Dr. Lorne wiped a sheen of nervous sweat from his brow as the containment rings of the Quantum Refractor hummed to life, pulsing with a cold purple glow. Across the cramped lab, buried deep in Outpost Epsilon's ice-crusted hull, Dr. Vale's fingers danced across a panel of toggle switches, each one sealing them further into an irreversible gamble. Outside, the void pressed in, indifferent to whether their timeline - this timeline - would be the one that survived.

"Initiating the shift," Vale muttered, voice tight, as she slammed the final switch. The machine shrieked a silent scream - felt rather than heard - warping the air into jagged fractures of light. For an instant, Lorne swore he saw a dozen versions of himself, each watching in horror from their own doomed branches of reality. Then the universe lurched, the lab snapped back into focus, and the alert beacon from the corporate warfront on Amartres-9 flickered - this time, in victory green.