Butterflies of the Dark Star

10 (REVISED)

Butterfly wings fluttered on a starlit trail. Music, slow and gentle, followed the rhythm of the flight. Each wingbeat spread the nebulous rainbow cloud deeper into the void.

It shook the universe to its core.

Nova lifted herself out of her covers at a sharp beep from the small terminal station outside their room. It fell quiet with the dim red colour spreading underneath the door. Lead weighed down her legs when she kicked off the blankets to drag herself out of her sleep. Ugh... Nova swiped through the schedule on her wall — in the middle of a rest shift, she stood up. What is that noise...

In the other unit, Neo curled into his covers with his cheek pressed against the pillow. Starry clouds filled her view, and she shook them out with a groan and waddled out of the room to reach the terminals. On the edge of his desk, Neo's butterfly necklace, soaked in crimson from the terminal. Nova opened the offending tab to check on the status of her droid.

Anomaly detected within subspace perimeter... Nova typed her code to access the scanner, but flinched at the glitching graphs. What? Nova restarted the scanner, but it brought back the same garbled mess. What is this? It should be telling me about the class of anomaly. Nova left her desk to rush back inside their room, to get information from the one person with an education on anomalies.

"Neo," she hissed at the doorway.

He didn't stir.

Black Holes. Once he actually falls asleep nothing short of the universe ending will wake him back up. Nova pushed his shoulder. "Neo!"

Neo rolled over with bleary-eyed confusion. "Nova... what?"

"My droid's sending some sort of distress signal," she explained when Neo sat up. "It's picking up something. It's responding, but I don't know what's going on."

"Is it coming back?" Neo mused when she led him to her terminal.

"Uh..." Nova clicked through the tabs. "Yeah, but look at this." Back onto the anomaly scanner graphs, she waved at the screen and stuck an infodrive into the dock. "What do you make of that?"

"Interference, maybe?" Neo nuzzled into his sleeve and yawned. "Here, give me the infodrive and when my shift starts I'll get it to the research team." He held his hand out to her, and Nova placed it into his fingers, and he put it beside the necklace. "I'm going to try and get back to sleep now. You should do the same."

But what is happening to my droid, Neo? Her question never raised into a scream, but he wandered back into the room. He must be tired, though. I don't know why I thought he'd have more of an idea than I would... He's half-asleep. Extra infodrive in hand, she placed it into the docket to create her own copy of her droid's code in the event of an error before staring into the garbled mess her droid picked up. Long into the rest of the shift, it stared back at her. It crushed her bones, and she wrote down a note to leave Neo, to not forget the infodrive she gave him before sticking it over his necklace and trying to regain what little of her rest shift she had left to her.

Until it garbled the darkness behind her eyelids too.

It spat and twisted, and she drove her hands into her temples to flee the crimson underneath her door. It snaked across the floor and detached itself to grow into tendrils. It came closer and released puffs of nebulous clouds. Flattened against her bed, she wanted to scream, but something stole her voice into the vacuum of space. It loomed over her, and she shut her eyes and waited for the nightmare to end.

Someone's hand touched her shoulder. "Nova?"

It cracked.

Nova opened her eyes to see her schedule across from her. It released a little, happy chirp at the start of a new shift. Wake up. The time for everyone to get ready and go about their day. Anxious tension dug its claws into her heart, but she followed the urging of the voice. Neo loomed over her, fully dressed and ready for the day, while she laid in bed, fearful of the garble her droid gave her, but smiled. "Are you alright?"