Kaya glares at me as I set her down in the woods, and I don’t realize that the sun is starting to come up until I notice how clearly I can see her hatred. “Kaya…”

“Don’t talk to me.” She turns her back on me and limps over to a fallen log, but instead of sitting, she turns abruptly, pointing one finger at me, her eyes flashing fiercely. “I’ve done everything I can for you. For your sister. I gave you everything you asked for in the greenroom. Food. Soap. Towels. Anything to make your life in the bullpen more bearable. I studied Sylvie’s opponents myself and advised the committee on who to put up against her, to give her the best possible shot at survival. I let her keep a one-piece combat outfit, because I knew it would be hard for the men to get off her, if they attacked her again. And I didn’t turn you in when I saw you in the hall, on the yacht. I let you crash the damn ship to keep from getting you in trouble because I foolishly thought you wouldn’t do that to me. That you wouldn’t get me fired or arrested, because deep down, you actually gave a shit about me, beyond what I could do for you.

“And just now, I left you out of my message. I didn’t tell anyone that you kidnapped me, because I don’t want them to hurt you. All I want is off this damn planet. And you can’t even give me that. You can’t even let me save myself!”

“I’m sorry. You’re right.” I know that what I’m doing to Kaya is wrong. But I’m going to do it anyway, because my sister’s life sentence is more wrong. “If you’ll just be patient with me, I will get you off this planet. I’ll drop you somewhere safe, before Sylvie, Graham, and I disappear. I’ll make sure everyone knows you had nothing to do with the ship going down, or with my demands. Just…please give me a little more time.”

“No!” Her wide-eyed incredulity breaks my heart. She can’t understand why I’m doing this to her. Why I would put her through this trauma. “Sebastian, an apology is just words, if you don’t have the honor to do what’s right. It’s not up to you to decide when I leave this planet. It’s not okay for you to put me in danger to save your sister. I know you feel guilty for her being here, but she’s not the only one suffering right now! I’m here too. Because of you! And you can’t just spread my legs and start licking to make that better!”

“I mean…I could try.” But my grin doesn’t amuse her.

Kaya opens her mouth to start yelling at me again, then her gaze snaps up. She limps to the left, searching for a better view of the sky through the foliage, and suddenly I hear it. An engine.

It’s a rescue shuttle. They’ve come for her.

She looks at me. Then she glances at the sky again, and when her gaze returns to me, it holds the weight of a thousand things left unsaid. Of fear, and compassion, and determination. “Please. Sebastian, please let me go.”

I exhale. “Go.”

“Just like that?” She looks suspicious.

I nod. “If you can’t stand it here with me for a couple more days… If you can’t find it in your heart to do one more good thing for Sylvie—a woman who gave up everything she ever had to avenge our sister’s murder—then go.”

She steps toward the tree line, and I can practically hear her pulse racing. Her mind whirring.

“If you can live with yourself when you’re taking hot showers and eating fresh food, while we’re down here fighting monsters in the dirt for every bite we take, then go.”

“You’re an asshole,” she breathes. And coming from her, the rare expletive actually stings.

“I know. But you’re not. That’s why I don’t think you’ll go.”

Frustration explodes from her throat in an inarticulate cry as, between the trees, we see the shuttle land. Four men get out, dressed in riot gear. Carrying laser rifles. Two stand guard, scanning the landscape for threats, while the other two head into the building we’ve just vacated, the rising sun glinting off their gear.

Kaya shifts her weight from one foot to the other. She twists the ring on one finger; it’s not an engagement ring. She can obviously feel the clock ticking. Her chance to be rescued is rapidly expiring.

A minute and a half later, the men emerge from the building. They stop to give the corpses by the door a cursory examination, then they say something I can’t hear to the guards standing watch.

I want to assure Kaya that I won’t hate her if she runs across the field, shouting for help. If she gets on that shuttle and leaves Sylvie and me far behind. I don’t think I could ever hate her.

But I’m afraid that if I say anything—if I move a single muscle—I’ll startle her into motion. I’ll basically be pushing her away and screwing my sister out of a chance for a real life. For safety and security.

“I can’t do it.” Kaya turns to me as the guards get into their shuttle. She grabs a double handful of my shirt and sobs into the material. “I can’t leave you three here, if I can possibly help get you off-world.” Yet she’s still crying into my shirt. Soaking my shoulder.

I wrap my arms around her as the shuttle takes off. Kaya cries harder when she hears the engine rising into the air. Her back heaves. She’s choking on sobs. And that’s when it finally occurs to me that if I’d just asked for her help, rather than kidnapping her, she might have come with me willingly. She might have helped me, rather than hindering my every effort.

If I hadn’t taken the choice away from her.

I’m no better than David. I don’t deserve her help.

I have to be better. As of this moment, I owe Kaya everything.

“Hey.” I squeeze her, suddenly grateful for the feel of her body pressed against mine, even if she’s still crying. Still devastated by the choice—the sacrifice—she just made for me. “Hey. Kaya. I’m so sorry.”

“Me too.” She steps out of my embrace and wipes tears from her face with both hands, leaving smears of makeup beneath her eyes. “I hate this place. I’m not meant for this place. But I can’t just leave you here.”

I take her by both shoulders. “Thank you.”

She shakes her head. “Don’t—”

“No, Kaya. Thank you.” I lean down and kiss her. Gently. Briefly. As much because I can’t not kiss her in this moment as because I want her to feel better.

After a second, she kisses me back.

I don’t know what this is between us, other than impossible. And quite possibly self-destructive. I’m setting myself up for some serious pain, when I have to let her go. And I will have to let her go. But for now…

Kaya breaks off the kiss looking kind of dazed, her lips shiny and a little swollen. I want to see them a lot swollen. I want to see her bare breasts rub against my chest. I want to taste her earlobes and nibble on her nipples. I want to watch her face as my cock disappears into her body, inch by slow, thick inch.

She blinks up at me, and I hope she can’t see what I’m thinking. “This has to be different now, Sebastian.”

I nod. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I’ll give her whatever she wants. Everything I have, as meager an offering as that would be.

“I’m not your hostage anymore. We’re in this together. Partners,” she says, staring up at me. Then she pokes one finger into my chest. “We make decisions together. We stick together. So let’s just start over. Tabula rasa.”

“Tabouli what?”

“Tabula rasa. It means ‘blank slate.’ A fresh start. That’s the only way I’m going to do this with you.”

I can’t resist a grin. “And what, exactly, will we be doing together?”

“Finding Sylvie. Calling in a ransom. Getting you, your sister, and Graham off this rock. Hopefully without getting me arrested in the process.”

“Or fired.” Quitting her job is one thing, but losing it in disgrace would be quite another.

“That too. Though by the time I’m done suing UA for my ‘ordeal,’ I’ll probably never have to work again.”

I hope she’s right. I hope she makes a fortune and decides to escape the public eye. To maybe settle on a secluded moon where the press can never find her, so she can be something other than the woman who survived a hostage situation on a notorious prison planet.

Where she might want the company of a few other anonymous friends also looking to escape notice…

Well, that’s a pipe dream if I’ve ever had one. So I pull myself out of my fantasy to find Kaya staring through the trees at the building across the field.

“Okay,” she says. “The first thing we should do is head back there, get cleaned up, and hope that one of those dead guys had abnormally small feet. I could really use some shoes.”

I have my doubts about their feet, but she’s right. We should scavenge anything we can find.

I carry Kaya back to the building and set her on the counter, to keep her unprotected feet off the ground, then I grab both of the dead men’s packs and set them next to her.

One of the bags is in pretty bad shape, but the other looks fairly new. Kaya dumps both of them out, then immediately begins stuffing anything we can use into the newer of them, evidently planning to carry it herself.

One of the inmates was clearly fairly new to Rhodon—my money is on the blond man—and he was still well-stocked with his initial supplies, including antibiotics, water purification tablets, a book of waterproof matches, a clear plastic poncho still folded up in its original and bizarrely small wrapping, and a couple of pairs of dried-stiff, malodorous socks. As well as a single thick brown ready-to-eat meal packet.

I was hoping for more food.

I set the socks aside while Kaya picks through the rest of the offerings, because I think I can wash them out and use them to pad my extra shoes for her, if necessary. Then I head outside and search the men’s pockets. I find two protein bricks and a palm-sized flashlight.

The blond man was the smallest of the two, and though he’s still quite a bit larger than Kaya, his pants stand the best chance of fitting her. Or being made to fit her. I pull them from the corpse, pleased to note that while they aren’t exactly fresh, they’ve somehow escaped blood splatter. His prison-issue shoes are both newer and smaller than my extra pair, so I take those too.

Inside, Kaya is shoving the last of our scavenged supplies into her new bag. “Okay.” I lay the pants across the counter next to her and set the shoes beside them. “This is the best we have, until and unless we find a female prisoner willing to trade with us. They’re too big, but I’m going to suggest you wear them anyway, because the fewer people who realize you’re not a prisoner, the better.” If anyone finds out who she is, I won’t be the only one interested in leveraging her against UA. Which means that keeping her com device hidden will be just as important as hiding her identity.

“Agreed.” She gives the pants a disgusted but resigned look. “Hopefully we’ll find someplace where we can wash them out, by nightfall. So they can dry while we sleep.”

I hand her the pair of my own extra socks—the ones I rinsed out last night—and she pulls those on and doubles them over. Then I set her carefully on the rough concrete. Kaya flinches when her feet first touch the floor, but then she screws on a determined expression and pushes past the pain. “It’s not too bad today,” she insists.

“I can carry you sometimes, when your feet need a rest.”

“Thanks.” She sits on the ground and pulls the blond man’s shoes over her padded feet. They’re too big. Not as big as mine would be on her, but they’re definitely going to fall off her feet. “Crap.”

“The way you curse is adorable.”

She looks up at me, squinting in the sunlight shining through the broken window. “I don’t curse. Well, almost never,” she concedes.

“That’s my point. Here.” I grab the blond man’s spare socks and kneel next to her. “I think I can help. We’ll wash these out as soon as we can, but for now…” I take the shoes off her and slide the extra socks on over the ones she borrowed from me, doubling them over. Careful to make sure that none of that man’s filth touches her skin.

With the extra set of socks, the shoes fit a little better. I pull the shoe laces as tight as possible, then I head back outside. “One second,” I say as the door closes behind me.

The brown-haired corpse is wearing an identical pair of prison-issued shoes. I pull the laces from them, then head back inside and tie each of them around one of Kaya’s feet, shoes and all. To kind of anchor the footwear in place. “How’s that?”

She stands and takes a couple of experimental steps, careful to avoid the congealing puddle of blood. “They’re tough to walk in—like wearing clown shoes—but they’re staying on.” She turns to give the pants a rueful look. “I should have put those on first.”

Fortunately, the pant legs are wide enough that they go on over her shoes. The cuffs are easy enough to roll up, but the waist is a bit of a problem. They don’t issue belts in the bullpen, and evidently the same is true for the open population.

After some experimentation, we figure out how to “tight roll” the waistband by cinching in material on both sides, then rolling it down. I’m not sure how long that’ll last, but for now, it’s doing the job.

In appropriated pants and shoes, as well as my borrowed shirt, Kaya looks just like any other prisoner. In too-big clothes. Except for…

I frown at her right hand. “Take off your ring. And we need to cover your palm with something.”

“What? Why?”

I hold up my own, to show her the prisoner number tattooed on it. “It’s a dead giveaway that you don’t belong here. We should probably wash your face too. They don’t issue makeup.”

We wrap a scrap of cloth torn from Terry’s shirt around her hand, to look like a makeshift bandage, but her makeup—some kind of special, camera-ready, never-comes-off sorcery—just seems to smear until she’s used up half of my sad little bar of soap.

Finally, when we’re both dressed and as clean as we can get without a shower, we take off in the direction opposite the crash site. Which is when I realize that I truly have no idea where I’m going.

Sylvie could be anywhere.

“If I could access my com device, I might be able to help,” Kaya says as we walk. “I think there are satellite images with infrared capabilities. That would at least tell us where people are gathered outdoors.”

But even if turning on the device wouldn’t alert the rescue crew to her location, heading for clusters of people would be a risky move. We’re just as likely to find a dozen psychos as we are to find Sylvie and Graham.

“Do you know anything about zone three?” I ask as we walk. Kaya’s high-stepping through shin-high grass, to make sure she doesn’t trip over her too-long shoes. “Is there anywhere Sylvie might be likely to go, out here?”

“All I know is that zone three is where they dump the…um…bodies. From the arena. That’s where she would have gone to find Graham, assuming our plan worked. That the gun stunned him, rather than killing him.”

I stop and frown at her. “Wait, you don’t know whether it worked?”

“Well, no, how could I know?” She shrugs. “It’s not like I could ask someone. ‘Hey, Charles, not saying I rigged the finale or anything,’” she says in a cartoonish voice. “‘But do you have any reason to believe that Graham secretly survived his own execution?’”

My frown becomes a scowl. “So, Sylvie could have been out here on her own for weeks?”

“Sebastian, that possibility is part of why I stayed. But seriously, if any woman is capable of making it out here alone, it’s Sylvie.”

“She’s a high school anatomy teacher,” I remind her.

Kaya rolls her eyes. “We both know she’s much more than that.”

I don’t argue. I’m proud that Sylvie can handle herself, and I’d put her up against just about any man in the open population, one on one. But she won’t be fighting one-on-one out here, and even Sylvie can’t take on a dozen men at once.

“She still has her knife, right?”

“Yes,” Kaya assures me. “I made sure of that. And I snuck as much food into her pack as I could fit. I know that’s a short-term comfort, but it was the best I could do.”

“I appreciate that.”

We walk until the sun is high overhead, bearing down on us with an oppressive heat. There are no woods in this section of zone three, which makes me nervous, because now that UA knows Kaya is alive out here, they’re bound to send patrols out looking for her.

In fact, it’s likely that the only reason we haven’t already seen shuttles overhead is that they’re still using most of their manpower to salvage what they can from the wreckage of the blimp.

But we both know that can’t last.