The boy woke in the semi-darkness of a cold room, unsure of where he was or what had happened to him. He sat up, his head pounding with a vicious headache. His tongue was dry and swollen. The cot beneath him rattled with even the slightest movement. He looked around. Injured workers were lying in rows on old hospital beds, their vital signs monitored by machines.

When he remembered why he’d ended up in the medical ward, he yanked the IV lines from his arm and forehead, tossing the wool blanket aside. The moment he stood up, dizziness hit him, followed by a wave of nausea as he staggered toward the lockers. Small digital screens displayed the last names of patients in the dim light. In his compartment, he found his dirty boots and the worker’s coveralls he had worn beneath the pressure suit.

He got dressed and stepped out of the patient room into a brightly lit corridor. The overhead lights reflected off the freshly mopped floor. Squinting, he almost tripped over a cleaning bot that was dutifully following the muddy tracks from his boots.

At the reception desk, he saw a doctor whispering to a nurse. Both of them eyed the boy. The graying corporate officer wore a thoughtful expression, tapping his glasses’ frame. Tiny projectors on the inside of the temples flickered on, projecting the boy’s medical history onto the lenses.

"Ah yes, Lex Marrow," the doctor said. He had a trimmed white beard, light eyes and a kind face. Despite being a corporate employee.

"You were quite lucky today."

"I’ve never had luck. Especially not today."

"Then you probably don’t know what happened to you earlier. You were dead. — Yes, you heard that right. Your heart stopped for almost two minutes. One more minute, and your brain would’ve suffered irreversible damage."

"My heart stopped?"

"Yes."

"I was dead, sir?"

"We doctors like to say you only die once. So, you were just clinically dead." The doctor turned off the heads-up display on his glasses.

"What does that mean?"

"Your vital functions failed, but we were able to bring you back. That’s the difference. If that other convict hadn’t acted so quickly, pulling you out of your suit and resuscitating you right away, I’d be writing ‘asphyxiation’ as the cause of death in your report." He looked the boy over. "It’s remarkable that you’re already up on your feet. I always say, a convict can’t get back to work too soon—only quit too early. Don’t spare your body; hard work is the best medicine."

The boy pressed his lips together.

The doctor smiled and said, "Lira will give you your discharge papers and bill you for the treatment. But don’t worry about the cost—we also offer payment plans."

******

A day was originally defined as the time it took Earth to rotate once on its axis—24 hours from one morning to the next. On Limbo, a day lasted 384 hours, which meant 16 Earth days. The colonists in the Tau Ceti system still followed Earth’s 24-hour cycle, so it could be as bright as noon on Limbo even at midnight.

Lex was making his way through the 200-meter-long connector tunnel to his usual bar. Under the light of the gas giant Kronos streaming in through the long windows, a few familiar faces nodded at him. The entrance to the bar was a four-by-four-meter gate, with cold white neon letters spelling out “B17,” which stood for the 17th bar in Orongu. Next to the sign, a camera scanned the entrance area at a 60-degree angle.

The boy pushed his way through a large group of smoking convicts. A display board had caught his attention with a large headline about the Selection Program. All the while, he kept reminding himself that he still needed to tell Mori and Tayus that he wanted to enter the competition. But he doubted they were still here this late.

The board was on the right side of the passageway, right next to a fire extinguisher. Piles of trash bags blocked the lower third of the sign. Lex read what he could see:

14 days left until the Selection Program for Limbo’s most hardworking convict.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

This year’s motto: Only the Best Can Clear Their Inherited Guilt.

Any convict over the age of 15 with a clean record is eligible to participate. Registration is only available at the administrative complex in Bancarduu.

The winner of the Selection Program will be announced one day before the LEVIATHAN departs and will be allowed to leave the prison moon aboard the space freighter. On Cetos V, the winner will have their inherited guilt forgiven by Zara Thandros herself. In addition, the winner will receive a permanent work contract at Vega Prime.

For full participation details, see the brochure at—

"Excuse me?"

A completely sweat-drenched waiter was trying to dump two tied-up garbage bags right where the boy was standing. Lex stepped to the side, read the rest of the board and then headed into B17, hoping Mori and Tayus were still waiting for him.

The bar was located on the ground floor of the domed building, shaped like a flat cylinder. A projector mounted on the roof cast a flickering hologram into the humid, sticky air, reminding everyone of the Thandros family’s presence with the massive three-story corporate logo: a spaceship orbiting the letters TC, and beneath it the slogan: We Build the Future.

Lex squeezed between the crowded barstools and ordered three mugs of miner's piss, which was on special today.

"No one’s ordering anything else tonight," the bartender said. Clanging tinny music from the stage on the second floor blasted across the room. The only thing louder than the music was the overlapping chatter of the drunks and the rumble of the air filtration system working on overdrive. Lex fished his wallet out of his pants pocket and laid the exact change on the metal bar. Then he carefully balanced the mugs as he carried them over to the table where his friends were sitting, set them down on the grimy tabletop and wiped his fingers on his dirty linen shirt.

"Good day," Lex said ironically.

Tayus glanced up briefly before grabbing his drink. "Hey, man. You’re pretty late. Where the hell have you been?"

"We were worried about you."

"I wasn’t."

"Yeah, sure, Tayus," Mori said.

Lex sat down on the free stool across from them and took a few big gulps, leaving his mug half-empty. Then he sighed loudly, though the surrounding noise swallowed it up. Finally, he raised his drink and said, "Here’s to still being alive."

"So, where the hell were you?" Tayus pressed.

The seats weren’t cushioned and were bolted to the floor. Despite the filtration system, the air was thick with the sharp smell of sweat and body odor. Beside Lex, condensation streamed down the walls, collecting in a basin below the grated floor, where it was filtered into drinking water through a not-so-sophisticated process.

Lex took off his backpack, placed it on his lap and pulled out his datapad. "I’m in pretty deep shit," he said, "I just need to figure out how deep." He told them how the hall overseer had reassigned him to the recovery team, but he had hesitated too long before accepting the offer. "Now I’ve got my punishment: five days of work with no pay."

"Ouch." Tayus patted his pockets, searching for his tabacco. "We can help," he said.

"Yeah, we could start by paying you back for the drinks."

"Don’t worry about it. The three mugs only cost me six lousy coppers. Either way, I’ll be hauling ore sacks the next few nights if I want to scrape by."

Tayus was carefully spreading some dry tobacco in a rolling paper. "Is that why you were so late?" he asked without looking up.

"We saw the news about the accident with the bucket wheel excavator on the video screen earlier," Mori said.

"Lex, man?"

"Yeah, what a mess."

"What happened?" Tayus asked.

Lex looked up from his datapad, glancing back and forth between his friends. "I’ve got another punishment coming, and it’s a big one." He told them how he’d woken up in the medical ward earlier because he hadn’t been able to bring himself to breathe in the liquid mixture from his pressure suit. He had just dropped dead, but they managed to bring him back in time. "But now I’m not so sure that was a good thing. I got the bill for the medical costs—twenty silver pieces."

"Seriously?"

"You were dead?"

"You’ll never come up with that kind of money, man."

"And that’s not even the worst part," Lex added. "The administration’s blaming me for delaying the recovery mission because of it. My punishment: thirty lashes with the electric whip, sixty silver pieces."

Mori and Tayus exchanged a meaningful look. It seemed almost conspiratorial. "When?" they asked in unison.

"Tomorrow after work."

Tayus stopped rolling and shook his head. "Those damn bastards. If only I could…"

"And there’s something else," Lex said. "One more offense this quarter and I get a disciplinary warning."

"Have you ever gotten one before?"

He shook his head. "It’d be my first."

"Well, at least you’ve still got two left. They only exile you after three warnings."

"Yeah, but—" Lex stopped himself from saying the rest, but finished the thought in his head: The first warning would disqualify me from the Selection Program. Only workers with clean records can enter. That would mean saying goodbye to any chance of getting out of here.

Tayus lit the rolled cigarette, shielding the flame with his hand. He took a deep drag and passed it over to Lex. "I think now’s a good time to pay back my debt to you."

Lex, shaken from his thoughts, frowned. "What debt?"

"Dude, I smoked your last bit of tobacco at lunch today. Come on, take it. You could use it right now."

Lex smoked for a while, the silence between them making the conversations at nearby tables more noticeable.

"I’m taking tomorrow night off, no matter what," Mori said.

He flicked the ash into an empty cup and looked at her pale face. "Why?" he asked.

"To be with you."

"I’ll be fine. You need to focus on yourself. Everyone has to look out for themselves."

"That’s crap," Tayus cut in. "We gotta stick together, man. I’ve got a buddy who owes me a favor. He’ll cover my shift tomorrow. So I’ll be there, too."

Lex looked at his friend, smoking. He said nothing. Felt miserable.

"Now give me a drag, man," Tayus said. "I don’t remember smoking a whole cig from you."