"Tell me the last thing you remember."
The woman's voice was kind but insistent.
He remembered lights.
"Lights," he said, uncertainly.
"Good," she encouraged. "What else?"
He frowned. Images tumbled together on top of each other, confused and unclear. Voices he couldn't quite make out. He tried to pick the images apart, to separate one from the others. Nothing was clear. He wanted to give them something they could use. He concentrated harder. A headache began growing and throbbing insistently behind his eyes.
"I think there was…"
A pair of familiar, cat-like hazel eyes swam in and out of focus, and he latched onto them like a lifeline. He couldn't make out the rest of the face. It felt important. Was this what they wanted him to remember? He reached further into his mind, chasing after the memory, searching deeper for it. It was so close. He remembered someone calling his name, but he couldn't hear it. He could feel a sense of importance, earnestness surrounding it, brushing up against him in the haze of emptiness he lived in. He turned toward it and concentrated. The hazel eyes met his. A mouth he almost recognized formed words he could almost hear. De—
Without warning, the headache exploded in a surge of pain that ripped into his mind, tearing the almost-memory to shreds. He fought it. He struggled to hold on to it.
"Saaaaam!"
They were pulling his hands back, away from the electrodes he'd unknowingly dislodged, holding his hands down against the armrests of the chair. Someone was pressing an alcohol swab to his arm, followed by the sharp pinch of a needle and the burn of an injection.
He thrashed against them. "No! Sam!"
"Mr. Bonham. John. Sir!"
She was holding his hands with gentle strength, meeting his eyes as she waited for him to come back to their surroundings, out of the hypnosis-induced stupor.
Her eyes weren't black. Why had he expected them to be black?
Recognition filtered back to him slowly. Becky. His nurse. The examination room. His doctors. The facility.
She watched the calm overtaking his panic, the effects of the drug stealing over him and easing the surge of adrenaline. "Okay, John?" she said, loosening her grip on his hands.
He took a deep breath and mumbled an apology. "That's not my name," he told her, not sure how he knew.
She smiled kindly. They'd danced to this tune many times before. "I know, hon," she said. "Do you remember your name?"
He chewed his lip for a moment, then shook his head.
She patted his arm reassuringly and ripped open a packet containing a wipe to dissolve the sticky adhesive that the electrodes had left on his forehead and temples. He leaned his head back, drained, against the padded examination chair as she methodically scrubbed the adhesive off his skin. She ran a hand through his hair affectionately when she was finished.
"I'm sorry this is so unpleasant sometimes," she said lightly. "You're doing great."
He looked up at her. "Who's Sam?" he asked unexpectedly.
She glanced back at the two men at the conference table behind her, and they exchanged a look. She turned back to John. "We, uh," she said uncertainly, "we're hoping you can tell us."
He blinked, frowning slightly.
"He's m—Ah!" He clutched his head, doubling over and crying out in agony.
"John?" She put a hand on his shoulder and glared at the men at the table. "Is it really necessary to keep putting him through this? He obviously doesn't remember."
"It is necessary." The tall, authoritatively dressed African American man stood up and collected the files he had spread out on the table in front of him. "And he will." He nodded to them briskly before turning to the second man in the room. "Dr. Novak, please note for the record – no change."
The blue-eyed physician furrowed his brow and cocked his head slightly but made no comment. He proceeded to write on John's chart as he stood to go as well.
"Dr. Novak?" she ventured.
He stopped and looked at her intently. "Yes, Becky? There's something else?"
Becky was rubbing her hand in slow circles over John's back. The man's breath was still ragged and uneven.
"He just… Are you sure these sessions are helping?"
"Why do you ask?"
"The migraines. If that's what they are. I've never seen anything like them. They seem to be triggered by something in his memory."
"That is correct."
She pressed her lips together. "It just seems to me that if that's the case, the better protocol would be to let him recover those memories naturally. If at all. Some amnesia patients—"
"Under normal circumstances, you would be correct, Miss Rosen. However, this being a matter of national security, we do not have that luxury. Mr. Bonham is aware of the risks."
"But as an inpatient, he—"
"Excuse me." He ducked his head in a curt but polite nod and sidesteps the nurse, leaving her to tend to the man on record with the FBI as Mr. John Bonham.