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Grian stretches his wings, cracking his neck with a soft pop as he sits on the edge of his mattress. They pull taut behind him, and he shrugs at the soft strain of the muscle.
The com beside him is buzzing incessantly, and he reaches for it. A call is trying to come through. Whoever it is must be bold, to call him this late. Normally nothing good comes of this. (He’s still finding plastic ducks in his quarters.)
He picks the com up, rubbing his hands over the peeled stickers and cracked screen, making a mental reminder to get it replaced before it inevitably shatters. The buzzing persists.
He sighs, deeply, and answers the call. “Hello?”
The line crackles. “Hey, Gri.”
Ah. Pearl. This will go well for him, surely. “What’s up at this hour?”
Pearl laughs, slightly. “Me, for one. And, unfortunately, some deep-space anomaly.”
Grian feels his feathers shift, puffing up a little bit. “What is it?”
“Nothing really bad. Just a little interference on the systems. Wanted to get you down here just in case it goes bad.”
“Has the night shift switched over yet?” Grian says, getting up and tugging his pyjamas off.
“Yep. We’ve got Skizzly, me, Martyn, and Gemmy on her first shift ever!” Pearl rattles off as he tugs his clothes on, grunting when his cardigan’s slits don’t quite make it onto his wings, tangling them in the material.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute. Want me to stay on until I’m at the transporter?” He straps his com to himself and is at the door.
“Naw, it’s fine. But if I do call again, pick up right away, ya hear me mister?” Pearl scolds him.
He huffs and agrees, ends the call, and heads towards the end of the hallway. He contemplates flying for a moment, but decides it’s not worth it. He’ll end up bruising his wings on the too-small corridor for nothing.
He reaches the end of the corridor, and steps into the transporter. He feels that all-too-familiar twist of being pushed in and through before he steps out of the other end ( you could be a part of everything, sings his soul).
When he steps out, Pearl is upon him in an instant. “Griba!”
“Pearl!” He responds in turn, poking her under her wing and twitching back when she does the same.
The rest of the room is quieter, but not silent. Martyn hums a beat under his breath seemingly to no tune at all and Skizz is making frustrated comments at one of the tables that display readings. Gem is, as per usual, so silent Grian’s pretty sure the other two have forgotten she’s there. She’s in the working of one of the tables, running some sort of scan, he guesses.
“Okay, Pearl, what’s going on?” He says, striding to one of the tables and pulling out its readings.
“Well, at 2100 hours, one of our scanners picked up on some interstellar radio signals. We wrote it down, checked it hadn’t interfered with anything, and moved on. Then at…2200 hours, I think, we noticed our scanners kept picking up pieces of debris, interspersed with the same signals. We checked it, and it wouldn't fit a frequency logged for interstellar communication. No big deal. But, as we were trying to file it in the log, we couldn’t nail down the right time. Every instrument had a different time. Our coms were the only things that were all identical. Some instruments are off by minutes, some are off by hours, and one of the deep space scanner stations thinks it’s two weeks from now.”
“Huh. That’s weird.” Grian says. “Any bugs you could find?”
“Nothing,” Pearl shrugs. “It’s like we’re being pranked. We can’t find anything.”
Martyn pipes up. “Well, I just found out the times have all switched again. Deep space scanner thinks it’s three days ago and the replicator wishes it was a month from now.”
Pearl groans. “Skizz, you got anything?”
Skizz looks up. “It might be nothing, Pearlie Pop, but…”
Grian walks over. “Go on.”
Skizz gestures to the table. “It’s got all our readings mixed up. Looks like a kid went in there and scrambled it like a plate of noodles!”
“That’s bad. Do we have the backups of those yet?” Pearl asks.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna open them in case they get messed up too.” Skizz grimaces.
Pearl nods, and makes her way over to a gently beeping scanner.
“So, any updates on the radio waves, Gem?” Pearl calls as she scans through the machine.
Gem pulls herself out of the innards of the machine. “I can probably put it into a frequency we can listen to now. I don’t know if we’ll be able to understand them, though.”
“That’s fine, honestly. “ Martyn chimes in. “Tone can tell you a lot about what the message could have been.”
Gem stands, brushing herself off, and presses a button. The speakers burst into life, flaring with the tell-tale sign of an alarm.
A short message plays, and though much of it is lost to static and odd distortions, the alarm persists, as does one word everybody can understand. “Help”, in heavily accented Galactic, over and over at the end of a brief spiel. In the background, there are screams. It feels wrong, like something has shifted out of place, like an awful fabric against his skin, and he almost falls over as a sudden wave of dizziness washes over him. The transmission is abruptly cut off.
“Poor guys.” Skizz says, hand pressing into his chin. “Sounds like a reactor failure.”
“Doesn’t explain why they were using such an odd frequency. They knew some Galactic, obviously, so maybe they were trying and it just was a bit off or something?” Grian says, wings tightening to his back.
It feels like a trap. But it’s just some message of a crew lost to space.
“I don’t know,” says Pearl, “They didn’t sound like they knew what they were doing. Reactor failures are dangerous, sure, but aren’t they super rare? Tango was talking about how easy it is to prevent them the other day.”
“Maybe they had a bad engineer crew?” Martyn offers.
“Well, whatever happened to them, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to us. Can we get Tango down in the reactor? If he’s so sure he can prevent them, let him be down there. We can get Impulse to switch on at 0200 hours.” Grian declares.
The main bridge becomes a bustle of activity, each member falling into their roles. Skizz goes to wake Tango up, Gem double checks her com to make sure the time is what it is, Martyn is cross-referencing their route to make sure they haven’t drifted off course, and Pearl and Grian have put their heads together to brainstorm a plan to make sure they don’t fall to the same fate.
It’s in the middle of their talking when Skizz returns, Tango at his side. “What’s all the fuss about?” Tango asks, carding a hand through his hair.
“Ship had a reactor issue and the last we heard of them was screaming, so we wanted to make sure that that wouldn't happen to us.” Pearl summarises.
Tango goes pale, and nods. “I’ll get down to the engine room. Skizz, wanna come with and help me check everything?”
Skizz nods, and the pair leave.
Grian turns to Pearl and says, “You know you didn’t have to put it that worryingly?”
She giggles. “Gotta keep him on his toes. Or else he’ll be taken advantage of in this cruel, heartless universe.”
He cackles, and the pair return to their work. Martyn confirms they’re going the right way, Gem locks in a solid time (“It’s about 2330 hours,”), and they don’t hear a peep from Tango or Skizz.
15 minutes pass like that, people double, triple, and quadruple-checking calculations until they’re reasonably confident it’s all on track apart from the times, which remain inconsistent. Which machine is the farthest off becomes a small bet whenever they have the discovery the times have switched again.
Grian feels his com buzz in his pocket, and he takes it out and answers it. “Hello?”
He hears short, gasping breaths on the other side of the line, and feels his heart sink. “H- Hey, Grian.”
“Tango? What’s going on?” He asks, biting his claws.
Tango’s response is half lost to static. “Uhm- don’t- don’t know. It’s – Grian – reactor – fine – Skizz – glitching? – Reactor on the – Can’t stabilise – get everyone – if we’re – HURTS – HELP, PLEASE – ”
Grian’s head jerks up. “Martyn, go get Ren and wake everybody up. NOW . If you can, send Impulse to the reactor. Something’s gone very, very wrong.”
Martyn scrambles up, wings buzzing as he sprints over to the transporter and is whisked away.
Pearl is in front of him, grabbing his shoulders. “Griba, what’s happening?”
“Skizz is hurt, I think. And Tango as well. I think the reactor’s malfunctioning.” He says with the same panicked air.
Pearl nods and straightens, running over to Gem, who’s been twitching her ears trying to catch the words. She clearly has, because when Pearl runs over and grabs her, she follows without complaint.
Grian takes off after them, leaving the main bridge after setting it to a full stop. The three dash into the transporter, one after the other, and as they all fall out, Grian knows that something is wrong.
It feels like his chest has been squeezed empty with fear. His blood is rushing in his ears, and his communicator nearly slips from his hands. Pearl squeezes his arm reassuringly, and he takes a deep breath. Something in him pushes his feet an extra half a step forwards, and he trips, falling into a roll before shakily getting back on his feet.
His hands are red. His communicator screen finally broke, glass shards pushing their way into his palms and staining them with the colour of his blood. His com is buzzing with a call. He picks up, ignoring the smear it leaves.
“Where are you?” He asks, voice trembling as he runs with Pearl and Gem.
“Hey, Grian. I’m in – mess. – something’s wrong – Martyn?! – okay – meet you – Grian, we’re staying – meet you here, lad.” Joel’s voice crackles through the com.
Gem shouts from ahead of him, “Where are we going?!”
Pearl says back, gasping, “Mess hall.”
Gem turns around, and something in her posture changes. She pauses just long enough for Grian to get beside her, then says, “Sorry, but I think me and Pearl will be faster than you,” and picks him up onto her back.
Even with him essentially getting a piggyback ride, Gem is fast. Her and Pearl shoot down the hallways at top speeds. Grian needs to hold her shoulders to stay on, and feels guilty about the bloody handprints he’s leaving there.
The ship around them groans with the sound of breaking metal. Grian tucks his face to Gem’s shoulder and beats his wings, giving her just enough of a boost to stay neck and neck with Pearl. They turn a corner and see one of the support beams give way. Pearl leaps over, and Gem follows suit. The ship is making more distressing sounds now.
The group skids into the mess hall, to see an assortment of people. Martyn isn’t there yet, and neither is Tango or Skizz. Everybody else is, though. There’s a small group huddled around something, and Grian slides off of Gem and runs over.
Lizzie is kneeling beside Bdubs, who is more still than Grian’s ever seen him. His face is pale and his shrub, normally so well taken care of, is lying underneath him, crumpled. Lizzie is feeling his neck, and Grian has a moment of pure terror.
“It’s okay, he’s breathing.” Lizzie says, reaching beside herself for a medpack. She affixes it to Bdubs’ chest, and it hums with the gentle whirr of its activation.
“What’s going on, Lizzie?” Grian asks, feeling the way his voice cracks.
“Bdubs had something happen to him. He started… glitching, I guess? It looked really weird. His arm was through a wall. When it stopped, his breathing mask was gone, and he just collapsed.” Lizzie says. “Don’t worry. Etho’s grabbing the spare respirator. Bdubs’ll be okay, we just need to get it on him.”
Grian breathes a sigh of relief as Etho comes over and sets the mask of the respirator on Bdubs’ face. “Anybody else glitching?”
The gathered crew murmur their no’s, all except for Jimmy. “Tim?” Grian asks, concerned.
“It wasn’t anythin’, really,” Jimmy says, rubbing the back of his head. “Just had a minute there where I thought I was a Axotl. Felt weird.”
A couple people laugh, and Grian feels his own worry subside. If Jimmy’s making jokes, everybody’s okay.
Lizzie turns to Grian, having finished setting up Bdubs, and squawks in disbelief. “Grian, what did you do to your hands?”
Grian holds up his com. “Screen broke.”
Lizzie wraps his hands in gauze, and just as she’s finished her scolding, Grian feels his com go off again. “Hello?”
“Grian, It – Martyn – Me and Impulse – reactor – Tango – bad, if I’m honest – can’t – Skizz – reactor’s messed – get everyone topside? – closest to – Talk soon.” Martyn’s voice cuts off, and Grian feels a whole new level of fear descend on him.
“Okay, everyone,” He clambers onto one of the benches. “The reactor is having issues. Martyn and everyone down there will meet us at the pods. If anybody has issues, tell somebody, please. Let’s go.”
The assembled group forms a sort of parade, and moves towards the escape pods. Grian is at the front, running Gem down on the emergency protocols and being impressed when she has them memorized, when Jimmy sidles up to them. Grian puts a wing around him without thinking.
Jimmy leans over. “Grian, can I talk to you?”
Grian looks over. Jimmy looks nervous, and as they’re walking, he stumbles oddly. Like he doesn’t quite know how to balance.
Gem steps back quietly, and Grian leans in with Jimmy. “What’s up, Tim?”
“I wasn’t- Grian, I wasn’t joking when I said I felt like an Axotl. I can’t balance anymore. It feels like I’m supposed to have a tail.” Jimmy says, voice hushed.
Grian feels a wave of guilt wash over him. “Sorry I didn’t take you seriously, Tim. You can balance on me.”
Jimmy leans on him awkwardly, his hand on Grian’s shoulder and only slightly bent at the elbow with their height difference. They lead the crew down to the escape pods, and Ren walks forwards. “I’ll get us a nearby planet, dude.”
Ren inputs some things, and frowns. “The only one nearby is Lo. Almost entirely water, air is at 20%, and about a couple days of travel out. Mostly inhabited by Axotls.”
That’s too far out. They won’t make it on the pods, not with everyone. Not with this many. Maybe with half, but escape pods are designed for 3, maybe 4. They only have 3 escape pods.
“That’s too far out.” Cleo points out, always straightforward.
“Cleo’s right.” Bigb adds. “With all the pods at max capacity, we’re two pods short. We didn’t get the upgrade for the extra pods. That was the next thing on the list. What are we going to do?”
Everyone starts murmuring. Grian is never going to get to talk over them all. He can’t be that loud. Please, just make everyone- “EVERYBODY SHADDUP !!!!” Bdubs yells, and everyone goes silent, looking at him expectantly.
“Well, we can…we need to see if we can stabilize the reactor. Can I get a group to go down and see if we can find Tango and the rest of them?”
Grian doesn’t get to find out who (if anybody) would have volunteered, because at that very moment, the reactor explodes.
If he would have had the time to consider what a reactor core exploding would feel like, he would have thought it would be warm. He’s wrong. It's a searingly cold light that reaches into his bones and compresses them, for just a moment, where if he could think he’d say he feels like a diamond. Then, it’s like he is pushed away. It is colder than the deepest reaches of Pol, desperate and hungry. For a moment, he has the same sensation of being in the transporter, of you could be a part of everything, always , but then Grian is gone.
—
Grian shoots up in bed, breathing heavily. He hasn’t had a nightmare that bad since EVO. His wings are shaking, flared as much as they can in the space. His room is spinning, and belatedly, he sucks in a deep breath and feels his lungs burn.
His claws dig into the blankets, and he feels around the edges of his nest. Pearl’s hoodie, Jimmy’s jacket, Joel and Lizzie’s scraps of cloth. Everything is there. There’s an empty space to one side, and he knows it is only a matter of time before his hindbrain requires him to steal something of Gem’s. Maybe a bandana.
He shakes his head, stretches his wings. They strain softly, pulling taut behind him. It feels nice.
His com is ringing beside him, and he checks the time. It’s too late, far too late for him to be awake. Why anybody would call him at this time, he doesn’t know. They must be especially bold.
He pushes aside his remaining shakiness, makes a mental note to replace the cracked screen soon, and answers. “Hello?”
“Hey, Gri.”
He has the strangest sense of deja vu. “What’s up at this hour?”
“Me, apparently,” Pearl laughs. “And unfortunately, some deep-space anomaly.”
He feels his heart sink. “Is it bad?”
“Nothing really awful. Just a little interference on the systems. Wanted to get you down here just in case it goes bad.” Pearl says, and he hears her typing on the other end of the line.
“Has the night shift switched over yet?” He asks, pulling off his pyjamas.
“Yep. We’ve got Skizzly, me, Martyn, and Gemmy on her first shift ever!” Pearl rattles off as Grian tugs on his cardigan, grunting when the flaps for his wings catch and he briefly is tangled in the material.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute. Want me to stay on until I’m at the transporter?” He straps his com to himself after freeing his wings, and heads to the door.
“Naw, it’s fine. But if I do call again, pick up right away, ya hear me mister?” Pearl scolds him.
He huffs and agrees, ends the call, and heads towards the end of the hallway. He contemplates flying for a moment, but decides it’s not worth it. He remembers his dream, and his dream self is right. He’ll end up bruising his wings on the too-small corridor for nothing.
He reaches the end of the corridor, and steps into the transporter. He feels that twist of being pushed in and through before he steps out of the other end ( you could be a part of everything, sings his soul). It rocks him, as he momentarily is back in his dream, with the reactor exploding.
When he steps out, Pearl is upon him in an instant. “Griba!”
“Pearl!” He responds in turn, poking her under her wing and flinching back when she does the same.
The rest of the room is quieter, but not silent. Martyn hums a song under his breath, and Skizz is making frustrated comments at one of the tables that display readings. Gem is, as per usual, so silent Grian’s sure the other two have forgotten she’s there. She’s in the working of one of the tables, running some sort of scan, he knows.
How does he know? All of it is too similar, too real. Martyn’s tune is even the same. His breathing gets faster.
“Grian, you okay?” Pearl asks.
He shakes it off. It’s nothing. He’s fine. “Okay, Pearl, what’s going on?”
“Alright… Well, at 2100 hours, one of our scanners picked up on some interstellar radio signals. We wrote it down, checked it hadn’t interfered with anything, and moved on. Then at…2200 hours, I think, we noticed our scanners kept picking up pieces of debris, interspersed with the same signals. We checked it, and it wouldn't fit a frequency logged for interstellar travel. Odd, but no big deal. Except, as we were trying to file it in the log, we couldn’t nail down the right time. Every instrument had a different time. Our coms were the only things that were all identical. Some instruments are off by minutes, some are off by hours, and one of the deep space scanner stations thinks it’s two weeks from now.”
“Huh. That’s weird.” Grian says, ignoring his growing unease. “Any bugs you could find in the system?”
“Nothing,” Pearl shrugs. “It’s like we’re being pranked. We can’t find anything.”
Martyn pipes up. “Well, I just found out the times have all switched again. Deep space scanner thinks it’s three days ago and the replicator wishes it was a month from now.”
Pearl groans. “Skizz, anything you got?”
Skizz looks up. “It might be nothing, Pearlie Pop, but…”
Grian walks over. “Go on.”
Skizz gestures to the table. “It’s got all our readings mixed up. Looks like a kid went in there and scrambled it like a plate of noodles!”
“That’s bad. Do we have the backups of those yet?” Pearl asks.
“Yeah, but I don’t wanna open them in case they were fine, and then I get them messed up too.” Skizz grimaces.
“Fair enough. Gem, any updates on those radio waves?” Pearl asks, crouching beside her.
“I think I can put it into an audible transmission frequency, but I don’t think I can translate it.” Gem says, standing up and dusting herself off.
“That’s fine, honestly. You can tell by the tone, what the message might’ve said.” Martyn chimes in.
Grian feels the blood drain from his face. He can’t listen to it again. He can’t hear them screaming, can’t help but think of his own crew mates, pulled into space as tiny particles because he couldn’t save them.
“G-sharp? You okay?” Skizz asks, and no, wait, his crew is fine, it was only a nightmare .
“Yeah. Let’s listen.”
The speakers burst into life, flaring with the tell-tale sign of an alarm. A short message plays, and even though much of it is lost to static and odd distortions, the alarm persists, as does one word everybody can understand. “Help”, in heavily accented Galactic, over and over at the end of a brief spiel. In the background, there are screams. The transmission is abruptly cut off.
“Poor guys.” Skizz says, hand pressing into his chin. “Sounds like a reactor failure.”
Grian knows his wings are puffing up, but he can’t help it. He knows that was the kickstarter, even if it was just a dream. He has to say something, though, everyone is looking at him.
“Doesn’t explain why they were using such an odd frequency. They knew some Galactic, obviously, so maybe they were trying and it just was a bit off or something?” He knows his voice is shaky, but luckily everyone will just assume it’s the transmission.
“I don’t know,” says Pearl, “They didn’t sound like they knew what they were doing. Reactor failures are dangerous, sure, but aren’t they super rare? Tango was talking about how easy it is to prevent them the other day.”
“Maybe they had a bad engineer crew?” Martyn offers.
He wishes it was just a bad engineer crew. He wishes. But he already feels like he knows differently, even if he couldn’t possibly know that. Unless a possibility he refuses to believe exists is happening.
“Well, whatever happened to them, let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to us. Can we get Tango up here to brief him? If he’s so sure he can prevent them, let him be down there. We can get Impulse to switch on at 0200 hours.” Grian declares.
The main bridge becomes a bustle of activity, each member falling into their roles. Skizz goes to wake Tango up, Gem double checks her com to make sure the time is what it is, Martyn is cross-referencing their route to make sure they haven’t drifted off course, and Pearl and Grian have put their heads together to brainstorm a plan to make sure they don’t fall to the same fate.
It’s in the middle of their talking when Skizz returns, Tango at his side. “What’s all the fuss about?” Tango asks, carding a hand through his hair.
“Ship had a reactor issue and the last we heard of them was screaming, so we wanted to make sure that that wouldn't happen to us.” Pearl summarizes.
Tango goes pale, and nods. “I’ll get down to the engine room. Skizz, wanna come with and help me check everything?”
“I’ll come.” Grian volunteers so fast, he doesn’t recognize that he’s spoken until Tango is staring at him.
“You sure? We might need a captain up here.” Pearl says.
“No, I trust you. If anything goes wrong, get everyone to the mess hall. I used to be an engineer on my old ship. I can check systems just as well as- actually, no, almost as well as you can.” He says, aware of how much he’s tripping over words, but he needs to be down there.
“Okay, come on then.” Tango grabs his wrist and takes him to the reactor, Skizz following behind them.
It’s shining, end crystal engines glowing at a steady rhythm. Just seeing it, he feels better, more calm. Tango rushes around, checking systems and mostly just asking them to remember numbers. Skizz takes out a notepad and begins writing them down, adding extra information when Tango asks and reciting the numbers when told.
Grian recites the status all the machines should be functioning at, and sees Tango give him an appraising glance. The behaviour continues, when out of nowhere, the reactor begins to spark.
Tango goes pale, and he curses. His hair sparks to life, and dims to almost burnt out. He begins yelling even more frantic instructions, and for all of 10 minutes, Grian is lost in the haste that makes up the reactor and conjoined engine room.
That is, until Skizz starts to yell.
Grian’s heard Skizz yell before. Often, it’s in joy, or general excitement. Skizz gets excited about a lot of things. Never before has Grian heard a yell like this.
It sounds like there’s two people screaming, layered on top of each other, and Skizz’s Eyes open. They flash random colours, like some cursed strobe light. Skizz grows louder, and Grian realises his wings are through his cape. Not simply ripped through. It looks like the cape is, for lack of a better word, glitching around his wing. Grian’s pretty sure it’s still bleeding.
Tango shrieks. “Skizz! Your wing is glitchificating through your cape!!!”
Skizz doesn’t answer, but he does keel over, wings still spread through his cape, which luckily seems to realise it’s meant to not be like that, and in a twist of the world that truly feels wrong, it is now on top of his wings. His arms spasm, and Grian nearly throws up when, after coming back out from the floor, there are patches where the skin is gone, bleeding profusely.
Tango fishes out a communicator. “I’m gonna call Pearl.”
Grian rushes over to Skizz while the com rings, and does his best to staunch the bleeding. When he touches him, the bleeding clots, haphazardly seals the wounds. At the same time, Tango says “H-hey, Pearl.”
“What’s – on?” Pearl’s voice comes through glitchy.
“Uhm- don’t- don’t know. Me, Skizz, and Grian made it to the reactor and it was fine but then Skizz started… glitching? And now, the reactor’s skadoodling, and I can’t stabilise it, so get everyone off. If we’re not –” And Tango starts to glitch, and he screams . “ IT HURTS IT HURTS, HELP, PLEASE – ”
Grian runs over and tucks his arms around Tango. Or rather, he tries to run over and tuck his arms around Tango. Halfway there, he feels his wings shoot and jerk into an angle they are not supposed to be in . He screams as well, and his world shrinks into that minute point of focus. Every nerve is in agony. It feels like his wings are laid out on a live wire.
He is not quite aware of how Tango, still screaming as he contorts, pulls himself towards Grian. He’s in too much pain to notice how Tango hugs him as tight as he can. He barely even notices when Skizz joins them.
All he notices is when the reactor compresses them, and all he can think is that he failed them again.
—
Grian’s in a time loop. He knows it now. He knows the fear and the panic of how he wakes up every time. Everytime he tries something different.
Loops are numbered, now. He tried to alphabetize them, but there were too many.
In loop 5, he finally got them all into the escape pods.
He was right. Lo was too far away. It hurt his very soul to hear as the oxygen ran out on the other ships, just as much as it hurt him when they couldn’t breathe. He died that time, before the reactor hit. He still woke up in his bed.
In loops 9, 10, and 11, he tried to eject each end crystal, to see if they were faulty. Every time, it still exploded.
Loop 15, he tried to repeat the exact circumstances as loop 0. It went exactly the same. He thinks. He might’ve said a line wrong somewhere.
He spent loops 17 to 35 trying separate approaches, and timing how long it took the reactor to explode. In the ones where he did nothing, it exploded even faster. The longest one was another time he got them on the escape pods, and set off for a further planet. That time, the oxygen didn’t run out, but the rations did. He didn’t like remembering what it felt like. He didn’t like how close everyone got to violence before they died. He was pretty sure Cleo’s message through the ship’s intercommunication system would haunt him until the day he died.
In loop 47, he answered every question before people even said them. It confused everyone, but the reactor still exploded.
In loop 52, he got everybody up for a big pillow fight. They all died right as he bashed Scott across the face with a massive throw pillow in revenge. All the loops in the 50s were spending time with his crew, refusing to acknowledge what was happening until he woke up in his bed again.
In loop 67, he couldn’t find the energy to get out of bed. He didn’t answer the com. He didn’t answer the knock on his door. The reactor exploded 2 hours earlier.
Which leads him to this loop. Number 77. Lucky number, he supposes. He can’t find himself all too pleased, now when he catches sight of himself in his mirror and sees that his skin has taken on a reflective hue, reminiscent of a diamond. In contrast, his wings have faded in lustre, turning completely black at the tips.
He grabs the com before it starts ringing, answers it as soon as it does. He’s tired in his soul now.
“Hi Pearl.”
“Hey, Griba.” Pearl’s voice rings over the com.
If he was a hopeful person, he’d say Pearl sounds tired. He’s not.
“What’s up at this hour?” He recites.
“You, apparently.” It’s wrong. It’s different, and it’s wrong, and he feels something like hope slide out of the dusty cupboard he’d shoved it in.
“Yeah?” He answers.
“Are you stuck?” This is new. He’s never heard this before. Not when he followed the script, anyways.
“Y-yeah. Pearl, what’s-”
“I can help you. Can you get to the main bridge?”
He’s never felt hope like this, he decides. Never. He takes off, not even changing out of his pyjamas. He spreads his wings, and flies through the corridor, bumping and scraping his wings on the sides.
He twists into the transporter, feels his bones hum with the displacement ( everything and always ) and stumbles into the main bridge.
Nobody is there. It’s empty. Something new .
The machines whir and hum, gently beeping. No Martyn, humming a tune he’s heard 77 times. No Skizz, muttering at a machine that won’t give him anything. No silent Gem in the corner trying to translate the message. For the first time, the main deck is empty.
“Pearl?” He asks into the com, feeling his wings ruffle.
“You at the bridge?” She says, and that’s not an answer but it is something he can work with.
“Yeah. What should I do?”
“Do you remember the transmission we couldn’t decode?” Pearl asks.
“Obviously.” He wouldn’t forget it, ever. It kickstarted all of this, he’s sure of it.
As she talks, he fiddles with the threadbare edges of his pyjamas, undoing the worn strings with his claws. “Well, could ya put it through the translator?”
“I thought that didn’t work.” He’s already moving towards it.
“Well…Alright, I don’t really know how to explain this to you. I haven’t done this before, Gri. It’s odd, even for me!” She laughs, bright and loud and Grian would give anything to see that again.
“Try.” He inputs the transmission into the translator, listens to it fire up.
“Okay. Don’t blame me if your squiggly brain doesn't understand it! So, when the transmission played, you looked like you heard somethin’ weird! And we were asking you questions and then you kinda just…fainted?” Pearl seems to deliberate over something.
“Okay…so far not seeing what my “squiggly brain” wouldn’t understand.” Grian clicks a couple more buttons, and then waits for it to be translated.
“Lunaris can go into dreams.” Pearl says, point blank.
“...oh.” Grian pauses.
“I wanted to see if you were sleeping. So I tried. And Griba…this isn’t exactly a dream. My connection to this place is a little iffy.”
Grian’s hands are shaking. He starts picking at his pyjamas even more.
“So, It’s not a dream.” He asks, but it’s barely a question.
“No, it’s a memory. There was a Axotl crew transporting a bunch of Enderians to Hypi, and on the way, the reactor acted up. Like Tango says, usually easy to prevent, except their engineer was garbage apparently, because it blew the entire ship up.” Pearl explains.
“And that’s relevant how?” Grian’s left sleeve is half gone, strings trailing towards the floor.
“Enderians are telepathic, Gri. They were in the middle of a huge conversation, and then they were all talking to each other about the reactor, and then they were all screaming to each other when it exploded. The leftover energy from them must have mingled with the transmission and interacted weirdly with your brain. Avians are super sensitive to that kind of stuff.” Pearl finished.
Grian’s mind spun. “So all of this is basically their dying recollection of it, just switched around in my brain to fit me?”
“Exactly! Hey, you explained way better than me. You should be the one to explain it next time.”
“Let’s hope there isn’t a next time .” Grian hears the translator ping. “So how do I wake up?”
“Play it backwards and adjust it to be translating Enderian frequency. It should counteract the frequency that put you in here in the first place.”
He adjusts the settings, and lets it play.
This time, it feels like his brain is melting out of his ears. He’s been sick like this, once, when he was very little. The sounds playing feel like they slide off his mind and sink into his bones at the same time.
Times seems to stretch out, and he moves like he’s trying to push through glue, before-
Everything coalesces in a snap. He blinks, and he’s on the floor.
Pearl is leaning against his propped up body, one hand on his head, with her antenna brushing him and her eyes glowing slightly. It feels almost like a hug.
Skizz is nearby, pacing worriedly, and Grian can see some of his Eyes open and dart to him before Skizz closes them again quickly. Martyn is routinely ducking out of his path to be close to Grian, but far enough away it wouldn’t look like he was hovering.
Gem is standing further away, playing with her com. She is looking at the ground, and her ears, which almost blend in with her hair, are pressed back.
He struggles to sit up, and hears the exact moment Skizz and Martyn notice it.
“GRIAN!!!” “G-SHARP!!!”
His wings are splayed behind him, and he realises he’s still on the main bridge. There’s no beeping, no warning systems, nothing playing that would be anything but a ship during the night shift.
Grian feels his wings go limp behind him, and he sinks back down, pushing his fists into his eyes with a long, heavy sigh. His cardigan is rubbing against his feathers, pushing them out of place, but he can’t find the energy in himself to care.
“-buddeh? You alright?” Skizz asks, concern clear as day.
“Tired.” He grumbles, leaning over so he’s at least sitting up.
Martyn and Skizz buzz over him, their words becoming nothing more than background noise. He feels like his head is full of cotton, and more than once he catches himself nodding forwards into almost sleep as the group around him chatters. Just wait a little longer, he tells himself. They’ll be done and you can sleep. His heavy limbs and crowded head say otherwise, but he is too stubborn to give in.
Pearl prods him. “Griba?”
He blinks up at her, and oh, when did he lean back against her? That’s rude. “Yeah?”
She smiles. “You look exhausted, Gri.”
He can’t do much more than nod. Something in her expression shifts, a question she wanted to ask, but she doesn’t.
“Grian? Are you sure you’re okay?” Martyn asks, all four arms managing to be equally as awkward as he fidgets.
“I’ll be fine, Martyn. I just need sleep.” He shuffles closer to upright, but still against Pearl, relying on her to keep them both sitting.
Martyn frowns, one eyebrow perking up in perfect judgement. Skizz just shakes his head.
“Is there anything we can get you?” Gem says, stepping forwards. Skizz, who hadn’t noticed her approach, jumps a foot in the air and momentarily opens every single one of his Eyes.
“Water’ll probably help, Gem. Otherwise, I think sleep sounds pretty good.” Pearl answers, ignoring Skizz even as he stumbles into Martyn and sets the both of them grabbing at each other to stay upright.
“I’m sorry this had to happen on your first watch ever, Gem.” Grian says, sheepishly rubbing his neck.
“It’s okay. No watch I’ve ever been on has been perfectly silent.” She says, and after a beat, when nobody says anything, she finishes. “At the Academy, I mean. Practice watches. For practice.”
“Grian, I’m going to get somebody up to take my place to watch, and then we should go back to your quarters.” Pearl suggests after a long pause.
Grian nods, and pulls himself up alongside her, puts an arm around her shoulders and leans on her as she texts Ren and asks him to cover watch for her. Her sweater is so comfy, and he just wants to take it for his nest.
Pearl sees and feels him kneading the sweater with his claws, and slides it off of her, passing it to him effortlessly. “C’mon, Griba. Let's go.”
As she leads him out of the room, he leans onto her shoulder, wings dragging behind him. She sighs, and hoists him onto her back. He curls his arms around and clasps them together at her collar, pressing her sweater between them.
She walks down the hallway, and the repetitive jostling of her steps closes his eyes. He's so tired, it's all he can do to hold on to her. The longer Pearl walks, the closer his eyes come to not opening again. His arms slip, and eventually Pearl puts his arms over her shoulders, leaning him entirely against her neck and the top of her back. His face is pressed into her shoulders, his eyes are closed, and he's almost entirely asleep by the time Ren pads past them.
He hears a quiet conversation, but can't parse the meanings of the words, just feel the vibrations and hear the movements. “Hey, Pearl.”
“Hiya, Ren. Are you sure you're okay to take my shift?”
“I'll be fine. Is Grian okay?” A hand, ruffling his hair.
“He'll be okay. The transmission was mixed up with some residual Enderian telepathic energy, and it really put him through the wringer. He was already up pretty late, at least for him, so he conked out basically right after he got out.”
“Got out?” The hand leaves, and he finds himself chasing it.
“Yeah. It was like a dream and a memory smashed together. Lunaris can go into dreams, and so I went in. Half in… It was unstable. But I reached him, and got him out.” A jolt, as he's shrugged further up Pearl's back.
“Sounds awful on his part, dude. I'll check in again later, when he's awake. I gotta get up to the bridge. See ya tomorrow, Pearl?”
“Yeah, mate. See you then.”
And the sound of fading paws. Pearl hefts him up, re-adjusts him on her back, and keeps going. He feels himself slip into a calm place, and the next noise he's aware of is the sound of his door.
Pearl walks in, and slips him into his nest. He mourns the loss of contact, even as her sweater is curled into his claws. She hears him whine, and says pitifully, “Just a second, Griba. Gosh , you're such a little gremlin sometimes!”
He grumbles his complaints, and delights in her shining laugh as she moves his communicator, setting it off to the side. His eyes are closed, but he still hears some quiet shuffling noises as she presumably puts his scattered pyjamas away, and then he feels the nest dip towards her as she climbs in.
“C’mon Griba, time to sleep.” She cuddles against him, tucking her antenna over his hair and wrapping an arm over him.
He lets himself go, and surrenders to the safety of family, nest and warmth. It’s over now. He can rest.