Agent Zero

“And what became of the sheikh.”

Somehow Reid was suddenly aware that the sheikh in question had been detained and taken to a black site in Morocco. It wasn’t a vision. He simply knew.

We don’t talk. Ever.

A cold chill ran down Reid’s spine as he struggled to maintain some semblance of sanity.

“Tell me,” the interrogator insisted.

“I don’t know.” The words felt strange rolling from his swollen tongue. He glanced up in alarm and saw the other man smirking back at him.

He had understood the foreign demand… and answered back in flawless Arabic.

The interrogator pushed the tip of the scalpel into Reid’s leg. He screamed as the knife penetrated the muscle of his thigh. He instinctively tried to pull his leg away, but his ankles were bound to the chair legs.

He clenched his teeth hard, his jaw aching in protest. The wound in his leg burned fiercely.

The interrogator smirked and cocked his head slightly. “I will admit, you’re tougher than most, Zero,” he said in English. “Unfortunately for you, I am a professional.” He reached down and slowly tugged off one of Reid’s now-filthy socks. “I don’t get to resort to this tactic often.” He straightened and stared Reid directly in the eye. “Here is what is going to happen next: I am going to cut off small pieces of you, and show you each one. We will begin with your toes. Then the fingers. After that… we will see where we stand.” The interrogator knelt and pressed the blade against the smallest toe of his right foot.

“Wait,” Reid pleaded. “Please, just wait.”

The other two men in the room gathered on either side, watching with interest.

Desperate, Reid fingered the ropes that held his wrists in place. It was an inline knot with two opposing loops tied with half hitches…

An intense shiver ran from the base of his spine to his shoulders. He knew. Somehow he just knew. He had an intense feeling of déjà vu, as if he had been in this situation before—or rather, these insane visions somehow implanted in his head told him he had.

But most importantly, he knew what he had to do.

“I’ll tell you!” Reid panted. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

The interrogator glanced up. “Yes? Good. First, however, I am still going to remove this toe. I would not want you to believe that I was bluffing.”

Behind the chair, Reid gripped his left thumb in his opposite hand. He held his breath and jerked hard. He felt the pop as the thumb dislocated. He waited for the sharp, intense pain to come, but it was little more than a dull throb.

A new realization struck him—this was not the first time that had happened to him.

The interrogator sliced into the skin of his toe and he yelped. With his thumb opposite its normal angle, he slipped his hand free of its bonds. With one loop open, the other gave way.

His hands were free. But he had no idea what to do with them.

The interrogator glanced up and his brow furrowed in confusion. “What…?”

Before he could utter another word, Reid’s right hand shot out and grabbed the first implement it closed on—a black-handled precision knife. As the interrogator tried to stand, Reid pulled his hand back. The blade raked across the man’s carotid.

Both hands flew to his throat. Blood eked between his fingers as the wide-eyed interrogator collapsed to the floor.

The hulking brute roared in fury as he lunged forward. He wrapped both meaty hands around Reid’s throat and squeezed. Reid tried to think, but fear gripped him.

Next thing he knew, he lifted the precision knife again and jammed it into the brute’s inner wrist. He twisted his shoulders as he pushed, and opened an avenue up the length of the man’s forearm. The brute screamed and fell, clutching his grievous injury.

The tall, thin man stared in disbelief. Much like before, on the street in front of Reid’s house, he seemed hesitant to approach him. Instead, he fumbled for the plastic tray and a weapon. He grabbed a curved blade and stabbed straight for Reid’s chest.

Reid threw his body weight backward, toppling the chair and narrowly avoiding the knife. At the same time, he forced his legs outward as hard as he could. As the chair hit the concrete, the legs broke off from the frame. Reid stood and nearly stumbled, his legs weak.

The tall man shouted for help in Arabic, and then slashed the air indiscriminately with the knife, back and forth in wide sweeps to keep Reid at bay. Reid kept his distance, watching the silver blade swing hypnotically. The man swept right, and Reid lunged, trapping the arm—and the knife—between their bodies. His momentum drove them forward, and as the Iranian toppled, Reid twisted and neatly sliced through the femoral artery on the back of his thigh. He planted a foot and swished the knife the opposite way, piercing the jugular.

He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew that the man had about forty-seven seconds of life left.

Feet pounded a staircase from nearby. Fingers shaking, Reid dashed to the open doorway and flattened himself against one side. The first thing through was a gun—he immediately identified it as a Beretta 92 FS—and an arm followed, and then a torso. Reid spun, caught the gun in the crook of his elbow, and slid the precision knife sideways between two ribs. The blade pierced the man’s heart. A cry caught on his lips as he slid to the floor.

Then there was only silence.

Reid staggered backward. His breathing came in shallow gulps.

“Oh god,” he breathed. “Oh god.”

He had just killed—no, he had just murdered four men in the span of several seconds. Even worse was that it was kneejerk, reflexive, like riding a bike. Or suddenly speaking Arabic. Or knowing the sheikh’s fate.

He was a professor. He had memories. He had children. A career. But clearly his body knew how to fight, even if he didn’t. He knew how to escape from bonds. He knew where to deliver a lethal blow.

“What is happening to me?” he gasped.

He covered his eyes briefly as a roiling wave of nausea washed over him. There was blood on his hands—literally. Blood on his shirt. As the adrenaline subsided, the aches permeated through his limbs from being stationary for so long. His ankle still throbbed from leaping off his deck. He’d been stabbed in the leg. He had an open wound behind his ear.

He didn’t even want to think about how his face might look.

Get out, his brain screamed at him. More may come.

“Okay,” Reid said aloud, as if he were assenting to someone else in the room. He calmed his breathing as best he could and scanned his surroundings. His unfocused eyes fell on certain details—the Beretta. A rectangular lump in the interrogator’s pocket. A strange mark on the neck of the brute.

He knelt beside the hulking man and stared at the scar. It was near the jaw line, partially obscured by beard, and no bigger than a dime. It appeared to be some sort of brand, burned into the skin, and looked similar to a glyph, like some letter in another alphabet. But he didn’t recognize it. Reid examined it for several seconds, etching it into his memory.

He quickly rifled through the dead interrogator’s pocket and found an ancient brick of a cell phone. Likely a burner, his brain told him. In the tall man’s back pocket he found a scrap of torn white paper, one corner stained with blood. In a scrawling, nearly illegible hand was a long series of digits that began with 963—the country code to make an international call to Syria.

None of the men had any identification, but the would-be shooter had a thick billfold of euro banknotes, easily a few thousand. Reid pocketed that as well, and then lastly, he took the Beretta. The pistol’s weight felt oddly natural in his hands. Nine-millimeter caliber. Fifteen-round magazine. One-hundred-twenty-five-millimeter barrel.

His hands expertly ejected the clip in a fluid motion, as if someone else were controlling them. Thirteen rounds. He pushed it back in and cocked it.

Then he got the hell out of there.

Outside the thick steel door was a dingy hall that ended in a staircase going up. At the top of it was evidence of daylight. Reid climbed the stairs carefully, the pistol aloft, but he heard nothing. The air grew cooler as he ascended.

He found himself in a small, filthy kitchen, the paint peeling from the walls and dishes caked in grime piled high in the sink. The windows were translucent; they had been smeared with grease. The radiator in the corner was cold to the touch.

Reid cleared the rest of the small house; there was no one besides the four dead men in the basement. The single bathroom was in far worse shape than the kitchen, but Reid found a seemingly ancient first-aid kit. He didn’t dare look at himself in the mirror as he washed as much blood as he could from his face and neck. Everything from head to toe stung, ached, or burned. The tiny tube of antiseptic ointment had expired three years earlier, but he used it anyway, wincing as he pressed bandages over his open cuts.

Then he sat on the toilet and held his head in his hands, taking a brief moment to get a grip. You could leave, he told himself. You have money. Go to the airport. No, you don’t have a passport. Go to the embassy. Or find a consulate. But…