“Seven, that’s not important right now.” Two shook her head and ran a hand down through her hair “We’ll worry about that later, right now we need to get you to Three. I’m so sorry Seven, I never should have even suggested this, it was-”

“No, you were right.” she said in the same quiet, distracted voice, still holding tight “You were right all along. They had a plan for us.” she kept staring into the distance while she held tight to Five, it was like her body wasn’t responding to her how she expected it to, but she didn’t realize it.

“No, you’re going to the infirmary. We have all the time in the world.” Five said as she held tight to her “You’re most important right now.”

“I’m most…” she started, then just went quiet, her gaze following some invisible movement in the middle distance.

“Yeah, gonna need your help, I’m not sure if she can walk like this.” Five spoke to Two. Two nodded in agreement “Get her out of that shirt first.”

—

After removing the offending shirt over her head, the two practically carried Seven through the halls of the Last Stand shoulder on shoulder. Seven mostly stayed limp in some kind of stupor, but occasionally looked up and became alert, as if watching something move past. As they neared the infirmary, she started muttering to herself “No, no, no, we have to… no… not here.” and started to try and pull away from Five, her strength beginning to return to her.

“Hang on, we’re almost there!” Five held her arm despite her protests, and they hauled her up to the infirmary door, carrying her over the threshold where she immediately retched, the gravity swap seeming to make her nauseous all over again. She gasped loudly when she could breathe again while Two and Five set her down in a chair. “Go get Three, I’ll watch her.”

Two nodded and hurried back out of the room, heading directly to the dormitories. She knocked furiously on Three’s door and shouted for her “Three! We… We screwed up! We need your help!”

Three’s door opened, and she saw that the medic did not look happy with her “Two… you’re supposed to be resting. I’m supposed to be resting. You just got out of a long stay in the infirmary. What did you possibly get up to already.” she looked the girl up and down “I swear, if this is just to show me your new arm-”

“It’s not me, Three. It’s Seven. She’s in the infirmary right now. We’re not really sure what’s wrong with her, but we… she used this machine that came from the cloning chamber and now she’s talking nonsense and she’s not listening, and it’s like she’s somewhere else.” Two tried to get her desperation across to Three, but she just stood there looking tired.

“Can you… slow down one second, is she dying? Or sick? Or even injured?” she asked, pinching the bridge of her nose in an effort to wake herself up since it seemed she wasn’t going back to sleep.

“Well, no, but she’s delirious.” Two started to calm slightly when she put it in that perspective “I just… I don’t know what to do with her.”

“Delirium? Are you sure you’re using that term right?” Three asked, pushing lazily past Two as she walked calmly out of her room.

“She seems really confused, she doesn’t seem like she’s in control of herself. I’m sorry, this is my fault, we… Five and I were arguing over who should do it, and she stepped up and she made a really good argument that it should be her, and-”

“Slow down again, what exactly was it that you did.”

“I found the device the cloning machines used to train us. We used it on Seven to play One’s file.” Two finally just said what happened outright.

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Three started moving with more urgency down the hall “And what the hell possessed you to do that?” she grumbled angrily.

“I didn’t plan on it being her, okay? It just happened. I needed to see what was in One’s file, since she would have known what our mission is.”

“Ugh, I swear, I’m strapping you to your bed so you can’t do anything else stupid after this. Of course she’s confused.” Three muttered “Two, we woke up knowing how to control our bodies, speak, think critically, and basically how to live. If those files taught us all of that subliminally, imagine that going through your head when you already know it. Of course she’s confused, she’s probably trying to make the world make sense again.”

“I didn’t think about that…” Two muttered.

“Well maybe you should spend some time thinking for once!” Three turned around to scold her face to face “I’d already thought to look into something like this, but I dismissed it right away once I figured out how crazy it was! How it might fry our sense of reality!”

Two slumped her shoulders as the words sunk in. She was right. She’d been reckless. Again. And it wasn’t her that got hurt this time “Yeah…” was all she said, unable to look Three in the eyes.

Three rolled her eyes and turned around again “I’ll see what I can do.” she said as they approached the open infirmary door.

On the inside, they found Five wrestling with Seven on the floor, trying her best to keep the smaller girl still. She looked frightened beyond reason and she was shouting “Let go! We have to… Phoenix! We have to go to Earth! Phoenix goes to Earth! It’s…”

“Little help here!?” Five called out as she held tight to Seven.

Three stepped over the two and began rummaging through a cabinet, pulling a glass bottle and sticking a syringe into it while Two came to assist Five and Seven continued to bellow nonsensically “We have to go! We have to activate it so we can start! We-we only have so much time for-”

She was interrupted as Three stabbed the syringe into her arm and pushed in on the plunger, the girl’’s thrashing slowly dying out before she seemed to fall into a relaxed state beneath the other two, her muscles refusing to answer her as she went limp, continuing to mutter to herself “Phoenix… it rises. Phoenix rise. Rise.” as she lost motor control, she just repeated the words erratically until she was completely relaxed under the spell of whatever chemical Three had injected her with.

“That… may have been a larger dose than I meant to use.” Three said quietly “Get her up on the table, I have to watch her vitals now.”

Two and Five panted as they made one last burst of effort to raise the smaller girl up while she impotently muttered nonsense. They both sat down and slumped back. Seven was stronger than she looked, it would seem.

“Now… I’ve heard Two’s side of this. Five, what happened?” Three demanded.

Five was silent for a moment while she caught her breath, and it was only by Three motioning to her impatiently that she began talking when she did “She… Seven asked me for some tools. I asked what for and she said they’re pulling apart one of the cloning chambers. So obviously I went to supervise.”

“Not to stop her? Because we don’t know if we might need those intact?” Three began hooking Seven up to vital monitors, that familiar consistent beeping noise returning to the room.

“Frankly, Three, I think she had the right idea.” Five sighed.

“I’m sure Seven agrees right now.” she responded sarcastically.

“Just listen. We’ve been looking into this for weeks. We’re at a dead end. I know we got plenty of rations and all, but we can’t just wait around forever to just accidentally stumble across answers. We have to make something happen.”

“Yes, good job, brain damage is just what we needed.” Three was sounding less amused by the moment.

“Look, she’s real confused right now, but I’m sure once she’s calmed down, she can tell us what we need to know to move forward.” Five finally took a breath, catching her second wind “She… she wanted to do this.”

Three stopped working for a moment and let out a sigh “I’m becoming tired of cleaning up everyone else’s messes, but I suppose that’s just my job on this station. You two, stay here, though. We’re going to stick together so that you can’t run off and do something else idiotic while I’m still dealing with her.”

Five reluctantly nodded her head. It wasn’t like they had anything else to go off of at the moment, at least that’s what she thought. Two, however, had been quiet, mulling something over in her head “… What if she’s already told us what we need to know?” she said quietly.

“Doesn’t matter. You do not leave this room, Two.” Three spoke sternly “You can speculate all you want, you can use your slate if you’re bored or something, but I’m keeping an eye on you.”

Two sighed and nodded to her. She was right. She couldn’t go around making more risks while one of them was in such a state. They had to take care of Seven first, and then see what she had to say.