'The first fist that breaks the mirror 
       will be the last to shatter it's illusion.'
                               
                       - Barrothen Yndir, Elder Monk of The Dellinger Temple 






Most people don't seemed to gel with their own reflection. The mirrored image
never really seems to look quite right to those observing it, our brains can even so much as reject
the image portrayed. In some instances, if you stared at it too long, it began to feel as if it was 
someone else staring back. People commonly tried to explain this for ages; maybe to soothe
some deep seated fear we were never really built to handle, but, to Beka, it was simple.
We always find ourselves just a little unnerving.

So, when it came to staring through the darkness at a living embodiment of her own future,
she didn't know how to feel. I mean, besides being trapped in a room with no way out and with 
no clue as to what's going on. But those were all annoying little details compared to what a 
sight the two of them must've made. 
"Why the Maru?" Beka asked, watching the other woman regard her with interest. Her features
were hardened, chiseled down either from years of experiences she didn't really want to know 
about or years of work done that she definitely didn't want to know about.
"We need to get you off this ship. Now." 
"I could take a slipfighter out." Beka offered. 
Oddly, this seemed to rub her in all the wrong ways. 
"You're making a run for safety, not playing chicken with some star gunners." 
"Safety?" She scoffed, "What about that thing that's out there?" It's like anyone could miss the laser 
lightshow currently tearing the galaxy apart piece by piece. She either didn't notice or didn't care. 
"What about my mission here? The rest of the crew are counting on me right now." 
"Let them count."  
Glaring at her would probably be more effective if she even bothered a glance her way. 
"You think I'm cruel, don't you?" She asked, arms crossed across her chest. 
"I think you're being stupid." Beka corrected out of spite. "And unreasonable." 
"Well, I'm sorry." She answered back in a way that totally wasn't. "But there are 
some things we can't let people compromise." She shifted her attention
to the silence outside the door, "That's just what it's like being Chosen." By now, she sounded like 
she was talking to herself more than Beka. Even though, I guess, that was also talking to herself or, uh, well... 
This is getting to be all too confusing, even for her, at this point. 
"Chosen? Chosen for what?" 
Her eye widened in response, reeling in a thought that was probably best left floating 
face down where it was. "She didn't tell you?" 
"She doesn't tell me a lot of things." Beka admitted, sorely. 
"Yeah. She does that." She listened again at the door, "Seems the coast is clear." 

Bending over, Beka watched what years of mechanical engineering could do to a person, fingers easily 
wedging themselves in the seal in the door and manually pulling it open like she was simply
peeling back a can of sardines. 
Admiring her work, she turned, amused at the look plastered across Beka's face. She then hoisted her forward, 
absently drawing a weapon from her hip and cramming it into the space between her shoulder blades.
"Well? Get going." 
Was she serious right now?
"Oh, come on, like you'd shoot me." 
It was like this version of her had somehow unlearned how to bluff. 
Pulling a heavier magnum from her thigh, Beka put on a little bravado. "You see, your 
time has already came and went. Anything happens to you? Well, that doesn't affect me in the
slightest." She then twisted her body, the rim of her laser gun finding it's target on her last
working eye. Maybe this would give her a better outlook on life. Maybe, rethink her newfound 
career as a really annoying omen from the future. "But, me? One bad shot off the ol' noggin' and you'll..." She 
really didn't know what would happen and, personally, didn't want to even think about it.
Shrugging, she decided to let that thought slide. Anything to strengthen the ever growing
tension between them.
"Face it. I'm the one in charge here, not you."

"Clever." Her future self applauded without actually applauding at all. "Except, you see, I 
personally know what parts of you can be blown off and replaced." She then turned her blaster
on herself, a downward trajectory against her clavicle and fired without even so much as a flinch.
She then turned the gun back towards Beka, aiming in the exact same spot, "So you better get
moving before you become a very long-term pet project."

Well, that was certainly convincing. 










If Harper ever got out of this alive, he was going to head down to the best Capital Planet he could find
and swipe himself the most expensive pair of work boots he could get his hands on. After all, it was 
pretty hard to back up your claims of engineering brilliance in a pair of beat up sneakers. 
It was also really hard to run in them too. 
"Where are we going!?" He screamed over the sound of heavy footsteps echoing down the halls around
them. "We're supposed to be heading towards the Engine's main support systems, not-" He took a quick
glance around, realizing that they'd passed through this hallway before. "-running around in circles..."
His eyes widened, "Tyr, we're running around in circles!!"
"I noticed." 
"And!?" 
"As long as we move, we can stay ahead of it."
"Until when!?"
"For as long as we can."
"And then what!?" 
"We hope for another shift."
"Okay, that's not- that's not a plan!" Harper argued back, earning himself a nasty look which, by the way,
wasn't exactly boosting morale over here. 

Fine. He didn't need a plan, yet, anyway. He just had to observe- okay, you know what? Looking behind
his back, Harper was starting to rethink this whole 'being a part of The Commonwealth'
thing. Yeah, what he actually needed to do was find a nice little dirt planet and squat there
for a while. Hide underground, live off canned beans. No more mind games, no more time hijinks, 
and no more giant armored guys slowly barreling after him.
Twisting his head back, again, he watched as the figure wasn't exactly running after them as much as
it was briskly stomping a set pace. Only, it appear confident so much as it seemed...confining. 
The figure moved in a way that suggested it was being strung along, legs moving just far
out enough to not catch on any unseen wires or strings. It reminded Harper of those creepy little 
puppets you'd see as a kid in street shows back on Earth. He'd say those things gave him the nightmares, 
but, he had other things already doing that job for him at the time.
"Hey I-" He turned back just in time to catch Tyr sliding down a corridor, breaking away from the chase and
leaving Harper to overshoot it by like a mile. The worst part was, he wasn't sure if this was his fault for
not paying attention or if this was another one of Tyr's brand of wildcard moves that made him so popular on 
their ship as of late. 
Turning back, he realized their pursuer had seemed to have all but disappeared down the same corridor.  
Suddenly, everything clicked into place.

Tyr. It was following Tyr.

Now was his chance. He could run off and finish his mission, alone, and let those two bat it out or
he could do what he, painfully, was already on the track of doing and turn around. The things you do
for a guy you knew but also didn't know, you know? 

Finally reaching what he had hoped was still the right corridor and not some passageway that would 
now lead him straight into the auxiliary power reserves, Harper pressed his body to a nearby wall. 
Fighting every instinct that told him to just keep going forward with the mission, he peeled
himself off of the wall, quickly stealing a glance down the hallway before clamoring back up against 
it again. It was barely enough time to register anything. Okay, well, second time's the charm.  
Peeking over again, he fought to keep his eyes open despite every scenario that took place in his
mind up to and including having them scooped out of his head the moment he saw anything.
Thankfully, he didn't see anything. 
Unthankfully, he...didn't see anything. 

Heaving a deep sigh of both relief and annoyance, Harper retreated from his hiding place. His pace
set and his confidence shakier than a homemade holotape, he started down the hallway. Sensibility
struck and, suddenly, he was on his way back towards the Engine room. Three steps in and a hand shot out, 
wrenching him by the shirt and yanking him into a tight space between a support beam and the wall.  













Carrying a crew as small as she did for so long led the Andromeda to accumulate a lot of cargo
that sat, untouched, for a number of years. Items that were planned on eventually being moved
but never had the opportunity due to a number of reasons. The entire eradication of her crew 
being one. So, to see the old common room cleared out and cleaned up like this, Dylan almost 
felt a sense of nostalgia wash over him between the newly replaced
barstools and clean carpeting. It was a grim reminder of just how little they could do
to keep her looking pristine after about three years of working with nothing but what could be 
generously called a skeleton crew.

"I thought I'd be able to find supplies to catch the hogs with in here but, uh, it seems as 
if we're looking at a change of plans." Dylan explained. 
"Never have I seen a man so disappointed by a bought of spring cleaning, before." The Rev 
observed, "Nonetheless, we might still be able to find what we're looking for, here, and without
the typical consequences to boot." 
"What do you mean?"
"Well, surely, this isn't an iteration of the ship that either you or I have inhabited..."
Dylan was starting to wonder, at this point, how long this version of the Reverend had been 
stuck aboard The Andromeda with the rest of it's crew...
"And, surely, those affected by the aftermath of our work- if there would be any at all- 
wouldn't mind." The Father's plan seemed to forget the crucial detail of
overestimating just how much generosity and understanding others held compared to himself. 
"Considering our circumstances, that is." He added with a smile. 
Despite sounding like the excuse of a conman, permission was still permission. More than
anything, Dylan would be able to shake the dust off some old tricks he learned way back 
in the Academy.


Gathering up the tools at their disposal, Dylan watched as the Reverend made work skinning 
the posh Visuvian Leather off the seats of a nearby booth, his nails carefully working their
way across neatly lined segments to ensure they had a clean, mostly straight, cut for divots
where they'd string curtain ropes through for makeshift netting. It had been ages since Dylan
worked with his hands like this, in creating something instead of destroying it. Although, 
he supposed, they did have to destroy something to create something else. 
"Question." The Father offered as Dylan tied off yet another one of his trademark knots through
a piece of leather, securing it in place. 
"Answer." He offered back in jest. 
"Do you assume that, with the well-stocked shelves of alcohol, and the revitalization of these
old halls, the refrigeration unit might also hold it's weight in stock?" 
The very thought made Dylan's stomach growl for the first time in so long. "You mean-"
"Meat." 



Opening the freezer, the both of them, for opposing reasons, quite nearly fainted at the sight. 
Fresh cuts of meat sealed and organized by Commonwealth standards. All assigned it's very own
home by species. After years of subsiding off of rations or small runs of food, Dylan found the
sight bordering on cruel. The Father did as well; only for his own personal reasons. 
Closing the door, Bem took a long step back, taking a deep breath as he held it shut with both
hands. "Just as I predicted." He smiled despite himself, tone conveying a dishonest joy 
that Dylan couldn't help but to feel pity over. "With this, we will be able to lure them to us
in no time." It was a good thing that these were hogs they were feeding, seeing as Dylan's 
cooking abilities never did make it quite up to snuff.  
 













The moment Harper's head stopped spinning, he came face to face with the fact that that down
now meant left, left now meant up, and askew meant 'actually just a little to the side there'.
He also had to come to terms with the fact that Tyr really sucked at lying. 
"So, what? You're being followed!?" He practically screamed, causing Tyr to clamp a hand down
over his mouth, shaking his head, grimly. 
"Not...particularly..."  
Yeah, and the thirty yard dash they just did was all for the exercise. 
Pulling the hand from his face, Harper looked him square in the eye. 
"Are you in some kind of trouble?"
Tyr drew away from him, not even giving him the courtesy of a response.
Lying by omission was worse somehow. He felt almost insulted people even considered it lying at all.
The only people who won't actually just lie to your face are people who are either protecting
themselves or protecting you, but, in the end, it didn't do either. 
"C'mon man, you gotta tell me something."
"It is within your best interest not to know."
"What about yours?"
There it was, again, that storm that threatened to rip Tyr in two, filling him out and flooding him up
to the eyes until it seemed to pool out somewhere between the both of them. Their bodies braced against
it like the wind whipping through their bones, creating a chill neither of them could entirely shake.   
"A mercenary." He answered up. "That's all you need to know." He then drew a hand out as if he was 
trying to bum a smoke. 
"Now you."
"What are you talking about?" Harper snorted. 
Tyr embraced a chill, "What is in my best interest not to know?"
Oh, there was absolutely no way in hell they were having this conversation. 
"Hey, I'm not supposed to tell you anything, remember?" Harper snapped, scapegoating like a coward. 
Stumbling back out into the light, he had to clear his head. So stupid. He was so stupid,
he didn't even realize he had been doing the same damn thing this whole time. He wondered how he
must've looked letting Tyr slip under his radar like that, forgetting to flip that final switch and
leaving his grifter's grin behind the moment he saw his friend again. He didn't even know
if he was even doing it to protect Tyr or himself. 

Mercifully, he was put out of his panicked misery when a hand clamped down on his shoulder, pulling
him back behind the pillar just in time to watch a parade of hogs scream by, replacing one bad
memory with another. One best left tucked away in some Enforcer's unsolved case files. Shaking off the
whole ordeal, Harper found a spare ounce of humor in the whole thing.
"Those things'll eat your face, y'know." He jested, watching Tyr's eyes scan the perimeter.
"They should've been able to smell our presence." Okay, well, he did not like where this 
conversation was going at all. 
"Which means they're running towards something, right?" He begged to the Universe in vain. 
"Or away from something." Tyr answered back with more honesty than Harper could deal with right now. 
A pause. 
"Where's the armory?"











On her hand, currently, Beka could count the number of times she had been a hostage
in a hostage situation. On her other hand, currently, she could count the number of
times she had been in a hostage situation. So, with these numbers at her side, you
would think she would have the patience for this sort of thing. Well, turns out, she didn't.
She barely had the patience to put up with some badly phrased remark without getting 
pissed off which, unsurprisingly, she had been getting a lot of these days.
"So are you ever gonna explain this 'Chosen' thing to me or am I supposed to glean
it off some other vague idiot pointing a gun at my head?" 
Rule number one of any hostage situation: never taunt the guy with a gun.

"I don't know why you're fighting this so much. I'm the one saving your life." 
See, this was the problem with having to deal with your own weird issues. Something that
you thought you'd dealt with ages ago will just pop up out of nowhere and decide to ruin your day. 
"I'm not going to cut and run out on my crew." Unlike some people, she had loyalty. Granted, 
it was loyalty that she had just accumulated after years of weird trust building exercises 
but it was loyalty, nonetheless.
"They're hardly your crew." 
"Hey, to you, maybe, but I've known them longer than you and they actually mean something to me."
She watched herself bend a bit, shoulders shaking as she typed in the passcode to access the
docking bay. At first, Beka thought she had struck her right where it hurt. In that lonely little
pit that she always carried with her that never seemed to find it's fill. Sometimes she'd glance
into that pit, at all the sex, money, and near death experiences that floated at the bottom and 
she felt the weight of all that time she'd burnt up, coursing on adrenaline, alone. Now, throw Flash on 
top of it and we got ourselves a real party going on over here.
"Look, I didn't mean that I-"
Laughter.  
She was actually laughing at her with this cruelly slanted smile across her face, looking her up and
down like some stupid child. "Since when did you grow a pair?" 
"Since, oh, five seconds ago." Beka smiled back, showing off her knowledge of the docking bay 
by kicking out a plate that never quite liked to stay fixed, effectively breaking the safety lock 
to the hangar's inner hall. 
The doors, without anything but a blinking light 
to guide them, assumed that there had been some kind of breach and effectively sealed themselves shut 
three times over. "We're not going anywhere." Beka spat.
Rule number two of any hostage situation: never let the guy with the gun know what you're thinking.
Impressed, her future self conceded with a nod. "Once again, very clever." Sliding the canon off
her back, she then pressed it's mouth to the door, the mechanical whir of her artificial muscles
working at full force, screaming out as she blasted a hole straight through the first layer. 
Now was her chance.
Turning, she sped back through the halls trying to retrace her steps. She had no idea where she 
was going but, with any luck, by the time she got out of dodge, she'd be able to come up with a plan.
Or find someone with a plan. Or get a boot planted firmly in her back. 
Hitting the ground, Beka let out a gasp, quickly rolling onto her stomach to see she had barely made
it further than a few yards. 
I guess that's what happens when you buy time with cheap tricks, you get what you paid for. 
"What're you gonna do now, huh?" She slurred over the high pitched ringing in her ears, "Gonna drag me?"
Rule number three of any hostage situation(and this is the most important one of all):
Never piss off the guy with the gun. 
Turns out her future self dealt with animosity about as well as she did. 
With an ultimatum. By blasting out the life support systems. 











The smell of cooked meat pouring from the common room, alone, was enough to rile up any beast;
more or less, a pack of hogs. Even Dylan, himself, was tempted to steal away within the inner
workings of the ship and spend a good five hours or so working through the kitchen's newfound
stock. 
Bracing himself beside the Rev, makeshift net in hand, they waited; holding their post just
outside as to let them smell their reward but not exactly see it. It was a cruel game of carrot
and stick. Motivation to keep going without even a sight of a reward. The only issue was that 
they underestimated what the sheer idea of a reward could do to an animal that was desperate 
and hungry. The hoard appeared, abruptly, with numbers that they failed to estimate, tearing 
towards them with enough force to destroy anything in their wake. 

Casting his net and failing to catch even a tusk in it's path, Dylan watched as the
hogs reacted as any wild animal would when approached with danger; they turned and attacked.
Piling upon them in waves, the pack used their sheer numbers, alone, to disable their enemies, 
mindlessly crushing anything in their path, hands, ribs, limbs; using their weight as a weapon
to subdue their prey.

As it was, Dylan usually didn't have what one would consider a weak stomach but the animal's 
breath, alone, should've been enough to incapacitate him. It created a nauseating fog over 
his face that made him sick to his stomach. Hardened teeth, ready to tear and grind anything
in their vicinity closed in on him, snapping it's jowls loud enough to sound out a hard, 
ossified, click. 
This was then followed by a Greek chorus of clicks, signaling a wave of death that swept through
the hallway. 

The Father wasn't faring any better, trying to use an old, discarded piece of Pyrotitatnium 
as a shield to keep his attackers at bay and yet they continued to pour in, dulled tusks 
tossing him about, painfully, until he was flipped onto his back, staring directly into the
face of one singular hog. Their eyes met with intensity as they regarded each other. 
Beast recognizing beast, they both understood what this moment meant. 
It was eat or be eaten.
And Father Bem, despite his disposition, despite all his teachings, would not bow to being eaten.
They descended upon each other, mouths gnashing as the hog's flesh tore open. So easily did it fall, 
it's still shaking body now gathered in the Reverend's embrace as the remaining hogs proceeded 
to scatter around them and clear out with one deep, resounding, growl. 
Salivating, the Reverend watched with a sickening fascination at this once living creature, now reduced 
to a pile of lifeless meat by his very own hand. 
He began to hunger.



Dylan had never seen the Father like this before. It was like he was another person, another
species, another creature; it was like he was a-

A Magog.

It came rushing around him all at once; a whirlwind of all the times he'd reasonably dispel the 
concerns of others about his crewmate. 'Yes, he is a Magog but-' But what?
Right now, he had no idea what.
It was so easy to forget, to wipe over the Reverend's image with a shiny cover to make 
everything appear far more rose tinted than they were. After all, the idea he had of a Magog
didn't involve a pious man of the cloth. 













Immediately, Tyr went to work, scanning every piece of weaponry, filing through each and every
item and taking inventory. Anything that wasn't absolutely essential was ignored. Anything they
could easily grab and haul on their backs was taken. They were traveling with a wider variety
but the cargo was light. Nothing larger than anything you could carry on your hip. "We need to
get to the engine's reactor before they do."
"Yeah, question. Uh, why would they also be after the engine? I thought they were hunting you." 
Harper's raised hand only brought Tyr to look up at a point in the ceiling and then back at him.
"Do you want to fix our debacle or do you want to sit here, philosophizing over details?" He
sighed, frustratedly, tying up his hair, resuming his preparations and completely overlooking
the piece of metal strung around his neck that was no longer hiding behind his braids. 
"Hey what's that?" Harper pointed at just a little too closely, his wrist getting caught in the
Nietzschean's grasp in a way that easily sprung up an image of those little pieces of metal on the
end of a spring-loaded mouse trap.
"Are you dull or deaf?" Tyr asked so matter-of-factly that Harper was pretty sure it was a 
legitimate question. 
"Probably a little of both." He answered and watched closely for his response. A reset jaw, 
eyebrows relaxing, ever-present intense expression subsiding- all data that contributed, finally,
an answer to the Universe's Greatest Hypothesis. 
"Oh my god, you do think I'm funny."
It was pretty much here that Tyr's frustration seemed to reach it's boiling point. Releasing him,
he managed to snatch up a protective vest, pushing it into his sternum with a harsh shove. 
"You know the silent treatment's not gonna save you." Harper mocked, already pretty fed up with
whatever version of his friend this time contortion managed to spit out. "If it did,
you wouldn't be wearing that Magog-Brand 'Baby Be Gone' around your neck." Tyr was half in the
process of handing him a loaded ammo belt when he stilled. 
"I can't even remember what I did with that old thing after I got all cleaned out." Harper then
wracked his brain for a moment. "I remember sharing a Mai Tai- or eight- with Beka. She had
to fish my head out of an airlock afterwards." He laughed, "Guess I gave that thing a good ol' 
fashioned space burial." His brain then suddenly changed course, connecting wires that didn't 
seem to fit before. "Wait, then how'd you get-" The ammo belt was gently placed in his grasp 
and suddenly, it all started to weigh down on him, heavier than the sun. 
"Maybe we should reconsider carrying light." Tyr stated, coolly, looking over a munitions launcher 
that seemed just small enough for Harper to carry. 
"Hey, wait-" 
Out of all of the 'hold that thought'-s the universe could throw at them, it had to be some 
eight foot tall guy crashing his boot through their armory. 

Quickly strapping the launcher to Harper's back, Tyr 
wrenched his hands up against it's frame, giving him a push of a head-start, and rushed him out by
sheer momentum, alone. "I'll follow your lead. Go. Now." 
There was something in his tone that Harper didn't trust and it wasn't his usual brand of 
mistrust, either. It was a level of 'Spot went off to live in the great toilet bowl in the sky'
mistrust. He knew, if he left now, he'd never see Tyr again and the worst part was, he already
knew what it felt like to never see Tyr again. 
"No, you're going with me or we're not going at all." He stood firm, white knuckling the straps
holding the launcher in place. 

Here, he watched as Tyr eyed him over with one singular question Harper had said 'yes' to ages ago.
"Have you lost your senses?" 
Now fully armed to the teeth(to which Harper just realized might not have been the brightest of 
ideas), Tyr pulled a blaster from it's holster and squeezed off a single shot into the room, 
his eyes alight with that crazy glow he got when he, just for a second, remembered he was still alive.
The ensuing explosion of a plasma mine with it's trigger shot out sent the armory into a domino-ed
force of destruction around them. Tyr grabbed him by the sleeve and started running. 












"Don't make me do this, Father." Dylan pleaded, silently praying his words would reach their
mark. "It would be years of progress undone by one fatal action." His lance did not tremble 
in his hand. He was a beacon of light, reaching out to illuminate a member of his crew back
to the correct path. It then dawned on him that, as many times as he had tried, he had never 
successfully done this before. Every lost member of his crew was another knife in his back. 
A failure on his end and nothing more. All except the Father who was not beyond help.

He was just beyond Dylan's help. 
 

Dangling just out of reach of his words, Bem's features untangled, exhaustively back into 
place; his stare was distant, sweeping, lulling between this place and another before burrowing 
itself in Dylan's gaze. 
He was starved for death.

Everything that Dylan had mistaken for resilience now showed it's true nature underneath.
He was a holy house infested with termites, threatening to collapse in on itself in a 
moment's notice. 
His stomach churned.
"I thought you were stronger than that." 
"I am...a battle." The Reverend began.
"No, spare me your sermon. You are not the same man I admired." He could taste the 
venom in his words. Bitter and vile. 

Resonating within the Reverend was something he had kept tucked out of sight for far too 
long, now breaching the surface with full force, rearing it's face before the last man
that held his trust. "No, you listen to me, boy!" He roared, his usually smoothed out features 
growing more wild, more ragged, than he had ever seen before. "I am not some success story 
with a beginning and an end for I live beyond your eyeline. Any perceptions you have of me
merely scratches the surface of what I've allowed you to see. You do not know what lays inside.
It is not dormant! It rages!!" He was trembling now, his head shaking in disbelief. 
"It rages and every second of every minute of every hour of every single day-" The halls 
boomed with his words like thunder signaling a storm. "And I must be the one to 
tirelessly fight against it until the moment I die!" 

Dylan could feel the skin on his face prickling with something he couldn't control, an 
expression. A reaction. Something he felt both assured in and ashamed of all the same.

"This is not mere bravery or valor, it is everything that makes me what I am; my very essence-
my soul- trying to destroy itself at every turn! I must always remain always vigilant,
always on guard, to keep that from happening!" 
His voice raised to something mightier than what the heavens could reign down on the both 
of them. "Don't you see that!?" His demeanor then shrank into something that resembled 
something more akin to a man than a Magog. 
"I am a battle."











"You think I didn't try to save them!?" Beka heard her scream over the sound of the Andromeda's
powerlinks overheating and humming. "I tried and I failed and you'll do the same so, please!"
 She called out, voice breaching through the wind that whipped around them, "Please just do as 
I tell you!!"

There was something about hearing your own voice pleading out that felt so unnaturally wrong. It 
made her feel sick. 
"Don't you get it!?" She yelled against the mechanical whine of the ship, "You can't stop what's 
happening out there! You can only live through it!" The blaster canon hit the floor, thrown down as if 
it weighed nothing. "You're going to survive and you're going to thank me for every single breath 
you draw from here until the day you die!"
It hit Beka, suddenly, that this is exactly the kind of words she remembered hearing from everyone
she ever clung to whether it was her uncle or some crappy boyfriend or any number of 
people she chose to follow. Sure, the words were never the same, sometimes harsher, sometimes
sweeter, but she knew exactly that this was what always kept her under lock and key. 
The promise that she'd be safe if she just followed orders.

"Is that what she told you?" 
"Who?"
"Trance." Beka stared her down just like she stared down every other reflection in every 
single mirror over every single bathroom sink every single day she woke up. "Is that what
she told you?"
No response. 
"Is that why you're so obedient to her? Because you're grateful? Or because you think you 
should be?" 
Clearly, she hit a nerve; and, by that, I mean she practically plunged an icepick into her
own brainstem because she had never seen her face make that expression before. 
Grabbed by the roots of her hair, Beka was thrown off her feet and down the ramp.
She was cornered now, the sound of heavy boots slamming into the metal grate growing nearer
as she pushed herself up off the floor. A heavy film formed over her tongue, keeping it 
weighed down too far to speak. She tasted blood. 
Smearing it across her mouth with the back of her hand, Beka rose up again, knowing full well
that she wouldn't be able to stop this impending mechanical wall of a person from slowly
closing in on her. She had to think fast, think like someone who would do anything to survive
even if it meant taking the coward's way out. 
She had to think like Harper.

Just as her future self readied a blow to knock her out, Beka slid closer, just close enough
to get into range and, with a prayer, spewed a mouthful of blood into her eye. Quickly skidding
backwards, she watched as her future self stumbled just far enough to stay within arms length.

Grabbing the canon off her back, Beka pulled down on it, disconnecting it from it's holster and
sending her future self to the floor in one quick motion. Somewhere in here was a bad joke
but, she was too busy trying to not have her skull caved in to think of one. 
Using the ground for leverage, she let the butt of the canon stay where it was, aiming it
like a mortar, her body wrapping around the weapon, clinging to it like she should be waving
a cowboy hat and screaming on the back of a nuke as it dropped down to the Earth. She had 
one shot and she was going to make it count. 
Aiming at the ceiling above them, she squeezed off a single shot. Breaking through several 
layers of the ship, splitting floors open and sending their contents down the warped opening
to rain down upon the space between them, she utterly destroyed the bridge between her and herself.
The Maru and the Andromeda. 
"You go be The Chosen." Beka told her, standing firmly with all the strength she had left. 
"I'm staying right here."


As beautifully victorious as the sight must've been, her future self staring at her over the
burned out carnage of the room around them, singed red hair flowing from the release of fresh
air into the bay, it was quickly lost when gravity decided to give up on them once again, 
allowing her to leap across the gap between them in one simple motion while Beka was left 
grasping for the safety railing around her. 

Squeezing her eyes shut, Beka could feel the ship capsize; spinning once and then twice, out
of control. She might as well had crawled inside a washing machine and taken it for a ride.
Her brain rattled inside her skull, leaving her cross-eyed for a second too long.
The figure was now standing over her and she knew it was all over. Bracing herself for the 
impact, Beka screwed her body around the railing, readying herself for the connecting blow 
with closed eyes, her brain popping off every single horrible way she was about to get her
face rearranged.
But nothing came. 
Opening her eyes, she saw herself in ways she had never before; old, exhausted, and wise. 
The fist that held enough power to smash her teeth into dust merely hovered just past her 
jawline, it's knuckles so close, she could almost kiss them. 
The hand then opened, scooping her chin up in it's precise grasp. 
"She was right about you." She conceded with a grin.













"This has never happened before." Trance; ancient and golden and worn, panicked
like a lone child lost in the cosmos as her counterpart remained at ease.
"Of course it didn't."
"I-I don't know what course to take, what direction to go in-" Pacing, she could
feel every single scenario play itself out in the worst ways imaginable. She 
saw a holy figure fall and be unable to salvage what was once holy about them in the
first place. A ship trapped in a sea of darkness, forever forced to repeat it's 
mistakes. A crew experiencing more death and destruction than what any living
creature should naturally be able to be put through. 
"You're doing it again." She heard her other self taunt, "Did anyone ever tell you
that you're a real sucker for hubris?" 
"It's something I have to figure out for myself."
"No, it's annoying." She chastised her, rolling her knuckles up on her hips, "Not to
mention the mess it makes!" Trance had been under more than her fair share of judgement as 
of late, but the peering gaze from some third party observer was nothing compared to 
hearing it from her own mouth. "Look at Beka! Do you know how long it took to undo the 
damage you did to her?" She started to pace, looking around for the peace of mind to
look herself in the eyes again. "You and I both know there's a line between the capacity
for mercy and the capacity for cruelty and you danced all over it like a...a..." 
Overwhelmed, her younger self was unable to find the words. She could 
feel a shared thought passing between them- they both wished Harper was here to fill in the gaps. 
"A really bad party!!" 
The difference between how she is now and how she was caused Trance's head to spin.
She tried to recall a place back in time in which everything was so simple, a place 
when everything made sense. 
"How did it all get so bad?"
Closing her eyes for a moment, Trance began to recall everything from the beginning.
The very beginning. 
"You thought you could fix anything..."















Dylan watched as the Reverend removed his robes and draped them over the hog, stripping himself
of his only guise of humanity. It was an odd sight, some kind of communing with the beasts
that fell more in line with ritual than funeral. The Reverend then kneeled 
gently at the hog's side, bloodied hands folded in grief as he begged for it's soul's 
guidance to...wherever it was they went to when they died. 
"I am no different than this creature." He explained, "Her death is the same as my own."
The concept unnerved Dylan in more ways than one. The Rev seemed to always toe the line
of what most would consider a sentient being with a soul. 'Most' but not all. The goalposts 
always seemed to move, shapeshifting to the thoughts and feelings of those around him. 
At what point does one have a soul? Surely, they weren't just limited to the righteous and 
chosen, even evil men had souls. 
Even broken men.

"We must find a way to contain them without any more bloodshed." The Reverend commanded, 
his nudity, while a symbol of penance, made him appear more akin to the hogs than the rest
of the crew. It made a wave of discomfort wash over Dylan in ways he couldn't quite place. 

Taking off his jacket, he moved in to do the only merciful thing he could, "Please let me-"
The Reverend held up a hand in refusal and smiled, sadly, despite his own mirthful chuckle. 
"I am fine, my child. This is, after all, a Magog's natural state, is it not?" 
"Yes but-"
"Despite their lower intelligence even the hogs recognize this. Do they not?" Within his words 
laid deeper layers of questions with only one answer. 
"But, because of their lower intellect, they will not understand my intentions. Only that I
am a Magog and what that means." His lighthearted tone made Dylan's mind reel. "Do you understand?"
Distinctly, Dylan's eyes searched, vainly, for an answer until he realized it had been staring him 
in the face this whole time.
"Yes."







Galloping down the halls, the hogs pulled themselves back into formation, ready to storm
the common room once again for it's contents when a lone fist made it's first, uneasy, beat
against the ship's Pyrotitanium walls. Again and again, the wall was struck until the beat became
louder, more pronounced into a song that spoke out something deep within the very nature 
of every living creature who heard it's rhythm. 

The Hunt.


As Bem continued, he couldn't decide if it was a tragedy or a comedy that this song seemed to 
still resonate in his blood while names of compatriots, hymns, sermons, always seemed to 
fade back into a distant memory. 
Naturally, the hogs circled around the him, each open mouth ready at the mark. Surely, they
believed that by their sheer willpower as a group, they could take down one Magog no matter
the cost. They were already marking their victory, already imagining the meat that would
collect in their stomachs. Their mouths began to salivate.
"NOW!" The Reverend called out, signaling Dylan to throw his makeshift netting over them 
only, this time, they cast away any understanding of danger, diving in.

Dylan's stomach churned, watching the Reverend allow them to take bites of his flesh in
an attempt to subdue them. He stood still, unmoving, seemingly unaffected by even the
slightest suggestion of pain. It was madness. 
A loud roar resonated throughout every passage of the Andromeda, shaking one fear from Dylan's
mind and replacing it with another. The ship began to tilt. It's heavy frame screaming out, 
harmonizing with the Reverend's call. 
To the hogs, what was merely just a collection of phenomena, became a symbol of destruction 
reigning down upon them. Armageddon. 
An end they attempted to flee from as they were whisked up by the sheer force of the ship's rotation.
Screams overlapped each other, wild eyes peering through the makeshift netting as they tangled 
outwards, caught in the midst of a chaos they couldn't comprehend as it collectively slung 
them around in a frenzied storm of panic and fear. 

The second turn did no better for their luck, smashing them against the walls, the floor, even a
nearby ladder that Dylan could swear wasn't there a moment ago. All congealing into a mess 
of insanity until the ship set itself back upright once again, effectively throwing them all
to the floor as the artificial gravity returned in full force. 


"Bem! Father Bem, can you hear me!?" He called out, digging through mountains of hair
until he found their Reverend staring back up at him, eyes wide with elation.
"I'm...alive." He sounded almost shocked by this. The Father, not too quick on his
feet, made work of cutting himself loose from the netting. 
"I thought we had lost you there for a moment." Dylan exhaled a sigh of relief.
"Let's just say The Divine was cutting it a bit close with that one." 










With their backs pressed firm against the blast doors, their hearts pounded against it's 
hard frame like the world's most insane drum solo.
"I thought you said we weren't friends!" Harper pointed out. As much as this wasn't really the
time for gotchas, there was never really a 'good' time that anything fell into his lap so might as 
well smoke 'em while you got 'em.
"I thought you said you would keep your mouth shut." Tyr breathed, checking his ammunition.
"Actually, I didn't really promise anything on my end." 
"Then neither did I." He then peered down at him with that look on his face that, in his own 
grim way, counted as a smile. Talk about a real heartbreaker. 
"So, at the cost of ruining the spacetime continuum and ripping apart the whole universe and
everything..." Harper started, grasping onto what was probably a real whale of a Hail Mary right
about now. "You didn't do it."
Just as Tyr was about to ask, Harper held up a finger, taking a few quick breaths to regain his
composure. It was bad enough that he had to make a confession here after a brief jaunt with what 
will probably be their super violent and bloody deaths.
"You almost did but you didn't."
He was no poet like Tyr was, but, the look that dropped across his face could fill a book of 
the stuff. 
"I noticed the animosity."
"Oh yeah, there's animosity for days up here."
"I also noticed I was no longer on your crew registry."
"Seriously? You checked that thing!? When? While we were locked up on the deck!?" Of course he 
did, there was no off button on this guy! 
Looking away, he shrugged his shoulders, "One gets bored waiting for a course of action." After
a moment, they met eye-to-eye. "So, may I ask where I am, currently?"
"You may!" 
"And?"
"That I..." He took a breath. "...don't really know."
"Do you wish to know?"
"I don't know..." Harper looked away in regard and back up at him, again, "Maybe." 

A loud clang against the shield doors signaled that their time was up. 
"It seems as if we've been beset upon once more." 
A statement Harper figured was Tyr-speak for 'Ah crap not this guy again.' 
"So are you gonna tell me who this guy is?" 
"Someone I've dealt with before." He answered, "Someone I can certainly deal with again." 
Yeah, this game of vagueness telephone was starting to get exhausting. 
"Did you get 'im last time?" 
It was here that he smiled, not really with his mouth but with pretty much everything else.
"I most certainly did."
Eyeing a pair of crates, Harper's brain formulated a plan, fast and messy, just the way he
liked it. 




The moment the doors opened, their mercenary friend was greeted with the sight of Harper's 
big beautiful launcher, held steady in his grasp as Tyr guided it towards it's target.
Squeezing off a shot, they both dove back under the cover of safety as the explosion practically
blew the door off it's hinges. 
Seeing as cargo crates liked turning into splintered, flying, projectiles they did what two 
reasonably smart men would do in this situation. 
They scattered. 
Sliding across the floor, Harper managed to just miss having decades of vital knowledge
painted across the wall behind him. Aiming his blaster at the merc's ankles, he held
his breath; missing once, twice, and- hold on- there's no way he was this bad of a shot. 
Even as a kid, he took potshots at rats better than this. 

Continuing his laser-guided chase, the merc followed Tyr from one piece of cover to the next.
He wasn't even trying to avoid being shot. 
Suddenly it made sense.
This guy's jerky movements suggested puppeteering but not that he was being yanked around so 
much as he was dragging something along. Some kind of shield. Probably
a prototype that only worked against blaster fire. Untouchable. 
And he'd stay untouchable just as long as nothing with any actual mass was thrown his way. 
Aiming towards a piece of scaffolding, Harper made a mental note to clock how many hours
it would take to repair the damage. Two shots at the top, up near where the pylons 
were attached to the bulkhead, Harper watched them fall off their hinges. 
Just as long as Tyr kept on the move he'd make the distance in time. His mad dashes between 
each new stretch of cover as he leapt up, over, and between each new obstacle in his way
were enough to impress. All Harper had to do was wait, aiming just low enough to make the 
final shot, making sure the structure collapsed right between the merc and his target. 

This at least managed to buy Tyr enough time to reload. Miserably, his hands worked tirelessly
to rip another round off his back to guide into the chamber of his launcher. Their last
chance, carefully held in his hands. Leaning his head into the sight, locked and loaded,
he aimed at his target and, with a prayer, the universe answered to him exactly the way it
always did. 
By turning on him. 
Counterclockwise, the ship spun out of control, the weight of the launcher in his hands 
pulling him with it. Still, he didn't let go of it. They were sent sliding across the 
floor until it was no longer the floor but a wall and a ceiling and everything in between.
  
Well, you know what they say; when life throws off the magnetic field around you and tosses
you around like a ragdoll, you become the ragdoll. Letting the pull and flow of gravity
toss him around, Harper let himself get flung towards a nearby pylon, just missing having
his nose flattened by the sheer impact of it against his face. Pulling himself up, he crouched
against it like a hoverboard. A really bad hoverboard that was probably bought at half price
off some back alley dealer by a guy named Slim. Kicking off, he threw himself at the Merc, 
letting their bodies collide as he became twisted up on the guy, desperately grabbing the 
first piece of equipment he could get his hands on and pulled. The ship flipped a 
second time. This one was more violent, severing them with a loud snap that sent Harper
flying, then skidding, across a floor that found his back with a loud 'thud'. 

Heaving a loud gasp, Tyr struggled under the weight of the launcher that now had him pinned
to the floor as he tried to roll it off his body. His heavy breathing echoed throughout
the hollowed-out room, over the engine's weak hum, and against the weight of a solid boot
that came down against his chest. Refusing to give up, he reached out, grabbing at the merc's
leg, trying to break it with sheer willpower, alone. The action held the both of them in
place as they seemed content to place their final bets on a battle of strength. As if strength 
ever got anyone very far.
"Hey!" Harper shouted, just loud enough to cause the Mercenary to pull away from Tyr, just
far enough for him to plant the muzzle of his blaster between the assailant's eyes. 
"Ever get killed by a dead guy?" God, that line was so cool! Squeezing off a single round,
he watched the body drop, lifelessly, to the floor. 














"What if I told you a secret?" Trance; young and pink and new, looked down at her hands, letting 
the tips of her fingers curl in on each other, her voice barely audible over the sound of the 
chaos around them. "What if I told you that things could be different this time? From here on out?" 
Her features gave way to a face that she, herself hardly recognized anymore. 
"Maybe it might not be the same. Maybe the details might change. Maybe the people; their hearts, 
their minds, their intentions...Maybe this entire universe, itself, will be a brave new world for us. 
Would you be able to do it?" 
It already felt like she was having to bear so much lately. Too much. 
"I know it's asking a lot of you, but, do you think we can do this one more time?" 
It was the cruelest thing that had ever been asked of her. "What if it turns out worse?"
"Well, that's the beauty in it, isn't it? The unexpected changes in the universe? You could boil
so much of it down to a science and yet...that science never truly answers all of our questions
does it? Sometimes, it only asks more questions for us to answer, blooming fresh, new, ideas. 
Revelations." Her old mind filled with images of things that both didn't happen and did, playing 
their lives forwards and backwards in a cycle. It reminded her of one of those old programs Harper 
watched where the characters on the screen grew and changed, experiencing comedies and tragedies, alike.
And when it was all over?
He'd restart it from the beginning as if the events wouldn't transpire exactly as they did before.
Just like they always did. 
Just like they always had.
"I think...I understand." She stared into a space beyond time that came folding back into place.
"Good!" Her old self gave her a loving pat on her head. "Looks like the student has now become
the master, yeah?" 
"Well, I did tell you to grow up, didn't I?" 
"You did!"
"And?"
"I haven't!" She shrugged, sticking her tongue out, playfully. "But I'm working on it!" 


The ship lurched under their feet, deciding to spin under the ample persuasion of another 
event caused by the aurora. Yet they remain unmoved, feet planted firmly into place on the 
ground floor of the Andromeda as it lost control. 
"There's no turning back from here." Trance told herself, the hull of the ship crying out 
over her words as if it was in pain. "No more restarts. No more do-overs." 
"This is it, then?" She asked, fearing what the future may bring. "The beginning of the end?"
"It was fun, though, wasn't it?" Her younger self asked. "Until it wasn't, I mean." She added,
sheepishly. "But now you can let them go. It's not your job to hold them anymore. They have to
experience free will of their own. Make their mistakes, find their way." 
"What if they make the wrong decisions?" She asked, feeling the weight of the ship as it
begged to be set free from the light's hold. 
"Then those are their wrong decisions to make."

Trance recalled the nature of a particular flower she grew once, as much as she tried to 
preserve it's beauty, she had kept it from delivering fruit by keeping it closed off and weakened. 
Dependent on her, it remained forever beautiful but unable to grow. 
She then remembered the sight of watching the Andromeda being pulled from it's abyss- locked 
into stasis for so long that both it and it's Captain had become preserved; captives of fate. 
It was their freedom that struck that first light of hope throughout the galaxy. 

"Do you trust them?" 

Some would say a sign of madness was doing something over and over again and expecting different
results. No one ever considered that the real madness was a result of it. 

"I do."

With a heavy heart and her last held premonition, Trance could feel it burrow a feeling of both 
emptiness and relief as the final hour of time's grasp slipped from her hands. 











"End of the road?" Beka asked her freaky future self in all of her freaky future-ness. 
"Yeah." She nodded. 
"You ever miss being a blonde?" She asked, rubbing the bruises on her cheeks.
"I miss not having a robotic spine." 
"Wow, okay."
"What?"
"Am I really that dour?" 
"No." She reloaded one last time. "But, I am." She reached over to give her hair a quick 
ruffle as if she was the little sister they both had always secretly wanted. "You don't have
to be." 
There was a sort of liberation to her words, like she was finally being let go from something 
that she had to carry for so long but couldn't quite name what it was.
"Is this goodbye?"
"No." With a shake of her head, she flicked the switch to unlock both doors in their passage
between the Maru and the rest of the ship. "It's hello." Charging forward, she slid through the
crack in the door just as it began to open, leaving Beka. This Beka, for here and now, to turn
the opposite way, and do the same. 











"So that's it? You're going to leave?" Dylan asked, so afraid of what the future held for this 
version of his teacher, he found a task as simple as imputing information into the ship's 
mainframe too difficult to handle.  
"When I get back home? Certainly!" The jubilation in the father's voice sounding out for all to hear.
"You're quite confidence that you're even going back at all." 
"If the Divine allows it, my path will be set before me."
A pool of worry started to form in the pit of his stomach. "What if it's too late for you, now?"   
"I thought of that and I've decided that, while it may be a possibility, it would be better to
try and fail than to hide and ensure that failure from the very start." 
"To breach into the unknown?" Dylan asked a little too sardonically. 
"Your newfound pessimism shocks me, Captain." 
"Well, let's just say after you've been burned so many times-"
"You learn what will burn you." He reasoned. "And with that knowledge, you continue onwards. 
After all, you can't expect to do anything of value unless you leave yourself the room for 
missteps." He glanced over the interior of the ship, at faces that weren't currently there
but were bright and alive and awaiting him back from where he had come from. "Others as well." 
"You've gotten better at that."
"At what?"
"Nothing."  
As if he understood, The Reverend laughed to himself, "Just make sure not to lose sight of 
your convictions." 
With that, the final power emitter flickered to life before them, creating a soft glow that bounced 
from screen to screen, slowly waking the ship's A.I. back from her slumber.










Dragging each other across the way, Harper and Tyr struggled to stay afoot, using each other
as a sort of counterbalance to keep either of them from falling. It was the tactic of drunks
and guys who got into fights they probably shouldn't have won. 
"Wanna do the honors?" Harper asked, looking down at the control panel, then up at his friend.
After all, it only took three fingers and a thumb to get the job done. It wasn't rocket 
science or anything. Just a good, old-fashioned, feat of engineering. 
Tapping his swollen fingers over the screen, Tyr kept his eyes focused on his work. 
For the first time in a long time, Harper didn't feel the need to say anything, letting the silence 
comfortably wash over them as the engine spat, hacked, and sputtered back to life. 
With a deep sigh of relief, they both turned to each other, smiling for a brief moment from underneath 
swollen bruises and busted up faces until they realized what this now meant for the both of them. 
Quietly, a deal was offered, played with, passed around; and, with a heavy heart, refused. 

Then, in the silence, a deal was struck.














From her seat upon the Andromeda, as the oxygen started to run low, Beka watched her life play in 
reverse and then forwards, backwards, left, right, up, down, askew, cattywampus; the images spotty
in places, skittering and skipping between scenes of her life and the various characters in it.
She watched as the whole of Andromeda Ascendant was unraveled atom by atom like a reverse big bang,
bursting at the seams into a nothingness that wasn't really nothing at all before reeling back
into what was essentially a light; timeless as time itself that bloomed to life right before her 
very eyes.
The deafening sound of her own struggled breaths overwhelmed her eardrums until it was the only 
thing that existed. She did not hear the doors of the upper deck open. Did not see her newly 
arrived guest. Did not feel the press of the oxygen mask encase over her face or the gloved hand that 
reached over to brush the hair out of the way, pulling strands off her sweat covered brow 
with care. 

















From aboard the Maru, Beka opened her eyes to a sea of intense looks from a crowd of familiar faces. 
"See, I told you she'd pull through!" Harper laughed as if he didn't look like he was on the verge
of tears. 
"You had us worried there for a second." Dylan smiled, warily removing the oxygen mask from her face, 
"Where's Tyr and the Rev?" She asked, eyes scouring over their expressions, each exchanging glances,
sinking further into concern. "They left, Beka." 
"They left!?" She sat up quickly and, oh, big mistake. Her lunch practically hurled itself off
the starboard bow. Translation: all over Harper's shoes. 
"Yeah, that was my reaction too." He groaned, a little too caught up in trying to wipe the spit
off her face than worry about a pair of old sneakers.  
"No, I mean, how'd they leave, they were just here!!"
Everybody then collectively drew back in concern as they just let her sit there, babbling
like an idiot. "There- there was a big flowery rainbow thing and an age of something that was going
to come change the universe and there were hogs everywhere!!" Alright, maybe her choice of words 
weren't exactly the most coherent in the world. "Somebody installed seat warmers on the deck!!" 
She felt like Dorothy waking up from Oz except backwards somehow. "Are you seriously telling me
none of you remember anything!?" She snapped at the crew who were all eyeing her with more than
just your usual brand of concern.
"Just...have your report on my desk." Dylan regarded her with a pat on her arm, "Whenever
you can get around to it."
"If you want, you can dictate it to me, but, without evidence, we can't really file it as official." 
Rommie offered with an air of sympathy. 
"Yeah, that whole 'passing out from a lack of oxygen' thing kinda bunks up your whole story."
Harper chimed in, "I am totally following up on that seat warmer thing, though!"

As the others started to filter out, it was Trance who approached her, helping pull her out of the seat,
a knowing smile across her face. "Sounds to me like you had quite the experience." 
"You know exactly what happened, don't you?" Beka sneered, only for Trance's face to smooth out into
something vague and unreadable. 
"Yes." She answered straightforwardly, for what was probably the first time in her life. "And no."