In. Out. In. Out.
It went along with her echoing footsteps.
On the trail of star-splattered desolation, unable to flee the weight on her shoulders, unable to do anything but head into the black hole weaving around him. A strong, gravitational force tugged a string around her heart. Music squashed into silence and the universe whispered for the eyes of time.
I won't—can't let this kill you. I can't let it end like this. I knew at the start of the loop; no, I knew the moment you dropped this necklace in my hands. In a way, I still didn't want to believe. But that's what I told myself. We're back here again. Through writing nebulous tendrils, she came closer to the collapsed star. It unravelled to reveal Neo, who stood in front of the transit with an empty expression.
The light in the greys swallowed by the event horizon of a dead star.
"I said we'd work this out together if you got some rest," she said and ignored the tormented atmosphere.
"I can't rest." He gazed at the distance. "I can't rest until it is expunged." He trembled. "I can't stop until it is complete and whole again. If I stop, I will not be able to finish it. I must get to it."
The longer I prolong this, the farther away you get.
"It's okay to slow down," she whispered and came to his side. As with the northern terminal, it sprouted the same incomprehensible letters of before. "I just... are you sure about this?" she asked and held his shoulder. Give me something, Neo. No matter how deep this goes, that you're still you.
In his silence, she found no reprieve or comfort. The transit doors opened, and she reached out before he went deeper; to grab him or stop him, it was too late for both. Too late for everything but to hold onto his clammy, cold hand.
You're not a corpse, not yet.
"You don't have to come with me." He squeezed her hand as if she was all that remained to keep him out of reach of the black hole of his own creation.
Nova listened to the dissonance of a heartbeat. "You have a track record of getting yourself into trouble. You'd hurt yourself if you didn't have someone keeping an eye on you."
Neo tipped forward to break from his staredown with the abyss. Nova longed for a quip, or the smallest joke.
Anything, Neo, please.
His hand slipped out of her grasp.
Nova gave chase when he walked into the transit, to not be left ahead again in the desolation of dead stars. As the transit rumbled to life, the music intensified with a surging peak. Neo leaned on the door.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"Why?"
In one slow breath, he answered, "Time loses meaning here. I don't even know if it's sunrise or sundown back home. I can only see in this pocket." His shoulders slacked, and he twisted to her with a familiar smile of compounded pain. "I... I don't know why I'm sorry... because there's too many reasons." He returned to his inanimate support and darkness covered the future ahead. "I just want things to make sense."
Nova took another leap of hope. "Neo, we could still stop by the central medical tower. You need to lie down for a couple minutes." Arms folded, she nudged him with her foot. "Look, ever since I met you... it's sometimes like you're driven solely by an automotor. Isn't that exhausting? Sometimes you're just... you're so far away. I can't tell what you're thinking."
"Yes." Neo slipped his brow on his arm. "More than you can understand."
"I want to understand."
"You'd be one of the few."
Neo pressed himself against the door.
"I don't think rushing to the anomaly will help." Nova pleaded to the universe for an ability to make a difference in someone's life. Neither of their reflections appeared in the yawn of the void. But maybe I'm fooling myself again. You weren't so hellbent before until after you vaporised the loop... but if I'm honest with myself... this is you. You get so fixated on one thing that... you forget everything else around you. Little details started to reset, and you finally started to notice. I can't let you go back there. I can't let you on that track. I will never be able to get you off it if I don't. Words died on her tongue and burst into supernovas. Torn in two, she sighed and metal screeched to signal the end. "If this is your choice, if you think it'll help."
"It is," he insisted, stronger, but with none of his mannerisms. "It will."
I'm going to end this. I'm going to find a way out. Nova braced herself when the transit rolled to a stop. And I will shoulder the weight of my actions. Of the people I've let die in an attempt to save you. Fingers dug into her palm, she bit on her tongue until she tasted life to cement it over her shaken resolve. Fuck the universe, I said... You forgot I was a variable.
"We're here." Dim mist spread forth when they stepped off the transit. "I hope we're not too late."
Too late many times, what's one more?
As they tread through unfamiliar corridors, Nova looked for an avenue of escape or a second chance. Neo pushed on without hesitation, without fear. Rage boiled in the back of her throat as she followed him.
Many stars faded into oblivion.
"Neo," she said, and he stopped. "I have one last question."
"Yes?"
"What are you seeing?"
Glitchy heat waves radiated off him from a single whispered question. "It's like watching through static," he murmured, and space shuddered around him to distort time with his pain. "I... I was confused. I don't understand why you hid from me. I wondered if you didn't believe me when I said I'd come back with an answer. I wondered if maybe you hated me for what happened. I came back and it made everything worse."
Her bones rumbled. "You believed in me. It made it so much harder when everything fell apart around me. You gave me something precious, Neo."
The rumbling of the universe stilled when he finally looked her in the eyes.
"What did I give you?" he asked. "What could I have given you?"
Nova blocked the view behind her. "You gave me hope. You gave me a lot, Neo. I believe in you."
He blinked. "You... do?"
"Yes."
He relaxed, then continued on without another word.
And that's why...
Nova stayed in his expanding shadow as they headed into the laboratory corridors. Behind the Class Z bulkhead, a bright red colour blazed to life on the edge of a static world. Brighter than a star. Neo let out a sigh of relief and headed through the open door. Nova kept on his heels, and waited for the fleeting moment.
For time rendered meaningless.
"I'm here," he said when tendrils beckoned from the heart of the universe. He edged past the shivering containment field. Hot chills swept over her skin, but he came to a stop in front of it, where the oldest star sucked in the grey tendrils of the black hole. "I'm going to open it and it will unravel out of the fold, Nova."
Atmospheric pressure choked her.
Tendrils slipped the arrays on one by one. Moment by moment. Every layer of containment lifted to unleash the star made manifest on the space station. Time moved away from the noise in one, slow, torturous moment.
The last array opened the final containment.
The writing along the circumference glowed white hot. It whispered out to her, but she listened for a fading heartbeat, overtaken by a loud, rumbling one.
Gravity kept her back, but her sins far outmatched it.
"I knew this was about the D.S Butterfly," she whispered, causing him to check on her.
And whatever this thing is, it is not a heart.
Neo kept his back to her when phantoms screamed around her, staring at the eye themselves, but never acknowledged those of a different time. Neo frowned at them in broken confusion. "Neo, I want to go home. Forget the I.A.R. We're going to meet the same fate as the Butterfly, you know that," Nova rasped.
"That sounds nice," he whispered, devoid of himself.
Don't close your eyes to this. Look him in the eyes.
Her capacitor whirred to life, and she lifted her blaster to aim at his heart.
He turned in full.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"What I have to," she repeated his words.
Neo zoned in on the blaster, then the atmosphere shivered. "Really?" he asked. "Really?" He took a step off the anomaly platform, but it continued to drain the world of colour. "Is this what you're going to do, Nova? Did you learn nothing from this?" He threw his arm to the side as if to swat the air in front of her, but she refused to bend. "Don't do this."
Nova rested her finger on the unloader and took a step forward. "I don't want to, so don't make me do this."
Neo narrowed his eyes, and the black hole rumbled behind her. He took a small step for the anomaly, a test, a taunt of her resolve against his own. Teeth grew from the darkness, aimed at her body, but she clashed with worse, clashed with her inability, her grief, her confusion when her best friend pushed her away out of fear. Nova tightened her grip on the blaster.
The jaw snapped to close.
It whispered air in her ear, the teeth inches from her throat to rip her apart.
Nova shook her head at the broken resolve.
The moment he turned his back with the snap of a jaw, she pulled on the end of the universe.
It splattered nebulous colours against the arrays beneath the anomaly.
Neo turned with a look of confusion, then brought a hand up to the hole in his lab coat. "Nova, what did you...?"
Nova threw the blaster to the side when the anomaly split in two. It rippled with a distant screech as the teeth dissipated into the void. Nova ran through space and time when the world slowed when he stepped for her. He slumped into her embrace when the D.S Butterfly screamed to life, torn by the seams off the fracture to assimilate into the eye.
Nova dragged him from the field of Butterfly phantoms and fast-forwarding time.
Static reflected the mirror of the first loop — the experience of the D.S Butterfly.
Tendrils from the anomaly pierced the phantoms for their attempt to break through, to create the fracture. It screamed with the swallowed monster as the lines tried to find equilibrium.
"Why?" Fear filled the greys as she clutched onto him with her back against the wall he once died against.
Metal pierced her own heart.
For the silence of an endless moment.
Why would you do this?
It fell further into the universe.
"Answer me," he pleaded in a small voice as he clutched onto her and the tears of betrayal fell down his face.
Look him in the eyes.
Nova held him close, though she lost the right. "I don't have an answer," she rasped and her tears of resentment joined his. "You won't... remember."
And that makes it better? a voice chided in her head. Is that what you're going to tell yourself next time?
Grey clouds intensified over the fading light in his pupils, but Nova bit down on her hate for what the loop gave. "You put yourself on the same sequence as the D.S Butterfly to fix something that you should've never had to fix," she rasped. "What foolish notion went through your head when you decided that? I don't want you to die."
And yet, I killed him. We really are helpless. I can't save myself let alone him.
Neo gripped her forearm when the grey spiralled into a new birth of the universe. "I... I said I could do something for you..."
His recognition made her choke.
Another time lost.
His lips parted with a blink of realisation. "It was them, I said... they awoke it. Heard its warning but followed it like bait." His hand went limp. "They wanted to see... it killed me—them... us." He gazed up at her, something ancient in the greys. "Nova, I'm..."
Why did you kill me?
Nova stifled a sob when he went limp. His heartbeat faded away in her bloody hands. A memory swallowed into the starless sea. It went quiet, but never in her own heart, haunted by the noise of a gunshot.
It stretched out around her.
Into another reset.