I gasp for air, clawing at the hands Varian has wrapped around my throat. Squeezing…

Wake up, Mallory! He isn’t here.

My eyes finally fly open, but at first they won’t focus. All I can make out is a face over mine, backlit by what’s left of the fire. A body straddling me, half-crushing me with his weight.

Varian. He’s found me. This isn’t a dream.

Then my eyes adjust, though the edges of my vision are dark and fuzzy. Because I can't breathe.

It’s Barrett.

He’s choking me. His forehead is furrowed and his eyes are unfocused, as if he’s seeing something else. Hating someone else.

“Stop!” I shout, but no sound comes out. I claw at his hands, trying to pry his fingers from my throat, but I can’t get purchase. My hands are slick with the blood I’ve drawn. “Barrett!” But again, my voice carries no sound. I can’t breathe. My vision is fading.

He’s killing me. And he doesn’t even seem to know it.

My throat is agony. My head feels like an overstuffed balloon, about to explode. My lungs burn with the need for air.

My hands fall away from his. They feel too heavy to lift.

When I stop fighting, Barrett blinks in confusion. His eyes focus on me, and he looks horrified. He releases me, and as my vision zooms back into focus, I can see that his hands are trembling and covered in blood from where I’ve scratched him.

He says something, but I can’t understand him. His gravelly voice sounds like it’s coming from miles away, and the syllables don’t make any sense.

He lifts me, and the world spins around me. My head flops on my neck, until his arm props it up. I’m in his lap. His face is red. He’s shouting words I can’t understand.

I'm scared. He's terrified.

Finally, my mouth opens, and I suck in a breath. Sound roars back, and suddenly I can hear him clearly, though I still can’t understand his words. He’s begging me to do something.

To breathe, I think.

I take another breath, and his frame relaxes a little, though he’s still watching me closely. As if I might still die, right here in his arms. When I keep breathing, he finally sets me on my blanket again, then backs carefully away from me.

Barrett sinks onto his thin, dirty bedsheet and leans forward with his head in his hands. Grasping great handfuls of his own hair, as if he might pull it out.

I crawl across the dirt toward him, and when he hears me coming, he looks up. His hair stands in stiff clumps because of the blood smeared at his roots from his hands. I climb into his lap and wrap my arms around him. My mouth finds his neck, and he goes still as I nibble my way up to his earlobe and let my lips close over it.

Barrett lifts me out of his lap, and my mouth makes a sucking sound as it’s pulled free from his ear lobe. He sets me in the dirt in front of him and gives me a confused, angry look, along with an aggressive shrug of his shoulders.

“What am I doing?” I guess, and he nods. “Making you feel better. At least, I’m trying. But you’re being a bit of a grouch about it.”

His brows arch halfway up his forehead. Then he holds his hands up, miming choking something. Choking me. Then he shakes his head and shrugs.

“Oh, I know you didn’t mean to do that. You were still asleep, weren’t you?” He was having some kind of flashback.

He nods slowly.

“Before I was arrested, I had a friend who used to sleepwalk. I found him peeing in the kitchen trash can several times. I mean, he never tried to kill anyone, but that’s basically the same thing. Right?”

Barrett shakes his head. He exhales slowly, then he leans forward to swipe leaves from a small section of the ground. My heart jumps in my chest when he drags one finger through the loose, reddish dirt.

He’s writing.

Damn it.

I stare at his face, rather than his words, until he taps one finger insistently in the dirt. Asking me to look. So I look.

“Yup, those look like letters. Great penmanship. I give it an A plus.”

Barrett frowns at me. Then he taps the words again.

“I can’t read, okay? Isn’t that just fucking perfect? You can’t speak, and I can’t read. We’re a match made in hell. Which is fitting, because that’s clearly where we’ve wound up.”

Barrett’s scowl deepens. Then he exhales, long and slow, and for a second, I think he’s going to try to say something. Instead, he points at me, then he points off into the woods, in an arcing motion.

My heart thumps too hard when his meaning becomes clear. “You want me to leave?”

He nods, then he makes that choking sign and shakes his head. Then he points into the woods again.

“You’re afraid you’re going to hurt me?” I ask, and he nods. “So you want me to leave.” Another nod. “Okay, well, I have nowhere to go, and you didn’t really hurt me, so I’m good here. With you.”

He reaches out and runs the back of one knuckle over my neck, where there is apparently evidence—beyond the vicious bruised and swollen feeling—of his hands.

“Yeah, I’m not denying there’s a problem. But there’s a bigger problem waiting for me out there without you. I testified against a man who wound up in zone three, and if he finds me here, he’ll kill me. Slowly. I know, because I’ve seen him do it. At least you didn’t mean to hurt me.” And he stopped without having to be dragged off me. “So I pick you.”

Barrett blinks at me. He wipes his hand on his pants, smearing them with dirt and blood. Then he shakes his head and glances at the forest all around us, as if he’s still trying to talk me into leaving.

“Okay, let me be clear. If you want to get rid of me, you’re just going to have to pack up and outrun me. Think of it like an adult version of hide and seek. Gotta warn you, though, I was hide and seek champion in my neighborhood, when I was a kid.” Back when I had normal things, like parents and a home. “And I suspect I’ve only gotten better since then.” I frown as I glance around at the woods. “Though this neighborhood is a bit bigger.”

His frown deepens. He stares at my throat, as if he’s punishing himself with the sight of my bruises. Then he points at my blanket, clearly telling me to go back to bed. But as I curl up facing him, I know sleep won’t come, and this time that has nothing to do with the drug. Gerald and Phoebe’s fucking stimulant has finally worn off.

This time, I’m afraid that the man who killed his own friend to save me might accidentally do the same to me in his sleep.

I wake up with the sun, and I can tell with one look at Barrett that he didn’t get any more rest than I did. He relieves himself in the woods, then he brushes his teeth and washes his face with water from his pouch, without offering me any. He doesn’t even look at me.

I get ready as fast as I can, using water from Cleft Chin’s pouch, because I know what’s going on. Just like yesterday, Barrett may let me tag along, but he’s not going to encourage it. In fact, he’s going to make the idea seem as unappealing as he can. And he thinks he’s doing that for my own good.

Maybe he’s right. But I’m pretty sure that in a zone full of murderers, the man who doesn’t want to hurt me is the lesser of several hundred evils. So when he takes off into the woods, I follow him, and though my thoughts are racing, I’m determined to keep my mouth shut, so that I don’t annoy him and get myself banished.

We hike for hours, and every step takes me farther and farther from the wreckage of the blimp. From a life lived in a sterile cell they only took me out of in order to sell me.

I walk as fast as I can, even though my new backpack bumps the leather satchel on my other shoulder, throwing me off balance with every step, because I know that if I fall behind, he won’t wait for me. But by the time the sun is high in the sky, I don’t think I can take another step. I stop to dig my appropriated water pouch from my backpack, and Barrett doesn’t even seem to notice that I’ve stopped.

The water is warm, but it’s the best thing I’ve ever tasted. I have to force myself to cap the pouch before I drink all of it, because though there are purification tablets in the dead guy’s backpack, I have no idea where to find a source of water out here.

Barrett never has to stop for a drink, because he can dig his pouch from his bag without stopping, so by the time I’ve shoved mine back into my pack, he’s halfway across the field we're crossing.

I race to catch up, but I’m in rough shape. An existence spent in orbit with poor nutrition, inadequate exercise, and no sunlight has left me with no stamina. My head begins to spin as a dark ring forms around the edges of my vision. I realize I’m going to pass out about a second before the ground rushes up to meet me.

I wake up on a mattress. An actual mattress, not just a thin vinyl pad, like we had on our bunks at the Resort, or a support-less cot like the one that pulls out of the wall in my cell on Station Alpha. I sit up slowly, afraid I’m going to pass out again, and discover that I’m alone in a room made of concrete. There are no windows. No furniture. The only source of light is a flashlight standing on its end in the center of the floor.

This room has the musty feel of a basement.

There are no doors.

Carefully, I lean forward and grab the flashlight. The room doesn’t spin. I’m thirsty, but I’m not going to pass out again, so I shine the light up at the ceiling and find a metal hatch, too high up for me to reach. There’s a ladder folded into it, but I can’t reach that either.

I aim the flashlight around the room and find my leather satchel sitting against the far wall. Which is only as far away as the width of another mattress. This is not a large room.

Next to my satchel stand two worn, prison-issue backpacks. Presumably one is Barrett’s and the other is the one I’ve been using, which used to belong to Cleft Chin. I wish Barrett were able to tell me his name.

Metal squeals overhead, and I shine the light upward again as the metal hatch opens to reveal a rectangle of bright blue sky, sprinkled with puffy white clouds, a sight I still can't get used to, at least five years after I was “rescued” from my dying homeworld. Barrett’s head appears in the opening, as the ladder unfolds, all on its own. He’s backlit by the sun, but I’m already intimately familiar with the shape of the man who’s fucked me twice and tried to kill me once.

Hard to believe I met him yesterday.

He grunts in greeting, then climbs down. There’s plenty of light now, so I turn off the flashlight to save the battery. Then I stand, when I realize I’m sitting on his bed. And that there’s nowhere else to sit.

I knew Barrett was big, but in this small, windowless room, he looks huge. His gaze assesses me methodically, lingering on my eyes, and after a few seconds, I realize he’s probably looking for signs of a concussion. Or of heat stroke, or exhaustion, or whatever led to my collapse.

Apparently satisfied, he steps forward, and I back away out of instinct. He takes up most of the damn room, and though I don't think he would intentionally hurt me, it’s a bit intimidating to see him coming at me in such a confined space.

Barrett holds up both hands, to show me that he’s unarmed. Or harmless. But those are the hands that nearly choked the life out of me.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had to trust someone who scares me.

“I’m fine,” I assure him, and he kneels to grab his backpack. Then he sits on the edge of the mattress, as if he knows that he takes up too much room in here, standing.

“This is where you live?” I ask, and he nods as he digs through the pack.

He brought me to his home.

Barrett pulls a pill bottle from his bag. He sets it on the ground in front of me, then he holds out his water pouch. I take it. The pouch feels cool in my hands. He must have just refilled it, which means there’s a source of water nearby.

“Thank you.” I open the pouch and gulp from it, but then his hand lands over mine, forcing the spout from my lips. He shakes the pill bottle, and I finally focus on it. I can’t read what’s written on the side, but I recognize the green label, from what they used to give us at the Resort. “Vitamins?”

He nods and presses the bottle into my hand. Clearly, he wants me to take one.

I open the bottle and dump out one pill, then I wash it down with water from the pouch. And I keep drinking.

Barrett takes the pouch away again and hands me another pill bottle, this one with a white label.

“One-dose antibiotics?” I can’t think of any other pills issued at in-processing, other than water purification tablets, which aren’t meant to be swallowed. And those have a blue label. Barrett nods. “Why?”

He shows me a bottle of blue-labeled water purification tablets, then he points in an arch over his head, mimicking the sun’s trail across the sky.

Time. Purification tablets and time.

“Oh. The tablet hasn’t had a chance to work? The water might not be clean yet?”

He nods. I could be drinking bacteria.

He carried me to his home. He doesn’t want me to get sick. He’s left the hatch open and the ladder down, so I’m evidently free to leave any time I want. But he’s not kicking me out.

He’s going to let me stay.

Relief washes over me like hot water in a bath, and I sink into it. I want to close my eyes and float in it. Instead, I take an antibiotic, and this time he lets me keep gulping from the pouch until I’ve had enough. “Thanks. I was thirsty.”

Barrett takes the pouch from me and stows it in his bag, along with all three pill bottles. Then he scoots back on the mattress to lean against the rough concrete wall.

“Are we underground?” I ask, still standing in front of him, and Barrett nods. “Like…a storm cellar?” Another nod.

He’s watching me, and I have no idea what he’s thinking.

“You brought me here because I passed out?” I’m actually surprised he noticed. “I’m growing on you, aren’t I?” I say with a smile. “I think you like me.”

He rolls his eyes. But he’s not scowling.

“Thank you.” My smile fades. “For bringing me here. For not just leaving me out there to fend for myself. I assume most of the other men around here are more like your friend with the cleft chin than like you, and if Varian found me—”

A surprised look rolls over his features, leaving him staring at me.

“What? What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head, and now he’s frowning as he waves his hand in a curricular motion, telling me to go on.

“I was just saying that if Varian finds me—he’s the man I testified against—well, I’m as good as dead. Although, for a while, he’ll probably just make me wish I were dead.”

He makes that “continue, please” sign again, and I frown. “You want to know how he’ll make me wish I were dead?”

Barrett shakes his head.

“More about Varian, then?” I guess, and he nods. “Okay. He was my…well, it’s complicated. They sold me to him when I was—”

Barrett’s growl actually startles me. It takes me a second to realize that’s his disapproving sound. About the thought of someone being sold.

“Yeah, I know. But my parents died, and my uncle didn’t have money to pay for our passage, so he—”

Barrett waves both hands at me, palms out, while he shakes his head. He’s asking me to slow down. He doesn’t understand.

“Sorry. You want me to start from the beginning?” I ask, and he nods. “Okay, but it’s a long story.”

He shrugs and leans back against the wall again, settling in.

“My homeworld started dying decades before I was born. By the time I started school, the air wasn’t breathable. Everyone who could afford to leave already had, but my family was poor. We waited, assuming the government would evacuate everyone, and they tried. But there wasn’t enough money, and it turns out the failed government of a dying world can’t get credit. So, they just left us there. Thousands of us. People were dying by the hundreds, from breathing toxic air. My parents died. And my sister. Two of my cousins. My aunt. My grandparents. I survived because I was the baby, and when they could afford a ventilator—the kind you wear over your face—they put it on me. I got more than my fair share of clean oxygen.

“My uncle took me in after my parents died, when I was seven, in Earth standard years. He was my mother’s sister’s husband. He couldn’t afford to support both me and my cousin Ben, so he pulled me out of school and I went to work with him, scavenging scrap to take to the recycler. On a good day, we made enough for all three of us to eat.

“Then, the year I was fifteen, these shuttles just descended from the sky. The men onboard offered us passage off-world. They said we could work the debt off when we got to their planet. We didn’t have any other choice, so we packed up what we could carry and went with them.

“But my uncle got sick on the trip. He wasn’t well enough to work by the time we landed, so they offered him a deal. They would wipe his debt, and he and Ben could leave, free and clear—if he signed custody of me over to them.”

Barrett’s eyes close for a long time. He breathes deeply, and his jaw bulges with tension. Finally, he meets my gaze again and makes the signal that I should go on.

“I don’t think Uncle Russel wanted to do it. But he was sick, and I wasn’t his kid. I wasn’t anyone’s kid anymore.”

Barrett’s teeth grind together so hard that they make a creaking sound.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. But he shakes his head. He flashes the fingers of one hand at me three times, his brows arched high in question. “Yeah. I was fifteen. I thought they’d put me to work in a kitchen somewhere, like they did on the shuttle, during transport. I liked that, because washing dishes was easy, and they let me have all the coffee I wanted. With creamer. But instead, they sold me to Varian Roys. He had several other girls, but I was the youngest, and I’m pretty sure I was his favorite.” I shrug. “He took care of me, and he taught me how to take care of him.”

Barrett shakes his head again, and this time he keeps shaking it. He’s trying to tell me something, but all I can understand is “no.”

“No, what?” I ask him.

He wraps the fingers of one hand around his opposite wrist, then repeats the gesture on his other wrist.

Handcuffs. Jail. Crime.

Oh. “Yeah, selling people is illegal, but so was everything else Varian and his family were into. They sold all kinds of things. But mostly weapons and shuttles modified to avoid detection. I heard all about it, because Varian kept me with him most of the time.”

Barrett nods, then throws his arms out, indicating the planet all around us, with one brow arched in silent question.

“How did I wind up here?” I ask, and he nods. “Something went wrong one day. One of the family’s former employees—I never met him—started picking off Varian’s bodyguards. Shooting them, one by one, faster than he could replace them.” Barrett’s jaw tightens again, but he motions for me to go on. “Then one day Varian got shot, but he survived. His men mostly use real bullets, because he thinks that’s classier than laser rounds. But I think he likes seeing actual blood spilled, which doesn’t happen with a laser pistol. Anyway, whoever shot him used real bullets too, and the doctor said that’s why Varian lived. While he was in the hospital, the police came for me. They said I was a valuable witness, and that if I testified against him, they could protect me from him. But that if I didn’t, they’d arrest me as co-conspirator in Varian’s crimes.” I shrug. “I didn’t have any choice. So I testified. Varian was convicted. But they arrested me anyway.”

My throat gets tight on this part. The words taste bitter. “Turns out that the cops didn’t have to hold up their end of the deal, and there was nothing I could do about it, because I wasn’t a citizen, so I didn't have any rights. Because I was brought to the planet illegally. They arrested me as an illegal alien and sent me here, on the same damn transport shuttle as Varian.”

Barrett holds up three fingers, then makes that wide-armed gesture again.

“Yes, I’m sure he’s in zone three. I heard them tell him that’s where he’d be going, during in-processing. Right before they took me and Lilli out of line and sent us to the Resort. If they hadn’t done that, I’d already be dead. Varian doesn’t suffer traitors.”