Nicholas slowly, as if in a trance, averted his gaze from the flickering monitors. The movement felt heavy—the reality of the laboratory, after beholding the abyss, seemed alien to him, almost ornamental. He looked at Liam and William, while the vacuum of the "Shard" still echoed within him, searing away everything he had deemed important for the last thirty years. His entire path in science, the atlases, and the titles had turned into insignificant dust in a single instant.
?The youths were asleep. They curled up in the chairs, defenseless and eerily calm—exactly like two children whose dreams had not yet been touched by the icy breath of the chasm. They were no longer interested in the mysterious device or the scorching alien suns. Sated by what they had seen, they had fallen into a deep oblivion. In this flickering twilight, amidst the hum of iron, their steady breathing seemed like something foreign. Nicholas watched them, and something inside his soul finally snapped.
?"And let this be the last night I dedicate to research," he whispered almost inaudibly. "But tomorrow… tomorrow I will give the remainder of my days entirely to my son. For so many years, Marcus, I chased shadows in infinity that I forgot how a living voice sounds. Instead of racing through the boundless Mojave together, facing the wind, he heard only stern lectures from me. Look at them... they compensated for our lack of attention themselves. They collided and went still, like two stars drawn to each other in this mute void. We were too busy with the cosmos to notice: their own Universe is here, in this friendship. Enough. Even if the greatest mystery is hidden there, behind the screens, I no longer wish to meet it in the embrace of iron. I want to be beside the one who is truly dear to me."
?Marcus stood up. His steps were noiseless, spectral. He took a heavy cut of black silk—the fabric usually used to cover the system's key nodes. Approaching the youths, he carefully covered them, as if shielding them from the cold draft of the air conditioners and that harrowing truth that had spilled onto the displays. For a moment, Marcus's stern face wavered, reflecting a fleeting, almost forgotten smile—the way one looks at something they fear losing forever.
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?But the delusion quickly dissipated. He straightened up, and his former cold focus returned. The researcher approached the terminal, obeying some ancient, almost instinctive fervor that had guided him through the years. In the silence of the hub, the keyboard responded with a dry click. The light of the monitors reflected in his eyes again, but now it was the glitter of a man who had felt the logic of existence and would not be able to stop until he reached the essence.
?Marcus looked Nicholas directly in the eyes. There was no more doubt in them—only a fanatical readiness to burn himself for the sake of a single frame of Truth.
?"We go to the end," his voice sounded like a death sentence for their past. "We have little time. Only until morning."
?Nicholas froze. His hand hovered over the console, and his gaze was dead-set on the eighteen orbits dancing around the amber giant. He swallowed hard, feeling the calculated scientist and the man who had touched the edge of eternity for the first time painfully struggling within him.
?"You know, Marcus…" he said quietly, a bitter, almost frightening greed piercing through his voice. "I would gladly give a month right now to study every planet of this star. I would gnaw into their atmospheres, drink these data dry… But we do not have that luxury. Fate gave us a chance to step beyond the limits of the possible. It opened a crack for us that humanity has not dared to peer into for millennia. I crave to deploy the system to full power until it burns every damn node we have. I dream of seeing what lies beyond reason, of letting this flow pass through me, do you understand?! If we leave here in the morning, I desire to carry out a flash of Truth in my head, not just snapshots of a few dead rocks."
