But Dr. Sugimoto had other plans.
He lied.
The end came not from the police, nor from a vengeful survivor, but from the machine itself. Neural pathways, once forged, become roads. The more he traveled the roads of cruelty, the more those roads grew inside him. After the twelfth subject—a former teacher named Yuki—Sugimoto felt something crack. Not in the chair. In himself. But Dr