The first demand made of her: get an implant in. She’s assigned a chaperone, a thin young thing comprised mostly of anxiety, whose tag scrolls LT FRASH|THEY|TERA BLUE-4. The twenty-minute walk feels longer than it takes. The dim floaty environment thrums with bodies, other soldiers busy with their duties. Angelsteeth slowly being rebuilt after the damage of the last battle. Lieutenant Frash barely meets Misery’s eyes, and responds to her probing questions with silence, their knuckles white around the scratch pad they’re carrying. It’s a dead end. The lieutenant takes her through the frequently gated, densely signposted interior of Angelsteeth until they reach the warren of glass and metal that is the medical facility. A half junction with floating signs saying MEDIC on the left and RESEARCH on the right. Lieutenant Frash takes the left and leads her into an area of painful fluorescence and sterile metal walls.

Her assigned doctor waits in a circular nave lined with floating panels and spiced with antiseptic. Dr. Sower Cabbage, she/her, a short and soft-cheeked woman with an intense, prying gaze. Not a saint. “So this is you,” she says, taking in Misery’s stature and mundaneness. Surprised that someone supposedly so blessed by the Larex Forge is a regular chuck like she is. Was expecting more outward signs of messianic nature. “Well, I’m Dr. Sower, and up top says I’m in charge of your medical care. So let’s get started.”

The good doctor waves a bar scanner over Misery with a brisk, curious professionalism. “Never had an implant in, have you?”

“No. We didn’t have them where I grew up in Rootsdown.”

“Where’s that?”

“Duchy of Apis. Sector Eighteen. It’s a stonemining colony on a desert moon.”

“I see.” She tuts. “We really do our backwaters injustice…”

The doctor has one prosthetic hand, all glossy and bejeweled, made of dark glass where it disappears beneath the sleeve of her coat. Misery notices it when the doctor demands her mother’s amulet. Misery’s already in the gray mesh for low-level military grunts, but she’s managed to hang on to the stone through all her outfit changes. Now the doctor, this stranger, is asking to claim it? She thinks not. Misery gestures to the prosthetic. “What happened there?”

“You curious? I’ll tell you after we’re done with the scans. Now hand it over.”

Dr. Sower puts on a gracious smile, but Misery can see she thinks less of her for asking. Gambit failed. Very reluctantly she places her mother’s amulet in the waiting palm. Anxiety shudders through her marrow as the doctor holds the strange stone to the light, frowning. “You ever had this thing looked at?”

“It’s sacred to me,” Misery says, more sharply than she intends.

The doctor raises an eyebrow. “All right.”