Two and Seven walked into the genetics lab, and Two was pleased to find that the room’s smell was significantly better than when they last left it. It still didn’t feel clean, but it didn’t make her want to throw up anymore either.

Two walked by the cloning chambers and stole a glance into Four’s. It was empty, as Five promised it would be. Still, she didn’t linger on it long, not wanting to upset Seven with what she knew.

She continued moving back to One’s chamber and once more adjusted the console back into place so it would turn on again. The motors in the door shuddered as it began to open. Even with the chamber emptied of the filth, it still unleashed one last wave of stench as the panel rose up, revealing an inside stained with slick black and green residue. Various chunks of organic matter, perhaps mold, stuck to the corners of the chamber.

Two stepped back, holding her nose and resting against the wall for a moment. This was the birth place of that thing that took her hand. She didn’t dare go in. Thankfully, that wasn’t why she was there. Gathering her composure, she attached her slate to the prosthetic, adjusting it to hold gently, and then hooked it once more into the computer.

The same files as before. She didn’t remember exactly what all the nonsense said, but she knew it wasn’t anymore forthcoming than it was the first time she’d seen it. Just scrambled data, not meant to be read by human eyes.

She was momentarily distracted, though, by trying to operate the device left-handed. She hadn’t realized before how difficult it still was to use her off-hand for delicate tasks. It was like her brain refused to follow her instructions correctly for it. But she’d have to endure, it wasn’t like she could just decide to be left-handed.

“Different approach…” she muttered to herself, taking a step back. She unplugged the slate and turned around, facing her own chamber. They had to be given the information they’d received somehow. Their minds had to be trained for their specific roles in some way.

Stepping into her own chamber, she walked along the edge, feeling the smooth walls. It all started here. It was strange to come back after everything she’d gone through. She felt so much stronger than she did on that first day. So much wiser from what she’d learned. It wasn’t truly that long ago, but it was her entire life to her.

She stopped as her hand ran over a seam. It was the same color as the rest of the room and difficult to distinguish from it. Following it, it ran up to the ceiling, where there was an oval-shaped cutout that sealed to the top of the room. Stepping back outside, she looked around the outside of the chamber. Five had inspected these before, but there was nothing on the shell that looked like it would be easy to remove or open, but she couldn’t have checked the top.

“Hey Seven.” she called across the room to Seven, who had been preoccupying herself with organizing some of the glassware “Can you borrow a prybar from Five for me?” she asked “And a hammer?”

“Huh? What for?” Seven asked “Are you… going to break that thing?”

“Probably. Might be able to disassemble it in the process though.” As Seven left, Two began moving and stacking boxes around the room, making a rudimentary staircase up to the top of her cloning chamber.

Five and Seven walked in together, Five with a toolbox under one arm “Someone call for a destruction crew? What are you doing, Two?” she sounded impatient “You shouldn’t be messing with these things, what if we need them later for something?”

“That your best Three impression?” Two asked, pushing one more box up over her head and onto the stack “You brought the tools, didn’t you?”

“I did.” Five nodded “But I’d have to agree with her usual caution on this one. These machines are beyond us. Maybe Six would’ve known, but…” she set the toolbox down and threw her hands out, as if to demonstrate that Six wasn’t with them.

“I know, I know. But we need to do something. If we keep going like we are, we’re just going to keep looking for a few years, run out of food, and die. We need to make progress.” she started climbing up her makeshift staircase, being careful to maintain her balance “I’m gonna experiment on my own chamber. I’ll take responsibility for it.” she said quietly.

“Fine.” Five gave a defeated sigh and let her shoulders droop “But I’m helping. Don’t need you electrocuting yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing up there. Why up there, anyway?”

“There’s an assembly at the top. You can see where it comes from if you follow the seams of the structure.” Two explained as she shakily stood up on the top box and stepped over onto her cloning chamber. It was there that she saw there was a box-shaped shell over top of something. “Yeah. Definitely something up here. A covering panel.” she felt around at it, but it seemed sealed tight.

“Well, you certainly asked for the right tools. Were you just planning to bash this thing apart if you didn’t find anything?” Five asked, putting the prybar up on top of the boxes for her to grab.

She took the tool and lined it up with the edge, idly pushing her foot against it, but she wasn’t strong enough to push far in “Hammer too.” Two called.

“See, this is why I came. That thing’s not gonna be on there as tight as the engine room door was. You hammer that thing in and it’s gonna break something. Just use leverage.” Five crossed her arms and watched.

Two shrugged “You’re the expert.” She stood next to the prybar and grabbed hold of it with her good hand, pulling back awkwardly, and to her surprise, it slipped right in under the panel. But after that, it met resistance. She couldn’t quite manage to pull it up with her strength, something inside holding the panel down. “It’s stuck.” she declared.

“Use your arm, genius.” Five taunted.

Two looked down at her arm, then realized she was talking about the prosthetic. She stood back up straight, clamping it down and tightening it as far as she could. It felt awkward, like she was anchored in place. But there was no pressure against the bar to hurt her hand like this. She took a deep breath and simply tried to walk away from the prybar, holding onto the harness with her other arm as she used the full strength of her arm to pull on it, grunting as she felt the resistance giving way, until with a crack of metal, she fell over on top of Four’s chamber, the prybar clanking to the ground next to her, still clamped in place on her prosthetic hand. The panel was sitting up with a large dent where she had pried it up. It had been fastened down well, but it was no match for some force.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Aww yeah!” Five cheered “Knew that thing could take it! Yeah, I built that!”

Two sat up slowly, feeling at her head “Haha, yeah.” she began unscrewing the grip of the prosthetic, letting the prybar fall to her side “I just wish I’d thought to bring a pillow or something. Ow.” she got back to her feet, rubbing her sore arm with the prosthetic for a moment before she looked down into the machinery.

There were all kinds of devices inside, mechanical arms and tubes attached to complicated rigs. She pulled one out that looked like a visor and helmet made of wires. They were definitely one assembly. She stared at it for a moment before her mind flashed with recognition. It felt like something from a dream. A panel lowered in front of her eyes, and then suddenly, understanding.

She held her head and shook as she took a deep breath “This… I… remember it. I think. I remember it being on my head.” she held it up to show the others below “Or… in my head.”

Both Seven and Five stared at it for a moment before they both seemed to snap back to reality “Y-Yeah…” Seven murmured “A neural interface.”

Five nodded “Something like that.” she held her head with one hand and shook her head “That’s, ah… I don’t know what that was.”

“We must have been too young.” Two muttered “I didn’t remember it until I saw this thing. Floating in that tank, I didn’t know anything. I was just… instinct. And then afterward, I could think. Like how I’m thinking now. I-It’s really hard to put into words.” she grimaced “This is what it used to teach us what we know. Which means…”

“It’s interesting, for sure, but I’m not sure how it helps us now.” Five sighed “Anything else useful in there?”

“Hold on.” she gently lowered the interface down to the floor level of the lab before she started climbing down the staircase once more “I have a… really stupid idea.” she said as she got to the floor again.

Five gave a concerned look to Seven as they followed her back around to the front side of the cloning chambers. She took her slate out again, hooking it into One’s chamber. After a few moments silently touching the screen, Five had to ask “Are you going to fill us in on this plan? Or are you going to do something else dangerous?”

“I could do both” Two declared, unplugging the slate from One’s chamber and turning around to her own again to plug in once more “So… I know what these files are for now. They’re instructions for the neural interface. So if I play One’s file, I’ll be able to learn what our objective was supposed to be.”

Two felt her hand get grabbed as she reached to press her slate again though. It was Five “Hold on now.” she let go of her arm but stood in front of her “I think I see what you’re planning to do here. But there’s probably a good reason these files got divided between all of us. And you don’t know if you can work that thing right. What if this thing fries your brain?” she asked, a serious expression on her face.

Two sighed and let herself relax “I-I know that. It’s always a risk though. But we need to take risks if we’re ever going to learn what our purpose is. I HAVE to do this.”

“No, Two…” Five stepped back a bit and picked up the visor “You been through enough. It’s my turn to take the risk.”

Two stood there in silence, shocked at what she was suggesting “Five… look, I-I’m already crippled, and your engineering know-how is too important for us to-”

“I’m not arguing this point, Two. You’ve already given up a limb for everyone else. And me being a coward played at least some part in that.” Five spoke stoically, though her glassy eyes betrayed her fear “Just… let me do something for us.”

Two stammered, not wanting to put her through this when it was her idea in the first place “But… really Five, without you, the station’s going to fall-”

“I’ll do it.” came a hoarse voice from behind Five. They both turned to look at Seven, who was staring at the floor “Use me.”

Five stared at her wide-eyed before she started “Sev-”

“Nothing that’s happened to me has caused permanent damage yet either, and I don’t have any skills that we would be taking a risk losing.” she explained, her voice raised up higher than usual. She looked just as scared as Five, but she was standing firm and said as if it were a demand this time “I’m going to make myself useful.”

Two couldn’t think of anything to say. She could have said something about how she was the breeder, and that could be something monumentally important, but it wasn’t clear that it was any more important than anyone else’s role either. She couldn’t argue with her point, and she knew Five couldn’t either. She looked down at the slate and pressed a button to transfer the file she’d copied from One’s chamber “Set her up.” She said quietly to Five.

“Are you crazy? She’s just a kid!” Five shouted.

“We’re all… just kids.” Two interrupted her. Staring her down until Five finally closed her eyes in frustration and turned to hand the visor to Seven.

“You better survive this.” Five muttered to her as she helped her position all of the wires around the top of her head, moving the visor in place over her eyes.

Seven swallowed and sat still to let her sister work “I will. I have to.” Seven murmured as the visor covered her eyes and Five began guiding her down to the floor to sit “I trust you, Two.”

Two nodded as she navigated the menus, finding her way to the controls for the neural interface. It wasn’t as difficult to read once she understood what it meant, and she was quickly hovering over the ‘begin playback’ key. She looked down to Seven and pursed her lips “No matter what happens, we love you Seven.” she said quietly “Launching playback in… three… two… one…” Two had to close her eyes before she pressed the button.

Electricity flowed to the wire connecting the neural interface to Seven, and a moment later, Seven let out a quiet whine that was quickly silenced, her body slumping down limp against the outer wall of the cloning chamber.

Immediately, Five bent down and reached for the crown. “Don’t!” Two shouted, her own eyes becoming glassy and her voice breaking “It’s not done yet.” the machine still whirred.

“She’s dying!” Five shouted back, but listened to what she said anyway. The two clones watched as their sister sat with the visor flashing something over her eyes.

“She’s not dying. Look. She’s breathing.” Two noted her chest rising and falling at an oddly stable pace. Her fingers occasionally twitched and her whole body shivered occasionally, but she was still alive and apparently conscious inside whatever the visor was doing to her. Her body just wasn’t responding.

After minutes passed, the program continuing to run its course, Five continued to watch carefully with crossed arms “… How long you think it’ll take?” she asked Two, who was still monitoring the slate.

Two shook her head “I don’t know. It doesn’t have a progress bar or anything, it’s just running through the data. Three quarters of the way done if it’s file size is anything to go by.”

Five shook her head “Dammit… it should’ve been me. Eugh…”

“What?” Two looked down to Seven to see there was a slowly growing wet spot beneath her “… She peed herself.”

“She peed herself.” Five nodded “That uhh… makes sense. All her muscles shutting down like this.”

Two nodded nervously “… Five, I… I’m sorry. If this kills her, or… makes her braindead or something, it’s going to be my fault.”

Five sighed “You love putting everything on yourself, don’t you?” she asked “You’re so selfless. It’s infuriating sometimes. Like I went and tried to stop her. I got scared again. When she stepped up like that, I was relieved, Two.”

“I was too.” Two admitted “I just… didn’t want to have to make someone else suffer because I made a mistake.”

“We don’t know if you made a mistake yet.” Five muttered “Why’s this have to take so long?”

“One’s file was the biggest.” Two explained again “It has to have the information we need. It’s almost done.” Two said as she put the slate down on the floor, walking to kneel down by Seven’s side with Five.

When the electric hum of the visor’s machinery halted, the two stared at Seven silently for a moment before Five carefully pulled the visor up and away from her again. Seven had a distant look in her eyes, her mouth hanging open slightly. Two watched her chest stop moving and her eyes went wide when she noticed. “Get Three, quick!” she called out.

As soon as Five stood up, however, Seven breathed in a huge gasp of air, and her arms went to Two who was next to her. She was panting loudly as she held the taller girl tight, grasping her arm in hers and her leg in the other. Her entire body was shivering and her expression still appeared vacant as she caught her breath. “Oh god, Seven. Seven.” Five knelt back down and held her tight, Seven’s hands going to grasp her instead when she got closer “It’s okay, it’s okay. Breathe. You’re here, you’re okay.”

Seven continued breathing heavily, shaking as she spoke with a dull tone of voice “I… I know what we need to do.”