Instead, of earning a sentence of death, however, Arrin was sentenced to a lifetime of exile in the small colony of New Hope on the partially terraformed and otherwise uninhabited planet of New Earth.

As soon as the Nephron prison entered inter-universal space, Arrin was forcibly given his first dose of PMZ, a drug so strongly addictive prisoners released after they’d been given the drug committed suicide rather than face the remainder of their days without the golden liquid coursing through their veins. At first, the drug brought him two hours of unequaled euphoria which Arrin reveled in as it brought him a temporary escape from his misery and loss. When two hours later the euphoria gave way to an easy calm nothing could rattle, he began to falter in his longstanding conviction that drug use was...

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