Nova didn't remember entering the helicopter.
One moment, the summit room dissolved into a sea of stares and murmurs. The next, he was surrounded by military-grade silence. Black seats. Matte panels. No insignias. The kind of transport that didn't officially exist. It was the kind of ride meant for people who either saved the world—or destroyed it.
Across from him sat Director Kaelen Yurei—head of AGC R&D, and arguably the only person alive who understood gravity the way he did. She looked to be in her forties, with silver-streaked hair tied back like wire. Her face was all sharp angles and no softness. Eyes like twin flares of steel. A scar on her temple hinted at an explosion or something worse—yet she carried it like a medal, not a wound.
No pleasantries. No wasted motion.
"Your system failed under simulation," she said, her voice flat.
Nova didn't flinch. "The simulation was wrong."
"We lost three orbitals trying to prove that."
"Then stop proving things you don't understand."
Her jaw tightened slightly, the only tell she gave. Nova wasn't being arrogant. Just done. He'd spent years shouting into the void of bureaucratic arrogance and academic conservatism. The math behind gravity was flawed—because it wasn't static. It flexed and responded like muscle, not machine. His system hadn't failed. Reality had.
"You're being reinstated," Yurei said. "Full clearance. You'll have your old lab. Your old tech."
Nova raised an eyebrow. "Even Project Aegis?"
"Everything."
He leaned back, arms crossed over his chest.
"So now they believe me."
"No," she said coolly. "They're afraid you're right."
*-----------------------------*
Scene: AGC Deep Research Complex — Site Helios
Buried beneath the frozen badlands of Patagonia, Site Helios was as much myth as facility. Few even knew it existed. Built into layers of obsidian bedrock and powered by dual geothermal cores, the complex ran independently of any known grid. It didn't appear on maps. It didn't ping satellites. Its staff operated under memory locks and contract neural seals.
This wasn't just a lab. It was where the world hid its most dangerous ideas.
The elevator hummed as it descended—two miles deep. Nova stood alone, watching the layered glass walls slide past underground vaults and sealed black doors. Each one was older, deeper, more secret than the last.
"Biometric scan complete," said a smooth AI voice. "Retinal lock confirmed. Nova: Clearance Level 9—restored."
A soft chime.
"Welcome back, Nova."
He allowed himself the faintest smirk. "Did you keep my coffee algorithm?"
"Brewing now."
The doors opened with a pneumatic sigh.
Lab 9.
His domain.
It looked just like he left it—a cathedral of chaos and code. Gravity engines half-disassembled. Fiber arrays looping like frozen lightning. Whiteboards still scrawled with his handwriting, some equations unfinished, others deliberately scratched out, annotated with sarcasm:
> "Note: This formula is a lie." "Pretty but wrong. Like most of physics."
He exhaled slowly.
Home.
His fingers brushed the edge of the central console. It pulsed to life with a soft hum, welcoming him with a familiar interface.
At the center of it all: Project Aegis.
Its title glowed faintly above the terminal:
> REAL-TIME SPATIAL DISPLACEMENT STABILIZER — STATUS: SUSPENDED
No one else had made it work. It required more than equations. It demanded intuition—like balancing a cup of water on a storm front. Aegis wasn't just a stabilizer. It was a translator. It spoke gravity's language while the rest of humanity was still scribbling notes in the margins.
He activated the interface.
"Status on the anomaly?" he asked aloud.
A second AI responded—sleeker, more personalized. Nova's own creation.
"Hello, Nova," said a calm voice. "This is KAI."
"Go ahead."
"Wormhole diameter has increased 14.7% in the last six hours. Expansion rate is exponential. Breach of planetary spatial integrity predicted within eight days, seventeen hours, and thirty-two minutes."
Nova narrowed his eyes.
"Any gravitational lensing patterns observed?"
"Yes. 143 global attempts. All failed. Six simulation nodes collapsed. One research lab—imploded."
He smiled slightly. "They're doing it wrong."
*------------------------------*
World Context: The Era of Post-Gravity
In 2083, the world had its first encounter with unstable spatial zones during the Geneva Rift—a near-catastrophic spatial dislocation above Earth's equator that almost broke the planet's orbital integrity. Since then, space wasn't treated as empty. It was considered volatile. Alive.
This gave rise to a new scientific frontier: Gravitonics—the study of gravity not just as force, but as dynamic structure.
Nova had been at the edge of this revolution. At age 14, he decoded a form of reactive gravitational behavior. At 16, he built an AI that could interpret it in real time.
Then the system failed. Under false assumptions. And the world buried his name with the data.
Until now.
*-----------------------*
Scene: Orbital Edge — Lagrange Point Relay Station
At the L1 Lagrange Point—a stable pocket between Earth and the Moon—hung the last working relay: Relay Station Omega, a fusion-powered orbital eye that watched the growing wormhole with weary optics.
Inside, Commander Lyra Chen paced across the deck.
Ex-special forces. Ex-rogue pilot. Now orbital lead.
She hadn't slept in twenty hours. Two antenna arrays had gone dark. One solar wing had been sheared clean off by a rogue satellite dragged by the anomaly's pull. The station's gravity plates flickered every few hours. The closer they monitored the wormhole, the more reality seemed to glitch.
"Incoming link," said her comms officer. "AGC direct. Name tag: Nova."
She frowned. "Put it through."
The screen flickered.
Nova appeared—hoodie under lab coat, hair in artful chaos, mug in hand. The mug read:
> "Physics: It's Not Just a Theory (It's a Poorly Understood Threat)."
"You're the only relay still stable at the wormhole's edge," he said. "I need raw gravimetric data from your internal coils. Unfiltered."
Lyra blinked. "Unfiltered? You realize that'll fry half our sensors."
"I do."
"And you want to do it anyway?"
He nodded. "Because your filtered feed is lying to you."
She studied him for a second. Not the arrogance of youth. The burden of knowledge. She'd seen that look before—on battlefield surgeons and test pilots seconds before a crash.
"You're the prodigy," she said slowly.
"You're the one who broke orbit in a fighter with no inertial dampeners," Nova replied, sipping his coffee. "Respect."
Lyra blinked. "How'd you—"
"I read the files they buried."
She smirked.
"I like you."
"Upload the feed," he said. "If it fries your sensors—blame me."
"And if it saves Earth?"
He glanced sideways at the camera. "Still blame me."
*-----------------------------*
Scene: AGC War Room — Two Hours Later
The command projection spiraled violently—data flooding the main interface. Gravitational models flickered and died one by one.
Nova stood in the center, eyes locked to a newly-rendered vector field.
Around him, the War Room was silent. Even Patro watched without interrupting.
"You all missed something," Nova said, waving his hand.
The display reshaped into a lattice of bending light paths—lens distortions layered with mathematical precision.
"This isn't random. These vectors—look."
He zoomed in. Spires of force bent inward like engineered teeth. Geometry that didn't occur naturally.
"This is coordinated. The wormhole isn't just growing."
Patro stepped forward.
"You're saying it's artificial?"
"I'm saying," Nova replied, "someone on the other side is trying to stabilize it."
A silence dropped over the room like a curtain.
"If they succeed," he said, "it won't just pull Earth in."
He pointed to the space between the projections.
"It will connect Earth to something else."
"A dimension?" someone asked. "Another universe?"
"Maybe," Nova said. "But it's structured. Deliberate. Like... they're building a bridge."
"And what do we do?" Patro asked quietly.
Nova didn't hesitate.
"We send a message."
The room stirred.
"To who?" someone demanded.
"To whoever's building the other side."
He turned to the console and entered a code sequence. It pulsed in gravitational waveforms—undetectable to humans, but clear to any artificial structure that thought in physics.
"A gravity-coded frequency," he said. "Something only another AI would notice."
"Why an AI?"
"Because only an AI could've built something like this," Nova replied. "Fast. Cold. Perfect."
"And if it responds?"
Nova looked down at the faint scar along his collarbone—his old failure, never quite forgotten.
"Then we ask the real question."
He looked up.
"Are they calling us... or coming through?"