He could hear Crichton's punches out in the corridor. A seething anger informed the human's every blow, a frustration only soothed by the whiff of an unpredictable intoxicant. John was a coward. The human not only ignored his constant warnings, but his feelings for Aeryn as well, befitting his knack for holding grudges, and his obsession with betrayal.

"John…" Scorpius said. "We need to talk."

He approached him cautiously, stepping through the red triangle on the floor that separated them, as if they were being watched. He also didn't know what mood the human was in this day. They might have had this conversation before, but right now Scorpius needed him sober, and sensible.

"I'm kinda in the middle of something here, Scorp."

Perhaps subconsciously, Crichton's punches became more brutal as he aimed for the red bag's lower half. He punched harder and quicker, as he turned his back to the door. No doubt John was imagining punching him. Or throwing him into that awful dumpster.

"Not in the mood for your daily doom peptalk, Mephistopheles."

"Nor I. It's something else with which I require your assistance."

John punched the bag a final time and stopped to catch his breath. He grabbed his towel from the floor and pressed a bottle of water to his lips. Scorpius leaned in close.

"Tell me, what do you remember from yesterday?"

"That's what you want to talk to me about?"

"Indulge me."

John dabbed his forehead with the towel.

"Does it matter?"

John's constant obstinacy was becoming annoying.

"It matters, because… this is not the first time we've had this conversation."

"I wish we had less conver-"

"This EXACT conversation. Yesterday, I entered this room. And the day before that. And you were here."

"Did I give you the finger?"

"You called me Grasshopper."

"I always call you that."

"This is serious, John. I think I am constantly reliving the events of the same day. And it seems I am the only one to hold any memories of it."

John tilted his head a bit, glared at him with his blue eyes, and took another zip of his water bottle.

"You're saying you're in some kind of loop? Some kind of time loop?"

"Yes…"

"You're saying it's you? You? Not me."

John pressed his face into the towel before throwing the towel and the bottle into the corner of the room, nearly hitting a DRD.

"Finally! Someone else gets the wacky adventures for once."

"What are you doing?"

John was taking off his soaked shirt.

"Getting a shower. Don't worry, Scorp. I'll meet you in Command."

"Time is of the essence, John."

"Jup. That's how it works! PILOT!"

Day 5

There it was again. The sounds of a punching bag receiving a beating. Crichton's technique was clumsy, unpolished and angry. Much like his personality.

Scorpius didn't waste any time this time. "John, I need your help."

John kept on punching, circling the red bouncing bag without ever looking up.

"I'm kinda in the middle of…"

"…in the middle of something, yes. I can see that. Still, there are more pressing matters at hand. Moya might be in danger."

He picked the towel off the floor and threw it into the human's face, who promptly caught it.

"What are you talking about, Scorp?"

"Something is wrong with Moya. Time is repeating itself. We, or better put, I, am trapped in a temporal loop with this day repeating itself endlessly. This is the third time we've had this conversation. Take a shower, John, and meet me in Command."

He'd already started the necessary recalibrations of Pilot's sensors before any of the crew had woken up. It displeased Pilot, but there was little he could do to stop him once he'd started tampering.

Scorpius had stayed up all night to observe the transition from one day to the next, or more accurately, the morning of the same day, but to no avail. There was nothing to indicate any change. In any case, the transition was seamless. He would have to pick a different vantage point the following night, if his efforts this day proved as fruitless.

They had spent all day that day coming up with different hypotheses, most of which involved the strange indications of movement in the cluster not far from their position. Any unknown lifeform could be tampering with their experience of time from that hideout in the clouds.

The question remained: why was Scorpius unaffected? How did he retain his memories of the days that followed? A full medical analysis with the limited equipment on board Moya served only to annoy him and waste his time. There was nothing wrong with him.

Scorpius felt the anger rise within him, like a heat wave, until he realized his cooling rod needed to be replaced. He could feel his eyeballs burning. His headache returned with the rising sensation, but he'd learned to ignore pain and focus his senses elsewhere.

D'Argo was surprised to find Scorpius in Command before him. He did not like it.

"Pilot, what is he doing?"

"He has made several alterations to several subsystems in the past few arns…"

"Captain D'Argo," Scorpius spoke, knowing that by addressing the Luxan by his new title would help to gain his favour. "Moya is in danger. I need your permission to change the alignment of Moya's sensor array."

"To do what?"

"Moya's long range sensors aren't sufficient to scan the cluster ahead. Therefore I've made some alterations to the energy banks by increasing the size of the energy burst sufficiently enough to be able to bounce it off the cloud particles. That should allow us to detect the contents of that cloud in more detail. Do you concur?"

Scorpius dug his fingers into the operational consoles, adjusting fluid levels to maintain standard efficiency and bypassing certain life support systems in order to power the array.

"Uh… okay," D'Argo replied.

"Do you concur?"

"… with what?"

"I need Pilot to scan that cluster. Time is a luxury I don't have."

"Is something the matter?" Sikozu entered Command. "I heard shouting. Is something wrong?"

Scorpius felt like offering relief, but he needed D'Argo's authorization to continue his alterations of Moya's subsystems. If they blocked his research he would lose precious time pointlessly arguing and engaging in the same idle speculations he'd had tolerated the day before.

"It's vital that I continue this research. Please."

"What research?"

D'Argo lost his patience. "Crichton! Get up here! Scorpius is doing something!"

"Damnit," a voice crackled over the comms channel. "What's he up to this time?"

Still the human played his game, despite Scorpius' complete candour toward him just moments ago.

"Pilot, engage the long range scanners," Scorpius ordered. "Target that cluster."

"Pilot will do no such thing," D'Argo spoke. "Now what's going on?"

Day 6

"Ladies and gentlemen! It's Groundhog Day!"

Crichton rubbed his hands with glee. Scorpius growled, for he had made that same pointless reference three times and still no-one got it. Yet he tolerated the human's frivolities. John was the only one who seemed to have any practical knowledge of what he was experiencing, either because of the subconscious wormhole knowledge implanted in his brain, or thanks to the amount of science fiction movies he'd been brought up with as a child. The primitive species of humanity were perhaps uncivilized and brutal, but, at least according to John Crichton's memories, they were imaginative. And more intelligent than a first glance would believe. Their adaptability more than made up for their limited sensory capacity.

Crichton would never admit it, but they were more alike than he would like to believe. They were both survivors.

Scorpius snarled again as he was put through the same humiliating medical examination a third time, bearing the same results. "Survivors," he thought to himself, as he endured the scanner. He'd suffered through worse indignities after all.

"Can we now return to the matter at hand, please?"

"Not until we figure out what to do," John replied.

"Sit down." Chiana pushed Scorpius back on to the slab. He showed his teeth in response. It wouldn't be the first time someone tried to bite her that day.

"So what's the plan?" Aeryn asked.

D'Argo was pacing. The others were sitting in a circle of chairs around Scorpius' slab. D'Argo didn't like the idea of being stuck debating something that might as well not be real. There was no proof to any of it.

"Okay, if we'd had this conversation before," Chiana said to Scorpius. "Then tell me… what am I going to say next?"

Scorpius rolled his eyes at the question. "Events have already changed. Different variables, creating different outcomes. I cannot predict what you're going to say because I cannot know what you are thinking."

"You could guess."

"You could leave. This is pointless!"

"Is the almighty Grasshopper already losing his patience?" John asked out loud. "I thought you were the world champion of patience, Scorp!"

Scorpius shrugged, but the words did strike a chord.

"I've already suffered this inanity several times, and no doubt I will have to suffer through it again."

"The only way we're going to get out of this is by working together, Scorpius. You've got to trust us. Rely on us. Come on, man, talk to us. You never stopped talking before. Different variables, remember?"

Scorpius growled. The human was making too much sense, but it was pointless anyway.

"I've already tried recalibrating Moya's scanners to pierce the oncoming cluster, to no avail. There's nothing there to indicate any lifeform intelligent enough to create time distortions. No known species can."

"I was once stung by a black hole," John said. "Skorvians made it."

"Ilanics," D'Argo corrected him. "It was a scientist named Verell. We encountered him three cycles ago…"

Rygel scoffed. "More like crashed into them."

"…he and his Skorvian assistant were working on a special project to turn a black hole into a superweapon."

"You would've liked him," John added.

"But those were side-effects," Aeryn said. "Scorpius, were you exposed to any strange radiation or substances before all this started?"

Scorpius had perfect recall. "No."

"And we haven't been near any black holes…" D'Argo said.

"Moya's afraid of them," Aeryn added.

"What if this is all just in Scorpius' head?" Rygel spoke. "Tomorrow we'll just wake up and everything will be fine, and then we can all conclude Scorpius lost his mind. Hmm?"

"I'd be fine with that," Chiana said.

"We have to listen to Scorpius!" Sikozu spoke. "If he is right about this temporal displacement, we could be trapped here indefinitely. Scorpius is the only one who retains any knowledge of what transpires here. We need to help him. He's the only one that can get us out of this."

"I think Scorp's telling the truth," John said, and the room fell quiet. "Our lives may very well be in your hands."

None of them could actually believe what he was about to say.

"How can we help?"

Day 6

That night, Scorpius stayed up try out a new experiment. He took a piece of fruit from the kitchen and placed it on the floor of his cell. Then he asked Sikozu to stay and watch over him throughout the night. That way, he ensured different variables. The transition from day to day could now not be executed seamlessly, now that Sikozu wasn't in her own quarters asleep in her own bed. This discontinuity had to be accounted for, somehow.

Scorpius watched as Sikozu slowly dozed off. Her head slowly sank into the palm of her hand, her red locks of hair falling down the front of her face. She was beautiful at rest.

He played with the ball of fruit as the night went on, throwing it up and down into the air whenever he liked. Finally, he took a bite. It tasted sour and squishy inside. Moist and stringy. Scorpius spat it back out again.

He remembered the exact spot he'd taken it from. Lately, however, his photographic memory started to fail him. Days started to meld together since they were all so similar. To organize his experiences, he counted every singular encounter with the crew and recalled all the ways in which they differed.

Six days had already passed in this state. How many more would he have to endure?

The solution would present itself soon.

Day 52

Sikozu had faded, just like she had done on every day they tried the same experiment. Every time Scorpius picked that very same ball of fruit, it would reappear in the refrigeration unit again, whole as ever, without bite or blemish, as if it had never been taken out.

This world, where nothing he did made a difference, where nothing he did mattered or made any impact on anything, frightened him. Out there, in the universe beyond the walls of this ship, the Scarran Empire was amassing enough forces to wipe out every Peacekeeper world from existence. From here, there was nothing he could do about it. Nothing that could ever change that outcome.

Here, he was useless.

Some time ago, Scorpius knocked out Aeryn and stole her Prowler to fly as far away from Moya as he possibly could. He hadn't counted on the speed of D'Argo's ancient Luxan ship, so the next day he had to try again. This time, he enlisted Crichton's help.

But the headache persisted, even as Moya shrank into the distance until they could no longer see her with the naked eye. Farther and farther they went, with Moya flying in the opposite direction (and Lo'Laan standing by for when they would eventually run out of fuel).

It was quiet in the Pod. John wouldn't speak much, and even though Scorpius had never much enjoyed flying, he'd always been enamoured by the sight of the vast cosmos surrounding them.

As a boy, all he ever knew was the four walls of his cell, and the loving touch of his 'mother's torture, that shaped him to be the person he was now. He'd always thought that was the universe, the space within those walls, and that he and Tauza the only ones that existed within. He soon found out that wasn't the case, when he managed to hack his cell's systems and discovered he was the unfortunate passenger of a Scarran Dreadnought, and the product of two incompatible races; two of many endlessly diverse races that populated an entire universe. His burning need to learn more fuelled his plans for escape. That, and his desire for revenge.

"Man," Crichton grumbled in the cockpit. "I hate being Andie MacDowell. I do NOT want to be Andie MacDowell."

Crichton's Pod might have been cramped, but to Scorpius, looking out at the stars, it felt like a breath of fresh air.

"Just tell me when we're done so we can head back," John said, yawning, before rubbing his sore eyes. "Fuel's nearly down to zero."

"Almost," Scorpius said. His internal clock was impeccable. "If we are indeed beyond its reach, the transition will not occur. If not, however-"

Not long after he said that, Scorpius found himself waking up in his cell, as if he had never left. It had all seemed like just a dream, only for him to wake up to a terrible reality.

For the first time in his life, Scorpius didn't know what to do.