Some fears make more sense than others, Alex thought, crunching his eyes shut against the flames and retreating into the furthest corner of his cell. He read a case study once, when he was sane, about a man with Pharmacophobia. Fear of medicine! The poor man suffered from epileptic seizures yet refused to take his pills. Madness. Counter-intuitive. Misfiring self-preservation instinct rejecting the very things that preserved.
But fear of fire? That made evolutionary sense, Alex comforted himself, picturing humanity's ancestors scattered across the veldt as flames licked dry grass. He wasn't mad. He was just too sensitive. His phobia was just awareness of the damage that the inferno raging in front of him could do to his delicate tissues.
If it was real.
Simon had summoned him, Alex remembered. Accused him of betrayal. And now he here was. A test subject. Meat for the grinder. Brain matter for the thresher. More data for Stagg. They'd stopped pumping toxin into his cell hours ago. But still the fires burned around him. A phantom wall of flame.
They started closing in.
Alex Sartorius screamed as the flames consumed him. Screams of terror, not pain. To an outside observer the result was slapstick - a white-coated scientist flailing at nothing. But all Alex could see was flames eating at his flesh, gnawing down to the bone.
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