My heart kicked up a notch. “Forget I asked,” I said quickly. Apparently, it was an Aunare side effect. That was bad. Especially since I would be trapped in here for two weeks if something went wrong.

The glass top started coming toward me from the foot of the bed. I slammed my head back on the pillow, narrowly avoiding getting hit in the face with the lid of the chamber. My panting breath was fogging up the glass three inches from my face. The patch on my forehead was starting to burn, and I itched to take it off, but I couldn’t move my hands. A sharp poke hit my arm, and I glanced down to see an IV extended from the wall of the chamber, feeding liquids into my arm.

“Relax. You’ll be on Abaddon before you know it.” The nurse’s voice was muffled by the glass. She gave me a stiff nod and then walked off.

The nurse was crazy. I couldn’t relax. I whimpered as I tried to move but couldn’t. As the tingles spread across my body, I became paralyzed.

I knew that I was supposed to be falling asleep, but I wasn’t. I was frozen. Being awake and frozen and trapped in a tiny pod was a nightmare that I wanted out of. Now.

“Just relax,” Ahiga said from the next chamber over. “The meds in your patch will hit in thirty seconds. When you wake up, we’ll be on Abaddon.”

When I tried to answer him—to ask if this was normal, even if I was already pretty sure it wasn’t—my lips wouldn’t move, and my tongue was tingling worse than the rest of my body. I only managed to make a garbled noise. I started the breathing technique again, but it wasn’t working. My skin began to glow, and I lay there terrified that the nurse would come running back. That the ship’s crew would come in and see. That someone would find out what I was.

I waited and waited and waited, but nothing happened. No one came back.

I’d read about cryo sleep. The theory was that the mind went into some state of perma-tranquility, like sleep but without dreaming. Everything slowed down, including aging, to help combat the effects of warping space faster than light speed. Except that everything I was feeling wasn’t like what I’d read.

It was supposed to be a peaceful transition to sleep, but I wasn’t falling asleep. My body was, but my mind could feel my lungs and heart slowing and panic set in.

I was frozen, and there was nothing that my medicated body could do about it.