It took too long for the silence to end.

Neo didn't budge with the first ringing alarms. He gave his datascroll a cursory glance then twisted onto his other side with a squished frown when they continued to scream.

"LOCKDOWN Z INITIATED — AGGRESSION CONFIRMED WITHIN INDIVIDUALS. COOPERATE WITH TRAINED PERSONNEL."

It's time to get to work. Nova packed her blaster as Neo dragged himself out of bed.

"I bet there are some people annoyed with me stalling the briefing," he said with a smile, dissonant to the alarms. Unaware of his fate at the end of it all. "Here I was saying I'd be there in an hour... and it's way past that."

"Why would be they annoyed by that? I'm the one that forced the reschedule." Nova checked her tools and pinned the capacitor safety before holstering it.

"Well, you had a good reason." Neo shrugged. "I elaborated that there were some unforeseen circumstances that we'll have to put off for later — my specialty. Maybe that'll give them some time to come up with tangible samples as to what the anomaly is or what it's really capable of." He pouted. "Those are my favourite parts of scientific observation. I wanted to share mine with everyone."

"I know you think it's a heart," Nova whispered. Neo eyed her, but the question from before never left his lips. He rubbed his throat again with a soft, near silent huff, and Nova frowned. "Why didn't you just tell them you weren't feeling well?"

"And why would I do that?"

Pixel butterflies fluttered over hologram flowers. Trapped against time, her own wingbeat changed nothing yet everything at once. "Thank you for covering for me, Neo."

"You've done it plenty of times for me."

And I fail you each time... though I know that's what you mean. Nova took a drink from her own water capsule and relished the chill swelling into her stomach. "Are they in central command?"

"Where else would they be?" Neo asked. "We're in lockdown. I doubt they'll be in the breakroom." He pinched his cheeks with furrowed thought. "Was it a Z shutdown? It means they'll be in the safest place on the space station in case anything goes wrong." His smile shifted into pointed curiosity. "Why would that change?"

He's right. Another constant? Or something I can easily change but haven't figured out how? Nova shrugged her heavy shoulders and headed out of the dorm side by side with Neo. Metal shutters groaned and rolled over the windows where the nebulous tendrils disappeared. Nova bit on her tongue, then switched on her heel to speed her pace to the south transit.

"Nova?"

Nova hesitated at the footsteps behind her. Neo threw his thumb over his shoulder. "Central command is that way, last I looked."

"I know that, Neo. I'm going to the hangar."

He blinked. "Why?"

Nova wanted to explain, but the words never formulated into an appropriate excuse. "I think we missed something about our droids," she admitted. "I access the archives remotely from the terminals." And get the information it wouldn't give me last time. "You have to go to central command and have them send people if need be, but stall anything dangerous they might consider."

Neo frowned. "Dangerous?"

Nova continued down to the southern transit station, but space dragged when Neo and her short time made a dogged pursuit. "Neo, I'll be fine. You know during Lockdown Z one of the options is an emergency warp. If there's anomalous aggression, they'll shut down the facility," she explained, but he continued in her steps anyway. "In case something happens I need you over there."

"I'm coming with you."

"No!" Nova smacked him on the chest to stop his chase the moment her boots hit the station floor. "You are needed somewhere else. I'll—" Hands shaking, she called the transit in the south. "I'll meet back up with you, Neo. You should go see if the anomaly readings have changed."

"Why would they change? I..." Neo faltered, and checked behind him as if he heard something. He shifted on his feet with a nervous sigh, then focused on her. "No. Why would it change?" Her heart dropped into her stomach when his brow creased in pain before he rubbed his eyes. "Last time I was there it was fluctuating like usual."

"Neo."

"Yes?"

Nova squeezed his arm. "I'll be fine."

"You still shouldn't go there alone if they're reporting aggression."

"Thuni will be there, and I actually did my training exercises when we arrived." Nova studied his expression. Maybe not as himself...

"I..." He brushed his hand through his black hair with a softer shake of his head. "I don't—I don't know why I don't want you to go over there." He drew his hand down to the back of his neck, and the vibration along his frame stiffened. "I guess I needed sleep after all. Jokes on me." He went quiet, then took a step closer to her with insistent concern. "Still, let me come with you."

Let me help.

Nova groaned when the transit slid into the station. "I'll work faster alone."

"That just hurts my feelings. I work fast."

His mock offense lifted a weight around her heart, but the station pounded against her. "You'll just have to take my word for it, Neo." Her hands shook for the incoming death, but anything to stop his and the loop. Anything to prevent another circuit. "I'll be right over once I'm done."

Metal screeched on a rail, and the doors opened with a chirp.

Neo stared at her. "I choose to ignore that."

Stars, I hate you sometimes.

Neither of them budged.

If I rush onto the transit, Neo will follow me and then what? If I wait any longer, I'm going to miss the opportunity. Either way, I need to prevent him from... It set a flame on her tongue. "You really don't want me to go?"

Neo folded his arms and set his position. "No."

You're not remembering, but maybe there's a small part of you that does subconsciously. Nova stepped backwards to the transit, with Neo in her small shadow compared to the one the oppressive presence threatened to swallow. On the edge of the end, she sucked in her lips when the embers stilled. At what point do I throw my arms up? Should I have done that sooner? Or later? Now? Everything about this is stupid. I can't do anything. I'm just one person.

I hate what I'm being forced to do to save one person.

Fuck the universe. Fuck it for what it's done to me and you. I'm stuck in a loop, and though I like to think I have the power to change things, all I can seem to change is how you die. What changes is how many times I have to watch the light leave your eyes... if I even get the luxury of holding you so my best friend isn't alone. Nova scowled when he came closer, following the path of before.

"Look," Neo insisted and tugged his feet onto the tram, too close to his end. "I don't know what's going on, but you can talk to me. Maybe I can figure it out. Whatever you're about to do, you don't have to do it by yourself. I can figure things out if you just talk to me."

You won't remember a single thing of this she longed to scream at him.

Fuck the universe for taking my best friend away from me.

Her mind gave up long ago.

"All I've ever wanted was for you to talk to me," Nova mumbled through her endless grief.

And if I let you do just that... I will lose the ability to go through with this.

Neo came closer with a plea forming in his eyes.

Nova silenced him when he breached the event horizon around her. He gave a jolted start when she pressed her lips against his warm ones. Time fluttered on wings, and in the same moment of curiosity satiated, she drove her heels in and threw him off the transit. Her foot slammed into the manual override for the doors the moment his back hit the ground when he tripped. Cut off from life, she tried not to cry.

Nova took in a ready breath and reached forward to send the transit back.

Someone knocked on the glass of loss.

Neo lifted his datascroll to her.

"That's not fair," he wrote on the page. "You don't have to do this alone."

Nova took out her own datascroll, a sense of childish mischief of passing notes in class, the last remnant of innocence when words wouldn't make him understand. Butterfly drawn, she held it up to the glass.

Neo stared at it, then tipped his head in thought as the veil of a scientist took over and he examined his own datascroll.

"I'm sorry, Neo," she whispered through space and hoped time would hear.

He looked up.

Nova turned her back on him when the transit kickstarted onto the rails to face the doom meant for him. Nova brushed her fingers down the pixel butterfly on her datascroll. Whatever happens here... I'll leave him the answers. Sample in her hands, she examined it when the transit slowed after minutes of agony. She left the tram behind to push onward through her plan and headed into the droid bays. On her way, she turned on the lights.

Some cracked and failed to turn on.

I can't waste time.

She raced to Thuni, where his corpse waited. "I'm sorry about this," she whispered and aimed her blaster at his heart.

Her shot slammed into his chest, but he never budged. Nova shut the door again to rush for the ruined droid and readied her thermotorch to cut a hole through the rusted panels. Ooze bubbled from the heat, and she ignored the noises. Golden core in her arms, she hauled it to the terminal to repeat the same process of the last loop. Data filled the terminal, and she allowed herself a laugh of relief as the answer grew between stuttered lines. "Okay... Okay." Nova studied the lines, and tried to understand the language of time.

They're bouncing off each other at their highest points. Whatever makes this alloy unique acts like some sort of firewall to a virus... Nova traced the live lines. Counteraction to a signature the anomaly gives off, as Neo would put it. It could mean its possible to harm the monster... Nova wrote it down on her datascroll to leave it on the desk, ingraining it to her memory when the lights dulled in her head.

Her heartbeat thumped with the rising peaks of the lines. In time with the roar of a monster. Hand on her blaster, she readied herself.

Whatever it takes.

Gold pulsed with fading light.

Whatever it takes to save him.

Nova whipped around in the slowed waves of time at the lumbering footsteps.

Another shot slammed into their shoulder, and it passed clean through the tangled crimson of sinew and left a splatter of blood on the floor. A large arm smashed into her stomach, and the blaster clattered to the ground at the super strength of the monster in a human body. Nova wriggled when another arm wrapped around her throat, squeezing tighter and tighter as she gasped for life in fear.

Oxygen fluttered in her lungs as she kicked and choked, fighting against Thuni with equal might. Thuni stumbled more than he had with Neo, but he never let go with the blank eyes of death. Her gaze caught the quickening readings before the end of it all, but she fought harder when he tugged her to the side. Her boot slammed into the side of the desk and sent her datascroll to the ground.

Nova grasped for the space between her, her blaster, and Neo who she left behind without an explanation.

Her heart quickened with fading air as she struggled against the pressure on her neck and gathering in her head. Nova swung her elbow into his, lunged, and forced the monster to adjust with its stolen form, but she screeched into his arm when he crushed her collarbone.

Another rumble fluttered time.

Nova choked, and the world ahead darkened with the grey, nebulous mist.

I don't want to die, Neo.

'See through it.'

Nova shoved her leg behind Thuni's, but he choked the air out of her. Panic crashed into her temples as she lunged for everything in reach. Cracks overflowed in the continuum when her skull threatened to crack with the oppression in the air. It breathed out a plume of death when it swallowed the droid bay with her consciousness, and the world started to tip on an unseen axis.

Nova cast one last glance at the terminal before the end.

Her wrist snapped to her toolbelt, and her thermotorch tumbled out of her hands when Thuni twisted her around, and she whimpered when the darkness descended with twisted coils of rage. It threatened to turn her into spaghettified atoms when its teeth drew out of its endless abyss.

Stars, no... Nova cried and her head screamed in pain. Unable to breathe, her grip faltered.

Ready for it to restart without her.

For Neo to die over and over, but for her to never return to stop it.

A spark of a star-shaped butterfly whisked at the edge of the horizon.

A shape walked through the plume of nebulous tendrils and broke time.

It sent the same, fallen star through the air.

Her ears rang with a blaster shot.

Red mist sprayed around her, and her knees smashed against the floor, gasping out the hot flash. Everything moved, fell still, and went silent.

Neo stood there with a hard, cold expression to match the black hole long gone to the lights of the droid bay as he kept his blaster trained on the enemy he already fell. His hand fell to his side when the chill broke apart and he took in a small, short breath.

Metal clattered against metal when it fell out of his loose fingers.

She had hesitated and allowed him to die.

He had none, and shot Thuni with one, well-aimed press of a trigger.

Neo sank to his knees and set his hands in his lap. "Oh, no..." He covered his tears with his hands, full of shame she carried.