"Does anyone ever take these things off where you're from?"

"They exchange them for a different one sometimes, ma'am." 

(And if they do manage to take the collar off, the Authority of Mages will -

but she doesn't expect that to be either a compelling 'argument', or one she should attempt to make. Doesn't think she should be trying to drop to her knees and beg them.

Trembling may be getting to the point where she's not entirely succeeding in keeping it internal.)

"Do you know how they do that?"

"Not the details, ma'am. Once another is on the first one can be removed safely more easily." And, since they might not realize that, possibly: "there is a time in between when both are active, but not a time when none are."

"If the collar were encased in something that could hold in the force of the explosion, would it be safe to remove?"

"No, ma'am. It is the bonding against me that causes it, not the collar as itself." ...there are a lot of reasons not to try asking, but, "Might I know why it is important to remove it?

That is illegal, where I am from."

"Why is it - "

"Tracker," says the cute creature.

"There you go. I guess they don't want you wearing one wherever they want you."

There is probably no way to ask this that won't get her tortured later, but possibly a way to ask this that's better than other ways. And at the moment might be better than not asking. "Might I know why blocking the tracker might not be what is desired?" (She is pretty definitely not allowed to volunteer information about the other trackers, if they don't know it already.)

"Because putting spells on you is so easy and works just like we expect it to, of course. Have you ever heard of anyone getting a collar off without another collar to put on first?"

"Might I know if there is a reason it would need to be on me, and not only around me, or between me and anything that might be a receiver?" Very much getting tortured, but even without balancing that against 'going around without a collar', she does have a rather high preference for not dying in an explosion if they can't figure it out right and try anyway.

"I know it does happen, ma'am."

"If you're going where I think you are they'll do that too."

"She warded the hallway during the fight," says the little cute creature. "Or something. It wasn't normal."

The female officer sighs. "Okay, look. Have a seat somewhere while we have someone scry the collar and figure something out. Do you want some vegetable juice?"

She doesn't have a stronger reaction to being talked to that way only because she's been trained to and in field cover before. As it is, it's odd and then some to get it when she's arrested in uniform with her collar visible. (If they have their own mages she really needs to figure out how to comprehensibly communicate that she is one, in case saying she was a mage and wearing a collar didn't do it. The longer it takes till then the worse she can obviously expect of it when they get it.)

"Yes, thank you, ma'am." And, yet more bad ideas to say that are probably better than not doing that: "I didn't ward the hallway, ma'am." (That's a weird to think happened when it didn't. Was there someone else there who did or something?)

(The collar is pretty scrywarded, they might find, if they try.)

"What... never mind, they'll ask you about it in Mar Geru."

Someone brings her some juice.

It's not too long before their knowledge mage reports on the failure.

"If we just took it off, would you expect the explosion to be fatal?"

She drinks juice. This is really the nicest arrest she's ever experienced aside from the part where she's going to be tortured for it later. And the part where they might be about to kill her.

"Yes, ma'am. And to anyone around me without enough protection."

"We're going to have some people do some research for a while," says the woman who flew her here. "And while we're waiting I'm just going to sit here and not do anything as long as you don't try to go off on your own or do any magic."

Being told what's happening is also odd. Being threatened conversely is very familiar. She stays on the floor where she sat down and makes no attempts to go elsewhere and is not able to do any magic and doesn't.

It is, in general, not a good idea to try and check if you have permissions outside of people saying (or otherwise indicating) they're giving them to you. But given the circumstance she has kind of an unusual amount of attention on her collar, and so she notices when it starts feeling like this is in fact the case.

...Is the handler in range and using the controls again? Why? But the permissions don't seem to match well with that -

A minute later there's more of them. Then again. Definitely not matching well with the handler and at this point she recognizes the pattern -

(Sometimes this happens, which is of course why they have instructions about it. In which case of all the timing. Or it might be something they did, given.) She doesn't put her hands over her head because she's sitting and they won't see her hands there. Doesn't kneel because it's moving and she doesn't know if they'll recognize the gesture. She goes very, very still. 

"Ma'am? I think my collar is failing."

"That would be convenient. How can you tell? Did you do something to break it?"

Shudder and it gets into her voice because if someone thinks that - 

"No, ma'am. I didn't, ma'am.

I'm - able to do magic that it would keep me from, and this is progressing." Still, still, still, hands visible, not moving.

"We were instructed in what it would be like, if it occurred. Sometimes there are failures." (Given the timing, did the teleport issue somehow do it? She'd certainly not heard of something like that, but she'd also never heard of this planet, so.)

"Does that mean we can take it off now?"

It would still probably not be helpful to drop prostrate. It would definitely not be helpful to stop functioning in terror.

"No, ma'am, but - as the progression continues you will be able to. Or it might - disintegrate."

"How long should that take?"

Usually if a collar starts failing slowly measures will be taken before it actually finishes at it. But extreme situations happen, and she does know how to -

"An hour maybe at this rate, ma'am."

"Okay. In that case we'll want to be in the air in about a quarter of an hour or so and it can fail on the way. Then we'll have it off before we land, I think."

"Yes, ma'am." They don't seem at all concerned about this fact and what it means, which runs so utterly counter to the entirety of her life, experience, or anything like expectation thereof that it's somewhat hard to process. 

(She isn't, of course, going to do anything, not now, anymore than she was going to lie to them and not just because they might well have a truth spell somewhere. If her usual government isn't here already (and they might be) they might proceed to arrive at any next ten minutes.

And she continues to retain a rather strong preference for not being tortured to death.)