Some things are worse than death... Private detective John Arsenal can't tell you what terrible crime he committed to wind up in a sweltering urban hellscape, surrounded by thieves, drug addicts and murderers-only that it was very bad, and now he's being punished. That's because in Hell-or Brimstone, as the damned prefer to call it-your identity, your memories, even your name, are stripped away from you. John is relatively comfortable in his damnation, working easy cases and making himself at home in the grimy squalor of the afterlife. That is, until a mysterious woman appears in his office, begging him to find her missing sister, and promising him the impossible in return-a glimpse of his old life, before Brimstone. To track down the enigmatic Sophie, John must delve into Brimstone's darkest recesses, where murderous children run wild in packs, and a strange and terrifying new drug promises to deliver the user to the heights of ecstasy, but at the risk of being snuffed out of existence altogether. All the while, John must grapple with the vivid nightmares that have haunted him since his arrival in Brimstone, and confront the thing he desires and dreads the most-the truth of what he did to deserve damnation.