“The court is remanding Ms. Martinez into the custody of SpaceTech Officer Ahiga for immediate departure to Abaddon.” The judge slammed the gavel a final time.

Of course. The asshole who interrogated me. That just made my day.

I watched him approach me with a small med-gun in his hand. He grabbed my arm before I could move and placed the med-gun against my arm. A tiny chip floated in saline solution inside the chamber.

A tracker. “Shit.” I glared at Jim. “I—” I couldn’t have a tracker. It’d drive me crazy before the week was up. I tried to free my arm, but Ahiga’s fingers dug in.

“Hold still or it’ll hurt worse,” Ahiga said. “Don’t make another scene.”

I closed my eyes and swallowed down the cry of panic that was threatening to break free. My former life was gone. As crappy as it was, it’d been mine. Fighting with the Crew. Teaching. Even the shitty job at the diner. It might not have been much, but it was mine.

“Son of a spacebat!” Pain radiated, numbing my arm. “What? No count to three?”

He grinned, showing his full set of perfectly straight white teeth. “Easier when it’s a surprise.”

I waited for the tracker’s onslaught to my system but oddly felt only the tiniest of blips. It wasn’t nearly as bad as the implant in my finger had been, which made no sense. It had to have been modified for Aunare. I didn’t even know that was possible.

I stared at the doors Declan had disappeared through. Was the tracker his doing?

Ahiga yanked me to my feet before I could think too hard. “Let’s move.”

This was actually happening. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening. I was going to be alone up there. Completely under SpaceTech’s control. In that moment, loneliness and dread threatened to swallow me whole. Only Ahiga physically dragging me down the hallway kept me upright.

When we got outside, a black SpaceTech-issued armored hover vehicle sat at the curb. Ahiga shut off the alarm with a swipe of his finger and opened the back passenger-side door. “Get in,” he said.

The last twenty-four hours of my life had been surreal, but this just seemed off. I was walking out into the daylight wearing a shitty orange prisoner jumpsuit, and no one was stopping me. No officers were watching. It was just Ahiga and me standing beside a car. “Don’t I need to be, like, processed or something? Or handcuffed? Or—”

“Do you want to be handcuffed?”

“No!” I sighed. “I just… Is this how this normally happens? I thought it’d be more—”