The plating drops to the ground in a dull clatter as Rush moves back, away from the herald of his own deconstructing reality.

"Impossible, apparently," he answers lightly, and the words sound faint to him. He has achieved a distance, possibly from himself. The ship appears to be working again, the engines engaging in their hollow drones of efficiency, but that hardly matters. It can't. It doesn't.

Did it ever?

He presses his thumb into the disappointingly shallow cut, grits his teeth to the resultant piercing nervous response. Pain is not a theoretical concept. How can it exist in a theoretical space? The two concepts are not veridically aligned.