Butterflies of the Dark Star

42 (REVISED)

Nova coughed for air and lifted herself to her knees. Neo tore his hands away from his eyes to lunge for her. "Nova, stars. Talk to me."

"I'm fine," she mumbled through sticky webs caught in her throat and used his shoulders to steady herself. "What are you doing here? I told you to go to central command."

"Fine? You are not fine. You were getting strangled." His grey eyes turned to the same hard iron as before with a lick of fearful rage. "I'm glad I didn't do that and listened to my gut." He embraced her, and her tears spilled over at her inability to shoot; where Neo — peaceful, gentle, excitable Neo who avoided violence like the plague even if it would save his own life — managed the one thing she found herself unable to do.

He snapped his head to Thuni's corpse, and cringed into scooting away from her. "I-I didn't think—I never thought Thuni would..." Tears fell down his cheeks as he pressed his unbloodied hands against his face, clawing at his cheeks. "I didn't want to kill him, I just—"

"Neo, no, that's not Thuni." Nova squeezed his shaking hands. "It wasn't Thuni. He was already dead, but why didn't you go to central command?"

Neo sat cross-legged in front of her. "It's like I said, I... I was going to go like you suggested," he murmured. "I just couldn't ignore the sensation that you were up to something when you threw me off the transit — and kissed me, I guess, but that's besides the point—" He rubbed his knuckles into his temples. "I went back to our room and grabbed your extra blaster. I don't know what came over me, but I knew I had to get to the droid bay before I was too late." He sighed, then pressed a hand against his heart. "It was like something screamed in my head to go, and before I knew it, I was here and..." He hid in his hands. "This is so messed up."

"Neo." Nova held his shoulders. "Neo, I know it's messed up, but—"

"No. No, I don't think that's the right word for it." He drew his attention to the terminal. Numbers glitched across the screen, and he pulled her to her feet. Nova rubbed her throat when he stopped at the desk to grab the sample. "Is this what you were after?" He poked the core. "This?" He shuffled on his feet in discomfort, too close to Thuni's corpse.

Nova steadied her breathing before joining him at the terminal. "Yeah."

Neo eyed Thuni's corpse, but Nova tugged him back to the terminal, away from the consequences of her actions. "What do you make of this?" One eye on the corpse, she refused to relax on the off chance it got up to enact a third revenge, to choke her or pierce Neo's throat so he drowned in his own blood.

Neo wrote information down onto his datascroll. "Alone, this can't tell me much." He thumbed the sample, then frowned. Using his free hand to trace the lines, he stopped at the highest points where they met. "It mirrors each other, fractured from the whole." He shrugged off an unseen weight and held the beaker over the core. "You have to fill in the gaps."

Nova jolted when the station screamed out the same warning as before.

Neo ignored the call, and tipped the sample over the core.

Counteraction to similarity. It unraveled against the biological compound and became one constant line. Disbelief crushed despair when she pushed to gaze into the truth. Steam slipped through the metal core as it absorbed the traces left behind. I can replicate this. I can replicate this with a couple of fuel cells and a subcore to release the energy — the question is, how much would it output? Nova drummed her fingers on its axis. Definitely anything in the vicinity might vaporize upon release, but—

Nova tickled her cheek, but frowned when Neo tipped forward.

His eyes rolled into the back of his head across the trail of grey stars.