“Of course.” She doesn’t mind. And she’s curious about the internal workings of this strange creature, this stranger. “Tell me more about yourself.”

“About myself?” Ghost looks confused. “I was made here. I have always lived here. I don’t know very much beyond these walls. I … am not sure what else you would want to know.”

Spider’s expression curves into derision. “You’re a freak. You’re a reject from those disgusting cloning projects the Throne thinks we don’t know they’re running. What are you doing here?”

“You. What’s wrong with you?” Tank purples with indignation, pushed past the limits of her goodwill. “That’s how you talk to your comrades? We’re supposed to be a team.”

Spider’s expression grows lazy, but his fingertips press into the table’s surface. Ghost seems unfazed by the opprobrium, watching Tank and Spider with a curious eye.

“Enough.” Their captain Sunyata Diamond slaps her palms upon the glossy tabletop. “You are soldiers now. Behave like it.”

Tank’s expression sours, but the admonishment works on Spider. He goes quiet, silenced by Diamond’s gravitational pull. Misery studies the sharp-haired woman, curious what she has to say.

Diamond scans the table, taking in the messy assemblage of people she’s supposed to lead. “We have been brought here not by circumstance, but by fate. Whatever petty differences you have, you need to put them aside. You are called to a higher purpose.”

Her voice is clear, her eyes bright. She appears a different person from the wound-up pillar of gloom Misery met in the heat of battle. Spider crosses his arms across his chest, sullen and inscrutable, all his swagger gone.

Tank squints. “What higher purpose? I thought this was the military, not Church. Not trying to be rude or anything, but seriously.”

She’s genuinely not trying to be rude; her inquiry is honest. The big brass told her nothing she wanted to know. She hasn’t been pardoned, hasn’t had her sentence commuted, and she’s been drafted into a top-secret extra-classified experimental new serving with no explanation. It chafes at her soul to lack such key information.

Diamond says: “You’ve been reading the news, I presume?”

“We didn’t get a lot of it in fricken jail.”

“So you haven’t heard about the return of the prophesized Messiah?”

“Oh.” Tank leans back in her seat, wary. “I know about that one.”

“Then I must tell you that they are sitting next to you. The Larex Forge has brought them to Angelsteeth to carry out their mission, and we have been chosen to assist them. That is the decision made by General Tsung, and I expect you to respect that decision. Our serving will learn to fight in this holy war. Beyond that, it is up to the will of the Forge.”