Free Burn by Julianna Baggott

and now you’re grown. An Academy Boy…
    His father’s brain was affected by the enhancements. It was deteriorating, and he was willing to sacrifice his own son to be able to live on. Partridge whispers through his dry lips, “My father was insane.”
    Partridge reaches up and grabs the letter. He balls it in his fist. His father was writing letters to them all this time? He was making a walk-in photo album, a display. And he kept it to himself all these years.
    Partridge pulls loose a photograph of himself at five on a bike, of Sedge in his ice hockey gear, of his mother and father dressed for a formal occasion.
    His love and hate for his father churns within him. Who was Ellery Willux? Did he love them after all? Is this place proof that he couldn’t show it?
    Partridge lunges at the wall and tears down as many photographs and letters as he can. They fall to the floor. He drags his hands down the walls, ripping one swatch and then the next. His chest contracts. He feels like his heart is clenched, and his breath is suddenly shallow. He holds his fist to his chest. “Damn it,” he says.
    And he staggers to the only chair in the chamber, the one behind his father’s desk. He sits down heavily and slowly looks around the room. This is everything he ever wanted from his father. Some show of his love. Some gesture of affection. And all along he was building this ?
    He hears a knock on the door.
    “I told you to wait in the hall!” he shouts, then tries to catch his breath. Is he having a heart attack? Jesus, is his father trying to kill him with this shit?
    “It’s me. Lyda.”
    Lyda. He pushes himself up from the chair and moves to the door. He turns the knob and, as before, the door opens automatically.
    There she is. He takes her in for a moment—her face, her lashes, her parted lips.
    “You told the truth,” she says, astonished.
    For a second, he’s not sure what she’s talking about—saying all those things at the service feels like it happened a long time ago. “I was hoping you were out there, watching.” He pulls her in close. He smells the lavender scent of her perfume. “I told them to bring you here. I had to see you,” he says. “Come in here with me.”
    “What is this place?”
    He puts his hand on the small of her back and guides her into the chamber. She looks around at the floor littered with photos and letters, and at the walls splotched with tape. “Partridge,” she says, “was this your father’s room?”
    “His secret chamber.” He’s relieved that she’s here. She’s like an antidote to his father’s lonesome madness. She brings sanity to this room. He can focus on her and let the rest of it all blur behind her.
    “Why did he do this to you?”
    “To me?” Partridge asks. “What do you mean, to me ?”
    She looks up at him, surprised. He can tell that she’s holding back. She doesn’t want to say something that will hurt him. She’s not good at hiding it.
    And then it hits him, and he looks around the room again—this time seeing it the way she sees it. Is this all for show? His father must have worked on this for years—long before he’d planned to use Partridge’s body to move on. Is this room some kind of prank? Are all of these photos and stupid letters an attempt to wrench Partridge’s heart? Or maybe it was originally designed to mess with Sedge. He was the rightful heir.
    Is this all fake? A ploy to garner sympathy? A final power grab at love?
    “Do you think he’s messing with me still?”
    She walks to Willux’s desk with its shiny surface. She circles behind it and pulls out his chair.
    “Don’t,” Partridge says.
    “Why not?”
    “I don’t know. It’s just…”
    “What?”
    “This room. It feels like it’s filled with contagion. Don’t you feel him in here? His presence? It’s like he’s not dead. Not in here, at least. He fills up the room, the air.” Partridge wonders if the contagion he feels is his own toxic guilt. He looks at