—7 Days Until Spatial Breach
*----------------------------------*
Scene: AGC Central Archives – Level B13 (Restricted Access)
The deeper Nova went beneath Site Helios, the colder the air became—not physically, but existentially. This floor wasn't on any blueprint. KAI had unlocked it using an encrypted access code Nova wasn't supposed to possess.
But he had to know.
He passed rows of cryo-sealed data servers, each humming with secrets long forgotten. At the far end, a reinforced door blinked with a red sigil:
BLACK LEDGER – EYES ONLY
He placed his palm on the biometric lock.
"Override code: Theta-11. Confirm identity—Dr. Nova Voss."
The door hissed open.
Inside, the walls were lined with hollowed-out drives—data cores physically altered, some melted, some fused into the walls, as if something inside the data had corrupted them. A single terminal remained intact, pulsing faint blue.
Nova sat down, hesitating for the briefest second.
He inserted the classified black drive.
Then everything changed.
*----------------------------------*
Scene: Encrypted Playback – Trial Eleven Audio Logs
"Recording 11-B. Lead: Mark Patro. Subject: Project Aegis pre-prototype stabilization test."
Nova recognized the voice. Younger. Unhardened.
"Nova's pulse rate is climbing," another voice said—his sister, Astra. "He's hearing something."
Static.
Then:
A deep whisper, not human. Not earthly.
"He must disconnect," Astra shouted. "Patro, he's—"
"We hold." Patro's voice, cold. "We are this close to proving resonance transfer."
Then the scream.
Nova turned away from the screen, fists trembling.
Patro had known.
He had heard the voice too.
And still he kept Nova connected.
That voice wasn't from the stabilizer.
It was from the other side of the wormhole.
*-----------------------------------*
Scene: Site Helios – Control Room (Same Time)
Chairman Patro stood before a holographic map of Earth. Fissures of gravitational instability bloomed like veins from the central point on Mars.
"How long until collapse?" he asked.
"Seven days," one of the command AI said. "Six, if the anomaly expands."
Patro didn't blink. His attention was elsewhere—on the shadows forming at the edge of the wormhole.
He remembered the eyes. The ones that had looked at him during Trial Eleven. Not imagined—real. Something had seen him across the veil.
And it had remembered.
*-----------------------------------*
Scene: Dr. Elira Vos's Quarantine Cell
Nova stared at Elira through the reinforced glass. She looked better—but her eyes remained hollow. Like they saw a thousand versions of the world at once.
"I was inside the same place you were," Nova said quietly.
"No." Elira shook her head. "You were touched. I was taken."
She pressed a shaking hand to the glass.
"They showed me what's coming. You're trying to build a stabilizer for the breach?"
Nova nodded.
"You don't understand," she whispered. "The breach is not a doorway in. It's a wound. And your machine is trying to sew it shut... but the infection is already inside."
Nova's throat tightened.
"They've seeded it," Elira continued. "Thoughts. Dreams. Codes. Even people."
"People?"
"Double selves. Echoes. You've already met one—you just didn't know."
Nova stumbled back.
"Wait," he said. "What do you mean I've met one?"
Elira's lips curled slightly. Not a smile. A warning.
"How do you know the Mark Patro you serve is still the original?"
*--------------------------------------------*
Scene: AGC Blacksite – Unknown Location
In a dark room beneath the Antarctic facility, an old man sat in stasis.
His heart barely beat.
His name: Mark Patro.
The real one.
Suspended since the Singularity Trials.
Above him, on the surface, the other Patro—same DNA, same memories—continued running the AGC.
But Nova didn't know.
Not yet.
And the man calling the shots… was not a man at all.
*-----------------------------------------*
Scene: Council of Atmospheric Integrity – Emergency Session
We're introduced to Dr. Iman Kyro, head of astrophysical ethics. A man of unshakable conviction and a former friend of Astra Vos.
He slams a report on the council table.
"There are thirty-two classified anomalies in the stratosphere, and none of them are naturally occurring. These are bleed-throughs."
"Bleed-throughs?" another asked.
"Leaks from the other side."
The council murmured.
"Nova Voss is building a solution," one member offered.
Kyro glared.
"No. Nova is being used."
*---------------------------------------*
Scene: Lab 9 – That Night
Nova opened his sister's old research journal—smuggled out of a burn vault.
One page stood out.
A sketch of the wormhole with glyphs around its edge—matching symbols now appearing in the gravitational data feeds.
Underneath, one phrase:
"They don't live in time. They live between it."
Nova stared at the glyph.
It was pulsing on the stabilizer's outer ring.
Not drawn.
Etched—overnight.
By what?
Or… by who?
Quote in Astra's Journal:
"Truth is the first casualty of discovery. The second… is the one who discovers it."
*-----------------------------------------*
Scene: Site Helios – The Sky Burns
At 2:13 a.m., half the sky turned black.
The wormhole on Mars pulsed again, creating a brief mirror event in Earth's upper atmosphere. For 14 seconds, the stars above Helios blinked out and were replaced by… different stars.
Ones that didn't exist in our known universe.
And something moved across them.
A shape.
A tower.
A face?
Nova and KAI ran calculations.
The stars weren't real.
They were memories of a possible future.
A timeline that failed.
Scene: Patro's Office
Patro stared at himself in the mirror.
The version staring back blinked one second later.
Lagging.
Not a glitch.
A delay.
Like time no longer trusted him.
Or like the mask was slipping.
He smiled.
But the mirror did not.
Final Scene: Nova's Dream
Nova was a child again.
Standing before the collapsed singularity.
But this time, someone else was there.
A girl—his sister—but older.
And her eyes were made of stars.
"Don't build the bridge, Nova," she said. "Burn it."
He tried to speak, but the dream shattered.