Timothy staggered down the hall, praying that the watchmen were not at their usual station or checking her part of the building on rounds. The Tortabo Valley Care Facility for Cancer Patients had turned out to be anything but, and she wanted to have no more of it. Every patient at the complex was terminal, and they did not deserve to live out their last days tortured by the staff.

The treatments sapped the life out of them, and what little spot of vitality remained was summarily beaten and harassed to nothingness by the staff. Timothy had wanted to release her friends from pain and avenge all the wrongs done to them all, but could do nothing—until one day, when a visitor left her a matchbox on the front desk while he went out to take a smoke.

The others were weak and would surely perish in the flames—nobody at the complex would care enough to save them, but Timothy figured it a blessing that their suffering would soon be over. Praying for forgiveness, she threw the lit match into the wall plants and left.