Three gave a half-hearted nod to Two as she descended into the access hall beneath the lab. They both went down the ladder and found another hatch beneath them. “That must be it.” Two said, climbing down onto the hatch “Uhh, stay on the ladder a second, I don’t think there’s room to stand. Kind of annoying that there’s two in a row.”

“Be thankful.” Three hung from the ladder and watched “If it weren’t like this, the other side would have depressurized waste management and it would be in vacuum.”

“Yeah, and we’d be screwed.” Two nodded as she pulled out the same mechanism that unlocked the hatch above them, taking hold of the ladder as it opened up, revealing a much more spacious, dimly lit chamber.

Descending down, Two turned and looked in awe at the plant. Numerous turbines filled with liquid turned around in dozens of enormous clear machines, showing either water in various stages of filtration, or other chemicals that the station must have kept control of. It was beautiful, in an industrial sort of way.

Three looked on as well, but didn’t seem as heartened by the sight “Do you have any idea how this works?” she asked, unsure if they had the expertise between them to be trying to operate the machines.

“Not even a little. Let’s find out.” she stepped between the machines, trying to find the end of the filtration process by sight alone. She stopped at what appeared to be the clearest-looking liquid in the room and plugged her slate into the machinery. “… Most of this doesn’t make any sense to me.” she muttered “I don’t dare to touch the controls, but… it’s labeled station water output.” she stood there navigating the menus as Three walked a different path through the room.

Likewise, the medic plugged her Slate into a machine, but this one was clearly contaminated “Cycle four… I wonder if the filtration process even still works.”

“Well… since life support still works, something must have been preserving that. And if life support was off, this place may as well have just been in open space.”

“Which would keep everything in stasis. Everything that didn’t break thawing out anyway.”

“But why?” Three almost sounded angry. She couldn’t understand what purpose their existence RIGHT THEN could possibly serve, or why things had been arranged on the station so meticulously as to still be operational now, so long after this disaster that struck Earth.

“Someone probably planned for us to wake up.” Two said as she skimmed through a diagnostic reading on her slate.

“Someone planned for us to wake up eons later? I don’t buy that.” Three absent-mindedly read about the machine she was hooked up to before unplugging and moving to another “I think we’re just an accidental anomaly. Something tapped the station just the right way that woke us up.”

“And happened to turn everything we needed to live on?” Two rolled her eyes “That’s ridiculous. It looks like Seven was right. Everything’s fine, the pipes are still just heating up. Should have water flowing to the cafeteria in maybe… six hours. Physics lab is closer, so they might actually already be running.”

“So we really do have water, which can be recycled.” Three sighed, conceding that at least for the time being, their survival was at least possible. “And you said we have food enough for…”

“Awhile, at least. I don’t really know how we would measure it out since it’s all in these weird… gel tubes. But I’d guess there’s enough for the four of us for… years, at least.” Two kept looking over the slate “I’m not really sure how to check for purity on this thing, we should probably boil the water, just in case.”

“That just leaves air.” Three sighed as she plugged into check another of the waste turbines “Genetics waste…” she muttered.

“Well, we’re breathing for now. I assume that’s getting recycled too.” Two unplugged from the machine and rejoined Three at her current one, looking it up and down “Genetics waste…” she repeated, and after a moment to think, her brow furrowed “Huh… would’ve thought it’d look dirtier.”

“Hmm?” Three nodded “Well, it’s not CLEAN. A lot of skin and tissue in there. It’ll be drinkable once it goes through the system though.”

“Yeah, but… Five said earlier that One’s chamber drained itself while we weren’t there.” Two mused. It should have come here if it had drained, right?

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“Maybe especially toxic stuff just gets ejected.” Three mused and then asked “What’d she need back in there anyway?” There was a long silence where Two just looked away from the other girl, realizing that she’d have to reveal the plan she’d made with Five “… What?”

“Well… Five and I talked when we were on the subject of food, and… we need to make use of every resource we have here…” she gulped, hoping that was enough for her to piece it together.

“Okay… And?” Three retrieved the cord of her slate, not seeming to get the gravity of what she was saying. She wasn’t picking up on it at all.

“Five was…” Two took a deep breath before she blurted it out quietly “She was bringing Four’s body to the freezer.”

It took a few moments before Three was able to parse what that meant, and her eyes widened at the thought “Y-You mean she’s going to…”

“Only as a last resort…” Two shuddered at the thought “If we run out of everything else, we can-”

“No, we can’t!” Three shouted, storming away from her and back toward the ladder, fuming “That’s disgusting! That’s… That’s awful! If that’s what it takes to survive, then… then I don’t want to anyway! Screw survival if we have to become… monsters!” she leaned into the wall by the exit and started to breathe heavily, like she was going to be sick. Two watched sadly as her companion wrestled with the idea of what they might have to do, exacerbating her already fragile state. “What’s the point?” Three sobbed “Why are you acting like there’s something we’re going to be able to do about this? We’re just going to float here and eventually waste away, if the station doesn’t kill us first. And if humanity has to resort to cannibalism just to get by, what’s the point?”

Two finally stepped closer and she wrapped her arms around the other girl. Three elicited a quiet squeak before relaxing into her. “I know. I hope we never even have to think about doing that again. And maybe if it comes down to it, we just won’t. We could just let it end there.” she slowly turned Three around to face her, seeing that she was crying again. Barely any tears flowed though, since she had already cried so much. She hugged her again, Three reciprocating this time. “As for why we should keep going… I don’t really know if I have a reason. At this point… curiosity I guess. Someone wanted us right here, right now. I’d like to know why. Maybe they knew something that we don’t. Maybe they had a plan.”

“Maybe this isn’t all just a cruel joke.” Three stammered out between sobs. “… If nothing else, preserving Four’s body means one less possible contaminant sitting around. She won’t rot.”

Two patted her on the back “You know… when I first woke up, I got the impression you were the most mature out of us. Maybe you still are. But you’re a lot more emotional than you let on back then.”

Three sniffed, unsure how to take her words “What are you saying?”

“Just… making an observation. Maybe you shouldn’t hold in what you’re feeling like that. Let us know if you’re scared. Or feeling sad.”

“Of course I’m feeling sad.” she sniffed, almost sounding like she was scolding Two for a lack of common sense “What else would I be feeling right now?”

“Happy to be alive?” Two shrugged “Curious about our circumstances? Excited about setting things up in your medbay?”

Three couldn’t help but let out a nervous laugh at the last note “You trying to tell me to get to work or something?”

“When you’re ready.” Two smiled back “I think right now, we all need to rest. We’ve had… quite a day.”

“Happy birthday to us.” Three let out another dark chuckle “I think… I think I should try to sleep.”

“Same. Let’s go.” Two patted her on the back and backed away slowly, letting her get her own footing again and motioning toward the ladder.

—

True to what she’d surmised, it was only a matter of hours before the entire station had running water. The girls had organized the kitchen freezer so that Four’s body was hidden at the far back corner and the mysterious tubes of food were distributed to each of them.

After a day of rest, Two continued exploring the nooks and crannies of the station, and Three had to scold her for considering taking a spacewalk to find where life support and gravity were located. It was out of the question, of course. With the majority of the station that they could access mapped out, she began the arduous process of exploring the vast computer database for information on their genesis.

Three spent several days in her room, but welcomed company now. It seemed she was far more fragile than she let on, and needed time to come to grips with their situation. She was, before long, reading literature on anatomy, biology, and genealogy, studying for scenarios she considered possible in their circumstances. She did not, however, begin to take stock of the medbay just yet.

Five took her new moniker as the engineer seriously, and began tinkering with the station’s power station and labs, trying to see if she could build anything helpful to them. She’d also continued to reinforce the door to engineering, just in case, and spent a good amount of time crawling the maintenance tunnels, seeing if she could make more sense of the structural state of the station than Two could.

Little Seven still wasn’t really sure what her position on the station was supposed to be. She mostly followed Five around as she learned the ins and outs of the ship, to help carry tools and assist her where she could. She continued trying to be helpful in whatever way she could manage, as if still trying to prove herself to the others. But she often found herself having to wander back to the dorms where she fell asleep from overexerting herself once again. Her initial wound was a faint memory in no time.

The girls had begun to make a home of the station. They didn’t have much, but they had each other, and a vague hope that there was some reason to be waiting for them somewhere on that station. The last four humans, who had only just been born, were able to take things at a leisurely pace for now.