The alarms blared through the Analysis Division—shrill, unending, suffocating.  

Red warning lights strobed across every surface, painting faces in flickering crimson.

“Temperature spike! Chamber exceeding limit!” a technician shouted. “Seal breach imminent!”

Inside the observation window, Ed could see the inferno blooming—white-hot, alive, consuming everything in the chamber.  

Elina’s silhouette was swallowed by light.

Then came the explosion of sound—a thunderclap of pressure as the containment seals ruptured.  

Glass fractured. Metal groaned.

“Deploy suppression team!” Captain Voss’s voice thundered through the comms. “Now! Breach protocol—Omega Two!”

Within seconds, the **R-Squad** stormed in, armored suits glinting under emergency lights. The containment doors opened just long enough for them to enter the blazing chamber. A rush of fire and ash poured out, scattering sparks into the corridor.

Ed could only watch, his fists clenched, as the live feed filled with static.  

When the image cleared, the flames were gone.

Two operatives dragged out what was left of Elina Viver.  

The body was blackened beyond recognition, smoke rising from what used to be a human being.

For a long, terrible moment, the entire division stood silent.  

Then the chatter resumed—as if nothing had happened.

One analyst sighed, typing rapidly. 

“Mark it: fatality confirmed. Subject thermal collapse at timestamp 16:42.”

Another adjusted her headset. “Proceed with secondary containment—Fire Man’s temperature returning to baseline.”

Ed stared at them, disbelief tightening in his chest. “That’s it? She’s *dead!*”

The older analyst didn’t even look up. “It happens. Better one than twenty. She knew the risk.”

Voss entered the observation hall, his voice low and cold. “Medical recovery team’s en route. We’ll transfer the remains to morgue level three. Log everything for Director Joseph.”

Ed turned toward him, anger rising. “You’re just—accepting this? No investigation? No responsibility?”

Voss met his gaze, unflinching. “This is Analysis Division, rookie. Everyone here knows the rules. You volunteer, you pay the price.”

The captain’s tone softened slightly. “You think this was cruelty? It’s mathematics. If that creature’s voice carried a memetic resonance—a sound that corrupts minds—we’d be scraping half this wing off the floor right now. One death prevented dozens.”

Ed said nothing. The words made sense, but they felt hollow.  

He looked back at the monitor. Inside the isolation chamber, the **Fire Man** sat perfectly still. The heat readings had stabilized, his body no longer burning—only faintly glowing, like cooled coal.

On the screen, his lips moved, almost imperceptibly.

The sound system was muted, but Ed could read the shape of the word.  

*“Warmth.”*

He felt a chill crawl down his spine.

Around him, analysts resumed their debates, technicians recalibrated sensors, and a new report template was already being filled.  

In less than an hour, the tragedy would become just another line in the database: **Incident ARC-027-A – Analyst Fatality (Acceptable Loss).**

As Ed turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of Elina’s empty desk.  

Her notebook lay open, half-charred but still legible. A single line survived the fire, written in rushed ink:

*“To understand is to burn.”*

He closed the cover slowly.  

No one noticed. No one ever did.

Somewhere deep inside, he wondered—not for the first time—  

if the real anomaly wasn’t the monsters they contained,  

but the people who learned to live with them.