S. L. Viehl’s smart, savvy surgeon Cherijo Torin has ventured across the universe in and out of danger and love, driven by two great forces—her sworn duty to heal the sick, and her constant fear of the demented man who created her…
 
Having freed themselves from the Hsktskt slave traders, Cherijo and her husband Duncan wanted to start looking for a nice, quiet part of the universe where Cherijo’s Creator, Joseph Grey Veil, wouldn’t find them. But Joseph Grey Veil never gives up...
 
Now the newlyweds are living underground with the help of a renegade band of alien-human half-breeds. But when Duncan is forced into their deadly shockball games, and Cherijo is used to keep the players healthy, safety becomes its own kind of imprisonment, and Cherijo learns that she cannot merely run from her past—she must destroy it…