“You’re going in there?” Five asked. The three girls stood at the entrance to the maintenance shaft around the cafeteria. It was a claustrophobic mess of cables and pipes, neatly arranged, but not built with comfortable space for a human in mind. It was a good thing that the trio weren’t adults, or it would be an even more challenging place to navigate.

Two stared into the opening, sighing deeply “Yeah. We need to find the water reservoir and heater, make sure they’re running, and see where it’ll come out first. We’re just gonna get in each others way if more than one of us goes looking down there. I know Three said not to go off on our own, but-”

“But Three’s not here. And it’s gotta get done. I gotcha.” Five nodded “Seven, you stay here so she has someone to call out to. I’m going to go take care of… that thing we talked about.” Two nodded grimly as she stepped away, not wanting to discuss Four’s fate with Seven present.

Seven looked up at Two worriedly “Are you sure I shouldn’t do it?” she asked, trying to bolster herself and put on a brave face “I’m smaller than you, so-”

“Remember my role, Seven? Recon.” Two interrupted her “It means I’m best suited for this. They engineered us to be a certain way, so I probably got something in my head that’ll help if I get in trouble in there.”

Seven nodded slowly “O-Okay, if you say so. Just let me know if I can help.” The girl couldn’t hide that she looked more than a little relieved that she wasn’t told to do what she’d asked.

“You are helping, Seven.” Two reassured her “If I get hurt in there, I can’t run to Three for help myself.”

Seven nodded again “Right. I’m here in case of emergency.” She smiled a little, finding a comfortable middle ground.

“Yeah, you got it.” Two gently pat her on the head and then turned to step in to the maintenance hatch.

The inside was lit at distant intervals, making the whole tunnel dim, but bright enough to make out where she was going. The path twisted and turned, but Two found herself making a mental map around the rooms she knew, tracking her location accurately. She smiled to herself when she realized how instinctual the skill was. Recon. Still, she wasn’t finding what she was looking for. She wasn’t finding any damage at all either, but she wasn’t finding a reservoir. Pipes led all around from places water should flow, but they seemed to disappear into one room. Waste processing. It must have handled the rest of the plumbing of the facility too. It made sense when she thought about how compact a station like this had to be.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Two found it difficult to open the other hatch doors from the inside without Five’s strength, so she made her way back to where she started, emerging to find Seven’s smiling face “Welcome back.” she said “Did you find water?”

Two gave a tentative nod and tried fruitlessly to wipe grease off of her arms and legs with her shirt “Sort of.” before they saw Five walking back up the hallway.

Her shirt had a few scattered spots of red on it, which she immediately addressed before Seven could ask “Some of the machines had this… oil…” she said quietly, though her pale complexion belied the grim deed she’d done. She was absolutely haunted in that moment. “Uhh, good news is, we can go back in genetics. One’s room got mostly cleaned out. Probably when you turned waste processing on. It doesn’t smell nice, but it’s not as bad as before.”

“Weird. I would have thought it’d stay that way until someone fixed the computer.” Two shrugged. It would let them go over that room again more easily now at least “I think the water reservoir’s in waste management actually, so that’s… actually kind of annoying at the moment.”

“Seriously? I hope the water’s not tainted…” Five groaned as she started walking down the hall alongside them “Where is waste management anyway?”

Two began to follow slowly, trying to map out exactly what she’d seen in her head as she went “That’s the thing, I couldn’t find a maintenance door directly into it, and it’s not a room off the main hall.”

“So… where is it?” Five asked again.

Two shrugged “Somewhere between physics and engineering. Thing is, I don’t know how to get to it from up here either. There’s nothing there in the hallway. Best guess is, there’s a direct access tunnel through one of the labs.”

“You figured all that out just be crawling through some tunnels?” Five looked impressed.

“It’s not hard, you just kinda draw a map in your head and you can tell where things are.” Two shrugged and kept walking, guiding the others toward the labs she suspected held the hidden tunnel.

“Recon.” Seven giggled a little “Okay, yeah, it’s good you went in. I don’t think I can do that.”