Astra-9 drifted closer to the Refracted Star, its hull bathed in prismatic light that bent around the ship like a distorted halo. The engines were silent now—standard propulsion useless inside the star's wounded gravity well. They were being drawn in, not by force, but by resonance.
Orion stood at the forward deck, hands gripping the rail, his eyes locked on the blazing fractures ahead. The Infinity mark within his mind pulsed in perfect rhythm with the Star.
Lyra stayed close, as if a single step away might lose him forever.
Rhea's voice cut through the uneasy quiet.
"Navigation—report."
Rowan swallowed."No conventional coordinates exist anymore, Commander. The Star is acting like a temporal sink. We're not moving through space."
Solven finished the thought calmly.
"We're sinking through events."
The space ahead of them peeled open like thin paper.
Not a wormhole.Not a gate.
A scar.
Inside it—metal.
Orion's breath caught.
A structure drifted in the wounded spacetime: enormous, ancient, scarred by impossible energies. Its outer surface was layered with concentric rings of alloy and crystal, each etched with symbols that hurt to look at too long.
Archive Zero.
"It's still here…" Lyra whispered.
Kessler stared at the readings in disbelief.
"This facility has existed inside refracted time for decades… and no time at all."
Vale's tone was grim.
"Which means everything inside it could be from the past, the future, or never at all."
The scar widened.
Astra-9 crossed the boundary.
And reality changed.
Inside the Scar
The stars vanished.
The universe folded inward into a vast chamber of floating debris and warped geometry. Shards of metal from different eras drifted side by side: ancient alloy, modern Fleet plating, unknown alien constructs—all suspended in a slow, eternal fall.
At the center loomed the main body of Archive Zero.
Its exterior was split open, as if by a catastrophic internal force. Jagged crystalline growths erupted from its core—temporal scars crystallized into matter.
Rhea inhaled sharply.
"All hands. We're committing to boarding. There will be no extraction window until the Star releases us."
Rowan muttered,"So… possibly never."
Vale turned to Orion.
"You drive the resonance. We follow your signal."
Orion nodded, throat tight.
His footsteps felt heavy as he led the team to the docking airlock. The Infinity mark flared with heat beneath his skin, guiding him like a compass that pointed not to place—but to origin.
The docking seals engaged.
Metal screamed against warped metal.
Then—
The airlock opened.
Archive Zero — Interior
The inside of the facility was impossible.
Corridors stretched and looped back on themselves in non-Euclidean curves. Walls flickered between different architectural styles—human steel, crystalline refugee alloy, unknown alien geometries. Gravity shifted in slow, unpredictable waves.
And time…
Time bled.
Orion felt it immediately.
Every step caused a faint double-image of himself to trail behind—then rejoin him a second later.
Lyra whispered, unnerved,"It's like walking through delayed reflections."
Kessler scanned rapidly.
"This entire structure is soaked in temporal radiation. Every second here overlaps with a thousand possible seconds."
Vale's hand hovered near his sidearm.
"That means we're not alone."
As if summoned by his words—
Footsteps echoed down a shattered corridor ahead.
Slow.Uneven.Familiar.
Orion's breath caught.
A figure emerged from the haze.
Fleet uniform.Burned and torn.Face scarred.
But alive.
The man looked up.
His eyes widened in the exact same moment Orion's did.
Because the man was him.
Another Orion.
Older.Hollow-eyed.Carrying a fractured data-core against his chest like a sacred relic.
Lyra sucked in a sharp breath.
"Orion… there's—"
"I know," he whispered.
The other Orion took a trembling step forward.
"So… this is the timeline where you still have hope."
Rhea raised her weapon instantly.
"Don't move."
The echo Orion smiled faintly, weary.
"Relax, Commander. If I wanted you dead… you wouldn't have made it past the scar."
Vale's eyes hardened.
"This version survived the collapse longer than the one who sent the Archive message."
The echo Orion nodded to Vale.
"Barely."
He turned back to Orion.
"You came early this time. That's… encouraging."
Orion's heart hammered.
"You're a temporal residue."
"Yes," the echo replied softly."A survivor of a timeline that almost learned how to win."
Seraxis' voice crackled through the comm, weak but urgent:
"Do not trust echoes. They are incomplete reflections of collapsed realities."
The echo Orion looked pained.
"She always said that too."
Lyra stepped beside Orion.
"If you really are him—then tell us how to stop Archive Zero."
The echo's expression darkened.
"That's why I waited here."
He lifted the fractured data-core.
"Because the experiment is still running. And the machine that began the Unmaking… is awake."
The corridor trembled.
Deep within the facility, something massive shifted.
A low, inhuman resonance rolled through the fractured walls.
Vale spoke quietly:
"Then we've found the heart of the nightmare."
The echo Orion met his gaze.
"No.""You've found the first heartbeat."
The lights of Archive Zero flared violently.
And far beyond the scar, the Refracted Star pulsed in agony.
The countdown jumped—skipping forward by a full minute.
09:21:18:03
Time was accelerating.