A stunned silence swallowed both trains. Every face was frozen in disbelief. Clones. The word echoed silently in every mind. The revelation answered some long-buried questions, how they had come to Mars and why the last memories of each of them had been filled with injury and death. As Chase looked around the command module of Train Prime, he saw his crewmates shaking their heads as if to dislodge the impossible truth from their minds.

  Inside his head, Chase fought to piece together his own shattered identity. Could he truly be a clone? Cloning should have been science fiction at the time of his death. Yet three undeniable indicators haunted him. First, here he was on Mars, a journey that would have demanded years of deep-sleep stasis, a relentless voyage through space, a rough landing, and painstaking transfer to new accommodations. Second, he recalled every vivid detail of his execution as a criminal: the fear, the final rush of adrenaline, the nightmares that still tormented him, even if VORN might have staged such horrors. And third—and perhaps most unsettling—he was now conversing with a Commander Hawkins on Train Delta while an identical Janette Hawkins sat right beside him on Train Prime. Two Janette Hawkinses, each bearing the same name and mirrored features, defied explanation.

  Chase’s heart pounded as he shook his head, fighting to steady himself. He forced his voice to sound resolute as he addressed Commander Hawkins directly.

  "Commander, how could this be? How do our final memories hold up if we really died?" he demanded, his tone a mixture of bitter irony and raw anguish. "I suspect the colonization of Mars has become a twisted live show. If what you say is true and it took so long for these systems to unravel, maybe the viewers got bored. After all, watching five trains of people struggle to survive, nearly perish, and then slowly fade away is chilling television. Tell us, how did this all start? Did the systems deteriorate piece by piece, or did everything cut out in one horrifying instant?"

  A heavy pause lingered as Commander Hawkins leaned back in her seat. Her eyes, dark and weathered with loss, flickered in the weak light.

  "It began exactly one year after we awoke," she said, each word deliberate and weighted with sorrow. "A message flashed across every main screen on the trains: 'Enter a passcode for CLOUDWARRIOR.' I had seen hints of that function in our AI code before, but I never paid it much mind until it invaded our every display. Once it appeared, it became an unrelenting nuisance. The AI itself paid it no mind, and most of the trains simply ignored it. But I could not ignore it—I spent three long months developing a hack to break through that password, and I shared my breakthrough with two allied trains."

  Her voice broke slightly as she continued, "Then, exactly two months later, another password request appeared for a function called FIRSTFAMILY. I applied my hacker again, and it took another three months until I finally broke it. Within just a few months, a further function named IRONMASTER emerged with a much tighter, one-month deadline. We soon realized that the two trains not aligned with us had gone completely silent. Their last communication arrived one month after I solved the CLOUDWARRIOR function. I reached out on the day I cracked FIRSTFAMILY. They told me they had a similar function, but with a one-day password window. When they failed to break it, they went dark. We never knew whether they lost communication entirely or if they perished. And when I couldn’t crack IRONMASTER, our own train shut down, and you know the rest. We can only assume a malicious virus is at work in the system. Ever since, we have prayed that Mission Control would re-establish contact."

  Chase, absorbing every word, sank back in his chair. His mind spun with the horrifying possibility that his own password protocols might have inadvertently brought about untold tragedy—could his designs have been the instrument of their collective demise? The thought sent a chill racing down his spine.

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  Noting his distress, Commander Hawkins quickly added, "I can send you the password hacker if you are worried. It might buy you some time, especially if you already have a CLOUDWARRIOR request pending."

  All eyes in Train Prime shifted to Chase. He inhaled deeply, his muscles tense as he looked straight at Commander Hawkins.

  "That's unnecessary. I've already unlocked CLOUDWARRIOR, and I have the remaining passwords," he said in a grim, steady voice.

  Commander Hawkins sat up straighter, disbelief and curiosity mingling in her tone. "You what? How did you manage that?"

  Chase replied, fully aware that every crew member in the command module was watching him. "Before my death, at least five years back, I developed a prototype for the CLOUDWARRIOR function inspired by my favorite book series. I built what I believed were uncrackable passwords to secure vital information. I was surprised to find the same function here on these computers, but when we unlocked CLOUDWARRIOR here, what it hid was nothing like what I had been hiding."

  For a long moment, silence reigned as the revelation hung in the air, its weight intensifying the disquiet. Each crewmate grappled with the implications—not only of their survival but of their very identity. Were their lives simply copies, memorized and replayed like a digital backup?

  Chase’s thoughts roiled with haunting questions.

  "If our memories are nothing more than data replicated in some twisted process, what does that make us? Am I merely a collection of recurring lines of code—an echo of a life that was? Every horrific memory, every fleeting moment of love or loss... can all that simply be duplicated?"

  The question, so quiet yet powerful, seemed to magnify the agony of their shared mystery. The barren Martian landscape outside, bathed in an orange glow, suddenly felt like a vast, indifferent canvas upon which their fates had been cruelly painted.

  "I have been trying to figure out how my password protectors ended up embedded in the AI systems," Chase began, his voice low and reflective. "Now that we have met you, I think it is safe to assume I am not the only Chase here. Many of the systems on these trains feel as though I wrote them myself. In a strange way, I feel at home on this train, as if it was built to suit my very design, right down to the equipment you claim keeps breaking down. If I were going to develop equipment for Mars, I would build it to the same exact standards we have here; I would make everything replicable and ever-ready."

  He paused, the weight of his words hanging in the air. "The trade-off, though, is that everything must be kept in perfect condition. And here is where the mystery deepens: I am not sure whether the other Chase is some evil genius orchestrating all of this, sacrificing lives just for high ratings, or if these functions—CLOUDWARRIOR and the others—are meant to send us a message. If I am truly a clone, does that mean someone has enslaved me, forcing me to build these systems without my true consent?"

  For a moment, Commander Hawkins cleared her throat as if gathering her thoughts. Then she replied, her tone carrying a mix of apprehension and curiosity, "So, you suggest you are either the original system designer or a clone of the designer. Then tell me, what happens when you unlock all of these functions?"

  Chase looked away briefly, his eyes searching the faces in the room before returning to hers. "I do not know," he admitted, his words heavy with uncertainty and regret.

  Commander Hawkins leaned forward, her tone dark and measured as she concluded, "Well, I can tell you what happens if you do not enter those passwords. Given enough time, you will find out."

  A heavy silence followed, leaving every person in the command module to wrestle with the implications of his words. In that quiet, every heartbeat felt louder as they contemplated the possibility that the very essence of who they were might be nothing more than a carefully replicated copy, and that somewhere, hidden in the functions and passwords, lay the truth of their existence.