Page 54 of Hardline Torque
“Victor.”
Always his name.
It anchored him even as it was used against him.
They had sat him in a chair bolted to the floor, restraints firm but not cruelly tight.The IV line ran into his arm, taped neatly in place, fluid cool against his veins.He had clocked it early—saline at first, then something else layered in.Not enough to knock him out, but enough to slow the space between thought and response.
He hated that part the most.
Not the pain.The delay.
The first interrogator spoke with a mild accent Victor could not place.
“Same questions as before,” the man said pleasantly, as if apologizing for the repetition.“We just want to confirm what we already know.”
Victor lifted his head.Kept his eyes level.He made them work for that alone.
“I’ve already told you...”he said.His voice sounded rougher than he expected, like it had been sanded down.“I don’t have what you want.”
The man smiled faintly.“The problem with that answer, Victor, is that we disagree.”
The questions came in a familiar order.
Names.Places.Timelines.
Who ran Black Tide.How many vehicles.Where they staged.Who Victor answered to now.
He gave them fragments.Old truths stripped of context.Answers that were technically accurate and strategically useless.He had learned that skill a long time ago.
They swapped interrogators every few hours—or what felt like hours.Different faces, same cadence, but always calm and professional.No raised voices and no threats that were not implied.
They wanted confirmation, not a confession.
That was how he knew they were pressed.
At some point, someone injected something into the IV line.Victor noticed because the room tilted half a degree to the left.Because his tongue felt thick.Because the effort required to hold onto certainty increased.
He breathed through it.
In for four ...out for six.
He counted the ridges in the metal table in front of him.Thirty-two.Always thirty-two.He used them like a rosary.
The third interrogator was a woman.Her voice was low, almost kind.
“You know,” she said, “we thought they’d be here by now.”
Victor did not respond.She tapped a control and a screen flickered to life in front of him.
Black.
Then static.
Then a feed that looked like a comm channel gone dead.Time-stamped.Silent.She let it play for too long.
“They’re careful,” she continued.“That’s admirable.But it also makes them predictable.”
Victor swallowed.He could feel the effort in it.
