Three years after Tammy and Avi met, the nine-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl find themselves in a box. A large metal box, with a lock on the inside, and a dozen air holes strategically hidden between the metal panels.

The two sit across from each other, on opposite sides of an electrical lantern. Their backs are pressed against the metal walls and their legs are spread in a V, their feet touching. There’s a deck of cards next to the lantern, discard piles in front of them, and each holds a hand of cards. They’ve been playing old maid for the past six hours. This is round 34, and Tammy has won 32 so far.

Around the box are trash bags filled with four days’ worth of food wrappers and water bottles, a rolled-up pillow and blanket, and both of them organized a backpack full of games to play. Built into the lantern is a timer, set to turn off when it’s night, and enough charge for five days. That’s the only way they can tell the passage of time.

“One day left…” Tammy groans, grabbing a card from Avi’s hand. It doesn’t match any in his hand, so he takes a card from the deck.

“One. Day. Left.” Avi repeats. Her tail is coiled in a pile at her side, but her enthusiasm is gone and it doesn’t rattle anymore.

“What if we just, like, died in here?” Tammy stretches forward to let Avi grab a card.

She grabs a card, realizes it’s the old maid, and clicks her tongue. “We won’t. I’d sooner unlock the box and kill everyone on this ship before that happens.” There’s a gentle hum of the ship’s engine as it speeds along a calm sea.

“What if we lost the key to unlock it?” Tammy waits for Avi to shuffle her hand, then reads her facial expressions to avoid grabbing the old maid.

“We needed the key to lock the box though? How could we lose it?” She grabs a card from Tammy’s hand. It doesn’t give her a pair so she draws from the deck.

“Hmm…” Tammy grabs one of hers, and it’s a pair. “It was really cold last night. What if the chill messed up the lock and the key is worthless?”

“Then,” she takes a second to yawn, “I’d use my acid and melt the wall. Or the lock.”

“What if you don’t have any acid?”

Avi wiggles in place. “I have six pouches full of acid right now.”

“What if you really messed up while making the acid and it’s of too poor a quality to dissolve the metal?”

“First: rude.” Avi reaches forward to swipe a card. “Second: I’d… punch the wall until it broke and we could escape.”

“What if your hand broke?”

Avi cocks her head, and lets Tammy take a card. “It… won’t? My bones don’t break.”

“Joints?”

She shakes her head, “they don’t break either.”

“Uhh…” Tammy takes a card from Avi, it’s not a match, and so he takes the last card from the pile. “What if… cosmic radiation caused you to undergo a sudden mutation that makes your bones normal and brittle?”

“Well then I guess I’d keep punching until my hand broke.”

“Then?”

“I’d use my other hand.”

“Then?”

“Uhhh…” Her eyes are too dull to be annoyed. At this point, any conversation is better than silence. “I’d bash my head against the metal and either I’d get us out of here, or I’d die.”

Tammy nods, finally getting her to the answer he wanted. “Yeah, good plan. I would too, right alongside you.”

“How romantic,” she says, monotone.

It’s the final turn of the round. Tammy has a king, Avi has a king and the old maid. She holds the two cards up. It’s all down to this. If Tammy picks the king, he wins. If he picks the queen, he loses. “Hmm…” He leans in, as does his wife.

He raises a hand and puts his index finger on the right card.

Avi’s face brightens, a rare moment of emotion in this dreadful smuggling trip.

He moves his hand to the left card.

All the enthusiasm is wiped from her face, the only emotion left is annoyance at being selected for the five-day smuggling route.

Tammy moves his hand right, and Avi’s brow raises, her tail swishing silently.

Tammy moves left, causing her tail and brow to flop back down as if she lacks the strength to keep them raised.

He drags his hand back to the right, and Avi just sighs and softly closes her eyes.

“Would you pick one already?”

“Because you’re in a rush all of a sudden?” Tammy huffs, then thinks. “I guess I should let her win a few matches. She’ll get frustrated and stop wanting to play.”

Tammy grabs the right card; the one Avi was happy about him potentially grabbing. Avi feels the card slide out of her hand and opens her eyes.

When Tammy turns the card around, it’s the king. Avi still has the old maid. “Huh?”

“You jerk!” Avi cries, repeatedly slapping her tail against the floor. “You were going to let me win?! When I finally figured out how to trick you!?”

“Oh. Oopsie.”

Avi leans back to the wall and flicks the old maid away, “this game sucks. Even when I win I don’t win.”

“Well, that’s…” He looks at the kings, then tosses them aside. “Bah.”

After another day of twiddling their thumbs, the pair are delivered to a warehouse in the planet’s capital city. According to the postage markings on the side of their box, they’re sent through a large portal to another planet in the Gurant Empire, where smugglers pick them up and send them to a town miles outside the new city. The Ranger Supreme of the Barabba Tribe, Avi’s uncle, then collects them, signals them to open the box, and the two are finally free.