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Two more guards joined the first one, and the trio oversaw his ride upstairs in an elevator. They took off his T-shirt, pushed him down onto a hospital bed, and strapped him down tightly. He considered resisting but decided it wasn’t worth the entertainment to his captors.

Doe came back with a woman in surgical scrubs, who efficiently set an IV in the back of his hand and taped the needle down securely. He briefly considered resisting her as well, but the guards were big guys and more manpower would be nearby.

The IV drip started. For now, it was a simple saline solution. But a stainless steel tray with several loaded syringes stood on a table beside the bed.

Doe picked up the first syringe.

Alex broke his silence to say, “I guarantee that no one in this room has the proper security clearances to hear what I have to say. Unless you want to create a severe shit storm of security violations that will land on your head, you might want to re-evaluate who’s in here if I do, in fact, start talking.”

“Oh, you’ll talk.” And with that, Doe injected the serum into the IV line. Alex didn’t feel any pain at the site of his IV. Must be one of the new generation meds, then. A couple of the old ones burned like fire on their way into the body.

“We’ll give that a few minutes to work, Dr. Peters, and then I’ll be back to have a little chat with you.”

Alex ignored him. He was already hard at work filling his mind with harmless images from his childhood. Soccer games on Saturday mornings. The dew had been cold and wet on the grass, a silver gray cobweb over the soccer field. His shin guards, too big, slid down inside his tube socks and bugged him. Grass clippings stuck to the wet soccer balls. The more minute the details he filled his mind with, the better.

He registered vaguely that the guards, did, indeed step out into the hall when Doe came back. Alex’s vision had narrowed to a brightly lit tunnel with dancing images at the end of it. Shouting kids. Harassed coaches. Matching t-shirts.

“Can you hear me, Alex?”

“Yes, Coach. I’m listening.”

“Why are you in Cuba?”

“To play soccer.”

“Who sent you here?”

“My father. He wants me to fit in.”

“What were you testing in the lab?”

“My hands. Best part of playing goalie is getting to use them.”

“We’re going to give you another drug, Alex. It will amplify the effect of the CCRE.”

CCRE?What was that? He’d never heard it mentioned in his training last year.

The door opened behind Doe and a nurse came in. Different nurse from before. The nurse looked just like someone he knew named Katie. He liked Katie—the real one.

The hallucination made him smile a little. Yup, she was the reason he would fight to the bitter end. And win. He had to win this soccer game. He sank further into his boyhood memory, wrapping it around him like a thick blanket as the second drug was injected into his IV.

His head was starting to spin pleasantly and his body felt heavy and languid. But as quickly as that sensation registered,panic followed it. What had they done to him? How had they known to make the nurse look like a girl he liked? They were all out to get him. Wasshepart of the plot, too? It was brilliant to use her. Evil.

“Gotta win,” he muttered.

“What’s that?” Doe leaned down a little closer to hear him.

And that was when the nurse pulled a rock out of a wrapped towel and clobbered Doe across the back of the head with it.Holy shit. The interrogator fell across Alex’s lap and then slid to the floor, with Katie-nurse attempting to slow the guy’s fall.

That was a good ploy to get him to trust her. He watched, bemused, as the hallucination frantically unbuckled the leather straps from his wrists, neck, waist, and finally, feet.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered. “Can you walk?”

“If I can play soccer, I can walk.” And hey. If she wanted to bust him out of here as a head game to gain his trust, far be it from him to stop her. He could always get away from her later.

She ran over to the window and looked out. “Can you jump out the window? We’re on the second floor. Did they teach you to drop and roll in soccer?”

“Of course,” he answered indignantly. “I’m a damned goalie.”