Ahiga stepped forward, waving me to do the same, and I followed him on shaky legs.

The small room was filled with cryo chambers. Each chamber was about the size of a twin bed, laid out in circles, five each, like the petals on a blooming nightshade bud. In the center of each flower was a circular console with images hovering above the head of each chamber. At the moment, they read “not in use,” but that would change for at least two of them.

I counted fifteen chambers and wondered if a flight crew would be here after launch or if they’d remain empty. Not that it mattered. But I had to keep my mind focused on something or else the fear of the cryo sleep and Abaddon and whatever nightmare I was going to face next would be too much for me to control. If I wasn’t careful, I was going to start glowing brighter than the sun, and I couldn’t afford for anything else to go wrong. Not now.

A nurse came in behind us, her white medic uniform pristine, not a single hair out of place. “Please lie down,” she said, motioning to the nearest chamber.

My hands shook as I climbed onto the bed. It would be my first time to be put into stasis. Human medical procedures and I didn’t exactly have a fantastic history. The one time I had nanos hadn’t been pretty.

I hoped that Declan had worked his magic on this, too. He’d covered everything so far. If he hadn’t, then I’d pray that whatever they did to put a human in stasis would work for an Aunare.

I glanced over at Ahiga, who was getting into the chamber next to me. While my head was turned, the nurse pressed an injection gun to my arm. Pain radiated all the way down my bicep to my fingertips. “You could’ve warned me.” Fear and pain made my words sharp.

“No time. We leave precisely at oh-nine-twenty-five.” A little less than an hour.

A tingling sensation started running up my arm, replacing the pain. I wanted to ask if that was normal, but if it wasn’t then the nurse might ask questions that I didn’t want to answer. It was too late anyway. Whatever she’d injected me with was already doing its thing. I’d have to find a way to get through it.

I was still rubbing my arm when she came back with a patch. She slapped it onto my forehead, and before I could ask what it was, she started punching buttons on the side of my chamber.

The tingling was getting worse, painfully spreading out to all my limbs, and I had to ask. “Is it supposed to tingle so much?”

The nurse scrunched up her face, giving me a look like she thought I’d lost my mind.