Fifteen Minutes Before Nexus Enters the "Mouth":
"You're sure you haven't seen her?" Eve said. She was beginning to question a journey that would require a full day's wait to return to the girl's side.
"We're sure," Lucas said. "It must've taken some precise, stealthy maneuvering for Dixon to get himself to this side of the station for even a brief period, let alone a hostage who would either be unconscious dead weight or awake and struggling."
Eve sighed and looked over at Lauren, who shrugged. What were they supposed to do, now?
The boys had been waiting for them by the airlock when they'd arrived. Eve had expected a long and involved search for her friend, but was now being told that it was probably a waste of time.
“There’s got to be more hidden places on the station, right? Maybe she’s somewhere we don’t have access to?” Lauren volunteered.
Ten Minutes Before Nexus Enters the Mouth:
"I've got to wait for the rest of the Reactor Club to thaw," Alex said. "Someone's got to stay here and explain what's going on to them. Who knows when this update will finish."
"Okay. I've got to find a way back now, though. Who knows when this update will finish?"
Alex dressed in the clean white and grey Nexus uniform stored in a compartment beneath the main part of the hyperbolic chamber. He buttoned up all the way to the high collar.
"I'll take control of the relay station," he said. "There's got to be a way back to the main station. One of the maintenance doors should lead you to a ship or shuttle."
"Alright, Alex." Victor said. A rumble shook the relay station. "You probably don't have long. I don't know what traveling through a wormhole will mean for the relay stations. They aren't connected physically to Nexus."
"We'll head back for the main ship as soon as possible," Alex said. He gave Victor a confident thumbs up. "Don't worry. I've got this under control."
Victor nodded and ran off towards a maintenance hatch he hadn't had a chance to explore. There had to be a way back to Nexus.
Eight Minutes Before Nexus Enters the Mouth:
Tears stained Rajia's face as she struggled to use the comm system that sat right in front of her. She'd managed to get to the cockpit chair despite the bindings on both her hands and legs, but hadn't been able to do much else. This cabin was almost certainly sealed, which meant that if she couldn't at least manage to turn on life support she would probably run out of air. Not to mention the fact that she was thirsty beyond belief, and hungry too.
Suddenly, she heard a chiming sound.
"Who is it?" she shouted hopefully. She would even settle for Dixon, at this point.
"Najar, first called Rajia," said a strange alien voice in odd, almost musical, tones. "Your habitation approaches the yawning mouth. You must prepare your ship, or it will be torn apart by the transit."
Five Minutes Before Nexus Enters the Mouth:
"Hello? Is anyone there? Can you hear me?" said a desperate voice from the comm channel. Alex looked at the panel, perplexed. He had only just managed to start pulling his friends from the Reactor Club off of the shelf.
"Yes," he said, pushing the response to open communications. "Who is this?" It was a female voice, confirming what Alex had hardly believed was true about Victor's story, whatever other things he had said.
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"Never mind that. Can you get to the Reactor Club room?'
He couldn't, but Alex was pretty sure he didn't need to from where he was sitting. A rumbling shook through the relay station."
"I'm in front of a control panel as we speak," he said simply.
"Good. Those rumbles, I assume you felt that last one just now? They're because Nexus is about to be torn apart. We can save her, but I need you to change some of the Reactor Settings. It's simple, but you need to hurry."
"How long do I have?" Alex asked as he exited the cryogenic chambers menu and navigated to Reactor Systems.
"Well...."
Three Minutes Before Nexus Enters the Mouth:
Victor found the shuttle almost immediately. It was a small cockpit with a few seats and a main panel, clearly meant only for the short trip to and from Nexus.
The controls were easy to manage. He programmed a trip back to Nexus on the girl's side, the same way Dixon had come. It was possible that Rajia was stored in one of the docking bays that were normally locked off form the rest of the ship. The fact that there was an empty shuttle next to his on the relay station seemed to help his case.
The shuttle coasted easily out into naked space. It moved with along an automatic trajectory smoothly and swiftly. It would have to if it was to, in theory, be capable of shuttle as many people as necessary back and forth from and to the relay stations. That made Victor wonder: if students were stored on the first relay station, what secrets were held on the second? Was it possible that Rajia was there?
He'd look into it after he checked the docking areas on both sides. Now that they had control over the relay station, it was only a matter of time before they controlled Nexus.
"Victor? Are you there? It's Alex."
"Everything alright, Alex?"
"Not exactly. I've just reprogrammed the Nexus reactor so it won't be torn apart. You need to dock --"
Alex's voice cut off suddenly.
"Alex? Hello."
That was when Victor realized that where Nexus should've been was nothing but empty space.
-----------------
Alex stared out of the view port of the ansible relay station. Instead of Nexus and the star around which it and the anomaly orbited, he was staring at a massive yellow sun much closer and many times the size. There was no sign of Nexus anywhere. He immediately stopped the thawing process for all but the one or two who were already too far along to put back on the shelf without completely thawing, first. They would need to conserve resources. Alex surmised that because the relay station was relatively small, it was not as at great a risk of being torn apart as Nexus had been. Also, it had been further from the anomaly. That meant that Victor could be alive, somewhere.
They were all separated. At least the life support systems and provisions on the relay station would probably hold out a week. Even if Victor was alive, he doubted he would survive in the shuttle that long.
Status screens began to pop up as the relay station automatically gathered its bearings and ran lightning fast scans on the star. Among the stats and readings were the star's size, the number of planetoid objects that orbited it, and a small message blinked at the bottom in red: Supernova Collapse Event Immanent.