The chains of poverty that bound her were broken the moment she signed away her dignity. Maybe it should have been harder, giving up her body for her family's security, but it wasn't. She filled out paperwork, lied through interviews, and acted as if she had actually been excited for this. But just below the surface, Mira was terrified by what she had agreed to.

She stepped off the ship, embraced by the beauty of this wonderful new world. The trees were all the wrong colors, purple and orange and bright pink. The grass looked like moss and the sky was the same turquoise color as her sister's eyes. Even the air tasted sweet as she inhaled the first non-filtered oxygen she had breathed in months. The world looked like something out of a fairytale, so warm with color and bright with soft light from a distant star rising in the horizon. But as amazing as this new world was, Mira still couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of grief.

"Welcome to your new home," one of the Jayku said, leading the group of young girls off the spaceship and onto the dock.

New home, Mira thought. You mean our new prison.

That was the deal: If you sell yourself to the alien race that call themselves Jayku, your family will be cared for and comfortable for the remainder of their lives. Some girls don't do it for the money, however. Some do it for adventure and excitement. After all, earth was an overpopulated, polluted planet on the brink of war. Other girls believed coming to Akaari and becoming a slave was better than being trapped on their home planet. But Mira wasn't one of them. She had signed away her body for one reason: to save her little sister, Ava.

The medicine Ava needed was too expensive for her family, and had Mira not done what she did, Ava would have been dead within months. It wasn't a matter of adventure or new opportunities for Mira, it was a matter of life and death. That's why it was so incredibly easy for her to lie through the interviews and land herself a ticket to this planet. But acting all those months had taken so much energy, she was beginning to grow tired of pretending.

It's just a handful of months, she reminded herself. Though, she knew she was lying. It would probably be more like years before she had the chance to go home again.

The Jayku who had welcomed them led Mira and the others over a long bridge connecting the spaceship dock to a large domed building. As many of the girls inspected their new home, Mira was busy studying the Jayku.

The aliens made contact with earth two decades ago, explaining the only reason they decided to reach out was because they needed women, since a mysterious disease had wiped out almost all the females on the planet. Without women to bear their children, their species would die out.

At first, the humans on earth were repulsed by the idea, but then the aliens came down and when humans saw how similar the aliens were to them, the idea became less grotesque and more fantastical to many.

The Jayku were similar in appearance to the humans from earth. They were slightly taller, with adult males height averaging about six foot five. They had all the same major organs in the same place, except their hearts were a slightly different shape and structure, and their lungs slightly larger, allowing them to go without air for several minutes longer than humans. The Jayku's skin was also a slightly different hue, ranging from tan-blue to black-purple. The final major difference was the dark birth marks along their skin that reminded Mira of tribal markings or tattoos. The dark patches or rings of skin were known to glow different colors when in the water.

Mira had seen it before on TV. One of the Jayku's came down and allowed scientists to study him. As soon as his skin was wet, it was like the markings were activated, and they lit up like some type of bioluminescent fish.

The Jayku leading her and the other girls had the markings along his neck, and splotches of it over one eye. He looked almost like a Dalmatian. It was strange, however, since not all of the Jayku markings were the same shape, in the same areas, or even glowing the same color. Some were blue, some green or yellow. Every Jayku's markings were different, like a fingerprint.

Mira wondered what color this Jayku would glow if she spit on him."My name is Tukutifira, but you may call me Tuku, as we know the language is foreign to you."

As they approached the dome building, automated doors slid open. Inside, a web-like design supported the structure of the dome. Everything was white. The ceiling, the walls, the bridge. They even passed the occasional white bench. Mira wondered what it was made of, guessing plastic or plaster of some sort. But for all she knew, it could have been the bones of the women they lost. Are their bones even white? She thought.

"You will be escorted to chambers where you will be cleaned and dressed for selection." Tuku stepped onto a platform with the girls, and Mira hurried in last just as the platform began to lower on a belt-like escalator. When they reached the bottom of the dome, they went through a tunnel that led out of the dome.

Mira reached out and let her fingers graze along the tube, and she discovered it felt like the inside of a tent. But the color of the material was a bright, clean white. She wondered how they kept it so clean.

Mira hadn't even realized they stopped moving, and almost ran into the girl in front of her. The light above dimmed, and dark sheets were being pulled out like curtains on tethers, blocking the sun from getting in.

"Select a room, and we will meet back out in the hall when you are finished."

Each girl disappeared behind a curtain along the walls of the tunnel, and Mira walked along the hall, finding each room with a curtain pulled, signifying it was occupied. When she was the last one left, Tuku smiled at her warmly and gestured to one of the opened curtain doors in the back. "There you are dear."

They had studied humans for years before they finally made contact. That's what they told them when they arrived. They did not probe anyone, but they had abducted a few men and women to scan their minds for intel. They then would wipe their memory the best their technology allowed and returned them safely to earth. But they swore they did not do it for any reason other than to ensure it was safe for them to come down and make contact.

Part of Mira wished they would have deemed humans too violent or too dangerous to contact, but she knew if that had been the case, her little sister would be dead right now. So she couldn't truly hope for that.

Mira stepped behind the curtain, and it shut behind her, being pulled by sturdy white bars. The Jayku's technology was so different from humans, it was frightening to Mira. She didn't understand how any of it worked.

Growing up, her father owned a junkyard, and her and her two older siblings helped him run it. Her two older brothers helped fix up cars and other tech, while Mira and her little sister would go on hunts for parts. But when she was old enough, Mira's father began teaching her how to fix things up too. Ava had only just begun learning when she got sick.

"Hello, welcome to Akaari." A feminine automated voice said through speakers Mira couldn't find. "If you would like refreshments, there is a machine to your left that can provide them." Mira looked over to the left and found a small fridge-like box in the corner. On the front of it were pictures of different drinks and snacks from earth. Tea, water, and fruits.

She ordered nothing, feeling slightly sick. It must be the nerves, she thought, or maybe the trip here. She was only awake for a few hours of it, having been in a sleep chamber for the past three months. Jayku space travel technology was far more advanced than humans, but maybe it still caused motion sickness. Mira had always gotten car sick easily.

"Whenever you are ready, a bath has been prepared in the back room." Mira stepped through the curtain hanging on the back wall, and found a large round bath inside what almost looked like an inflatable built into the floor. She dipped her fingers in the water, and it was the perfect temperature.

Mira took a deep breath and looked around the room. Towels were folded on a stool in one corner and a white robe was wrapped around a mannequin figure in another.

Mira began to peel off her clothes. They didn't allow her to wear her own on the spaceship, but she was allowed to pack one large suitcase of her belongings, which she was told would be returned to her once she got settled.

As soon as she had discarded the skin-tight space suit made of spandex, she dipped her toes into the water and slowly eased herself into the water. She quickly observed that the bath wasn't an inflatable, but some kind of bubble. It reminded Mira of a water bed she once had. They were hardly ever used anymore, but someone dumped one off at the junk yard in the back of a broken down pickup truck. They fixed it up and she used it as her bed for years before it finally had to be thrown away.

"The water is mixed with a special soap. Instead of scrubbing and rinsing like humans do on earth, it cleans all the bad germs off your skin and hydrates it with nutrients to give you a healthy glow."

The automated voice also reminded Mira of something from home, a voice that was on her phone. She pushed all thoughts of home out of her head. She had to focus. She knew little about the selection process, but if it was anything like online dating on earth, she needed to prepare. But she didn't know what Jayku men liked. She didn't know if they were kind or gentle. Were they stuck in some prehistoric way of life where women were property and better if they were obedient and quiet?

It wasn't easy to tell, considering there were almost no Jayku women left—which meant no interviews with Jayku women. No human had ever met one, though the visitors had explained there were few. All she knew about them was that they were very protected and valued. But were they valued the way they wanted to be? Or were they forced to live like prisoners for their "safety."

Mira combed her fingers through her hair, and gently rubbed every part of her body with her palms as if there was soap on them, just out of habit. But the longer she stayed in the water, the more she realized how good it felt. It made her skin almost vibrate, filling her chest and stomach with a warm feeling. The thought worried her, like the water might be drugged or something. So she quickly got out of the bath and reached for a towel.

She dried her body as fast and as best she could, wanting every drop of the water off her and to be back into clothes. But not because she wanted to get on with the next part of this process--the part where they are paired.

She reminded herself that this is what she signed up for. Though she was only twenty, this was the only way to save Ava: Become an alien's baby maker, in exchange for the money for her sister's medicine. Mira just hoped that one day, she could return home. There was no time frame or any specifics about when she would be able to return home, only promises of allowing communication between family members up to three times a week if desired, and only after the first month, which they called the adjustment period.

"You have twenty minutes to finish up." The voice said cooly, and Mira realized she had been sitting in the stool covered in towels, staring into space. Maybe this was a part of that "adjustment period."

She grabbed a towel and rubbed her hair as hard and thoroughly as she could, drying it as much as possible before grabbing the robe and slipping it on.

Outside, only one of the other girls was waiting.

"The water freak you out too?" She asked. She had short black hair and thick, naturally red-pink lips.

"Yeah," Mira laughed, and walked over to stand next to the girl. "I'm glad it's not just me," she laughed awkwardly.

"My name is Shay. I agreed to this to escape a debt I owed to some dangerous people. How about you?"

At the nape of Shay's neck, Mira noticed a tattoo peeking behind the white robe. She was average height, but from what she could tell under the robe, she had the perfectly skinny figure guys on earth loved. She wondered if Jayku's loved thin girls too.

"Mira. Did it to get medicine for my sister."

"Ah," Shay said, nodding. "Pretty sure the rest of these girls wanted to come for the adventure."

"Why wouldn't we?" A short blonde girl stepped from one of the tents, smiling brightly. "I heard Jayku men worship women like queens. The money was just a bonus. Not that I even wanted it." She elbowed Mira gently, giggling. "I'm Beth. I'm assuming you two were reluctant to sign up?"

"A little," Mira said almost sarcastically as she glanced at Shay.

The rest of the girls began pouring out of their rooms, and Tuku appeared from behind a door at the end of the hall.

"Hope you all feel refreshed and ready to go. Follow me this way."

He led them through another set of automated doors and into a new room. But this one didn't look as foreign to Mira. In fact, it resembled a large clothing store she had been to a hundred times.

Red tile covered the floor, and wooden walls made a box shape, like many of the buildings on earth. Clothing was hung on black hangers in aisles like a library, with the occasional mannequin wearing a frilly dress here and there.

"Pick whatever you like. There are dressing rooms in that corner," he pointed beside Mira where red curtained stalls lined the wall. "And there are hair products in the next room over. Enjoy ladies."

Most of the girls squealed in delight as they ran to find a dress to please their new men. But all Mira could think about was what a Jayku man would even want them to wear.

Maybe that's the point, Mira thought. Maybe we're supposed to pick what we would wear to attract whatever Jayku man it attracts. Or maybe they don't care at all. Maybe they just grab the first girl they see and select her.

Beth looked at Mira and smiled. "Do you want help?"

Shay laughed beside her. "Don't we all," she said, and then turned into one of the aisles.

Mira shrugged and said, "Sure."

Beth grabbed her hand and practically dragged her down the first aisle.