Two could hear the accelerating beeping noises above her, but she was too focused on her right arm. Or rather, what remained of her right arm. She just stared at it, shaking as it dawned on her what was happening. She could feel her muscles moving, trying to flex her fingers, her wrist… but it did nothing. It was gone.

“I’m sorry Two.” Seven said quietly, holding Two’s hand tight while she continued “Three said it was the only way to keep you from dying. She saved as much of it as she could.”

Two’s eyes were wet as she laid back on the table, panting loudly just from the exertion of her mind racing. That was it then. That little touch by the creature didn’t just leave her with a temporary rash like she thought it would. It crippled her. She stared at the bright light overhead, not really certain what to say, or even what to think now. She felt hot tears forming on her face. This couldn’t be real.

The infirmary door opened after a few moments and Seven called out immediately “She’s awake. She… saw it.”

“I can tell…” Three said grimly “Two… I’m so sorry.”

“You cut my arm off.” Two stammered out in quiet disbelief, tears streaming down her face.

“I had to cut it off, Two. The infection would have spread further.” Three sounded defensive, apologetic “I-I had no choice. You were going to die if I didn’t.”

Two knew that had to be true, but it didn’t make it hurt any less. She still felt it, like it was there, but nothing real responded when she moved it. “I… W-Why didn’t I just get a rash?” she pleaded, hoping that this somehow wasn’t real and she could rationalize it away.

“Whatever that stuff is, it becomes less potent over time because the bacteria kills itself. But if you touched it right from the source… well… your arm was caught up with everything else in there.” Three explained “After it was severed, it just… your arm just slowly disintegrated into this bacterial jelly. That would have happened to your whole body if it stayed attached to you.”

Two had to face the reality of it. It was gone. Her arm was gone. It wasn’t coming back, she couldn’t wish it didn’t happen. It was gone, that’s all there was to it. She took a deep sobbing breath as she held Seven’s hand back squeezing as tight as she could with the little energy she had “I understand.” she managed to get out between breaths.

“For now, rest.” Three demanded “You’ve been out for four days. You lost a lot of blood and we’ve been taking turns feeding more back into you. It looks like that worked. You’ll probably still feel weak for another few days though, so you’re staying here.” she insisted, knowing that Two would want to get up and continue exploring the station again once she had the energy, even despite her new condition “Don’t need you to collapse and get yourself injured again.”

“What about the monster?” Two asked, staying laid back as she was told.

“Five sealed the box in an airlock. It won’t hurt anyone anymore.” Three said quietly “… Two, I… I can’t believe that you touched it. I know, you wore the best protection you could find, but…” she stopped herself, pinching the bridge of her nose “I guess what I’m trying to say is… thank you. Seeing what it does to human flesh… it was going to happen to someone eventually. And we would be less prepared than you were. You… you took that hit for all of us.” Three looked down at the floor “You’re very brave. Stupidly brave. Don’t ever do that again.”

Two couldn’t help but make a dark chortle at this. Three was lecturing her, even as she was complimenting her. “You’re a hero, Two.” Seven added.

“Five and I are already started working on building a prosthesis.” Three continued, an apologetic tone to her voice again “It… obviously won’t be as functional as your hand was, and it’ll need some upkeep, but you’ll be able to grip things with it and use it for balance.”

Two nodded slowly. Her heartrate had calmed dramatically from when she first realized what had happened. She was still distressed, but she was glad to have the others by her side for it. They really seemed to care for her. And she knew she would do the same for them. They bickered a little bit sometimes, but they were a team. They were sisters. And she really needed people like that in that moment.

—

The days passed slowly for Two. As her strength returned, the others stopped having to donate their blood, but they kept visiting her. Five showed up with parts of the prosthesis to show it to her and take measurements, but the wound still hurt too much to try to fit anything onto it.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Two quickly learned to operate her slate with one hand, finding the boredom of laying down for so long unbearable after a day of coming to terms with her disability. She needed something to discover, so it looked like she was back into delving the depths of the massive computer database that was somewhere on the station.

It finally dawned on her a couple of days after she woke up that she could search the database for specific keywords, and she went to work with renewed vigor.

Two scrolled through another entry on the mythology of the phoenix. It was remarkable how much information the computer contained on things that ultimately wouldn’t matter from a scientific perspective. It was perplexing, but given the massive size of the databank, she supposed that it wouldn’t have been a waste to preserve at least a small part of human history and culture among it.

Feeling tired again, she let out a sigh and let the slate rest on her chest while she thought. Phoenix was somehow too broad of a topic… In fact, there was a suspicious amount of information on the bird contained in the database. It was as if it had been stuffed with scientific documents related to this one myth specifically for them to find and read through. And it was tiring. She needed a different approach.

She went to pick up the slate again, but ended up just staring at her absence of an arm instead. She’d tried to use it again. Feeling herself tear up again, she just laid back and wondered. Was there a point to this? Maybe Three was right. Maybe they really were just awake as some kind of twisted cosmic joke that incidentally released them long after the death of their kind, and they were just destined to rot here eventually. Was there actually any point to her sacrifice, unintentional as it was? Or were they all going to die like this anyway? She wondered if she should just keep lying down and just give up like Three had on the first day.

That’s when the door opened and Five walked in “Hey Two.” she waved and sat down in a chair next to the table “So… how you doing?”

“I’ve been worse.” Two said with quiet sarcasm and then smiled “I’m going to have to try to avoid this almost dying thing, not sure if it’s for me.”

“… Hey, for what it’s worth, I’m… I’m really sorry about this.” Five sighed, looking down at the floor.

“For what? Your box worked fine.” Two waved it off “I was the one who fell over on a bacteria monster.”

“I just mean, like… I didn’t go in there. I could have put on gear too. I could have watched your back. I was just too scared.” Five let out a loud sigh. She was beating herself up a lot about what happened. No doubt that she thought it should have been her, in hindsight. “This didn’t have to happen like this.”

“Maybe.” Two nodded, letting that hang in the air for just a moment “But I was stupid too. I wanted to put that trap right in the middle of its territory instead of just leaving it at the edge. Three’s right; I was reckless.”

“Did she actually say that? What the hell?”

“Well, her words were that I was ‘stupidly brave’.” Two let out a chuckle “We both could have handled that differently. But this is how it went. Just… make me a hand I can make good use of, okay? Then we’re even.”

Five smiled at her “You got it Two.” she said as she reached over to her mangled arm and started to take measurements from it again.

—

The next day, Two was finally sitting up. She’d been moved to a seat and been unhooked from the monitors she’d been attached to since the incident, though Three still insisted that she stay confined to the infirmary. Her wounds were closing nicely, and her bandages no longer showed blood when they were changed. Three said that she was making a remarkable recovery.

But still, she frequently went to use her phantom hand. And when she did, a sadness came over her face and she just stared where it once was until the moment of regret passed and she went back to scrolling the slate one-handed.

She’d been researching cloning as a science today. Three was changing her bandages when she looked it up “Seems like the old humans had a lot of ethical problems with cloning.” she mumbled.

“Yeah, I noticed that too. There’s no scientific papers in the database about it being done successfully on humans.” Three noted “Plenty of discourse on the subject though.”

“Yeah, a lot of it is over my head.” Two nodded “If we were born back then, I bet we’d be hated.”

“Or pitied. There’s no one to judge us either way here though.” she pulled the bandage tight and adhered it to itself “That world is dead. We’re all that’s left.”

“… You know, you used to get all despondent about that.” Two noted “Now you can just say it so matter-of-fact. What changed?”

Three stopped to consider it for a few moments “I guess… I’m taking it as a challenge. Survive as long as we can on this garbage heap. See what happens.”

Two fidgeted with the bandage for a moment, making sure that it was well in place “… Been thinking… what if we could get to Earth?”

“What, you too?” Three chortled “Seven still hasn’t given up on that idea. She getting to you?”

“I’m serious. What if… I dunno, Five can engineer us a landing shuttle or something?” Two smiled half-jokingly.

Three smiled back “Hah, stop. She still hasn’t figured out how to fix the engineering lab. She’s fine working with small stuff like that containment box and your prosthetic, and she hasn’t seared her retinas off yet with that torch, but I doubt she has the materials or the expertise to make a spaceship.”

“Doesn’t need to be a spaceship, just has to break our fall hard enough.” Two chuckled and left her missing arm alone “But yeah, I know, you’re probably right.”

“But at the same time… A phoenix is a bird that’s reborn in fire.” Three muttered.

Two raised an eyebrow and looked up “Hmm? Yeah. I’ve read about it.”

Three hesitated to say it “Well, re-entry would… No, nothing, just… thinking.” she sighed and went back to reading from her own slate. Two shrugged and did so as well.