"Circumstances are beyond human control, but our conduct is in our own power."

Benjamin Disraeli

A couple of days later Jake went to watch the interrogation of his would-be assassin. He was in a filthy mood. He and his friends had tried to speak of casual, everyday things - or at least he and Paul had - after the heated debate before, but all conversation felt stilted, crushed under the weight of fraying emotions. Their meeting had ended with Paul and Mike departing to their separate lives, Jake promising they were still welcome to visit the Ministry anytime, at least for now. He didn't want to end things on such a sour note, though he chuckled wryly at himself for being concerned about such a simple thing as old friendships when he was dealing with a life-or-death situation, but he didn't know how he could make things any better. Mike had left with a final bitter comment that it was up to Jake to find out about any lovers or family that needed to be informed of Josh's death.

Josh...

It seemed like years ago, not just a few days. He knew he was avoiding thinking about it, but the Ministry had ways of dealing with that kind of thing. He could leave it to them. He felt a knot in his gut at the thought, and forced himself to focus upon the situation at hand.

He was no longer in the Ministry building of the days before. Now, he was in a location not listed under any property register, not even under a false name. This place existed in physicality only, buried deep beneath the ground several hours out of London. He supposed the media, in their melodramatic way, would call it a black site.

It looked like an abandoned bunker, and probably was.

He followed the dimly lit grey concrete walls down a gently-sloping curve, stepping over the trails of stagnant-smelling water that seeped here and there from the bedrock around. There was no sound but that of his footsteps, and the occasional drip-drip-drip of condensation. The air was musty and still, but warm, far warmer than the winter air outside. There was no sign that anyone had been here in decades.

His steps eventually led him to a wide, open room carved directly out of the ground, the mottled and rough granite ceiling given added support by thick iron girders welded upright into the floor. He heard but did not acknowledge the low whirr that signalled the security camera shrouded in murky shadow turning to focus on him. To the far side of the cavern a pale light suddenly appeared, the outline of a door that gradually swung back to reveal glossy white walls stained yellow with age. He walked through without a moment's pause, and continued as the door swung shut behind him.

A few hundred feet further he reached his goal. Ray was already there, leaning over a glowing computer screen that gave a live feed into the adjacent room, where the assassin could be seen toying at the chains that bound her hands to the centre of the table. Beside Ray, leaning his hands upon the desk as they watched the screen, stood a man Jake hadn't seen in a long time.

"General!"

The man they called The General stood up at the sound of Jake's voice and strode over, slapping him on the back and leading him towards where they had been. All was greetings and niceties for a few moments.

"But what are you doing here? Last I heard, you were thinking about retirement," asked Jake.

"Retirement? My boy, I'll retire when they make me, and not a day before! No, I've been hard at work on our old project."

Jake blinked, taken aback.

"I thought that project had been terminated, sir?"

The General smiled as if a great joke had been made.

"Terminated? It was, Jake, it was. But then some of the upstairs boys started asking rather... pointed questions regarding wasted funds and effort, and it was decided to see if we couldn't get one more good swing at it. And damned if we didn't do it! The project was completed, Trials, finished, and much of it thanks to your efforts!"

Jake smiled awkwardly at the news, not quite sure how to take it. The misgivings he had had towards the project had disappeared with its failure, but now he felt them resurfacing. He needed time to process.

But The General wasn't going to give him any.

"Jake, this is why I'm down here. That... terrorist... in the next room has not been terribly forthcoming about her organisation, so I felt now would be the perfect time to demonstrate to you the great leaps we have achieved! Fantastic, isn't it? The first field-test of a substance you helped to develop, and we'll be using it for your benefit!" The General was positively beaming.

Jake felt unsure how to reply, but it didn't seem to matter. The General barely noticed the lack of reaction. He turned to Ray and spoke;

"Now is as good a time as any, don't you think?" He continued upon seeing Ray's nod. "Seize the day, I say!"

The General practically marched out of the room, his clicking footsteps echoing down the hall as he left. Ray stood there, graven faced, not acknowledging Jake as he stepped up next to him.

"Did you know about this?" asked Jake.

Ray grunted an affirmative.

"A few weeks ago we got a message saying something was in the pipeline for us to test. It wasn't until after your little firefight in London that he showed up, though. I was only filled in on the details a couple of days ago."

“And the serum? It really works?”

Jake watched the screen as he spoke, watched as The General entered the room. His jovial demeanour had been dropped, and instead there stood a dour-faced, severe man in a dark, unadorned suit.

Ray didn’t bother to reply, he simply reached over and clicked on the audio. The answer was about to become apparent, one way or the other.

The General stepped smartly into the room where the interrogation was to take place and pulled his chair out. He sat down to face the gunwoman, stared directly into her eyes, and… did nothing.

The stern stare and deep silence began to affect the prisoner. She met his gaze eye-to-eye at first, but was the one to break it. In the tense silence that followed Jake got his first good look at her.

Even in the compressed size the image on the monitor offered, it was clear she was strong, muscled. Jake wasn’t surprised he had assumed it was a man who was attacking him back then; her build and attitude, even now ready to fight, matched anything a man could offer. Not that she was manly, not butch, but Jake thought she looked able to go toe-to-toe with almost any person he had fought before.

Looking down at her chained hands, at the loop to which she was fastened in the centre of the table, she mumbled something the camera did not pick up.

“I beg your pardon?” barked The General, still holding his discomforting gaze on her.

“Here to try to get something out of me, are you?” came the reply, audible now. “Well, some old man isn’t going to get anything more out of me than the rest could.”

“I am not that old, my dear, and I am afraid that very soon I will be taking everything I want from you. Every little detail, ones you don’t even think you can remember. You will tell me it all.”

The woman raised her head and stared at him suspiciously.

“So you’re going to try to torture me, is that it? We knew you guys were monsters, but how far are you…”

The General cut her off with a raised hand.

“Torture? No, nothing so crude. What we are going to use is completely painless and quite efficient. In fact, we are going to help you, my dear, bring you back into civilisation.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed in defiance and she threw back her head and shouted at the camera;

“My dear? Who the fuck is this crusty old fossil? Get him the hell out of here before I give him a heart attack.”

The General did not react. He raised his hand calmly, and through the door came Samson.

He’s always there when called, like a little lapdog, thought Jake.

There was something deeply unsettling about the scientist, or whatever he was. Jake never saw him do anything that wasn’t at the behest of his boss. He came when called, performed whatever task he was requested to, and left silently to await his next job, always wearing the same facial expression no matter how dubious the task may be, no matter how extreme the test subjects reacted. Jake had seen him once or twice sitting quietly staring into space, waiting, whilst The General worked away in another room.

Something about the eyes…

He was a small man, but there was no way Jake would ever allow himself to be alone with him.

Samson entered the room in his usual emotionless manner, eyes staring at the woman as if she were some dull, everyday laboratory specimen, and not an increasingly discomforted human being. Every time Jake saw this he told himself such coldness was the only way anyone could possibly do the job, but it sounded pathetic even in his own head. Later he would be able to shrug it off, push it to the back of his mind, but now he shifted uncomfortably where he stood. He thought Ray might have shifted slightly too.

The needle slid into the nape of the woman’s neck with ease, though she twisted her head back as she felt the alien object penetrate her skin. From the viewpoint of the camera above, Jake could just about make out the plunger sliding down, forcing the liquid – was it darker than he remembered? - into her veins.

This time the low keening sound went on for much longer, almost a full thirty seconds. The woman’s eyes rolled backwards and her lips curled up, exposing white teeth clenched together by steel-taut jaw muscles. With a deep release of breath, she suddenly sagged forward, shoulders limp, a ragdoll cut from its strings.

“Will you tell us who you are now? My dear…” The General practically spat the appellation this time.

There was no reply at first. The woman’s head hung limply over her chest. A few seconds passed, and then her head slowly began to rise, and her eyes fixed on The General again.

“I won’t tell you,” she said, though her voice contained little hostility now. Instead, it had an almost drone-like, lifeless quality.

“I think you will,” replied The General. “What reason have you not to?”

Jake could see her eyes widen even through the camera, the whites filling the sockets as her mouth made a sudden ‘o’ of terror.

“Make it stop…” she whispered, legs beginning to kick out against the legs of the table with more and more energy.

“Make it STOP!” she yelled, and her arms began to thrash wildly, yanking the chain left and right.

“A terrifying thing, is it not?” continued The General in level tones, as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening in front of him. “The sudden loss of purpose, of faith. Did you even know that it existed before it was gone? Do you feel small now? Insignificant?”

He leaned forward towards the woman, who was beginning to hyperventilate.

Jake stirred uncomfortably as he watched. The General's questions felt like taunts, as if he was taking personal pleasure in this.

"Why's he doing this?" Jake hissed at Ray.

Ray didn't reply, his eyes fixed on the screen.

“Calm down, now. What’s the point?” The General was saying to the woman.

Her breathing abruptly dropped to normal, her flushed face turning pale again in seconds. In the blink of an eye, her flailing limbs had relaxed, and she was suddenly still, sitting as if bored, as if in a waiting room knowing the wait would be long.

Jake looked on, mystified.

"What have you done to me?" she asked, voice soft.

"We've... shut off the part, or parts, of your brain that control belief. The 'God spot,' I've heard it called. The small parts of you that, regardless of all evidence to the contrary, tell you there is a point to living, a reason for you to take the next breath, and the one after that. Without those parts, it's hard to imagine you would even wake up in the morning."

"It hurts," she whispered.

"So I'm told. It doesn't, of course. You're not in any physical pain whatsoever. Soon you'll stop believing even that."

Jake told himself he was only imagining the smirk in The General's voice.

"Now," continued The General, "we can restore you if you just cooperate. Who are you?"

"Lieutenant Jessica Cooper."

"Lieutenant? What outfit?"

"Royal Marines, formerly."

The General let out a burst of laughter, but when he next spoke his voice carried an edge.

"You're lying, which takes real focus, well done. There are no women in the Marines."

She held his gaze without passion.

"Not officially. Off the books. Better that way. Keeps things away from the media, from enemy elements."

She spoke now in short, sharp bite-size phrases, all extraneous information cut away.

"Hmmm... Even were that true... You said formerly?"

Lt. Cooper made no reply, staring blankly ahead.

"Ah yes, it needs to be a question," The General said to himself. "You said formerly, what do you mean?"

"Short-term training program. Moved to special services, then joined a private security group."

"You're a mercenary?"

She didn't respond.

"Ok, let's try a new line of questioning. How do you know about the Ministry?" asked The General.

"Actions all over the world. Evidence from operation sites, statements from those under investigation for corruption, dead bodies. Bound to notice eventually."

"What are your plans?"

"Unknown. Just a grunt. Approached a few years ago, good pay, in the UK, seemed safe."

"So you don't have an ideology? You're doing this for money?"

"At first. Came to agree with the job the more I saw. Huh..." Now it was her turn to laugh, "...I believed in them. In him."

"And who is in charge?"

There was a long pause.

"The Ministry has interfered with a lot of people. They're angry."

"So they decided to kill Jacob Trials? Why?"

"Saw opportunity to get rid of him."

Jake's felt the hairs on his arm stand up even though he knew they were not, his follicles as carefully under the control of the nanites as the rest of him.

"Why try so hard to kill him?"

"Not after Trials. Used him."

"Used him?"

Silence.

"Used him for what?" snarled The General.

"To find the Ministry's headquarters."

"Find the..."

"Now we know where you live..."

The next few minutes were chaos. Ray was swearing at his phone's lack of signal and sprinting out of the room before Jake had even figured out what to do. Torn between staying to see what would be said next, tearing up the hall and demanding Cooper tell him what she knows, and following Ray, he was held suspended momentarily as if by multiple chains.

Finally, he swore under his breath and ran after Ray. He caught up with him a few hundred metres along the entrance corridor, where the tunnel came close enough to the surface for signals to penetrate.

"She's not answering," Ray swore. "The private line's down and she's not picking up her mobile."

Jake knew he meant Jo.

Something must already be going on. Jo would never fail to pick up normally.

It had always amused Jake that the Ministry used ordinary smartphones for communications between agents, but it made sense. Whereas years ago the idea of a proprietary, gadget-filled piece of tech seemed like a good one, it had quickly become defunct in the face of these mass-produced pieces of technological magic, so instead of working on some Hollywood-style secret comms system, they simply upgraded the batteries, created a modest signal extender, and ensured each agent a permanently open data stream on commercial satellites. Besides, it wouldn't have mattered anyway - the bunker was so far down no portable radio system could punch its way out, and anything stronger would expose the location.

"Bring up the cameras," said Jake.

Even this tech was little removed from the commercially available security camera apps that allowed home-owners to watch their property when away. In fact, it was developed from it: Jake had been involved to a small degree in the industrial espionage required to get a look at the tech before it was released.

The video feed that appeared on the phone's screen showed nothing out of the ordinary. The lounge, the halls, the various computer rooms and medical centre... nothing unusual. A few people in lab-coats or suits could be seen moving purposefully on their individual jobs, each labelled on screen with a glowing green tag that identified their names, numbers, security chip condition and further information. Nothing stood out.

"Who's that?" said Ray suddenly, tapping on one of the images and bringing it to full screen.

The feed he'd tapped showed the entrance Jake had taken with his friends the first time he'd brought them in. A group of about ten people, all heavily built and dour-faced, were striding up the steps towards the entrance. Jake jolted back in shock. Walking ahead of them, pale-faced and sweating, his right eye bruised and bloodied, was Mike.