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The man turned to the bench behind him and removed the pads from the defibrillator, carefully unwinding the cables that connected them to the machine. When he was done he removed the protective plastic covers from each pad and then turned to face her, bending over to place one pad against her stomach, kneeling to press the other to her ankle. The pads felt sticky and cold against her skin.

Her mind was racing. She felt herself starting to sweat in spite of the cold. What was he doing? She tried to tell herself it would be okay. Defibrillators had failsafes – inbuilt sensors that monitored the heart’s activity to prevent a shock being delivered where one was not needed. She had seen ambulance crews attaching the pads to themselves, pressing the button to prove nothing could happen if one were used on a healthy person. Besides, he had placed the pads in the wrong position. The machine simply couldn’t work. She forced herself to remain calm, staring at him with all the composure she could muster.

‘Look, I don’t know what you’re trying to do, but…’

He cut her off.

‘Doctor, it would save time if you listened. You will have recognized the machine to which you are now attached as an automated external defibrillator. It is also possible because of your medical training that you believe the machine will not activate when connected to a person who is not showing abnormal heart activity. That would be a mistake. I have removed the safeguards from this machine. It is capable of delivering between 200 and 1700 volts for whatever duration I choose to select. You will note that I have placed the pads so that the current should not pass directly through your heart, and so while it will be deeply unpleasant, the shock should not be life threatening. However, if I do manage to cause your heart to stop I can of course reposition the pads and restart it.’

He turned back to the table, appearing to adjusting the settings on the small device to which she was now attached.

Alison was speechless, still not believing this could be happening to her. The man hadn’t even asked her any questions. What was the point if he hadn’t even given her an opportunity to talk? He had to be bluffing, simply trying to frighten her into telling him what she knew.

‘Now listen, this makes no sense. You can’t…’

Before she had a chance to finish the sentence he turned back to face her, at the same time pushing the large red button on the top of the machine. She felt an unbelievable pain, as if her entire body was suddenly on fire. Every muscle convulsed, her back arching against the chair, her legs and arms straining against the straps holding her to the chair. The shock caused her jaw to clench tightly and she found she couldn’t even scream. The pain continued for what seemed like an eternity until finally, mercifully, she passed out.

When he was certain that it was safe, the man leaned over to check her. Her pulse was racing but the defibrillator told him that her heart hadn’t been affected. She had bitten her cheek when the current had hit and blood was flowing steadily from her mouth. When he had first started to use the machine he had given his victims something to bite down on to protect against such injuries. But he had found that people broke more quickly if they had something tangible to remind them of the pain between the shocks. The slick, coppery taste of blood in the mouth worked well. He checked that she really was unconscious, then pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves to check the cut. Her head was forward, and the bleeding was unlikely to obstruct her airway, but he couldn’t risk the woman’s death, at least not until she had told him everything she knew. He knew little about his current employer, but he was being paid an exceptional amount of money, and the type of people who needed his services were typically not forgiving. He would need to be careful.

He would have liked more time to study the woman’s background. He had read her file carefully and he believed he knew where best to apply pressure to get her to talk quickly. With someone like her it would have been better to proceed more cautiously, but whoever was paying him was impatient for results. The woman was educated, but unlike most intellectuals he was certain that the simple application of pain would not be the most efficient way to break her resolve. Even a cursory inspection of her file revealed that her life had been characterized by sacrifice, first for her father and then when she hadn’t been able to save him, for others like him. Everyone had physical limits of course, everyone broke in the end. But this woman valued the goals that defined her life more than her own wellbeing, which meant it would take time.

It was a pity, normally he would have relished the task. But whoever was employing him refused to wait and so he would simply apply pressure to those things she cared most about. Divulging the information he needed would cause her to jeopardize the very thing she had dedicated her life to, but now that they had her mother he was certain that he had the leverage to overcome that concern. And he had another plan if for some reason that didn’t work.

After a few minutes he decided that she had been out long enough. It was just after three in the morning, but the room had no clocks, no windows that might let her know it was even night. Most people naturally reached their lowest ebb in the early hours, and after being knocked out twice she should be sufficiently disoriented. The mind made emotional decisions when it was tired, he knew that well. It would make it easier for him. He reached into his pocket for another capsule of ammonium carbonate and broke it under her nose.

A few seconds later Alison came around. She spat the blood from her mouth, staring at him from the chair. She was frightened, he could see that, but there was something he hadn’t seen before, a hint of defiance. He smiled. He had been right about her. He could always tell when they decided they were going to resist.

‘Alison’.

He had purposely dispensed with ‘Doctor Stone’. It was important that she realize the transition of power, that it was he who was now in charge.

‘The shock that you experienced was relatively mild, towards the lower end of what this machine is capable of delivering. If I were to increase the voltage, or to make your skin more conductive, for instance by wetting it, the effects would be significantly more unpleasant.’

He turned around again to the bench and she flinched, bracing herself against the shock, expecting the current to flow through her again at any moment. But he simply turned on the monitor, stepping back so that she could see the image clearly.

It was her mother. She was tied to a chair, men wearing ski masks on either side of her. It looked like they were in her house, upstairs in one of the bedrooms.

‘It was necessary for you to experience the effects of electrocution to appreciate in some small way what your mother will experience if you do not co-operate fully. The men who are holding her have electric batons that are far less sophisticated than the defibrillator whose effects you have experienced. Those batons can however deliver a much higher current, sufficient to severely burn or even rupture the skin. And these men, while no doubt skilled at administering pain, are unfortunately unlikely to be as careful as I might be in avoiding those areas, such as the heart or the head, that might cause death or permanent incapacitation.’

Alison stared at the monitor, her mind screaming. She knew now that she was already dead. They’d want to silence her just for what she knew about Cody. The man hadn’t even bothered to hide his face. But she might be able to save her mother. The men who were holding her were wearing masks. Why would they bother to do that if they were going to kill her anyway? Cody had the potential to be the most important discovery in medical history and it was her fault he was being held by these people, but she couldn’t change that now. All she could do was try and save her mother. She dropped her head, nodding that she would co-operate.

The man walked back around behind her. He pushed a button on the wall and spoke into an intercom.

‘She is ready to talk.’

A camera mounted high in the wall in front of her blinked into life, an almost inaudible whirring as the lens focused on the woman strapped to the chair.

She began, explaining how Cody had first visited her the previous October, how she had heard nothing further until almost three months later she had been contacted by Lars Henrikssen, the sheriff from Hawthorne investigating the events at Mount Grant, and how she had subsequently uncovered various details about his past from the internet which suggested he had been born in Britain almost a century before. She was careful not to mention how she had first connected him to Luke Jackson through the picture of her father in her parents’ house. If her mother was to survive this Alison had to convince her captors that she knew nothing about the man. She limited what she said to information she had found on the internet, facts that were therefore available to anybody who was looking for them. It wasn’t much, but there was a good chance that these people had already found out what she had – maybe she wouldn’t be telling them anything they didn’t already know. She mentioned nothing about what she had found out in the lab the day before, that the most likely trigger for Cody’s regenerative capabilities was adrenaline. She had destroyed her notes before they had arrived at the motel. She had to hope that it would still take them some time to make that discovery.

When she had finished the man left the room and closed the door behind him. Alison sat alone, waiting. She hoped she had done enough to save her mother. They wouldn’t harm Cody, at least not immediately. He was too valuable to them. It would take them a long time to unlock his body’s secrets. He was well trained and resourceful. Maybe he would find some way to get free. There would be no escape for her, she was sure of that now. Once they were certain she had told them everything she knew they would kill her.

After what seemed like an eternity the door opened. She looked up as the man with the white lab coat and the moustache entered the room, walking over to stand in front of her. He was alone. She had expected others, the men who would take her to where she would be killed. Then she noticed that he was filling a syringe from a vial he had taken from the bench. So that was it. He would do it here.

Alison was suddenly angry. She knew she was going to die, there was nothing she could do to prevent it, but what right did this little fuck have to take her life? She would at least show him that she was not afraid. She stared at him, nodding at the syringe.

‘What have you got there?’

He ignored the question. He set the first syringe on the bench and filled another from the same vial.

‘Alison, I have a problem. You have not told me everything that you know.’

She felt her heart race, her anger suddenly evaporating. She forced herself to keep a straight face. They mustn’t find out how much her mother knew.

‘What do you mean? I’ve told you everything.’

The man sighed.

‘Alison, I have been doing this for a very long time. You have to believe me when I tell you that I know when people are withholding information from me. I do believe that you want more than anything to save your mother, and therefore I can only assume that you think that the information you are holding back is likely to endanger her. You might even be willing to allow her to suffer a certain amount of pain in order to preserve her life. Whatever the reason, my employer is not a patient man.’

‘Thankfully I have developed a
poción
, how do you say in English, a concoction. What you would call a truth serum. It has taken me more than twenty years to perfect its composition. Once it takes effect you will find it almost impossible not to answer any questions I put to you with complete honesty.’

Alison shook her head. She knew more than most people how the brain worked. The truth drugs that were administered in films were a myth, a fiction created by Hollywood. Certain drugs were effective at suppressing higher cognitive functions, which could certainly make a person more talkative, even more co-operative, but there was little evidence that a sufficiently strong-willed person might not still be able to lie.

The man was watching her closely.

‘I see you are skeptical. I forget, you have some experience in these matters. I would actually be interested in your professional opinion. I unfortunately do not know the precise composition of the serum I use. It contains barbiturates of course – sodium thiopental, sodium amytal, scopolamine – all those that you might expect to find in use by interrogators in dozens of countries around the world. And methylenedioxymethamphetamine, MDMA. For years I experimented with these compounds in varying doses, with only moderate success. But then the government I was working for came into possession of a drug known only as SP-17. It was apparently developed by the KGB. I have tried for years to discover its active ingredients but unfortunately without much success. Its composition is for obvious reasons a closely guarded secret, and as the drug has neither taste, smell nor color it is hard to guess at its composition. SP-17 was much more effective, but the results still varied. It was only when I started to combine this new drug with the chemicals I had been using before that I started to achieve truly incredible results. It took me several more years of experimentation to arrive at what I believe to be the optimal ratio. Unfortunately the supply of SP-17 at the time was unreliable and sometimes months would pass when I had no access to the drug. Thankfully things have improved since the end of the Cold War and now I have several suppliers. The benefits of a free market economy.’ He smiled.

‘But I digress. What I learned was that, when combined with higher concentrations of MDMA and smaller amounts of barbiturates, SP-17 quickly renders a person incapable of withholding information. That information must be extracted quickly however. Despite its excellent performance my discovery has one significant disadvantage. Once the drug has been administered irreparable damage to the brain is unfortunately inevitable. The subject experiences only a limited period of lucidity before quickly becoming disorientated. First short term and then long term memory are lost. Speech quickly becomes impaired, followed by uncontrollable tremors and finally complete muscular paralysis. The drug can therefore only be used as a last resort, and when the interrogator believes he can extract the information he needs quickly. You will have noticed that I have prepared another syringe, in case I feel that more of the drug needs to be administered in the little time that we will have once I have given you the first injection. It is merely a precaution, however. I have never known a single dose to be insufficient.’