Broken Time: Tales of a Bounty Hunter Book 3

Chapter 4 - Memorabilia

"It's not that simple." he whispered miserably. "The white hole....it doesn't make sense." he lifted his head and stared pleadingly at her.

As if she had any answers that he didn't. She could see that it was eating at him. The lack of knowledge. These baffling events that didn't make sense.

"The white hole. We should have never been able to enter it." he explained desperately. "It's impossible. They're the polar opposites of black holes."

It pained her heart to see him this confused. This brilliant man to have been reduced to a madman.

"Maybe we were sucked into a black hole and exited the white one." she offered softly.

But he was shaking his head before she could even finish the sentence. "We would have noticed the black hole and more importantly, we wouldn't have survived it. We would've been squashed like flies by its gravitational force."

Astrid took a moment to reply. "Have the data you're salvaged shown anything else?"

"NO!" he gasped, diving his fingers into the wilderness of his hair. Astrid saw his eyebrows pushed together and his lip tremble. He truly looked like a lunatic right now. "This is why it doesn't make sense."

Her heart broke for him again. If only she could help him. But if HE couldn't figure it out, then SHE definitely couldn't either. Hesitantly, she places her hand on his arm comfortingly. She wanted to show him that she was there for him. And then offered softly:

"Maybe some answers we're not meant to have. Some riddles are supposed to be left unsolved."

The look he gave her was one of a defeated person, and it held so much desperation that it almost overwhelmed her. She wondered how he was able to still stand on his feet, for she would most certainly crumble over the weight of those emotions.    

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Convincing Novah not to do something is like convincing the stars not to shine. He broods and mops and does whatever he feels like doing. In the end, Astrid has to leave him alone. The other scientists have taken to exploring the new place - Eurilia. She had been reluctant to do the same because she felt out of her depth and she didn't have any other friends besides Novah. Leaving the wreckage was just as dangerous as entering it in the first place. Astrid does her best to not hurt herself on her way down. She almost cuts her hand on a sharp piece of metal and she wonders again the logic that made her follow the wayward scientist in the first place.

It's one thing to be told of Eurilia and entirely another to experience it. To see it with your eyes, to smell it with your nose, to feel it with your fingertips. Astrid feels as if she has stepped into another dimension. She laughed as fast as the thought is formed. She is after all in another dimension.

In the end, Novah concedes. She sees him from afar as he makes his way towards her, lean and tired but not less authoriated and graceful. He looks beautiful, she realizes. Not beautiful like Amora, he doesn't make her heart about to explode or her stomach full of butterflies. But objectively speaking, he is ethereal. Perhaps it's because she has witnessed the power he holds in the future and is responding to that. Or perhaps she admires his kindness, his intelligence, and his vigor.

"Finally decided to come out of your hole?" she teased him, grinning like a lunatic.

He returns the grin lightheartedly. "A wise person told me I was wasting my time in there."

"Must be indeed wise. You should listen more often to them."

He giggles and shakes his head. "I'll be sure to do so." he plays along. "I'm sorry I've been so difficult lately." he sounds sincere. "And for leaving you alone, to practically fend for yourself against the wolves."