“Rayla!” Sam Cottrell bumps my shoulder with his own as he passes me in the hall, and I make myself stop and give him a flirty smile, because that’s what I would normally do, and as far as he’s concerned, this is just another normal day.

“Hey Sam.” Along with my smile, I turn and walk backward, holding his gaze. “Your cap’s looking a little worn. Too bad you don’t know someone in the supply room who could hook you up with a new one.”

“There are new caps?” He stalks toward me with an almost predatory gleam in his eyes, but he’s harmless.

Well, according to my dad, all the prison guards are dangerous and off limits, but as far as dangerous, off-limits guards go, Sam is about as tame as they come.

“New shipment came in yesterday.” I flick the brim of his red-rimmed gray uniform cap and hold his gaze. “They’re mostly spoken for, but I might have set one aside for you.”

He steps forward, and when I resist the urge to step back, we’re only inches apart. “Well then I might sneak in before my next shift and take it off your hands.”

“You’re gonna have to wait until next week…” I tease as I turn and saunter off down the hall, fully aware that he’s watching me walk away. I’m not actually to him, but I am…curious. “As of ten minutes ago, I’m on vacation.”

Not that “vacation” means much for someone like me.

When I was a kid, I used to sit on my bed and watch from my window as shuttles and transports pulled through the nano-barrier into the Station Alpha docking bay, knowing that soon they’d take off again, bound for exciting places. Or maybe boring places.

Some, I knew, would only be traveling part of the way around Rhodon, their passengers reporting to work on one of the other guard stations, which, I’m told, are metal-and-polymer structures just like Station Alpha, only smaller. Not exactly a life-changing journey. Yet even those shuttles and the workers on them would be going somewhere I’d never been. Somewhere I would probably never go.

I’ve spent my entire life—all twenty Earth standard solar units—on Station Alpha, orbiting the prison planet Rhodon. For most of that time, I was restricted to the crew quarters.

I hold the distinction of being the only child ever born on an orbiting prison guard station, and technically, my presence here was illegal until I started officially working for Universal Authority when I came of age two years ago. Kids aren’t allowed on Rhodon, or on any of the four orbiting guard stations. Rhodon—the Devil’s Eye—is where criminals go to die, not where babies go to be born. There are about half a dozen regulations specifically forbidding that.

The women who work for Universal Authority are required to be fitted with a long-term prophylactic device for the entire duration of their assignment on Rhodon, and should a female employee get pregnant in spite of that—I hear it happens—she’s required to report her condition and either terminate the pregnancy or accept an immediate transfer to Universal Authority headquarters.

Yet somehow, here I am. An open secret on Station Alpha.

That matters a lot less now that I’m grown. Or so I thought until last month. Tired of inventorying and issuing supplies for a living, I went online to register for college; I need an education to qualify for a job good enough to get me off this hunk of metal and out from under my father’s thumb. But when I tried to fill out the application, an error message kept popping up, informing me that my citizen ID number was invalid.

According to the university, Rayla Elaine Shaw doesn’t exist.

When I tried to register to vote, to apply for a private shuttle pilot’s license, and to buy healthcare under my own name, I discovered that the university was right.

Despite the fact that I draw a salary from Universal Authority and that my own image appears in the mirror every time I step in front of it, without fail, I don’t appear to officially exist, anywhere in the galaxy.

Which can only mean one thing: my father is a big fat liar.

At the end of the administrative wing, I turn left and use my thumbprint to let myself through a secure door into the docking bay, and for a second, I can only stare around in awe. This has always been one of my favorite places on Station Alpha.

Overhead, a network of transparent polymer panels puts my bedroom window to shame as the station orbits to face Rhodon, and the crimson planet takes up most of the view. I grew up staring at that damn planet, but the sight is still stunning.

I wonder what it feels like to walk on the grass? I wonder what the trees smell like? I wonder—

“Rayla!” a familiar voice whispers, and I glance up, embarrassed to realize I’m still standing in front of the security door like an idiot. “Over here,” Kenny calls softly, and I turn to find him waiting for me in front of a small patrol shuttle.

My heart races, and I make myself walk calmly toward him, when what I really want to do is run over and dive into the shuttle, then duck down in my seat and hide until we’re off the station.

Nothing to see here. Rayla’s just come to stare longingly at the shuttles again, as if she’s ever actually going to leave this place.

“You sure about this?” Kenny asks as I casually pull open the passenger’s side door and sink into my seat. As if I sneak off of Station Alpha on a regular basis. As if my father—who’s also my boss—isn’t going to kill me for this.

“For the millionth time, yes.” I close the door, and Kenny sits next to me. “Are you sure?” He’s really the one taking all the risks.

Kenny shrugs. His eager gaze holds mine, and I can practically feel his excitement. “People pay good money to go see dangerous animals on safari.”

I roll my eyes at him. “First of all, they may be wild, but the inmates aren’t animals—animals don’t act in malice. Second, I am paying good money for this. I deposited the first half into your account an hour ago. You’ll get the rest when we get back, as promised.” I wish I could be as excited as he is, but the truth is that I’m terrified.

Kenny’s smile fades. “You know I’m not doing this for the money, Rayla.”

“I know.” He’s doing this because he’s had a thing for me since I was sixteen standard solar units old, even though sixteen is underage and way off limits for a grown ass man. Not that he ever acted on his attraction, because Kenny Daniels is a genuinely nice guy. “But this is a job, and you should get paid,” I insist. Because otherwise, I’m just taking advantage of some poor guy with a crush.

Some poor guy who’s an expert with a laser pistol and trained in hand-to-hand combat. Who’s uniquely suited to be my guide, my bodyguard, and my platonic companion as we trek through a very hostile environment.

“Okay then, let’s go.” Kenny seals the shuttle doors and rotates his hand over a ball hovering in a socket on the panel between us. As his hand moves, the shuttle begins to rotate on its landing pad until it’s facing the shimmering nano-barrier. Until we’re staring out at the velvety depth of space, dotted with light from distant solar systems I will likely never visit.

Heading toward us, and steadily growing in size, is a prison transport—the kind my dad calls a “heavy.” It’s probably the one carrying thirty-four male inmates, bound for zone sixteen. I sent their standard-issue supplies over to in-processing at the end of my shift.

Kenny checks several settings and gauges, while I watch the transport, then he presses a button. Our little shuttle rises to hover a couple of feet off the landing pad. Kenny takes the joystick and smoothly pushes it forward, and we glide toward the nano-barrier.

There’s no tangible sensation when we pass through it, yet my heart seems to leap into my throat, as if I’ve just plunged several stories in a broken elevator.

I’ve never left Station Alpha before.

As melodramatic as it may sound, as we head for the pyro-shield surrounding the planet, I can’t help thinking that my life will never be the same again.

“So, has anyone ever actually hit the shield?” I ask as the glimmering barrier grows closer. The pyro-shield is a transparent sphere of energy—like a big clear ball—with the bright red planet Rhodon nestled inside it.

“I’ve only seen that happen once,” Kenny says. “And it wasn’t prisoners trying to escape. It was a malfunction in a cargo shuttle. Something went wrong and the pilot lost control of the vehicle. It hit the pyro-shield and was disintegrated in one prolonged flash that started when the front of the ship hit the shield and didn’t stop until the momentum pushing the shuttle into the barrier weakened enough to leave the last third of it intact and just kind of floating out here.”

“Holy shit.” My palms sweat as I stare at the barrier growing larger and larger through the windshield. “I think I remember that.” Four years ago, the entire crew was really tense about some accident, and my father told me we’d lost a transport. But he never mentioned that it had hit the shield, and the wreckage hadn’t been visible from any of the windows in our quarters.

“Yeah. I volunteered for cleanup duty, because I have a little experience spacewalking.”

“Shit, were there…bodies?”

“No. The pilot and co-pilot were incinerated, but all the supplies from the part of the ship that didn’t burn up were just floating around out there, near Station Gamma. It was a total mess. At first, we tried to round them all up. But then we realized it was easier just to push them into the shield and let it incinerate them.”

“That’s a huge waste of resources.”

“Yeah, but rounding them up was a huge waste of labor that was needed elsewhere. Like, keeping the new inmates from taking over Station Alpha.”

“Fair point.”

The pyro-barrier technology was invented a couple hundred years ago, but the company that figured out how to form and sustain that barrier in the shape of a sphere revolutionized the penal industry. In the decades since the shield went up, no one has escaped from Rhodon, and there are now two other prison planets on the other side of the galaxy using the same technology.

“So, where’s the gate?”

“We’re headed right for it. There are four pillars marking the corners. The shuttle’s instruments can see it better than we can.” Kenny taps a screen built into the panel in front of us, where I see a clear dome representing the half of the shield we can see. In the center is a flashing rectangle.

As we approach the shield, the rectangle defined by those four pillars begins to shimmer extra hard. Then it disappears.

“Those pillars interrupt the field between them and make a window for us to go through. It’s automatic on our way in, because the patrol shuttle has clearance. But on our way out, we’ll have to ask Station Alpha to open it. That’s in case inmates ever manage to steal a shuttle and try to make it off the planet.”

Which means that even if no one figures out where we’ve spent our vacation days, everyone will know once we get back. But I’ve always known this secret would not keep. I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.

I could not care less about the consequences. About my consequences, anyway. Kenny knows this will get him fired. He’s doing it in part because he’s getting paid. In part because he likes me. And in part because he believes as strongly as I do that what my father did is wrong.

He’s the only person I’ve told.

We fly through the gate, and I forget to twist and watch it close behind us, because I’m staring at the surface of the planet like I’ve never seen it. It’s so…close. And it looks so real, without the shimmering barrier blurring its features.

“Your stuff’s in the back.” Kenny tosses his head to the side, and I twist in my seat to look into the small cargo area in the back of the shuttle, where patrol guards usually keep emergency gear and extra weapons secured in locked boxes built into the floor of the vehicle. In addition to the usual gear, Kenny has stowed a standard-issue prisoner’s backpack, which I stuffed with supplies from the warehouse.

“You should probably go ahead and change,” he adds.

I crawl into the back, where a brand new light gray prison uniform peeks out from beneath the supply pack. Fresh doubts surface as I change into it and fold my UA uniform. Disguising myself as an inmate seems dangerous. Yet I can’t exactly walk around looking like a civilian or a clerk from the Station Alpha supply room, and there’s no way I could pass for a guard, even if I put on the red-brimmed hat and wore a gun belt. I’m well aware of how young and inexperienced I look.

The only role I’m going to be able to pull off is “brand new prisoner.”

Kenny glances at me as I climb back into my seat, the supply pack on my lap. “That is so weird,” he says as his gaze roams my shapeless gray top and pants. “Oh, take out the ponytail. We don’t issue rubber bands.”

Which I should know, considering where I work. I pull the rubber band from my hair and stuff it into my pocket, then I dig in the supply pack, in search of something else a real prisoner would not have been issued. Something I will very much need. “I guess it’s a little late to be asking this, but are you sure this shuttle’s safe? They finished fixing it before you stole it from the repair bay, right?”

Kenny scowls at me. “I didn’t steal it. I borrowed it. And yes, it’s fixed. I just changed the date on the return-to-stock slip. If we get it back within a week, we can return it and the system will ship it back to the patrol unit automatically. No one will have any idea it wasn’t in the repair bay the whole time.”

Finally, my fingers close over the roll of medical tape, and I pull it from the pack. “So, where do people think you’re spending your vacation?”

“Officially, I’m on my way to meet my new niece, on my homeworld. What about you?”

I give him a look as I begin to peel back the tape, and he flinches.

“Sorry. I forgot.”

I’m not allowed to leave Station Alpha, so as far as anyone else knows, I’m spending this week of vacation days just like I spent the last one. Alone in the crew quarters, splitting my time between the gym and the recreational facilities. Eventually someone will notice that I’m not showing up for my racquetball reservation or doing my pool laps. Not that it matters.

There was never any chance for my “vacation” to go unnoticed.

“When does your dad get back?”

“Not for eight more days.” I begin winding the tape around my right wrist, working my way up my palm and around my hand. “Unless someone tells him his daughter has gone missing. How close are we?”

“Close.” Kenny adjusts a couple of settings, then rotates the joystick toward the right. “See that wall up there?” He nods toward the windshield, and I look up to see a long metal wall stretching across the rusty landscape, glinting in the sunlight. “That’s the boundary of zone four.”

My destination for the next week.

“There are two settlements in that zone, and I’m going to put us down as far from either of them as I can.”

“Won’t that just mean we have to walk farther?”

“Yes. But it cuts down on the chance of anyone actually seeing us landing. If we expect to find our shuttle intact for our return, that’s vital.”

“Seven days.” I’m mumbling as I rip my strip of tape free from the roll and shove the roll back into my bag, but Kenny seems to understand just fine. “We have seven days to accomplish my mission, then make it back to the shuttle.” After that, if we don’t show up to work, people will notice we’re missing and start looking into our disappearances.

Kenny will be fired either way. I might be fired too, and I could not care less.

“You sure you’re okay with this? With losing your job?”

Kenny snorts. “I hate this job. Half my friends died at the Resort a couple of months ago, but that’s not even why I hate it. This job makes me feel dirty. I’m going back to school, and I’m going to finish this time. You’re helping me make that happen.”

With my life savings, half of which I’ve already deposited into his account.

“Good for you.” I guess neither of us will be the same after this week.

“Okay, right over there.” Kenny points through the windshield. “That’s where I’m going to put us down.”

“I don’t see anything.”

“Exactly. No prisoners. No buildings. I’m going to park this thing as close to that patch of woods as I can get, then we’ll cover it with—”

An alarm screeches through the shuttle, reverberating in my head. I slap my hands over my ears, glancing around with wide eyes at all the blinking displays. “What’s wrong?” I shout, but Kenny can’t hear me. Or he’s too busy trying to figure out the problem to answer me.

“We’ve lost the engine. Fuck!”

For a second, I can’t process what he’s saying. How could we lose the engine?

“Did you take the wrong shuttle? Was this one not fixed?”

“It has nothing to do with the repair. The shuttle was in to have its circulation and climate control fixed. This is a whole new disaster.” He grabs the joystick and braces his feet against the floor. “Hold on. It’s going to be a rough landing.”

“Shit! How can I help?”

“You can’t. Get in the back. Behind your chair. Use it like a shield.”

I climb between the seats into the cargo space, and I’m already ducking behind my chair by the time it occurs to me to ask what it’s shielding me from. But when I peek out to ask, the sight through the windshield steals the breath from my lungs and the words from my tongue.

Trees. Racing toward us.

We’re not going to make it past that patch of forest.

“Rayla, duck!” Kenny shouts.

I cower behind the chair just as something smacks the underside of the shuttle, throwing it into the air again. I cling to the back of the seat in front of me as I’m lifted from the floor, then slammed back down.

The shuttle falls again, still barreling forward, and something scrapes against the floor with the screech of tearing metal. Daylight appears through a hole in the floor, inches from my left knee.

I scream as we hurtle toward the ground, shearing the tops off trees as we fall. Then the nose of the shuttle slams into the ground, and I fly forward, plastered against the back of my seat as glass shatters and something races past my head.

A tree branch slaps my face. A broken limb pokes my side. And suddenly the shuttle goes still.

For several seconds, I remain frozen, huddled on the floor behind my chair. Beneath a tree limb that was mostly stripped of bright red leaves when it speared the windshield, then pierced the headrest where my head would have been, if Kenny hadn’t told me to get in the back.

“Kenny!” I crawl out from under the limb and peer around it to see that we’re on the ground, the nose of the shuttle crumpled and half-buried in rust-colored dirt. Against the base of a huge tree. “Kenny?” I push aside a broken branch, and my hand comes away sticky with blood. “No…”

Kenny’s slumped forward in his chair, his arms hanging limp against the panel. I pull him back by his shoulder, so that he’s sitting up in his seat again, but his eyes are open and staring at nothing. There’s a huge gash on his forehead, stretching back into his skull.

I have no idea where his cap went.

“No, no, no…” He was one week from getting out of this place. From leaving Rhodon and its violent criminals and corrupt corporate board behind. From going back to school and making something of himself.

And I got him killed.

Tears fill my eyes as I climb over the limb, squishing myself between it and the door on my side of the shuttle. Kenny was an actual nice guy. And he’s gone, while I have nothing more than a couple of scratches on my arm.

I shove my door open and step out onto the ground, and that’s when the true depth of my predicament hits me.

I’m alone. On a prison planet. And with the shuttle wrecked, I have no way to get off the surface of Devil’s Eye.