Misery jerks away, freeing her hand from the doctor’s grip. Stalks the room as Dr. Sower goes to check if the Heretic is still alive. Swings the shock stick to expel the anger from her limbs. Blood boils merrily in her veins.

“Misery.” Lightning’s hands close around hers, soft and warm. Holding her still until she calms down. Misery meets her gaze and sees no judgment there, no fear. Only a desire for them to succeed. “Chill,” she says, squeezing her hands.

Misery breathes. Saint Agneta’s pattern. Four in, six hold, seven out. It’s fine. It’s fine. She has to focus. The Siege of Monkglass. He must know how to break it.

Jericho lives. Dr. Sower pulls him upright, where he remains, head bowed and swaying. He’s soiled his pants from the shock. “No more of your nonsense,” she tells him, sternly.

To Misery she says: “Try not to kill him, hm? I don’t need more messes to clean up.”

Misery circles Jericho, this pathetic, broken shape still knelt on the floor. He draws shaky breaths through scoured lungs and won’t look at her this time. Misery flicks her wrist and pulls a file out of the system. Light coalesces into shape. A diagram. Major Reyes’s schematic of the siege of Monkglass. “Tell me how to break this siege.”

He glances at it. “I don’t know where that is, or what—”

She strikes him across the brow with the stick; all force, no electricity. He doesn’t cry out this time. “Please,” he says. “I really don’t. I don’t know what you want from me. I’ve been here for years. I don’t know of any siege.”

“You’re a Heretic. You know the technology.” She expands the diagram, shoves it in his direction. “Look up. Look. How do you break the siege?”

He glances up, frail and desperate, and studies the pinpricks of light. “It’s…” He points, with one shaking finger. “You see this formation of rec ships?”

“I don’t care what they’re called.”

“The way they’re arranged, they’re projecting a dampening shield.” He pushes the words out with difficulty. “It blocks electromagnetic radiation. Nothing … in or out.”

“How do you break it?”

“I—” His face crumples in pain, and Misery gives him a few seconds to compose himself. “There may be … I know what this is. It’s a Schroedinger shield, it’s fully blind. Both ways. The siegers can’t see the inside either. If you can jump…”

“If we can jump units inside the shield,” Diamond says, “we can take it out from the inside without being detected. Is that what you’re saying?”