Deep Space Bob Novella · Part 1

Part I
Kilkin Station

Scene 1

My hands didn’t shake because some brilliant geneticist had designed me that way. I had the front panel off the lock and a beautiful rainbow of confused wires exposed. Well. They didn’t confuse me. I knew how the whole station came together, from the tiny little blue wire there in the wall panel up to the comms dish pulling in broadcasts from the other side of the galaxy. 

Eighty-Five stood behind me, hand resting lightly on my shoulder. Hand on the shoulder was considered an “acceptable” amount of contact between students, the instructors wouldn’t think much of it. This way, if someone happened to walk down the hallway, Eighty-Five could block their view and stall them while I reassembled the panel. 

About 1,000 students and 100 instructors lived in the Bowl at any given time. Not a big crowd. Eighty-five was really 77785, of course, and I was 77777, so we were usually called Eighty-Five and Sevens. All the students look the same, identical, but the instructors all look different. Just one of those things you get used to. Most of the students take on certain personality ticks and quirks, so we could tell each other apart. I didn’t know how the instructors did it. They recognized on sight, down the long, curving halls, and they could pick one of us out of the crowd with no trouble at all. The rebellious ones learned that the hard way.

Every instructor had a pen-sized correction stick and if they found you up to something they didn’t like, they’d give you a little “bump,” usually on a 10 point scale of pain. Talk out of turn? 1. Little itch. Late to class? 5. A sting that would linger all day.

I’d seen an older student intentionally spill a tray of hot food on the Commander. His face hadn’t changed. He calmly applied an 8 to them and the student gave a small cry of pain before they slumped to the ground. Like they’d been powered off. We didn’t see them for a week. If that was an 8… breaking into the Commander’s office…? 12 or something? They’d go past 10 for sure, probably have to put us in the infirmary for a month. Maybe worse…

It didn’t scare me though. I don’t really get scared like I should. That’s what Eighty-Five says anyway, that I don’t feel like I should. Most of the students don’t. When Eighty-Five asked me if I thought that was strange I just shrugged. 

Didn’t I want to know why that was? shrug

Didn’t I get curious why we all looked alike? shrug.

Don’t I care about anything? …

I told them I cared about space stations and how they went together. After a second, it occurred to me that I cared about Eighty-Five, too, so I told them that. They’d tilted their head at that and thought for a moment. Then they told me their plan. Break into the Commander’s office, access the real, Intergalactic Web, and get some answers. 

Or get caught. Get hurt. Get pain. I knew the stakes. I just didn’t worry about it. Pain was pain. It would come and pass. 

Eighty-Five gave my shoulder two gentle squeezes, meaning, “Still clear, keep going.”

My mind lingered on the warmth of their hand for a second, surprising me. I didn’t get caught up on things like that very often. I didn’t get caught up on anything very often. Suddenly I found myself picturing Eighty-Five’s long, lean form standing over me, guarding my back. They looked like every other student, except… the tilt of their head when they had a thought, the subtle bump out of their hip when they got offended, the little widening of their eyes when they had an idea. And their mind… Eighty-Five just thought circles around me, around most of us. Sure, I’m good with ship and station schematics, but Eighty-Five had the gift of creation. This plan for example. All their idea. I still didn’t really even appreciate why they wanted to get into the Commander’s office so bad. Didn’t need to, I guess. 

Reluctantly, I slipped my mind away from the warmth of their hand and concentrated on the wires again. In a fit of deft snips, I had the blue and red wires exposed. I could hotwire the lock to get the Commander’s office door open, but Eighty-Five would have to power down the alarm and take it from there. We’d only have a few moments before an alert got sent out to the Commander. 

“Ready?” I asked, keeping my voice soft and low.

“That was quick,” Eighty-Five replied, surprised. A pause. Then, “Are you sure you want to do this?” 

I paused, fingers holding the wires just two centimeters apart. I hadn’t thought about it yet. I glanced back and up at them, they glanced down at me with a worried frown on their face. Students at the school didn’t worry about much, so it felt strange to see their face twisted lie that. I felt the warmth on my shoulder. 

“I’m sure if you’re sure,” I said. Their face didn’t change, if anything the worry deepened, but they nodded.

“Ok,” 85 said, “Let’s do it.”

“3…2…1…” I brushed the wires together, enjoying the tiny crackle of sparks. The door hissed open and I felt Eighty-Five roll around me and pad into the office on light feet. 

I entered behind them in time to see them jam a data stick into a port on the backside of the door panel. Eighty-Five sank into the bulbous chair behind the broad steel desk. I glanced around, all steel everything, no frills, no pictures. Most of the instructors had a hint of personality in their offices, not the Commander. A dark red Kilkin Industries logo circling the back wall gave the only hint of personality. Well. He wasn’t exactly known for having a great sense of humor. My heartbeat quickened, which surprised me. I could work with high-voltages on tight timelines often, not much shook me up. I pictured the commander, a foot shorter than me and stocky, like most of the teachers. I pictured his face, stone I moved to keep watch at the door.  The hallway stood empty. 

The Commanders desktop interface appeared in midair between us, translucent so that I could read it backwards from the door. Processes appeared on the screen and flashed by in a sickening blur of keystrokes and colors. Eighty-Five danced through the Commander’s firewalls, scattering defenses like white light in a prism. I felt a little impressed, like I always do when Eighty-Five surprises me. 

“We’re ok,” they said. “Let’s see what the web has to offer.”

Their fingers flew, I watched the Kilkin logo fill the screen as the much anticipated Intergalactic Web loaded. Footsteps. Too soon. My head whipped back around and I glanced peered up the hall. The footsteps grew louder, louder, then receded. They’d passed the intersection. We had time. Even the Commander had to eat. I pictured him in the cafeteria, then pictured the student he gave an 8 correction in the cafeteria. Pictured the contortion of pain on their face and watched them drop to the floor in my mind. I shivered. The hall remained quiet. A little gasp came from the computer. I turned to face Eighty-Five and found them staring at the screen with their mouth in a little “o.” 

“What?” I asked. “What’d you find?” They glanced at me and shut their mouth.

“Listen to this,” they said. “ ‘Kilkin handcrafts each clone to innovate for your corporation at maximum efficiency. When AI just won’t cut it, smart companies call Kilkin. From software and systems architectures to planetary engineering, Kilkin Clones do the hard work better.’ We’re… clones.” They finished. “We’re… we’re…. made. To work.” 

They looked at me through the display, their face showed right next to a picture of some other… I forced myself to think of them as clone. To think of Eighty-Five as a clone. 

I shrugged.

“Good thing I’m good with stations,” I said.

“It doesn’t… Seven… doesn’t that…” Eighty-Five trailed off and her eyes widened. “Of course…” She pulled up new pages and flicked through them. I could tell I’d let them down somehow… kind of couldn’t put it together at the time. 

They read a little further, moving their lips rapidly as they went. “They breed us to feel less, to have less emotion. Creative, but… not as… mercurial as humans… Humans. The instructors are human. The Commander. Everyone but us, the students. And… look at these comments… humans… despise us.” A few more web pages flipped up and down. “Decades of… hatred and malice. Human unions. Clones murdered in workplaces.”

They glanced at me again, eyes wide in fear now. We were almost ready to graduate. 

“That’s… uhm… maximum gravity,” I said. “Heavy.” 

Their eyes narrowed at that, maybe they’d wanted more from me… I don’t know. 

Then their eyes sprang open wide and they shot up out of the chair like it had burned their asscheeks. I turned back to the door to find the Commander before me, stone-faced and brutal.

“Maximum gravity, indeed, Seven,” he said in a soft tone. In his hand, I saw the head of a correction stick. I couldn’t see the intensity, but I heard the little bastard humming. I swallowed hard.

Scene 2

“Step inside, Seven,” the Commander continued in that soft and dangerous voice. “Please be seated, Eighty-Five.” He gestured to the two steel chairs in front of his desk. 

Suddenly trembling, I went and took a seat. Eighty-Five settled in beside me.  They crossed their legs and glared at the Commander. Glared at him. I realized that I felt afraid of the pain and that shocked me enough to double my trembles. So. I sat their shaking like a light sail in a solar flare, while Eighty-five held it all together. Leaned back in the chair, legs crossed, glare set, questioning, demanding, ready for the pain, ready for the retribution. Remorseless. The Commander sat at his desk and tapped the corner. The display disappeared from between us. He leaned forward and steepled his fingers. A small, mean smile accompanied the glare he leveled first at me and then at Eighty-Five. He settled back on me. Of course. Because I looked terrified. 

Several things clicked further into place as I stared back at him. Hair. The instructors had hair. The Commander had short cropped black hair and each hair in its place. Same for his eyebrows and thin mustache. We had none. Not even eyebrows. I decided, suddenly, that if I ever had hair, it would not be like the Commander’s. Certainly not that important little mustache.

“Tell me what you’ve learned,” he said in a firm deep voice, staring into my eyes.

My mouth popped open to recite what I knew, but Eighty-Five’s hand shot up to halt me. I made a small sound and my mouth hung open, but I didn’t speak. My brain lit on fire at the conflicting commands. I felt my eyes widen, air couldn’t decide whether it should head into or out of my mouth. I glanced at Eighty-Five’s face out of the corner of my eye and caught the raise of their chin. They’d handle this. I shut my mouth. The Commander grinned and looked to Eighty-Five, waiting. 

“Kilkin made us,” Eighty-Five said. “Humans hate us, loathe us, and murder us. They treat us like… animals, out there. And you… You send us into that… that… meatgrinder… completely unprepared. I mean… how do you live with that?” The word “meatgrinder” new to us both and a little awkward in their mouth, but it got an eyebrow raise from the Commander. “We’re just numbers to you. Product experiments. ‘Seven-Seven-Seven-Eight-Five, low likelihood of acclimation, low likelihood of profitably, suggest discontinuing this experimental series.’ Am I to be the last of my kind, Commander? Am I not profitable enough for Kilkin?”

The Commander just stared at Eighty-Five as they spoke, grinning, patient. 

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes, what?!” they spat back.

“Yes, you’ll be the last of your kind,” he said. “Despite my best efforts,” 

Eighty-Five opened their mouth, then shut it again. 

“Explain,” they said. 

He leaned back in the chair, sighing. His face softened. He suddenly looked very tired. Used up. 

I relaxed. Somehow… miraculously… maybe… we weren’t going to be punished.

“Seven…” he nodded to me. “We can print a million Sevens and we’ll always make good margins on them with reputable companies. 80% of operational space stations have had a Kilkin clone on their staff at some point or another. Every one of those clones looks, acts, and thinks, just like your friend here.” Eighty-Five shot me a quick look, their expression didn’t change. I felt pitied. Which seemed silly, at the time. I get that now. The Commander paused, thoughtful as he chose his words. 

“But you Eighty-Five… we made you different. I’m sure you’ve noticed. You’re more disruptive than the others, more inquisitive, more… volatile.”

Eighty-Five stared at him, expectant. I could see their chest fluttering more than it should have. But their face remained calm. 

The Commander paused again, for longer this time.

“You wear contacts, don’t you?” Eighty-Five asked, abruptly. “AR displays and scanners. It helps you ID us. Visible to you. And they’re–” They paused, tilting their head slightly. 

“Yes,” the Commander said, smiling again, not warmly. “Very good. What else?”

“You can… track us… track our movements in the station,” Eighty-Five mused. “You knew we were here… You let us in.”

“Right again. Why?”

“You…” Eighty-Five trailed off. “It was a test.”

The Commander’s eye twinkled and the mean smile came back. An image swam up for me, from one of the earlier classes. We’d studied and practiced facial expressions… I guess since they made us to feel them less, we had to learn how to recognize the patterns. We learned anger, fear, and joy, the concrete ones, but we also learned some abstract ones. Like greed. The Commander looked like “Greed.” 

“We could have made a ridiculous amount of money on your model.” 

Eighty-Five’s back straightened. Their head cocked to the side just a hair. A similar look to the one they’d given me in the hall. Something didn’t add up.

“What… did you make me for?”

Their voice had a tremble of uncertainty. I felt another little treble of fear rise up, surprising me and making my palms sweat.

“What do you think, Eighty-Five?”

Their hands twisted in their lap and their head hung low. They didn’t say anything for a long time. The Commander waited, eager, but restrained.

“You made me for tasks… like this,” they said. “To… steal things. To… break… systems.”

“Very good,” the Commander said in a low-soft tone. “If it’s any consolation, we planned to market you to security departments. A tester, basically, of their work. Barring that, I’d hoped leadership might allow us to open a new line of business to less… well, let’s say a more creative customer base. But!” He slapped the desk with his open palm and we both jumped in our chairs. He didn’t notice. “No one wants it. No one wants you. Marketing gave up on it. Some horseshit about the ‘PR climate around clones’ being too hot. Sentiment’s very pro-human, anti-clone, right now. Can’t have a security cracking, lab-bred monstrosity on the loose. Not the right time…” 

He gave a short, sharp sigh and drifted off in thought. We both stared at him in silence. I glanced over at Eighty-Five, their hands sat in their lap, fists clenched. A jaw muscle worked up down on the side of their head and their eyes narrowed. Rage. My hands had stilled when they took the lead, but now I started shaking again. I didn’t like where this might lead.

The Commander sighed again, this time long and resigned, and stood up. 

“Well, we tried, didn’t we? The glorious experiment, my glorious formula… wasted…” he said. He clasped his hands behind his back and stepped around the desk to stand by Eighty-Five. “Eighty-Five, please stand.” 

Eighty-Five blinked a few times, their eyes darting around the bare office. I could see that their mind raced; plotting, planning, scheming. Breaking a system. It humbled me. They stood and faced the Commander.

It happened so fast. His hand flashed up, darting up toward for Eighty-Five’s long neck, but it had moved. The Commander’s eyes shot open wide as my friend’s forehead crunched into his nose. He collapsed to the floor, cursing softly. Eighty-Five stepped on his wrist, crushing down until his fist opened and the pen fell out. 

They stooped down to pluck it from the floor and showed it to me. It read “100.” I shivered. He meant to kill them. Maybe us. He groaned. Eighty-Five stared at me, a bit of pleading in their eyes, but they didn’t speak. Didn’t petition me. 

I stepped around them and looked down at the Commander. He glared up at me, blood streaming from his nose, and opened his mouth. I could kind of gather from his eyes that whatever would come out of his mouth would upset Eighty-Five, maybe even me. So, I pulled my leg back and kicked him in the head, firmly. He lay still after that.

I turned back to Eighty-Five. They smiled at me for a moment, then their face set back to determination. We had more to do, apparently.

“Where’s the nearest long range pod launch?” they asked.

I pictured the route in my head. 

I rattled off the directions, “We take the southeast corridor to the main, second right, second left, third right, end of the hall.” They blinked, taking all that in. It struck me that another piece of information would be helpful. “There’s a short range pod just down the hall.” 

“Ok, good, good,” they said, thoughtful. “We’ll need a long range, though, ultimately. Now, I believe this station has a gene sequencing lab. Where is it?”

I shut my eyes for a moment, picturing the schematics of the station, rolling through the halls, ducts, and service areas. The station featured rings within rings 

“It’s hidden from us,” Eighty-Five said, quietly. “probably beyond the Instructors ring.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s a large power draw… blank spot in the student schematics… toward the center, not far from here… between the office ring and their dorm ring… accessible only to high-level faculty…”

“Like the Commander?” they asked.

“Yes,” I said, opening my eyes. They had maneuvered the Commander to his back, legs bent so that his knees touched his backside. They stood on his feet, gave a grunt and a swift tug, and rolled the Commander up and across their shoulders.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked, feeling stupid and a little inadequate. 

“Special training,” Eighty-Five said, shrugging the Commander into a better position. “And I think I’m beginning to understand why.”

They looked at me for a long moment, holding the Commander of our space station across their shoulders. I nodded, thinking it might be expected. They nodded back and half turned to go. I took a half step to follow. They turned back to me abruptly, the Commander’s legs gave a little bounce. 

“Seven. You can run,” they said. “Run away now. Tell them I forced you into this. Because… I think it gets worse for you. Out there. You’re not made for… We’re not made the same. I don’t know if I can protect you.”

I stared at them for a moment. A space station has a rhythm to it, patterns that repeat, over and over, until they circle around and reconnect. I had decided long ago that life had patterns, too. Rhythms that connect and reconnect, logically. Suddenly it didn’t, and I felt fear again, sneaking up my spine. I glared at Eighty-Five, felt the anger chasing the fear away.

“No… I’ll go,” I said ,nodding to myself. “I’ll go with you. And I’ll take care of myself.”

They smiled. It felt right. And it felt good to feel so sure about something other than the wiring diagram for a space station. 

“I’m glad,” they said.

“We need to get off the station,” I said. To where, I didn’t know, but that seemed like an obvious first step, with the unconscious body of the Commander across Eighty-Five’s shoulders. “We need to get to that long-range shuttle.”

“And we will,” they said.

Their smile widened and they told me the plan. Fear crept back up my spine again. But I agreed to it, the fool that I was.

Scene 3

Eighty-Five stormed down the hall, clutching the Commander’s stout form across their shoulders, and I fell in behind them. The cool white lights of the station glinted on their smooth head. The Commander didn’t move, didn’t groan. He looked… stiff. A sinking feeling started to curdle in my stomach. I didn’t like the direction that sensation had gone, so I pushed the thoughts away. 

In a way, it seemed like we’d already survived the worst. I was, of course, a trusting being. I had trusted the Commander. I had trusted the Instructors. It created a structure around me, kind of like the station. A lot like the station. So I like structures. They fell away as we ran down the hallway. I thought that fear should have rushed in again as the structure of my life crumbled… but it didn’t. I felt a thrumming energy rattling my bones and lightening my steps. It felt strange to me. New. I hardly understood what to do with it and didn’t want to learn.

So, instead, I looked back on my life through and watched everything click into place. Why students and clones looked and acted so different. Why we were slow to experiment and quick to follow an order. Why we were discouraged from “excess personal contact,” why we didn’t have parents, or families. Why we didn’t seem to need them. It had been bred and conditioned out of us. So that we could produce profits without human fallibility of distraction. Perfectly numb. Almost.

I felt my mind reach for anger, but it fumbled with it. It’s a strange feeling to think how you should feel and try to feel it. Like trying to chew on something gelatinous. I kept trying to sink my teeth into the rage, but it kept sliding away from me. I let it alone again and settled for excitement. There was a large galaxy out beyond the Bowl, playing host to a million stranger worlds. We were going to see them. Together. I trusted Eighty-Five. 

We pulled up short, panting, at a round topped door with red trim. Off-limits to students, one of the doors leading to an inner ring of the station. I’d walked past it many times, and studied the inner rings of the station in my youth. I’d never thought about what actually went on inside. 

I knew the black pad mounted next to the door would need a face and handprint to allow entry, obviously not from a clone. Good thing we had the Commander with us. Good thing he was unconscious. I glanced at Eighty-Five, wondering how long they’d been planning this and whether I’d factored into their plans the whole time. Did they really need me? They gave a little heft to adjust the Commander’s weight on their back. He groaned and an immense wave of relief swept over me. I hadn’t killed him.

“Can you get his head in position?” Eighty-Five asked.

I stepped up and palmed the Commander’s head with my long fingers, pulling his head back and up. He moaned a bit more, but didn’t stir or resist. The density of his head, the dead weight of it, surprised me, and the oiliness of his hair made it slip in my hands. I tightened my grip while the scanner took a look at him. The sensor kicked on, beeped once, and a hand showed up on the screen. Gladly dropping his head back to Eighty-Five’s shoulder. I grabbed his stubby little hand in my slender ones and pressed it against the screen. Another little beep and the door whisked open. The next room had stark white paneling on all the walls, and hummed with the soft-low sounds of small machines at work. A fully functional laboratory for the experimentation and manufacture of cloning DNA. The machines that made me. 

At the end of the room another door led out.

“...Incubation,” Eighty-Five read aloud the label on the far door “Units 1 to 15.” Their voice had a choked quality. I glanced their way and saw the fierce stance, the hard look in their eyes. They’d gotten the hang of anger, it seemed. The door whisked closed again and Eighty-Five dropped the Commander without ceremony. He flopped to the ground before the door with a small groan.

Eighty-Five strode to a desk on one wall and tapped open the console. I looked around, taking in the far wall of chillers, the vials, and all the little centrifuges. I could hear the chiller fans whirring and wondered how much power the room drew from the main in a given week. With all the equipment, the exercise got more complicated than I expected and I got lost in it for a few moments. I paced over to the chillers and opened one to get a sense for how cold they got. 

“There. Seven,” Eighty-Five blurted, glancing at me. “Yes, perfect. You need to grab–”

The door to the outer-ring beeped. Both of our heads snapped around. It whisked open and an Instructor began to step through the door. I recognized her, of course, Ms. Green, one of the nastier ones, quick to make a painful correction and smile while doing it. She wore the customary gray instructors uniform and a tight bun. Her eyes drew down, mean and narrow. 

“What are you–” she began, taking a stride into the room, correction pen wielded before her. She tripped on the body of the Commander mid-sentence and cursed as she rolled to the ground. Eighty-Five took one step forward and gave her two sharp kicks, one to the gut and one to the head, then snatched the correction pen from Ms. Green’s hand. 

My friend stood over the Instructor, examining the pen, their head cocked to the side. Ms. Green moaned and clutched her head. Eighty-Five squatted down next to the woman and asked in a soft voice, “How does the DNA identifier in your lens work, Ms. Green?” She held the correction pen down where Ms. Green could see the number on it.

Ms. Green coughed, still clutching her head, then squeezed her eyes shut. 

“What are you doing, Eighty-Five? How do you think this will end?” she asked in a horse whisper. 

Eighty-Five turned the pen up a notch and cleared their throat. Ms. Green looked up. She laughed, once, garbled in her throat.

“You won’t,” she said. “You’re an emotionally incompetent automaton.”

Another notch.

“I’m different,” Eighty-Five said, quietly.

“No,” Ms. Green spat back. “You’re nothing. You’ll be decommissioned by the end of the day.”

Eighty-Five’s face contorted up in rage. I watched the word “decommissioned” roll back and forth across their lips. Slowly, their face untwisted itself and sank back to the flat expression we all wore everyday. Eighty-Five shrugged.

“You’re nothing to me as well,” they said, voice cold and flat. Then they turned the pen up three more notches and stretched it out toward Ms. Green’s neck.

The anger melted from Ms. Green’s face and her hands went out to the sides. Helpless.

“Wait, wait, wait…” she said, but Eighty-Five drew closer. “It’s moisture! Moisture from your breath.” Eighty-Five paused, glaring at the woman. “When you breathe the lenses read the DNA on the breath leaving your nose and mouth. They translate that to your ID number in our lenses.”

“I see,” Eighty-Five said, their look went distant for a moment, head tilting as they calculated and re-calculated. “... clever.”

A few moments passed, the now horrified Instructor looking up at the clone. 

“What now?” Ms. Green asked in a whisper. “Where does it end?” Eighty-Five came back down from their thoughts and noticed the Instructor again. With a blank expression, they pressed the pen to the Instructor’s neck. The woman’s mouth snapped open in a silent scream and her back slowly arched. Her legs torqued back until her feet almost touched her tight bun. A rasping noise escaped her constricting throat and I shuddered at her pain.

“Seven,” Eighty-Five said, tight and curt. I tore my eyes from Ms. Green and looked to them. “Grab ten of the vials from the top rack of chiller three.” 

I nodded and went to the chiller, ignoring the soft, choked noises still coming from Ms. Green. The chiller opened like a tall drawer, displaying rack after rack of liquid vials in a sublime 

To the Instructors and geneticists, a rack of promethean material to study and manipulate. At the time, I couldn’t have told you what it meant to me, but I shuddered from my spine out, without understanding why. I now that it… I think maybe it humbled me. I stood in the light of my own creation.

Shaking the sensation off, I pulled out a neat rack of vials. It held 12. I nearly put two back in the chiller, but decided having two extra wouldn’t hurt. A soft, slumping noise came from the door. I turned around to find Ms. Green in a crumpled heap, unmoving.

“Is she–” I started.

“No,” Eighty-Five said. “She will be. Someday. And so will we. But not today, I think. Let’s go. Quickly.” 

Holding the vials close to my chest with both hands, I stepped over the two still bodies and followed Eighty-Five out into the hallway. 

Scene 4

We moved away from the lab at a slower pace. Eighty-Five walked with an envious purpose in their gait. Their one piece suit swished to the rhythm of their confidence, towing me along. I lacked that surety. It occurred to me that I felt rather exposed walking the halls, having helped incapacitate an Instructor and the Commander of the school. Eighty-Five walked down the hall as if we hadn’t kicked the Commander in the head or used a correction pen on Ms. Green. As if we didn’t deserve, by their rules, to be decommissioned. As if we weren’t fugitives. As if, in fact, they ran the school, and anyone else survived on the whim of Eighty-Five’s tolerance.

“Uhm… Eighty-Five…” I started.

“What?” they said, without looking back.

“When you outlined the plan… you mentioned a distraction…” They didn’t respond, I tried to form a question. “Uhm… Aren’t we a little… I mean, should we really just be… walking around? With these?”

Eighty-Five threw me a grin, wicked, brief, and fierce, over their shoulder. 

“Better moving than waiting around to get caught,” they said. Then they stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and turned to face me. I pulled up short, nearly ramming all the vials into their chest 

“Whoa whoa whoaaa…” I cooed down at the vials, trying to steady them in the rack as they rattled.

“Last chance,” Eighty-Five said. “You can give me those samples, tell me what I need to know, and then sit down right here to wait for an Instructor. Tell them I conned you, that I dragged you into it, that you were terrified of me, they’ll believe  you. You won’t be decommissioned.”

I hesitated. I admit it. Of course, I was terrified of Eighty-Five. And of the outside world. Of not knowing our next step, the next pitfall. I hadn’t realized it, but an undeniable disquiet had built up. 

“You can’t get out without me,” I said, quietly. “I don’t think.”

“Watch me,” they said, showing a little teeth with their grin this time. “These instructors,” they sneered, “have no idea what we’re capable of. No idea at all.” They held out their hands, palms up. “But. If you’re scared… just have a seat, and wait to be collected.”

My hands and arms twitched. I found the vials curling closer to my chest. I looked down at them, surprised. Eighty-Five’s grin warmed into a smile. 

“Good,” they said. Then, “Follow.”

“But we’ll get caught!” I whisper-yelled, striding to keep up with them, vials rattling. “We can’t just walk around with these.”

“It’s a meal hour,” Eighty-Five said. “Didn’t you wonder why we hadn’t been seen already?”

Of course. Plans within the plan. Logistics within the schema. The subtle mind of Eighty-Five. 

“I thought we’d been lucky,” I said. “Can we just go straight to the shuttles then?”

“Of course not,” Eighty-Five said. “They’re guarded. We need to create some mayhem first. We need disorder in the Mess hall.” They trailed off, thinking again. 

“Or a bit of luck…” I didn’t say it to be clever, I just didn’t have much to contribute to this plan they were creating.

“Luck doesn’t happen to people,” Eighty-Five shot back, startling me. “Luck is created, hoarded, and disseminated. Luck is a resource and a craft.”

I nodded, though they didn’t look back, and pretended to understand and appreciate all that. Maybe I’d started to.

We’d gotten close to the Mess Hall, where meal packs got heated and distributed for students – clones – to enjoy during a leisure hour. Eighty-Five made a sharp turn and pulled me into a classroom. Same steel walls, a handful of tiny seats grouped around tables with little model space stations. I’d spent months here in my youth, beginning my education, learning and consuming what the Instructors put in front of me. The scent and feel of the room, the way the light caught those tiny stations… Even empty, the room hummed with the energy of exuberant little minds and their fits of celebration in discovery. 

“Seven,” Eighty-Five said, my gaze snapped away from the tables and back to their eyes. Their head had tilted just a bit, just enough so that I knew they had a puzzle to work out. “How to phrase this…” they muttered to themself. “Ok… Yes. Seven, what would cause the station to evacuate the Mess Hall… but not the entire station?”

“There are 27 scenarios where that would occur,” I rattled off, flipping through them in my mind’s eye. “Unless certain safety protocols malfunction, in which case there are 142 scenarios.”

“And how many of those would result in zero student fatalities?”

“Uhm…” That would never have appeared in the schema. “I don’t know.”

“Ok… That’s fine…” Eighty-Five said, frowning, thoughtful. My heart dipped, I’d disappointed them. “Ok… this one may be difficult for you… but… let’s try.” They shot me an encouraging smile and my heart soared. I nodded, a bit too eager. 

“How many of those 27 scenarios could you create in the space above the mess hall in under 90 seconds?”

“Oh…” I said. For a moment, a painful, evil, horrifying moment, my brain froze solid. It felt like a little spike shaped meteor had shot through my cranium and brought all cognitive load to a complete halt. I think I groaned. Eighty-Five bit their lip, watchful and worried. I could feel a mounting panic that I might disappoint them again. My eyes slid from their face and roamed the roomful of tiny space stations. I noticed a table where the students had pulled three very different space stations apart and reassembled them with parts from one another. I smiled. My mind wandered, and possibilities began to float into it. 

“Fire,” I said. “Fire would be the simplest. We could light a fire above the Mess hall, big enough, but not too big. It would trigger an evacuation. Even an organized evacuation would mean mayhem and disorder.”

I looked back to Eighty-Five and found them beaming. 

“Explain,” they said. I smiled back at them and rattled off what I knew.

“Fire containment protocols seek to minimize loss of life and loss of property on the ship. Allowing for reasonable efforts to preserve life in the immediate area, containment of the conflagration to only one portion of the station takes absolute priority.” I continued, still smiling. “In event of a fire, students are to remain still until the Instructors have exited the area, then await instructions. … oh.” The smile slid off my face. Once you hear the prejudice and malice in policies and systems, there’s really no going back. This one: Value of Instructors lives > Value of Clones’ lives cut deep. 

My hands tightened on the rack of vials. I hardly felt the sting as the sharp corners dug into my palms. Anger. It gets easier with practice. Eighty-Five’s face had clouded as well, but they nodded for me to continue. “Uhm… right… Fire containment protocols will lock blast doors and asphyxiate the conflagration.”

“So we need to start a fire, large enough to evacuate the Mess Hall, but small enough to allow the clones out. Can we use an oxygen line?”

“No!” I nearly shouted at them. “No no no. Much too large. That fire would… be very bad. Uhm.” I looked around the room, desperate for inspiration. Fuel for a fire. I looked at Eighty-Five again. 

“Ahhh…”  I said. “Our uniforms… that would do it.”

“They’re non-flammable,” Eighty-Five said.

“They’re flame retardant,” I corrected. “With the right application of voltage I could make enough smoke to trigger the alarms.”

“Ok…” Eighty-Five said, trailing off and sinking into thought again. “No other way… No other way, really. Ok. Now…. there’s a humidifier access above the Mess Hall, right?”

“Oh… uhm…” My mind had a moment’s whiplash from the sudden changes of topic. “Yes… I mean… no.” Their head cocked to the side a bit, but they didn’t interject. “Uhm… There is an access above the Mess, but there’s an intake just outside the eastward door.” 

“Perfect,” Eighty-Five said, smiling. “And I can open that by hand?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Perfect. Now, hand me those samples.”

Eighty-Five reached their hands back out for the vials. Again, I clutched them close to me.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“I think you know,” they said. I felt my face contract into a glare.

“Seven,” they said to me, voice soft. “I’m sorry… they were never coming with us.”

Tiny spikes pricked into my heart from every side.

“But…”

“No,” Eighty-Five said. “Give them to me.”

“No!” I retorted.

“Seven, if you don’t hand those vials to me right now, we’ll both be decommissioned–” They stopped, midstream, squeezing their eyes shut and giving their head a violent shake. “No. Murdered. We will be murdered. Executed. By the end of the day. We need them.” Eighty-Five took a tiny step closer to me and reached out to put their hand on my shoulder. “We’ll come back.” They said quietly. “We’ll come back for them. For all of them. All of us.”

I stared into their eyes, feeling the anger tickling at my brain on the heels of confusion. We stood like that for about half a minute. My breath and heartbeat quickened… then faded. Eighty-Five was right. I knew it. I saw their plan, walked through it, understood it. They stared at me, hand out, expectant. We both felt the ticking clock, the possibility that the door at their back could whisk open and expose us both. They moved their hand from my shoulder up to my face, cupping my jaw and the back of my head with their long fingers. My heart pounded in my chest, alternating beats for rage and glee, hope and pain. My chest hurt.

I held the rack of vials out toward them. They smiled and let their hand fall from my neck. They tucked the rack along one forearm. As they glanced down at the tingling glass their smile slid from their face.

“Where will I–” I started to ask.

“Enter and exit above the East door, I’ll have a fresh uniform waiting for you.” 

“ATTENTION ALL STATION PERSONNEL,” the station speakers blasted from all around us. I nearly leapt out of my skin. Eighty-Five startle a bit, but not as much as I had. “CODE 86 ON UNITS 77777 AND 77785. CODE 86 ON UNITS  77777 AND 77785. UNITS LOCATED IN EDUCATION ROOM 227.”

Eighty-Five’s face hardened. 

“We need to move,” they said, stepping to the door, “quickly. Are you ready?”

I nodded. They turned toward the door and it whisked open.

Scene 5

Eighty-Five jogged out of the room, vials tingling, and I followed right behind. My heart started pounding again and I tried to calm myself. I could see a junction of halls ahead and the ceiling panel that would get me into the guts of the station. Fifteen meters past the junction stood the south exit of the Mess Hall. I watched those doors, dreading that they’d whisk open.

We had time, probably. We dashed forward to the ceiling panel. I stared down the doors. They stood still. Eighty-Five shifted the vials into one hand, then took a knee and put out their other hand. 

Without breaking stride, I stepped on Eighty-Five’s knee and reached up to pop open the panel and slide it to the side. A gentle whoosh came from the doors ahead of me. My eyes snapped down to see two Instructors and we all paused, staring at one another. I didn’t recognize them, but I knew they could see who I was with their lenses, and I could see that they already had their correction pens out. 

My heart beat against my ribs in a few painful lurches. We all hung frozen for a moment, the Instructors didn’t approach, didn’t speak. They were afraid of us.

“Seven!” Eighty-Five said, voice stern. I glanced down at them. They smiled up at me, smiled wide. I couldn’t smile back. “GO!” They gave their knee a jostle, urging me on. 

I nodded once, then leapt up into the ceiling. I could feel Eighty-Five standing even before my weight flew off, giving me a little extra lift. I slid headfirst into the cramped, wire-lined tunnel above the hall. Curling around quickly, I reached across the gap for the ceiling panel.

I could already hear Eighty-Five’s footsteps padding down the hall, away from the Mess Hall. I heard the two Instructors pounding toward the access. I slid the panel halfway over the gap.

“Lock down the station!” an Instructor shouted, breathless as they ran toward me. I waited for a moment, to hear how they’d handle this.

“I’m trying!” another replied. “It won’t let me!” I grinned, realizing Eighty-Five must have done that from the Commander’s desk long ago. Schemes within schemes. The Instructors reached my panel and I still wore that grin as I slid back it in place. 

“Seven come down from there at once!” 

The ceiling panel clicked shut and locked in answer. It grew quiet, I could hear a shouted discussion beneath me, but muffled and muted. All around me, the station hummed a sweet song of crackling electric currents, trickling fluids, and spinning fans. A symphony. A heartbeat. The spaces between layers of the station all had dim red lighting and low oxygen levels. The endless hum of machinery kept the cramped tunnels hot, despite the closeness of the frigid outside the station. The thin hot air felt right to me, I felt at home.

I took a quick look around and found what I needed. With a little coaxing, I loosened enough wire to wrap up the latch of the ceiling panel latch, just in case. They’d have to choose between chasing me or Eighty-Five. I crawled down the tunnel without looking back. Knees and elbows digging into the metal grates beneath me, I passed quickly into the warren of paths above the Mess Hall. 

My heart had slowed, but perspiration still leapt out over the crown of my head and down my back as I went. I didn’t dwell on the sweat, it happened anytime you did work in the subsystems. The wires grew thicker as I crawled and after a minute or two in the quiet, I realized my mind had wandered. Would Eighty-Five be alright? Did they get away? Would they be ready at the East Entrance? How could they possibly know when I’d start the fire? How could this possibly work? It all suddenly seemed terribly ill-contrived and… I’d lost my bearings.

My eyes rolled a little at the realization, roving madly over the wires and connections around me. I screwed them shut and hunched over, concentrating, dragging up schematics in my head. I tried desperately to trace back my worming path through the subsystems. The heat and the confusion of the maze bore down on me. For the first time in my life, I felt out of place in the ship’s inner workings. Unwelcome. Sweat poured out of me now, drenching my uniform. My flame retardant uniform. Which I need to light on fire soon. 

“Oh no no no,” I muttered, suddenly, stupidly panicking. The suit would have lit up just the same and smoked just the same, damp or not, with the amount of juice I hoped to put through it. I didn’t think of that. I just started ripping it off me. Wriggling, maggot-like in the cramped tunnel.

As much time as I’d spent in the guts of the station, it had never occurred to me to get naked up there before. It took a lot of bumbling, bumping, and grunting to break free. The metal grate now dug directly into my skin and caused a surprising amount of pain. I compartmentalized this, as I’d been taught, and focused on the work. It's a neat trick they teach all the students, your pain matters less than the job. Unless the wound hinders the work, continue working and patch yourself up later. So, my mind cataloged all the myriad abrasions and bruises blossoming on my skin, but I didn’t stop working. 

Until I pressed my back against a coolant pipe. I had my arms out and was working the material over my hips when I rolled back and touched a freezer pipe to my spine. Immediate freezer burn, a long streak up my back of blinding pain. I cried out and fell forward panting until I could breathe, breathing until I could groan, and groaning until I could think.

I heard a click and hiss of a latch releasing near my head. My eyes shot up and watched the latch begin to turn. My torso rested on a ceiling panel. That someone had just started to open. 

I had to get off the panel. I didn’t have room to curl around to the side, but overhead I had more space. I could roll only backward. Over my fresh burn. Grimacing, I pushed up enough to curl my knees underneath my body, pooling my legs and guts into a tight coil of sinew. The metal grate took some skin off, but I ignored it. Then, steeling myself, I rolled over my back in a tight ball. The metal grate scraped my back mercilessly and blasted out a little exhale as pain laced up my back. I landed on my knees, clutching my bundled uniform to my chest. The ceiling panel hissed open and a crack of light appeared at its edge. I tore my eyes away and probed the dim mess of wires and pipes around me. Then I spotted it. Just to my right, through a narrow gap, between two boxy appliance units, I saw a wire node. The short column protruded down from the metal frame overhead and had a mess of live wires weaving in and out of it. We used them for troubleshooting and rerouting power in emergencies. 

I dove into the gap, right arm ahead, left arm trailing back with the uniform. 

“Seven!” an Instructor shouted from the ceiling access. “Is that you?”

Gary. Of course, it would be Gary. I froze. Of 100 hundred Instructors, only one ever allowed students to use his first name. Only one talked to us more casually than in direct orders or observations. Only one treated us like we could, someday, be equals. Only one. 

I jolted a little at his voice and bumped my back against the appliance behind me. It scorched my fresh burn again and I cried out in alarm. I snapped forward and leaned on the other appliance, it felt cool and relieving on my face. I stuck there for a moment in that narrow straight. I’d wasted too much time already. This couldn’t work. This never could have worked. 

“Seven,” Gary called. “What are you doing, my friend?”

Friend. 

Such a strange word. 

I felt a little tug on the uniform and tugged back instinctively. 

“What’s all this, buddy?” Gary called. “Did something happen with the uni? Is this… blood?”

I didn’t answer. I realized that my throat hurt from the effort of not crying. I clamped down on it and pushed the pain away. Pushed it down. Numbed myself. The work. I had a job to complete.

I started to inch forward, away from Gary and his access panel. The uniform caught behind me. I had just enough space to turn my head and look back. There was Gary. Two days of scruff of white speckled brown beard on his face and a kind, concerned look. He had a hand wrapped on the sleeve of the uniform. 

“Let go,” I said. “I have work to do.”

“Ok. I will in a moment. What kind of work are you doing?” he asked.

I didn’t have time. I knew I didn’t, but I didn’t want him to know. I’m not sure what made me realize that, but I thought Eighty-Five might be proud of it. I had enough space to cock my head down for a look. My body had little cuts and scrapes all over it. Bloody rips and tears covered my small clothes. An exposed bundle of wires ran past my waist, just within reach. Not the best option, but it would have to do. 

Making tiny adjustments to my grip and weight, I kept the uniform taut between us. I could feel heat from the unit behind me, my back wound pulsed with it. I shook my head and concentrated on the uniform. I tied the legs tight around the bundle of wires, then edged away toward the node. 

“Where you heading, Seven?” Gary called. “Other Instructors are on the way, you know.”

Good to know, I thought, inching out of the gap and taking a deep breath as I flexed my arms and fingers. I assessed the wire node and took a glance at the wiring. I found peace again, looking at the markings on the node. I got my bearings back. I knew where these wires came from and where they went again, but there were dozens. I needed three specific ones to finish my part of the job. 

“Seven?” Gary called. “You ready to come out? We can talk all this through. There won’t be trouble.”

I believed him, in part. Gary, for his part, didn’t want to see me decommissioned. Probably. The rest of the Instructors? And the Commander? Different feelings. I scanned the connections streaming around the node, calm and methodical, searching for the right wires.

There. I reached for them.

“We have Eighty-Five, you know,” Gary said. “And we’re sure they talked you into a lot of stuff you didn’t want to do.”

I froze with my fingers wrapped around the first wire. 

Scene 6

“It’s over, Seven,” Gary said. “Whatever this was… It’s done. Let’s go talk about it. Hot tea?”

My mind raced. I tried, very hard then, to think like Eighty-Five would think. 

First, would Gary lie? 

Humans seemed capable of that kind of thing in a way that my fellow students couldn’t fathom. 

I pictured him in front of his classroom, half perched on his desk. His face tended to rest in a small smile, and he answered questions with patience. I had never seen him use the correction pen. I had never heard him raise his voice. 

Still. Trusting, especially an Instructor, felt like a risk at this point. Eighty-Five had made trust a variable.

And what do we know about troubleshooting? Variables tend to change. They love change. They change. So.

Was Gary really on my side? Would he have said that if he were? It was a well-calculated statement aimed to disrupt me, aimed at my attachment to Eighty-Five. How much of that had Gary guessed at? Did he actually care? Had he ever? 

I glared down at the knot in my uniform legs, tied around the station’s piping. The knot held well in the wet fabric. Wet. I realized that I had soaked the leg of the uniform with my sweat. That could be a problem.

I heard another voice from below. Whispering, but not softly enough.

“- right now! Gary!”

“C’mon, Seven,” Gary called up, some of the patience slipping out of his tone. Some kind of edge crept into his voice. “We’re old friends. Let’s go talk about this.”

A pale new light peeled around the darker corners of my mind. Kindness… it played with emotions. Kindness as manipulation… my brows knitted together.

Even if it were true… if Eighty-Five had been caught… I was their only hope of escape. If I went with Gary now, it’d be over. 

What then? That answer seemed straightforward, at least.

They’d decommission me. Execute me. For sure.

So. That limited my options. See, look. Troubleshooting: works on space stations, works on people.

“Gary,” I said. 

“Yeah, Seven, what’s up?” he replied, as if I’d just come up behind him in the hallway and asked about a recent quiz question. So nice. So friendly.

“You’re going to want to let go of that uniform,” I said.

“Why’s that?” 

I pulled the wires out of the node, careful to keep their tips separated.

“Because it might get dangerous for you otherwise,” I said.

“Oh, I think I’m quite–” 

I touched the wires to one of the taut legs of the uniform. 

Blue sparks blasted through the cramped space, flashing up to prickle my arms and chest, even bouncing off my face. The reaction with the trace metals in our uniforms surprised me with its ferocity. I had smoke coming up almost immediately. The tingling charge played across my hands but never shocked me. I was careful not to touch the fabric. 

Gary, however, “got a good one.” As we say.

The shock zipped up his hands and slithered up to his skull and down his spine in about 1.87 painful seconds. He kind of scream-gurgle-lurched back out of the access. The shock made his hands crimp tight around the uniform, so as he fell back, he pulled on it. The leg tore, and Gary ripped the uniform right out from under me. I nearly got myself a good one as the empty legs whipped away and trailed out of sight. 

I heard him topple to the floor, then a few smaller bumps. The sparks had him twitching. Someone below started to shout at him.

“Gary! Gare! What did he do t-” 

FWUMP!

The soft sound of a spark finding oxygen. The tiny smoldering spot on the uniform leg had caught a whiff of that thicker atmosphere and blossomed. I felt a rush of warm air blast past me, up into the ship’s guts. Smoke followed close behind, crackling into my lungs and making me cough. I realized that my ears were ringing and an alarm had begun. More smoke filled the space. I needed to move. Fast.

Hoping that I hadn’t actually killed Gary, I crawled away from the smoke. The metal grates had free access to my raw knees now, and the pain mounted enough to almost distract me. The alarms buzzed below, and I knew where everyone would be.

Popping those three wires out of the central node had disabled the other doors in and out of the Mess Hall. All but one. The east door. I went east. 

I could still smell smoke and hear the alarm, now accompanied by the droll tones of the station itself giving directions. The station would put itself in a stage three emergency lockdown and cordon off the affected areas. Honestly, it should have had the fire contained in moments, but the complication of two Instructors involved might have bought us more time. I felt a wave of guilt about doing that to Gary and hoped again that he wasn’t too hurt.

Thinking about the lockdown got me wondering about Eighty-Five again, whether they’d gotten caught, hurt, or decommissioned. 

Or if they’d escaped. Just left. Could they have? Of course, they could do anything. They’d proven that already.

I slithered through the station, leaving a trail of tiny blood spots from my knees and elbows as my stark thoughts crumbled around me. My back throbbed. I heard a low murmuring of voices below and slowed down. I was over the Mess Hall now and closing in on the eastern door. Clones would be evacuated through there, after the Instructors, of course. 

They’d work to clear this ring of the station before the station addressed the fire. 

Not with water. Water is precious on the station. 

Void. Vacuum. Suffocation. That’s the stuff. Plenty of that right outside. Of course, the system takes into account personnel losses before it depressurizes. Still, the manuals never discussed what an acceptable loss would look like in an emergency situation.

As I wiggled past another central node, nearing the east door, my eyes latched on to something out of place. A pile of cloth that broke the straight lines of pipe, wire, and appliances all around me. I scurried to the heap with a rising heart and took up the fresh uniform with a full grin on my face. Eighty-Five hadn’t left me.

A ceiling panel lay beneath the uniform. I clutched the bundle to my chest and cranked open the ceiling access with my other hand. Cracking the door open just a hair to assess the situation.

Scene 7

An endless line of bald heads bobbed past below me, three across. I could see the back of the students' heads as they marched beneath me with quiet purpose. Their heights varied a bit with age, as did the crispness of their facial features. Most of those differences came with age. Sure, their skin tones varied by a few shades here and there, but they all looked alike. They all looked like me. They left the Mess Hall, following orders, unworried and unhurried. 

"Please proceed to the A-217 exit and continue to Ring Three," the station's serene voice emanated from the walls. "All is well. Use door A-217 to exit toward the student dormitories." 

"Keep moving!" someone shouted behind them, where I couldn't see. I recognized the voice of a burly older Instructor, Mr. Krasnik, who'd taught our introductory physics courses. Krasnik tended to grate against the station's helpful personality. 

POP. POP-POP. BOOM.

I heard the tiny explosions first, then the larger one. Pipes rattled and wires shook all around me. I heard a few calls and cries of surprise from the clones below. When I looked back down, the students had broken into a jog, still in an orderly fashion but faster. A low hum rumbled through the pipes and ducts around me. Emergency ventilation had kicked on. Next would be cordons and vacuum fail-safes. 

"Quickly, now!" the station chirped. "All is well! But move quickly now, students!" 

Standard language for emergencies… I caught the scents of smoke filling the crawlspaces above the station. 

"Failsafes are offline and the fire is spreading!" the station continued. "But all is well!"

Fail-safes offline caught my ear. We'd deviated from standard operations somehow. The whole station could burn or come apart without those fail-safes. 

The trickle of smoke around me thickened from wisps to strands. I shoved the fresh uniform over my nose and mouth and slowed my breath.

"Station!" barked Krasnik, coughing. "Report!"

I had to strain to hear the station's reply over the alarm sirens and the shuffling jog of the students below me.

"Fail-safes for conflagration prevention have been disabled," the station said in a calm, even tone meant only for Krasnik. "A large fire _____ gaining moment- _____ -stern quadrant _____ Hall."

My eyes watered and I felt the itch of smoke deep in my throat. I glanced back down the access and caught a flicker of orange in the distance. I didn't have much time.

"Who turned off the fail-safes?" Krasnik yelled. "How many casualties? And why can't I tell these damn students apart?"

"The Commander disabled fail-safes–" the station replied, but I missed the rest.

I saw the first signs of disorder below me. Heads bobbled past faster and faster; some lines had four heads instead of three. Shoulders were hunched. Even the clones could tell things had gone sideways. 

Half the school must have been at lunch when we started this fire. When I started this fire. And Eighty-Five had shut off essential fail-safe procedures. I ran through the scenarios in my head, wishing I knew which fail-safes had been turned off. The smoke burned my eyes, and I realized I'd started sweating again. The heat rose.

"-potential for a staggering loss of life." I heard the station finish its chat with Krasnik. All of them. I had to assume that all of the fail-safes had been turned off. Krasnik swore a few times. At least, the inflection and cadence sounded like swearing. It must have been his native tongue; I haven't heard the language since.

We needed to get off the station. Very quickly. I took a last deep breath through the uniform and held it, then began wriggling into the fresh uniform. Dropping down there in my ripped and bloody undergarments would bring some unwelcome attention, I was sure.

"Well, turn them back on!"

I didn't hear the station's reply but heard more of Krasnik's vehement cursing. A lower-grade officer couldn't override a superior's commands to the station, even to turn on fail-safes. Which meant that the entire station could burn. They'd probably want to address that in the next system update.

With a final wriggle, I cinched the uniform to my body. I looked down to check on it and felt a sudden surge of repulsion. No time for repulsion. I brushed it off, pried open the access panel, and dropped down into the throng. 

The lines of students peeled around me with some widened eyes but not even a squeak of surprise. They kept jogging past. I stepped out of the lines and looked back toward the wide-open east doorway. Krasnik stood on the other side, cursing at the station. He hadn't noticed me. 

Then. As I looked, his head snapped around my way. We locked eyes. Behind him, a cloud of smoke and flickers of orange brewed in the depths of the Mess Hall. In front of him, just out of his line of sight, Eighty-Five stood on my side of the doorway, grinning madly. The lines of clones took no notice of any of us as they jogged away from danger. 

Krasnik glared my way, squinted, and rubbed his eyes. He cursed some more under his breath.

"You!" he shouted. My chest pounded, but in the corner of my eye Eighty-Five pumped their palm to the floor, urging me to wait. To stay calm. "Keep moving!" He pointed a stubby finger down the line. Krasnik hadn't recognized me. Whatever Eighty-Five had done had worked. We were safe, anonymous. 

Eighty-Five, still grinning, peeled themself from the wall, shooing me on ahead of them. I nodded at Krasnik, took one more glance at the smoke and fire spreading in the mess hall, and hesitated. Eighty-Five reached me and touched my arm. 

"Let's go," they said in a low voice, "they might still figure it out." 

"Krasnik sounds confused," I said as we slipped into line. "Your plan worked? They can't tell us apart?"

"Muddled their lenses with the samples from the lab," Eighty-Five replied, their grin almost wicked with self-satisfaction. 

"Eighty-Five!" I heard Krasnik shout. "Stop where you are." The clones around us faltered, looking at one another. A few shot glances at Eighty-Five. Their eyes widened and I could see their mind working furiously. We kept moving with the line. "I SAID STOP! I see you!"

Eighty-Five cursed under their breath a few times. 

"Go," Eighty-Five hissed to me. "Run! To the long-range bay!" 

We ran.

"REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE! EIGHTY-FIVE!" Krasnik's voice had a guttural gravity to it now, lent by the smoke and the indignation of one whose home burned behind him.

Krasnik kept shouting, but his voice grew muffled as we sprinted up the side of the hall, putting several hundred identical bald heads between his rage and our escape. The hallway's graceful arc stretched ahead, cluttered with the three-abreast line of clones jogging in silent obedience. Emergencies brought out the most docile in us, it seemed. Most of us. I glanced at Eighty-Five.

"Why can they still pick you out?" I asked, my voice soft.

"I don't know," they replied. "I don't know..." They trailed off with a shake of their head. "Doesn't matter… we'll make it. I don't think they can pick you out, so we have that." 

Ahead, I started to hear the clipped calls of an Instructor. It sounded like Green. Krasnik fumbling along behind and Green ahead. 

"Students to the right," Green called. "Head back to your quarters. Classes are canceled for the afternoon. Clones to the right."

Classes were canceled. The station was literally on fire, and she, they, the Instructors… felt it essential to remind us that classes were canceled. My head spun for a moment.

"She'll see you," I said. "Recognize you."

"I know," Eighty-Five said. "I'm thinking."

We jogged in silence.

"No other way," Eighty-Five muttered. "Ok. You go with the students. Get to the long-range launch bay, take one, and disable the other shuttles. I'll distract Green, then hop in a short-range and meet you out there, dock mine to yours and we'll disappear into the galaxy."

I reflected, for a few paces, on the several thousand things that could go wrong with this plan. Then I reflected on how many things could have, should have, and did go wrong already. And how we'd carried on. 

"Ok," I said, "good luck."

They flashed me a smile, "Doubt we'll need it. Almost there." I felt a smile spring open on my own face.

Then we rounded the hallway enough to see Green standing in the middle of the curving hall. Her face had swelled and discolored and she held one hand to her ribs as she called out instructions to the clones. She stood just past a T-junction that led off to the right, toward the outer rings where the students slept, and the long-range shuttles waited for us. Her eyes scanned the crowd relentlessly, digging at each clone in turn, but hundreds jogged past. Calm and expressionless. Some of their uniforms had soot stains. 

I tried to face forward and ignore the Instructor, fighting to stay calm and expressionless. The sudden sense of calm came quite easily, though I could make out her face. She scanned the crowd, back and forth, back and forth, and then lit upon Eighty-Five. Her eyes shot open wide, and I could almost swear I saw her nostrils flare from 30 paces away. 

Her hand slipped down to her side. Maybe I saw fear there at first, but rage followed fast. Her eyes slid from Eighty-Five to me, jogging beside her. I realized that I'd slipped, that I'd made eye contact with her. Good students don't tend to make eye contact outside of direct conversation. Good clones run past anonymously. She saw Eighty-Five. She knew me. The clones streamed to the right, down the intersecting hallway. 

"Get behind me," Eighty-Five said in a low grumble. Their jaw had set a hard line, and I dropped back a pace, grateful. 

We closed in at jog, and Green was shouting at the station.

"It's Eighty-Five and Seven! They're here! They're HERE!"

Eighty-Five started screaming. A guttural, deep, angry, long, low scream that bounced with their steps. They sprinted ahead full-tilt toward Green. I started running, staying close behind but not too close. The line of clones flinched to the left, opening space for us and staring at us as we rushed past them. The bruised Instructor lowered herself into a crouch, hands held up and out, correction pen wielded before her, glowering at Eighty-Five. 

Eighty-Five sprinted right up to her, then checked their momentum at the last moment, just as Green lunged forward. Eighty-Five spun to our right, slipping past Green but swinging a long arm around to catch the Instructor in the back of the head. She stumbled, screeching, and Eighty-Five danced through the lines of clones. They popped out of the crowd, and their long legs took them down the arcing hallway in a flash. 

I dashed up behind her, angling for the inside gap, between Green and the hall corner. Green regained her feet as I flashed by. I planted my foot to make the turn and slapped a hand down to the smooth wall of the station, swinging my body around it. Green screeched in my ear and lunged forward. I felt a sharp pain on the back of my head but ignored it, turning the corner and sprinting past the line of clones. 

"Station! Seven is bleeding!" I heard behind me. "Seven has small lacerations on the back of his head! STATION!" 

I risked a look back and found Green tearing up the hallway behind me. 

Scene 8

"Attention Instructors: Seven and Eighty-Five have been sighted. Seven is approaching exit A-218 to the outer ring. Eighty-Five is–" 

The station cut off mid-sentence and began again. 

"Attention Instructors: Seven is the priority. Apprehend Seven immediately. Students proceed to your quarters. Do NOT aid or interact with Seven in any way, or you will be severely punished."

I could feel panic clamoring up my spine. The station had set itself against us; that felt ugly. Logical and inevitable, yes, but still ugly.

I'd never run like that in my life. I sprinted up the hallway, gliding along the wall and brushing past my peers. They contracted away from me in a wave, opening space as I went by and swelling back out as I passed like I carried some bizarre reverse-clone magnet. I felt contaminated.

The back of my head burned, and I thought I felt some drips of blood leaking down the back of my fresh uniform. 

Even as I sprinted and fought down the panic, my mind raced around the problem. 

We'd been separated again. And now Eighty-Five was no longer a priority. Which meant Eighty-Five was dead or gone. But… it was Eighty-Five. Their performance so far suggested that they were gone, jettisoned off-station, but in a short-range shuttle.

And the clones were on the run. 

And I was wanted. Hunted. Set apart from them.

And the station burned.

And the fail-safes stayed down.

And I knew I could 

And the long-range shuttle bay lay ahead.

It struck me that forty-eight hours before, none of it would have floated through my strangest nightmares, let alone my waking thoughts.

Another T-junction loomed ahead, and I slowed to match the pace of the clones. My longer legs had bought me time. I glanced back and didn't see Green. Still, she'd be close behind. The drove of students thumped around the corner to the right. To the left lay the long-range shuttles.

Through a momentary gap in the throng of bouncing heads, I saw three Instructors to the left of the intersection. They perched on the balls of their feet, telling the students to keep moving but watching the backs of their heads as they jogged past, searching for lacerations on their skin. They'd have correction pens at the ready. And no reason to hold back.

I jogged on, fighting the rising panic of the cornered animal. Everything closed in around me, and I snarled back at it. If I tried to dart through that intersection, all of it would end before it began.

They'd let Eighty-Five rot to death in the short-range shuttle. Leave my friend's body drift through the void, alone, forever. A spark of anger lit again, and my mind raced. What would Eighty-Five do? They'd create chaos to sow confusion, then slip away. Chaos and confusion.

It hit me. I grinned and looked around, finding a few clones my height. I didn't relish it, but I did it. I swept in close behind the nearest student who matched my shade and height and lashed out. They bounced up in stride as my nails streaked down, digging deep even as the student winced forward. I scored three deep lines down the back of their skull and wheeled back down the line. They never cried out, didn't even miss a stride, just kept sprinting up the hall. 

Jogging against the flow, I felt the horrified energy of the students as they melted away from me. I could see another disturbance back down the line. Green, bustling her way through the crowd, shouting in frustration. I thought I could hear some of Krasnik's foreign, colorful language further back. 

I rounded again to meld with the flow and thought for a moment. Confusion. Chaos. I needed more. I found my next target. Again, I snuck up and raked their head, then wheeled away. Again, they winced but ran on without a word. Perfect. 

I fell back in line and jogged toward the intersection with a new sense of purpose. It didn't end here. 

The intersection approached: ten meters, five meters. I could see the whites of the Instructors' wide eyes, fear and anger writ plain on snarling faces. 

Any second now… 

Any second… 

Had they missed my marked clones? 

"Stop! STOP THERE SEVEN!" I breathed for the first time in a minute.

Instructors dove into the crowd, scattering clones left and right. They charged down the hallway, bashing through the students and swimming away in a chorus of authoritative cries. I felt a part of me aching to snap to their commands and stop in place, but I fought it back, giving the ground and a good kick to sprint forward up the line. 

I skimmed up the left wall and rounded the corner on light feet. I didn't glance at the commotion behind me. I just swept up the hall, dashing in silence toward the long-range shuttle bay. 

"Attention instructors: Seven has been apprehen–" 

The station stopped in mid-sentence again. I ran on. 

Ahead, the hallway ended, opening up into the shuttle bay. I could see the massive glass paneled windows and a dozen long-range crafts arrayed on a turnstile beyond them. I knew I'd have to initiate a launch sequence from here, lock it in, and then get to the ship. A long run, but with most of the students and instructors behind me, I could make it. As the station moved through space, the light changed subtly. One of the shuttles caught a ray of nearby starlight and glinted at me. It looked fresh off the assembly line. Ready to sail off into the galaxy… I allowed myself a smile. 

"Attention Instructors: A non-conforming student is moving toward the long-range shuttle bay. APPREHEND THEM IMMEDIATELY." 

I heard a shriek of fury far behind me, down the hallway, then pounding footsteps. Sounded like Green still wanted her correction pen on my neck. 

Ahead, the launch bay lobby came into focus. One student, taller than me and more pale, stood at the control panel, back to me. The ceiling opened up high, and the walls fell away as I entered the lobby. The student didn't turn around as the slap of my feet on the floor echoed through the cavernous space. I decided that one student wouldn't stop me, not after all I'd been through. I would leave this station on that shuttle, no matter what I had to do to them.

"ATTENTION STAFF: Apprehend Student 77777 before any harm comes to the shuttles. Fail-safes remain inoperable. I repeat, fail-safes remain inoperable. The Mess Hall fire has spread to the outer rings of the station. Apprehend Seven immediately."

The student at the console picked their head up and turned to face me. They watched me sprint toward them for a moment… then stepped calmly back from the console. They turned and jogged away from the control panel, disappearing down an adjoining hall. I never learned why. 

BOOM.

The whole station shook with the force of the explosion. I stumbled for one step, then another, then tumbled to the ground in a tight ball, somersaulting twice. The burn on my back lit up painfully, making me grunt. I slapped the floor to pop back up and sprinted on. As I crossed the last few meters to the panel, my breath came in painful heaves.

I had to assume the station had started collapsing. If the fire had started inward, toward the energy cores… it would get worse. A lot worse. And fast.

Scene 9

“Staff and students proceed to the long-range shuttle bay,” the station said in a strained but even voice. “A Class One evacuation is now under way.”

Class One meant everybody. They’d abandon the station on long-range shuttles. 

My feet slapped the floor, slowing me just enough to slam into the control panel without cracking the screen. I started mashing the console. The adrenaline from the chase had my heart hammering and my hands shaking. The familiar workflows of the station helped calm me and blazed through the long-range shuttle launch sequence. 

Of course, the station threw me a few unnecessary blockers and diversionary screens, trying to stop or slow the launch, but I danced around it without much trouble. After a few moments, the engines sparked and began to warm. I glanced up to make sure that it had come to life and saw the dull blue light. Hope skipped in my chest. This might actually work. The shuttle needed time to warm up and get online before I could release it. Then one more click on the console to lock it in and I could race up and around to its dock, hop aboard, and take off. 

A progress bar popped up and inched forward. Five percent, ten percent… 

It felt slower than anything I’d ever seen. I looked back up the hall and saw two indistinct forms running toward me. Green huffing and puffing, followed by the hunched form of Krasnik. I slapped a few more buttons, diverting energy from the station to the shuttle's power core, then glared at the bar as it inched up. 22 percent. 25. 30. Faster, but still… 

I glanced back, both Instructors looked strained and furious. Green didn’t waste breath screaming at me anymore, but  I saw the cold light of murder in her eyes. I’d never seen that before, never felt that kind of rage land on me. Shaken, I looked back down at the console. 40 percent. I glanced at the window and noticed my reflection for the first time. My bald head, a bit smoke stained, a drop of my own blood just visible on the collar. Still, though, a Kilkin Clone. One in a thousand that year.

A new thought struck me. I started to do math. Simple addition at first. How much space did those shuttles have on them? Enough for the Class One evacuation? Almost enough? I glanced up at the ships, making estimates and calculations. It’d be tight… really, really tight without the shuttle I planned to steal. And the short-range shuttles may not sustain life long enough for rescue…

65 percent…

I looked back and saw Green, close enough to make out the bruises on her face again. Still sprinting and huffing. She looked unhinged. Scary. My blood got cold. 

BOOM.

The station shook hard, I snatched the control panel to steady myself, then started new calculations. Uglier ones. Time. How long would it take the rest of the shuttles to warm up? They had to go one by one, excruciatingly slow. And how long would it take the clones to get here? Would everyone make it off-station? 

80 percent warm. Eighty-five, my heart leapt at the number.

Another distant boom sounded, but the shuttle bay didn’t shake. My heart flipped over and landed in my gut. Something wasn’t right… Would anyone make it off-station?

Something grumbled at the back of my mind. Something I hated. Something I didn’t want to feel or look at or host in my mind. Something I couldn’t shake. Something so heavy that I nearly staggered at the weight of it. 

90 percent…

A simple image swam up in my mind. I saw the  launch bay lobby as if I were outside and looking back at a sea of familiar faces. They watched my shuttle leave… then watched the Instructors’ shuttle leave… then waited for their own shuttles to warm up, one by one. Waited as fire and flame crept closer. Waited as the station cracked apart around them, as the oxygen bled out.

98 percent…

Chaos. Confusion. 

My face, a thousand times over, staring out through the glass. Docile. Patient. Trusting.

My gut wrenched into an ugly knot and I nearly vomited. Green pounded through the hall behind me. 

“READY TO LAUNCH,” flashed on the screen. I slapped “OK.”

“LOCK-IN LAUNCH OR LAUNCH REMOTELY?” 

My hand hovered for a moment. A sudden sense of calm and acceptance slipped around me. I exhaled. The release felt incredible. 

I slapped, “Yes,” and jumped to a new screen. Outside the shuttle's thrusters kicked on and it piloted itself out into space.

BOOM.

The largest explosion yet shook the station. My rocked against the console and the lights flickered. I ignored it all. My ears were for Green’s footfalls behind me, echoing in the lobby now, closing in. My eyes and hands were for the screen. It would work. I still had time. If I didn’t miss a keystroke. If Green didn’t beat me to it.

I couldn’t override the fire fail-safes, but Eighty-Five might have left another way, if they’d forgotten it. I held onto hope and slapped the keys. Green’s footsteps grew louder, louder. I burrowed into the system, spiraling down through the commands to find what I needed. 

Green’s footsteps never slowed. The echoes faded as the slap of her feet closed in behind me. My mind kept trying to picture it: the stocky woman, consumed with her hatred and anger, charging at me with all the inevitability of a comet streaking through space toward an unsuspecting planet. I pushed the image away.

I slipped through the last few commands for the station, mashing the final “RUN PROTOCOL” button. 

Green screamed right behind me, feet pounding the floor.

Every light flashed out at once in the lobby, even the console. Darkness fell. Green squawked in surprise. The shuttle dock lights winked out and plunged us into the pitch black of deep space. 

I dove to my right and rolled, then heard a crunch and a scream as Green slammed into the control panel. Then came a soft thump and a low groan from her. 

Another set of footsteps padded into the launch bay, slow and cautious. Krasnik. I rolled to my back and propped myself up on my elbows, glaring into the darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I saw distant stars flickering beyond the windows and the fading thrusters of the launched long-range shuttle as it moved out into space. I thought I caught sight of something smaller chasing it away into the galaxy, but in the sea of stars I couldn’t tell for sure.

I counted down in my head, hoping beyond hope my plan had worked. 

Finally, I felt the shudder of the station taking its first new breath, then heard the subtle, whirring cacophony of a million subsystems reawakening.

Dim, white emergency lights flickered on across the floors, outlining Green’s still form where she’d collapsed beside the control panel. The panel itself sprang to life, casting sickly shards of light around as the cracked screen flickered. The light caught Krasnik, frozen in mid step. 

He looked at me, wide-eyed.

“Seven?” he whispered. “Seven, what have you done?”

We both heard a distant, hearty screech, then felt a violent shake in the station. No explosions though. Emergency life-support kicked on and the vents gave an extra blast of air. The compressors sounded a little more guttural than I’d have liked, but we’d put the station through a lot today. We all felt run down, I guess.

The main lights kicked back on. Green didn’t stir. 

“ATTENTION ALL STAFF AND STUDENTS: Cancel evacuation and return to your quarters. REPEAT: Cancel evacuation. All fires have been put out and repairs are underway.”

Krasnik let out his breath in a low whistle. He looked at me, then looked up at the empty long-range shuttle dock. He swore a few times. 

“STAFF: Seven remains at large. The shuttle bay is locked down. Apprehend them immediately.”

“Why?” he asked. “Christ, kid, WHY?” 

I thought on it for a moment, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. So I didn’t. I stared up at him, frozen for a second.

He shook his head, then scratched at it. I glanced at his other hand and saw his correction pen.

He stepped forward toward me. My eyes glanced around, looking for inspiration. The command panel screen flickered once more, then whited out. Green still hadn’t moved. 

Krasnik stood over me now. My heart pounded. 

With slow, deliberate motions, he leaned down and pressed the correction pen to my neck. I couldn't find it in me to flinch away.

Pain. Incredible, blinding white pain. It arced from my neck down to my heels to the roots of my teeth and lit my body aflame. I cried out, then my throat constricted. My heart slammed against my chest in a full-blooded panic, but I hardly noticed that. Every other nerve in my body seemed to pop, fester, and boil. Consciousness started to fade and I felt grateful for the blackness as it slipped around me.

Scene 10

I came to with no orientation in life or space. For a few sweet moments, I thought I was late for class. 

I sat up and saw my surroundings, which confused me further. Not my bunk, not my room. The stark white walls of a holding cell. One cot beneath me. One toilet in the corner. One door across the room from the cot with a tiny round porthole out to a steel-walled hallway. 

It surprised me. I stood and tried to remember why they'd incarcerated me. My legs hurt, my head ached, the world spun around me. My throat felt rough and ragged. I focused on the porthole to help steady me. The Commander's face stared in on me, grim and bruised but sporting that well-trimmed buzzcut and thin mustache.

Reality tumbled into place. Memories flooded in faster than I wanted them, and I collapsed back into the bed. My breath came short. Eighty-Five. The shuttle. The fire. I'd nearly destroyed the station. I'd almost destroyed everyone and everything I'd ever known. I'd helped Eighty-Five... helped them assault Instructors, pick apart the station's security systems, and escape certain death. I'd committed offenses that promised a quick execution. 

The cell door swished open, and the Commander stepped inside. He had a pair of manacles in his hand.

"We're going to go talk," he said in a quiet voice. "Do I need these?"

"Why didn't you decommission me?" The words jumped from my mouth before I thought them. "Why am I alive?"

A smile flashed across the Commander's lips and then disappeared. He nodded, hiding his face as he put away the grin. Then he leveled a stern look at me and stepped back, gesturing to the door. 

"We're going to discuss that. And your future."

"My future?"

He gestured to the door again. I stood up and concentrated on my legs to firm them up. I glanced at the Commander, at the faded bruise on his face. Then I walked out past him. 

"To the left," he said behind me. 

I turned left and walked down the hall. Maybe they'd saved my decommissioning as a more public example. It didn't scare me. I felt numb to the idea. After the quick catalog of my actions, I couldn't find a firm footing to disagree with them if that was what they intended. We passed a few narrow doorways with small portholes in them. More cells.

"On your right," the Commander said.

I glanced up the hallway, and it occurred to me to run. I hesitated for a split second as my foot rose and fell. The thought left as quickly as it had come. I'd caused enough damage for a lifetime. 

I turned into the room. Miss Green and Gary sat on one side of a long table, leaving an empty chair between them. Another empty chair waited across the table. A cup full of blue liquid sat in front of that lone seat. 

Green's bruises had faded to an upsetting greenish hue, but she looked pleasant compared to Gary. Burns streaked down his face and neck, continuing out of sight under his formal uniform. Green smiled at me, not warmly. Gary's face slipped into a slow scowl. Then he blinked and winced in pain as his skin stretched too quickly. His face reset and blinked in slow motion. They both watched as I entered the room. Before I could pull my eyes away from them, the Commander brushed in behind me with measured grace.  

"Sit there," the Commander said, sitting between the Instructors. I sat alone on the other side of the table, then rested my hands on my lap and waited, staring down at the table.

"Drink," said the Commander.

I looked at the glass of mystery liquid then up to the Commander. He stared back, stone-faced as ever. I looked back to the cup.

I had nowhere to run. No chaos and confusion to hide in. No options, really. I reached out, picked up the cup, and drained it in one long pull. Almost instantly, it eased the aches throughout my body and dulled the crinkling pain in my throat. I set the cup down. The Commander flashed me a grin. I felt a needle of rage but let it slide away.

"We've convened this small panel to determine whether Kilkin Unit 77777 is fit and ready for deployment."

I stared at them, speechless, trying to understand what he meant.

"Unit 77777," he continued, "if confronted with an airflow continuity issue in the central ventilation systems on a Class CX-8 or newer space station, where would you begin troubleshooting?"

My mouth opened, but my brain hadn't told it whether to ask a question or answer the Commander. 

Of course, I had a simple, textbook-perfect answer in my mind… but… why? Why bother?

“Uhm… I… I…”

The Commander leaned forward and gave me the slightest smile. 

"Just answer the question, Seven," he said softly, encouragingly.

"Uhm," I glanced at Green and Gary. She glared back, content in a vile kind of way. Gary blinked once, slowly, but didn't smile like he usually would've. "I would start at the power source, looking for fluctuations or deviations to determine its safety. Next…" 

I went on. I recited, word-perfect, the exact protocol needed to complete a full overhaul of the central air systems on a Class CX-8 or later space station. The Commander grinned, Green glared, and Gary kept a neutral expression. He put a lot of effort into conscientious blinking and his pink new skin kept glinting in the light, raw and inflamed. 

The Commander asked a handful of questions related to space station maintenance, upkeep, and repair. I gave thorough, substantiated answers in a monotone.

"Now," the Commander said, "I believe Instructor Sinkaid has a question for you."

I blinked at him. Who?

"Seven," Gary said, "we believe that you recently fell victim to a rogue student's misguided efforts to sabotage this facility. We believe that they coerced you into acting against the best interests of yourself and your fellow students. Is that correct?"

I stared at him, nonplussed again. Before I could respond, Green spoke. 

"Commander, I believe Seven worked in concert with Eighty-Five. I believe their actions were premeditated and executed with malice. In the course of their so-called 'escape,' they assaulted multiple Instructors, with near fatal consequences for some." She paused and glanced at Gary. The whole thing suddenly felt… scripted. Rehearsed. Badly acted. Green continued. "I believe this Unit has developed unintended and undesirable personality traits which make it a danger to society. I believe it should be decommissioned. Immediately." 

The needle of rage pricked my mind again, and I found myself glaring at Green. The Commander sat quite still and let us glare at each other.

"Seven," he said, after a moment, "explain."

Just that. "Explain." 

I shifted my glare to him, but he wore a pleasant smile. Once we had locked eyes, for the split hair of a second, he tipped his head a fraction of an inch toward Gary. I felt my eyes narrow in consternation.

I could choose to lie. The weight of that drifted down on me as I stared at the Commander and ignored the other two. My heart began to thump heavily in my chest and Eighty-Five drifted through my mind. I pictured their clever eyes and had an inkling of what they might do in my place. I forced down a smile. 

"Eighty-Five coerced me," I said. "They had a premeditated plan to leave the station on  a long-range shuttle, but they needed a second student to distract authorities. I did not want to help them, but they threatened to kill me, other students, or Instructors, if I failed to comply. When I saw that I had the opportunity to abandon them and save the station, I took it."

By the time I'd finished speaking, the Commander had a wide grin across his face, and Green looked like she might lunge across the table and strangle me. Gary stared at me. I'd never seen that cold and empty look in his eye before. 

"Well," the Commander said, "thank you for your testimony Seven. Please wait outside."

“Commander–” Green blurted, but the Commander held one hand up to stop her. He gestured toward the door with his other hand.

I stood and left without looking back, then stood in the hallway as the door whisked shut. Doubts cluttered my mind. I didn’t know for sure that it wasn’t a trap. Maybe by lying I’d actually failed some kind of test… maybe they’d kill me after all. I still found myself numb to the concept, as if I’d maxed out my ability to emote and had defaulted back to a neutral state. My pulse didn’t rise, my breath came in steady streams. I’d done what I’d done, what would happen next I couldn’t do much about.

The door whisked open. Gary emerged and stood before me. I caught a phrase from Green.

“This is completely unacceptable, Commander! That… animal tried to kill–” 

The door whisked shut behind Gary and muted Green’s voice back down to an angry buzz.

Gary stared at me for a moment. Seeing his burns up close I could almost trace how the fire had ravaged him. From a few feet away it had all looked pink. From here I could see the remnants of red, white, and black scar tissue creating pockmarks and pillocks across his once-smooth face. If that was the best the medical unit could do, then I really had almost killed him.

A surge of remorse curdled my insides. Guess I had some emotional capacity left after all. He started to go around me, but I stepped in front of him. He pulled up short and stared at me again.

"Uhm. I'm sorry," I said. “I never meant to… I didn’t want…” His face started to twist in a funny way, like regret and rage fought for control and both lost. Then he winced in pain, inhaled sharply and looked away. 

"You told me to let go, Seven," he said, toneless. "I should have listened. Now, I am." He started past me again, but I stepped in front. He looked past me this time, posture rigid, his stare a careful blank.

"Why did you defend me in there?" I asked, my mouth surprising my mind again.

His hand lifted up to touch his shrunken cheek. We stood in silence.

"Because,” he said, quietly, "you’re a clone. It gets worse for you out there. Much worse.” 

His eyes found mine for the last time. I had stopped breathing.

“I didn't want you to miss out."

Then turned and walked away in the opposite direction, a slight limp on his burned side. I watched him go until he disappeared around the curve of the hall. My vision grew dark and blurry. I took my first shuddering breath since he’d walked away.

The Commander barked something curt at Green, snapping me back to the moment. The door whisked open again. The stout iInstructor barreled past without a word or look for me. The Commander left after her and planted his feet before me.

"Congratulations, Seven," he said, his hands clasped behind his back. "Orpheus Corporation has a role ready for you. You'll be shipping out this afternoon. Report to the long-range shuttlebay."

I meant to say, "Yes, sir," but my mouth said, "Why, sir?"

I needed to hear something, anything, that wasn’t Gary’s promise of what the world held. The Commander’s smile didn't flicker.

"Orpheus heard that you saved our station from an imminent explosion and paid a premium to get their hands on you. Just about covered the cost of station repairs and raising you. And your… Eighty-Five's antics inspired a new line of education and deployment that we're all very excited to test out in the coming years." He leaned in. "You single-handedly turned an absolute disaster into one of the greatest opportunities Kilkin has seen in decades. The board can’t ignore that. They won’t cut me loose. Well done, son."

He reached out and squeezed my shoulder. Then he turned and walked away. I watched him stump down the hallway with a bounce in his step. I felt ashen inside. Hollow.

I walked to the long-range shuttle bay in silent contemplation. I didn't see a single student or Instructor on my way there. A shuttle had been warmed up and prepared for launch, coordinates set for an Orpheus Corp. manufacturing site one star over. 

I boarded the shuttle and strapped myself in. We launched and turned away from the station, pushing toward the station’s private subspace portal. A host of displays and navs that I didn't really understand flashed up in front of me. I cleared them all away, revealing the galaxy of stars beyond them. The last window showed a rear view of the station shrinking away behind us. 

I hesitated as it faded into the stars, then cleared the window and stared out at the billions of stars ahead. 

~ END OF PART ONE ~