Pulsing bass smashed into Keri with physical force as she stepped across the wave field that separated the club from the outside world. Where all had been peaceful just a step previously now thudding noise washed through her, jarring her bones together, causing her thoughts to smash into each other before falling into the juddering recesses of her mind in an indecipherable mess.

It was why she came here.

Still, tonight even the noise didn't seem able to clear her head, and some part of her was relieved when Jyme tapped her on the shoulder as she was leaning over the bar counter to shout her order at the automated barhost. She turned from the machine and its glowing blue eyes, leaving it to repeat the same preprogrammed refrain over and over again until it abruptly registered that she had departed and rotated to face its next customer.

The place was packed despite the fact that the night had barely begun, and whatever the colour the place might naturally be it was its usual night time mess of deep purples and reds created by the sliding, flashing strobes that veiled forms and faces in shadow.

Jyme led her across the dance floor, Keri following in the wake the large man carved through the heaving bodies by sheer force, cramming their way past writhing, dripping dancers until they were both soaked in a sweat they could not have identified as their own or someone else's. Eventually they made it to the other side, Keri popping out of the throng before diving across the pale blue, crackling wave field Jyme had ducked through.

The room through the arched opening was silent except for the sound of trickling water emanating from the tiny water fountain placed in one corner, a regular feature of such rooms to prevent the discomfort and nausea absolute silence could cause when completely enclosed in a wave field. Jyme threw himself onto the long row of white cushioned seats jutting out from the walls of the room and lay stretched out on his back. He was staring intently at his forearm, which glowed.

It looked like his sphere-time had come up; inconvenient, but she’d just have to wait.

She looked around the small space while the man was otherwise occupied. The white faux-leather seating ran around the three walls in a sweeping U-shape and a small, round, black table stood in the centre of the room, four equally dark seats pushed in underneath it. Everything was featureless monochrome, a carbon copy of the rooms either side, identical to the ones that ran in both directions around the dance floor. A place for partygoers to take a break; nothing more.

A tobacco hole had been burned into one of the white cushions, she noticed. The faint smell of it hung in the air. Unusual, thought Keri, though recently people had been getting back into unusual things. The world was ending soon, so why not?

"So what's up?" she asked as she drew back one of the jet-black chairs. Its legs scraped across the floor and she dropped down onto it, arms resting upon the backrest as she stared at the man who had finally lowered his arm.

Jyme grunted, eyes closed but head shifting just slightly as if too heavy to rise. Keri’s brow furrowed in suspicion.

“Are you..?” she started, leaning forward and reaching out with one hand to force open one of his eyelids, thumb and forefinger dragging it apart to reveal one bloodshot, massively dilated brown eye.

“Seriously?” she said incredulously, rising from her chair in sudden anger. “You’re taking chems now?”

It was rare for anyone to use chems, chemical agents, anymore. Not when you could get your highs through cortical stimulation. All up, no downs, that was the motto of today’s generation, though Keri wasn’t sure sometimes that the grey dullness you experienced when you removed a skull-patch wasn’t a crash in its own way.

But it was clear that Jyme had taken something with a far more visceral effect.

“Wai… wait,” he mumbled, arm falling to swing at his side as he struggled to turn himself. Keri was already heading for the exit, cursing thoughtless friends and the idiocy of the times. “N… no…”

She stopped in her tracks, and spoke without turning around.

“I’m surprised you could even walk well enough to get across that dance floor. Whatever you took, I…”

Her words were cut off by a strange gurgling sound. She span around in surprise; Jyme’s face was dark and blotchy.

“What the hell’s the matter?” she yelled, rushing to his side and pushing him back onto the seats. “Are you… are you OD’ing?” she demanded, using the vaguely recalled term from old vids.

Jyme’s body was shaking violently now, his eyes bulging as if trying to escape their sockets. Flecks of foam hung at the corners of his mouth.

It took Keri a while to realise that Jyme was desperately trying to pass something to her. At first it seemed as if the spasms of his limbs were completely random, and it was only after several strong grasps of her hand that she felt the cool, round object thrust into her palms.

She looked down at the data-sphere now resting in her hand, a glyph-card beside it, then back up at Jyme’s distorted features. The instant she took the sphere his eyes seemed to calm, the pressure behind them dissipating, staring forward in peace.

It was a few seconds before she realised he was dead.