Overhead, Safira dangled from above, buckled in her seat and unconscious.

  She stirred. “Chaucer?”

  Chaucer didn’t address her. He didn’t even look her in the eyes, because he spotted the case six feet ahead on what now served as the floor. He reached in and grabbed the case.

  Safira saw what he was doing, her concussed brain slowly figuring it out. “Chaucer—what?”

  “I’m sorry.” Chaucer hurtled one row of seats, heading back to the crack in the fuselage where he had come in.

  “No, I am sorry,” she said. He heard the click of a gun hammer cocking. Chaucer threw the case over his shoulder so that it blocked his head and neck.

  “Go ahead. End the world if you have to.”

  Safira had no shot. Chaucer’s body was obscured by the seating, which in this plane was hardened, and she was not about to call his bluff and fire into that case.

  She watched helplessly as Malcolm Chaucer disappeared out of the plane.

  Chaucer exited the plane with the case intact. He hopped into the lorry and started it up again. Or, he tried to start it up. He tried twice. Three times.

  The steam coming from the manifold had completely obscured the windshield, telling Chaucer that the lorry was no more.

  Chaucer stepped out of the lorry, watching as two airport police vehicles raced at him.

  “Put the case down, Chaucer.”

  Chaucer glanced over his shoulder. Safira had made it out. She was standing at an angle. Messed up, but not too messed up to fire.

  Chaucer yelled, “They have Tempest! You have no idea what they’ll do to her!”

  Safira took a deep breath. She knew if this were true, her friends at the safe house were dead or compromised. She understood completely what Chaucer was feeling. “We can’t trade the end of the world for that, Chaucer, and you know it.”

  Chaucer looked back at her, pleading with his eyes. “You’re young. One day you’ll understand. It’s always the end of the world, and it’s never worth it.”

  The airport police vehicles screeched to a halt in front of Chaucer. Four Kuwaiti police officers exited, weapons drawn. They first tried to talk to him in Arabic. “No sudden moves.”

  Safira responded for him, “This man is a U.S. national in my custody.”

  One police officers—the one with the lieutenant stripes—responded, “We sort that out at my facility. You will all have to come with me.”

  Safira said, “I’ve got two pilots in the craft, possibly injured.”

  The lieutenant thought for a moment, then nodded. “Ahmad. Laaiq. See to the plane.”

  The two officers from the other car nodded, holstered their pistols, and hurried over to the plane to check for survivors.

  But one of them suddenly stopped.

  He drew his service weapon and put a bullet in Safira’s back. He followed it up with two more into the lieutenant and his own second-in-command.

  CHAPTER 62

  His partner, who had already entered the plane, spun, utterly shocked at what had just happened. With zero emotion, Ahmad put a bullet in him. Ahmad fired three more bullets into the plane. Chaucer assumed he took out the pilots and the attendant.

  Chaucer tried to run. He made it six steps. “Stop!”

  Chaucer did as he was told. He turned back to see Ahmad aiming at his head. “Is that the case?”

  Chaucer knew he was staring at a zombie.

  Tempest yelled, followed by a series of animalistic grunts. Chaban was impressed. This was clearly her way of saving some face, a bit of dignity. Most of his subjects were screaming uncontrollably at this point.

  But not Tempest MacLaren.

  He made another incision with his scalpel. He opened up another part of her neck, revealing the sheathing at the top of her spine, and inserted two more electrodes into it.

  This was not the ladder, not the cradle, or the mountain, or the iron wall. This was none of Po’s many other protocols for the breaking of the human spirit. No, this was the one Chaban was most proud of. This was his own invention. Though he never named it in front of another human being, he called it the Marionette.

  Po was decidedly old-school. He shunned the use of computers, or even electricity, despite its efficacy. For Po, the psychological space of torturer and tortured must be inviolate.

  To Chaban, this was romantic nonsense.

  The electrodes attached to several points of Tempest’s spine were connected to a computer that was running a program. Tiny microbursts of electricity turned her into a literal puppet.

  If he wanted, he could make her quite literally dance.

  But that wasn’t his goal. His goal was to quickly and efficiently break her.

  Tempest screamed again as her right eyeball twitched violently left and right. “I’ll kill you. Motherfucker, I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you!”

  Over the last hour, Tempest had gone through several such mantras. But this was the only one that still stuck. The last one she clung to.

  When the mind started to break, it told an experienced torturer everything about the person. What was the last thing to go? What was the last thing they clung to before the warm relief and utter horror of total capitulation?

  For many, it was mercy. The last thing they would do was plead over and over for mercy.

  For some, it was valiance, pleading that they wouldn’t harm a loved one, even though that loved one was rarely in harm’s way.

  Still others clung to faith, pleading to a silent god for release.

  Chaban found it interesting that most of those who resorted to this as their last salvation were not devout in their former lives. Plenty adopting the strategy were confirmed atheists.

  “I’ll kill you. I’ll fucking kill you.”

  Chaban sat down in a chair so that he could stare her in the face. The program was between pulses right now, and she was as close to lucid as she would ever be from this point forward.

  Tempest was the only one he had ever encountered whose last resort was a revenge fantasy. Usually, that was very early to go in the process.

  He wished he could study her for years, but then he quickly put that thought out of his mind.

  It was in these moments that he knew what it was like to be Po.

  Jane entered behind him, behind Tempest, silently. She knew Chaban did not like to be disturbed when he was working. But Chaban nodded, allowing her speech.

  “The package has been picked up and is en route.”

  “Get the second chair ready in the other room. Ask Martell if you need help.”

  Chaban grabbed the top of Tempest’s hair and lifted her head up. He snapped his fingers, causing her eyes to open and stare into his.

  “Your Chaucer is an extraordinary man. I put the odds of him recovering the package at ten percent. How must it feel? How must it feel to have someone willing to end the world for you?”

  For a single moment, Chaban saw a glimmer of hope enter Tempest’s eyes.

  Then he mashed the return button on the computer.

  Tempest’s screams echoed all throughout the facility as the agony of a thousand knives entered her body simultaneously.

  CHAPTER 63

  Ahmad sat in the passenger seat of the airport police sedan as Chaucer drove. He held an unwavering gun on him the entire time. Ahmad guided him to a rear gate through which they were quickly waved .

  Chaucer asked, “Where to?”

  Ahmad spoke tersely. “Make a right.”

  Chaucer knew that his only chance right now involved getting Ahmad to talk. “If you tell me where we’re going, this will be easier.”

  “I’m allowed to shoot you, you know? I’m supposed to bring you and the case, but it is acceptable to bring only the case. Now make a right.”

  Ahmad’s gun never moved a millimeter. His eyes stayed on Chaucer relentlessly.

  The behavior was almost natural, and that’s what made it entirely unnatural to Chaucer. It was an interrogator’s own version of the uncanny valley—that human instinctual truth that things that look nearly human trigger fear and revulsion. It went all the way back to early evolution, and the threat posed by creatures using mimicry.

  Chaucer glanced into the man’s eyes and knew he was deep inside the uncanny valley.

  “Turn onto the highway heading north.”

  Chaucer did as he was told. “I don’t even know your name.”

  “My name is unimportant. But if you must use it, I am Ahmad.”

  Interesting. The other zombies seemed to have alternate identities. Russian identities. But Ahmad remained Ahmad. Chaucer tried to work out what that could mean. Was the alternate identity overlay an older version of the program? Was Ahmad a new recruit? “How long have you been working for Chaban?”

  Ahmad gave just the slightest reaction, one of surprise. “Those I work for—those who Chaban also works for.”

  An actual response. Chaucer fed on it. “But Chaban recruited you?”

  “That is his job.”

  “I’m curious. Do you remember your life before your recruitment?”

  Ahmad’s left eye twitched. It was almost imperceptible, but it was there. His left pinky did the same. There was a reaction happening, nearly completely beneath the surface, but it was there.

  Chaucer hoped it was a string, a single thread that could be pulled on and eventually unravel the man. “I remember everything.”

  “So you remember the torture?”

  Ahmad’s breathing shallowed slightly and then sped up. The hairs on his left and right arms raised ever so slightly. Inside this man, a war was brewing.

  Ahmad was forceful in his reply, “I said I remember everything. And there was no torture.”

  “Hate to disagree with you, but that’s clearly what happened. It’s the same for all of Chaban’s recruits. You were held against your will. You experienced levels of pain no human should ever experience.”

  Another twitch, this time across the left side of Ahmad’s face. “No more talking!”

  For the first time, the gun wavered. Not much, but it was a start.

  “Take the exit to the oil field.”

  Ahmad was trying to calm himself down, trying to remove the physiological stress from the memories that Chaucer was inducing.

  Chaucer softened his voice, “I’ve dealt with victims like you before.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Chaucer saw it happen: a full-on twitch at the word victim.

  Ahmad didn’t respond.

  Chaucer thought, This is either very bad, or very, very good.

  CHAPTER 64

  “Who do you work for?” Chaban asked.

  Tempest’s head lolled and swooned. She didn’t even have the energy to pick it up anymore.

  Chaban pressed the return button, and Tempest screamed as her body did a little dance for him. And now it wasn’t simply writhing in pain. Now it was an actual dance—intentional movements brought on by nerve stimuli.

  Chaban discovered that removing all bodily autonomy sped up the physiological process of ego destruction.

  “Who do you work for?”

  “Ffff…f…freelance.”

  Chaban smiled. It was both the truth and an obfuscation. It meant she wasn’t broken yet. Chaban, of course, knew who she worked for. Nothing in this process was to gain any information. But questions designed to divulge sensitive information were the best way to probe for any remaining resistance.

  And while Tempest showed no more physical resistance, her mental and emotional resistance were very much still intact.

  Chaban hummed to himself as he adjusted his program. It had been a long time since he had to do so, and he was delighted to find a human specimen that could still challenge him.

  “My dearest Tempest,” he said, stroking her hair gently. “I cannot tell you what a gift you are giving me. Your soul is dying in the most exquisite way.”

  Suddenly Tempest’s head snapped up. Her body lunged forward, even if forward only meant a couple of inches, and her teeth grabbed onto the tip of Chaban’s middle finger.

  He yanked his hand back, but it was too late. Tempest chomped right through the end of his middle finger at the joint.

  She chewed it once and swallowed, smiling. “I will kill you, motherfucker! I will kill you!”

  Now it was Chaban’s turn to scream. “Jane!”

  The highway into the oil fields was a straight black line through an unchanging landscape of tan. Sand dunes, undulating in fractal-like patterns, extended to the horizon.

  And seated beside Chaucer was a Kuwaiti police officer, slowly breaking down.

  Chaucer’s one worry was whether he would have enough time. Wherever they took Tempest, it couldn’t be far now.

  “Chaban has victimized many⁠—”

  “Stop calling me that!” Ahmad spoke through clenched teeth.

  “Calling you what?”

  Ahmad’s voice trembled slightly, “Victim. I’m not a victim. I’m an operative.”

  “Look, you’re the guy with the gun, so I’ll agree to whatever you’re saying. But operatives volunteer. Operatives are recruited and trained. Victims are tortured.”

  The man’s twitches now began to resemble Saint Vitus’s dance.

  The car passed a sign: Pumping Station 313. For the first time, Ahmad turned his face away from Chaucer.

  “Take the turnoff in three miles.”

  And there it was. Chaucer’s time was about up. He had one last gambit, one last card to play.

  “If you are an operative, then you know me. You know my name. My reputation.”

  “I’ve been told enough.”

  Chaucer’s eyes bore into the man. “Then you know that I always tell the truth, right?”

  Ahmad shrugged. An admission of fact.

  “So, in the time we’ve been talking, could I really be lying to you about it all?”

  Ahmad looked unsure. “N—no.”

  No twitching was evident. The man was calming down. The calm before the storm, Chaucer called it.

  Chaucer put on his signal, preparing to make the turn. He turned his head so that both of his eyes were facing Ahmad. He stared with his right eye into Ahmad’s right eye. “Then know this. My name is Malcolm Chaucer, and I do not lie. And you are not, and have never been, an operative. You are a victim of torture and brainwashing.”

  A single full-body twitch erupted in the man. His gun hand twitched toward the windshield.

  Chaucer leapt at him.

  The sedan continued down the impossibly straight highway as Chaucer gained control of the gun and smashed it into Ahmad’s head.

  Ahmad slumped over in his seat, and Chaucer drove on past Pumping Station 313.

  CHAPTER 65

  Ahmad awoke in darkness, as all such people do. He struggled, testing his range of motion. He discovered that his hands and feet were tied, roughly, using strips of cloth he quickly believed came from his own clothes. His torso was bare. He fought the urge to panic.

  “Good. I wonder—is that your police training, or did Chaban give you some rudimentary skills?”

  The voice came from behind him and sent a chill through the man. Ahmad said, “Let me go or your friend dies.”

  For Chaucer, the light was dim, but plenty sufficient to read the man’s many tells. It was a lie, of course. “That won’t work. Not with me. Where is she? Who is with her? How many of them are there, and what guns and opposition am I looking at?”

  Ahmad shut his mouth, which was a good instinct.

  Chaucer exhaled slowly. He didn’t want to do this. In his mind, this person was a victim, not unlike he was. Torturing a victim of torture didn’t sit right with him.

  But with each minute that passed, Tempest was being ripped apart. That one thought destroyed any remaining pause in his mind.

  Chaucer threw open the door to the maintenance shed, and the blinding white light of the Kuwaiti desert flooded in. Ahmad shut his eyes, but it was too late. He was blinded. In his retinas was a ghost image—his police car right outside the door.

  Chaucer dragged him in the chair toward the open door. Ahmad realized he was sitting backward in the chair, with his neck on the chair back, though he did not know why.

  “Trust for trust,” Chaucer whispered to him. “Anything that can be learned can be unlearned. Anything that can be taught can be re-taught. Anything that can be programmed can be deprogrammed.”

  Chaucer lifted the man up in his seat and threw him backward. His back hit the hood of his own police car, which had been sizzling for hours in the Kuwaiti sun. Instantly the smell of burning flesh—disconcertingly familiar, like barbecue—filled the air.

  Ahmad screamed. Chaucer counted to five, then pulled him off. He didn’t look back, knowing that bits of the man’s skin remained on the hood.

  “Where exactly is she? How many are there? What is their defensive posture?”

  The Iraqi officer cried out, hoping against hope for help that would never come.

  In Jefferson’s black site, Chaucer had seen that it was possible to switch someone from a waking state to an awakened state. He knew he could reverse the process. The question was how long it would take.

  Again, Chaucer asked where exactly she was.

  CHAPTER 66

  Chaban punched Tempest dead in the face. She grinned maniacally as her nose bled down into her mouth.

  In the room's corner, Jane prepared another gauze wrapping, seeing that Chaban was already bleeding through the one she had given him. She stared at Tempest MacLaren, bleeding and grinning like the devil herself, and processed how things had fallen apart in the last five minutes. She swallowed his goddamn finger!

  Jane looked over to Martell. She knew Martell had been with the Venture for a long time and was hoping for him to intervene. But Martell was more soldier than operative. Like Jane, he stayed at his post, letting Chaban handle the interrogation in his own manner.

  But it was clear that Chaban had lost the thread. Tempest was now in charge.