"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU JUST DID?" the man bellowed, his voice shaking the steel walls of the command center.
Agnes froze. Regret rippled across her face as she turned to face him.
"Boss, this wasn't my fault. You saw the diagnostics too — you knew what we were dealing with," she said, her voice trembling.
"I don't want excuses," he snapped. "Pack your things while I figure out how to clean up this mess. You have no idea what you've done. What am I supposed to tell the higher-ups?"
He sank into his chair, head buried in his hands — a man crumbling under the weight of his apathy.
Before he could say another word, the room dimmed. The main screen flashed red.
ALERT: HIGH-ENERGY FLUCTUATIONS DETECTED
The satellite feed came online — shaky, grainy footage crackling across the display.
Where once there was radiant light from the supernova, now there was only chaos.
The star flickered... then collapsed in on itself. In its death throes, it birthed a shockwave — an expanding halo of dust and debris that spiraled outward like the arms of a dying god.
Agnes stared, unblinking. She couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"Holy shit," the older man whispered, his voice hollow.
The cloud of destruction widened, devouring the starscape. Then —
Crack.
The feed was cut to static. A jagged fragment of cosmic rock had struck the satellite, shattering the connection.
Silence fell — thick and absolute — before the gasps began. Whispers. Choked sobs. A rising tide of disbelief.
"Was that... a black hole?" a crew member asked, barely above a whisper. His face was pale, his eyes wide with dread.
As if summoned by the question, the ground began to tremble.
The floor shook. Lights flickered. Laptops and instruments tumbled from desks. Screams rang out as the crew was thrown into the air like rag dolls. The command center became a storm of shattering glass and collapsing metal.
And then the screams changed — sharpened into something primal. Shriveling, broken. The sound of people realizing they would not survive.
Agnes felt her body slam against a console, the wind knocked from her lungs. Her vision blurred. The world spun in stuttering frames.
The last thing she saw before everything went black was the roof cracking apart — a jagged line splitting it like a wound — just before it came crashing down.