The locket swung in slow arcs between his fingers. Empty as it always had been. Still, he watched it like it might change.
He sat alone. He was not locked in, he just, didn't want company. The others were laughing over some stupid co-op game or tossing bets over who'd crack zero-G chess next. Someone shouted "double or nothing" as a vodka bottle smacked the table. He should join them. Protocol encouraged camaraderie. Team cohesion reduced mission fatalities by 18%. He'd passed on all of it. Most nights, he slipped away, found a corner with a view of the sky. Earth's moon still hovered there, dull but loyal.
He'd grown up staring at that same shape. Now he stared through it.
Colonies on Mars were old news. Nations had sunk billions trying to terraform a planet that coughed red dust and spit back death. Still, they tried. Still, they built and buried and swore it would work. He never bought it.
Fix Earth first. That was his thought. Make home liveable again—then go looking for new gods.
But people didn't want survival. They wanted frontier. Discovery wrapped in profit. Something to stamp with a flag and name after a billionaire's dead kid.
That's why Zeus Project mattered. This was different. Fifty years ago, it was a joke scribbled in a paper nobody read. A warp drive. Alcubierre's idea, cranked into the real. Now it was tested. Drones folded space. AI came back intact. The impossible bent just far enough.
He let the thought drift—maybe even time could be broken. Maybe you could reach beyond it, run past it, reshape it.
Footsteps. Fast. Someone shouted his name, "Kovac." The intercom crackled. "Briefing room. Now." Then added, "We need you on the Axis."
He slipped the locket into his pocket and stood. The locket bumped against his leg with each step as he jogged after the voice.
Kovac stepped through the pressure door into Axis Briefing Chamber 6. He expected the usual crowd—maybe four or five familiar faces from the ops team, a coffee thermos still hissing in the corner. Instead, the place was packed. Chairs pulled tight. No idle chatter.
People turned. They'd been waiting for him.
He froze for half a second before stepping in fully. Closed the door behind him. Kept his expression neutral, not flat, just unreadable enough to buy a few seconds. There were at least fifteen people. Some in worn blue flight suits, others in darker uniforms with high collar pins. A few lab coats. A face he recognized from orbital broadcasts.
Dr. Li Shao.
She stood near the console, still as rock, holding a tablet like it was part of her arm. Thin frame, sharp shoulders. Her cheeks looked drawn inward, as if time had spent years carving her to precision. The lenses in her specs were thick enough to distort one eye more than the other. She nodded once at him.
He gave a nod back, slower.
A tap echoed—someone hitting their datapad against a chair to get attention. The room quieted.
The commander, tall, square across the chest, spoke without looking at anyone in particular.
"Before we begin," he said, "I'd like to confirm—everything discussed here is classified. No comms, no recordings. This does not exist outside this room."
Everyone nodded. Some slower than others. One person shifted their weight but didn't speak.
The commander glanced to the left. "Jim."
A shaggy-haired tech, maybe late twenties, leaned toward the projector console. "Yessir."
A low hum rose from the base of the table. A blue projection spun to life. It flickered twice, then stabilized into a massive red-orange form—swelling, boiling, slow-turning mass. It hovered over the table like a dying god.
"What you're looking at is… Batike-296." The commander turned halfway toward the group. "Hope I said that right."
Someone chuckled near the back. A few quiet snorts followed.
The commander shrugged. "That's all I got. Now I'm going to let the actual smart people do the explaining. Doctor? It's all yours."
He stepped back. A short, respectful pause.
Dr. Li didn't smile. She didn't adjust her tablet. She didn't clear her throat or ask if they could all hear her.
She just started.
"Batike-296 is a misnomer. There is no official registry under that name. The designation was made by the AI during a sweep of gravitational anomalies."
Kovac shifted slightly in his chair. Something about the way she said anomalies—flat, like a checklist item—put a pin in the back of his head. He glanced around the room. No one else looked spooked. Maybe they hadn't caught it.
Li went on.
"From our data, now, it seems to have evolved. It is not a single star. It is part of a binary system. Possibly even a trinary, but only two objects have been verified. Neither emit detectable light in the visible spectrum."
She adjusted something on her tablet. The projection flickered again—shifted, now showing not the star itself but a larger map, a sector of the galaxy laid out in dull lines. A shaded region swirled in purples and opaque grey.
"Roughly 82 light-years from Sol, in a blind spot behind the Veil Nebula. The anomaly was detected by accident."
Kovac leaned forward, frowning slightly. He'd studied that sector. Years ago. Nothing unusual. Dust and ice.
"Hidden by a tangle of stellar dust and dark matter," Li continued, "the binary system had evaded every telescope. It didn't emit visible light. Only irregular pulses of graviton noise—"
She paused just long enough for it to feel intentional.
"—strong enough to distort neutrino readings back on Earth."
The room held still.
Kovac caught himself chewing the inside of his cheek. He let go. Tried to frame it all logically. Graviton noise? Neutrino distortion? That meant...what? Mass fluctuations? Compression? No. Tidal waves. Dimensional pressure. It didn't make sense.
"The thing is, Batike-296 should not exist in this configuration," she continued. "Based on initial modelling, a star that size—its mass, temperature—it should have collapsed into a singularity. A black hole."
"It didn't," Li said. "It split. Not into fragments. Into twins. Two neutron stars. Identical mass. Perfect orbit."
"That's—" someone muttered.
"—not possible?" Li finished for them. "Correct. We ran it through eight simulation stacks. Quantum, classical, modified Newtonian, relativistic, you name it. None of them worked. Not one."
Kovac felt his pulse skip. It wasn't fear. It was worse. Curiosity.
"Jim, can you forward?" she asked.
The tech tapped twice. The hologram reversed, spinning the star backward, collapsing it until it glowed like a sun. Then it split. Clean. Surgical.
Li pointed at the frame.
"There. See that? That's not collapse. That's bifurcation. It didn't die. It cloned."
More murmurs. A woman in the third row scribbled something on a tablet without looking up.
Dead silence. Not even a cough.
She looked around, her eyes moving fast.
Dr. Li raised a hand to bring the meeting together again. Her fingers shook slightly before she laced them behind her back. The old woman didn't seem the type to enjoy standing in front of a room full of younger scientists and astronauts, but she was doing it anyway. Kovac noticed the way she stared past the projection, like she was already somewhere deeper in the data.
"And it gets even more interesting." She said, and her lips pressed together like she was still deciding how much to share.
"The readings we've received…" She took a breath. "They say there are three bodies."
A small wave of movement went through the room. A cleared throat.
She went on. "But not three stars. Not exactly. One of them — we believe — is a planet. Or a failed star. That part's still under debate. It doesn't behave like any object we've catalogued before. Too massive to be a gas giant. It's… big enough to hold ten Earths, possibly more."
Kovac leaned back against the wall. He didn't mean to, it just happened. Ten Earths. You could drop the Moon into a pit that size and never hear it land.
Dr. Li blinked twice and continued. "Now. About the Alcubierre tests. We've sent four warp drives. Unmanned. Full autonomous control. AIs with quantum core processing. Every one of them failed to return."
Someone near the back mumbled something about cost.
"Yes," she said sharply, catching it. "It's expensive. Very. That's why the next one isn't going to be a drone."
There were a few glances. One muttered "shit."
"But here's the point. We didn't just lose signal. We lost systems. All four went cold. Until last month."
She turned slightly. "Jim."
Jim tapped a few commands into the console without saying anything. The stars blinked out. The diagram shrunk. In their place came a single number, pale blue and flickering.
920231192119
There were no explanations for a moment. Just the number. Projected. Static and strange.
Dr. Li tapped the tablet in her hand. "This signal was picked up by neutrino scopes in the southern plateau array. We matched it with a spike in graviton activity — and confirmed source direction through triple-array angular differentiation. All data points to the same location."
She paused. Looked down at her notes, then didn't read from them. "We don't just believe it came from there. We know it."
Silence.
Kovac heard one of the techs murmur to another, too low to catch the full thought. He caught the words "...but why a number?"
The commander took a step forward.
"We believe that's contact."
A breath.
"Extra-terrestrial."
His voice didn't rise. He didn't need to say it twice.
"First contact," he added. "And this time… it's confirmed."
No one moved.
Kovac stared at the numbers without blinking.
The number hovered like a verdict. Pale blue, flickering slightly. A frequency embedded in numbers. Someone's idea of language. Or a warning.
The commander cleared his throat. "Alright," he said, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve. "We're going to need seven."
A pause. Then: "Seven of you will pilot the warp drive to the twin stars."
He scanned the room. Grins curled at the corners of some mouths. Others stared at their feet. One guy with glasses made a sound like he was going to ask a question, then didn't.
"So," the commander said, "any volunteers?"
Silence.
Someone in the back coughed.
"Come on. No one? What happened to courage and youthful ignorance?" He raised an eyebrow.
Still, no hands.
The commander smiled faintly, shook his head, and said, "Luckily, six of us are already cleared. Fully trained. Fully briefed. Probably still idiots, but brave ones."
He turned, straightened his back. "Captain Raelov."
A tall woman with a tightly cropped mohawk and silver jaw implant stepped forward, lifted her hand to salute. "Yes, sir."
"At ease."
She dropped the salute and shifted her stance. Her expression didn't change.
The commander continued.
"Aaron Nez. AI Labs."
A wiry man with deep circles under his eyes gave a tiny wave, like he didn't want to draw attention.
"Gina Patel. Systems and redundancy."
A woman in her thirties nodded once, already tapping something on a tablet.
"Mikhail Baro. Engineering. Propulsion focus."
He raised two fingers. Had a toothpick in his mouth. Somehow.
"Shino Yamane. Astro-navigation."
No gesture. Just a calm bow of the head.
"Zola Mbeki. Structural."
She grinned. "Hope the thing doesn't fall apart before we hit the anomaly."
A few quiet chuckles again.
Then the commander paused. Let the air still. He turned his head toward Kovac — not dramatically, not slow — just a shift. Like he already knew.
"Dr. Li suggested a candidate for our seventh," he said. "Someone who doesn't need to be told what they're walking into. Someone who's been walking into it their entire life." A beat. "Kovac."
Kovac's jaw clenched.
"You'd fill the gap. But it's only if you're will—"
"I'll go."
It came out fast. Final. No space for permission. Not this time.
The commander blinked once. Then nodded.
Kovac didn't explain. He'd been dreaming about this before he even knew what the word "graviton" meant. He wasn't going to wait around just to wish he had.
The commander didn't add anything. Just turned his eyes back to the team. "Meeting adjourned. Pack light."
The screen faded. The lights came on. Chairs scraped the floor. People stood, but nobody left quickly. There was murmuring. Glances. A few claps on shoulders.
The kind of end that didn't feel like one. Just a new edge forming.
They stepped out onto the viewing platform — a wide strip of reinforced glass running the length of the hangar wall — and there it was: not the drive itself, but the rocket. Tall, narrow, lean like a blade. White with matte-black bands wrapped around its lower third, vapor streaming from its base as if it were already impatient to leave. The launch scaffolding surrounded it like a nervous parent. This wasn't the future-tech elegance of the Warp Drive floating in orbit. This was muscle. Fuel and flame. The brute force needed to get them up there.
Zola let out a low whistle. "So, this is it, huh?"
Mikhail cracked his neck. "Nah, that's just the bus. The real toy's already floating out there, humming like a loaded gun."
"Doesn't matter. Once we strap in, there's no turning back."
"You nervous?"
"If I was, I wouldn't have signed up for this."
A few meters away, Kovac stood near a reinforced wall with two others — Zola and Gina — while two techs suited them up.
The suits didn't look like anything Kovac expected.
They weren't bulky. No hard outer shell. No metal exoskeletons.
They were sleek. Reflective — almost like oil-slicked chrome, but textured. You could barely feel the material shift when it moved. The fibres responded to body heat, sealed instantly at any joint, and had layered dispersion for high-energy particles.
No matter got in. Not air, not dust, not even thought. Fully vacuum-hardened. Inner temp-control linked to spine sensors.
The masks hadn't been put on yet — they rested on a separate rack. Round-headed. Faceless. The type you didn't wear so much as become.
"Feels like a wetsuit if the ocean hated you," Zola muttered, adjusting the collar.
Gina glanced at Kovac. "You alright?"
"Fine."
He wasn't sure if it was true. Didn't care.
The bay doors opened at the far end. Footsteps. The soft shush of soles on synthetic flooring.
Dr. Li.
She didn't speak at first. Just walked up, nodded once at the techs, who stepped aside.
"Kovac," she said, quiet.
He turned toward her.
She looked smaller today. Maybe it was the distance between him and everything familiar. Maybe she always looked like that.
"I need a word. In private."
He hesitated. Then nodded once.
Dr. Li didn't ask permission before closing the lab door behind her. Kovac stood near the wall, still adjusting to what had just happened in the briefing. He half expected her to launch into a diagnostic, or ask about his training logs. She didn't.
"You knew you wanted to go up there," she said, voice soft, not questioning. "That's why I chose you. As the seventh."
Kovac didn't reply right away. He scratched behind his ear and waited. She watched him with those sharp, glassy eyes that never missed much. She didn't blink often either — just stared, like she was still measuring something.
"I mean," he said, "I didn't think you'd actually—"
"Well, I did."
She paced a short half-step in front of him, chin tucked in thought. "You're the only one up there who knows both astrophysics and astrobiology. Real knowledge, not just read-from-a-script kind. That's not luck, Kovac. That's why I trust you with this homework."
"Homework," he repeated.
"It is. That planet — if it even is one — we need someone who can read between the radiation spikes and the gravitational inconsistencies. And who won't panic if something growls back."
There was a pause. The kind of silence where it felt like both people were deciding whether or not to say more. She eventually turned, reached for the door.
As it hissed open, she added without looking back, "By the way. I read your book."
Kovac's brow lifted. "You—wait, what?"
"It wasn't that bad."
"You loved it," he said.
She glanced sideways. "Don't get high hopes, Kovac."
For the first time in weeks — maybe months — he smiled. Not the twitchy kind, not the forced version he wore around command. A real one. Small. But real.
The crew was strapped in now. Seven of them. The cabin hummed with restrained energy, tension braided into every shoulder, every breath. Flight engineers in the Axis room were walking them through the last sequence of checks, voices steady through the intercom.
Outside the porthole, the rocket loomed — no metaphors, no metaphysics — just raw, industrial teeth. This wasn't the Warp Drive. This was their ride up. Their real job waited in orbit.
"Looks like a damn grain silo," one of the engineers muttered. Ramirez, maybe. He was still buckling in. "Built by someone with anger issues."
"Focus," Raelov shot back. "No jokes during launch."
A beat passed.
"Unless they're good."
Countdown began.
Ten. Kovac exhaled. His hands didn't tremble. Not yet.
Nine. Captain Raelov's fingers tapped his thigh. Military habit.
Eight. Someone muttered a prayer. Or maybe a grocery list. It was hard to tell.
Seven. The harness across Kovac's chest felt tighter. Maybe just in his mind.
Six. The noise began — deep, distant, a monstrous growl from under the Earth.
Five. Heat trembled in his boots. Not pain. Vibration.
Four. He closed his eyes.
Three. This was it.
Two.
One.
Ignition.
The thrust slammed them back like an invisible fist. Pressure folded across his ribs. Bones felt like paper crushed in a child's fist. He gritted his teeth, resisted the urge to shout.
The rocket lifted.
The sky peeled apart.
And then — silence. Weightlessness. As if gravity had stepped out for a cigarette.
Zola floated a few inches out of his seat, kicked back with a laugh. "I'll never get tired of that."
"Strap down," Raelov said, half-smiling. "We're not tourists."
The interior lights adjusted, and the console came alive. Clicks, toggles, numbers rearranging themselves like a puzzle halfway done. Kovac tapped a few keys, watching fuel ratios stabilize.
Then the bay came into view.
The bay was massive — a cathedral of steel, light, and magnetic hum. The Warp Drive didn't look like a rocket. Not even close.
It floated six feet off the deck. No visible supports. No scaffolding
A sphere, matte black and smooth, maybe thirty meters across. Surrounding it, two vast rings intersected at oblique angles, slowly rotating. The rings weren't solid — not entirely. They shimmered. Almost translucent. Like they were there in theory more than in metal.
Inside the sphere, no windows. No seams.
"There it is, the Five hundred trillion-dollar ship," said Mikhail, arms folded as he stared up at the rings.
Captain Raelov looked at him like he was joking.
"Does that money even exist?"
"No bank gave it to us," he said, shrugging. "If the money ain't there, you print it. There's no point borrowing if you're the one holding the press."
Raelov smirked. "That's terrifying."
"And patriotic."
The rocket tilted, corrected itself, and aligned with the floating monolith ahead.
The Warp Drive hung in the void like a riddle—thirty meters wide, black as basalt, with two rings slicing around it at impossible angles. No visible support. No propulsion system. Just suspended certainty.
Inside the cockpit of the rocket, voices flickered in from the Axis Briefing Room, guiding them.
"Adjust yaw. Two-point-seven degrees. Stabilize lateral drift. There—lock it."
"Confirmed," said Raelov, flicking a toggle. "Bridge extension deploying."
From the base of the rocket, a telescoping arm hissed outward. A bridge—angular, skeletal, but sealed—extended and docked to a faint port just beneath the Drive's shimmering surface. Magnetic clamps locked. Lights turned green.
The crew snapped on their masks. Suits already sealed.
They moved slow, methodical. A sequence practiced a hundred times. Into the tube. Feet floated. Hands gripped railings. One by one, they entered the orb.
The inside wasn't metal. Not quite. It shimmered—somewhere between carbon weave and polarized crystal. A material designed to resist shear, time dilation, radiation. Something theoretical ten years ago. Now real.
Six chairs were anchored to the inside floor, arranged like a command flower—one at the front, two pairs angled on the sides, one behind. They weren't strapped down. They floated—stabilized magnetically. No console, no windshield. Displays were retinal, voice activated.
Kovac pushed off the entry rim and coasted gently to his seat. He removed his mask. So did the others. The air smelled sterile, faint ozone. The orb had an atmosphere system. Better than Earth's.
Captain Raelov checked the seals on her chair, eyes locked ahead. A beep echoed through the Drive.
"Captain Raelov, do you copy?" came the Commander's voice through the main channel.
Raelov replied without hesitation. "Yes, sir."
"Alright. So, I've heard you'll be traveling at ten-c—whatever that means. Should take you eight minutes to reach destination. Sixteen minutes round-trip. Down here, that's sixteen years. Hell of a trade."
Pause.
"Once you're out, we won't reach you. So don't waste time. If you meet someone out there... come in peace. Take what you need. Come back. Agreed?"
"Agreed."
"Good. Remember the training. Good luck out there, guys."
The line cut. Static faded.
Raelov exhaled, leaned forward, started tapping in commands.
Click. Swipe. Toggle.
Gina Patel checked power redundancy. Aaron Nez synced AI permissions. Shino Yamane hovered cross-legged by the nav controls, wristwatch still ticking. Zola slid beside Kovac, nodding once.
Kovac held the locket in his palm again. Empty, reflective and cold.
Zola peered sideways. "That's... yours?"
Kovac nodded without looking.
Zola tilted her head. "There a picture inside?"
Kovac turned it over and popped it open. Hollow. "Nope."
"Huh. You carry a blank locket?"
"It was given to me this way. It's too small anyway. Can't fit a picture with two people."
"So, where's the picture then?"
Kovac stared at the empty shell. Then him. "Burned all of 'em."
Zola gave a half-smile. "Dark."
"Maybe, but Efficient."
Before she could respond, Raelov called out: "Alright, lads. Buckle up."
Click.
She pulled a lever, notched deep and the lights flickered.
Outside the orb, the interlocking rings spun up. First slow, then wild. Orbiting in opposite directions. They shimmered harder now. Then they blurred. Became light.
A sound, too deep for ears. Felt in the ribs.
And then: motion. They launched.
Acceleration punched through every part of them. Muscles stiffened. Time didn't pass—it cracked.
Stars blurred but not into lines. They looked like streaks against them, like swimming upstream against galaxies. Kovac tried to breathe and realized he already had. Zola gripped the side of her chair.
Mikhail whispered, "Jesus."
Nez blinked. "This ain't speed. This is—"
"Hang on," Raelov said, voice calm. She wasn't looking at anyone. Her eyes were set forward, but there was no forward.
Shino looked at his wristwatch. Eight minutes to the dot. He tapped the casing.
Another thirty seconds passed.
The rings outside the orb slowed. Dragged. Phased.
Everything stopped.
Silence returned. There was no hum or motion.
Shino checked again. "Eight minutes and thirty seconds. Guess Li was wrong."
They had arrived.
Exactly eighty-five light-years from Earth.
Patches of violet fog drifted across their field of view—like bruises in space, with specks of starlight bleeding through. None of them spoke at first.
Then: "Uh… sorry, just asking," Mikhail started, adjusting the seat harness, "you're telling me a teaspoon of that thing over there weighs… what—four, six billion tons?"
Shino tilted his head slightly. Didn't need to answer.
Mikhail gave a low whistle, mostly to himself. "Hell."
Ahead of them, hanging alone in the dark, a planet rolled into view. Blue-green. Not the kind of blue seen on Earth. Too heavy. With bursts of brightness that shimmered like oil on metal. It pulsed slightly, like it breathed—or maybe that was just the illusion of their movement. Either way, it was massive. Even Kovac leaned forward.
"That's big," someone muttered.
And it was. Too big.
Kovac stared. Something about the place—maybe the way the stars seemed to bend around it—unsettled him. And then—
The girl. In the stars. She was laughing. Pointing. He shook his head, closed his eyes. When he opened them again, nothing but the usual constellations. He rubbed his face, cleared his throat.
They drifted closer. The ship adjusted on its own, lining them up above the planet's upper pull.
"So… who's going?" Gina asked.
Kovac stood before anyone else could pretend they hadn't heard.
"I will."
A moment passed. Then Zola: "Hey—hang on. Who said anyone had to leave the ship?"
"There's one tube," Kovac said. "You're the pilot," he added, looking at Raelov. "You can't leave. The rest of you don't want to. Or won't."
"Wait, that's not—"
"And I'm the only one here with astrobiology training."
The captain blinked. Didn't say anything.
Kovac didn't push. "The commander said not to waste time," he said. "We're wasting it."
They suited him up.
The black layer clung to his frame. Sealed tight. Flexible in the joints. The AI lab team finished syncing real-time feeds into his internal HUD, confirming thermal feedback, integrity checks, vitals. The engineers tightened the tube's base, testing the micro-hydrogen thrusters meant for escape, though none of them knew if they'd be needed. The fluid down there might not even let him sink.
The tube was small. Just enough room to move an arm. Its glass dome had been reinforced for re-entry—something between diamond and boron-nanotube mesh. Strong enough to endure the burn. Maybe.
He stepped toward the chamber. Someone adjusted the latch. He paused, turned.
"Captain."
Raelov turned.
"If I don't come back," Kovac said, "don't start a planetary war."
Raelov just looked at him.
Nothing else was said.
The ship adjusted orientation—bringing the launch tube in line with the planet's gravity well. In the tube's upper segment, helium thrust capacitors waited, ready to compensate against the initial drop. Once triggered, the descent would be rapid and narrow.
He climbed in. Closed the seal.
"Do you copy, Kovac?" came the voice over the comm.
"Yeah. Copy."
"Counting down," Raelov said.
Kovac swallowed.
"Five."
"Four."
"Three…"
He closed his eyes.
"Two."
Click.
"One."
There was a snap.
Then—release.
The world around him twisted. Not violently, but completely. Friction carved orange trails across the shield as he punched through the atmosphere. The green haze blurred the dome. Chemical clouds peeled past, thick and luminous.
The heat surged. The black suit held.
Sensors around him chimed with alerts. External pressure climbing. Internal temperature stable. Still falling.
Green. Deeper green.
The atmosphere, laden with ammonia and propane, lit up differently than Earth's. No blue. No gold. Just heavy moss tones cut by electric blue swirls—likely liquid helium pockets forming in the cooler layers. Beneath it all, a liquid sea. It wasn't water. Probably a compound—ammonia slush with traces of methane and alkane hydrocarbons. Oily. Slow-moving. Reflective only in broken pieces.
No surface.
The tube's descent slowed as it sank into the layer of heavy fluid. The propulsion system didn't fire. It had no need. The base floated naturally.
Suspended. Still.
He breathed. Or tried to.
There was static in the comm.
"Raelov, do you—do you copy?"
Nothing.
Just static.
"Kovac here… confirm receipt."
Nothing.
Then the static cut entirely.
He was alone.
The hatch opened with a low grind. Kovac didn't step away from the tube. Not completely. One hand still gripped the edge like a tether. The moment he let go of it, the whole thing might slip from reality. Or he might.
"Rho, run a scan," he said. "Average temperature."
The AI gave no sound. Just a short whirr.
Nothing for a second.
"Now, damn it." Then a faint blue beam lit up the space around him, diffused into the thick liquid that seemed to move without motion. Like breathing, but upside down.
"98.15 Kelvin," the AI finally said. "Approximately minus 175 degrees Celsius."
"Close to what I guessed," he muttered. "Too cold to be anywhere near alive."
"Not for long without heat support," the AI added.
He floated. Or sank. It was hard to tell. The suit's internal heaters hummed quietly. External readings scrolled against the inside of his helmet. The liquid out there shimmered, rippled with soft hues that didn't belong in Earth physics—greens twisted into soft turquoise, and sections of faint orange or violet blinked and faded like distant lighthouses.
"Everything's poisonous," he said. "Even the light feels like it wants to kill you."
"Judging by the scan," the AI said, "estimated oxygen concentration ranges from 0.0001 to 0.001 percent."
"Wonderful." He turned his head slightly, watching swirls in the liquid. "Just wonderful."
Then something drifted across the field in front of him—just past the perimeter of the blue scan light. It shimmered. No real outline. Just a form that existed and didn't. Blue, same as the lake around him, but brighter somehow, as if fused with the liquid itself.
He blinked. Still there.
"Run another—" he started, then stopped.
It didn't look like a body. No limbs. No eyes. No outline. It wasn't in the lake. It was the lake, and it happened to be gathered in one place. An organism that didn't separate itself from its environment.
"Are you—" He reached out.
Nothing.
Fingers moved through the fluid, but where the thing should've been, there was no resistance. Just that same ambient chill pressing against the suit. No boundary. No change. Then—
He jerked. Or the world did. Like something had tugged his entire field of perception sideways. His balance vanished. The liquid around him stayed still, but the sensation was movement. Falling forward and being yanked upward at once. Then something shifted. A jolt. No—more like… the world itself turned. He didn't feel a shove. Not in his body. More like the entire frame of reference shifted under his feet. Up became forward. Liquid turned to sky. He couldn't tell what was falling or what was flight.
He hit the floor.
Hard.
A room. With lights, dry air and a desk.
"Rho," he said, pushing himself up. "Do you copy?"
"Yes."
He waited. One second. Two. Three.
"You saw that too, right?" he said, still staring at the door.
"Yes, sir." Rho answered.
Clothes—he looked down. Not the suit. His old shirt. Gray, slightly stained. Corduroy pants. Ones he hadn't worn in years. He held out his arm. No sleeve displays. No interface. Skin.
"What the hell just happened?"
"I don't know," the AI answered. "My sensory input ended, then resumed here."
He turned slowly, eyes scanning the walls, the shelves. Same wood desk. Same half-broken cabinet near the corner. A cracked mug still sat on the top shelf. His mug.
"This looks like... my house," he said quietly.
"Seems consistent with your memory logs," the AI replied. "The pattern matches stored visual data."
"No," he said, louder. "That can't be. It's gone." He took a step.
"Are you projecting this?"
"No, sir,"
"So, what is it?"
"I don't know."
"You already said that."
He ran his hand along the wood. Rough. Splintered at the edges. Real.
The AI's voice hadn't changed. That almost made it worse.
He pressed his hand to the desk again. Slid a finger over the edge. The groove from when he'd slammed a wrench on it. Still there.
"This is real."
"In your frame of perception, it appears so."
"No, no. I mean… I can feel it. Smell it. Dust. Wood. My suit's gone. I'm—" he looked down. Pants, shirt.
The AI didn't answer right away.
"In my assessment, it appears structurally consistent with reality."
Something clattered. A laugh.
Before he could take in the next thought, a thump.
"Footsteps, uneven and light, pattered like children's."
He turned.
A small girl ran toward him, bare feet smacking the floor. She was laughing—softly, urgently—as she grabbed onto his leg, trying to hide. Then a boy, maybe three years younger, tore after her with a plastic cup raised like a weapon. They both vanished out through the doorway. She'd left it wide open behind her. He didn't even see their faces.
Kovac stood there. One hand still resting on the desk. The air hadn't changed. No strange scent.
He still didn't like that answer the AI gave it to him. He pinched his forearm. Then slapped himself across the cheek.
It hurt.
He shook his head once, hard. "Ok then. If it's real, where are you?"
"Inside a system state I don't recognize," the AI said. "I'm not currently sure how to categorize it."
He took two steps forward. Looked toward the open door.
Footsteps again. Slower this time.
Someone was approaching. A woman. Just out of view.
And Kovac didn't move. He just stared at her.
She had the same soft crease near her brow when she smiled. Same habit of brushing her wrist against her collar when nervous. She looked exactly how he remembered and nothing like the worn memory he'd been clutching to in the dark.
"Come on," she said, laughing. "You're doing that thing again."
He blinked, tried to reply, but nothing came out. His jaw just hung there, stupidly. Then, with almost no warning, he pulled her into him. The hug landed hard—he hadn't meant it to, but he couldn't stop it. She stiffened at first, taken off guard, then folded into him. Familiar warmth. Familiar scent. She was real. Or close enough.
"We've got to hurry," she whispered. "It's Hannah's day."
He didn't move. Just held her tighter.
"Hey," she said, pulling back slightly, brushing a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "Are you okay?"
He tried to speak, swallowed, tried again. "I... yeah. I missed you."
Her brow furrowed. "What do you mean? I was here, like, an hour ago."
He smiled, a flicker that didn't quite reach his eyes. "Doesn't matter. I just missed you."
She tilted her head. Something in her softened. "Okay, well, my lover boy—Hannah's waiting in the dining room. She's been hyped since 5 a.m."
He paused. "I thought she ran past me earlier. With a friend."
"Yeah, the neighbourhood kids. She's been playing with that shy boy, um… what's his name—Tommy or something. You seriously need to learn the names."
He laughed under his breath, nodding vaguely.
"Don't forget," she added, already walking out, "we're going shopping after drop-off. Big surprise. Don't be late."
"Two minutes."
Then she was gone.
He stood there for a second longer. Fingers twitching. Then, quieter: "Rho."
"Yes, sir?"
"I want diagnostics. Environmental data. Latency scans. Figure out what this is."
"I've already begun. Standby."
He ran a hand along the rail as he walked. The surface was smooth, slightly cool. Cherrywood. Yes—he remembered. The exact grain, even the worn patch on the left edge from Hannah's teeth when she used to chew on the corner during tantrums.
Downstairs, light poured through the kitchen windows. The smell of eggs and toast. Coffee brewing.
Then a squeal.
"Daddy!"
She threw herself at him, small arms locked around his neck. He lifted her, nearly dropping to one knee with the weight. She'd gotten heavier—or maybe he'd just forgotten how light she once was.
She laughed in shrieks, kicking her legs. "You didn't forget today, right? You didn't forget?!"
"No way," he said, eyes still studying her face. "You think I could?"
She tilted her head. "You look weird."
He snorted. "Do I?"
"Yeah. Like you cried, but your face got stuck."
"Huh."
She paused, looking serious. "Are you sick?"
"No," he said quickly. "No, just... tired. Long dream."
She nodded like she understood. "I had a dream too. But mine was dumb. You weren't in it."
"Well, I'm here now."
She grinned wide. "Okay. So! I won. I beat Sam. He said I cheated, but I didn't. I swear. You helped me."
"I helped?"
"Yeah, when he tried to tag me, you stood in the way. Remember? You said, 'No way, mister.'"
Kovac blinked, head tilting slightly. "I did?"
She giggled. "Yes! And then I zoomed to base! He was so mad."
He lowered her slowly, still watching her face. "Sounds like me."
She ran off to grab her backpack, dragging it halfway across the floor.
His wife passed behind him with a plate, nudging his back with her elbow. "You look like a statue. What's going on in that head?"
He shook it off, sitting down. "Nothing. Everything. I'm just—glad."
"Huh." She smiled. "Weird day for you to be sentimental, but I'll take it."
As they all moved through the kitchen, clinks of plates and chatter filled the room. Everything felt stitched together too perfectly. Not artificial—just... precise. Like a memory wearing skin.
Then it shifted.
The change was instant but not violent. The air folded. Like something peeled the room back. Not tearing it—more like it slipped out of itself.
He didn't fall. Didn't float. Just… transitioned. Like a cut between two frames. One second, eggs and laughter. The next—
Concrete. Buzzing lights.
Fuel.
He gasped, nearly toppling over. Metal surfaces. Screech of tires. Neon blinking above—black letters on yellow boards. A petrol station.
"Sir?" Rho said. "Are you alright?"
Kovac steadied himself, legs trembling. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm here."
He looked around slowly. Dust, rust, the choking smell of rubber. And just ahead—a market. Stalls lined up under canvas tarps. Crates of fruit. Old signage.
He froze.
"No," he muttered. "No, no, no."
He stumbled forward, then ran. Fast as he could.
"Sir?" Rho said, alarmed. "Sir, where are you going?"
Kovac didn't answer.
The car was already in motion. He knew the make. The angle. The way the driver jerked the handle back too far. It was all the same.
The tank hose hadn't been removed.
The rover rolled just enough.
Contact.
He screamed as he sprinted, arms flailing wildly. "Stop! STOP!"
But it was too late.
One flicker. Then a crackle.
Then the explosion.
Heat roared outward. Metal bloomed like a dying flower. Shrapnel sang. He saw the silhouettes. He saw them.
His wife.
His daughter.
Inside.
He didn't even make it to the flame. He dropped before the blast finished echoing. Screaming. Hands digging into his scalp, dragging. He couldn't stop yelling. His chest convulsed. The world blurred. He was choking on breath.
Then—
That sensation again.
No sound. No colour. Just that fold. The unravelling.
When it ended—
The liquid again.
Suspended.
Quiet.
Rho's voice returned, muffled like underwater radio. "Sir. Readings have stabilized. You're back inside the atmosphere."
Kovac didn't speak.
Just drifted. Inside the green-blue lake. Cold. Still.
Surrounded by silence that didn't comfort. Not anymore.
Kovac didn't speak for a while. The walls of the helmet pressed in closer than usual. His fingers twitched at his sides, fists loose but ready.
The AI's voice didn't change. It never did. "I'm sorry for the experience, sir."
He blinked. Hard. "Run the data again."
"I already have. Multiple passes. All models reached one consistent outcome."
Kovac stayed silent.
"The host of this planet—" the AI continued, "—is a binary neutron system. Two stars formed by the collapse of a supermassive progenitor. Based on the gravitational patterns and field interference, this sun should have birthed a black hole."
"That's not—"
"—possible under classical physics, yes. But the distortions are real. Even the organism—the one you couldn't touch. Its physical signature was unreadable not because of cloaking, but because it partially exists in higher spatial axes. The anomalies all trace back to the planet's anchor point."
Kovac's head dipped. Then he straightened and said, "So where we are now… it used to be a star."
"Presumably. A star big enough to rewrite physics. What's left is a pocket. An enclaved zone of distorted time and geometry. What you've been inside of… isn't just atmosphere. It's a temporal habitat."
"A what?"
"An environment layered in dimensions beyond three. Four is common, but here… the metrics behave as if they're five. Possibly more."
Kovac laughed, once. "So, what—you're saying this planet exists in five dimensions?"
"Eighty-five percent likelihood."
He chewed the inside of his lip.
"That's why the organism can't be touched," the AI continued. "It's not shielding itself—it's just… not fully here. Not in the way we are."
He stepped forward, then stopped. "So, when I saw them again. It wasn't an illusion?"
"No sir. It was another point in time. You didn't remember because your body, your thoughts—everything—was interpolating across temporal coordinates."
Kovac stared ahead. "So, I can go back. I can actually go back."
There was no answer.
He turned.
The organism floated a few meters away. Dim sparks ran across its structure now—soft pulses, like thoughts too big to hold still. Kovac stumbled forward, staring at it. He raised his hand. Then dropped it.
"Please," he said. "I know you don't understand me. Or maybe you do. But please. Take me back. Just once more. I'm begging."
Nothing.
He dropped to his knees. "Please."
The hum came again. Deep inside his ribs. It was happening.
Time shifted. His body didn't move, but everything around him tore sideways—like slipping into a story mid-sentence. When the blur settled, he was there.
Before it happened. Days before.
He ran. Told them not to go near the station. Warned them of everything. Changed the route. Changed the plan.
They still died.
Then again. And again. Hundreds of times. Thousands.
In some attempts, he screamed. In others, he went cold and calm and tried logic.
None of it mattered.
On the 3,986th time, the AI interrupted.
"Sir—"
"No."
"Sir, please. Time inside this zone progresses at a scale unknown to human biology. You've already burned 9,846 seconds of oxygen. Every reset costs you one. You are halfway depleted."
"One more."
"Kovac—"
"One more."
He reset.
And another. Then another. He stopped counting.
Until the day came. The day everything bent, but didn't break.
This time, they were in a different country—far from the petrol station. Far from any familiarity. He'd planned everything down to the seat numbers. A bus this time, not a car. He didn't speak much that morning, except to remind his daughter to tie her shoelaces. She pouted. He smiled. He kept watching her feet.
The hours passed. There was traffic. Then delays. Then nothing. No explosion. No screams. No burnt air in his nose.
They came home.
He held himself together, barely. Hannah kicked her shoes off at the door and ran to her room. He walked up slower. She had already crawled under her blanket. Her soft voice peeked out: "Read the one about the flying cat, okay?"
He nodded, pulling the book from the shelf. Read it twice.
She asked if they could go to the beach tomorrow. He said maybe.
"Night, Daddy."
He kissed her forehead and shut the light. Then he stood at the door for a while. Just stood.
He went back downstairs. His wife was folding laundry on the couch. Some soap ad was playing on the TV but muted. She looked up, saw him. "You alright?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then he crossed over, arms out. She leaned in. He pulled her close. Held her like he hadn't seen her in years. Maybe longer.
A few tears came out, finally. Just a few. It surprised even him.
"You're crying," she said quietly.
"Yeah. It's nothing."
"Alright."
She rested her chin on his shoulder.
The room stayed like that.
He didn't say anything more that night. Didn't need to.
He won.
It had been ten years. The fields didn't feel the same. Air was warmer, even in winter. The static in his ears had finally gone silent. Kovac aged, but quietly. Laughed more. Slept less. Work never stopped, but the walls of his life had settled.
One evening, Rho summoned him. No urgency, just that tone it used when it had something it considered important.
Kovac walked into the workroom still holding a coffee mug he hadn't sipped. "Go on," he said before even sitting.
Rho's interface blinked to life. "Sir. I think I have something that might interest you."
Kovac gave a half nod, half shrug. "Only one way to find out."
"You see... I might have deciphered the biological framework of the lifeforms in the Hectegral Zone. And why the five quantum AIs vanished."
"Alright," Kovac murmured.
"You remember the concept of synthesized matter—"
"Topoconductor," Kovac cut in.
"Yes. Exactly. The life form uses this."
A schematic rotated midair—three-dimensional, shifting layers. Molecular bonds and pulses. Rho explained while Kovac's eyes moved fast across it all.
"A topoconductor, operating at cryogenic temperatures, emits controlled quantum pulses—phase shifts, fractional charge flows—through a graphene-doped ammonia gel. This interacts with the organism's membrane. Polar, azide-reactive molecules react at quantum scale, triggering neurochemical responses. Not language. Not communication. But biochemical reaction. Proof of registration."
It didn't just talk about biology anymore. It talked about interaction.
"Sir," Rho continued, "it means the AIs... were the beginning of life. Not just tools. Their matter fused with this ecosystem. They evolved."
Kovac leaned forward, jaw slightly clenched. "And the data in them?"
"Wiped. They weren't needed anymore so the world collected only the topoconductor."
He stared at the image—Rho's model of a half-AI, half-organism, flickering and translucent like something still becoming real.
Rho's screen pulsed again. "There's more. I think I breached the 5th dimension. Only once. Never again. But... I sent a message."
Kovac snapped out of his trance. "That's enough," he said, standing up. "We'll talk tomorrow."
"But sir—"
"It's a big day tomorrow. Don't ruin it."
A pause.
"Yes, sir."
That morning smelled like coffee and cut grass. His certificate ceremony was overdue by five years, but Hannah had begged him to wait until she could attend with full understanding. Sixteen now. Taller. Quieter. Wiser in some ways he hadn't taught her.
They walked out to the car. The air shimmered faintly in the sunlight.
"Keys," he muttered.
His wife flicked them to him.
He missed. Bent over to pick them. "Still got butter fingers," she teased.
He pulled her close. Kissed her on the cheek, then the mouth. "You're not supposed to mock me today. Remember?"
"Didn't agree to that."
"You're lucky I love you."
"You're lucky I'm still here."
They laughed, kissed again, lingered in it longer than needed. Hannah rolled her eyes but smiled through it.
As they drove, she played music—something instrumental, probably from one of her learning playlists. They passed old roads, a vendor selling juice in bags, some field Kovac used to walk through when he was too angry to think.
"I still don't know what to say when I get on that stage," he said.
"You'll say what you always say," his wife replied.
"And what's that?"
"Something no one expects. Something weird. Then something moving."
He smirked. "Pretty much."
The light ahead turned red.
But Kovac wasn't looking.
He was mid-sentence, saying something about gravity and graduation—some small remark meant to make Hannah laugh. His wife had just leaned over to fix her bracelet, and the car kept moving. Quiet hum, smooth gliding. No hesitation.
Across the intersection, a lorry had already begun its turn.
It was hauling more than it should have, tires straining against their own rhythm, chassis fighting inertia. The driver—half a second late—hit the horn, but it came out garbled, too mechanical to sound urgent.
The sound barely registered.
Kovac's foot hadn't touched the brake.
Then everything cracked.
There was no screech. No heroic turn of the wheel. Just steel meeting steel. A noise like someone splitting the sky open from inside. The windshield warped, then burst inward. The side panel buckled. The world twisted.
The car lifted—actually left the ground. Rear first, like a bottle kicked upward.
Glass scattered. Not in slow motion, not in fragments. It rained sideways, jagged and fast. The seatbelt caught Kovac by the ribs and yanked him back, but the frame was already folding inward. The air filled with burnt rubber and antifreeze. Screams, maybe. Or metal crying.
His daughter's bag flew past his shoulder and disappeared through what used to be a window.
The vehicle spun once—too fast to process. Then hit the road on its side, then again on its roof.
Something slammed into Kovac's head. Or maybe he slammed into something. Couldn't tell. There was blood somewhere. He could taste metal. Something was still moving, still grinding.
Except... he wasn't in the car anymore.
He was outside of it. Watching. Floating.
He wasn't anywhere at all.
Just outside, looking in—watching the wreck spin, hearing it all happen again from somewhere impossibly still. Like watching a recording from the future, already knowing what was about to unfold but unable to stop it.
The world around him unfurled like a sheet pulled back. Endless versions of the same crash, same decision, same outcome. All timelines, all failures. All at once.
And then the world folded inward again, and he was gone.
He was back.
The planet again. The liquid hummed around him. His suit, too loose now, shivered at the seams.
Rho spoke softly, from somewhere near his chest.
"That... was the warning, sir. You can exist anywhere. You can relive it all. But you cannot... rewrite it. You may... divert. But the current will always return to itself."
Kovac didn't answer. He knew that.
Rho added, "Oxygen: low. Suit temperature: falling. Hydraulics thinning. Don't move. Don't talk. Silence slows entropy."
But Kovac chuckled. Just once.
"Rho... what was the message?"
The AI paused. Then: "920231192119."
He blinked, "What," shoulders shaking from the cold. "Translation?"
"It was us."
Kovac tilted his head against the inner lining of the mask. A hairline crack had already split across the visor. The liquid outside shimmered green.
"Well," he said, half-laughing. "Now that's poetic as hell."
Rho hesitated. "I'm sorry, sir. This mission was not successful."
Kovac closed his eyes.
"No... not successful. But…"
A wheeze, a smile he didn't have the strength to finish.
"…good enough for me."
A small bubble slipped out through the cracked mask, spinning as it rose, and was gone.