Site Z. It wouldn't go away. In the 4 years he'd been working for the news agency Mike had kept on coming across it. The first time had been on a conspiracy theory website, and he'd dismissed it with all the other crank articles on the site. A month after that he'd received an anonymous phone call, offering information for cash about UFO sightings and secret government facilities. He got lots of calls like that, but the place had been mentioned there too. And then, a few weeks after that, a journalist he knew had disappeared – simply vanished. Mike had done some digging, and was startled to find that Site Z had turned up buried in some emails that the journalist had sent to his brother. It had been amongst a great deal of other, more mundane, stuff, but it had been there.
Mike was an experienced investigative journalist. A while ago he'd made something of a name for himself tackling dangerous subjects, but lately the stories that had come to his desk had been rather less impactful. What he could do with was a story that would catapult him back to the top of his field. And the more he looked at this, the more he was getting a strange feeling in his gut that Site Z just might be it. He was already working on a couple of other stories, but he put them on the back burner for the moment while he did some research on this.
He sat back and looked at what he'd got. Site Z was rumoured to be a place where 'disappeared ' individuals – activists, dissidents, suspected terrorists and the like – were detained indefinitely without charge. There were hints that it was a research site for experimental interrogation techniques – and the rumours were that it was somewhere not far from this very city. If that were true, then it was a Guantanamo Bay not just on English soil, but on his doorstep – but without even Gitmo's legal boundaries, and in total secrecy.
He needed to find out where it was. If he knew that, he could expose the whole thing.
Mike spent the morning on the phone, but the name meant nothing to any of his usual informants. Except one.
As always, Jackar sounded less than happy to hear from Mike, but when the subject of Site Z came up he practically wet himself. After some mostly incoherent and deeply worried whimpering which included 'oh for fuck's sake ', the only thing he said was, "leave that a-fucking-lone , Mike." Then he hung up the phone.
Mike heard nothing more for the best part of a week, and then two things happened on consecutive days. On Monday he received an email from Jackar. It consisted of just a single line: the name 'Paul Fletcher', an address, and the letter 'Z'. The following day, Tuesday, he was stunned to hear that Jackar had died from a heart attack. The guy had been vastly overweight for as long as Mike had known him, so he supposed that wasn't altogether surprising – but the timing worried him very much indeed.
* * *
The house was on the other side of the city. The guy who answered the door was in his early thirties, in a pink hoodie and black jeans. Mike explained who he was and why he'd come – and he had his foot in the door when the guy tried to close it. "Look, Mr Fletcher, I'm going to do this piece with or without your help. If it's without it, then your name's going to come up later, and that will very probably not be good for you. If you talk to me, I'll keep you well out of it."
There was a long, worried pause, but then the man seemed to come to a decision, and reluctantly let him in.
* * *
It wasn't until he'd driven out of sight of the house after the interview that he pulled the car over and switched off the little recorder in his top pocket.
* * *
Mike poured himself a small whiskey, then fired up his computer. He transferred the sound file, then started it playing and sat back with the scotch in his hand.
Fletcher had, it seemed, worked at Site Z for a while, in maintenance. That was until he'd fallen off a stepladder and had broken his shoulder. This was the closest that Mike had got to the place so far – and it sounded like it actually did exist. Fletcher had spent ten minutes demanding to know who had given Mike his name and his address, but Mike had told him repeatedly that he never revealed his sources. After that the man had refused to say anything else at all for a while, until Mike had driven home to him the possible consequences.
Even though Fletcher had eventually, but unwillingly, relented, he had been very tight-lipped about details. There were no names and – most frustratingly – not a word about where it was. Not even a hint from the man. Mike tried as many different ways as he could think of to get the location of the site out of him, and pressed him repeatedly – even to the extent of threatening to expose the guy – but Fletcher just shook his head, his lips in a tight line. Mike got absolutely nothing about where Site Z was.
Mike sighed to himself in silent fury. The location of Site Z was, more than anything, what he needed to know.
It was clear that Fletcher had been terrified about talking about it at all and, in the end, hadn't actually said all that much. But, from even the little he had said, Mike realised that there was indeed disturbing truth in many of the rumours. There were things going on in that place that were definitely against Geneva. From conversations Fletcher had overheard between either the staff or the prisoners, it sounded like the facility was indeed experimenting with advanced interrogation techniques.
This was big, he realised. And it was also dangerous. After copying the files and all the other information he'd collated, he burned them onto a DVD and took the disc to the local library where he hid it between the pages of the dustiest book he could find: 'A Guide to Reciprocating Steam Engine Maintenance'.
* * *
Monday the 5th was not a good day. It started out all right – sunny and bright – but when Mike got home from his customary run around the park, he found that his flat had been trashed. He'd only been away for an hour, but in that time every drawer had been emptied onto the floor, the mattress on his bed was on its end, and everywhere else had been searched. And his computer was missing. It was at that point that it really hit him how dangerous this investigation was turning out to be. Someone very definitely did not want him to find Site Z.
The phone rang. It was the news agency. Apparently the fire alarms had gone off, and when everyone had got back into the building several people had found that their workstations were not in the state they'd left them.
When he got to the offices, Mike found that his computer was switched on – and that every single file that as much as mentioned Site Z was gone. He sat back and drummed a pencil on his desk, thinking. His phone rang.
"Is that Mike Drummond?"
"Yes. Who is this?"
"You want to go to the site?"
Mike sat bolt upright. "Yes. Who are you?"
"You know the Legion pub?"
"Yes."
"Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock. In the car park."
The line went dead.
Mike replaced the receiver slowly. He was going to be taken to Site Z. He punched the air slowly – once he knew where the place was, he was set; he could bust this thing wide open.
They would undoubtedly blindfold him when they took him there, but he'd grown up in this city and the streets were as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He knew he'd be able to work out where they'd taken him.
This was the kind of progress he'd been looking for.
Mike had smiled to himself when the voice had told him to go to the Legion pub; it was was on the edge of the countryside, the other end of town, and not far from the place where he'd done his motorcycle training on the little Honda 125 when he'd been a teenager. He hadn't kept the bike for long – he'd quickly lost interest when he'd found out that he wasn't cut out to be a biker – but his training had taken him around all the roads in that district countless times. He knew them well.
It was just before 9am and the pub car park was deserted except for a black BMW SUV with tinted windows. He pulled in beside it and waited, but nothing happened, so he got out and locked his car. A moment later he heard a click, and the BMW's rear door nearest to him swung open a couple of inches. He looked around, then got in. He could see out of the windows to the side and rear, but there was a plexiglass partition behind the front seats, and that was black, concealing the front compartment. He wished he'd thought to look through the windscreen before he'd got in.
On the rear seat was a blindfold and a pair of handcuffs.
He waited in case someone gave him instructions. None came, so after a few seconds of silence, he did what they were waiting for him to do: he picked up the standard police-issue cuffs, locked one around a wrist, then pulled the blindfold on. He'd hoped that he'd be able to position it so that he could see something at least, but it was large and effective, the elastic sealing it tight below his eyes as well as above them. No light sneaked around it anywhere. He put his hands behind his back and fastened the other cuff. After a moment the engine started and they moved off.
The car had turned left out of the car park. He brought up a map of the local roads in his mind; they were heading back towards the city. The Crossfield roundabout would be coming up shortly. If they took the first exit they'd be going towards the power station; the second exit went further towards the city centre, and the third was the feeder road to the motorway. He hoped they didn't take that one.
He felt the car slow, and heard the ticking of the indicator. His body leaned to the left as the car circled the roundabout – and it continued to do so. He smiled – he'd expected them to do this. They went round it several times, the driver clearly trying to make him lose track of direction. After several circles they left the roundabout. Mike wasn't worried – he had indeed no idea which road they were on at the moment, but he would know soon.
Yes. A few yards further on he felt the BMW go over a rough patch of road. The workers hadn't done a very good job of removing the speed bump that had been there before general complaint from the locals had forced the council to remove it. He'd almost fallen off his bike on that more than once.
So, they'd gone straight on at the roundabout and were headed into the city. So far so good.
The car was entering the town proper now. Degas Street crossroads was next. They slowed, stopped at the lights, and went straight on. A couple of minutes later they turned right onto Brooke Street, then right again at the end onto Canal Street, along the side of the waterway. They were going round a large block – this road eventually curved around to Degas Street crossroads again.
No. They turned left before that. Mike frowned. What street was this? He wasn't sure; if he remembered correctly there weren't any roads to the left off Canal Street. They slowed, Mike thought he heard a mechanical sound, and the car started forward again, but gently.
Ah, right. It must be the old factory. The place was scheduled for remodelling at some point in the future into a museum and canal centre, but as far as he knew it was disused at the moment. That sound must have been the barrier raising – he remembered there was one there, it was rusty brown and yellow.
They continued on, slowly, until the car turned sharp left, and came to a stop. A louder, longer sound came to him: a large metal door closing behind them.
The rear door of the BMW opened and hands guided him out of the car. The acoustics sounded right for a place like the old factory, and, given the length of time the car ride had taken, he thought to himself, this couldn't be anywhere else. Was this it? Was this Site Z? If so, these people really hadn't done a very good job of hiding their route.
Hands searched his body thoroughly; they were checking that he wasn't wearing any devices that would record sounds or images.
A sliding door opened in front of him and he was guided into a van. He counted two people getting in after him, and heard the door close. Ah, Mike thought, so this wasn't the end of the ride. His handcuffs were removed and he was pushed down into a metal chair that felt like it was bolted to the floor. He heard a box or something being opened, then hands held his arms as leather straps secured them to the sides of the chair. More restrained his ankles to the front. He was beginning to feel a bit vulnerable, but so far he wasn't too worried – he doubted that he was in danger from these people, at least not yet…
The van rocked slightly on its suspension as the two guys sat down and then one of them hit his hand twice against the wall. The large metal door outside opened again, and then the van moved off. Mike realised that he was facing backwards, and he guessed that was an attempt to make keeping track of direction a bit more difficult, but he knew the area well enough; he'd have no problem.
They passed the rusty barrier again, and turned right onto Canal Street, back the way he'd been brought in the SUV. He was following a map in his mind and, unless they took the Brooke Street turning to the left, they'd have to go all the way to the end of Canal Street, and that was quite a way. After crossing the water on a narrow bridge, it would eventually come to a T-junction. There, it was west into the centre, or east towards the industrial estates and after that, the countryside. That choice would be an important one to note.
Mike guessed that the van was travelling at around 30mph, so they must be well past the Brooke Street turning by now. It was over a mile to the T-junction.
But the van slowed, pulled in somewhere and stopped, its engine still idling. Mike felt the two guys get up, and a moment later his blindfold was removed.
He glanced out of the window (yes, they were on the upper reaches of Canal Street), then he took a good look at the two men. Both guys were muscular and, of course, they were masked. But even though their short black balaclavas hid their faces, he reckoned he'd possibly still be able to identify them if he had to – one had a flaming torch tattoo on his neck, and the other one's eyes were emerald-green. Torch had the blindfold in his hand, and Green Eyes was getting something out of a long metal box on the floor. Mike watched as he took an object that looked quite heavy out of it. He shook it a couple of times over the box. It was a long black leather hood – and it was dripping.
Mike stared at the thing with mounting fear as the guy brought it closer. Green-eyes didn't rush. He wanted Mike to see it first, to take in every detail of what was about to swallow him whole. Mike had only been hooded once before, on a story he'd been doing a couple of years ago, and he'd reacted badly to it. But that had just been a black canvas one. This thing, there was something sinister about it; it looked like a medieval executioner's hood – thick and heavy, not only dripping with water, but also dripping with menace – and long, with a rounded bottom that would come down to his shoulders. The leather was black, worn, with thick straps hanging from it like tendrils waiting to snap tight. And Green Eyes showed him that the inside was black leather as well, but shinier.
Mike’s breathing picked up. He was trying to keep his cool, trying to act like the sight of the hood didn’t send a spike of panic through him. But the way his eyes widened gave him away.
“Don’t,” he muttered, his voice shaky. “Come on, man, that's over the top. You don’t have to do this –” But his words were cut off as Green Eyes gripped the back of his neck and yanked him forward.
He fought, twisting his head to the side, but Torch helped. Their grip was like iron, and between them they got the hood onto him, pulling it hard all the way down over his head. The heavy leather cut off his vision instantly. Their hands left him then, but it was too late – there was no way out of it now. He couldn’t see anything – not even a sliver of light. It was like being shoved into a black hole. And the hood was soaking wet. As the straps were pulled closed behind him the slick leather pressed tighter and tighter around his head, across his face. This thing wasn’t just meant to blindfold him; it was designed to do much more than that: to subdue him and overpower him completely. Thick, suffocating, the leather felt like it was pressing down on him from all sides, trapping the heat of his own breath inside. It was like he couldn’t get enough air. He needed to tear it off, wanted to scream, but he was helpless, his hands fighting against the restraint straps.
Then came the sound, or lack of it. Everything went dead quiet, like the world outside didn’t exist any more. His own breathing was loud in his ears, but it was muffled, almost wrong. Panic started creeping in, slow at first, then faster. His chest heaved. He blinked rapidly inside the darkness, knowing full well it wouldn’t do any good.
The cold, wet leather clung to his skin immediately. It wrapped around his face like a second skin, wet and slippery, pressing against his cheeks, forehead, and neck. Every time he moved his head, it shifted with him, keeping him in blackness. Every time he blinked, his lashes brushed against the damp leather, slick and cold. It was everywhere. When he breathed, he could feel it sliding against his lips, brushing across his nose, slippery and unrelenting. He tried to pull his head away from it, but there was nowhere to go. The wetness seeped into his hair, matting it down against his scalp. He tried to stay calm, tried to breathe through it, but the leather was too close, pressing across his eyes, his nose and mouth. The wetness had a weight to it, dragging him down, making him feel like he was sinking deeper into the darkness.
He twisted his head violently, trying to shake it off, but it moved with him, making him even more aware of his helplessness. His throat tightened, panic rising with every breath that came harder and faster than the last. It wasn’t just the feeling of being trapped – it was the way the wet leather seemed to crawl into his mind, infecting every thought. His skin started to itch, but it wasn’t real. He knew that, but it didn’t stop him from fighting the straps, desperate to tear the hood off, desperate to get some kind of relief. He struggled, but even then the hood held him. It was working on him – he couldn’t think straight. It was in his ears, muffling everything, in his hair, wet and heavy, pushing down on his skull like it was squeezing his thoughts out of him.
And worst of all, there was nothing he could do about it. He felt the straps restraining his wrists as he struggled, every movement making the leather slide wetter against him, mocking him. It was as if it were alive, adjusting itself around him, sealing him inside. It felt as if the hood was wrapping itself tighter over his face, forcing him to acknowledge how completely it controlled him. There was no escape. It was just him, the hood, and the slippery, wet black leather.
“Let me out,” he rasped, voice barely a whisper at the start, but rising to an urgent yell. “Let me the fuck out.”
But there was no answer. Only the sound of his own pulse hammering in his ears, and the rapidly mounting terror that he would never get out of this hood.
His breathing became shallow, not because he couldn’t get enough air, but because each breath came through the small holes in the leather – carefully placed low down so that he couldn't see through them. It was almost like he was tasting it, pulling in the dampness with each inhale. He could smell it too – the musky, rich aroma of the leather mixed with the moisture. It heightened his awareness of how close the leather was, how utterly trapped he was inside it. It wasn’t suffocation, but it was control — total and absolute.
And every movement was amplified. When he tried to shift his head, the leather slid across his skin in a way that sent shivers down his spine. There was no escape from it; the hood gripped him completely, hugging his face, his neck, his entire head. So close, it felt soft and pliable, yet the wetness made it feel heavier than it should have been, like it was slowly melting against him. The hood didn’t just cover him, it owned him. He was acutely aware of how it dominated his every movement, how it forced him to feel every inch of it against his skin. The inside had warmed up a bit now and the wetness wasn’t exactly uncomfortable, it was just… overwhelming. The leather had become more than just a material – it was a boundary, a prison, a weapon being used against him.
He forced himself to be calm, and after a minute he realised that he was breathing slightly more normally.
He'd found that if he inhaled slowly, there was plenty of air; it had been his panicked, urgent breaths that had made him feel like he was suffocating. He could still easily start hyperventilating again if he wasn't careful, but if he made himself relax, things were slightly better.
With a start, he finally registered the fact that the van was moving again. When had that happened? He'd been too terrified to notice. Was he still on Canal Street? He had no idea. He needed to see. Desperately. But the black leather clinging tightly over his eyes wasn’t just blocking his vision – it was intentionally and relentlessly controlling it. His mind raced as he tried to piece together where he was. He strained to hear, hoping for a clue, but the heavy wet leather hood muffled everything, reducing the world outside to vague, distant sounds, like he was listening through water.
His thoughts spiralled as the panic threatened to set in again. He had to see, to know where they were taking him – to learn where Site Z was. He had to find its location and put that information somewhere safe with a time-release on it, or not only would all of this have been for nothing, but his life would very much be in danger. They'd already searched his flat and his workstation at the office, so it was a fair bet that they would also find out he'd actually been taken to the fucking place.
He'd been able to deal with the blindfold earlier, but this thing – it made sure that his own involuntary reactions and panic distracted him to the point that it was the only thing he could concentrate on. And that panic was coming back; his breathing was getting quicker now, shallow and fast, his chest rising and falling as the dread grew again. He could feel the weight of the hood pressing down on his eyelids, crushing his need to see. It wasn’t just the darkness – it was the way the hood controlled the darkness. And the wetness of the leather made it worse, reminding him with every second that he was completely under its power and at the mercy of the men who had put it on him.
His mind kept screaming, I need to see. I need to see. But he couldn't. The hood did more than just make it impossible for him to see; it made him acutely aware of how badly he needed to see – how absolutely vital it was. That need became overwhelming, but the hood didn’t care; the leather held him firmly in blindfolded blackness, like some sadistic joke, reminding him every second of just how impotent he was.
The frustration ate at him; it was worse than pain, worse than fear. It was the utter helplessness of not being able to do the one thing he needed most: to be able to see where they were taking him. But no matter how hard he tried, the hood never let him get close. It made him feel smaller, weaker, with every passing moment.
He tried to shake the thing loose again, jerking his head from side to side, but the tight straps held it firmly in place. The leather stayed glued to his face, sliding wetly against his skin with every desperate movement, but not allowing him even a single ray of light. And it was gagging him – he couldn’t even move it from over his mouth. Every time he tried, the leather simply gripped tighter, designed to trap him in this sensory prison. It was a constant reminder that he couldn’t get it off, couldn’t see, couldn’t do anything but sit there and let it work on him.
The van jolted as it took a sharp turn, and his body instinctively leaned with the movement, trying to orient itself. But without sight, without knowing what direction they were heading, he was completely lost. The hood pressed heavy against his face, wet leather clinging tight to his skin, as if someone were holding their leather-gloved hands tight over his eyes and mouth, blindfolding and gagging him. And however hard he fought, he couldn't get away from it.
He forced himself to concentrate, trying to picture the route in his head, counting the turns, listening for clues – anything that would give him a sense of where they were going. But it was impossible. The muffled sound through the thick wet leather made everything feel disjointed, like he was underwater. He couldn’t tell how fast they were driving, couldn’t hear the traffic, couldn’t see a fucking thing. His mind was spinning. He needed to know where they were taking him.
There was the sound of a window being slid open, and then he felt a cool rush of air. The bastards were doing this on purpose, he knew – toying with him. Letting him catch small, meaningless fragments of the outside world without any way to connect them. It was torture, being so close to getting a clue, but still blind to it all. He strained, listening, trying to match the sounds to something – anything recognizable. Was it the motorway? An open field? The city?
But then the window slammed shut again, plunging him back into the deafening silence inside the hood. His fists clenched in frustration on the arms of the chair, helpless. His ears were no help, and the leather sealed everything in tight, gripping him in an endless, frustrating void.
"Getting curious, huh?" the voice came, low and mocking, close to his ear. They knew how badly he needed to see, to know where he was being taken. And they knew it was driving him mad not being able to.
“You want to know where we are, where we’re going, don’t you?” The voice was casual, like this was all a game, like they were just taking a little drive, no big deal. But to him? This was everything. Knowing where he was being taken was everything.
He felt a hand tighten on the back of the hood, forcing his head forward, pressing his face deeper into the wet leather. “But you can't see a fucking thing. No fucking idea where you are, have you…” The voice was gloating.
He tried to speak, to plead, but the leather hood sucked the words away, muffling them into nothing. His head jerked, trying to lift, to pull free from the pressure, but it was no use. He needed to see . But the hood had him locked down, each breath filling his lungs with the smell of wet leather, each shift of his head sliding it over his skin, teasing him with just how trapped, how helpless, he was.
Another turn. His body pressed back into the chair with the motion, his heart pounding. Where are we? He tried to gauge the distance, how long they’d been driving, anything to make sense of it. But with each bump, each shift of the van, he'd felt like he was spinning deeper into the black hole of his own mind, desperate for an anchor.
Then they came to a stop. Suddenly, a sharp tug at the hood. His heart leaped in his chest. Were they going to take it off? Was he finally going to be able to see where he was?
But no. Just a tug. Enough to make him think he might get a glimpse of where they were, of what was waiting for him. Then the hood settled back down, tighter than before. It was a tease. They were playing with him, giving him hope, then yanking it away, leaving him drowning in darkness again.
“You thought we’d let you see? Nah. No chance,” the voice said, amused. “You don’t get to know where we’re going – unless you can see through leather.” The guy chuckled softly. "I'm looking at what's going past outside. You'd know where we are in two seconds if you could see it."
He felt fingers stroking the outside of the hood. They moved over his head, then pressed harder over his eyes.
The frustration was unbearable. His body was tense, every muscle straining. The need to see wasn’t just an instinct any more – it was a full-blown obsession. No longer just to find out where they were headed, he realised, but now just to be able to see anything at all . Not knowing, being cut off from even the most basic understanding of his surroundings, was driving him crazy.
The van was moving again. Had that been traffic lights? If so, where? It could be – it could be fucking anywhere.
Another bump in the road. Another turn. He pictured streets flashing by, main roads, back roads, but he couldn’t know for sure. The wet leather clung to his face, denying him everything—every detail, every answer he craved. It wasn’t just the physical weight of the hood, but the mental weight of being kept in the dark, of being so close to knowing where they were, yet so completely, utterly blind. And it was so fucking, unbearably, humiliating.
And Mike knew that that was exactly how they wanted him — trapped in his own desperation, chasing the need to know, to see, while the hood sealed him in pitch-black, helpless silence.
He jumped as unseen hands were on the hood again. They pushed, pressed and pulled it, squeezing his face hard into the wet leather, one hand clamped over his eyes, forcing his head back against the chair, another over his mouth, cutting off his air. He panicked – they were going to suffocat e him . Then there were hands all over him: around his neck, squeezing his thighs, pinching his arms; a brief pain on the back of his hand. Then, as suddenly as they had come, the hands went away. There was the sound of quiet laughter.
The van seemed to be going slower now, turning and changing its speed slightly more often. As he sat there, and they were leaving him alone, Mike slowly began to relax. His breathing gradually returned to something approaching normality, and he started to feel a bit more comfortable. The leather hood really wasn't all that bad, he thought. It had warmed up now and, in fact, in a way it was almost nice. The leather felt – he didn't know quite how to describe it – interesting. And on a strange kind of engineering level he recognised that it had been designed to do a job and that it did it very, very well. Very well, he thought. The way it blindfolded him, gagged him, slid over his face whenever he tried to move, made him feel so fucking helpless, that was all… interesting, in a way. He closed his eyes, but then opened them again – he actually wanted the wet black leather to remind him of all of that.
When the van finally came to a stop, Mike's head swayed back and then forward. He felt slightly drunk, but it was a good feeling. He thought he'd like to get to know these two guys better – under other circumstances, of course.
Circumstances. What exactly were the circumstances? He laughed inside the leather hood; he'd forgotten. Ah, yes, that was it. Site Z. Perhaps they'd arrived there now. He was excited – he seemed to remember that he'd heard about Site Z.
Hands at the back of his head, undoing the straps. When the hood was lifted off, Mike felt sad. He'd miss it. He'd enjoyed having the leather pressing tightly over his face. He scrunched his eyes closed in the light.
They gave him a moment to adjust, then unfastened the straps that were holding him down to the chair. Mike looked at the guys – they were no longer wearing their balaclavas. He smiled and nodded to them. Green Eyes was a bit of a hunk, he thought, with military-cropped hair. Bet he was popular with the girls. Girls. He wondered if there were any at Site Z. He grinned – that would be interesting.
He let them stand him up and get him out of the van. He looked around. They were in the countryside. There was a wood over there. There were trees and things. Oh, wait a minute, he knew this – he'd been around here on his bike years ago. He remembered that there was a small lake just beyond the trees. Nice. He frowned as he stumbled a little – he was definitely a bit drunk, but he couldn't remember having had a drink. Green-eyes smiled at him as he steadied him. The guy had a nice smile, he thought.
Then he was in a lift, going down. Going down a long way. How had he got into a lift? No idea. Didn't care.
Corridors. No windows.
A small room. A bed, a chair, a toilet. That was it. They laid him down on the bed and he smiled at them as they went away.
His eyes closed.
* * *
"Drink this."
Mike blinked himself awake and saw a masked face gazing down at him. He struggled up to an elbow and drank the water. Mmm, that was good.
"Where am I?"
"Where you wanted to be. Site Z."
Mike sat up. "Site Z? I'm here?" At last! He'd made it! He frantically tried to remember. There had been the car, then the van, and the hood. What had happened after the van? He had no memory of that; it was a blank. He closed his eyes in fury – he still had no idea where the fucking place was.
"Yup. Come with me."
The guy led him to an office, then left and closed the door. The man sat behind the desk was in combat gear and also masked. "Have a seat."
Considering this place was a secret site denied by the government and marked on no maps, the man answered most of Mike's questions with surprising openness. There was spin on it all, of course – the Good of the British public, National Security, the Ongoing Fight of Good over Evil etc. etc. etc. – but Mike was well used to that sort of thing and had little difficulty reading between the lines. This massaging of the facts also applied when Mike asked him what they actually did here, what the 'experimental interrogation techniques' actually consisted of. The guy smiled behind the mask and said, 'painless persuasion'.
Painless? Persuasion? Mike seriously doubted that they sat the prisoners down and just talked them out of their sinful ways over a cup of Earl Grey.
The word 'rendition' was mentioned. He learned that certain types of psychological manipulation were used ("did you enjoy the hood?" the man asked him, smiling again), and that the residents weren't just limited to terrorists – they also included journalists, whistleblowers, political opponents, people with information on sensitive military projects or covert operations.
By the end of the interview he'd learned a lot more about Site Z. But he wondered why, given all of the above, they had allowed him to know so much.
Now, all he needed was the fucking location of the place. They'd made sure that he hadn't been able to know where he was going while he'd been in the van, and after that, they must have injected him with something – when exactly had they done that? He didn't know. And the injection clearly hadn't been intended to knock him out, just to prevent him from forming short-term memories for a while so that he couldn't remember anything between being in the van, and being in the small room with the bed. He remembered everything before that, and since, with no problem, but just not that fucking important bit.
But why had they done that? It would have been easier just to have kept him hooded and brought him into the place and he still wouldn't have seen anything. But he knew exactly why. They had been playing with him, sending him a message: we can control you; we can control exactly what you see, what you know, and who believes you. He had lots of information now – they'd even provided a pen and paper for him to take notes – but without the location of the fucking place all of that was totally worthless to him. It was no better than the crap on any number of conspiracy websites. They knew this, they knew that he knew this, and they also knew that there was fuck-all he could do about it.
He was back in the small room. Where was this damn place? If he could only know that. He was inside Site Z. He'd seen Site Z. He'd talked to a prominent figure in Site Z. But he still didn't know where the fucking place was . For all he knew, they could have given him a complete fucking guided tour of the place on the way in, but he had no memory of it if they had. And he still had nothing he could use. Still didn't know where it was.
He beat his fists on the mattress in frustration. Perhaps there was a chance that he could find out on the way back. Perhaps they wouldn't do as much to make sure he couldn't know. Perhaps they wouldn't use that damned hood on him.
Perhaps.
The door opened and a masked guy came in. It was the one with green eyes; Mike remembered him from the van. He wondered what the guy looked like under that balaclava. In one hand he was holding a syringe – and from the other hung the leather hood – heavy, black, slippery and dripping onto the floor.
"Which is it to be?" He asked, smiling slowly beneath the mask.
Mike fumed in impotent silence. The fucking bastards were going to do it to him again. Because they could.
He looked at the syringe. If he chose that, he would drunkenly experience the return journey, but remember nothing about it at all afterwards. And if he chose the hood? That would make very sure indeed that he could see nothing. But he would remember everything.
He stared at it, then reached out his arm.
Green Eyes hesitated for a moment, then handed the leather hood to him.
He turned it over in his hands. It was even heavier than he remembered. Slippery, black and shiny from the wetness. He ran his fingers over it: over the top, the back, the sides of it, over the straps and the buckles. He pushed his hand inside, feeling the wet, slippery smoothness there. His fingers slowly caressed the area of leather that pressed over his eyes; that was the leather that blindfolded him, that made it impossible for him to see, that prevented him from knowing.
He thought of what the hood was designed to do, what it was capable of doing to him.
Then he looked into the green eyes. "This one," he said.