Age range 12+

From USA Today bestselling author Aileen Erin

Maite Martinez has always yearned for more than waitressing in a greasy diner, especially when most people have left the polluted ruins of Earth behind for a better life on other planets. It’s not just working at the diner that’s making life hard for her. Being a half-human, half-alien girl has never been trickier. With the corporate government hunting down the last of her father’s alien Auanare race living on Earth, hiding her growing special abilities has become a full-time job on its own.

Every minute Maite stays on Earth is one minute closer to getting caught. The stress is almost more than she can bear, and when a fancy Space Tech officer gets handsy with her at the diner, she reacts without thinking.

Breaking the officer’s nose wasn’t her smartest move. Now she’s faced with three years forced labor on the volcano planet, Abbadon. With the job she’s slotted for, it may as well have been a death sentence.

It doesn’t take Maite long before she realizes there’s more to the mining on Abbadon than Space Tech has let on. As she makes unlikely allies, Maite uncovers Space Tech’s plot to nuke the Aunare homeworld. The firepower stored in Abbadon’s warehouses is more than enough to do the job ten times over.

As the clock ticks, Maite knows that if she can’t find a way to stop Space Tech, there will be an interstellar war big enough to end all life in the universe. There’s only one question: Can she stop the total annihilation of humanity without getting herself killed in the process?