“Can they hear us?” I asked, cutting him off before he gave away any of my secrets.

“Against company policy to record in areas where there are bathrooms and changing areas.” He motioned to the other room. “Entrances to the quarters are watched, but once you’re inside, you’re okay.”

Well, at least SpaceTech wasn’t totally pervy. Now that I was alone with him, I had one big question. “What is it that I’m supposed to be doing exactly?” Matthew had said I was red-zoned, but what did that mean?

Ahiga wouldn’t look at my face, and that was starting to freak me out. “What?” It didn’t matter what job I had, I’d get through it. I had no other choice.

He rubbed his stubbly cheek. “You’re going to be on the tarmac and roadways outside.”

“Doing what?” I didn’t know anything about directing airships, but I was pretty sure that was done from a control room inside the base. For everything else, there should be bots.

“Icing them down, apparently.”

I laughed. Was that a joke? “I’m sorry, I thought you said I’d be icing down the tarmac and roadways?”

“Affirmative.”

It made zero sense. “Don’t you have bots for that? And hovering vehicles? Do you even need roadways? And what good does icing them down do anyway, when the whole freaking planet is lava? If they wanted a more stable place to put a base, they shouldn’t have built here.” I was out of breath by the time I finally stopped my rant, but I honestly couldn’t come up with a more stupid job if I tried.

“Yes, there are bots for icing. Yes, the vehicles hover. And, no, we don’t actually need this job to be done. The ships are much faster on smooth roadways, which can mean the difference of getting out of someplace quickly, but they can get around just fine on any surface.”

I had to be missing something. “So why was I assigned this if it isn’t even necessary?” I was fine cleaning toilets or scrubbing pots in the kitchen or any other menial task, but risking my life out on the surface for something that didn’t even matter? That wasn’t even needed?

The glow started small at first but quickly turned into light-show Maité.

“Shit.” Ahiga went to the door and messed with the control panel, hopefully locking it, but I didn’t care.

I sat down on the edge of the closest empty bunk. “I can’t believe this.” I shouldn’t have been so surprised and pissed off, but I was. I’d honestly thought Jason was going to have me cleaning toilets with a toothbrush, but to risk my life—