It had been a long, long day. It was hard, and getting harder, to teach psychology at a normal university knowing what he knew.

He stepped into his house, closed and locked the door behind him. He felt the needle plunge into his neck, and was unconscious before he hit the floor.

He awoke tied to a chair. Bound so he couldn’t move, gagged so he couldn’t scream. Before him sat a man he’d thought dead for ten years.

“You recognize me, don’t you?” Oh, yes. He remembered Simon. One of his first subjects, and his only success. A man he’d thought died in the lab fire with the others.

“Oh, no, doctor,” Simon said. “I escaped, but not unscathed. You and your cohorts worked hard to awaken my empathic abilities. But you never taught me how to turn them off. I felt the fear, and, worse, the pain, that every one of them felt in the fire. Felt what it was like to be burned alive.

“And now that I’ve found you, I wish to return the favour.”

He felt every ounce of agony.

It was three days before his heart gave out.