'Sophia, can you hear me?'

He sounded Russian.

Her eyes stung from the light and her brain felt two sizes too big for her skull. She was sitting somewhere, but she could only make out muted sounds and dark blurs. Had she gotten to the river? She couldn't even remember hitting the water. Or what happened to Damien and Jay.

'Why am I...' Her voice cracked through dry lips.

'My name is Doctor Adamicz.'

He spoke softly. His head and shoulders came into focus. He watched her with faded blue eyes through wire-rimmed glasses. The man looked in his 70s, civilian, oddly calm. If there was menace behind his eyes, it wasn't coming out to play.

He stood about five meters before her. Unarmed. She could take him down. Clear the room. Find Damien and Jay.

But not just yet.

She could see him in full clarity now. Adamicz was dressed in slacks, a navy blue vest over a pinstriped shirt, cuffs rolled past elbows and damp patches under his arms. He had a thin, aquiline nose and a puff of white hair atop his head. He looked dimly familiar.

Sophia realized how rapid her breathing was. She tried to calm herself with slower, deeper breaths. She stood—for some reason he hadn't restrained her—but felt suddenly dizzy.

'I think it best if you remain seated.' He gestured to the chair she'd been sitting on. 'What I am to tell you may come as shock.'

'I'd rather stand.'

Her legs gave way beneath her, kicking up dust from the tribal rug underfoot.

She heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Two armed men stood over her. He'd need more than two, she thought. But Adamicz gestured for them to retreat. She stumbled to one knee and tried to stand again.

She couldn't quite place Adamicz. Was he the target? Was he an informant? She couldn't even recall what operation she was on.

'How did I get here?' she said.

Adamicz smiled. 'With great deal of money, planning and some luck. The bus sliding across the bridge was not part of the plan, but we adapted.'

The dull pain in her head began to recede. 'What are you talking about?'

'The former Blue Berets you see here are responsible for your capture.'

Men dressed in jeans and dark T-shirts, carrying M4 carbines, flanked Adamicz. The carbines were fitted with suppressors and angled foregrips. Sophia's gaze locked onto the balcony overhead. Four other men with carbines. She checked her sides. Just dark-stained bookshelves. She was in a library.

'You're holding me hostage?' she said.

'To the contrary, I hope to set you free.'

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

Back on her feet, steadier this time, she turned. A heavy door twice her height blocked her exit.

She wanted desperately to escape.

She wanted to listen to what he had to say.

She wanted to kill him.

She needed to regain her senses, observe her surroundings and, above all, think. If she couldn't think, she couldn't escape.

She sat back on the chair. 'I need some water.'

Adamicz gestured to one of the men, who disappeared from her line of sight. He returned a moment later with a bottle of water. He placed it a meter before her, then retreated, carbine aimed.

She stood, took the bottle from the antique rug. It was sealed, but she didn't open it.

'I don't remember what happened.'

'Memory shall return. In time,' Adamicz said.

She tried to think of what she had been doing between the bus and now, but nothing came through. It felt as though her mind was wrapped in a heavy fog.

'Where's my team? What have you done with them?'

'They were recovered by the Fifth Column.'

'Who do you work for?' she asked.

'No one. But I used to work for the Fifth Column.'

This is a test.

'What do you want from me?' she asked.

'I'd like to help you, Sophia,' he said. 'Help deprogram you from the Fifth Column's thrall.'

You're lying. Denton's watching through a camera right now, isn't he?

She didn't look for the cameras. She didn't want him to know.

'Sorry, but I don't think you can help me,' she said.

Adamicz frowned. 'You might not remember my face, but I was there when they abducted you from your family and trained you. I know in great detail every operation you took part in. Your first operation as team leader was a false flag in November, three years ago. Your career went off with a bang. Three, actually. How do you say ... simultaneous suicide bombings.'

I'm not buying it.

She had a faint recollection of the operation. But she remembered it differently this time. The terrorists no longer existed; just civilians. A little girl offered her an arrangement of flowers. Then Jay cut the lights. Sophia's team, one of three inter-reliant teams, had the explosives ready in the ceiling. She gave them the green light and the wedding guests never saw it coming. The girl never saw it coming.

A wedding ... that can't be what it was.

Adamicz moved to a bookcase. He rolled a ladder aside to reveal a wind-up gramophone and an old wood-paneled television with a late-1970s videocassette recorder. He turned on the television and recorder, then hit the play button. Stepping back, he allowed Sophia to see the dusty screen.

At first, she figured the footage was from a security camera, but it was placed in an unusual position. It could have been a pinhole camera. Disguised in a fire sprinkler or smoke alarm. Onscreen, she saw a middle-aged man lying on a bed, his business shirt undone to reveal a pallid chest. A young woman sat astride him, dark hair and ivory skin. She unraveled his tie and passed him a glass of caramel-tinted liquid. He drained the glass, then let her place it on the nightstand for him. Sophia caught a glimpse of the woman's face.

It was her.

Adamicz hit the fast-forward button. The onscreen Sophia stroked the man's chest, let the tips of her hair drape across his skin. When Adamicz stopped fast-forwarding, the man had passed out. Onscreen, Sophia stripped the man of his clothes. Two men entered the room. Damien and Jay. They flipped the man onto his side and slowly inserted a tube between his buttocks. Damien unscrewed a bottle, removed several tablets and slid them down the tube.

Adamicz fast-forwarded again. This time it was a different camera, different room. The bathroom. The bath was filled with water and ice. Damien and Jay carried the sleeping man—now tubeless—to the bath and placed him inside. His face and body were slicked with sweat, his cheeks flushed red.

'That's not what happened.' She looked at Adamicz. 'I remember that man, and we did not do that.'

Adamicz hit the stop button. 'The tablets inserted in the man's anus raised his body temperature to a dangerous level. By placing him in a bath of cold water, you efficiently induced a heart attack.'

Sophia's skin felt like it was burning. 'That's ridiculous.'

She half expected the man standing behind Adamicz to start laughing, but his face was drawn, gaze fixed.

Adamicz switched off the television. 'All of your work as a black operative for the Fifth Column, like what you see here, was not done of your own free will. Your personality was artificially split into dissociated alters, as is the case with multiple personality disorder. This is accomplished by using a combination of hypnosis and extreme trauma, which splinters your mind into dissociated compartments.'

She licked her cracked lips; held the bottle of water tightly. 'Are you suggesting I've been hypnotized?'

'That would be an understatement,' he said. 'Your mind was split in two: one half was your real personality—your archeopsyche.'

She played along. 'And what's my other half—a serial killer, hair stylist?'

'It's your neopsyche, your programmed personality,' he said. 'We splinter these into little parapsyches for assassination, espionage, even suicide if required. All this while your real personality sees everything differently.'

'You're crazy,' Sophia said. 'I don't have any of that.'

'That's because right now you're in your real personality. Here, you have no idea that your parapsyches exist. But when you're a black operative of the Fifth Column, you are always operating in one of your parapsyches.'

'I know what really happened,' she said. 'And it was not ... that.'

Adamicz nodded. 'Your memories are still intact, but you're seeing them through a veil. That's because your neopsyche is programmed to believe a certain ideology. So you can do things a Special Forces soldier with a good conscience might not.'

Sophia smiled weakly. He was trying to screw with her. 'And how exactly do you know this?'

'Because I am one who programmed you.'

Her smile broke into a scowl. 'Bullshit. That video is fake.'

Adamicz took two deliberate steps back. 'Mix sand with cider and wool with wine.'

Sophia's face flushed hot.

'The man behind me,' Adamicz said. 'He is your target.'

Adamicz was right. How had she not noticed this before? The former Blue Beret standing at her ten o'clock was the Iranian Minister of Defense. She was sure she'd killed him, but here he stood.

She dropped the water bottle and moved nimbly across the rug toward him. He aimed his carbine at her chest.

'And welcome Queen Alice with ninety times nine,' Adamicz said.

Sophia was holding the soldier's own knife, unsheathed, just inches from his neck. She blinked. But the Minister of Defense was no longer there. It was just the former Blue Beret.

'Mistaken identity?' Adamicz said.

Something dark and metallic caught Sophia's attention, on the floor beside her. The soldier's carbine. She'd disarmed him and taken his knife, but couldn't remember doing it. She pulled back.

The soldier did the same, confused.

'I suppose you thought that was funny, setting your Pavlova dog on me,' he said to Adamicz.

Adamicz remained focused on Sophia as he replied. 'Pavlovian. It's Pavlovian dog. And I no longer require your services. Thank you kindly for your time.'

The soldier snatched his carbine and shot a glance at the other men on the balcony. 'We'll leave you to slice each other up.'

Sophia watched the soldiers disappear from the balcony, then inspected the knife in her hand. 'How did you do that?'

'I switched you back to your neopsyche, then I activated the correct parapsyche to complete your mission. All I needed to do then was give you the order,' he said in his accented English.

'You can't control me like that.' Her cheeks burned. 'What did you really do?'

'The Ares parapsyche is responsible for assassination. If I had not stopped you when I did, you would have used that knife.'

She glared at him. 'With five highly trained soldiers ready to cut me down.'

He nodded. 'Lucky I stopped you.'

'There are no cameras,' she said.

'Here? Of course not.'

Part of her would've preferred this to be an elaborate testing scenario of Denton's, but that seemed unlikely now. She really was stuck here with this eccentric old man.

'What are you ... going to do to me?'

Adamicz frowned. 'It is not what I must do to you, it is what I must undo.'

*

There were wires in her head.

The ones that hurt.

Sophia was six years old. She was lying on a table of some kind and her arms felt fizzy. They'd put an earphone in her left ear, but it wasn't working properly because all that came out was a funny noise.

She remembered the sting.

They'd injected something into her arm. It felt weird. Above her, a fluorescent light buzzed angrily. Two men stood near her feet, their faces smudged in the dim light.

'You are loyal to us,' said a man with a very tired voice.

She could hear him only with her right ear. Her heart was beating really fast.

'What are you ... going to do to me?' she asked.

But they didn't answer.

The wires made it hurt again. Made her scream. Then it stopped. She tried to catch her breath. She trembled, couldn't stop it. The light was paralyzing her.

'You are loyal to the Fifth Column,' the tired man said.

She could barely breathe. 'Yes.'

'And because you are loyal to the Fifth Column, you will do anything in the name of freedom and liberty to serve the Fifth Column.'

'What do you ... mean?'

The wires made her hurt again. She tried to move her arms and legs to escape the pain, but they'd strapped her to the table.

'You will do anything in the name of freedom and liberty.'

'Please, stop it! I'll do anything!'

She shut her eyes. The hurt came back. She'd never felt anything like it. She just wanted it to be over. Tears squeezed from between her scrunched eyelids.

'You will do anything to protect the Fifth Column. Do you understand?'

The table felt cold against her skin. Her arms were covered in goose bumps. 'Yes.'

'We don't believe you.'

The wires hurt again. She wanted to make it stop. Anything to make it stop.

'Yes!' she yelled. 'I'll do anything to protect the Fifth Column!'

The tired man leaned over her, his nose wrinkling in disgust. 'Tell us again.'

'I'll do anything!' Breathe. 'To protect!' Breathe. 'The Fifth Column!' she screamed.

She opened her eyes and tried to slow her breathing.

The walls liquefied around her.

The tired man said, 'You are one with the Fifth Column. It commands you. It pours through you. You respond unquestioningly to its will. You are a valuable and integral cog in a vast and powerful machine. A machine that keeps civilization from the brink of destruction.'

Cracks appeared in his face.

'We're going to have a cigarette, Sophia. And then when we come back, we're going to break you into tiny little pieces.'

A split ran through his right eye, down his neck. He checked his watch.

'But don't worry. It won't hurt.'

She watched his left eye slide down his cheek. Was she going crazy? Then his eye slipped onto his neck, but he didn't seem to notice. He turned and followed the other man out of the room. The door melted behind them.

Sophia felt cold metal in her palm. She looked down. Her hand looked about ten years older. By this age, her grip on the pistol was comforting.

Other trainees stood either side of her with identical pistols. They each faced a quivering naked body with a black bag over its head. The bodies looked no more than fifteen or sixteen. Same age as her.

This was a different memory.

'The trainees you see before you are failures,' Denton said. He was standing behind her and the other trainees. 'They are not entitled to sympathy. They are not entitled to forgiveness. They are not entitled to charity. They, like you, knew the consequences of failure.' He paced behind them. She could feel his gaze weighing on her. 'And yet they still chose to fail. They ask you to take mercy on them and bring an end to their dishonor. If you do as they ask, you will graduate as qualified operatives.'

Some of the trainees were already taking aim at their targets. Sophia looked at her target. A young woman, not much different to herself. Her ribs pressed against her skin with every snatched breath.

One of the trainees beside her opened fire. Two rounds to the head. Sophia heard a body crumple onto tarpaulin.

Fingers curling around the grip, Sophia raised her pistol until she had a bead on her target. The girl's ribs were becoming more visible with each breath, as if she had somehow sensed Sophia's intention.

'Their failure is your success!' Denton shouted.

Her forefinger curled behind the trigger guard. The target's ribs were almost ready to burst from her chest.

Another trainee opened fire. And another.

Sophia pressed lightly on the trigger with the pad of her forefinger. The girl's legs trembled. Sophia could almost taste her fear, bitter in the back of her throat. Or maybe it was just bile.

She closed her eyes. The girl was not human.

Sophia could do things to her she would never do to another human.

She squeezed the trigger.

*

When Sophia opened her eyes, her target was gone. She was back in the library, under the watchful eye of Adamicz.

'What were those men doing?' she said. 'The static, the needle, the light buzzing in my face.'

'Fluorescent strobe light?' Adamicz said. 'It has a monoatomic gold filament, which is a hypnotic opener.'

'Opener for what?' Sophia yelled.

'For hypnotic suggestion. The first step is to implant your loyalty. Then I would begin programming you.'

'I killed ... one of our own,' she said. 'She died and I was allowed to live.'

Adamicz said nothing.

Why was she even telling him this? His silence sparked a deep-seated rage.

'Say something!' she yelled.

Her voice boomed through the library, bouncing back at her. Her lower lip trembled. She bit it, held it between her teeth until it tasted sour.

'You may not remember, but you hesitated that day,' he said. 'I had to scrub your hesitation from the records. Just to keep you in the project.'

'Stop it!' she yelled again. 'I don't want to hear any more of your lies!'

She heard him say, 'The exquisite corpse will drink the finest wine.'

For a moment, she was certain nothing had happened. But when she looked down, she was shocked to find that same knife in her hand again. This time, it was inches from her neck. Blood ran from her hand, down her arm.

He was right, she was programmed. There was no other way to explain what was happening. Her last thread of certainty drained from her. The knife fell from her hand. She felt nothing.

No.

She felt hollow.