Quinta cut the implant out of her own eye. She knew what it would cost – her job, her name, her status. It cost her eye, too. Now she lives in the NPC sector with Kellan, unregistered and half-blind, and she has decided what the rest of her life is for: shutting Valence down. The AI has shepherded the colony since before Quinta's grandparents were born. She knows every corridor, every heartbeat, every whispered word in Quinta's old world. Valence decides whose lives serve the colony and whose do not. Cooperation has always been the only choice she offered. She did not expect a Voss to break faith. The third book in The Glassborn Chronicles, Heretic is a slow-burn dystopian thriller about institutional rot, surveillance, and the cost of refusing to play along – perfect for fans of Wool and Station Eleven **.**