I lie next to Audra in the dark, listening to her tense breathing. She must be exhausted, but she’s still awake. She’s still rigid, her spine pressing against my arm, the rest of her body curled away from me.

She obviously thinks I’m going to roll over and grab her, and she won’t be able to relax until she’s sure that won’t happen. So I fake a soft snore, careful to fill my lungs with long, deep breaths. Faking sleep is a real pain in the ass, and I’m relieved when her small frame finally relaxes. She’s passed out.

But I lie awake for hours, trying to figure out what I’ve gotten myself into. How I’m going to make it to the supply drop tomorrow with two women in tow. Because it’s not like I can leave them undefended in our room. We’re all three targets now.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother with the supply drop unless I needed something in particular. I’d rather hunt fresh meat than eat the tasteless packaged shit dropped by the shuttles any day. But I’ll have to supplement that to feed Audra and the kid.

And they shouldn’t have to roll around in sheets that carry some stranger’s stench. They shouldn’t have to walk around in clothes so worn out they’re practically transparent.

I owe them better than what I’ve provided for them so far. Tomorrow, I will fix that.

* * *

“Come on,” I growl at Audra as she stuffs her things into her worn backpack. “We need to get going.”

She scowls at my tone. “Why? I thought the supply drop doesn’t come until noon.”

“That may be what they told you, but the drop can vary up to an hour in either direction. And we have no idea where the crate will actually land, because they drop it somewhere different every time, so people in different places get first crack at it.”

Audra rolls her eyes. “Like it matters who gets to it first. The strong will take what they want from the weak, and the weak will go hungry.”

“You won’t go hungry,” I assure her, and too late, I realize that I’m still growling, out of long-term habit.

“And you won’t go celibate,” she shoots back.

I start to tell her that she doesn’t have to sleep with me again—I’m well aware that I’m not considered attractive, even by Rhodon-standards—but even unspoken, the words make me sound pathetic. So I don’t say them. She’ll get the picture soon enough.

I sling my own bag over my shoulder and push open the bathroom door. The kid is still asleep. I shake her shoulder, and her eyes fly open, but there’s no recognition in them. She screams, and her right hand connects with my face with an echoing slap. I stagger backward, more startled than hurt. Though the little monster’s blow was surprisingly strong.

“What the hell did you do?” Audra pushes past me into the tiny room and pulls the kid into a hug, and finally the screaming stops.

“Not a damn thing.” I stalk into the bedroom, mentally counting to ten. “I woke her up, and she slapped me.”

“Well, you can’t just walk in here and scare her like that.” Audra stomps back into the bedroom and behind her, I see the kid stepping out of the tub, her long, dark hair disheveled, the lines of her pillow still imprinted on her face. “We have no idea what she’s been through,” Audra whispers to me.

“I thought you knew her. You said you got her into this.”

“I met her on the prison transport. I meant that I got her sent here, to Settlement A, where women aren’t allowed to eat without spreading their legs first.” Audra’s caustic commentary doesn’t seem aimed at me, but her words sting just the same. Because they’re true. Because I took what she thought she had no choice but to offer. Because I’ve spent my entire adult life here, where everything costs something and where pleasure and company are the ultimate luxuries.

Because I haven’t touched anyone else without drawing blood in so many years I’d almost forgotten what soft and pleasant felt like.

“Wendy would have overlooked her if I hadn’t pointed her out,” Audra continues. “Though obviously I had no idea where we were being taken.”

No wonder she’d insisted that I take them both. If not for Audra, the child would be relatively safe back in Settlement B, where the predators might take her food, but would almost certainly leave her body—and her soul—unmolested.

“Give me a minute with her.”

“One minute.” I stomp into the bedroom and truly study it for the first time. The room is utter shit. I wouldn’t care, if it were just for me. Unless it rains, I typically sleep out under the stars, but even if I wanted to make Audra and Maci live like nomads, that plan wouldn’t be practical. I need walls in order to protect them, and shitty though they are, these are the best walls I’m going to find.

The dresser against one wall is missing all its drawers, which doesn’t matter as long as we have nothing to store in it anyway. But with any luck, we’ll make it to the drop and will soon have real belongings. Which means I should find some drawers.

The bed is serviceable. The mattress sags, and I don’t even want to know how stained it is, but if I can get clean sheets…

I scowl at the unmade bed. I don’t even know if the supply drops ever contain bedding.

“Okay. Let’s go.” Audra’s voice is sharp and still annoyed, and I turn to see her guiding the kid from the bathroom. Maci stares at the ground, her shoulders hunched in her too-big shirt, her hair hanging over her face. She was not made for this world, and I can’t imagine what she did to get sent here.

I can only think of two women before her who were like Maci, and neither of them made it a month on Rhodon. I buried the second one myself when I found her, broken and bloody, naked, staring unseeing at the foliage deep in the woods, surrounded by too many muddy footprints to count.

I shove the memory down deep and stalk into the hall, wondering again what the hell I’ve gotten myself into.

We sneak out the back door, hoping to avoid being seen, but there’s no need. Everyone else is already gone. It’s drop day. They’re all on the way to wherever they plan to watch the sky, hoping that their strategic gamble will pay off. That the cargo shuttle will drop its crate close enough for them to make an initial haul and be gone before anyone else gets to it.

We’re about to make the same bet.

I lead Audra and Maci into the woods, and as soon as we’re out of sight of the building, Audra heads toward the east. “This way.” I toss my head toward the south, and she stops to scowl at me.

“I have a feeling about this direction.” She takes another insistent step to the east. I know what she’s doing—heading toward Settlement B—and that is a terrible idea.

“They’ll send you back,” I tell her. “I won’t stop you if you want to run, but Wendy and the others will bring you back. They have to.”

Her mental struggle plays out in a flicker of conflicting emotions as she debates admitting what we both know she’s thinking. She’s beautiful, smart, and fearless. But none of those will keep her alive if she runs.

“What would happen if I don’t go back to Wendy? If they never catch me?”

Her carefully blank expression breaks my heart. I want to tell her that I know of some place she and the kid can quietly live out their life sentences unmolested by the rest of zone four, and that no one else will suffer for her decision. But that’s not how life works here.

She needs the truth.

“If he can’t find you, Jaime will take men to Settlement B and demand compensation for what he’s lost. Plus a penalty. If Wendy gives him what he wants, the truce will remain intact. Life will go on as usual in zone four.”

“And if she doesn’t give him what he wants?”

“He’ll give the men free reign to take what they want until he thinks Wendy’s learned her lesson. They’ll take way more than six women. And there will be no rules. No time limits.”

Her face pales. “It’s the trolley dilemma.”

“What?”

“It’s a hypothetical exercise in theoretical ethics.”

Theoretical ethics? Who is this woman?

“There’s a trolley barreling toward five people who’re tied to the tracks. You can see it coming, and you have the opportunity to pull the lever and divert the train. But there’s one person on the other track. If you do nothing, the five people who’re already in danger will die. If you pull the lever, the person on the other track will die. The question you’re supposed to ask yourself is whether or not it’s morally acceptable to sacrifice one person whose life isn’t currently in danger to save the other five people?”

I study her, waiting for more, but no more comes. “What’s the right answer?”

Audra shrugs. “There is no right answer.”

“It seems like in ethics, there should be a right answer. An ethical choice.”

She huffs. “One would think. In the utilitarian school of thought, a net gain of four lives will always be preferable. Intellectually, it seems like a no-brainer. Saving five lives is better than saving one. But does that really give the bystander the right to sacrifice someone else who has nothing to do with putting those other five lives in danger in the first place?”

“Before today, I might have said yes,” I admit. Because she’s right. The math holds up. Five is greater than one.

“What changed today?”

I hold her gaze. “I realized you’re the person on that other track.”

She nods. “Me, and Maci, and Lauren, and Michelle, and Sana. And Wendy’s already pulled the lever. I can run—pulling the lever back to save Maci and myself—but I’ll be sacrificing the rest of Settlement B for just a chance at our freedom.”

“Jaime will find us,” a soft voice says, and it takes me a second to realize that Maci has spoken. I wait, expecting more, but no more comes. The child simply turns to the west, away from Settlement B, and starts walking.

“Where’s she going?” I demand, glancing from Maci’s receding back to Audra’s look of confusion, in the opposite direction.

“How the hell should I know?”

“You do whatever you have to do,” I tell her. “I’m not going to make that call for you.” Then I take off after the child.

Audra groans behind me. But after a minute, her footsteps thump at my back, snapping through twigs as she catches up with us.

“Where is she going?” I ask when Audra appears at my side.

“Seriously, I don’t know. You want me to try to turn her around?”

I shrug. “No one knows where the drop will be. Her guess is as good as mine.”

“Maybe better,” Audra mumbles.

We walk for about twenty minutes, and the ladies both look exhausted. Neither of them asks for a break, but I can see that they need one. “Where are you from?” I ask Audra.

She throws a suspicious glance up at me. “Small talk? Really?”

“It’s not small talk. You look tired. I’m assuming that your home world had less gravity than Rhodon?”

She nods. “That, and I feel like I’ve hardly slept.”

“It only stays dark here for around nine hours, and we were awake for at least two of them last night,” I tell her. “It can take a while to adjust to the rapid rotation of such a small planet.”

“I grew up on a farming moon tidally locked to an uninhabitable planet. The days on my moon were forty-six times the standard twenty-four hour Earth day,” she says. “So I’m used to long periods of light, followed by long periods of dark, at least, relative to this planet. Though I don’t know why we still use Earth days as the standard. No one even lives on Earth anymore.”

“I did,” I tell her as we walk. “I was born there.”

“You were…?” She stops and turns to frown up at me, skepticism warping her features into a mask of disbelief. “No.”

“Yes. Some of it’s still inhabitable, you know.”

She shakes her head. “I did not know. Your prison transport must have felt like an eternity.”

“It did. So, the short days and nights here must feel strange for you.”

“Everything on Devil’s Eye feels strange,” Audra admits. “Though the trees are nice.” She stares at the crimson canopy overhead for a moment. “Is this what it was like on Earth?”

“A few hundred years ago, maybe. Though our trees were green.” I shrug. “Ironically, this is one of the more beautiful planets I’ve seen. Shame they use it for a prison, huh?”

Audra shrugs, her gaze focused on Maci’s back again. “It’s better than the cages they brought us here in. Kind of.”

I understand what she means. There were no trees on the transport. But there was also no one else in her cage.

Maci’s footsteps go silent, and I reluctantly drag my gaze from Audra’s face to see that the child has stopped at the edge of the woods. She’s staring out at a field of un-trampled rust-colored grass nearly as tall as she is. “What’s wrong?” I ask as I stop beside her.

She cocks her head to the side, then looks up at the sky. And points.

I look up and find nothing but clouds. But she keeps pointing. And a second later, I see it. The cargo shuttle. Even from a distance, it’s easily identifiable, because it’s smaller than a transport shuttle and larger than a patrol shuttle.

Maci smiles. As if she knew it would be there.

Audra laughs from my other side. “Didn’t I tell you she has skills? Maci has the best ears I’ve ever seen. On the transport, she always seemed to know that food was coming. Or that they were about to spray us down.”

“That’s impressive. And it’ll be even more impressive if we can move fast enough to follow the shuttle. We won’t be the only ones. Everyone else who’s seen it will be headed this way.”

Maci shakes her head slowly, then steps out of the woods. She points toward the field in front of us, slightly to the left.

“What—?” But a second later, I understand. The shuttle slows until it’s hovering over the field. Then the cargo doors at the rear of the vehicle squeal open, and two men tethered to the inside of the ship shove a huge metal crate off the end of the lowered platform.

It crashes into the field, directly into the path of Maci’s pointed finger.

The kid hasn’t simply heard the shuttle coming. She’s taken us to the site of the drop.

“That’s not her hearing.” It couldn’t be. Her ears can’t tell her that the shuttle is going to stop and drop supplies practically into our lap.

“Let’s go!” Audra shouts as the men retreat and the cargo door folds up into the ship again. She races toward the crate as the shuttle flies off toward the next zone.

“Wait!” I shout as I rush after her, slapping aside tall stalks of reddish grass that brush my shoulder and nearly swallow her whole. “Everyone else will be on their way!”

“That’s why we have to hurry,” she calls over her shoulder. “Maci! Bring your bag!”

I catch up with Audra as she stumbles to a halt in front of the six-foot-long crate, using her shoes to flatten an area of tall grass in front of it. “How do we…?”

I grab one of the thick latches and flip it up. She watches me, then unlatches the other one, and as Maci joins us, we lift the lid of the crate, swinging it open on two huge hinges.

“Take everything you can carry.” Audra swings her bag off of her shoulder and reaches into the three-foot-tall crate, then comes out with an arm full of meal packs. She dumps them into her bag, then dives in for more. “What are you waiting for?” she demands as I stare over the crate.

“Go,” I growl at her softly. “Take the kid and go back into the woods.”

“What? Why?” Audra reaches into the crate again, and I pull her away, more roughly than I’d intended.

“Look.” I point her face at the other side of the field, where the grass has begun to sway in an unnatural pattern. “They’re coming. You two go hide. Now.” We cannot be caught in the middle of a crowd. I could hold off one or two men at once—three if I were really motivated—but while I was fighting, the others would take the women. And the food.

“Go,” I growl again, and this time I shove Audra toward the woods.

She grabs her now full bag and shoves Maci’s empty one at me. Then she and the kid take off through the tall, rust-colored grass, hunched over.

I move to the side of the crate, so I can watch them go while I dig through the contents. The first of the men arrive seconds after Audra and Maci make it to the trees, and now that they’re hidden, I begin my search in earnest.

Audra took plenty of food, but they’ll need other things. Sheets.

The men around me descend on the crate, grabbing whatever they can carry, and I shove them over. Then I lift a tray of foodstuffs from the crate and toss it several feet away.

Several of the skinnier men descend upon it, grabbing and fighting while I look deeper into the offerings.

I grab several folded bundles of cloth and stuff them into Maci’s bag. There isn’t time to unfold and identify them, but hopefully at least one of them is a set of sheets.

A man to my left grabs two handfuls of pill bottles, and I seize his wrist, then pluck one from his bundle. Water purification tablets. I drop them into the bag, then keep digging as yet more men descend upon the crate, elbowing for room.

I shove them over and dig through more material until my fingers brush something hard and curved at the bottom of the crate. I grab it and pull out a plastic cup.

Dishes. I thought of sheets, but not dishes, which says more than I’d like to know about my own subconscious.

I dive in and dig in the same spot, and I come up with a couple of plastic bowls and one more cup. They go into the bag, then I grab a solar powered flashlight, a few books of matches, several cellophane wrapped bars of soap, and another handful of material. Then I back away.

No need to be greedy.

Two smaller men fill the space I’ve left, and as I’m about to retreat toward the trees, my gaze falls upon the aluminum tray I tossed aside earlier. It’s empty now, and if I leave it, it’ll be picked up by the shuttle, along with the crate itself. But aluminum is lightweight and sturdy. I’m sure I’ll find some use for it. So I grab it in my free hand and head for the trees.

However Maci found the drop site, she has more than earned her keep.