Forty years old and he was still calling her ma’am. Edison leaned against the handle of the mop, then rubbed the bottom of it hard against the black plasticized floor. They hadn’t been on a ship then, but in his temporary office on Tokyo Bliss. He would transfer to Merchantia’s campus soon after, and he had just finished his own career with the military. It felt like the right time to marry Candace and help her with her kid. Diana saw it another way.

“That boy is going to need discipline. A lot of it.”

“Sure.” He shook his head. “That’s up to Candace.”

“It should be up to you. I know what it’s like to raise a boy on your own. How much it takes out of you. That’s what your children do. Take and take and take.”

Edison blinked, turning fully to face the apparition. This part of the conversation stung, unfamiliar, and the vision of his mother shifted, jangling out of tune. It hadn’t gone that way. She had wished him well, told him to message if he had any questions about being a parent, and then she made some joke about it being romantic to get married in the stars.

“Selfish,” Mother said. “That’s what you are. All of you. But you? This is the worst betrayal. You were my favorite.”

The blue woman floated closer, flickering between the face he knew to be his mother’s and a stranger’s. She reached toward him, fast, her hand lashing out before he could move and closing around his throat. Foxfire was in him, controlled him, wound seamlessly into his nervous system. He felt his throat closing, his chest suddenly tight. His forehead still ached from slamming it so hard against the lab barrier, and now his neck prickled with heat. Suffocating. He was suffocating himself. Edison clawed at his throat, trying to pry her hand away, but there was nothing there.

“I can take this from you,” Mother said. “Baby. Baby. My baby. She eludes me, but I can take you from her. Children take, Mother can take, too.”

He didn’t know how to plead with the monster in his own mind, but he tried, breathing deep, forcing himself away from the edge of panic. Foxfire controlled his pain receptors and now he felt it.

What did it want? Why would it kill him? The Foxfire needed hosts, needed people to carry it forward. But darkness closed in. The prickling in his throat spread to his eyes. Gurgling, scratching, he tried to paw at his throat again, but there were no hands there to bat away.

You killed me, baby. You killed your own mother.