As the car drove away, the linebacker asked the driver, “Is there any word on what they want us to do with him?”

  The Nike jacket guy replied in a rich baritone, “They want us to stash him at Site Charlie. We can spend a little time on him to see if he has anything we need to act on immediately, but Jacob is getting on a plane and wants to talk with him tomorrow.”

  The linebacker rapped me on the forehead with his knuckle and chuckled as he gloated, “You are burned worse than a slug in a salt mine. There is no fucking way that a nerdy bitch like you had any idea what kind of a shit storm you were walking into. When Jacob decides he needs to get personally involved, be prepared to get fucked in places you don’t even have a name for.”

  The big thug paused for a second, then continued, “Dave, you remember that kid that Jacob did in Baltimore? That kid would have sold his sister, his kids, and his mom to the Russian mob just for a break from what Jacob did to him. I did not know a human could scream like that.”

  His obvious tactic might have worked if I had been fully present in that moment, but the detachment of knowing it wasn’t real let me see through his ploy. So, I interrupted him. “Look, awesome job on the whole Keyser S?ze riz and all, but you don’t need it. I already know I’m cooked. I’ll tell you anything you want: passwords, access controls, bank account numbers—anything. I’ll answer any question.”

  The big buffalo next to me was pissed at not being able to finish his carefully planned soliloquy and slammed his fist into my solar plexus, knocking the wind out of me.

  The driver, whom my tormentor called “Dave,” began to laugh. He said, “Man, that is hilarious kid. Good call on giving it up, but you should have let Nick finish his story; he probably had another ten minutes planned, and you spoiled it. That won’t go well for you.”

  The big guy, whom I now thought of as Nick, shook his head and said, “Fuck you, Dave.” Then he hit me again, this time in the stomach. He sat back in his seat, shaking his head and looking disappointed.

  After giving me a moment to recover, Dave called out from the front seat, “Let’s start with the basics. Who was working with you on this job? Who were your partners?”

  “No one,” I replied honestly. “It’s just me. I used tools from other hackers, but I would never trust any of those guys with anything. It’s all transactional. We buy and trade tools, and that’s it.”

  Dave didn’t seem convinced, and I saw him eye me in the rearview mirror. “So you’re saying that you’re just some lone hacker who just happened to walk yourself into this mess. I don’t think that’s gonna fly without some solid proof. That girl at Stillpoint where you were hiding—she covered for you. There's no way she isn't involved. No sales clerk would randomly lie for someone they don't know.”

  I didn’t care if he believed me, so I answered honestly: “No, it isn’t like that. When I saw you go into the Starbucks, I noticed you had a gun, and I panicked and went into the first place I found. I gave her a made-up story about how you were some abusive boyfriend who I was hiding from.”

  He shook his head. “You’re still not telling it straight. Why were you even walking around and not in the Starbucks? Where is your computer? Did you leave it with the girl at Stillpoint? I looked around and saw no laptops without someone using them.”

  I tried to explain, “I was using the Starbucks WiFi from my car. I left my computer in the car when I took off.”

  He shook his head more firmly. “Don’t even try to bullshit me, kid. If you were in your car, why the fuck would you get out and walk into a random business? You would have just driven off. Is your computer with that girl in that Stillpoint place? Stop fucking lying to me, or this gets painful. You can’t protect anyone. We’ll know every friend you have, your family, and everyone in your life within a day. Just tell it straight.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  What he asked shook me. Why had I gotten out of the car? Why didn’t I just drive off when I saw him? I still remembered the fear I felt at that moment—it was like a drumming in my head, urging me to get out and run. It felt primal and immediate, almost as if it had a specific command: get out of the car and walk away. But why? Was it just a mental malfunction where fear made me act irrationally, or would driving away have been the worse option? Would they have noticed me and followed? The entire situation felt unbelievable.

  These thoughts spun in my head as Dave kept asking questions. Then, I felt another punch to the gut that winded me and brought me back to the moment. “Pay attention and answer his fucking questions,” Nick urged angrily.

  After that, I just gave whatever answers I thought would sound convincing and appeared to be “giving up” my whole team. As they interrogated me, I gazed out the window and thought about what I saw and what it meant.

  A few things stood out to me as we drove through the city. The afterimages didn’t appear around everything. Roads and buildings had none. Even the clouds in the sky lacked them. People were a different story; they all had afterimages. Cars that were actively being driven had them, but parked vehicles did not. Occasionally, I would see a person who seemed to be nothing but an afterimage, lacking any sense of solid existence for a moment before they vanished altogether.

  I didn’t know what it meant, but I felt it had to do with people and not things, just humans and what they controlled, like their clothes or cars. Then, as we were moving through a neighborhood, I noticed the leaves on the trees. When the wind would blow, they had very slight afterimages as well. It ruined my interpretation somewhat, so I set it aside.

  The most interesting thing I noticed were the afterimages around Nick. Dave had very few afterimages, mostly around his face and head. In contrast, Nick had them almost constantly, especially around his hands. Occasionally, I would see one entirely separate from the small changes, and a ghostly image of Nick would hit me. I couldn’t feel it, and as soon as the ghostly fist struck, it popped out of existence. Of course, Nick would hit me occasionally as well—usually, if I was slow to answer Dave or if he caught me in an inconsistency with the story I was making up about the supposed team I was a part of.

  I didn’t have an explanation for what the afterimages were that fully fit what I was experiencing, but I was starting to put together a theory. It had something to do with intentionality, capturing the subtle differences in our mental states and choices at any moment. The main image represented our actions, while the “afterimages” represented the possibilities of what we could have done but chose not to.

  Of course, another possibility was that I was utterly insane, high on acid, or otherwise out of it. This possibility felt much better than the thought that two mercenary thugs were about to torture and kill me. Still, if I was crazy or high, these hallucinations were unlike anything I had ever known or experienced. It felt more like a lucid dream but without any ability to control it at all.

  The other thing I thought about was getting back to my body and out of this extremely painful hallucination. In both of the other hallucinations, which I was beginning to view as premonitions, I returned to my body after dying, but not immediately. Each time I died, I experienced a few moments of clarity outside my body before waking up back in the sensory deprivation tank. However, dying did not seem likely this time; Nick and Dave wouldn’t let me die until they were finished with me.

  The other option that I considered was being awakened by Luanda after my time was up. Between the first two hallucinations and this one, I must have been in that tank for nearly forty-five minutes. Based on the time on the dashboard, it was closer to thirty minutes, but either way, my hour in the tank would eventually end, and Luanda would wake me up.

  As I thought about these things, we arrived in the Lower Queen Anne district and pulled up to the back of a defunct tattoo parlor. Graffiti covered much of what had once been a vibrant purple and black mural offering tattoos and body piercings.

  We stopped near a chained door at the rear of the building and parked the car. Dave got out and walked over to the door. He unlocked two deadbolts and propped the door open with something I couldn’t see. Meanwhile, Nick unhooked my seatbelt and pulled me sideways in the seat, so I faced the door. As Dave walked back to the car, I felt Nick's strong arms wrap around my neck in what felt like a triangle choke. He pulled me close into his body, and I could feel his face next to mine as he tightened down, closing my carotid arteries and making my head explode in pain. I smelled peppermint on his breath as he whispered in my ear, and my vision faded, “Nighty night, computer boy.”

  As soon as I went unconscious, I was outside my body, watching the two of them drag my limp form towards the building. I marveled at their professionalism. To the casual observer, the way they carried me, I probably just looked like I was passed out drunk.

  Then I felt that blessed pull, and I was back in my body, back safe inside the sensory deprivation tank.