across the sea of time when he came closer to it.

"Neo, I want to go home," she gasped against the constricted space. Words blazed, her one escape.

He swayed on his feet. "I know," he said with a soft laugh. "I'm sorry. This is a lot, but I'll open it."

Nova crossed the event horizon.

Neo raised his hand to the main array. "I have to correct this. I can fix the curling continuum around us." He twisted a couple knobs. "Find the point where you can escape out of."

"Neo, stop."

Her voice froze time.

It drained the room of colour. Her steps came closer to the embrace of the gateway. "You don't have to do this, this wasn't your mistake," she said through the ringing in her ears. "You did not do this to them. You're living in their moment. You've watched this all play out in front of you and I know what it's doing to you. I know you. This sort of thing would make you obsessed with finding a way to undo it. It's an anomaly, and you don't love anything more than the challenge of figuring them out," she snapped. "I get it. But Neo, you deserve to be happy doing what you love, you can't do all of that if you die for it. You can't explore the truth in things. You can't make sense of things if you're gone. You will never know why this happened if you sacrifice yourself for something you can't change. You love nothing else in your life but this." Her heart pounded. "But you have to stop living in their moment and get back to this one! You have people who love and care about you waiting for you. We can still escape."

His shoulders slacked, and he shook his head without another word.

"And Neo," she rasped. "I never regretted it, even though I know you don't believe me. It's the one thing you can't seem to believe." Ever closer to the end, she stopped. "I can't stop you, I see that... but listen for a moment." Tears went up into her throat. "I don't want to lose you. I know you think my life would be better for it, but only I get to make that distinction. You haven't made my life worse. You made it better." Nova trembled. "I love you, Neo. You're my best friend and you need to wake up."

It went quiet. Everything stopped.

He turned away from the anomaly to face her instead.

He blinked a couple times, and Nova readied herself for the grief to never end.

His footsteps echoed around her ears, and she stiffened when he came closer to her, then embraced her with more strength than she knew he really had.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I haven't been a really good friend lately, and I love you too."

Time restarted.

Her ears popped with an eerie groan. Everything spun with forceful inertia when the pupil twirled inwards on itself. Heat expanded in the lab as every piece of the first loop filled the gaps in the last.

Metal groaned, a monster roared in the corridor as the noise returned with a scream.

A piece of debris flowed through the world on nebulous wings.

Her hands grabbed him as his knees buckled and he slumped, and she tugged him out of the way of the first loop; the first death.

It slammed through the eye, and it cracked against the wall.

"DESTABILISATION IN PROGRESS! HULL BREACH IN NORTH SECTOR! EXTERNAL ANOMALOUS ENERGY ABOVE CLASS Z!"

Nova grasped for what made sense. Back in time. Back in the first, or the last. Nova frowned when it swirled into the depths of the black hole. Nova groaned from the soreness crawling underneath her skin, but she shook Neo. "Neo?"

Her communicator chirped, but she was set adrift.

Neo took in a shaky breath and continued to hold onto her, and she released the fear in her heart. "You're an idiot..." she mumbled.

"Spacyn!" Thuni snapped through the line.

"Thuni?" she asked.

"Stars!" He gasped. "You can read me?"

"I can." Nova steadied Neo when he went limp, but continued to breathe. Crimson light faded away into the twist of space and time. She dragged Neo to his feet and swung his arm over her shoulder when her communicator struggled to reconnect to them.

"Spacyn—" Thuni insisted. "Izerva—on their way—from western sector."

"What's going on?" Nova asked.

"Things went dark—I hear something in the vents—Ulin set up your droid we just need coordinates—Izerva explained—coming with—"

He shorted out.

Her senses came to life at the familiar words. Fuck!

Nova checked her grip on Neo, then dragged him out of the anomaly labs as bulbous tendrils unfurled out of the vents with a hiss. Memories carried on the flutter of wings poured into her mind. Neo lost his grip with each weighted timeline they left behind.

Her every step echoed in silence as she changed their direction to western transit. The PA system blared out dissonant alarms for an evacuation doomed from the start.

Stay with me, Neo.

Everything blurred as she escaped the approach of death, with no prey left but to rampage. She ignored all looping events. The transit struggled to start up, but she sent a kick into it, almost unbalancing herself to keep a hold on him. A nebulous cloud swallowed what she left behind.

It rumbled beneath her feet.

Nova sat Neo down on the seats and he slumped into the corner. Her hands held onto his forearms, where he remained limp. He breathed, but it slowly disappeared with the passing moment of the end —of time as it crossed the bloody, starless sea.

What was the cost of looking past the nebula?

Nova sank beside him from a gravitational push, but she refused to let go of him as the transit delivered them across. Metal clanged. Blasters tried to fight back against a formless being.

We could never fight it. The most you could do was trap it for a time... it was always fruitless to go after the Butterfly. Nova rubbed his shoulder. You still tried, so... it showed you an answer, and it thought you could survive it after the last time someone must've tried to use it.

Nova got on her feet when the transit rolled to a stop before pulling Neo with her, rejoining Izerva who tucked themselves into a corner. Their eyes buldged when they caught sight of them. "Nova," they signed and rushed to Neo's other side. "His energy is fading fast."

Nova nodded. "We have to get off this station. Now."

"WARNING! EXTERNAL ARRAYS UNRESPONSIVE!"

Gravity crushed them down with the fate of the first.

So close to the transit leading to their escape, where Neo lost his breath the longer they remained.

You were wrong. You were never supposed to die here.

You could reset it because you were never supposed to die, not because I had to escape.