Two felt drowzy. The last thing she remembered was being bored, staring fruitlessly at her slate while Three monitored everyone. As she glanced around the room, though, she saw that everyone else was asleep as well, Three included. She had been leaning over on the chair next to her when she drifted off, so she raised her arms up and stretched to get the stiffness out. It was when she opened her eyes and looked again that she found that not everyone was asleep. In fact, not everyone was there. Seven was missing from her perch, a long droning beep quietly sounding in the background because the sensors weren’t connected to her anymore.

Two immediately shot to her feet “Seven?” she said quietly, looking around to make sure she hadn’t just fallen off to the other side of the table or something. She briefly wondered if she should alert the others, but knowing how sleep-deprived Three was already, she let her rest, walking slowly out of the open door into the hall “Seven…?” she called a little louder now as she got out of earshot from the infirmary “Seven, you shouldn’t be walking around in this state.” she sounded worried as she walked the halls, looking for any sign that the girl had been by. How could she have gotten this far away from the infirmary when she was so heavily sedated? Or had she just dozed off for long enough that it had worn off?

She started opening doors, briefly checking each room she passed to ensure that she wasn’t missing somewhere Seven could have slipped into. But room after room came up empty. It was when she got to the helm that she saw Seven standing at the control terminal, leaning over it and staring at the red screen. She turned to look at Two as she entered the room and said quietly “Rise. Phoenix rises. But first it falls. In fire.”

Two approached her to make sure she was okay, but first she noticed the screen wasn’t showing exactly what she expected. It showed the same terminal as before, but after all of the entries that she’d added in the past that only gave errors, she saw a new line, with the word ‘RISE’ entered. This was followed by a filling bar.

“Seven, what did you do?” Two asked, putting her arms around the smaller girl, who wasn’t resisting being restrained this time.

“The mission. We… need to do our mission.” Seven nodded, refusing to look Two in the eyes “Phoenix rises. Baptized in fire, and then… and then…” she went quiet.

Two wasn’t sure what to make of Seven’s rambling, but she’d clearly done something. Perhaps she even activated whatever Phoenix was, using that keyword. She helped Seven sit down on the floor against the wall and then rushed back to the infirmary to retrieve her sisters.

—

The three girls stood over the terminal, watching the featureless loading bar slowly fill across the screen “What do you think is gonna happen?” Five asked, eyes fixed to the monitor.

“Probably nothing good.” Three sighed.

“She told me it was for our mission. She knew how to activate it, so she must have gotten One’s information like we thought. She kept saying something about fire too. Other than that, I couldn’t make sense of what she was talking about.” Two took note that the bar was almost three quarters full already, and at the speed it was moving, Seven must have snuck out awhile ago.

“She shouldn’t have been able to talk, never mind walk this far, for another six hours or so. How did she just get up and sneak here without anyone noticing?” Three asked, knowing that she was partially at fault for her getting by too.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“No idea.” Two shrugged “But whatever she did, it’s happening now.” she turned to look at Seven, who had finally willingly drifted off to sleep for herself. At least she seemed calm now “We should have tried to listen to her. Maybe if we tried to make sense of what she was saying, we’d at least know what’s happening now.”

“Phoenix is happening, apparently.” Five shrugged “I guess we’ll know what that means in like… maybe a half hour?”

“Yeah, whatever it’s doing, it’s a massive tax on the computer system.” Three nodded “I’m… afraid that what she’s done might have damaged the station though. What if we lose life support or something?”

“Then we’ll die.” Two said simply, closing her eyes for a brief moment as she took a breath and then looking seriously to Three “I know you’re mad at us for taking drastic action before. But what are we supposed to do? Just wait? Hope someone saves us? Because that’s not going to happen. We’re on our own, and we HAVE to do something. Drifting here and just surviving until we run out of supplies isn’t going to do anything. So we have to take chances, okay?” she held up her prosthetic arm as if to gesture to it “Even if there’s dire consequences. So… I think we’re past the stage of being careful and slow and methodical. You tried that and you didn’t find anything. So let’s keep being a little reckless. At least that gets us somewhere.”

“You say that as if I’ve ever truly been able to stop you.” Three muttered “I was just trying to keep us from losing what we didn’t have to. But you’re right about one thing. The risks you’ve taken have paid off. It cost you your arm, but you got rid of that dangerous creature. It may have cost Seven her mind, but she launched Phoenix. So…” she let out a long drawn out sigh “I’ll defer to your decision-making for now. You’re crazy, but you’re effectively crazy. I’ll just have to keep cleaning up after whatever problems you bring my way in the aftermath.”

“Two’s the second best leader to One.” Five shrugged and smiled at Two “You got the guts to keep us going. I have to respect that. So I agree. You should be in charge.”

Two looked back and forth between them and looked confused “Leader? I mean… I don’t think that’s necessary. We can still figure out what we’re going to do together, girls.” she waved her arms defensively, not sure if she was okay with taking on an official responsibility like that.

“Just a formality then.” Three gave a wry smile “Because you bet I’m still going to keep you from doing something way too stupid for any of our own good around here.”

“Shut up.” Two smiled back, walking over next to Seven and sitting down on the floor next to her “If I’m the captain, I say we should rest. Whatever happens, I’m betting we’ll need to be in top form for it.”

“Why do you say that?” Five asked.

“Because something’s going to go wrong.” Two shrugged.

“Something always goes wrong.” Three concurred as she sat down and tilted her head back against the wall “So a little extra nap would be nice in preparation.”

Five chuckled “Fine. I’ll watch the terminal. I don’t know how any of you could sleep at a time like this anyway.”

Two gave her a thumbs up as she yawned “Wake us up when we rise or whatever.” she said as she leaned down against Seven to use her as a pillow. Just one last peaceful rest before they went through hell.

—

“Girls!” came the cry from Five, alerting the dozing girls up from their slumber. Two looked up to see Three and Seven stirring around her as well, and all of the terminals at the helm were glowing red. “We’re in trouble.” she stammered.

Rushing to their feet, Two and Three moved to stand at her side while Seven just watched from the floor, a vacant expression on her face.

On each of the screens, there was a diagram displayed. It was an outside view of something that Two quickly identified as the shape of the station itself. Numerous diagnostic screens showed information of the sensors all over the station. Everything had checks next to them, signifying completion of something.

Next to the diagram was a timer, counting down just a few minutes from 72 hours. And between them was a diagram of a sphere, with a line showing a trajectory.

“… I know what Phoenix is now.” Five said quietly “The station’s going to fall to Earth.”