He looks at you with a trained smirk, the kind a man wears when he thinks he has an ace up his sleeve—a cross between a shrewd poker face and a polite smile. Some of them start out this way, either because they don’t know who you are, or they think that they’re special and won’t crack. He’s one of the latter. “Do your worst,” he says in a bored drawl. “I’ve had my fingernails ripped off and didn’t even blink. I don’t have any ties to anyone that you can hurt.” You lace your fingers together on your knee. “You might as well let me go now, honestly,” he says, glancing at the cameras in the corners of the small gray room. “You’ll just be wasting your time. I have no weaknesses. I’m trying to help you here.” You can tell that he wants to leave, which is a weakness in itself, but you don’t correct him. You don’t have time for semantics. You decide to get to the point. “Are you a materialist?” His right eyebrow dips for a moment before he recovers from the surprised frown. “What?” “Do you believe the mind and the brain are the same thing?” He chuckles. “Any reason you’re getting philosophical?” You remain silent. He shrugs. “Well, yeah. Without the brain, you’re gone. There can't be a mind outside of the brain.” You lean forward and uncross your legs. “So by that logic, to externally influence the mind, you have to do something physical to the brain.” He looks at you like you’re a particularly dense child. “Yeah.” A grin tugs at the corner of your lips, but you push it back. Not yet. “I see.” Your fist connects with the left side of his face. He spits out bloody saliva onto the concrete floor and turns back to you with a knowing grin. “Ooh, that probably hurt,” he teases, a trail of red running down his chin. You crack your knuckles and look into his blue eyes. They are the color of the open ocean. You look deeper, past their surface, down into the blackness of his pupils. He blinks, but you’re already too far in for that to matter. There it is: the moment where you punched him, right after asking him that question about influencing the mind. You wipe it away. “Well?” He scoffs. “Any other metaphysical bullshit you want to discuss?” You look at him just over the white rims of your glasses. “Why is your mouth bleeding?” You see his tongue flicker, suddenly aware of the taste of blood. He reaches a cuffed hand up to his mouth and feels the split lip in surprise. He pulls his fingers away and looks at them, their tips red with blood. “Did you hit me?” He asks. There is an undercurrent of confusion in his voice. You don’t answer. “Why am I bleeding?” “You don’t remember?” He frowns, still staring at the scarlet on his skin. “I asked you about influencing the mind. You agreed that it was possible only through external stimulation of the brain itself.” He nods slightly, as if in a trance. You suppress a grin; this is where the fun starts. “And then?” “Is this some kind of trick?” He snorts angrily, finally looking back at you. His face is rigidly set in a half-smirk, half-scowl, but the bottom rims of his eyes are elevated slightly, betraying the first seeds of fear hiding behind his irritation. “You spooks probably have some little blowgun or some shit hidden somewhere that you punctured my lip with, I don’t know.” You fight the urge to laugh. That’s a new one. “Or I probably bit my lip hard. That would explain it.” “Perhaps,” you shrug. You’re already back inside his mind now, walking through a forest of memories. New ones. Old ones. Some pleasant, some not. “You’re the worst interrogator I’ve ever faced,” he laughs. He didn’t have a nice childhood. He never knew his father. His mother was a drug addict. She had mousy brown hair that she dyed red. Her eyes were a muddy light blue. She died when he was sixteen from an overdose. “People have tried mind games with me before, but this is just something else,” he continues. You erase that last piece of information. “Any other magic tricks you want to show off, David Blaine? You think you can—“ “How did your mother die?” You interject. He stops. You see him wandering through the forest, looking for that one specific memory. There’s a blank space where it should be. His brow furrows. “She—“ He starts, expecting it to come to him mid-sentence. It doesn’t. “She died because—“ His eyes dart nervously amongst spots on the ground. You allow yourself a small smile. “That was a while ago, I—“ “Who was in here to talk to you before me?” You ask, having already removed the image of the Intelligence Branch Director from his memory. He opens his mouth and closes it. Your gaze is fixed on his face as it slowly cracks around the edges. “I don’t—I—” He stammers, avoiding your eyes. You lean back in the metal chair and cross your left leg over your right. “Your older brother is dead, is he not?” He nods almost eagerly, finally having found something concrete he can remember. “Yeah.” “How did he die?” “Car crash.” “How old were you?” “22.” “How old was he?” “28.” “You liked him, didn’t you?” “What’s it to you?” “The rest of your family was scum. He was the only one who took care of you and looked out for you since you two were kids. You loved him. Losing him must have been hard.” “Fuck you.” He is glaring at you now, having regained some strength from his certainty and anger. Your platonic smile is plastered to your face, hiding your true level of amusement. “He’s dead now. It doesn’t matter. You can’t hurt him or anyone else I gave a shit about, so you might as well go take your—“ “What was his name?” His entire body freezes. You watch as the color drains from his face, turning his complexion sallow. He runs wildly through his memories, searching frantically for the name that you hold just out of his reach. His hands start to shake, rattling the steel chain of the handcuffs. “What was his name?” You press, casually tossing the memory between your fingers. He grabs his sweating forehead, eyes wide in disbelief. “You’d think you’d remember something as important as that,” you snicker, dangling the name over the abyss. His breathing is labored as his eyes dart to you, growing red around the edges from strain. “What the fuck are you doing to me?” “According to your materialist view, nothing,” you say casually. “I haven’t poked at your brain with a scalpel or caused any blunt trauma. So it must be your fault that you can’t remember.” His lips are dry. “What the fuck are you doing to me?” He repeats, voice coming out louder and shakier this time. “Memory is a fickle thing,” you say nonchalantly, studying the crumbling man before you. “It is fluid, bending under time and circumstance. It recalls things incorrectly or not at all.” “Shut the fuck up!” He yells, composure exploding in shards of despair. “Give me back his name! Give it back right fucking now!” You check your watch. You were hoping it would take a bit longer, but apparently his physical strength and inability to feel pain didn’t translate to his mind. You sigh, disappointed, but not particularly surprised. You've seen it a thousand times before. “Then tell me what I want to know.”

You walk out of the room two and a half hours later, having successfully exchanged the needed intel for his brother’s name. The Director smiles and gives you a respectful nod. “Good work, as always,” he says. You pick up a tone of apprehension in his voice, the same one you hear from everyone who knows who you are. They don’t know exactly what you do and they don’t like not knowing. “I don’t know what we would do without you.” You thank him humbly and chat with the others for a few minutes about nothing in particular. They invite you to dinner, but you graciously turn down their offer and excuse yourself. You grab your coat by the door and put it on while you wait for the elevator. You could always just delve into their minds and grab the information you need without breaking them down, but then you wouldn’t have a job. Besides, that wouldn’t be much fun either. And how many people can truly say that they enjoy their line of work?