I was only ten minutes away from my second break when my suit got a crack. I’d never been so terrified. Tyler screamed through my com, yelling that he was coming for me, but I was seven hundred meters from the base. I’d thought the pain with my feet was bad on that first day, but I was wrong.

I ended up with second-degree burns that covered most of my body, and my lungs were toast. Which meant nanos again. A heavier dose this time.

Audrey wasn’t sure how I’d made it out alive that day, but I was stubborn. The pain kept me moving. If I hurt, then I was still alive, and I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let Jason Murtagh get the best of me.

I was given a two-day reprieve after that round of nanos.

The nightmares made it impossible to sleep. I was becoming a shell of myself, and only the gym and teaching helped me get through it.

I sometimes wondered why Jason or one of his goons didn’t come after me. I honestly didn’t see very many SpaceTech officers. Ahiga had been right about that. They were busy doing their own thing. After that, I came to the realization that they didn’t need to do anything else to me. They were doing exactly what Jason wanted, and that was torture enough.

It was one thing to face an opponent head-on, but this was something entirely different. All I could do was wait for something else to go wrong and hope that whatever it was wouldn’t kill me.

Calling my father was looking better and better, but my rescue meant war, and I felt the weight of so many lives on my shoulders. Why should I be responsible for so many? It didn’t seem fair or right, but I wasn’t sure anything was fair or right anymore. I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.

I was living my days in two-hour chunks, concentrating on surviving to the next break or the end of my shift. The sight of the suit made me sick, and I hated—hated—everything about this stupid planet.

Today was Tuesday—day eleven on Abaddon—with only two more days until the mining test—and I was back out on the surface.

Sweat trickled down my face. This was my third two-hour window of the day, and it was nearly over. Only eighteen minutes left. I was watching the clock, waiting for it to tell me that I could go back inside.

I hit the button on my arm, releasing the water spout so I could take a drink. I was going to make it without dehydrating this time.

The hiss of the chemicals hitting the hardened crust was mind-numbing. After my second day on the job, I’d started to hear it every time I closed my eyes.