Name. What was his name again? The man, prematurely aged by almost a year of torture and asceticism, stumbled in the coldness down a mostly empty street. It seemed vaguely familiar to him, as if he should know the giant metal spire that rose above the skyline or the wharfs that dotted the water to his left. His mind felt blanketed, buried. Still, people should be able to remember their own names, even if they had been through hell. He had survived Iraq, after all, with his mind still in tact.

Iraq. He had been an officer. What the men called him?

Yes sir, Colonel.
No-one knew more than the Deck.
Colonel Donald Lydecker, US Army.

Lydecker looked around himself again, this time registering what he was seeing. The spire was the Space Needle. At one time it had been beautiful and awe inspiring. Now it was covered in graffiti. The water was the ocean. It had always been that dirty. He was back in Seattle again. He knew someone who lived here. A young woman. A woman with his wife's eyes and a nasty return kick. A soldier. His kid.

Max.

Why did his wife let him call their daughter 'Max' all these years? It had to be a nickname for Maxine. Lydecker smiled. His wife probably hated that her only daughter went by 'Max'.

Lydecker stopped his aimless walking and racked his brain. His memories of Seattle were less than pleasant. He couldn't remember where his daughter's apartment was. He gripped the bars of the fence in front of him and rested his aching head against the wind-cooled metal.

Too late he heard the noise of someone approaching behind him.

There was a familiar face—one of his kids, whose name he could not remember—before a sharp pain punctuated the aching fog in his brain and everything went dark.