"It's down this slope."

Nova slid down it with more ease than the last time with Thuni and Ulin. Neo hesitated on the edge, then crawled down the rocks and twigs, lost in the distance as he landed without grace at the bottom. He clung onto a low hanging branch and frowned with a soft scoff.

"You need help?" Nova asked.

Neo let go of the branch and shook his head when she went to place her hand under his elbow. Through the valley, she took the middle while Neo wandered at the back of the pack. The distance between them choked her with the weight of survival. It needed to be bridged if they were to make it.

"It's up ahead," Thuni said from the front.

Nova waited for Neo to catch up before continuing through the forest. As before, the field of slimy spiderwebs blocked the grove with gooey tendrils. Everyone loomed on the edge when some of the bulbs oozed out the irritant slime. Neo raised the tip of his finger to brush away one piece with a frown. "Is this it?"

"Yeah..." Thuni mumbled and hid behind a tree.

"It reacted when we stepped into the center," Nova explained as Neo headed for one of the exposed tree trunks, where bulbs pulsed in the hollowed out holes. He hovered closer, anomalous scanner in hand without another word. Lines of data filled the blanks, and his silence unnerved her, so she checked on the other three. Ulin, who avoided the terrifying display of slime, knelt near the mud, but jumped when Thuni tugged them out of range.

Neo rested his hand against the slicked bark and brushed the edge of his finger against it. Inside, the bulb shuddered, and Nova held her breath when he wrote something on the scanner.

"Well?" Thuni asked, back behind the tree.

Neo gazed at her and then returned to his anomaly scanner, slipping out a thin attacher from the side, and slid the needle into the blooming bulb. Graphs filled the screen and projected in front of him. He brushed away smaller ones to add it into a whole document.

Slime slipped down the strands as the ground shuddered.

Nova kept her distance as Neo rubbed the side of his head in thought.

"What are you thinking?" she asked.

He returned his hand to the moss-covered bark and pulled his fingers down its surface. The mass inside the hollow shivered at the movement. He took one more peek inside, then studied the scanner readings. "Its root system is impressive."

"What?" Thuni questioned. "What about the slime? Does your scanner tell you anything about it?"

"It's some sort of defense mechanism against predators." He slipped the injector out of the slime ball. "It does have a couple of allergenic compounds, though I'm sure you could figure that out for yourself. I can say you're not going to die, but we'll keep an eye on it. You reported uncomfortable burning and itchiness, but it's been a day and you've both recovered." Neo folded his arms and sent a weary smile their way. "Does that help any?"

Thuni scratched his arms without a reply.

"It's not aggressive?" Nova asked.

Neo shook his head. "Aggressive is not the same as defensive."

"It's still dangerous, either way. Something defensive can be just as dangerous as something with full blown aggression." Nova caught herself in the staredown, and the bulbs above their heads swung in the wind. Thuni coughed under his breath, and she broke from the entrapment to check on him. "Thuni, you said the water helped alleviate some of the discomfort?"

"Yeah."

"Interesting." Neo sat at the base of the slime-covered tree, then wrote something down on one of the documents. Nova frowned when the hollow swelled and oozed from the cracks in the bark, though Neo paid it no mind. "I'll probably take a look at it, a part of the river is right by here, right?" He avoided her gaze once more to look at the direction of the part of the river breaking through the trees. "... just to be safe."

"Just to be safe?" Nova echoed at the word of caution and tasted it on her tongue until it settled in her mind. Neo shuffled against the trunk and buried himself in the projected documents. Tension cracked along her throat and left her parched for relief and stability. Her words stopped at the tip of her tongue, and she bit down on it.

He closed himself off.

Ulin's voice sounded behind her, but it was too far across the starlit sea.

"Nova!" Thuni yelled louder. "Nova, they're swelling!"

Neo switched his attention to the tree instead of the danger, and pressed his hand against it. Slime oozed out of the bulbs across the surface of the thick leaves. It squeezed along the strands, threatening to snap apart.

Across the starless sea, she rushed for him before his blood spilled again. He gasped when she shoved him out of reach of the trees expanding routes in one shuddered breath. Watery ooze blasted into her world. It slicked across her arms to tangle all over her clothes. It dripped off her fingers as Neo sat up from the ground with a hand on his back.

Bulbs burst apart.

Izerva screeched in alarm and dove into the bushes to avoid the sticky artillery. Thuni cursed a string of vulgarity as Ulin joined him behind the tree.

Everything burned in flames and metal alarms.

Barbs of flames dug deeper into her flesh and sent the sting through her blood. Nova fought to shake it off with a choking gasp, but it stuck to her clothes when she shuffled out of the danger zone, but it followed her with the thirsty jaws of the black hole.

Everything screamed. Everything rang.

Slime slipped off her fingers and turned into crimson in a flash of metallic light. "Fuck!" she gasped when it bit and boiled. "Fuck!"

Neo escaped the danger zone in the same millisecond the creature killed him.

Stars! Nova chewed her tongue and tried to push herself through the dark corridors of the space station as the blood ooze flayed her skin for her failures. Terror slammed into her heart when someone grabbed her around the middle. Hands around her throat. Left without oxygen in the frozen vacuum. It burned into her noiseless scream as someone pulled her out of the mud and dragged her closer to the jaws of nebulous gray mist, fluttering into a river. She kicked and writhed to try and free herself from the grip of a monster, everything flying by her at the speed of light. I hate it! I hate everything! What did I ever do?

"Let me go!" she gasped for old air.

An arm went around her shoulders, and she flailed when they pushed her off the edge and into dead space. Bubbles popped in her ears when the water swallowed her face and she found her grip on someone's lean shoulders. In another, colder instant, they dragged her out of the riverbed and steadied her. Droplets followed the trail of flame across her skin as she dug deeper into who hauled her into the embrace of the river, kneeling with her in the chills.

It went quiet.

Neo gazed down at her with his hands against her arms. A sob left her throat when he let out a sigh of life, and she hugged him close. "I'm sorry."

"We're going to have to go around it," Thuni said from the bank, and he had never laid a hand on her.

Izerva angled their tail. "Yes. I think that is wise."

Nova let go of Neo to wipe off the last of the slime barrage off her cheeks and sank into the relief the water gave. Neo kept a hand on her back as he raised his hand from the bed, rubbing his damp fingers with a quiet hum of affirmation and a shrug. "Thank you, Neo."

He froze, then peered at her. He straightened himself out and whisked some slime off his hands, then held one out for her to take. Hesitation inched across her fingers when she reached out to take it, as she had many times before, but she drew back. "I don't want to get anymore slime on you."

He sighed. "It's not like it can be any worse then..." He faltered off, then frowned. "We need to get you back to camp and dried off."

Nova held onto his sleeves to lift herself on shaky knees and out of the waters of her bad luck.

"Are you alright?" Thuni asked while Ulin tried to clean off their boots.

Nova scratched her arm with a shiver. "The water did help."

"You're going to want to submerge it more if it flares up," Thuni said, quiet when Neo crawled out of the river and in the direction of camp. Her fellow engineer examined Neo when he walked past the other three without another word — without an expression of thought or internal workings. Thuni rubbed the back of his neck with a painful grimace. "It's best if we go back and get cleaned off."

Nova wavered behind the pack when Izerva took the lead. Her fingers raked across her smouldering skin, and she tried to dig it out. Tongue between her teeth, the cold touch disappeared, over and over again when his hand fell limp in hers. "It's getting bad again."

"We will get a bucket of water." Izerva nodded at Thuni. "Come with me, it'll be faster with the two of us."

"Uh, sure."

"What about us?" Ulin asked as they made it back to the cave. "What should we do?"

"Stay." It was the only answer Izerva gave before disappearing to the lakeside with Thuni, who shoved his hands into his pockets.

Nova tucked herself against the rocks, and Neo hesitated in front of the entrance of their shelter. Her hands found her stinging shoulders. Teeth crawled against her skin with an universal hiss. Trembles pulsed through her body when she tucked her knees into her chest and pushed her palms against her ears to avoid the alarms. Tears slipped down her cheeks as she tried to rifle through the tormented memories.

Neo hadn't moved, staring at her.

Ulin shuffled past Neo with a nod of apology before disappearing into the cave.

Nova frowned when Neo sucked in his lips, then headed for her. His shadow loomed with grey tendrils, and she pushed out the image of the black hole, her best friend.

"Not my greatest moment," she choked on timeless tears.

"We're hopeless," he echoed her words in another loop. Nova swung her attention to him, and he tucked his hands against his chest. Shame and weariness mixed across his face.

Nova released herself. "Only a little... you remember that?"

Every emotion from before drained into the event horizon of the black hole of his creation at the center of the universe. "I..." He hugged himself, and he shuffled for the shelter without another word.

"Neo."

"We're back," Thuni called. "Is it worse?"

In her moment of distraction, Neo escaped into the cave.

Thuni and Izerva put the bucket in front of her, but Izerva frowned at Neo's hasty escape. "I am sorry if we interrupted something."

"There wasn't a conversation happening," she mumbled and shoved her arms into the water. Tears collected on her lips and brought pain instead of the relief she sought. "I think he wants to say something, but he can't... for whatever reason."

Thuni shuffled on his feet. "Is it because of us?"

"I don't think so." I hope not. Nova cupped the water and splashed it against her face to clean off the grime of the loops.

Izerva twitched and touched the tips of their claws. "You must give him time. It has only been a couple days since he awoke. He must be severely confused, with his thoughts and energy muddled. Anyone would be."

Nova groaned into the water. "I don't think we would've made it if we were anyone else." But... would this have happened if we were anyone else?

It haunted her nightmares; the question of the universe and the one Neo hadn't asked.