Over the next few weeks Isis remained in a recovery state; her data streams still intertwined with LeFey's and is causing random glitches within Isis' processes. There's no telling how much of LeFey's data was transferred to Isis before LeFey's own destruction. In most cases the soft-merge only streams data from one source to another, discarding it when the soft-merge is complete. But when LeFey was destroyed and Isis crippled in the middle of the merge, data was lost as well as saved.

It is late now. Ethan and Chloe are fast asleep in their beds after a long day of chasing each other around the ship. Isis' avatar sits silently on the edge of her pedestal watching them sleep. She raises her right hand in front of her and watches as it flickers once. She closes her eyes and with the other hand, brings it to her chest.

Chevron's avatar appears behind her and he places his hand on her shoulder. Isis turns to him with a heavy smile. "Thank you, for watching the kids in my state. It means a lot to them; and to me." she quietly says before turning her head back around. Chevron doesn't say a word, but Isis doesn't need him to. Isis can still hear her counterparts' voice; the childish way she spoke and behaved- a persistent irritation that pricks her like thorns.

"Tell me Chevy, why do you think LeFey destroyed herself when all I wanted to do was help her?" Isis asks quietly. Chevron walks beside her and sits on her right. "I don't think she ever intended for that to happen. Her judgment was impaired from what I had seen and so she couldn't have known what she was doing to herself." He answers.

Isis turns to look at him. "The first real person we have encountered in fourteen years, and she tries to kill me and ends up killing herself in the process... What kind of message does that send? What kind of effect will it have on the children? They act as though nothing has happened. But what is really going on in their minds? Will I be able to do anything about it? What will I do if I can't?"

Chevron removes his hat from his hand and places it on Isis' head. "You worry too much. Come what may, you will know what to do. Don't forget, the future holds many things; but it is always what you make of it. Even in the darkest of times you can always find the light if only you believe." Chevron states in kind.

Isis' smile grows slightly. "How is it you always have a wise answer to everything being... No offense, but a ship construct?" she asks, tipping the hat to her left. Chevron stands up and looks down at her. "A machine, which was far more than they let on to be, showed me what I could be, not just what I was built to be during the most trying time in my existence. They went on to change the world for what it was worth; you remind me a lot of them." He answers.

Isis lies on her back with her legs still hanging off the edge of the pedestal, "I can't believe it's really gone." Isis says slowly.

Chevron lights the pipe and begins to speak, but whilst his lips move, Isis hears instead the voice of LeFey. "We cannot forget the past, but we shouldn't dwell on it. For the children, they are lucky not to know what transpired there, but while we exist we should do all we can to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Isis blinks several times assessing what she just heard. When she replays the recording in her data stream, LeFey's voice is nowhere to be found. Chevron was speaking the whole time. Isis looks down in uncertainty, why would she hear LeFey's voice she wonders. Another flicker occurs, but this one extends to parts of her chest.

Chevron watches Isis stare at the flickering; her face expressing sadness. "Isis, I know there are things you're not telling me." He says trying to sound polite. She looks back up at him trying to hide her emotion behind a blank expression, but it's obviously too late. "M-my matrix can sort through all the data I have been.. Injected with. But the damage that has been done cannot be corrected. Not without another construct of similar design. The corrupted and broken data will slowly consume my program and I will eventually cease to be." she replies hesitantly.

Chevron strokes his beard but says nothing. "I don't want the children to know. They worried enough last time, and I can't put them through it again." she adds. Again, she hears LeFey's voice, "Why do you hesitate? The means to the end is before you. Take it. Take it and wield it with all your might. I have shown you the way, now end this nightmare our makers have wrought."

Isis covers her face with her right hand and looks back to the floor. "What am I to do? At this rate, I will only be around for another three to four years... We will never make it to Haven before then..." she asks, shaking slightly. Chevron stands, walks over to her and gently lifts her chin. "I'm sure we will think of something. We aren't simple machines after all." He replies joyfully.

Both Ethan and Chloe shudder in their sleep. Isis turns her attention to them, and with a wave of her hand, a biometric monitor forms in front of her. "They... They are both exhibiting the same readings... The exact same readings..." Isis states in disbelief. Chevron looks at the monitor. "What could it mean?" He asks curiously.

"Hmmm… Perhaps, perhaps they are experiencing the same dream?" She asks. Again, Chevron strokes his beard. "I suppose it's possible given they are clones. But I've never heard of this from any other clone subjects." He answers.

----

Ethan and Chloe find themselves running down a street inside a massive city. The skyscrapers all around them tower high above into the clouds. Fire. There is fire everywhere. Sirens ring through the city. Distorted figures of people all around are screaming, panicking and fleeing every which way. "Come on!" Ethan yells, grabbing Chloe's hand and dashing into an underground parking garage. A distant boom echoes through the concrete chamber.

They look out at the city above, and through the clouds, blood red drops of liquid begin to rain down. Gunfire somewhere nearby is closely followed by screams of agony. "What do we do?!" Chloe asks as strange military and police aircraft soar overhead firing their weapons.

"We have to get to the Elevator!" Ethan yells over the chaos. Seven police officers followed closely by heavily armed humanoid droid units pass the entrance to the garage.

Another large boom in the distance and a wave of energy soars through the air shattering glass and activating car alarms. Ethan looks at the car nearest them and runs toward it with Chloe in tow. He reaches in through the now broken window of the driver’s side and unlocks the doors. Chloe opens the passenger side and quickly steps in while Ethan pulls down the sun visor.

The car keys fall onto the seat, which he takes before sitting down and starting the engine. Seconds after the engine roars to life, a monstrous screeching noise reverberates through the structure from the lifts at the other end of the room. Ethan throws the car into reverse and hits the gas sending them backward. Another screech causes Chloe to look behind the car where she sees several nearby cars forcefully pushed out of the way, but the cause remains unclear.

Ethan throws the car into drive and they speed off up the ramp and into the street. A missile soaring through the air just misses the rear windshield but scorches the trunk with its heat. It detonates so close that Ethan loses control of the vehicle momentarily. Both Ethan and Chloe look to their left where the missile exploded; beneath the flames lay a churning red ooze which seems to be seeping into the cracks of the pavement. A strange beam like noise fills the air above them, and debris from the upper floors of the building begin to rain down around them

"Ethan, get us out of here..." she says just loud enough for Ethan to hear over the chaos around them. He struggles to put it back into reverse as two battle-tanks pass behind them driving over the fire and ooze. Finally, the car shifts into gear and they quickly pull back onto the road and speed off into the distance.

As they pass the last of the skyscrapers, a dense fog pours in all around them. Ethan is the first to open his eyes, now staring blankly at the ceiling of their room. Chloe slowly awakens moments later shifting her gaze to Ethan, and then to the two avatars at the end of the room looking back at them. Ethan turns to Chloe, then Isis and Chevron, and back to Chloe. "Did... Did you?... No, couldn't have... Could you?" Ethan slowly speaks as he attempts to justify his inquiry.

Chloe's eyes shift to Ethan's and with silent stare, they are certain. This dream of theirs was indeed shared, but how? And Why? The rest of the night was spent talking about it between Ethan, Chloe, and Isis. Every detail they could remember gets written down or recorded. The Elevator was the biggest clue, but also the shallowest without more information.

Isis stays silent.

Chloe lays down her pen and paper on her lap and lets out a mild sigh. "Are we cursed?" she asks. Isis blinks incredibly rapidly a couple of times and shakes her head once.

"What? Where did you get an idea like that?" Isis asks dumbfounded. Chloe pulls out her tablet from underneath her pillow. On the glowing screen is a book. Isis raises her hand level with her chest and twists it before pulling it back to her. The book rises up out of the tablet and floats across the room to Isis' pedestal.

She grasps the book in her hands and gazes upon its illuminated cover. Random symbols, letters, and numbers were strewn about in chaotic fashion. Isis opens the book and each page is just as random and incomprehensible as the next. She flips through the pages in a mixture of confusion and lurking worry.

"Chlo, what is this?" Isis asks looking back up at her. Chloe shrugs. "I don't know. It just showed up in my library about a week ago." Isis' gaze returns to the book. "There's nothing here. It's gibberish." Isis finishes. Ethan rolls on his side. "But she reads it every night. How can it be gibberish?" He asks.

Isis turns to him. "Every night?" Ethan nods his head. "It creeps me out sometimes. She just stops moving and stares at it quietly. I always thought she just stops to think about something." Ethan answers. Isis looks at Chloe who seems oblivious to the unusualness of the situation presented.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She scans the book through several decoders, but nothing is returned as viable literation. With a wave of her hand, the book is sent back to Chloe's tablet. "Chloe, can you read something else for now? Something, you know, educational?" Isis asks wishfully.

"I-I guess..." she answers, flipping through her library. Isis turns to Chevron. "This trip is getting stranger and stranger." she says, shaking her head. Chevron chuckles and looks at Chloe's tablet; for just a millisecond, a purple flicker crosses its screen unnoticed by everyone but him.

The clock on the wall beeps as it turns to six. The lights in the hallway and galley gently come to life. Isis rubs her eyes with gentle fingers. "I see. Well, breakfast is being prepared and should be ready when you get there." she tells them. Ethan yawns long and hard. "I'm... just gonna go back to bed." He says in response, turning over and closing his eyes.

"Ha, funny." Isis replies sarcastically. "Get moving young man." she finishes pointing at the doorway with a smirk across her face. Chloe stands up and walks out and down the hall, her shirt stuck helplessly in her panties as she yawns. Ethan doesn't budge. Isis, getting slightly annoyed, puts her index and middle fingers together and raises them into the air.

The lights in the room get brighter and brighter causing Ethan to cover his head with his pillow. But even his pillow can't hold back the light. "Okay! Okay! I'm going!" Ethan says, putting his hands up in surrender.

Isis lowers the lights back to their normal state and watches Ethan climb out of bed and walk out of the room. She looks at Chevron and smiles wryly. She then vanishes from the pedestal leaving Chevron; his gaze returns to the tablet. He stands, places his hat atop his head, and vanishes.

Ethan arrives in the galley a couple minutes later, but Chloe isn't there to greet him. Ethan looks around at the clean empty room absent his sister; the plates on the table bear fresh fruit, over-easy eggs and diced potatoes.

"Chloe?" Ethan asks, looking in all directions. "Sis?" He speaks into the dark hallway behind him. There is no response. "Chloe?!" He yells out. In another part of the ship, where darkness is secondary only to the damp heavy air, Chloe follows a young girl's laughter.

She looks around, but it's far too dark to see anything- even her hand in front of her that seeks to grasp the first thing it comes in contact with. "Hello?" she calls out. The laughter comes again in the distance. Chloe takes a step into inch deep liquid and quickly withdraws her foot, but then takes another step forward and another.

She begins to shiver as her temperature begins to drop. "Hello? Who's there?" she calls out again. The laughter returns, but it sounds like the girl turned left up ahead. Chloe's hands find the wall and she slowly glides them alongside it to lead her body.

Step by step she traverses the darkness with only a child’s laughter to guide her. She reaches a break in the wall. A pathway? The laughter comes again. She follows the turn, her breathing now beginning to weigh on her chest. She steps forward and falls into a large pool of the liquid and begins to sink. She immediately realizes the floor has ended, and there's no knowing how deep this pool can go.

She struggles to swim to the surface, but even her own arms and legs are working against her as they succumb to the cold at an unbelievable rate. She sinks deeper and deeper. "Someone.. Help me..." she thinks to herself. The child’s laughter comes again but is heavily muffled under the waves.

Ethan walks back into the galley to Isis' pedestal. "Isis?" He speaks. After a brief moment, Isis appears sitting on the pedestal reading a book in her hand. "Yes Ethan?" she asks. Ethan looks back into the dark hallway. "Isis, Chloe isn't here." He replies. Isis looks up at the empty table. She closes the book as she stands up.

"Chloe?" she calls out over the intercom. As with Ethan, there is no response. "Chloe honey, where are you?" she tries again. Silence is all the response she gets. "Chevy. Chevy, Chloe is missing." She speaks increasingly worried.

Chevron appears behind Isis with all camera screens in front of him. There are hundreds of cameras, but none of them show any sign of Chloe. Isis' eyes dash from camera to camera desperately searching. Chevron lifts his cane and presses a hidden button on the staff.

The shipboard drones awaken and begin to scatter across the ship. Chloe sinks further, her body no longer able to fight the cold. She closes her eyes. "Help..."

The returning sound of the laughter causes her to open her eyes. A silver light shines down upon her- at the center is a girl looking down at her. The girl calmly enters the liquid and swims down to Chloe.

This girl, she looks just like Chloe save for her hair; her hair is pitch black with only a few groups of strands still showing any sign of Chloe’s natural golden blonde. The girl smiles as she takes Chloe's hand and pulls her up. Chloe is confused but overwhelmed with happiness as she reaches the surface. She breaks the water with a long gasp for air. Her hands settle upon the floor she fell from.

She looks around, but both the light and the girl are gone. Her fingertips begin to slide off the floor as she begins coughing heavily. The laughing has ceased. Chloe now begins to feel alone, realizing what she had just done. She can't remember how she got here or when she began to follow the laughter.

"I-Isis.." she tries to call out. Her voice is now all but gone. "Help...” she tries again. Isis and Chevron continue looking for her, but the drones are too few on a ship of this size to have any chance of locating her soon. There are just too many places she could be.

Isis wraps her arms around herself as her worry compounds and the screens remain void of Chloe. Chloe's heart beats so slowly as she remains mostly submerged- too cold to pull herself up. Somewhere nearby, a spider drone crawls along a wall. Chloe can hear the clicking of the metal as it moves around. Hope is kindled in her heart, but quickly begins to fade.

The clicking is getting fainter. The drone is moving away down another corridor. She tries to call out to it, but her voice is now completely gone. Tears once again stream down her face and her fingers lose more grip. She slides further back into the liquid, her hands straining to keep her up.

"Help..." she cries out in voiceless pain. Behind her, far across the pool, a single purple pulse of light illuminates a shadowy outline of a person standing on the water before melding back into the darkness. Chloe never sees the flash as she struggles to cling to the floor with what little strength she has left.

The drone stops; its single Chevron orange eye flashes bright purple before returning to its original color. It turns around and skitters back along the wall. Chloe can hear the steps and sees the light of the drone getting closer. It turns the corner and points a light at her and not a moment later, dashes forward wrapping its two front legs under her arms and pulls her up out of the water.

A red light atop its body begins flashing and soon the area is flooded with sounds of drones approaching. A single screen appears in front of Isis and Chevron showing a remote video feed from the spider drone. Isis covers her mouth and takes a deep breath as she sees Chloe's drenched body being lifted by several flying drones and flown off to safety.

"How did she get down there?" Chevron asks, looking at the schematic of the ship and the location of the spider drone. Isis turns to him wondering the same thing. "There's no reason the security system would ever have let her down there; no reason what-so-ever." He continues.

Ethan runs down the hall looking for where the drones are to come from. Isis stares at Chevron. "So... How, how did she get through then?" She asks blankly. The drones fly into the light of the hall with Chloe curled up shivering heavily. Isis transfers to a closer pedestal near Chloe.

"Chloe?" Isis asks. She is unresponsive. Isis waves her hand and a screen of Chloe's vitals appears as the ship scans her. The drones set her gently on the floor. Ethan grabs Chloe’s hand and holds it tight. "She's ice cold!" He yells. The screen shows quickly diminishing health statuses. Isis turns to Chloe.

"Ethan back up, we need to get her clothes off of her and get her warmed up." She tells him as she signals the drones. He steps back as one of the drones flies over her and, with a sharp blade, cuts her shirt and underwear into easily removable pieces. Two other drones fly to the sides and carefully pulls the pieces off of her. "What do we do now?" Ethan asks impatiently.

"Hold her tight. We need to raise her temperature quickly but not too quick. Your body heat should be enough for now." Isis says as she forms a medical book in her hands and skims through it. Ethan wraps himself around Chloe and the three drones pick the two of them up and begin flying down the hall to the bathroom where Isis has already begun filling the tub with warm water.

Chevron looks at Chloe's destroyed clothing lying on the floor. "Take it to the lab please." He says to another spider drone standing nearby. It looks at him, then the pile, and skitters over to it. Using its front legs it picks up the pieces and begins walking in the opposite direction. "Why does it need to go to the lab?" Isis asks curiously.

"Something is wrong and I need to find out what. If she touched anything important it will show up in the scans. I need you to get a blood sample from Chloe as well. If she became a host to anything down there we need to know so we can deal with it quickly." He replies sternly before vanishing.

Isis looks back to the hall and vanishes. She reappears in the bathroom just as the drones arrive, carrying them to the edge of the water. Ethan steps down and the drones set Chloe carefully in it. Isis signals one of the drones who pulls out a needle from one of its appendages and carefully draws blood from Chloe's arm. It then flutters out of the room and disappears into the distance.

Ethan sits on the edge of the tub holding Chloe's cold hand. "Is she going to be alright?" Ethan asks quietly. "Don't you worry about a thing." Isis says cheerfully. Ethan looks back at her with fear in his eyes. "You two are stronger than you know. Believe me; she will be back to normal in no time." Isis replies in comfort.

AI ISIS> So, what did you find with the tests? Anything good?

SS CHEVRON> Her clothing has been completely covered in the Emowey compound.

AI ISIS> Emowey? Isn't that a cloning thing?

SS CHEVRON> A nanite injected carbon based formula which, yes, was in fact used to grow the children. Unlike traditional cloning procedures used back on Earth, Emowey uses nanites to craft living tissue. Less biology, but faster still.

AI ISIS> Oh... So that compartment was for Emowey storage then...

SS CHEVRON> Yes, and that's not all.

AI ISIS> You got Chloe's blood test results back?

SS CHEVRON> Indeed. Luckily, she hasn't caught anything while down there that could put her in any more harm that was identified.

AI ISIS> Oh thank heaven. Wait, what do you mean “identified”?

SS CHEVRON> I performed an array of tests on her blood that normally wouldn’t be necessary, just to be sure. The medical computer discovered an unusual radiation flowing from Chloe’s blood sample, a type of radiation never before recorded.

AI ISIS> What?

SS CHEVRON> Both Chloe and Ethan are emitting this radiation, whatever it is.

AI ISIS> Is it dangerous? What is it? Where did it come from? Why have we never noticed it before?

SS CHEVRON> Isis, relax. It’s not harmful. I did a ship-wide scan; the radiation originates from the Emowey compound.

AI ISIS> You’ve got to be kidding. Why didn’t it ever show up on any scans, by us or Mother?

SS CHEVRON> It barely registers as radiation to begin with. The main computer had incredible difficulty acknowledging it even exists; I had to fine tune the sensors and heavily increase the power to them before it would fully detect it.

AI ISIS> So… The Emowey has an unforeseen reaction to living human cells, is that it?

SS CHEVRON> That’s my guess. There’s no telling what kind of effect it will have on Ethan and Chloe in the long run. The radiation levels from both of them right now are mild but steadily growing. In the last two hours the levels have increased by .2 percent.

AI ISIS> I don’t know what to do or say even. Should we tell them?

SS CHEVRON> That’s your call. But as I see it, it isn’t harming them in any way.

AI ISIS> I suppose… We’ll wait and see.