Peering through the porthole in Moon's dropship, the same one that tendered me from my marketplace doom to the HMS Valediction, I catch a first glimpse of the planet that will host me for whatever ridiculous distraction Moon and his crew have cooked up. My skin itches and my guts crawl as my brain spends its unoccupied time counting the seconds wasted on this pointless mission accomplishing nothing. I'm sitting here, strapped into a chair, flying onto an unknown planet away from my ship, my people, my family, and my son to play a fucking game.

I will escape. I'm not participating in whatever this is. I will find a way out.

I exhale loudly and watch the horizon race toward us. I focus on the new planet so my nerves will settle.

The planet's surface is wrapped in water—it's an enormous runway of gray-blue ocean rippling beneath Moon's vessel. The nearly cloudless sky reflects the darkness of the water, tinting the planet in hazy steel. There's not a single stick of land in sight. Nowhere to run once I hit the ground.g I suck at swimming.

Averting my gaze from the outside, I scan the cabin for anything helpful. Moon's dropship doesn't share the same bedazzled affinity of the HMS Valediction. It's loose-screwed and rugged with bizarre, offbeat parts. The bucket seats aren't even a matching set and nothing is that royal blue and silver that seems to be the ever-present motif of the HMS Valediction.

His ship is sleek on the outside—looks just like it belongs as part of Teeno's premium fleet, but on the inside, wires with janky add-ons bulge from their boxes. Residue from busted weapons stains the interior. The seats are covered by what I can only assume are laser burns.

One corner draws my attention for the first time. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of rolls of paper. Stupid, stupid paper. My finger tingles at the memory of slicing it open after attempting to tear open the packet from our Homecoming read-in—an event that feels like a wispy memory from ten lifetimes ago when I was still Captain Janika Lorn of Earth's Militia.

Some of the paper is bolted into the bulkhead, flattened and arranged together displaying one large image. Thousands of dots fill the papers with lines connecting clusters of dots to words.

"What's that?" I ask, jabbing a thumb over my shoulder, pointing at the paper-covered area. Sitting behind Moon, I wait for him to turn around and acknowledge I've spoken. He does nothing.

Nuna, in the co-pilot's seat on his right, shifts to follow my point. She grins. "Those are maps."

I look again, squint harder and try to make out familiar lines from the maps I've used before. "I can't make out their location. Wouldn't it be easier to make them digital so you have access on command?"

Moon doesn't answer.

Once again, Nuna shifts more to fully face me. "Captain Moon has no need for these maps anymore. He keeps them for sentimentalities."

Moon adjusts his grip on the helm. "Shut up, Nuna."

I'm still confused. I don't think I'll ever get a straight answer out of these two without someone sliding into a private joke. "Why don't you need the maps anymore?"

"I memorized them," he says.

"So what are they for? They don't look like any roads I've seen before."

Moon chuckles once with his note of superiority. "And how many roads have you walked on since leaving Earth? Those aren't maps of terrain, fool."

I gasp. "Those are stars?" Leaning back farther in my chair to get a better look, I strain to see their patterns and shapes. "You've memorized the stars? How is that even possible?"

"When you choose to spend so much time alone, you have plenty of opportunity to study your passions." Nuna smiles as she speaks.

I scoff, crossing my legs and settling back into my chair. "Could've fooled me. I thought he spent his free time harassing the brig."

He continues ignoring me.

A few more blips pass as we graze the surface of the water. Nuna's seat swivels around to face me. "We should discuss the rules of the game."

"You drive, I shoot. What else is there?"

"Yes. But I have left out objectives that are most particular."

Here it comes. I can feel it—sense it crackling in the air. The way her eyes are narrowed, her arched eyebrows lowered like she's about to fill me in on a secret. I know I'm about to be told about a mission that is going to be horrendously dangerous. It's the same tingle I got during read-ins for Topside missions, the most dangerous ones—the ones where the odds of coming back were always stacked against me.

On impulse, my body becomes rigid. as I bark, "Yes, Ma'am."

Nuna scowls. "What is this formality? We do not say that here. I do not like it."

It's my turn to raise a brow. "You're my superior in this ship. It's a formality to show respect."

"No. This is not how we show respect on this ship. We show it with our actions. Not our words. How can I trust words?"

"You can trust I will be a professional. That, in my service, I will do what it takes to get the job done, Ma'am."

Nuna's frown deepens.

"Professionalism?" Moon grumbles, finally joining our conversation. "We need to trust you'll do what needs to be done to win. Your professionalism is a waste of breath."

"I'm a soldier. A prof—"

"We don't need a fucking tidy-bot soldier with a pipe up her ass. We need a sharpshoot who has our backs."

I don't relax despite the tension twisting my nerves. They can't trust me. They shouldn't. The next chance I get, I'm ditching this circus and leaving their carcasses for the birds. "Then why did you choose me?"

"Because you have the most to lose." Moon settles back into silence, carefully watching the distant shore approach.

I search Nuna's face for answers. The corners of her full, large lips curve slightly upward, her eyes narrow as she pulls out her tablet.

An unappealing portrait of a fat, mushroom-headed person flickers on. He's recognizably humanoid—so similar to me and the other Earthen in many ways—but still so different, I find him repulsive. Two blood-red eyes peer out beyond heavy lids of pale pink flesh. Tufts of black hair spout from the slopes of domed head and cascade down his tree-trunk neck. His thin lips curve in a mocking grin underneath a set of what look to be long, curved whiskers.

"Bor-Yann," Nuna says. "A high-ranking Marmolian member of Juno's inner ring. A truly unique example of galactic rubbish."

The long face and beady eyes remind me of the rats scurrying around the bowels of the URE—ones with eyes that glow from the darkest corners of the prison cells. "What makes him so special?" I lean in for a closer look at her tablet.

"He is cruel, cunning, and has a particular weakness for sport."

"He'll know where my son is?"

"It is a possibility. We are hoping to beat him in thisg competition and find out."

Bor-Yann's naked maliciousness sends chills down my arms. The strangeness of his alien features are lost in the universal vileness that radiates from the knowing tilt of his rounded head. Darkness is there, staring me in the face. I can't let it get to me.

"He doesn't look that intimidating," I say as I settle back in my seat.

Moon reaches across his dashboard to enter something in the keypad. "Good to hear. We already made a hefty wager with him."

"You're that confident in my skills?"

"We wagered you."

The need to punch him instantly shoots through my fists. I have to grip the armrests of my seat to stop myself from standing and strangling him. "You what?"

Nuna fidgets. "I know it seems rash—"

They wagered me. Me. A person. A human. The right words for this situation are stuck in my throat, bogged by outrage and shock. Finally, when I can speak again, they erupt. "What the fuck? What the actual fuck? Are you serious?"

Nuna doesn't shy away from my screams. "Janika—"

When she attempts to touch my knee, I jerk away, scowling, disgusted by her. By Moon. I will kill them. They deserve it. When I get on that starboard, I will fill my sights with their faces and this time, I'll pull the trigger. They'll be puddles when I'm done. "What the fuck! I'm a human. How can you do that?"

Nuna lowers her head as if attempting to be apologetic. "It is the way things are done. We are all commodities here."

I don't buy it. "I'm not doing it. I'm not going with him no matter how this whole stupid fucking game ends."

"It is the rules."

My mouth hangs agape before I shout in her face, "Do you think I give a rusty fuck about rules right now?"

We hover closer to the water, the smooth engine rumbling so quietly, my heavy breathing and frantic heartbeat are deafening in comparison. I can't go back to the marketplace. I won't return to being a slab of meat again—A pawn to place, a product to reproduce, a thing to shuffle around. No. No. No. I won't. I check the emergency exit latch that I had almost pulled before.

"Funny." Moon taps around on his dashboard. "That's what we hoped you'd say."

I shift in my seat to face the back of his head. "What do you mean?"

"Rules are for sheep."

I pictured the raggedy four-legged creatures from Level 4. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He heaves a boisterous sigh--something becoming a common occurrence the more we interact.

"Sheep follow the rules and live, Janika." Nuna reaches for the tablet at her side. "But if they were to think for themselves, they would not survive."

It clicks. "We survive."

Nuna nods. "We survive."

No rules. I flex, testing the way the words feel as I repeat them over and over in my mind. No rules. No rules. No fucking rules. They're encouraging me to do whatever I can to survive.

My muscles relax and my bones soften. I can feel the tension dissipating one limb at a time. This I can do. "So what are—" I lift my air quotes, "—the rules of the game?"

Nuna taps on the tablet. A new scene appears of a city with tall stone buildings along a deep, narrow road. It appears as a red-rock ravine with colorful flowers dangling from the crevices. But those aren't flowers or crevices. Strange beings spill from the arching windows of the enormous buildings, waving their appendages—many of them arm-like, but not really arms—and making noises of what appears to be a celebration. Huge, floating boulders pepper the air between the two buildings. The jovial scene shocks me. Chills rocket over my skin again. Whatever we're doing, there will be spectators and there will be action. I push the surge of anticipation down farther.

In the image, a myriad of different vehicles speed through the ravine. They move so fast, I can't decipher their shape, their driver, or even the weapon used to blast the enormous boulders out of the sky. All I'm able to see are blinking blue streaks illuminating a section of the screen before a floating boulder burst into dust clouds and debris. It's like trying to watch for meteors on a cloudy night.

One of the vehicles is caught in the dust cloud, crashes into a building and explodes on impact.

"That is a pathway de-clogger. D-Clogs. They clear the congestion."

As soon as the rocks shatter, a larger ship speeds through.

"This is what we will do. You and I are D-Clogs and will make a path so our dear Captain Moon can drive through with his payload." Nuna points to the larger ship. "He must deliver the cargo safely. If he is the first to complete the delivery, he keeps the cargo he hauled. And you."

"I'm assuming this cargo is pretty valuable."

Moon scoffed from the front seat. "Yes, because we're all risking our asses out there for a shipload of useless shit. Astute deduction."

I tap and zoom into the splattered intestines painting the mountainside after a brutal crash. "I'd love to see your guts smeared across that rock."

"That would make us both pathetic globs of useless flesh. How is anything supposed to get done?"

I glare at Moon's head, ready to scream my retort, but Nuna interrupts. "We make a path so no one will be globs of flesh today. Or, you must make the path, Janika. So we may win."

Again. Me. All me. I have the opportunity to let Nuna and Moon crash into the rocks, smashing their brains to jelly. I could steal the ship, return to ARC10, and be rid of all of this stupidity. It would be so easy.

And I'd have a weapon in my hands.

It would be so fucking easy.

No rules.

Moon grunts, breaking my intense stare at the remains of pilot and artillery sliding down the rocks. "We're here," he says.

Our landing is gentle—a soft tap against the ground that appeared from nowhere. When straining to peer out the porthole, I notice we are surrounded by the choppy ocean. I follow Nuna and Moon as they unbuckle and head toward the back of the ship.

Moon shoves a suit in my hands—a white suit, light and flimsy like animal skin. Trying to not be weird, but failing anyway, I watch my companions dress. Nuna unbuttons her pants, sliding them down her long legs and stepping out of them, picking up the blue bottoms and folding them neatly. Her underwear is black and perfectly hugs the curve of her thighs. I turn away when she begins unbuttoning her shirt and notice she's been watching me stare at her the entire time.

When I turn to Moon, he is unchanged. He glowers. "Did you forget how to change your clothes? Or is Nuna's ass too distracting for you to demonstrate basic motor skills?"

Why is he like this? This is already a horrible new experience and all he's managing to achieve is make me wish I could watch his ship crash into the rocks faster.

The suit, once I slip my legs and arms through, is skin-tight. I pull each finger through the glove and bend them, testing the fabric's flexibility. When I clench, I can't unfurl my hand. I'm stuck.

"What's happening?" I try to use my other hand to pry my fingers open.

"It's a special feature of our suits," Nuna says, fully vested and smiling. "Look."

She holds my hand in hers and squeezes my wrist. The suit releases my hand so I can see the thousands of tiny suction cups in my palm. "Woah."

"If you find yourself trapped in any strange atmosphere, all you have to do is rotate the cuff."

I twist the band on the glove. Blades. Fins. Ink. Heat. "This is incredible."

On her way out, Nuna grabs the starboard and clasps it against her side. "Do not forget to take a helmet. Safety first." She laughs at her own joke.

Out of the three helmets on the shelf, there are two that I want. One is vivid in Teeno's bright blue, one even covered with gold stripes across the top. The third helmet is bashed to hell, scraped up and dented everywhere. When Nuna takes the clean blue helmet, I stoop to pick up the one with the stripes.

"What do you think you're doing?" Moon grabs the helmet from my hands.

"I'm getting a helmet."

"This one is mine."

I gawk at his attire. "How come you're not in a suit?"

"I don't need one."

"Then you don't need a helmet." I stretch out to grab it back, but he holds it out of my reach.

"Pick another."

The third helmet is so horrible. I don't even think it would effectively protect my skull from a breeze, but I slip it on anyway. It's an oblong shape and is difficult to keep from sliding in front of my eyes. But this is what they give me, they'll both be dead soon. Those helmets won't work out so well for them anyway because I plan on aiming for their hearts. If either of them has one, that is.

The curiosity bites hard. While tuning my comms to our shared frequency, I ask, "Why don't you need a helmet? Or a suit?"

"I'm immortal."

I roll my eyes. "Seriously."

"If you're not going to accept the answer, why bother asking?" He slams his hand against the ship's exit latch and stomps down the ramp.

Miles and miles and miles of choppy water meet us when the hatch lowers. Without hesitation, Moon and Nuna wade into the water until it rises just above their ankles. They continue toward the empty horizon before Moon turns around, cocking his eyebrow and scowling.

"Are you coming or was this an enormous waste of time?"

Nuna watches me too.

I clench and unclench my fists. "Just for the record, I'm not a good swimmer."

We skim the surface of the ocean for a few blips before arriving at the head of a wet road. Creatures appear from other directions and follow us, joining our pilgrimage to the game grounds. No one says a word. The atmosphere is severe, reverent as if we landed on a holy planet and we were the penitents seeking the terrain's forgiveness. I can't shake the unease as we are joined by a mass of travelers in a wide array of uniforms.

As we walk, Nuna lifts the board and rests it against her head as if it was nothing more than an enormous hat. Beings part for us as we walk by. It seems as if it's because they don't want to be in the range of Nuna's board in case she trips or turns and slices a few heads as she spins, but I notice an overall sneer as we approach. Those who have eyes glare in our direction. The prickly sensation of being unwelcome is overwhelming.

"Do they hate us?" I avoid fidgeting as I ignore a particularly grisly snarl in my direction.

"They do not think we are evolved enough to participate." Nuna walks on unfazed. "We are infants in our galaxy."

"Infants?"

"Some of these species have been performing these games longer than our entire sun has existed."

I glare back at the creature, flicking it off as we pass. "So we're the underdogs?"

"No," Moon shouts. "We're not the fucking underdogs. We're the dogs themselves. We're the walking, talking, barely conscious snacks that are pretending to know what's going on in this fucking nightmare. That's what we are. We're not even the dogs. We're the scrawny scraps they feed their dogs off the table."

Nuna keeps her focus straight ahead. "This is the truth. We were abducted from our planet and tossed into this existence by accident. We did not earn our spot here."

"Fuck that," I spit on the ground and glare at anyone who looks my way. "Now that we're here, they better get used to—."

Something grabs my hand. I spin around, my fist tight, ready to strike it dead.

The creature is one I instantly recognize from the image Nuna had flashed at me. "Bor-Yann?"

She and Moon step in front of me as he drops my wrist, his bulky stature making his head hang from his hunch. The black hairs cascading down his neck are slick with moisture and his beady red eyes lock onto me.

A blood-red tongue slips past his pink lips and wets the lower half of his tubular face, coating his chin in slime. I can easily see the peeks of his jagged, blackened teeth glistening in his misshapen mouth.

I want to vomit, but I stare him down, looking directly into his eyes. No. I can't go with this creature. I have to win. I will win.

He rubs the bald sides of his head and slurps at Moon in his language.

Moon responds, making similar noises as if sucking through a straw.

Their conversation is short, but when Bor-Yann returns in the direction he came from, I could sense the confidence in his exit.

"What did he say?" When I get no response, I grab Moon's arm and make him look at me. "Tell me what he said."

Exasperated, blowing out air in frustration from talking to an idiot, Moon rolls his eye behind the curtain of his long, black hair. "He is excited to serve you as you look ripe."

None of these words make sense. All I can manage is a few blinks.

"Janika," Nuna says, grasping her board with one hand and resting the other on my shoulder. "We will not let him win."

"He's..." the words don't seem right. "He's going to eat me?"

"This is not news. I did extract you from a market, after all.

"But I didn't know for sure that was an option." Panic rises.

Moon shrugs. "It is. If we lose, I will hand you over and you will be slaughtered, butchered, and prepared however his personal chef sees fit."

The world tilts. I crouch on my haunches to try and stop the planet from spinning. "I'm in hell. I've died and have gone right to hell. Either that or I'm dreaming. This can't be real."

"Welcome to the god-damned universe." Moon walks away, leaving me and Nuna behind.

"This is why we must not let him win," Nuna says, offering me a hand up.

I point to my helmet. "Is this what happened to your last gunner?"

"We were confident. We need the payload—both ours and the special item Bor-Yann keeps concealed. Without it, we cannot raid Juno's ship."

This sparks my anger. This is all part of a larger plan—I need to remember. This is for my son, my ship, my future.

He won't win. I won't let it happen. Moon seems to get the new resolve I have. He doesn't say a word as we continue down the road, our boots sloshing through the water.