"WARNING! ANOMALOUS THREAT ACTIVE AND DANGEROUS! LOCKDOWN LEVEL Z IN EFFECT."

It rang out in an apathetic, robotic tone. Red pulsed underneath the doorway into their room as the small holomap on the wall blipped out its pain before the communications fell and reports failed to deliver to keep track of the emergencies in the space station. Metal rumbled and cracked and the emergency lights flickered.

Alarms. Voices. Neverending silence.

"If center command loses contact with the sectors..." Nova pressed her hand against the holomap to bring up the maintenance tab with her access card. "It might activate the warpdrive without the navigational data to our last safepoint..." And up our chances of throwing ourselves into a star... Another shake sent the abyss into her twitching stomach. Nova opened her communicator to click Thuni and Ulin's names, but static responded to her fervent call. One click on the south sector, it lost its light in the void. Fuck, the spaceflight terminals are down. Communications are disconnected to the south branch, fuck. This is bad. Onto the eastern sector, red clicks of activity shuddered along the corridors. "Neo, I—"

Neo sat at his desk, gaze unfocused.

"Neo."

He lifted his head.

Nova opened the protective cabinet with her card, taking a blaster meant for self-defense purposes. "I'm going to go head for security and maintenance to see if I can help with anything and to tell them there are still people in the south sector." Her communicator failed to grab Thuni and Ulin's connection on the space station, and it unsettled her nerves at their silence. "They aren't answering me and I left them in Droid Bay A." Where this all really started.

Neo tapped his hand against his terminal. "Maybe they left when they got the lockdown notice? Why would they stay at the bay?" He hauled himself out of his chair to follow her out into the dimly lit corridor. Along the halls, the Interns doors remained shut tight from the inside, but she wasn't willing to go down without answers to the problem in front of her — emergency protocol, and this was the real deal. Experience was a better teacher.

"You think Thuni was going to leave the droid if he couldn't get to the bottom of it? I wouldn't," she murmured and led him out of the Internship quarters, past the reinforced glass. The Ushavex nebula shed a rainbow of gaseous particles along their space station. Red swept in solar waves through the empty rooms they passed. Back against a corner, she checked around the side as Neo shuffled in beside her.

"We're not in a spy movie, Nova," he whispered. "You have maintenance access and I have my own access levels..."

"I'd rather be careful and take the training sessions Admiral Mythrai set seriously," she said. "Considering we don't know what's going on. I don't want to spook people." Ahead, the eastern bulkhead blocked the way onto the tram station. Half-way open, the nearby security dome with the maintenance entrance on the other side. Blue light peeked out of the frame, but no shadows whisked around to reveal the presence of trained personnel, with each one called to contain the anomaly at central command.

Neo's hand rested on her shoulder when he leaned around her. "The guards are gone."

Nova slipped to the half-open door. Cameras lined the walls with broken, glitched feed. Chairs swiveled on their pivots. A capsule of station fare coffee rested in a secured coaster attached to the desk. In the weapon cabinets, no weapons sat on the racks. Inside and at the terminal, she switched to the southern sector's feed. Glitches spread further until it was nothing but static in Droid Bay A.

"That isn't right." Nova pressed her hand against the desk, typing coordinates and signals to project it onto the security holomap in the middle of the dome.

Izerva's blip lit up in the training bay.

Thuni and Ulin disappeared.

Nova reentered them to make sure, but the answer remained.

Red blips moved instead along the outer bounds of the space station, and inside the corridors and ventilation.

Nova let go of the holomap when Neo raised a hand to his communicator. "Miss Zynaia?" He went quiet. "I'm clear and inside eastern sector security. It's quiet on our end, but what of everywhere else? What's going on?" His questions came out methodical with a steady certain tempo, but he sucked in his lips. "... what do you mean by that? It wasn't—?" Confusion and a thin layer of alarm fluttered across his brow when he switched his attention to the cameras. "Nova, you're looking in the wrong sector."

"What?"

"You need to switch to the north sector," he said with a tinge of desperation to his shaking fingers.

Nova followed his command.

Capacitors flashed through the dark glitch — no, not a glitch, the very air permeated with thick, black film. It exploded in the darkness when something molded through the corridor. A writhing mass of a sucking black hole. Crimson smeared in a slug trail. Liquid coagulated into a mass of bulbous tumours. Nova held back the vomit when it overtook one soldier when they scrambled to get out of its way, but nothing escaped the event horizon.

No sound came from the feed.

It greyed out the map on its trail. The feed stifled into pitch and tar, with nothing left but the last, spaghettified flashes of light. "Neo?" she rasped and her back hit the holomap to escape the unseen pressure of being pulled in with no escape, with her only protection behind camera feed. "Neo, what is that?"

His silence made her turn.

He gazed at the feed with another unfocused twist as he appeared to count his breaths. Pressurized air cracked along the cameras and burst her eardrums with the insistent tug. Her knees cracked, but she held herself up when the screens pulsed crimson. Her hand found Neo's forearm to pull him out of the suffocation, and she closed security behind her to catch her own breath in her lungs. It cooked in her temples and threatened to chew on her atoms, until it whisked in the unseen.

"Nova, what's wrong?"

His unfocused gaze disappeared when she lifted her head, and she wondered if she imagined it.

No, I didn't imagine it... and that wasn't him being unfocused. That was hyperfocus to the 'nth degree. Nova held his hand when he offered it to her. "It was heading for center command. Neo, what was that?" she echoed for good measure in case his auditory processing failed him.

He shook his head. "I-I don't know."

"WARNING!" a robotic voice called over the PA system. "WARP SEQUENCE LOCKED. AWAITING ADMIN INPUT AND ENGINEERING INPUT. REQUIRED: PREVIOUS COORDINATES"

Neo tapped his communicator with a soft scoff and tossed his hand into his hip. "I don't have contact with the anomaly division anymore."

"Last coordinates..." Nova tasted the command on her tongue. "Wait. That means Movium 1XH. They want to go backwards into unknown hyperspace?"

Nebulous tendrils wrapped closer to the reinforced glass. Clangs echoed through the facility and set her heart on fire at what stalked the corridors. Neo dipped his head forward and pressed his free hand into his chin with a deepening frown.

Even if we can get the angle and trajectory — no, the greatest damn pilot's in the galaxy couldn't pull off that feat. Maybe if we turn the station around to face the other direction... but fuck, we don't know which way is even up in this cloud. Her thoughts drifted to the grey event horizon. "Neo? What's on your mind?"

"I wonder if it's connected to the nebula," he whispered without direct acknowledgement of her words. He closed his eyes and inhaled a deep breath. "It would make sense — but it could be the other missing half of the anomaly. Maybe a defensive protocol of some sort..."

Nova shook him. "Neo, I don't think now is the time to completely theorise. That thing is tearing its way through the station and if it gets to the main core we might be fucked with a capitol F. Did you not see what happened on the feed?"

Neo nodded. "I wonder if it can multiply..."

"Neo."

He turned to the blast doors and disregarded her, where the bulkhead kept out the danger inside the northern sector. Nova found herself uncomfortable in the sight of the vents pumping renewable oxygen, with Habitation the sole lifeline in lifeless, sucking space. "We have time," he said. Greens. Blues. Purples. Crimson. It all danced on the glasswork of his butterfly necklace. "I need to get to the central towers to try and contact the other researchers on this... unprecedented situation." He headed for the control panel to the bulkhead.

"Maybe we should wait for the all clear?"

"I think that's off the table if the personnel can't get a handle on this new, uncontained anomaly," Neo said and swiped his access card. With a hard clank, the blast doors opened from the top. "If they reroute the defensive power back into the anomaly labs and try and lead it into a containment it might hold it off. We need to open communications and make sure we don't warp straight into a star."

"Neo, that won't work."

Neo never allayed the fear dug in the bile of her stomach when they slipped through the open bulkhead and onto the transit station. On the tracks, the lights pulsed. "Well, if we get communications up and running it might make it easier," he said and hopped onto the tram in the station. Nova clung onto the railing when it rumbled down the track. Vents groaned.

Unable to tell what was white noise, or a black hole on the hunt for light.

I never imagined any of it, did I?

Nova kept a hand on her blaster when they reached the end, and the warning rang out, again and again. Neo opened the next bulkhead, and she kept close behind him to keep track of their environment.

Decay smashed in her nostrils and she coughed out the mold. She pressed her filtration mask over her mouth and nose, and Neo followed suit without much reaction. Alarms distorted behind the layer of crimson in the air. It splattered in their wake and formed against the corners of walls to create thick piles of goo to clot. It slipped up into the vents. The space station was nothing more than an infected system of metal veins.

Nova raised her flashlight to the metal shutters closing off the reinforced glass for protection. "This is bad." Neo shuffled over to a close pile of hard to determine goop, and she grabbed his forearm. "Neo, can we not touch anything this time?"

"I wasn't." Neo held out his scanner and brought it close to the pile. He knelt closer, but never set his knees in the crimson metal. Nova paced around him until he whispered, "You need to take a look at this."

"Neo, I can see it, it's hard to miss."

Neo motioned to the data fed into the scanner. "It's registering as an anomaly, but the composition is—" He puffed out a breath, and his words came out with a layer of caution. "Blood and marrow..."

"Marrow as in..."

"Bone."

Nova shuddered and hopped to keep distance from the goo pile, but Neo tugged out the phial from before. Another tab opened on the scanner as he compared the two.

Nails scratched down her own skeleton as another sound joined the fray.

Heavy. Lumbering.

Everywhere, but in her own body and her own heartbeat.

"Neo, we have to go." Nova nudged him with her foot. "What if it comes back this way?"

Neo pocketed both the phial and scanner in his inner coat pockets, and she took the lead through the corridor to avoid the silent noise. It fluttered in the air, but when she strained to hear it in full it whispered with a beating wing. It echoed through the vents, nothing more than a distant, almost familiar hum in time with the tempo of her thunderous heart. Nova stopped at the flickering holomap to check the status of the northern sector. Everywhere they stepped, something squished in the dark.

Nova pointed her flashlight at the clot pile clawing for relief at the holomap. Its stench tore through her filtration apparatus. Broken signs directed to other parts of the infected divisions, bathed in shadows. Others, bright as stars.

What did that thing do here? Where is everyone?

Neo's datascroll beep and sent the fear in her stomach straight though her legs into a hazardous leap.

"Fuck!" she hissed.

"I'm sorry," he whispered and checked it. "It's a message from the senior researchers. I'm to report to anomaly labs — the main anomaly... started to respond."

"Really?" Nova relaxed her fear, but it slithered up her shoulders. "Then... I think I'm heading to the bridge to reestablish contact throughout the facilities and establish proper coordinates." Hesitation brought her closer to him. "Is it possible we agitated this... thing in taking the anomaly out of the nebula? If we get enough power, we might be able to neutralize it." Only idea I have anyway, and stars know my ideas tend to fall flat more often than not... Nova nodded at his datascroll. "Center comms are still up?"

"One-way." Neo nodded. "The creature hasn't torn through the defenses, so I need to head over there to give them my findings and tell them the state of this branch." He held her shoulder. "Nova, you should come with me. It's like you said, the creature might still be here."

"Yes, but we know for certain it passed the bridge."

Neo frowned and lowered his head, a cold mask came down when his attention drifted to the dark.

Is he... scared?

"We have to input safety coordinates in case it goes wrong," Nova whispered, to assure him and reveal the light underneath the mask he wore in times of stress. "I am working in the engineering division, Neo. I can do this, you're the one who said you believed in me." Her hand clapped against his shoulder. "We have to come at this from two angles, Neo. If I see anything of note and I get the comms running, I'll contact you."

Neo hesitated, then undocked the infodrive from his datascroll. "I'm not going to poke anything on my way there if you get more readings with this." He gripped her fingers, but she frowned at the shakes which bled into his smile.

"You promise not to?" she pushed.

He squeezed. "If you promise to be careful."

"I promise I'll be careful," she said and lowered his hands. "I'll come back to center command if I can't find a safe way to the bridge."

"Then, I promise to not touch anything and keep track of everything from there to the best of my ability." Neo released her and turned to the bloodied holomap when it sent out another blip. "Activity in the east sector... I guess another thing to bring attention to." He pointed a path around the largest blips. "Take this one to the bridge and... I'll see you later?"

Nova nodded and waited for him to jog down the corridor to make sure he kept to his word. Her own goal in mind, she rushed the other way, to the bridge and through the death in the air.

Wait... it was heading to center command?

What's in the east?