— 15 Minutes Remain —

The girls all laid still in their mattresses, strapped in tightly and staring at the ceiling. The hatch was closed. The air was slowly becoming thick again. The station was starting to rumble. It wouldn’t be long now, one way or the other. Within the hour, they will have made it or they will have died in vain.

“No matter what happens, we love you.” Seven repeated one more time in a clear tone of voice, making sure the others heard her from her side of the room “We’ll be reborn in fire together.”

“Yeah.” Two nodded her head, her thoughts full of dread for what was about to come. Their hardest trial yet. She held onto the same hope that Seven did, that they would be reborn, not simply burn up.

The end of the last remnants of humanity? Or the start of something new? Two gripped the strap tight as the shaking started to grow. She knew that she wouldn’t just be able to hold on by hand, but it somehow comforted her. Her mechanical arm was strapped to the underside of the hatch, a contingency to assure it didn’t break and become shrapnel. For the first time since gained the false limb, she felt comfortable having the prosthetic away from her.

— 10 Minutes Remain —

“I’ll admit it. I’m scared.” Five said in a hushed tone. They all felt it. The palpable dread growing in the pits of their stomachs. The last moment nagging feelings that they had left something important undone. The fear that they would soon face their mortality.

“We’re all scared.” Three answered, trying to give her a grim reassurance “We’re right here though. We’ll be with each other until the end.”

“Yeah. And we came this far.” Two nodded and gave a reluctant smile toward Three “We’re going to survive this. We have to.”

Five let out a sigh “I guess it won’t really be our problem anymore if we don’t though.” Five replied timidly, hoping to make light of the situation.

“Shut up, Five.” Two and Three said in unison. Two couldn’t suppress a nervous laugh at their combined jab.

“Finally, we agree on something.” Three mumbled back.

— 5 Minutes Remain —

Seven had her eyes closed and was whispering to herself “Baptized in fire, we will be reborn. The heralds of humanity’s return. The destiny of our kind is in our hands.” she repeated to herself over and over, trying to calm her warped mind in whatever way she could. However, it was unnerving the others.

Three laid still in quiet contemplation, but if the others could see her face, they would see a distraught girl on the verge of tears, only barely holding herself together to save face.

Five, meanwhile, was hyperventilating. She wasn’t sure if it was the oxygen running thin or the severe stress she was under, but she couldn’t stop herself from taking in fast, deep breaths, desperate to fill her lungs with what might be the last breaths she ever took.

“Calm down.” Two told herself, trying to reassure herself while the station rumbled, clearly already scraping the upper atmosphere of the planet “This is going to work. It has to work. All of this can’t be for nothing, it can’t just be the end right here. There’s so many more things we need to do. We’re going to land and then we need to do so many things. And there will be so much to see. So many new things to explore. We will live.”

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— Phoenix Command Activated —

There was a cacophony of cries as a loud crashing noise came from all around them. The girls felt the rumble increase to a violent shaking, and a moment later, they all felt themselves floating up into the series of straps holding them to the mattress. It only dawned on Five then that it might have better suited them to strap themselves to the ceiling, but it was too late to consider that. They had cushioned the straps with as much fabric as they could shove between them and that would just have to do.

Three at last let out a loud cry, bursting into tears as the gravity of the moment crashed through her. Seven was eerily quiet, and Five sounded like she was struggling to breathe entirely now.

Two didn’t dare look though. The stars visible through the window above were slowly starting to fade. Minutes passed and the sky slowly turned from black to dark blue. The terrible quaking of what they had come to know as their world made her close her eyes. She was definitely going to be sick, if nothing else. The straps were digging into her skin hard despite the cushioning, and she found herself unable to speak, the air not finding its way properly out of her, yet she mouthed the word ‘Please’ over and over, pleading for some kind of miracle to protect them.

The rumbling only grew louder. There were loud crashes on the outside of the station that made each of them cry out in turn if they could. It was falling apart. The station couldn’t take much more. Two opened her eyes and saw a small streak of pale blue sky before there was a deafening crunch and the world went black.

—

And everything stayed dark. Here they were. Beaten. Bruised. Destroyed. Were they really so insignificant? Did they mean nothing? Was this the end? Did everything they’d suffered through mean nothing? Did their sacrifices mean nothing? Did any of this mean anything, or was Three right at the start? Were they just a cosmic accident?

Was this death? Two wondered if she would get to see the others. One, Four, perhaps even Six despite the fact she never technically existed. She wondered if they ever stood a chance in the first place. So much had been stacked against them. The still-nebulous plans of their predecessors seemed to have fallen apart around them slowly. She wondered if perhaps, wherever she was now, she could ask them what they expected her to do from the start.

They were children. They knew more than any child ought to. They were practically adults in mind, but they were still just children. And the fate of the entire human race had been left on them. On half of the girls they had intended for the job no less. It was impossible after all, wasn’t it?

Three. She was strict and sometimes harsh, but she cared for all of them. She did everything she could to keep all of them alive, even when they seemed hell-bent on jumping into danger.

Five. Sometimes a little blunt, and she definitely had something of an ego to her, but she was willing to do what was right. She never knew when to be serious, and that somehow made her a lot easier to be around.

Seven. An enigma, now. But beneath the surface, Two knew that the somewhat timid girl, eager to prove her worth as an equal, was still in there somewhere. She had to be.

And herself. Two. She jumped headlong into danger, but she believed there was always something she could do. Some kind of progress to be made. She strove to keep moving forward no matter what obstacle presented itself.

No. It wasn’t going to end like this. It couldn’t end like this. Whatever this was, she had to fight back! She had to make their suffering worth SOMETHING. She had to live!

It started with a spark.

A glint of light shined on the other side of her eyelids. They were heavy, but with effort, they slowly opened. The station was quiet. Nothing moved, there wasn’t even the faint hum of electricity in the background that she hadn’t realized she’d grown accustomed to. The room was still. And above her, through a heavily cracked window, she saw pale blue and a shaft of light pointing down on her. Was this real?

It hurt her head to move, but she looked to the side to see Five staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, tears in her eyes as she continued to breathe heavily, her arms locked in place at the straps and still holding tight like they were still falling.

Three’s eyes were closed tight. But Two was comforted when she saw her chest rising and falling steadily.

“Home.” came the exhausted groan of Seven from the other side of the room.

Not one of them dared to move from their mattresses though. After what they’d just been through, they had no energy left. But they did it. They had beaten the odds. They had been enough. They had made it. Seven had been right. They were home.