I woke to the color white.
Not the brilliant, searing white of a star being born, nor the soft, nebular glow of distant galaxies. This was a dead white. The sterile, unforgiving white of a high-security medical bay. It was the color of an ending.
The second thing I registered was the pain. It was a clean, sharp, crystalline thing, a lattice of burning ice that had replaced my nervous system. It wasn't the memory of the fire; it was the fire itself, banked low and eternal, a permanent resident in the house of my body. It flared with every breath, a constant, high-frequency hum of agony that emanated from the base of my skull and spiderwebbed through every limb.
I turned my head on the pillow, a simple movement that cost me a universe of effort. My eyes tracked the silent readouts of the
