Freya sat on the floor of her bare cell under the dim overhead light, where they told her to remain until they were ready to process her. Shocked to the core, she didn’t have the heart to challenge any orders, not anymore. Death was for other people. Freya tried to get her head around what was going to happen.

Guilty as charged. She never denied what she had done. How could she when they found her with the bloody knife in her hand and splatters all over her clothes? Not murder, like they said. No, justifiable homicide. Freya killed the man who murdered her son. She executed the son of a rich man and that is why her sentence was decided.

Flynn had everything going for him; a good position in the science department of Government, a lovely and sweet-natured wife and a baby coming. They were such a happy couple when Flynn and Eva told her she was to be a grandmother. Who could have guessed the rot had already set in? Ava came to her after Flynn died, tearful, guilt-stricken and yet still defiant. The story she told set events in motion, leading to this cell.

A rich man’s son decided he wanted Ava as a concubine, but she wouldn’t go with him; refused to leave Flynn and abort their baby. He dealt with the obstacle by having Flynn eliminated. Freya knew then what she must do and what it would cost her, or rather what she thought it would cost. Accordingly, she gave Ava her property and all her credits before she began her revenge, for once it was done the State would take any asset she had. The child now had an assured future so she took care of the problem.

The criminal code of Altair IV wasn’t difficult to understand. Murder meant the death penalty, simple as that, but Freya tried for mitigating circumstances, wanting to at least have news of what was left of her family from penal servitude.

Under the dim, yellow light, she shut her eyes, trying and failing to shut out the images and sounds from the courtroom. A rich man’s son cost her eternity, for that was her sentence. Let the punishment equal the crime, they said. She would never die and no longer live, at least not as a normal person. She waited in this cell while they got ready the equipment to turn her into an angel. That is what Altarians called the deviant criminals turned into cyborg enforcers.

Freya might be free to roam the planet as she obeyed her new masters, for refusing wasn’t an option. She wouldn’t be shut away, but she would be deprived of the memory of all living family. What happened to her grandchild was something she was never going to know. Was the price of her action worth the consequences? If the child lived and thrived, then she had to hope what was coming justified his existence, for she hoped it was a boy.