They tied me to the chair. I opened my eyes and saw an enormous mirror on the wall to my right. I’d seen enough sub-projects to know, even in my compromised state, that it was a one-way mirror and I was being observed. There had to be an audio recorder, as well. I tried to prepare to die and prayed the torture wouldn’t last long. I couldn’t fathom what I had done. A man I recognized — Thomas Somebody, or Somebody Thomas — from the chemical studies came in, bent down, and gave me a shot at the base of my penis. It burned immediately and my penis swelled beyond anything I’d ever experienced. Enormous pressure, like my blood was trying to escape through my increasingly pained skin. It felt like it could split open at any time.
Then, a different shot, this one rough, as they tied off my bound left arm with rubber, and injected into my vein, after trying many times. I realized I should be feeling pain with the needle’s crude hunt, but I felt nothing. Just fingers and the pressure of the needle.
But once it was in me, even with the acid fracturing my brain, I knew immediately what it was. They’d been testing ketamine as a truth serum. And I’d felt a light sample once. This was not a light sample.
A young man — maybe eighteen — was escorted by two men into the room and they closed the door behind him. He stripped and came over to me, got on his knees, and began sucking my penis. I’d seen this, or something like it, happen to others in the program. The point was to compromise the agent by documenting him in certain positions — and homosexual activities were a popular way to leverage your total loyalty. I stared at the light and felt the boy’s mouth up and down the length of my penis. It felt amazing, and my head rolled back, and I moaned for what seemed like a very long time. He didn’t stop. I heard the door open. I heard cameras flash. Their light exploding behind my eyelids at irregular intervals. But I didn’t care. Nothing but lights and the feeling I’d be blind soon when I closed my eyes, and this blurred, distorted, beautiful boy in my lap when I opened them. I felt on the verge of orgasm for what seemed like an hour, but I never had one.
A man’s voice ordered the boy to stop.
I was already compromised. Whatever footage and recording they had were plenty. I felt the boy’s hands on my thighs as he started to stand, and I asked him to wait. I felt his erect penis hard up against my ribs as he got up and pressed into me.
“Please kiss me,” I said.
He sat on my lap and we kissed, my mouth open to the glorious invasion of his tongue. The ketamine had me floating endlessly — one of its effects was that it made you feel weightless and like you were drifting down slowly into a void without any bottom. My head grew cloudy with images. I tried to touch the boy, but my hands were still tied. I’d never felt someone lick my neck and I couldn’t believe the feeling. He kissed me again, and it was like we were alone, together, drifting and falling ecstatically through endless floating space and I never wanted to leave. Someone pulled him away from me.
I stayed locked naked and bound in that room. My mind stayed bent. The ketamine leveled off and faded about two hours later, but the grip of the acid was suffocating. I wanted it over. More than anything.
They turned the room temperature below freezing. I lost all control and shivered and shook while they interrogated me for an hour. My penis remained embarrassingly erect from whatever the chemist had shot me with. I tried to think of a chemical that would have this effect, but among the acid and the cold and the rapid aggressive questions, I couldn’t focus on any thoughts of my own. I saw my breath. The concrete floor that agonized my feet seemed somehow even colder than the air.
A man brought in a strobe light. Another came with a small table that he put down in front of me. The first man positioned the light in front of my eyes. They fastened a neck brace on me — one that totally restricted my head and left my eyes helpless to whatever assault they had planned. The overhead light went out seconds before the strobe started.
From a speaker in the wall, the faceless interrogator barked questions at me.
“What is your name?”
I had no idea at first. I laughed.
The strobe light made me sick. I tried to swing my head away, but I was completely bound. I vomited all over myself and felt it grow shockingly cold on my chest and legs. I could barely talk, but I finally answered my name.
“Have you ever betrayed the agency in any way?”
Answering was so difficult. I had no control of my body. I was falling into hypothermia — that much I knew. Every breath hurt. And the strobe light relentlessly attacked what little control I had of my mind. I spasmed repeatedly and lost control of my bowels and they left me in my own mess, never cleaning me the rest of the day. It turned cold. Soon, I would sit in my own frozen waste.
The interrogator said, “Answer me. And open your eyes.”
When I pushed my thighs against my bindings, I found that my vomit had formed a fragile skin of ice. When I moved — as little as I could — the sound of ice quietly cracking came from the vomit falling on the chair. I faded in and out of consciousness.
“Open your eyes!”
I did as I was told. With what little control I had left, I fought to not say anything that could make me a security risk.
He yelled the question again.
The strobe light had turned me blind. The questions kept coming. Are you trustworthy? Would you ever betray your country? Would you ever betray your country for the country you’d left? You’re not walking out of this room until you’re broken. Tell us that. Tell us you’re not walking out of this room until you’re broken.
I knew enough. They might be killing me, but I wasn’t giving them the satisfaction of a reason to do so. Plus, I was barely able to form a sentence. Whatever their plan was, they’d rendered me useless. I tried to think. To tell myself all drugs have their half-life and will fade. That I was a chemist. I knew this. But still, life kaleidoscoped and strobed and attacked. Light was a glorious enemy. Beautiful one second, jackhammering the brain the next.
I struggled to speak. “Then I am not walking out of this room.”
The cold was close to killing me. I screamed in pain. I screamed, thinking it was my last chance to be saved. I screamed. It was all that was left of me. Two men came in the room and untied me and brought me to a warmer room and covered me in blankets. I was going to live. And that could be very good — or very bad — news. The men stood over me. I still couldn’t make out faces. Objects I knew were stationary — bookcases, unoccupied chairs, a vase of flowers — swelled and moved like trees in a windstorm.
Maybe thirty minutes later, they brought me back to the room and tied me to the chair, the strobe light away from it. The room was comfortable with the heat cranking. Maybe eighty degrees. But I knew the room would shortly be heated to a hundred and five degrees and the interrogation would resume. The strobe came back on. The room grew hotter and hotter. A hundred and ten. A hundred and fifteen. By a hundred and twenty, I’d seen men start to die of heatstroke. One twenty-five or thirty, and you were sure to die.
I don’t know how long it lasted. I passed out.
I woke naked in a sealed box no wider than a couple of coffins. Tall enough to get on my hands and knees, but that was all. I’d been shot with ketamine again and it was starting to peak. The acid still raged inside of me. I was overcome with my own stink. I threw up.
Lights lined the walls and a voice kept repeating the phrase “You can stop this at any time.” How many times can you hear a sentence repeated for over an hour? Maybe thousands? You can stop this at any time. You can stop this any time. You can... It could have been ten hours or ten days. I thought about those we left to sleep for six months of this. I would live in this box and listen to that sentence until I died. I screamed and wept constantly and begged them for it to end. Never an answer, just the same recorded message over and over. I’d vomited so often it was impossible not to crawl or lie in it.