“Well. My life is a classic horror story. Did you ever watch Voidmouth? Indie thing from the edge of Taurus, stars a very young Quechen Banana. Pacing was shit, but the soundtrack was great. Never mind if you haven’t, it’s very obscure, a few gens before your time. The plot’s simple. Next to a remote military outpost, the twisted wreck of an unknown ship falls out of ultralight. Scans show the impossible: it’s a ship lost a hundred years ago, but it’s just spanking new, as it was on its doomed voyage. And there are survivors! Just a handful, but they bring them on board. Trying to figure out what happened. These people have just jumped a hundred years in time. But turns out, they didn’t jump alone. The nullvoid is in them. Starts bursting out and killing people. The ones they don’t kill, they infect. You know how the rest of it pans out. Lots of running, lots of screaming, lots of death. Eventually two people escape on a shuttle. Blow up the tainted, dying station. Problem solved, right? Twist ending! One of the survivors is tainted. Fade to black on their face as evil creeps through it.”

Misery tries to turn her head, but a set of firm fingers hold her still. “Are you saying that happened to you?”

“Well, almost. An ancestor of mine—a great-great-granduncle—was one of those refound souls. They wanted to study how the nullvoid changes the human body, our DNA, whatever. So they hauled in all his living relatives—every one they could find, hundreds of us, and tested us comparatively. Had us isolated on an abandoned moon colony just in case great-great-granduncle destabilized. You can imagine what happened next.”

Misery doesn’t have to imagine. She smiles lightly where the doctor can’t see it. “Just like in the movies.”

“Movies don’t have the half of it. He just … went. Exploded. Bits of him crawling black with the nullvoid. All over. Took out a whole wing of my family. I only escaped because I was in a different room. The scientists took me with them before they nuked the place. I got lucky. All I lost was an arm and a leg.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s cool, I like my prosthetics better anyway. But I spent almost a decade of my life in quarantine. Behind double-strength glass walls, being poked and prodded while everybody waited for me to turn into a monster like he did.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Nope. Still here, still kicking. But you never know. One day I might just be minding my business, and—boom!”