—March 17, 2161, 19:01:47—

  The air in Judith’s office was thick enough to chew, heavy with the sterile scent of recycled air and the lingering, metallic tang of fear. Judith sat perfectly still behind her desk, her hands clasped, a statue of calm in a room that felt like it was vibrating at a subsonic frequency. Marty sat opposite her, slumped in a chair that suddenly seemed too large for him, his gaze fixed on the floor as if he might find answers in the ferrocrete patterns. The only light came from her desk lamp, carving a small, tense island out of the oppressive gloom.

  The door hissed open, and Silas stepped through. He looked like he’d aged a decade since the morning, his shoulders slumped, his face etched with a profound weariness that went far beyond simple fatigue.

  "The Loom's back online," he announced, his voice flat, devoid of any trace of triumph. "Primary and secondary power cores are stable. The energy cascade was... disruptive, but the system's self-repair protocols held."

  Judith let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, the sound loud in the dead quiet. "Thank heavens," she said, the relief a fragile, temporary thing. "I was worried we'd lost it completely."

  But Silas didn't share her relief. His gaze was distant, his mind clearly somewhere else. Before he could form a thought, Marty looked up, his eyes hollow and haunted. He fixed his stare on Silas.

  "It's gone, isn't it," Marty said. It wasn't a question. It was a verdict.

  Silas wouldn't meet his gaze. His eyes dropped to the floor, and he gave a slow, solemn nod. "Yes. As if it never existed." He finally turned to Judith, his voice cracking with the weight of it. "Judith, this can't go on. We have to stop."

  Judith’s composure snapped back into place, a shield against the encroaching chaos. She cleared her throat, her tone shifting to the quiet, authoritative command of a department head. "Marty," she said, her voice gentle but firm. "I'm grateful you stayed late. Your detailed report was… invaluable. You should go home. Get some rest."

  Marty actually looked like he wanted to argue, to stay and fight the unseen monster in the room with them, but she saw him catch the flicker in her eyes. He got the hint. He rose from his chair, his movements stiff, and walked to the door without another word. When it hissed shut behind him, the silence rushed back in, heavier than before.

  Judith waited a couple of beats, letting the silence settle, then finally reacted to Silas's earlier plea. "We have to push on, Silas." But her voice lacked its usual conviction, sounding thin and brittle in the vast quiet. "This is just a setback. Evie may just need another break. We'll figure it out."

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  Silas exploded. All the quiet exhaustion vanished, replaced by a raw, frantic energy. "Figure it out?!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the walls. "She just erased the lives of tens of millions of people! An entire timeline! Gone!" He slammed a hand on her desk, making a datapad jump. The momentary silence between them was deafening. He leaned forward, his eyes wild. "And she didn't even snap her fingers to do it. She just willed it to happen and the Loom allowed it! That's not a setback, Judith! That's genocide!"

  Judith opened her mouth to mount a defense, to find some piece of logic, some procedural anchor to hold onto, but the words wouldn't come. She noticed her hand trembling in front of her on the polished surface of her desk and quickly moved her other hand over it, pressing it flat, trying to conceal the betrayal of her own body.

  After a moment, she offered a thought, grasping at straws. "Marty's report indicated that timeline was doomed either way." The defense sounded weak even to her own ears, but she had to say something.

  Silas scoffed. "We have no idea what the extent of the damage was going to be. We have nothing on file that matches what she said she saw. It could have been isolated for all we know.” She knew he was right. “And it may very well happen again."

  "We don't have any reason to believe that," Judith countered, her voice barely a whisper.

  Silas immediately shouted back, his voice cracking with despair. "We don't have reason to believe anything anymore!"

  The mask finally tore away from Judith's face. She let the last of her guard down, the commander dissolving to reveal the terrified woman beneath. She quietly admitted, "No, we don't."

  The two of them froze there in the silence for a long, heavy pause, the admission hanging between them like a shroud.

  Finally, Silas broke the ice. He walked over to a chair and collapsed into it, burying his face in his hands and letting out a long, frustrated sigh that seemed to drain the last of his energy. "There's no science to follow anymore, Judith," he said, his voice muffled by his hands. "You and I both know it. We've been going on faith, alone, for too long."

  Judith seemed to reanimate slightly, a flicker of the old fire in her eyes. "But Silas, we've done so much. They've saved so many timelines. That alone makes everything worth it."

  He shook his head, his face still hidden. "Will it be worth it if she destroys them all? Even this one?"

  Judith broke. Her voice was thin, stretched to its limit. "You know the answer to that. There's only one that matters, in the end. And she can't destroy it."

  Silas lifted his head from his hands, his eyes red-rimmed and searching. He asked the obvious question, the one that had been hanging in the air since the Loom roared back to life. "And why do you feel so confident about that?"

  Judith took a deep, steadying breath, her gaze fixing on a point just beyond Silas's shoulder, as if she were looking into another time, another place.

  "Because she's not in that one."