| Generated by Google Flow text-to-video AI software, powered by Omni Flash 1.1 |
Sugar and Runaway are on Tau Station. The latter is standing on a stage in
the recreation room, trying to explain to the survivors where they are, and
what’s going on. They’re panicking, because she has freed them from her
control, and let them cope on their own. They will be okay, though. They
will live. They won’t be able to go back home, because they’re all
duplicates, whose alternate selves are blissfully unaware of all this, but
they will be out in the bulk, where they can start new lives literally
anywhere else.
Sora is still in the lab with Pribadium as she’s preparing to force Tau
Station through a small tear in the universal membrane. At the second to the
last second, he will teleport over to the station too. They have modified
his spatial tether with her so that when it tries to pull Pribadium along
with him, she will be able to fight it until the very last second.
That way, she will be able to hold on long enough to make sure the survivors
make it all the way through the quintessential barrier. The machine is very
demanding.
Once the station is safely on the other side, she will let go of the
controls, and let the link teleport her over too, allowing the breach to
seal itself automatically behind them, leaving the outpost to be crushed
when this pocket universe collapses completely. Tau Station isn’t as much as
she wanted to serve as a bulk traveling hub, but it’s better than
nothing. The important part is that everyone will be alive.
The outpost asteroid is starting to break apart as the dimensional barriers
pulverize it. Tau Station is smaller, but this has to happen, and it has to
happen now. “Is everybody ready!” Pribadium shouts into the comms. “Do you
have them secured!”
“The rec center operates on its own equilibrium drive!” Sugar yells
back. “As long as it’s running, the whole station could tremble, and we wouldn’t
feel it!”
“Good!” Pribadium replies before facing Sora. “It’s time. Press the button.”
“Are you sure?” Sora asks. “You’re not just trying to be a martyr, are you?”
“I don’t wanna die, Sor,” Pribadium assures him. “That’s your plan one day.”
“I am rethinking that,” Sora admits. “There’s so much more to see, and not
eno—”
“I’m glad you’ve come to that realization. Why don’t you hop over there so
you can follow through with it,” Pribadium urges. “Go. Go! It’s halfway
through already!”
“If we don’t make it,” Sora annoyingly goes on, “I’m not going to tell you I
love you, but...I don’t hate you anymore. I really don’t hate you.”
He hits the button.
Pribadium feels a tight lurch in her chest. At first, she thinks it’s Sora’s
tether trying and failing to pull her along, but then it lifts with a sudden
snap. She physically almost falls to her face. She tries to shake it off and
refocus on her work station.
“What was that?” Sora asks through comms. “It didn’t feel like how you said.”
“Oh, no! Our tether! It’s broken!” Pribadium cries back. “I guess I
am a martyr.”
She hears someone’s voice through the radio, but it’s so garbled that she
can’t tell who it is. “Try—just—if y—we can almost—we see—technico—try ag—hurry!”
Pribadium exhales and sits down to watch on screen as the station disappears
in a bright swarm of technicolors. They left just in time. The universal
walls are so close now that space is warping like a giant magnifying glass
for the stars. “Not long now.”
“Hey,” Sora says behind her. “I teleported back. I promised I wouldn’t leave
you.”
“Goddammit, Sora. I accepted my fate, and was trying to relax,” she argues.
“We can still relax,” he reasons. “We can do it together. No one should die
alone.”
“No. Now I have to get back to work. Now I have to find another way to save
you.”
