A faint, sweet scent began to waft from the ventilation grates. A pale, ethereal mist, almost invisible in the dim light, began to drift down from the ceiling, slowly swirling towards the broad bed. Kovanya’s eyes, previously half-lidded in blissful anticipation of another drift into slumber, snapped open. Her nose wrinkled. This wasn’t the floral spray Bramen used to freshen the air after he fried fish. This was pungent, dense, and faintly sour. It smelled of overripe peaches and quiet oblivion. She took a shallow, experimental breath. Her eyelids grew heavy. A strange, insistent fuzziness bloomed at the edges of her thoughts, attempting to lull her into a deeper, more permanent repose. “Bramen,” she mumbled, her voice already slurring, “this…this isn’t quite right.” Bramen, who had just returned from checking the temperature of her footbath—a lukewarm disaster he was about to rectify—saw the mist first. He saw the way Kovanya’s head lolled to the side, her breathing growing shallow. He smelled the sickening sweetness that promised more than just sleep. A primitive, guttural growl rumbled in his chest, shaking the very floorboards. His wife. His Kovanya. They were trying to poison her. Again. While she was trying to nap. Red-hot fury, cold as the deepest glacier, flared in Bramen’s eyes. He scanned the suite, his gaze settling on the immense, freestanding bathtub. It was carved from a single block of pale, veined Vesuvian marble, a monstrous slab of stone that looked as though it weighed more than his entire ice-hauler rig. “No,” Bramen snarled, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. He strode towards the tub, his massive frame radiating an almost visible aura of rage. He gripped the smooth, cold rim of the marble. Muscles corded beneath his rough tunic after years of wrestling frozen blocks from the Glacies Maw. He dug his heels into the thick rug. With a sound that tore from his throat – a sound like granite grinding against granite – he heaved. The thick bronze pipes connecting the tub to the floor shrieked, then snapped with a series of sharp, violent cracks. The massive basin groaned, then lifted clear of the floor. Water sloshed, then cascaded, splashing across the polished stone and pooling on the rug. Bramen ignored it. He ignored the tremor in his arms, the strain in his back. He ignored everything but the sight of the pale mist curling over his wife’s face. He aimed, then with another ferocious roar, slammed the inverted tub down. It landed with a deafening thud, directly over the central ceiling vents that spewed the peach-scented oblivion. The mist, momentarily trapped, swirled angrily within the confines of the stone basin, unable to escape. Bramen stood, chest heaving, his gaze locked on the doorway. “There,” he rasped, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. “Now try to sleep, my flower.” Meanwhile, Cibbo, who had been attempting to coax a discarded pastry crust from the jaws of his faithful stray, Grommet, paused. Grommet, a scruffy, wiry terrier mix with an uncanny nose, was not interested in pastries. He was sniffing furiously at a hairline crack in the floorboards near the dresser, his tail a frantic blur. “What is it, boy?” Cibbo muttered, bending low. He peered into the crack. A faint, almost imperceptible whistling sound emanated from it. Grommet whined, then began to dig with surprising vigor, sending splinters of ancient oak flying. In seconds, a small, circular metal grate was exposed. Beneath it, a dark, narrow tube snaked away into the floor. “A pneumatic delivery system!” Cibbo exclaimed, his voice hushed with dawning paranoia. “Just like the one they used at the old Veridian Corpse Processing Plant! For… for sensitive documents! Or… or tiny, disposable assassination tools!” He looked up, his eyes wide. “Vossig’s sending secret orders, I bet! To his death-drones! Or the room service with the poisoned soup!” Kovanya, surprisingly, stirred. The thick fog in her mind had begun to dissipate thanks to Bramen’s impromptu ventilation renovation. She pushed herself up on an elbow, her eyes still a little unfocused, but a familiar spark of indignation was beginning to glow. She saw the upended bathtub, the splinters of wood near Cibbo, and the new hole in the floor. “This is absolutely ridiculous,” she declared, her voice rough with residual sleepiness and growing irritation. “First the heat, then the flood, now… now *gas*? And they’re tearing up the floor? The hospitality here is atrocious. I demand to speak to a manager.” She looked around, her gaze landing on a small, gilded writing desk near the window. A stack of thick, creamy stationery lay beside a quill pen. Kovanya swung her legs out of bed, her silk nightgown rustling. She strode to the desk, ignoring the scattered water droplets. She dipped the quill, then, with a furious, elegant flourish, began to write. The quill scratched across the heavy paper, swift and decisive. Her scrawl was indignant, each letter imbued with the righteous fury of a woman whose nap had been repeatedly, unforgivably disturbed. She composed a complaint of such blistering, concise scorn that it could curdle milk. “‘To the Management of the Solitude Sanatorium,’” she dictated to herself, reading aloud as she wrote, “‘Your establishment is a disgrace. The ‘Grand Cleansing’ seems to refer to your staff’s ineptitude, not any purported standard. My husband’s comfort, and indeed my own, has been repeatedly, aggressively, and quite successfully sabotaged. I expect a full refund, an immediate cessation of all ‘protocols,’ and a complimentary, uninterrupted twenty-four-hour nap. Failing this, I shall be reporting you to the Gresnov Consumer Protection Agency for gross negligence and attempted murder disguised as ‘luxury.’ P.S. Your bath salts are rather grainy, but I’ve found a new use for them.’” She folded the note precisely. Then, with a mischievous glint in her eye, she grabbed a heavy, ornate jar of bath salts from the vanity. The jar was solid ceramic, almost a small urn, and full to the brim with coarse, sea-blue crystals. She approached the open pneumatic tube with a determined stride. “If they want to send messages,” Kovanya huffed, “they can deliver *this* message. With emphasis.” She stuffed the folded note into the tube, then, with a grunt of effort, shoved the entire heavy jar of bath salts in after it. It fit, but only just. The ceramic scraped against the metal, a tight, unyielding fit. “There. Room service is truly abysmal.” Deep within the Sanatorium’s central control room, several floors below, Chairman Vossig was having a terrible night. His monitors flickered, showing only static where Kovanya’s suite had been. The pressure gauges for the gas distribution system were wildly unstable. His guards, burly men in black jumpsuits, stood nervously around him. “The anomaly resists!” Vossig snarled, slamming a fist on his console. “How can she jam the compactor, short the heating, and block the gas without moving?!” Suddenly, an alarm blared. A pneumatic tube, thicker than the others, embedded in the wall behind Vossig’s main console, began to shriek. The metal strained, groaning under violent, unforeseen pressure. A red light flashed erratically. “Pressure buildup in the primary dispatch tube, Chairman!” a technician cried, his eyes wide. “It’s… it’s critical! Something is jamming it!” Vossig spun around, his eyes narrowing. “What foolishness is this?” Before he could finish, the tube exploded. A deafening *CRUMP* reverberated through the control room. Fragments of metal, shards of ceramic, and a blizzard of sharp, glittering sea-blue bath salts erupted from the ruptured pipe. The shrapnel tore through the air, embedding itself in the walls, the monitors, and the faces of Vossig’s guards, who screamed, clutching at their eyes. Vossig himself was showered in a stinging spray of bath salts. He stumbled back, coughing, his eyes burning. “Blinded!” he roared, wiping at his face. “They’re all blinded!” As chaos erupted in the control room, a soft *hiss* echoed through Kovanya’s suite. The solid, metal-sealed suite door, which had been locked from the outside since their arrival, slid silently inward. Standing in the darkened hallway, a heavily armed hit squad, dressed in midnight-blue tactical gear and bearing high-caliber rifles, stood shoulder to shoulder. Their weapons, fitted with silent suppressors, were raised. Directly aimed at the four-poster mattress where Kovanya, now almost fully awake, blinked slowly, a faint, lingering irritation on her face.

Suffocating Comfort