The doors slid open with the sound of a tinny mechanical horn before Five came spilling through, falling over with the prybar as it moved into the wall. She rolled over and looked up to see Two perched perilously above her on top of a metal shelf, her hand pressed to the button near the top of the doorway.

“Oh God, you're okay!” She cried out “I thought maybe the room got destroyed or shot you into space or something!”

Two was surprised to see Five in hysterics like this. She clearly wasn't as tough as she wanted the others to see her as “Uh… yeah. I'm okay. It was a little scary, but you have to stay calm in an emergency.” She spoke sheepishly as she climbed carefully down from the shelf.

Three walked in after them, letting the wave of nausea from shifting gravity pass before she spoke “You did have us worried.”

Two smiled and stood tall “Haha, well, I am the brave adventurer of us, after all.” She couldn't help but giggle at the declaration.

“I'm just glad you're okay.” Five started as she got back to her feet before she crossed her arms and tried to save face “You know… cause there's not many of us. It'd be a big deal if we lost another one.”

“Whatever.” Two smiled at Five, knowing she was glad to see her safe “Breaker’s over this way.” She motioned for them to follow and rushed over to the electrical box.

Three crossed her arms as she stared at the electrical mess surrounding one specific breaker. “Did… you do that?”

Two shook her head “Haha, what? How would I do that? It was like that when I got here. Someone really wanted to make sure that lab stayed powered.”

“No matter what, it would seem… perhaps we needed to have been created.” Three pondered “Which really just begs the question of where our progenitor is if we're so important.”

“I’m sure we'll get plenty of answers once we can get the server running.” Two glanced over the breakers, labeled in indented lettering “dormitories… medbay… each lab has its own connection. Do you need medbay on to do your thing Three?“

Three pondered this for a moment “Hmm… not yet, at least. I don't know how much we can get away with turning on, so let's leave it be until we need it.”

Two nodded “Waste processing. I think that should be our first luxury option. Oh, a cafeteria. I wonder if we’ll find anything left there.” she clicked the switch for it on, but there was no obvious change, the cafeteria obviously being far from their current position. Still, nothing exploded, so it couldn’t have been bad.”

Five nodded “Hopefully there's something left to eat there.”

Three had her eyes closed and looked pensive as she thought it over “Maybe…” was all she mumbled. “Waste processing isn’t a luxury though. It might clear up that mess One made in genetics, and we can’t afford to go ill from poor hygiene either.” She reached into the box and flipped it on herself.

Two continued down the list “Hall… Terminal? That's another word for computer, right?” She said, flipping the switch on to check and then immediately lifting her Slate. It didn't change anything though.

“Would you quit turning things on so haphazardly?” Three scolded “Who knows what sort of state this thing’s in. It could short out if we use too much power.”

“Yeah, you're right. My mistake.” Two grimaced, hoping she didn't screw something up. “I’ll just turn on what we need right now. Like… the helm?”

“Could tell us where we are and where we're going. I say activate it.” Three kept looking down the list and frowned “This can't be everything… there's no life support. No gravity generator. No environment control. And that’s all on obviously.”

“Maybe it's not all hooked to this one box.” Two noted as she flipped the helm on. “It would make more sense to isolate important systems like that, right?”

“That doesn’t make things easier for us though.” Five groaned “What if there’s external systems… there’s no way this place has a space suit in our size, right?”

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“I wouldn’t trust something like that unless Six could look at it first anyway.” Two muttered, knowing that that was impossible now. “We’ll just have to do what we can from inside of the station.”

“Well, I think that’s enough up and running for us to explore for now.” Three stated, turning toward the hallway once more “I should go check in on Seven before we see if the cafeteria is worthwhile.”

“I wanna go to the genetics lab one more time.” Two shuddered at the thought of returning to the rancid smelling room as well as the corpses of two of their would-be companions “Well, I don’t want to, but I want to know what Seven’s skillset is, and since Six’s machine never activated, there’s probably some kind of food source or something left there.”

“Whatever form food takes for incubating clones, anyway.” Five grimaced, wondering if it would actually be edible at all through normal means.

“Right. I’ll stop by the dormitory to get clothes for Seven and I as well.” Three said as she turned and hopped through the doorway, stumbling a bit into the hall. “That’s going to take some getting used to.” she mumbled as she made her way down the hallway.

“Just us again.” Five shrugged as she followed Two out as well “We really gotta go back there?”

“We’re probably going to have to do a lot of things we don’t want to, Five.” Two looked worriedly up at the stars “Whatever happened here, for us to be in this situation, things have to be pretty bad. I really wish One made it.”

“You don’t even know what she would be like, why you keep looking up to her anyway?”

“Cause she probably knew what we’re supposed to be doing here. Without her, we’re just stumbling around in the dark.” Two explained, moving toward the lab section “So now we have to figure out a mystery while we should be doing something that’s probably really important.”

“Guess you got a point there.” Five went into the genetics lab first, holding her nose until the gravity sickness passed “Eugh… I can… taste it.” she grimaced.

“I know, I’m not happy about this either.” Two said as she stepped down to the line of chambers that they awoke from. “Can you see if you can find something on Six’s while I look into this? Like a canister maybe? Pipes leading out of the room even. It’s gotta be stored somewhere, right?”

She finally plugged her slate into Seven’s computer, scanning over the usual data to find what she was looking for. Her eyes went wide as she read the data, confusion turning to worry as she tried to work out the implication of what she’d just seen.

“Two.” Five called, snapping her out of her daze “… Something wrong?”

“… I-I… no, what do you need?” she stammered as she disconnected the slate, hiding it under her shirt for now.

Five raised an eyebrow at her “Okay then… There’s a drainage pipe hooked into the ship’s system, and power, but nothing else. It looks like if there’s food, it’s built into the chamber. We’d have to pull this thing apart to get to it.” she sounded defeated as she gently kicked the machine, trying not to injure herself expressing her disappointment “Can we get out of here? This is unbearable.”

“Yeah… Yeah, let’s go.” Two sounded haunted as she moved back into the hall, taking a deep breath of the comparably fresh air.

As soon as they were both clear of the stench, Five tapped Two’s shoulder to turn her so they faced one another “Alright, now something’s bothering you. What did it say?” Five crossed her arms “Come on now, we can’t keep secrets if this situation’s so serious.”

Two pursed her lips, trying to avoid eye contact with Five “I-I… here.” she couldn’t say it herself, so she held up the slate for her to read, eliciting an equally confused stare from the labor clone. They both stood in silence, resting against the wall, both of them lost for words as they contemplated how they would break this to the others.

It wasn’t until Three came walking slowly down the hall toward them that they realized they were out of time to think. Seven was following behind slowly, her chest covered in clean bandages. She was moving slowly because of her injury, but she was mobile now.

“Seven…” Two looked astonished to see her up and moving already.

“She won’t be able to do any heavy lifting, but the cut’s more shallow than I thought it was before she had a nap. Figured it was better to stick together.” Three explained, smiling at Seven, who returned the gesture.

Standing here, it was obvious that Seven was the youngest of them all, being considerably smaller. She looked… fragile. Frail even when she stood with her injury covered. Two and Five both looked silently at her with pitying gazes.

Seven just let out a quiet “Hello. Thank you for helping me.” before stepping shyly behind Three. It made sense to them both that she’d bonded more with Three after she’d taken care of her like that.

Three could tell something was wrong, assuming there was some kind of animosity between them somehow “… What? What’s going on?” she asked, looking between the two other clones and Seven. Her expression turned to the same concern “What did you find out in there?” she asked as she realized that they must have learned something grim.

Two sighed and handed her the slate, which Three snatched up quickly and glanced over, her own expression turning to terror. She looked at Seven, then the slate again, a distraught expression in her eyes before she turned around to Seven and held the slate close to herself, going silent as well.

Seven looked confused now, starting to get scared as the other three faced her “W-What is it?” she asked, looking over her body to see if there was something amiss besides her injury.

“Your role…” Three looked down at the slate again to be sure before she swallowed hard and looked her back in the eyes “It says… breeder.”