Butterflies of the Dark Star

27 (REVISED)

"What did they say about the strange readings?" Nova asked as they waited for the lift to the reactor facilities. "I'm assuming they shut down the substation entrances in the other parts of the station to prevent that monster from getting to the cores?" The ideal process... but with this, I don't know anymore. I don't know anything. Her mind filled with every little thing that could go wrong, but her short-lived relief filled her with the strength to go forward when none of them made the same morbid jokes from before.

"Aggressive anomaly," Neo corrected.

Nova sighed at Neo's insistence at the respectful reverence for something that wanted to kill him previously — he never called anything monstrous. Just different. Something to understand and unravel the mystery. Thuni pursed his lips at the holomap when he tapped it. "Whatever you want to call it, Teimea. If it gets to the core, we're — sad to say this — fucked." Thuni pushed an infopod in her hands. "Here's the failsafe in case this situation goes ten units under like I expect it to."

Nova nodded then poked Neo. "You let us handle the core. You figure out what went wrong at the control room, and if you're up there you can keep an eye on everything for us. We'll patch it in and they can get coordinates into the warp drive."

"I can do that." Neo toyed with his anomaly suppressor. "They want to send out a distress signal."

But if this is the fate the D.S Butterfly went... even if we send a distress signal, they'll never find us. "If all goes well, we won't need to go to the lower levels of the reactor. We'd have to take a lift and that'd take too much time. There should be override terminals around the main reactor," she explained, more for herself, to keep her knowledge of space station cores from school in her reach. "As long as we have access to the mainframe... it's better than nothing."

Better than another repeat.

Hope built of cautious sand filled her veins as the four of them stepped into the lift to go down, deeper into the belly of the space station. If they blocked the rest of the way to the lower parts of the space station... that monster might not... reach us. Her heart knew the truth. It could be anywhere, everywhere, all at once. A black hole undeterred by the space around it, sucking the light, feeding on life. No. I have to believe this will be different. In the last two loops, I never got the chance to go here. Maybe I can take direct action here.

"What do they think happened to the workers down here?" Thuni questioned.

"Oh." Neo jolted. "We don't know."

Thuni closed his eyes and his brow folded.

"Anything at all?" Nova pressed.

"There was just a surge of anomalous readings," Neo replied with a small shrug. "Why do you think I brought this?" He motioned to the suppressor hidden in his lab coat. "As long as you three get the reactor overridden, I'll do what I can from the control room."

The lift slowed.

Thuni and Ulin went forward, but Nova hung back with Neo. Her hand reached across space and time to wrap her fingers around his free hand. How many times must I do this? What do I have to do to save you?

It opened to an observation deck. Massive pillars of energy fed into the subcores, leading into the reactor in the center, where it sent pulsing waves into the lower bowels, then into the subcores. Her ears thrummed with the deep roar of its energy. Thuni nudged them to the smaller lift, and slipped his keypass into the terminal.

"I don't see anyone," Ulin said. "There should be people here."

Catwalks wound around the subcores at a comfortable distance to prevent hazardous energy from striking anyone who worked at them, each with their own terminal. Pipes ran underneath the catwalks, running down servers into the unseen abyss below it.