Maxwell has a steely gaze and an air of the implacable. Brisbane pictures his hands, his augmented limbs, squeezing that neck, the face becoming blue, the confident look in those eyes dying, turning to panic, the capillaries bursting in his eyes, his face progressing from cyanosis to black, and his limbs, first struggling, thrashing about convulsively, then going limp. Brisbane hates the guy and feels the weight of the whole Tehani history on him, yet he cannot bring himself to go ahead with it. He cannot kill a person in cold blood. This isn’t right. This is not… good.

“Brisbane, what are you doing?” asks Carmilla.

“This was a mistake. This… we aren’t going to get this done.”

“I know what to do,” says Carmilla.

“What?”

The furniture changes configuration underneath him. He hasn’t noticed but there is a fine mist in the air. The medbots are coming to life.

“You’re being sedated, Brisbane. But don’t worry. I’ll take care of things.”

“Carmilla…”

“Sleep.”

He does.

Wait.

Where am I?

Brisbane is having sex with a demon in a lava pool.

What? What is this?

Above, blackness. No sky, no moon. The lava glows, at knee height, lapping at the limbs. The demon has a tail which is lifted high and thrashing this way and that, allowing Brisbane to access its nether parts. It’s furred and deep orange, but that’s just the light from the lava. Everything is orange-yellow. No other source of illumination. The demon has spikes up its spine leading to three horns. It screams out pleasure in the language of demonkin.

What?

He feels nothing, not the heat of the lava – and it is hot – not his connection with the demon, not the fumes in his throat. Smoke breaks off from the lava surface and disappears upwards. No smell, either.

What?

Carmilla?

The demon’s wings beat and the smoke swirls around, yet Brisbane still cannot smell it. He stops moving and the demon whirls and swats him with a taloned hand. It doesn’t hurt and Brisbane wades back.

Carmilla?

“Oh, you’re awake. One moment.”

The scene freezes; smoke stops in mid-billow. The tableau dissolves, then Brisbane is in a bar of some kind, other drinkers present but hunched over their drinks in a way that hides their faces. The bartender cowers at the far end, as far away from Brisbane as possible. His body hair stands on end and beats with unknown currents.

“Go outside, Brisbane.”

Outside, desert. A sandstorm approaches from the west, too quickly to contemplate. He closes his eyes and shields his face—

—And opens them as a bot extracts a feeding tube from his throat. He coughs. His entire body feels different, worse than the worst days of Exotic toxicity.

“Carmilla, what’s… what is this?”

“Calm down. You’ve been in space for a while, that’s all. We need to get you back to physiologic norms because of the microgravity.”