Butterflies of the Dark Star

57 (REVISED)

Eastern sector fell quiet.

Nova rushed through the corridors when alarms rang out and the PA system called out the difference in times.

"DESTABILIZATION IN PROGRESS."

We have nowhere to run.

Nova twisted around a corner, but screeched when the station rippled apart. Her eyes boiled in flames when she found herself on the ground. Fast images of tendrils and blood metal seeped through her vision. Nova drove her fingers into her temples to pull it out, but it roared, never willing to die.

Back on her feet, she pushed forward through two overlapped realities. Into silence. Into an explosive supernova. Through everchanging space.

Everything trembled. Everything fell still.

Everyone screamed, but no one spoke.

People died, but walked.

Time continued, and stopped.

Shots rang out to echo slamming doors. Nova pushed one open with a grunt when her knees threatened to give out. Blood sprayed the walls, but fell into clarity. Wait, our room? But I was heading to the medtower! Why am I here?

Music rang in her ears and the flames of a distant star seared into her head. She stumbled when another shot blasted right beside her eardrum. It rang and shuddered the station with her gasp of white-hot pain ripping her scalp. Her fingers raised to graze the source of agony, but when she drew it back, no blood oozed between her fingers.

Nova scrambled from the door when it almost shut on her feet. Her back hit the wall, and she used the stinging reminder to force herself up. He's... I don't think he's where I left him. Nova stumbled her way in the direction of central transit. Every voice joined the chorus of space, except for hers and Neo's.

He mentioned how he heard it calling to him, so there's only one other place he'd go. Stars, all you had to do was stay put for once. A sob escaped her throat with the collected pain all across her body as she punched the button to activate the transit. Time and space crumbled at her touch. It repeated letters. It repeated time. It repeated space. Nova tripped onto the transit as it closed behind her, refusing to bend to any force but time itself.

I have to go.

Nova held on tight to the railing when it barrelled through the darkness with its own echoed screech. Questions burst in her mind, but she straightened herself out when the pain subsided though the universe no longer made sense and the loop entangled her in its whim. Any answer it gave led to more questions. It slammed into the central platform as people screamed in the distance, but she no longer knew if it was a time long past, the phantom of the D.S Butterfly, or the broken present.

Or both.

Cosmic energy ripped through the hull of the station when she pushed herself forward. Red stars guided her to her destination; to the only other place Neo would go. Death followed in his wake, but time froze. "Neo," she called out, trying not to cry out from the intense pressure gathering in her skull, and she leaned against the wall when a wave of nausea slipped into her nose. She tripped on bodies yet to be there. Over what the monster left behind. Her bones cracked with the arrays.

We're in the jaws of the nebula, and now it's biting down.

Nova wiped sweat off her brow as she stumbled on top of the Z lab terminal and shoved Neo's keypass inside. It responded with the same words, the same variation of numbers and letters with no meaning to her. Grey tendrils forced the doorway open, and she broke through the first death. Her knees buckled, but she refused to falter.