Agent Zero

The emergency box.

The van.

The plane.

And now…

Reid dared to open his eyes. It was difficult. The lids felt as if they were glued shut. Even behind the thin skin he could tell that there was a bright, harsh light waiting on the other side. He could feel the heat of it on his face, and see the network of tiny capillaries through his lids.

He squinted. All he could see was the unforgiving light, bright and white and searing into his head. God, his head hurt. He tried to groan and found, through an electric dose of new pain, that his jaw hurt as well. His tongue felt fat and dry, and he tasted a mouthful of pennies. Blood.

His eyes, he realized—they had been difficult to open because they were, in fact, glued shut. The side of his face felt hot and sticky. Blood had run down his forehead and into his eyes, no doubt from being relentlessly kicked to unconsciousness on the plane.

But he could see the light. The bag had been removed from his head. Whether or not that was a good thing remained to be seen.

As his eyes adjusted, he tried again in vain to move his hands. They were still bound, but this time, not by handcuffs. Thick, coarse ropes held him in place. His ankles, too, were lashed to the legs of a wooden chair.

Finally his eyes adjusted to the harshness of the light and hazy outlines formed. He was in a small windowless room with uneven concrete walls. It was hot and humid, enough for sweat to prickle on the back of his neck, though his body felt cold and partially numb.

He could not fully open his right eye and it stung to try. Either he had been kicked there, or his captors had beaten him further while he was unconscious.

The bright light was coming from a thin procedure lamp on a tall, thin wheeled base, adjusted to about his height and shining downward in his face. The halogen bulb shined fiercely. If there was anything behind that lamp, he couldn’t see it.

He flinched as a heavy chink echoed through the small room—the sound of a deadbolt sliding aside. Hinges groaned, but Reid could not see a door. It closed again with a dissonant clang.

A silhouette blocked the light, bathing him in its shadow as it stood over him. He trembled, not daring to look up.

“Who are you?” The voice was male, slightly higher pitched than that of his previous captors, but still heavily tinged with a Middle Eastern accent.

Reid opened his mouth to speak—to tell them he was nothing more than a history professor, that they had the wrong guy—but he quickly recalled that the last time he tried to do so, he was kicked into submission. Instead, a small whimper escaped his lips.

The man sighed and retreated away from the light. Something scraped against the concrete floor; the legs of a chair. The man adjusted the lamp so that it faced slightly away from Reid, and then sat across from him in the chair so that their knees were nearly touching.

Reid slowly looked up. The man was young, thirty at best, with dark skin and a neatly trimmed black beard. He wore round, silver eyeglasses and a white kufi, a brimless, rounded cap.

Hope blossomed within Reid. This young man appeared to be an intellectual, not like the savages who had attacked him and torn him from his home. Perhaps he could negotiate with this man. Perhaps he was in charge…

“We will start simple,” the man said. His voice was soft and casual, the way a psychologist might speak with a patient. “What is your name?”

“L… Lawson.” His voice cracked on his first try. He coughed, and was slightly alarmed to see specks of blood hit the floor. The man before him wrinkled his nose distastefully. “My name is… Reid Lawson.” Why did they keep asking his name? He’d told them already. Did he unwittingly wrong someone?

The man sighed slowly, in and out through his nose. He propped his elbows against his knees and leaned forward, lowering his voice further. “There are many people who would like to be in this room right now. Lucky for you, it is just you and I. However, if you are not honest with me, I will have no choice but to invite… others. And they tend to lack my compassion.” He sat up straight. “So I ask you again. What… is… your… name?”

How could he convince them that he was who he said he was? Reid’s heart rate doubled as a stark realization struck him like a blow to the head. He might very well die in this room. “I’m telling you the truth!” he insisted. Suddenly the words flowed from him like a burst dam. “My name is Reid Lawson. Please, just tell me why I’m here. I don’t know what’s happening. I haven’t done anything—”

The man backhanded Reid across the mouth. His head jerked wildly. He gasped as the sting radiated through his freshly split lip.

“Your name.” The man wiped blood from the gold ring on his hand.

“I t-told you,” he stammered. “M-my name is Lawson.” He choked back a sob. “Please.”

He dared to look up. His interrogator stared back impassively, coldly. “Your name.”

“Reid Lawson!” Reid felt heat rise in his face as the pain congealed into anger. He didn’t know what else to say, what they wanted him to say. “Lawson! It’s Lawson! You can check my… my…” No, they couldn’t check his identification. He didn’t have his wallet on him when the trio of Muslim men took him.

His interrogator tut-tutted, and then drove his bony fist into Reid’s solar plexus. The air was again forced from his lungs. For a full minute, Reid could not draw a breath; it finally came again in a ragged gasp. His chest burned fiercely. Sweat dripped down his cheeks and burned his split lip. His head hung limp, his chin between his collarbones, as he fought off a wave of nausea.

“Your name,” the interrogator repeated calmly.

“I… I don’t know what you want me to tell you,” Reid whispered. “I don’t know what you’re looking for. But it’s not me.” Was he losing his mind? He was certain he hadn’t done anything to deserve this sort of treatment.

The man in the kufi leaned forward again, this time taking Reid’s chin gently with two fingers. He lifted his head, forcing Reid to look him in the eyes. His thin lips stretched into a half smirk.

“My friend,” he said, “this will get much, much worse before it gets better.”

Reid swallowed and tasted copper at the back of his throat. He knew that blood was an emetic; about two cups’ worth would cause him to vomit, and he already felt nauseous and dizzy. “Listen to me,” he implored. His voice sounded tremulous and timid. “The three men that took me, they came to 22 Ivy Lane, my home. My name is Reid Lawson. I am a professor of European history at Columbia University. I am a widower, with two teen…” He stopped himself. So far his captors had not given any indication that they knew about his girls. “If that’s not what you’re looking for, I cannot help you. Please. That’s the truth.”

The interrogator stared for a long, unblinking moment. Then he barked something sharply in Arabic. Reid flinched at the sudden outburst.

The deadbolt slid back again. Over the man’s shoulder, Reid could see just an outline of the thick door as it swung open. It appeared to be made of some kind of metal, iron or steel.

This room, he realized, was built to be a prison cell.

A silhouette appeared in the doorway. The interrogator shouted something else in his native tongue, and the silhouette vanished. He smirked at Reid. “We will see,” he said simply.

There was a telltale squeak of wheels, and the silhouette reappeared, this time pushing a steel cart into the small concrete room. Reid recognized the conveyor as the quiet, hulking brute who had come to his home, still wearing the perpetual scowl.

Upon the cart was an archaic machine, a brown box with a dozen knobs and dials and thick black wires plugged into one side. From the opposite end trailed a scroll of white paper with four thin needles pressed against it.

It was a polygraph machine—probably nearly as old as Reid was, but a lie detector nonetheless. He breathed a sigh of half-relief. At least they would know that he was telling the truth.

What they might do with him afterward… he didn’t want to think about that.

The interrogator set about wrapping the Velcro sensors around two of Reid’s fingers, a cuff around his left bicep, and two cords around his chest. He took a seat again, produced a pencil from his pocket, and stuck the pink eraser end in his mouth.

“You know what this is,” he said simply. “You know how this works. If you say anything other than the answers to my questions, we will hurt you. Do you understand?”

Reid nodded once. “Yes.”

The interrogator flicked a switch and fiddled with the knobs of the machine. The scowling brute stood over his shoulder, blocking the light from the procedure lamp and staring down at Reid.

The thin needles danced slightly against the scroll of white paper, leaving four black trails. The interrogator marked the sheet with a scribble, and then turned his cool gaze back to Reid. “What color is my hat?”

“White,” Reid answered quietly.

“What species are you?”

“Human.” The interrogator was establishing a baseline for the questions to come—usually four or five known truths so that he could monitor for potential lies.