Misery rolls upright into a new dream. She’s in the courtyard of a cross-shaped building, two polished black oblongs stacked atop one another, the cantilevered edges gleaming with light from a distant and unknown sun. Trees float over the smooth stone of the yard in large, clear bubbles. The only sounds come from the sheet of water pouring off the side of one block into a huge pool below. Unusual architecture, this: both sleek and impractical. This is a Jericho dream. Beautiful, concise, otherworldly.

She shouldn’t be here. She’s allowed herself these luxuries on the thinnest of justifications, testing her resolve with these morsels of honey. But she knows, she damn well knows, that if she turns this indulgence over she will find greed pimpled across its underbelly. She wants the emotional comfort of these dreams without the consequences. She is the Messiah, chosen of the Larex Forge. Can she afford to be selfish? She should rid herself of distractions. The Larex Forge has given her the strength to purge the blight upon her soul. She doesn’t need this.

She does not need this.

Jericho stands in the shadow of the strange glassy building, gazing wistfully at the ripples in the pool. He looks strangely tired, and the air around him feels sour. There’s a hunch to his thin shoulders she isn’t used to seeing. Maybe it’s her doing, the knot of recrimination that clogs her ventricles pumping poison into the atmosphere of this dream-place. She lets the delusion speak first. Let him show his hand first.

He says, not looking up: “We used to swim here on the temper days, especially when I was younger and we had one every week or so. The water kept warm for a long time. Highest heat capacity and all. Me and Ally, we’d spend the whole day with our chins below the meniscus, blowing bubbles and growing more wrinkly until the pool reached thermal equilibrium. That’s what Father used to say. The pool didn’t get cold, it reached thermal equilibrium.”

She has no idea what he’s talking about. “What does any of that mean?”

“You mean the physics? I guess it’s hard to explain if you weren’t taught. I—”

“Fuck the physics. I’m not stupid. You don’t have a father.”

Jericho laughs, but it’s the laugh of a wounded creature. The laugh of a man stabbed through the chest but refusing to admit that the fight is over. He looks at Misery carefully, top to toe. “Something big happened on the station today.”

“It did.”

“Were you at the center of it?”

“I was.”

“You did something that upset things on the station. Upset people. Everything’s very tense.”

She laughs. He couldn’t be further from the truth. “I destroyed a Heretic ship today.”