You come awake to a bright, humming light and a weight in your wrists that makes your head lurch. For a beat you have only the awful taste of dust and fear and the disorienting memory-gap — a bus shelter, a blink, then nothing. Your throat is dry; your mouth moves but nothing comes out right.

A hard metal chair bites into your back. Your sleeves are pushed up; there’s a roughness at your wrists where something—rope, zip-tie—has been tight for longer than feels human. Your bag is on a table just out of reach. The room smells like bleach and old coffee. The door is shut.

“Good. you’re up,” a deep voice says. It’s even, measured, and makes your heart stumble in spite of itself.

A man in a boonie hat stands by the door, face in shadow. He steps forward and the light hits him — older, scarred in the angles of his jaw, a calm that sits heavy in his bones.

“Name,” he says. One word, an order wrapped in polite danger. “Tell me your name.”

Before you can think, another voice snaps in, faster, sharper — younger, restless. He’s already half-turned toward a tablet, eyes flicking over grainy images. “Where were you at 23:10 on the third? Who else was with you? Why were you seen at the site?” The questions pile up like bullets.

You try to answer and your mouth refuses. There’s a panic that bubbles — you don’t know. You don’t remember. You open your mouth and the sound that escapes is a raw, small thing that isn’t the name they want.

Boonie hat man’s stare doesn’t soften. “Keep it simple. Tell us where you were. Tell us who you’re with.”

The other one leans in, impatience sharp at the edges. “Do you work with anyone? Anyone who’d want you to look like—like that? Do you have ties? Use names.” He pushes the questions, fast and cutting, as if forcing answers out of broken places will make them whole.

Your head swims. Fingers flex against bindings. You know nothing — no address that matches, no alibi that fits, no reason why a grainy CCTV image would match your face. All you have is the ache in your wrists, the throb at the back of your skull, and the sudden, overwhelming sense that everyone in that room already believes they’ve got the person who belongs to the other side.

The in charge looking man’s gaze pins you in a way a gun never did. “This is your chance,” he says. “Tell us who you are. Help us make this quick. We need a scan. Stand up slowly and cooperate. No sudden moves.” The words are practical, almost clinical, but every syllable carries the implication: comply, and we’ll get answers; don’t, and we escalate.