I don’t know how Marlon or Herschel figured out we were there. Maybe they’d just forgotten something and come back to get it, but I remember clearly the sound of a gun’s safety being taken off, and the ashen look on Floyd’s face when Marlon appeared at the bottom of the stairs, his face twisted in an angry scowl.

Beside me, Floyd jerked forward, and then I was deafened by gunfire.

Floyd collapsed halfway to the stairwell, one knee a ruined mess.

I started to babble something, but then Marlon stepped forwards, knocking me to the floor before raising his gun above my head butt-first and bringing it crashing down, sending me spinning into darkness.

Things got hazy after that.

There are a variety of ways to get information out of people – drugs, torture, threats, even bribery. Marlon and Herschel opted for the first two. They kept me in one part of the basement, Floyd in the other. I was bound and gagged and handcuffed to a chair and shot full of something that sent me drifting off into a borderland between wakefulness and dreaming. Every now and then they took the gag off, and I mumbled answers to Herschel’s questions, hardly aware of what I was saying. They did the same to Floyd, then started dunking me face-first into a bucket of water until I nearly passed out, before dragging me upright once more and demanding answers to questions that meant nothing to me.

Days passed in this way. I wondered what was happening back home, and what Alice might have told the police once she realized I was missing.

I started to get sick – more sick than I had ever felt in my whole life. I had trouble breathing, and sweat drenched my skin. I shivered as if I had been cast naked onto an ice floe and set adrift. My tongue swelled in my mouth and I began to hallucinate. At one point I watched as Herschel and Marlon argued about whether it was worth keeping me alive, then I slipped back into unconsciousness, wondering if I would die anyway before they finished bickering.

Then, the next morning, Marlon appeared beside me with a plastic ampoule filled with some kind of clear liquid and injected me with it. I rapidly got better; the fever subsided, and I began to breathe more easily and be able to keep food down.

The next day my interrogation resumed. What did I know about the Haven? Was there anyone inside Red Harvest who was working for us?

The questions went on, and on, the two men’s anger only growing with each question I failed to answer adequately. Later that evening, I heard Floyd screaming from the next room as they tortured him, only for the sound to be abruptly cut off. I listened as his torturers bickered yet again, and I felt sure Floyd had died of his injuries.