"What exactly do you mean Navigator?" A woman with red accents on her uniform asked. The entire conference room was tense.

"It means Doctor Mirlaj, we are about to witness Rigel's collapse reverse." Fiolas' voice was a steady hammer chipping away the reality in Keisha's mind. The only scientist in the room who could manage a coherent sentence was Dr. Mirlaj.

"What do you mean in reverse?" She asked.

"I mean, the deeper into Dark Space we go, the further back in time we are. The stars are moving, slowly, back to their original positions. To verify this I went back to check the logs of the last few missions we have met up with and the rate at which our clocks are differing tells me that within the next several months, Rigel may very well not be a supernova anymore."

This time there was an eruption of conversation.

"This is preposterous!" Dr. Sturletto seemed to have come back to himself and was shouting over the top of the din.

"Please let's hear his proofs." Dr. Mirlaj was trying to reason with everyone.

"How could this be happening?" someone in a yellow accented jacket was muttering to himself in the corner.

Another blue jacket was now shouting at Sturletto to shut up and let everyone think. Meanwhile, the captain was as calm as a cucumber. Fiolas was holding his head in his hands and Zayd had a furrowed brow and was staring at the captain as though waiting for an order. After a few moments Captain Katopodis spoke, "Everyone sit, there is still much to discuss." Shockingly everyone stopped shouting and looked at her. "Sit. That is an order." She never raised her voice, her calm authority seemed to shake everyone out of their shock.

One by one they sat down and their worried faces turned back to Fiolas who was barely able to sit up in his chair. "Once again, please continue Lieutenant." He nodded at the captain and pulled up another chart showing their course.

"We've only seen a few missions that had reliable time stamps, the voracious plants, the robotic drone program, and the O2 bubble that just came in." Fiolas looked over at her nervously. "The plants were sent out in their container to see if we could create waypoints for ships that were in trouble but too far to be saved. They created a small biome that hypothetically you could float to and hang out in until you could be rescued."

He put a clip up on the screen of the container before launch. "When we arrived and checked on it," he pulled up the container Keisha had retrieved just a few days prior, "The plant life on there was something we haven't seen since we first landed on Chronos and started breeding out their carniverous traits.

"I checked the footage and at first, it appears the plants are dying, they're going back into the ground. But, then they emerge as something apparently new. I believe they reacted to the time-reversal and went from their docile counterparts that the people of Chronos are used to now, and went back to their wild natural states."

The next holo was of a drone being tested on Klokos I. "This is the robotics team from Klokos I, they developed a drone to test the second FTL drive. As you know we can fly close to lightspeed, but not quite match it. Adam Scofield did it once and we've never been able to replicate it. We've combatted this with cryosleep and patience. This drone was based off some of the research Scofield left behind. When we caught up to it the official dating clock, which uses celestial information states it is -500 years at this point. There was of course a failsafe clock built into it and it was sent out from Klokos I roughly 30 years ago, entering Dark Space 25 years ago." The researcher with yellow accents face fell and was starting to turn pale.

Keisha noticed Fiolas' hand trembled as he put up the next slide, it was of the disc they had found just that morning. Zayd looked at her and she returned the confused look. "This last mission is also a confirmation. Dr. Foravis sent out an experimental O2 bubble 50 years ago inside a liquid container that would allow resupplying ship's oxygen tanks. His most hopeful predictions were that 50% of the supply would be available, and this morning we retrieved 97%. Either Dr. Foravis underestimated his own inventions or the bubble is returning to its previous state.

"Of course the shooting gun is the placement of the stars. I caught a lucky break and was able to see the slight shift in the stars as they return to their original positions before the collapse." With this, he showed a graphic of the surrounding stars and planets moving slowly through time, towards Rigel and not away from it as they had during the supernova event.

"This didn't show up in any of my charts, how did you gather this information?" Dr. Sturletto spoke in a normal voice for once.

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"The ship somehow accounted for the shift and would automatically update our charts, so I turned off the automatic update log and searched for previous days. It was buried in the archives but I was able to retrieve it." He then released all the information to everyone's personal holo device. He nodded to the captain and she nodded back at him. "All of you have been brought in to help find a solution to this. It is imperative that this discovery does not leave this group of people and as such you will find your clearance levels have been altered to allow you access to files you may need to fix this."

The room became abuzz and Keisha barely knew where she was. Why am I here? Why was I called in for this? I barely understood anything Fiolas just said.

Zayd leaned over, "Something about this doesn't add up."

"I trust Fiolas with my life, if he says we're going back in time, then we're going back in time." Keisha retorted.

"I trust him." he looked sideways at the Captain, "I don't believe this is the first time the Captain has heard of this though. She's too cool. Something is wrong here." He swiveled her chair to face him, "Think about it this way, why are we here? This is a top-level meeting, we have nothing to offer for the solution here, which means the Captain knows something she isn't telling us."

"What do you think we should do?" Keisha asked.

"I don't know yet. Just watch yourself and be careful with who you talk about this with." She nodded and turned her chair to Fiolas. By now Fiolas was slumped in his chair, barely listening to the clamor around him. Keisha got up and kneeled next to his chair.

"Fiolas, are you ok?" She pushed his curly hair out of his eyes. He could barely open them.

She shook him gently, "Fiolas? Can you talk to me?" His head slumped over and she felt for a pulse, it was weak and his skin felt cold. She remembered seeing him like this when she opened the coccon back on Klokos II and shivered.

She turned to Zayd, "I need to get him to the med bay, something is wrong."

Zayd looked at him and immediately went into action. He got up and spoke quietly to the captain, she waved and he took hold of Fiolas' wheelchair and pushed it towards the door. No one seemed to notice that the person who had made the discovery of a lifetime was now unconscious. She grabbed his things and followed Zayd out the door. She had to run to catch up as he was practically running him to the med bay. Luckily the med bay was really close to High Command and they were there in a matter of minutes.

Andromeda met them, "Hello Keisha. Hello Fiolas." She smiled at her and Fiolas as though nothing were amiss. Assistants came and lifted him onto a table and med bay workers began hooking him up to machines.

"He collapsed after giving a presentation in High Command," Keisha told her. "I don't know why. He seemed fine when I left him last night, but he must have stayed up all night figuring out..." Andromeda just looked at her and put her finger to her lips in a shushing signal.

"We got him ma'am. Please have a seat." A random doctor with green accents shouted at her.

"I understand Keisha. He is in good hands. I will oversee his care myself." Andromeda showed Keisha and Zayd to some chairs out of the way. "Why don't you wait for him here?" They sat down and she floated away to look over the doctors shoulders. Keisha didn't know if Andromeda knew very much about medicine, but it made her feel better to know she was looking out for him.

"Why do you care so much about him?" Zayd asked, Keisha had almost forgotten he was still there. "It seems like the only time you're not focused on him is when you're out flying."

"What do you mean? He saved my life so many times. He's all I have left." Keisha said.

"From what I saw in the field notes, you saved his life just as many times." He ran his fingers through his hair and sat back in the chair, "you know, just because you shared a traumatic experience doesn't mean he has to be your only lifeline."

Keisha turned to him, "Excuse me?"

"I'm just saying there's a lot of people on this ship. You guys have your little club and hang out in the outer ring together, but there's a lot more on this ship than that."

"I like being in the outer ring." Keisha turned back to face the table where Fiolas was, "It's peaceful being there with him. Besides, you don't just abandon someone who gave their life for you. Not twice anyway."

He nodded. "I get it." he reached over and held her hand gently for a moment. "He'll be ok Keish, and I'm here if you ever need someone."

"He will be ok," one of the doctors called out as though on cue. Keisha left the chairs and went straight to Fiolas who was now sleeping peacefully, "He collapsed from exhaustion. It has been quite the day for him. All he needs is rest. The two of you can return to your stations."

"I would like to stay and help him get back to his room when he wakes up." She looked to Zayd, "Is that alright sir?"

Zayd looked to the doctor, "It's fine by me, she won't be in anyone's way." He gave a side smile to Keisha and Zayd and walked off to the next patient.

"Of course," he nodded. "I better get back to work." He left the med bay almost as quickly as he entered it.

Keisha watched him leave as she held Fiolas' hand. Zayd didn't understand that it wasn't guilt or trauma that kept her tied to him. The guilt was what kept her away from him, if she had been someone worthy of Fiolas, nothing would have stopped her from being with him. He was one of the bravest guys on this ship and he deserved a woman who could be brave for him. She stroked his hand while he slept. I can't go back and fix what I did on Klokos II, but maybe I can fix this for you.

She pulled up her holo with all the new information Fiolas had given everyone and tried to make some kind of sense of it. Keisha had thought she was bright at the academy, but it didn't take long to see that Fiolas was out of her league. His notes were impeccable and intricate. She could read flight paths practically with her eyes closed, but this spanned an entire sector. How did he come up with all of this in one night. He looked peaceful and color was starting to come back into his cheeks. Keisha had a gut feeling he wasn't just overtired. "It's going to be ok James. Just hold on." She whispered to him while he slept and then buckled down for one of the hardest study sessions she had ever done.