Perfectly blank, absolutely no reaction. A bad sign.

“Who is that?”

She allowed her sigh to be audible this time.

“You’re making the wrong choice, Daniel. Please think about what you’re doing.”

“But I don’t know who that is!”

She fixed him with a resigned stare.

“I’m being completely honest, Alex. I don’t know that man.”

She sighed again. “Then I suppose we’ll get started.”

The disbelief was there again. She’d never dealt with that in an interrogation before. All the others who’d been on her table had known what they were there for. She’d faced terror and pleading and, occasionally, stoic defiance, but never this strange, trusting, almost-challenge: You won’t hurt me.

“Um, is this some kind of fetish fantasy thing?” he asked in a low voice, somehow finding a way to sound embarrassed despite the bizarreness of his circumstances. “I don’t really know the rules for that stuff…”

She turned away to hide an inappropriate smile. Get a grip, she ordered herself. Trying to keep the movement smooth, as if she’d meant to walk away at that exact moment, she went to her desk. She clicked one key on her computer, keeping it awake. Then she picked up the prop tray. It was heavy, and some of the props clanked against each other as she moved it. She brought the tray to his side, rested the edge of it beside the syringes, and angled the light so the metallic implements shone brightly.

“I’m sorry you find this confusing,” she said in an even voice. “I am in deadly earnest, I assure you. I want you to look at my tools.”

He did, and his eyes grew very wide. She watched for some hint of the other side to break through, the Dark Daniel, but there was nothing. His eyes were somehow still gentle even in abject fear. Innocent. Lines spoken by Hitchcock’s Norman Bates flashed through her head. I think I must have one of those faces you can’t help believing.

She shuddered, but he didn’t notice, his eyes fixed on her props.

“I don’t have to use these very often,” she told him, touching the pliers lightly, then stroking her finger along the extra-large scalpel. “They call me in when they would like to have the subject left more or less… intact.” She brushed the bolt cutters on the hard syllable of the last word. “But I don’t really need these tools anyway.” She flicked her fingernail against the canister of the welding torch, producing a high-pitched pinging sound. “Can you guess why?”

He didn’t respond, frozen in horror. He was starting to see now. Yes, this was real.

Only Dark Daniel must already have known that. So why wasn’t he surfacing? Did he think she could be fooled? Or that his charm on the train had melted her weak, womanly heart?

“I’ll tell you why,” she said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper. She leaned in conspiratorially and held her face in a sweet, regretful half smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Because what I do hurts… so… much… worse.”

His eyes looked like they were going to bug out of his head. This, at least, was a familiar reaction.

She took the tray away, letting his focus move naturally to the long line of syringes left behind, glinting in the light.

“The first time will last only ten minutes,” she told him, still facing away as she set the tools back on the desk. She spun around. “But it will feel like a lot longer. This will just be a taste – you could look at it as a warning shot. When it’s done, we’ll try talking again.”

She picked up the syringe on the far end of the tray, pushed the plunger till a drop of liquid dewed at the top, then flicked it away theatrically like a nurse in a movie.

“Please?” he whispered. “Please, I don’t know what this is about. I can’t help you. I swear I would if I could.”

“You will,” she promised, and she stabbed the needle into his left triceps brachii.

The reaction was nearly instantaneous. His left arm spasmed and jerked against the restraint. While he stared in horror at his convulsing muscles, she quietly picked up another syringe and crossed to his right side. He saw her approach.

“Alex, please!” he yelled.

She ignored him and his attempt to somehow evade her, as if he were strong enough to rip free of his cuffs, and injected this dose of lactic acid into his right quad. His knee wrenched flat, the muscles pulling his foot off the table. He gasped, and then groaned.

She moved deliberately, not in any hurry, but not slowly, either. Another syringe. His left arm was already too incapacitated for him to try to resist her. This time she injected the acid into his left biceps brachii. Immediately, the opposing triceps muscle group began tearing against the biceps, battling for contraction dominance.

The air burst out of his mouth like he’d just been punched in the gut, but she knew the pain was much, much worse than any blow.

One more injection, this time into his right biceps femoris. The same ripping struggle that was happening in his arm started in his leg. And the screaming started with it.

She went to stand by his head, watching dispassionately while the tendons in his neck strained into white ropes. When he opened his mouth to scream again, she shoved a gag in. If he bit off his tongue, he wouldn’t be able to tell her anything.

She walked slowly to her desk chair while his muffled shrieks were absorbed into the double layer of foam, sat down, and crossed her legs. She looked at the monitors – everything elevated but nothing in the danger zone. A healthy body could experience a lot more pain than most people would think before its important organs were really in any serious peril. She brushed the touch pad on her computer, keeping the screen brightly lit. Then she pulled her wristwatch out of her pocket and laid it across her knee. This was mostly for theatrics; she could have watched the clock on her computer or the monitors just as easily.