Chapter 3
Merrilee
The Alliance ship shuddered as it entered Palaydium's atmosphere, and I gripped the edge of the metal bench hard enough that my knuckles went white.
Around me, a dozen guards stood at attention, their faces impassive behind their helmets, weapons held with the casual competence of people who'd done this a thousand times.
They were here to sell the illusion—that I was a prisoner, a spy caught red-handed, being sent to rot on a prison planet because Alliance law forbade executing humans.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
The Prime's words echoed in my mind, spoken in that conference room what felt like a lifetime ago.
"Hewes is on Palaydium. The prison planet hasn't hindered him.
He's made arrangements with the local power structure and is running the slavery enterprise from there.
But he's trapped, Merrilee. He can't leave without exposing himself to Alliance forces. "
I'd asked the obvious question. Why not just send in a strike team? Why not orbital bombardment? Why not use any of the hundred ways the Alliance could eliminate a single human trafficker hiding on a prison planet?
Her answer had been simple and brutal. "Because Hewes has connections.
Leverage. If we move against him officially, it could start a war.
But if a disgraced spy shows up on Palaydium—someone with whom it has history.
If that person were too kill him, it would be understandable and perceived as being out of Alliance control. "
The plan was elegant in its simplicity. Hewes would seek me out—of course he would. He'd want to know what I'd told the Alliance, what I'd compromised, whether I was still useful or just a liability to be eliminated. And when the moment was right, I'd kill him.
Then the Alliance operatives already in place would extract me. I'd be taken off-world, returned to Earth, reunited with Ana and Sebastian. My life could finally begin again, free from Declan Hewes's shadow.
Simple.
Except nothing about this felt simple. Nothing about descending into a prison planet's yellow sky, surrounded by guards who looked at me like I was already dead, felt like it would work out the way the Prime intended. Not to mention, I'd never killed anything in my life, save for the errant spider.
And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? The Prime had chosen me because I had access, because Hewes would come to me. She hadn't chosen me because I was a killer.
I wasn't.
I was just someone who'd spent years justifying moral compromises by telling myself I was protecting my siblings, that I was just gathering information, that I wasn't really responsible for what Hewes did with it. I'd been very good at not looking directly at the blood on my hands.
But this? This required me to look. To act.
Could I do it? Could I look into Declan Hewes's eyes—those cold, calculating eyes that had smiled at me across conference tables while he destroyed lives—and end him? Could I feel his pulse stop beneath my hands? Could I watch his light fade and know that I was the one who'd extinguished it?
The thought made my stomach turn, but beneath the nausea was something else. Something darker. The memory of Ana's and Sebastian's faces as Hewes described what he'd do to them if I didn't cooperate. The years they'd lost, the innocence they'd sacrificed, all because of one man's greed and cruelty.
The capacity for violence, for finality. It was there—it had to be there. Humans were capable of terrible things when pushed far enough, when everything they loved was threatened. I'd already proven I could betray my principles to protect my siblings.
Killing Hewes would just be one more betrayal. One more line crossed.
The last one, I promised myself. After this, no more compromises. No more blood. Just Ana and Sebastian and a life where I could look at myself in the mirror again.
I just had to become a murderer first.
The ship lurched, and one of the guards—a Romvesian with cold eyes—grabbed my arm to steady me. His grip was just a fraction too tight, his claws pressing against my skin through the thin fabric of my prison uniform. A reminder. A warning.
The uniform itself was made of climate-adjusting fabric, a dreary gray that definitely wasn't my color—though I supposed fashion wasn't a priority when you were being dumped on a prison planet.
Still, it was warm and sturdy, responding to my body temperature with subtle shifts that kept me from freezing in the ship's recycled air.
The boots were equally practical. Thick-soled and reinforced, designed to last through whatever hell awaited below.
Small mercies. The Alliance might be using me as bait, but at least they weren't sending me underdressed.
The landing was rough—the kind of controlled crash that made my teeth rattle and my stomach lurch.
When the cargo bay doors opened, the smell hit me first. Acrid and chemical.
Like burning plastic mixed with sewage and something organic that had been rotting for far too long.
I gagged, pressing my hand to my mouth, and one of the guards laughed.
"Welcome to Palaydium," he said, his voice carrying dark amusement. "Breathe deep, human. You'll get used to it."
I wouldn't. But I said nothing as they hauled me to my feet, marched me down the ramp and onto the surface of a planet that looked like the galaxy's garbage dump.
The outskirts of Fange City stretched before me—a wasteland of twisted metal.
Wreckage from crashed ships jutted from the ground at impossible angles, their hulls stripped of anything valuable, skeletal frames creating a jagged horizon against a sky the color of old bruises.
The ground beneath my feet was hard-packed dirt mixed with debris, sharp edges of metal and plastic that crunched with every step.
The guards stopped at what seemed like an arbitrary point—just another stretch of wasteland identical to every other. One shoved a bottle of water into my hands. Another tossed a small pack at my feet.
"This is as far as we go," the Romvesian said. "Fange City is that way." He pointed toward a cluster of structures barely visible through the haze. "Good luck, spy."
They were back on the ship before I could respond, before I could ask what I was supposed to do or how I was supposed to survive.
The ship's engines roared to life, kicking up clouds of toxic dust that made me cough and stumble backward.
I watched it rise into the ochre sky, where it disappear into the upper atmosphere. And then I was alone.
Completely, utterly alone.
I stood there for what felt like hours but was probably only minutes, trying to process the reality of my situation.
The bottle of water in my hands felt pathetically inadequate.
The pack at my feet contained—I checked—a thin blanket, a protein bar that looked expired, and nothing else.
No weapon. No comm device. No way to contact the Alliance operative who was supposedly in place to extract me once the job was done.
Just me, standing in a wasteland on a prison planet, with nothing but the clothes on my back and the desperate hope that I could somehow kill the man who'd destroyed my life.
I turned in a slow circle, taking in the full scope of my situation.
The wasteland stretched in every direction, kilometers of broken ships and toxic soil under a sky that looked diseased.
Yellow-gray clouds roiled overhead, backlit by a sun I couldn't see, casting everything in sickly orange.
The air tasted wrong—metallic and bitter, coating my tongue with each breath.
No one was coming.
The thought settled into my bones. The Alliance operatives the Prime had mentioned—if they even existed—weren't here. Weren't watching. Weren't going to swoop in and save me if things went wrong. I was bait, and bait was expendable.
I looked down at the water bottle in my hands. One liter, maybe less. The label was in a language I didn't recognize, the plastic already warm from Palaydium's heat. How long would one bottle last in this climate? A day? Two, if I rationed carefully? And then what?
The protein bar in the pack looked like it had been expired for months, its wrapper faded and cracked. The blanket was thin enough to see through in places, more symbolic than functional.
My breath caught, hitching in my chest. The panic I'd been holding at bay since the ship landed started creeping in at the edges, cold fingers wrapping around my lungs.
If I died out here—collapsed from dehydration or torn apart by whatever predators hunted in this wasteland—no one would know. Ana and Sebastian would never learn what happened to me.
I'd just be gone.
Another body. Another piece of debris among the wreckage.
The wind picked up, carrying with it the smell of chemicals and rot, and I realized I was shaking.
Not from cold—the climate-adjusting fabric was doing its job—but from the bone-deep understanding that I was completely, utterly alone on a planet that wanted me dead, with a mission that would probably kill me even if I survived long enough to attempt it.
This was what redemption costs, I thought, and the bitterness of it was sharper than the taste of Palaydium's poisoned air.
The sound of engines made me spin around, my heart racing.
Not the Alliance ship—something smaller, cruder, cobbled together from parts like a mechanical Frankenstein.
A transport vehicle that looked like it had been built from the corpses of different ships, held together with welds and prayers and sheer stubborn refusal to die.
It stopped about twenty feet away, and the doors opened.
Three males emerged, and every instinct I had screamed at me to run.