The cold hum of Lab 9 was the only sound that answered Nova's thoughts.
Outside the reinforced glass, the artificial lights of Site Helios blinked in deep patterns, like silent warnings only the paranoid could hear. The whole facility was alive in a way most people never noticed—circuits breathing, processors whispering in binary.
Nova stood motionless before the gravity lattice—his design, his curse.
The scar on his collarbone itched slightly. Not from pain. From memory.
"You ever hear a human scream as they're torn into nonexistence?" he once asked a professor at fifteen.
No answer had come.
Just like back then, when the experiment failed and the prototype ripped itself—and its test pilot—out of reality. Nova had been the one to override the failsafe, believing he could stabilize the jump. He was wrong. And someone died for it.
He never forgot the name: Elian Ward. His mentor. His friend.
His brother.
"Aether burn across the spinal cord," the med officer had reported.
"No remains. Just... scattered particles. He disintegrated mid-jump."
Nova had watched it all happen from the other side of the glass. And when the heat surge collapsed the shielding panel, the explosion left a mark across his throat—a thin, blazing cut of fire that never healed quite right.
That was the origin of the scar.
That was the day he stopped trusting anyone else's equations.
The lab's AI, KAI, interrupted his thoughts. Its voice was always polite. Too polite.
"Anomaly fluctuations increasing. New distortion signature identified on Mars' orbit. Would you like me to render a visual model?"
"Do it," Nova said.
A blue hologram shimmered to life. But this time, it wasn't just a swirling black mass.
There were… patterns.
Curves. Layers. Like an ancient symbol beneath chaos.
Nova leaned closer. His fingers traced the lattice.
"That's not gravitational noise. That's code."
KAI's voice paused, processing.
"Please clarify."
He exhaled.
"It's not random. The distortion isn't just an opening in space—it's a message. Structured interference, like gravitational pulses layered with meaning. Like... a language."
Patro's voice came through the intercom without warning.
"You're not cleared to decode that alone, Nova."
Nova didn't flinch.
"Then clear me."
"This isn't one of your old lab games," Patro said. "One misread vector and we collapse half the relay grid. If that wormhole's alive—"
"It's not alive," Nova cut in. "But something is controlling it. From the other side."
Silence lingered. Then a low tone confirmed the connection ended.
Nova smirked faintly. He knew Patro. Too well.
The old man didn't like being reminded of their past.
Flashback — Nine Years Ago
The child's name hadn't always been Nova. His real name was scrubbed from every database after the Omega Rift Incident. A classified black site, hidden in the shadows of Saturn's rings, had gone completely silent. Of the 53 scientists aboard, only two had survived.
Mark Patro and a child rescued from the data-core vault.
That child had no name, no family. Just one file entry: "Specimen-0: Enhanced Neural Symmetry - Gravimetric Cognition."
Nova had been born in a lab. Designed. Sharpened.
Patro had broken the chain of orders that night. Taken the child with him. Faked the casualty list. Erased the experiment.
But some truths don't stay buried.
"He's not human," one general had said during Nova's first AGC admission test.
"He's better," Patro had answered.
And so Nova was given a name. A home. And a fate heavier than any child deserved.
Back in the Present — AGC War Archives, Level Omega-3
Patro moved through the sealed corridors of the classified archive level. The place was older than him—built after the Luna Collapse in 2061, during the era when AGC still believed anomalies could be contained by brute force.
He paused in front of a vault door. Voiceprint scan.
"Chairman Mark Patro. Authorization: Black Horizon. Level Twelve."
The locks disengaged. Cold mist escaped the chamber.
Inside lay a file marked NOVA: PROJECT AEON RESONANCE.
He opened it.
Inside were blueprints. Not of a weapon. Of a gate.
It hadn't been designed to destroy wormholes.
It had been designed to create them.
"You always said we'd need to bend space to survive," Patro whispered to the file. "I never thought we'd have to do it alone."
His fingers hesitated over the last image—a security cam shot of young Nova, unconscious, bleeding, after the Omega Rift rescue.
"You were just a boy... but they saw a tool."
Scene: Site Helios – Lab 9, Later That Night
Nova was still working. His coffee had gone cold. Equations danced across the screens, spinning faster than any human could follow.
And yet, he was calm.
Focused.
KAI chimed.
"Multiple new gravitational pulses detected. They're rhythmic."
"Like Morse?" Nova asked.
"No. Like… coordinates."
Nova's eyes narrowed.
"Plot them."
Dots formed across the solar map. Not random. Each aligned with a known ancient structure on Earth.
Pyramids. Stone rings. Obelisks.
Nova stood slowly.
"They're not just anomalies."
He looked at the screen. Saw Earth as a puzzle.
"They're keys."
*----------------------------------------*
Scene: Orbital Relay Station — Commander Lyra Chen
Lyra watched as the last solar panel folded in. Her station had taken damage from the last spatial wave, but it held.
Nova's encrypted message came through.
She opened it. A single line:
"Find the ruins near Point Nemo. They're not ruins."
Attached were schematics for a long-lost AGC outpost, decommissioned after the Phobos Surge. A myth.
But Nova wasn't wrong often.
"Set course," she told her pilot. "We're diving."
*------------------------------------------*
Scene: Point Nemo — The Abyssal Gate
Beneath the southern ocean's dead zone, far from any human eye, an ancient structure stirred for the first time in centuries. It hadn't been built by humans.
It was built to observe them.
Inside, dormant systems flickered. Stone that wasn't stone reconfigured itself.
Something had answered Nova's signal.
And it had been waiting a long, long time.
Scene: AGC Central Command — Emergency Council
Chaos. Diplomats shouting. Warnings blaring.
Patro stood silent, letting them scream.
Then he spoke.
"Nova believes the wormhole isn't expanding by chance. He believes it's… a bridge. A test."
"Test of what?" someone demanded.
"Of whether Earth can survive what's coming."
"And what is coming?" the room asked.
Patro looked up.
"The other side of the universe."
*-----------------------------------------*
Final Scene: Lab 9
Nova stood before the fully activated lattice. The frequencies danced—music of the void.
He touched the central console.
"Activate pulse."
"Warning," KAI said. "The resulting frequency could cause temporary spacetime destabilization in the local grid."
"I know," Nova said softly.
"And you are certain?"
Nova closed his eyes.
He saw Elian's face. The memory of fire. Of failure.
"This time," he whispered, "I control the fall."
He pressed his hand to the interface.
The lab lit up.
And across the stars, something looked back.