The Freelancers demand every drop of knowledge you have about your father's project. The names of every technician, every scientist. Anything he ever shared with you about the machine. How it worked, what it was made of, how he intended to pull it off. When you can't explain in words, you're given a blank screen to draw on with your finger. Diagrams and equations, and about two thirds of it make the Freelancers chuckle like it's child's play. Alec Sadler was, is, will be a genius, who surrounds himself with the best minds from every field. He shared hardly any of his secrets; you had to piece this stuff together before asking him what it was all for. He didn't tell you a goddamn thing for certain until the morning of the "execution."
These people don't need to know the specifics, and you can't remember half of them. They're time travelers from the future, from some time beyond 2077. Surely they know how to do it already. It's names they want, and the names are more difficult to remember than the engineering. Faces from SadTech were a blur, employees going and coming all the time. You did your own work over in Electrical Engineering, but not the top secret kind. Employees on the time project had their identities hidden; you couldn't name them with the clearest of heads.
"I don't know," is an answer that elicits electric shocks from your captors. "I can't remember" gets a similar response, and it isn't until you're convulsing on the floor that someone forcibly snatches the prod away.
"Shh, shh, it's okay," she coos, rubbing your back. You're not in your cell; they've brought you to Not-Melville's office for this indignity.
When you're well enough to open your eyes, you look up into two concerned brown ones. It's the pencil-skirted woman from your first week there. She must be new, because nobody else seems to care you're suffering. It's as if they blame you for some future calamity they know about already. It's all my fucking father's fault! you want to scream. You'd scream yourself hoarse.
"Take deep breaths," she tells you, then turns to look up at the two Freelancers who sprout black wings and turn into demons in your dreams.
"That's enough, Warren!"
"Catherine-"
"Save it, Miller!"
You whisper something and Catherine asks you to repeat it. Water. Please, water. She gets some and eases you into a sitting position so you can drink it. There's a tiny planet floating in it, an alternate Earth, or maybe that's just dust.
Warren and Miller scoff like this is a woman thing and not common human decency.
"You've done well, Jason," she says, smiling comfortingly. "Believe me, all the information you have shared has helped us greatly."
You gulp down the rest of the water before being marched back to the Cage. It's time for your monthly shower. The water pressure of the hose is more painful today.