The wheels of this damn chair creak louder than my thoughts as they push me down the sterile corridor. The guards don’t look at me anymore. Not with respect, not with pity, just nothing. Good. I don’t deserve anything else.

The door hisses open. The room is cold. Always cold. They say it’s to slow the necrosis, to buy him minutes instead of seconds. The machines hum like a funeral dirge, tubes running into what’s left of him like roots feeding on a corpse that refuses to finish dying.

Toya.

Even now, even like this, charred, stapled, barely human, I still see the boy I trained. The one I broke. And only guilt is left on me.

I roll myself closer. The guards stay outside. They know better than to follow me in here. He doesn’t open his eyes right away. But I see the heart monitor spike. He knows it’s me. He always knows.

“Toya,” I say. My voice sounds wrong. Too quiet. Like the flames finally went out and left nothing but ash in my throat. "I found someone…Someone who can reverse the damage…"