They thought they had days.
They were wrong.
—8 Days Until Spatial Breach
*--------------------------------------*
Scene: Site Helios — Nova's Lab
The temperature in Lab 9 had dropped three degrees since the last anomaly pulse. Nova didn't need sensors to feel it—space had begun to ripple, and the air trembled with the whisper of something not quite sound.
He stood motionless before the Aegis core—his masterpiece.
The stabilizer floated in midair, suspended within a triple-layered quantum field. Energy danced along its mirrored edges, reacting to gravitational pulses miles away. The core's internal readings changed in real-time.
That was the problem.
Time wasn't stable anymore.
"KAI," Nova said, without turning. "Recalibrate the internal clock. We're off by two nanoseconds again."
"Confirmed," KAI replied, voice low. "Timestamp displacement is now increasing at an exponential curve. The anomaly is no longer just affecting space. It's touching time."
Nova exhaled slowly. His jaw tightened.
"It's starting."
*-------------------------------------*
Scene: AGC War Room
Patro stood at the war table, hands planted on either side. The room was darker than usual. Not because of power failure—but because shadows clung more stubbornly to corners than they should.
His generals surrounded him. Diplomats. AI tacticians. Even the Council of Atmospheric Integrity was here—a body not seen since the Venus Heat Flare Crisis.
A red line blinked across the central display.
"What is that?" someone asked.
Nova entered, his boots echoing unnaturally.
"A signal," he said. "From the other side."
A silence fell.
Nova tapped the display, pulling up a waveform pattern. It wasn't sound. It wasn't light.
It was a gravitational echo—one that mirrored the same resonance patterns recorded during the failed jump-drive test six years ago.
"It's trying to communicate," Nova said. "Or warn us. Or lure us."
"Or trap us," Patro said, stepping forward.
Nova's gaze locked with his.
Something flickered between them—unspoken history. Unhealed wounds.
"It's the same frequency from the Singularity Trials," Nova said softly. "The one you classified. The one you said was buried with the dead."
The air tensed.
"You said those deaths were an accident," Nova added. "But that resonance... that's what killed them."
Patro didn't respond. His eyes were hollowed with memories.
Because the truth was this:
Nova wasn't just a prodigy.
He was the only survivor.
Flashback: Six Years Ago — The Singularity Trials
Nova had been eleven.
A child genius, swept into AGC's secret gravity weapon program. The facility had no name, just a number—T-731.
And in Lab Theta, they had built the first artificial singularity engine.
Mark Patro had been the program head then—he believed Nova could stabilize what no one else could. But the tests had failed. One after another. Until the eleventh trial.
Nova remembered the scream of compressed air. The way the core imploded—not exploded. Like it was pulled inward by a cosmic fist. Scientists, guards, even Nova's older sister—gone. Ripped out of reality.
Nova had survived.
Patro said he didn't know the core would destabilize.
But even as a child, Nova had seen the lies behind Mark's careful eyes.
He had known.
He had gambled.
And lost.
Back to Present:
Patro stared at the blinking signal, then at Nova.
"We both lost something that day," he said, voice low.
Nova's reply was cold.
"I lost everything. You lost funding."
KAI interrupted the silence.
"Proximity alert. Orbital Relay Station 3 has gone dark. No transmission. No beacon."
Nova's breath caught.
That was the station closest to the wormhole.
"Deploy eyes," Patro ordered. "I want visuals."
*-------------------------------------*
Scene: Lagrange Point — Edge of the Anomaly
A recon drone deployed—its shell braced with gravitational shielding. The feed returned in fragments.
Static.
Then clarity.
Then—
Darkness.
Not emptiness.
Movement.
A figure stood on the other side.
Human-shaped.
But wrong.
Its form flickered like a broken hologram, phasing between timeframes. As if its body existed across multiple moments at once.
"Is that... a person?" one of the officers asked.
Nova leaned forward.
"No. That's an echo."
"An echo of what?" Patro asked.
"Of someone who went in," Nova said. "Someone... who didn't come back the same."
*---------------------------------------*
Scene: AGC Holding Wing — 7 Hours Later
The first survivor was found.
Not human. Not whole.
But alive.
They pulled her out from the magnetic field at the wormhole edge—half-conscious, trembling. Her name tag: Dr. Elira Vos. The same physicist presumed dead during the Aurora Gate project—a wormhole prototype that collapsed three years ago.
She had vanished during the failed test.
And now, she had returned.
Nova stood outside the medical glass as Elira screamed in her containment room.
"Time doesn't move forward in there!" she cried. "It shifts! We were pulled—ripped—put back in the wrong order!"
Her eyes bled black tears.
"They're watching through us! They're using us to see into your time!"
She looked at Nova.
And screamed one word.
"Aegis!"
She knew.
She had seen the stabilizer.
And something—or someone—wanted it.
*-------------------------------------------*
Scene: Lab 9 — Later that Night
Nova stared at his scar in the mirror.
He had always told others it came from an explosion. A lab accident.
But it hadn't.
It came from Trial Eleven.
When the core collapsed, something inside the anomaly touched him.
Not just space.
But something conscious.
Ever since, he had dreams he couldn't explain.
Of cities floating in darkness.
Of towers made of bone and steel.
Of eyes in the void.
And a name.
Whispered across every vision.
Vel'Cartha.
The word wasn't in any human language.
But Nova understood it.
It meant The One Who Waits Between Moments.
He turned back to the stabilizer core.
It was glowing faintly.
Not with power.
With response.
The wormhole was waking up.
Calling.
And something was listening.
Quote on the Wall in Lab 9(scrawled years ago by Nova's sister):
"To play with gravity is to hold the bones of time. Be careful which bones you break."
– Astra Vos