No one imagined anyone would want to break into the building, but that’s what Bennett did after everyone else in Haina had called it a day and the sun was starting to set again.

Its brushed steel outer door was unlocked—testament to the power of fear in keeping people at bay—but Bennett slipped through it slowly and silently, just in case there was anyone other than prisoners still inside.

She found herself in what looked like an empty hospital corridor. The floor was rubberised, the walls were perfectly smooth, painted green up to waist height and white above, and the air stank of bleach.

She passed a series of heavy doors that faced each other. They all had a letter stencilled precisely in black next to their handles, but there were no windows to reveal what was on the other side of them.

At the end of the corridor was another door. This one was wood, its top half frosted glass. Bennett listened at it for a moment, then gently tried the handle, opening it as quietly as she could.

Inside was some kind of laboratory office. It was large, and three of its walls were lined with tall filing cabinets and glass cases filled with small phials of garishly coloured liquids. The fourth wall was dominated by a huge two-way mirror that looked into another room.

This one’s floor, walls, and ceiling were all clad in shiny black tiles, and in the centre was a polished chrome chair, raised up off the ground on a podium. It had a high back and stirrups, and dark leather straps were attached all over it to keep whatever poor soul had to sit in it firmly in place. Two large television screens and what looked like several speakers were suspended from the ceiling above the chair on a chrome rig.

A shiver crept up Bennett’s back as she peered through the mirror. The set-up looked like some kind of modern medieval torture chamber.

She turned away and looked at the two desks that stood next to each other in the middle of the lab. They both had an ashtray piled high with cigarette butts on them, along with a single folder and a small television set. The screens were marked A and B and were broadcasting live feeds of two small, bare cells.

The man who had been exchanged for Asselin sat in the corner of one of them, his knees tucked under his chin, his hands over his ears, and his face twisted in a rictus scream. There was a switch on the side of the small television. Bennett flicked it and the lab was suddenly filled with a deafening, discordant cacophony of grinding, pounding, and scraping coming from some hidden speaker. She turned it off after barely a second.