The ship’s air lock twists open, segments disappearing into the hull to reveal a long corridor. Light floods in from the end of the tunnel and refracts off curved walls of galvanized steel, and despite the glowing lines along the floor, the tunnel is dark and I’m blinded by the bright light flooding in at the far end. Turret installations line the ceiling, gun barrels poking into the tunnel like the antennae of curious insects.
I start walking and the boots of the soldiers make a precise beat as they follow. There’s no second air lock door at the end of the tunnel, just a heavy barred gate—the prison relying on the air lock of any docked ship, willing to let everyone inside die to decompression rather than give prisoners any hope of escape.
My feet stop at the edge of daylight and, with a grind of machinery, the gate rises. A weapon is jabbed into the small of my back, and one of the voices behind me barks, “Keep moving.”
I walk forward and instinctively try to raise a hand to shield my eyes, but my arms are strapped together tight. Instead I squint until my eyes adjust to the sunlight . . . No, not sunlight, something else.
We’re standing on a flat expanse of polycrete. Directly ahead is a large transparent tube, two meters tall and extending out of sight in both directions. Behind this tube are two watchtowers, and beyond them the inside of the moon’s shell curves up above us. A massive forest covers most of the right hemisphere, broken up by prison compounds and cut into sections by endless lengths of transit tube. The nearest tree line looks close enough to walk to, but the farthest copse is inverted, pointing “down” toward the other side of the sphere, where a rectangular stretch of water shimmers. The pond, the trees, everything, held in place by centrifugal force, artificial gravity, or some combination of the two.
We’re inside Homan Sphere. It’s like a planet turned inside out, with land where the sky should be. The view makes my head swim, but I keep staring. I try to look near the “sun” without looking at it, and when I squint just right I see glinting lines of heavy cable suspending what must be an open plasma reactor. Behind this tiny faux star, the far side of the sphere hides in darkness.
“Incredible,” I say under my breath. When I glance at the Legionnaires, they aren’t even bothering to look up. I don’t know if they’ve seen it too many times before, or if being part of a human hive mind ruins you for appreciating extreme feats of engineering.
I look to the left hemisphere, not letting my eyes drift too far up this time, and see neatly delineated blocks. Most are shades of green flecked with shoots and spots of other color, but there are also shimmering fields of golden wheat and fallow stretches of dark soil. There are more gray compounds sown around the farmlands, and lengths of tube crisscross the whole of the Sphere.
Forests for air, farmlands for food—everything they need is generated right inside the prison. Except water. Maybe that’s my exit strategy: wait for a water delivery and hijack the ship.
This huge rock has been hollowed, terraformed, and turned into a self-contained ecosystem: wholly artificial yet somehow natural too. I can’t believe that MEPHISTO built a garden world for their fucking prisoners, while there are hundreds of colonized planets in the empire where people still can’t go outside without protective gear.
I forget my awe for a second as a new realization creeps into my thoughts: How do I break Mookie out of a closed system? A prison inside a prison?
A loud hiss builds within the transit tube, then ends suddenly in a shup as a bullet-shaped pod slides to a halt within the pipe. Machinery shunts the pod out of the transit loop; the roof folds away and an android envoy emerges. It’s unusually stocky, with extra armor plating on its torso and limbs. The head is lit up with a grainy image of a guard’s face: young, male, and bored.
The envoy holds a waver across its chest, low enough that it doesn’t block the lenses that act as its eyes. Weapons that tear apart flesh but leave inorganic material untouched are perfect for a prison where screws ride metal bodies via a holo-rigfrom behind the scenes via holo-rig.
The guard looks at me, then at the line of Legionnaires fanned out behind me. “All this for her?”
A Legionnaire to my right grunts. “Do not underestimate this prisoner. A recommended security routine was transmitted to Doctor Rathnam.”
The lenses on the envoy’s chest shift and swivel as the guard studies my face, then he raises his eyebrows and steps right inside my personal space.
“Yeah, we received it; Doctor Rathnam had this fabricated to specifications.” He produces a large, segmented collar from behind the envoy’s back and puts it around my neck. There’s a series of quiet clicks as the collar tightens. “Normally we fit our prisoners with a bomb collar, but this is something else entirely.” His voice is pitched high, with a strange lilt. It rises and falls steadily as he speaks, with no regard for what he’s actually saying.
“For some reason, they want to keep your head where it is, so there’s no bomb in this one, but there are sensors that can detect abnormal brain activity. If you use the abilities Hamid warned us about, the collar will shock you. If you stray too far from your designated prison campus, it will shock you. If you try and remove the collar, it will shock you.” He points over my shoulder and says, “If you try and enter that tunnel—”
“The collar will shock me?” I say.
He grins. “You catch on quick.”
When the collar closed around my neck, the information scrolling across my HUD dried up as my aug-feeds were shut down. Now, all that’s left is a blinking message: DISABLED. After a few seconds, even that is gone.
I lift my cuffed hands. “Are you going to take these off?”
“The restraints stay, but I’ll take this,” he says, then he grabs my cloak and lifts it off, snaking it down my arms and over the restraints.
The cloak was my second gift from Sera. The first was a bracelet that lets me slip through powershields; the same bracelet that’s clamped beneath my handcuffs, hidden from sight. With the cloak gone, the guard quickly frisks me, cold android fingers prodding my flesh.
“I’ll take it from here,” he says. The envoy grabs me by the arm and yanks so hard I bash into the android’s torso, then he spins and drags me toward the transit tube.
The Legion start moving and I turn to watch their formation shift and flow until they vanish into the darkness of the tunnel. The gate closes, and for all appearances it could be blocking a sewer drain or water runoff, not the prison’s only dock.
I sigh and almost stumble as the guard hauls me along, my legs still aching. I’ll be alone until I find Mookie, but loneliness was my life before; just me and Ocho, with a whole galaxy to hide in. So why do I feel so lonely now?
As we reach the car, we fall into the shade of one of the watchtowers. Hidden from the artificial sunlight, the shadows are black and cold as the void. I shiver and hope the screw didn’t see, doesn’t think I’m afraid.
We take a seat inside the transit pod and the roof closes as the vehicle slots into the transparent tunnel. The guard turns to look at me, his head twisting unnaturally while the android’s chassis stays motionless. “Hold onto your hat.”
We’re launched forward and my neck snaps back, head thrown against the metal headrest. The guard laughs. Pinned by gravity, all I can do is look up and watch the surface of Homan Sphere shift above me.
* * *
The transit loop delivers us to a complex deep inside Homan’s forest. Fake sunlight falls dappled through the leaves; eyelids glow flesh pink when I close my eyes.
The compound is butterflied—two mirrored halves connected to a main hub—and the guard leads me to a central building with a sign reading Maximum Security Site over the entrance. The doors slide open as we approach and snap shut immediately behind us.
The main corridor smells of antiseptics with an underlying note of urine. A flash of childhood wracks my brain—girls waking up in screaming terror, sheets soaked with sweat and piss. In my memories it’s the other girls who wake like that, pounding the ceiling with their manifesting telekinetic powers, but I was one of those girls too. Slapped by a caretaker and forced back into a soiled bed, feeling the wet patch turn cold while I cried, only knowing I’d slept because I woke later in the harsh light they used to simulate day.
I shake my head, as if that might clear the thoughts, but they linger.
Women dressed in green prison uniforms and metal collars move past, most of them walking slow or staggering. Some have had their scalps razored, others walk with heads low, faces hidden behind lank, dirty hair.
The guard takes me to a clinic. The lights inside are brighter than elsewhere, bleaching the skin of the patients lying in bed. Autodocs glide on wheeled feet, and a number of envoys line the far wall. These envoys are unarmored, torso panels white with caducei painted in red along the sternum, finely detailed wings spreading across the chest.
One of these medical envoys comes to life and walks toward me. A man’s face is projected from the holo-unit at the neck: sharp nose, large eyes, and a white beard speckled with black.
He nods to my escort. “Good day, corporal.”
“Sir,” he replies.
I roll my eyes at the farce: wherever they’re controlling the envoys from, these two are probably within spitting distance, heads hidden inside holo-rigs, playing at prison staff through their android toys.
“This is our new arrival?” he asks.
“Yes, sir; Mariam Xi. She was captured on Miyuki by Commander Hamid’s forces and claims to be the terrorist responsible for the destruction of Commander Briggs’s fleet, the murder of Commander Briggs, and the deaths of the personnel under his command.”
“Is that so.” The doctor’s holographic face doesn’t shift, but the envoy’s lenses whir as he focuses his gaze on me. Standing this close, it’s easy to see how his eyes don’t quite meet mine. “I was informed we were taking delivery of an extremely high-risk prisoner, but I must admit I wasn’t expecting someone quite so . . . petite.”
“Death comes in all shapes and sizes,” I say with a smirk.
He frowns, drawing deep lines across his face. “Deliver the prisoner’s cloak to storage;” “I’ll take her from here.”
“Sir, the induction procedures—”
“I will handle it, corporal.”
The doctor says the last word like a threat, but if the guard responds I don’t hear it. His head flickers then disappears and the envoy leaves the room holding my bundled cloak, carried away by its own basic artificial intelligence.
“My name is Doctor Rathnam, and I’m responsible for all that happens inside Homan Sphere. As warden and senior physician, I have assigned myself as your caretaker.”
It’s like they deliberately chose the title “caretaker” to make my skin crawl.
“Mariam Xi,” he says, as if to himself.
“People call me ‘Mars.’”
“Come, walk with me.” The envoy moves out into the hallway and I follow, walking beside the android as it ambles down the corridor.
“How do you feel, Mariam?”
I try to think of the best words to describe my particular mix of brain-fog and sluggish limbs. The best I can come up with is, “Drug-fucked.”
Rathnam laughs, but it’s a polite, insincere sound. “I’m certain the sedatives will be out of your system soon enough.”
“Which is why you put me in this collar, right? I’m not sure a little zap is going to stop me, doc.”
“I am well aware, Mariam: I have read the briefing documents which detail your abilities.” We come to a hallway intersection and Rathnam stops. “I have decided we must take additional measures to ensure the safety of the other prisoners.”
Rathnam’s envoy raises its arm and motions to a guard escorting a prisoner toward the clinic. This prisoner is an older man, his back hunched and organic eyes cloudy with untreated cataracts.
“Your weapon, corporal?” Rathnam says, and the guard passes his waver over. Rathnam turns to face me and raises the weapon, pressing it to the elderly man’s temple. “If you use your abilities to act out in any way, even in self-defense, one of your fellow prisoners will be killed. That might sound harsh, but you are a dangerous individual, and I take the well-being of my charges very seriously.”
I’m sure you do.
His display complete, Rathnam returns the guard’s sidearm. The old man sags, disappointment not relief, and we keep moving. A woman walks past and looks at me, her wide eyes windows to terror. She’s wretchedly thin, and dark shadows line the hollows of her cheeks.
“You probably think this is the part of my speech where I say that we’re going to break you—”
“I was waiting for that bit actually,” I say.
“—but believe me when I say we hope to treat you well here. Commander Hamid has great plans for you, and it is my job to see them brought to fruition. One way or another, you will pledge your loyalty to her.”
We enter the mess hall, empty but for a few prisoners mopping the floor and wiping down tables.
Rathnam continues. “I should also let you know that there are no space suits kept anywhere within Homan Sphere. So if you were to, say, break open the dock, you would be killing yourself and every other prisoner here.”
“Not to mention the staff,” I say, as a super subtle threat.
The doctor laughs, a loud blast that echoes off the high ceiling. “I am sorry to say that we are all safely ensconced on the surface of Seward, far away from your terrible abilities.”
We come to a long corridor walled and roofed with glass. Outside the sun has set, and the leaves flutter in an artificial wind, but I can’t hear their song.
The glass corridor leads us inside a multitiered building, four stories of cells rising above an open central corridor. Envoys patrol the walkways, some ridden, others empty-headed, all armed with wavers.
“And now we arrive at your new home, Mariam.” Rathnam leads me to a large cell on the second floor. A powershield shimmers across the opening—beyond, lines of shield segregate the women into individual cells. They sleep on the ground, arms folded under their heads for pillows. A woman with two prosthetic arms has her cheek pressed flat against the polycrete floor. Another wears only collar and underwear; even through the blur of the shields I can see the lesions and cuts on her skin.
A segment of shield disappears and the doctor sweeps an arm toward the opening like it’s a grand invitation. I step inside and hold my hands out to the envoy.
As he undoes the restraints, Rathnam says, “Escape is impossible. Remember that, and you will come to accept your new role more easily.”
I nod and cover my bracelet with my other hand, hoping he doesn’t notice it. It takes effort not to wince; beneath the bracelet my skin is broken, flesh bruised. “I understand,” I say. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean I’m planning to comply.