“I think you might have actually stumbled onto the reason we’re here.” Three mumbled as she stared at the helm control screen, reading the same message Two had found. Thankfully, It hadn’t gone away in her absence while she gathered the others.

Seven put her hands over the terminal like she was about to type something, but Two pulled her back by the shoulder “No, don’t. We have no idea what this is going to do. And it could just be waiting for any input at all to do whatever it’s supposed to do.”

“Aww come on, aren’t you the adventurous one?” Seven asked with a smile, but backing away as she was told anyway.

“Oh believe me, I want to press that button and see what happens,” Two let out a nervous chuckle “But I’m not going to play games with the station controls. I want to figure out exactly what Phoenix means first.”

“… Like the bird?” Seven asked.

“Bird?” Five balked, having only a vague understanding of what a bird even was.

“Yeah, the fire bird.” Seven nodded “It’s a bird that dies and it’s reborn from its own ashes. It’s a symbol of rebirth.”

“What are you talking about?” Five sounded a little nervous “Dead things don’t just… come back to life.”

“This one does.” Seven nodded confidently.

“Sounds like a myth.” Three chimed in “Maybe that’s what knowledge you have. Culture, or something.”

“Seems like a weird field of knowledge to equip one of a limited number of us with, given the circumstances…” Five scratched her head “But hey, if what she knows is actually relevant, then I guess it’s important.”

“So a symbol of rebirth…” Two tried to steer them back to the topic at hand “It could be that whatever Phoenix does is meant to recreate the human race somehow? But I don’t like all the other stuff attached to that message. Being baptized in fire and losing everything we have. It sounds like whatever it does is going to change something drastically.”

“One probably knew what it did.” Three sighed “I think we should try to decipher her knowledge base into plain English.”

“Sounds like a job for Six.” Two gave a frustrated sigh “You know, turning her machine on and waiting six years for her to gestate actually sounds possible at this point. As much as waiting that long to find out what this does pains me.”

Three stared at the screen again for a moment “I say we try it.”

The other three girls suddenly turned to look at her, not expecting her to be the one to suggest something reckless. “Huh?” Two asked “You’re kidding.”

“No, I’m not. You trust our progenitors, don’t you? If this is what they meant for us, then we should just hit it. If it really does something helpful, then we get it now. If it makes us all die in fire, then… well, we won’t have to suffer.”

“But what if they needed us to do something else first?” Two objected, crossing her arms and looking worried about the callousness Three seemed to have suddenly adopted for their safety.

“Well, what would you do in their situation, then?” She asked “Since we’re literally clones of one of them, we should have the same reasoning as them, right? So if you made a critical program you’d need your clones to activate, what kind of input would you code it to take?”

Two pondered this for a moment, then looked up at the screen and approached it “I think I understand what you mean.” With no hesitation at all this time, she hit the enter key. There was a quiet error noise and the cursor went to the next empty line.

“I knew it.” Three gave a triumphant smirk “If they needed us to know what we’re doing, they would password lock it.

Two typed in the word ‘launch’ and got an error as well. ‘Activate’, ‘Turn on’, ‘proceed’, and ‘unlock’ did the same “I doubt it’s something generic. There must be something we don’t understand yet.”

“So it didn’t matter. Whatever this thing does, we can’t activate it by accident.” Three sighed “Yet another mystery to solve in this place. But at least now we know that it’s there.”

Seven let out an impatient whine “I was hoping to see what it did already.”

Five crossed her arms “Really wish you’d at least asked if we were okay with you toying around with the big red screen of death there. But I guess nothing happened, so whatever. Since when are you the one who wants to take chances though?” she asked Three.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“I figured that if we’re supposed to be clones of our progenitors, we should just apply our own logic to their actions.” Three shrugged and smiled sarcastically “And I guess I’m coming around to Two’s methodology.”

All four girls came to a standstill when, out of nowhere, they heard a thump outside the room followed by a quiet hissing noise.

“… What was that?” Seven asked, looking to Five, expecting her to know what systems might cause the sound by then “That wasn’t the station, was it?”

Five stared at the wall, trying to trace the noise “I don’t know what that was.” she muttered “I haven’t checked hull maintenance yet today.”

“Wait, you haven’t?” Two looked surprised “I heard noises here earlier and I thought you were crawling around in there.”

“Not yet today.” Five said slowly “So what is that then?” she asked.

“It’s the station coming apart at the seams because it’s millions upon millions of years old” Three crossed her arms “Maybe you should take care of it, Five.”

“But what if it’s ghosts?” Seven asked, sounding serious “Cause the people here probably died in anguish.”

“Don’t say that.” Five groaned, the hair on the back of her head prickling as her imagination went wild.

“Three’s right, it’s just the station running again and it needs maintenance now.” Two clapped Five on the shoulder “We can’t just get spooked over nothing.”

“Then come with me to check on it if it’s that simple.” Three whined, not wanting to admit that she just didn’t want to be alone with the thought of a haunted space station.

“Alright.” Two shrugged. She wasn’t afraid to check out what was in there “Let’s go.”

—

Two and Five were crammed into the narrow hall together, following one after the other since, diminutive as they were, the tunnels weren’t meant to be walked side by side. Two led the way, and was staying quiet, but Five looked about the hallway nervously.

“What are you scared of?” Two finally asked “Think the space monster is gonna get you? Maybe aliens?”

“Hey, how are we supposed to know, right? It’s not like we’ve been watching this place for the last quarter billion years. What if some kind of creature did sneak on board?” Five seemed spooked already at the prospect of what could be waiting for them in the tunnel.

“Yeah, the vacuum-proof organism that happened to float into the station and hide out here waiting for eons for four clones to wake up so it could eat us.” Two smirked, shaking her head “Sounds like a valid hunting mechanism.”

“I know it’s not rational, Two, but that doesn’t stop me from being nervous about it.” Five suddenly came to a stop as they got to an intersection, creasing her brow and sniffing the air a couple of times “… Hey Two… what’s that smell?”

“Smell?” Two sniffed the air and scrunched up her face. Something smelled of… rot. “I… don’t know.” Looking around at both intersecting corridors, her eyes settled on a discoloration on the wall ahead “There. Let’s take a look.”

“Ugh, fine.” Five followed right behind as they both approached the strange marking in the hall.

“It’s… acrid. Is that the right word?” Two asked as she approached it.

“Last humans in existence and you’re worried about using proper language.” Five teased quietly.

Two rolled her eyes “It smells… sulfurous. I-It’s a chemical smell, I don’t know.”

“Looks like a pipe burst. That could be bad. Don’t touch whatever that is leaking out.” Five warned as she came in to take a closer look.

“No… it didn’t burst… it’s more like it was cut open. And there’s nothing leaking.” Two said as she stood right up against the wall. The discolored yellowish trail didn’t just run down the wall. It slid along the hallway lengthwise, almost like something had crawled that way.

Five froze, eyes going wide at the trail, following it with her gaze before returning to the pipe “Ooookay, that’s not a pipe burst, no, that’s something ALIVE, Two, I don’t know if you know this, but inert liquids travel down, they don’t go on a journey through my maintenance tunnels!”

“That makes no sense though.” Two mumbled “How could something besides us be alive?” she sniffed the air again “And why does it smell like it’s rotting?”

“I don’t know, and right now, I don’t care. We need to get out of these cramped tunnels!” Five was quickly losing her composure, faced with the idea that there might actually be something dangerous on the ship with them.

“Come on, Five, there has to be a more rational explanation to this than ‘aliens did it.’” she said as she began following the trail, being careful not to touch what she assumed would be some kind of corrosive slime as she went.

“Me come on!? You come on! This is serious! What happens if it is some kind of monster!?” Five was practically yelling at her at this point, but she wasn’t about to leave her alone on this either.

“Then you can get away while it’s eating me.” Two rolled her eyes and kept walking. The trail led all the way around the helm’s maintenance tunnel before splitting off toward the labs.

“This better not be some kind of prank or something.” Five muttered “That smell’s getting stronger too.”

Two nodded, becoming nervous herself as they moved, but it was too late to turn around and give up on this now “It smells familiar actually.” Two said quietly.

“Yeah… it smells like the genetics lab.” Five groaned “Like I wanted to be reminded of that again.”

“I… I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think I know what this is.” Two said as she turned around to look at Five and motioned for her to back up “Let’s take the nearest exit.”

Five didn’t waste any time on doing as she was asked this time “Don’t say something like that and then go quiet on me, what are we working with here.”

“You said One’s container was drained when you went to get Four’s body, right?”

“Yeah?” Five started to sound nervous about bringing up their fallen companion.

“Well Three and I didn’t find One’s remains being processed when we went into waste management.” Two said as she opened the door leading to the lab section of the hallway. “We just figured it got ejected or something because of how foul it was.”

Five quickly followed out into the hall, looking back into the dim tunnel with deep concern on her face “Are you saying you think this could be-”

Two shook her head “It’s definitely not human. But it might be One.”