"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." -Mark Twain.
No one saw the two black-ops agents knock Sinclair semi-conscious, then drag his limp form to their mobile headquarters, except a long-haired hippie rooting through trash. Leaving the shelter, he'd witnessed the entire kidnapping, but decided that sort of shit was none of his business. Disinterested, he continued sorting through the rubbish bins.
Lying sprawled on the van's floor, Ray rolled over. Painfully, he raised himself up on his elbows. "Mercenary pricks. Who the fuck are you?" The agent with the smaller build, studied him, probing him with dark, merciless eyes. Sinclair had never seen such an unearthly gaze, so devoid of humanity. Instinctively, he knew he'd been taken off the street to be interrogated and then killed.
"Do you know who I am? You kill me and the entire LAPD will come down on both of your asses." His head was throbbing from being bashed on the bathroom floor. He tasted blood.
"Mr. Sinclair." Dark eyes said, conversationally. "We know everything about you. You don't know who we are, but you and I are about to become very intimate. Tell us everything about the back door you installed in CENTRIXS's satellite software." Ray reached for his phone to dial 911, but discovered the pocket of his jacket was empty. They'd taken his mobile.
"I don't know what you're talking about, asshole." Anticipating what was coming, he felt his scrotum shrivel, while his throat went dry. He knew how inhumanely sadistic these CIA clowns could be.
"I promise, in the end, you'll tell us everything, Mr. Sinclair." The larger agent pinned him down, while dark eyes pulled a large hypodermic needle from a pastry box, nestled between the eclairs. The barrel was filled with an unsettling amber-colored liquid. Swiftly, he injected Ray with scopolamine.
Within minutes, Sinclair's green eyes began to blaze, his pupils dilating. He wanted to shout, "You motherfuckers." but all that came out was a feeble "muh." He began nodding off, experiencing the hazy, twilight sensation between consciousness and sleep. Against his will, he felt himself succumbing to the powerful psychotropic. "We're in a big machine," he muttered. Unconsciously, he started babbling, an incoherent, nonsensical stream of consciousness.
Stop dealing with morons,..Evie!...I don't like what you're saying, Satoshi...Vince...you sanctimonious prick! Orwellian millionaire..overlords..Fuck DARPA....sleazy war mongering criminals..What do you do in your office, Denis?...tapping away at your computer all day master-bating...
Listening impatiently, the larger agent frowned. "He sounds like a broken Pink Floyd record. You should have let me pound the information out of him, Karl."
"Patience, Neil. It's not a perfect science. Give it a minute. This is the initial memory dump." He patted the pastry box. "If the first injection of Dragon's Breath doesn't work, we have more goodies to use." He nudged the subject's subconscious a little further with a few cc's of truth-telling serum. "Tell us how to unlock the security on ICARUS, Mr. Sinclair." He waited, his dark eyes gleaming with anticipation.
Much to the subordinate agent's surprise, Sinclair mechanically delivered the information like a vending machine spitting out a candy bar. "It's not a password...ICARUS protocol uses retina recognition." The two men looked at each other and smiled. "The app scans the retina for access," Sinclair added, sealing his fate.
"Thank you for that information, Mr. Sinclair. Now lay back and relax." He started injecting Ray with an illegal, paralyzing sedative.
"We'll need to take his eyes," Karl told Neil. "Hand me that medical transport case next to the wedding cake."
Vince heard the screams coming from inside the van.