--- 23 days after The Fall of Luna, 18 days after launch of Project Phoenix, Max Becker, Phoenix Ship 23 ---

"Max, you said it yourself, it IS all a lie!" Lucy said, taking my hand.

"I did, but what if there's a reason for this!" I argued.

The wall of our room still had the sentence written all over it in black ink, together with a bloody mark beside it-

"Why would the OBSERVATORY be dangerous?" she challenged, pulling me forward, "this whole world is more dangerous than a glass dome!"

"But Kyle said that it is! You know, the only person here knowing what they are doing!" I spat back, but tried not to attract attention, we both knew it was a bad idea there.

"Oh, because of course, Kyle, the Norse mythology nerd knows what he's doing and I don't, you trust him more than me, don't you?" she returned, "because of course, Loki is telling you the truth, it's not like it would be the first time someone lied to you to save you, right?"

The memory was still engraved in my brain, I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to forget or forgive what happened. They had no right to lie to me like that, especially then, I wasn't a child no more, they could have just told it straight to me. But Kyle never lied to me, at least I thought so, for all I knew he didn't know much more than we did. The only thing that he knew that we didn't was how to control the ship, but I could've learnt that if I wanted to, he surely would teach me.

"You have no right to mention that," I growled, "but let's say we find something, what then?"

"We'll see," she said. Her hand collided with the door's panel like a lightning bolt, loosening it from the wall.

"Wait, what are you doing?" I asked, checking if anyone saw us.

"Getting in, I mean, how bad can it be? If it was depressurised it would say so," she said, stripping a few wires of their isolation and mashing them together. This ship was never meant to be secure in that sense, it was an ark, not a prisoner transport so the door caved in, sliding open with a whoosh and thunk.

"See," she started, "nothing, told you!"

And indeed, there was nothing there, past the observatory itself and a small pedestal with a holopad, probably used for tracking what you wanted to see.

Were the ships repurposed? I mean, why would there be an actual observatory in the first place.

She entered and I trailed after her, "there must be something, they need to be hiding something!"

She took the holopad, and I just stood there, she swiped left and right, with the screen not changing at all, stuck on the image of the black hole, "it's broken-" the observatory's viewport flashed and zoomed in on the black hole, at a click of a button.

"Woah," I mused.

For a thing like that, it was beautiful. If I tried not looking at the remnants of my home that is. Light bent around it, it was an otherworldly experience, something no living being was meant to see. It was beautiful.

"Woah," Lucy repeated after me, "consider this as my birthday present for you."

I just remembered that that was tomorrow. Time went on too quickly, oh how I would love to just stop it, I just my had sixteenth birthday, and now, in but a day, I would be seventeen-

But then something came back to me, days ago, when we were still on Earth, on that highway when I thought it all was over, I saw something. I knew I did, my attention was taken from it then, but now I noticed it lurking in the black hole's shadow again.

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"What's that?" I pointed out.

Lucy froze looking at it and dropped the holopad to the floor. To be honest I did the same, past the holopad-dropping part. It was beautiful. Not the kind of beautiful that the black hole itself was, this was different.

In the shadow of the black hole, it was like a shadow in itself, a purple phantom. Its tentacles wound around the Event Horizon, and floated around the Earth and the Moon. It was beautiful. It was like everything just faded, and it only existed in all of time and space.

And then its eye opened, streaks of pink, purple, and blue light beaming from it around a white as a star iris. I looked at it and it looked at me, into me. I felt its gaze on me, searching. The whole world came back, but not like it was before, it was just an echo, like I was in a place completely detached from reality itself. It stood, or rather floated before me, not in space, just there. Its gaze dug deep into my soul, as I was thrown into that abyss around us.

And I saw... I saw all of it... all of everything, ever, but not really. I saw, but I didn't get to examine all of it, there was too much. But I saw some things.

Our home on Proxima, I remember the vast grasses running in all directions from left to right, no, that wasn't how that was. No. There was a city around it, yes. My friends, my school, the- and it was gone.

Nothing made sense. But then it did. I heard a cry, something- someone crying, like a child. It was the hospital on Titan, I was the one crying. Mum, I tried to catch her hand as she held me, but I was a newborn, yes, I was just born, I don't remember that, but I do, somehow. My hand phased right through hers and I was thrown through the wall, back into the abyss.

The ship. My ship. Yes. But I was in the wrong place. Dad, he was there and mum, on the ramp. Yes, and I was there too and Lucy, I held their hands. I sprinted back towards the ship and the soldier leaned in to whisper to my dad, "sir, we can't take you, we don't-" and then the world fell apart. I fell into a hole, deep into the earth.

Then I saw dad's friend... a Caloxi, Te'ret, yes. I was on Caloxi Prime, I think. Some room, made from concrete. Yes, yes, and there were children around him and he said, "-child named Max, and they lived. This Max swore to protect us-" then everything went muffled... that didn't happen yet, no... he said something more and a child said something, "Max? The God of Calo-" and then I was launched as if a rocket into the purple skies of Caloxi Prime, and there were ships in the orbit.

A forest... dark forest, I didn't know that dark forest... or I did... it was the forest of Proxima, but it was different... weirder... scarier... a winged reptilian ran past me... what species was that? And then I fell upwards, in between the leaves of the canopy.

And then I was there, before it, a form of entropy in itself, surrounded by the echoes of a world long gone by in the abyss of eternity. And then it whispered something to me in a language forgotten before time had begun its existence in the universe, I didn't understand the words, but I understood the meaning.

Time and space was nothing more than an imaginary concept born from entropy, the universe was nothing more. Everything was just chaos, but chaos can be tamed and there was nothing that could stop me once I did that. Everything was just... a wave in the vast ocean of reality and it showed me how to turn the tide.

And then everything stopped before the echo of a world became itself in full and I was thrust back into the reality I knew so well, but now I understood it.

"-were right!" Lucy screamed frantically, backing away.

"It's beautiful!" I said, not yet understanding what was happening around me.

"No it's not!" she screamed, slamming herself against the wall opposite to the viewport, "it's ugly! It's bad! It's wrong! I am not- I don't- I-"

"What are you talking about?" I tried to approach, but she bolted away from the observatory.

"I will save everyone!" she screamed.

She ran, and ran, and I was after her for all of it. There was nothing i could do to stop her, but I could follow. We ran past the cafeteria, the residential area and started heading towards the Stern to the Bow. The ship wasn't that large and because it was the 'evening' the hallways were empty so she was making some distance. In what seemed like a flash we were before the bridge.

She banged her hand on the door as I tried to argue with her, "what the hell are you doing, Lucy?"

"Saving everyone," she whispered.

The door opened swiftly, the captain of the ship, Kyle Armstrong stood in the doorway.

"Commander," Lucy called, "I need you to come with me."

She pulled him out of the doorway before punching him straight in the face, potentially knocking him unconscious, but I wasn't sure. She bolted to the control panel.

"Lucy stop!" I tried to get her away from it.

She mashed her elbow into my abdomen, launching me into the wall on the small bridge.

From then on everything went like a flash.

I felt something appear in my hand and I gripped it tightly, something heavy, made mainly from plastic, but with metallic parts also. My arms snapped it into position on their own as if they knew exactly what to do.

And then- BOOM.