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  67. 3:46 a.m.

She watches me for a long moment. She knows exactly what I’m thinking. “We don’t create the nightmare,” she says. “We simply manipulate your sleep architecture, and you do the rest.”

The earthquake statistics. The Eskimo-Indian Games. The moose. The bear. All things I’d looked up on the internet. Ingrid getting pregnant. Lassie getting sick. Opik dying. My father lying to me. Being lost, hungry, and alone. All my biggest fears.

I had created this world.

The woman lowers the white surgical mask.

The heart rate monitor to my right jumps eighty points.

I gulp.

“Welcome to the CIA's Sleep Control Program,” my mom says. “It’s been a long time since you were here.”

::::

The doctor with the blue scrubs returns.

“I’ll ask again,” my mother says. “Where is the flash drive?”

“What flash drive? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The flash drive,” she says, then pauses.

The doctor in the blue scrubs raises a syringe.

“The one the President gave you.”

:00

I am in the White Room. My mother gazes down at me with green eyes. She pulls back her predominantly gray hair and puts it in a ponytail. She raises her right hand. In it, she holds a mallet. The handle is scarlet, or at least it appears scarlet, a consequence of all the dried blood. It might have been wood underneath, or metal. It’s hard to tell. The chrome head of the mallet, which has been cleaned, polished to perfection, catches the glare of the bright light overhead and shimmers a white gold. I flex my arms against the velcro restraints, but they have no give.

The mallet slams into my left hand.

My knuckles break. I have no idea how many.

The mallet slams down a second time.

Then a third.

She continues until my left hand is a pulpy mess. Until every single bone is broken.

The pain is indescribable. Unimaginable. A pain you don’t think, don’t want, to exist in this world.

My mother walks around the table until she is standing on my opposite side. As hard as she’s tried, she is covered in my blood. Bits of spray clinging to her lab coat, sprinkled on her neck and chin. Little freckles of pain and destruction.

“I will ask you this one last time,” she says, nearly emotionless. “Where is the flash drive?”

I shake my head. I don’t know. How many times can I tell her? The President didn’t give me a flash drive. He didn’t. I promise.

She raises the mallet.

Brings it crashing down.

I wake up gasping.

It takes me twenty seconds to realize I’m not in the White Room with my mother. That I haven’t been for over two weeks now.

I push myself up and glance at the fancy weather clock on the nightstand.

3:01 a.m.

July 7th.

69 degrees.