Right before “takeoff,” they’d gassed him. Nothing too potent. Just enough to knock him out for five minutes, and when he’d woken the plane was in the “air.” It was an impressive effect, the cockpit humming like a plane in flight. Hendricks had defeated the plane’s squat switch (a weight-sensitive trigger in the landing gear that told the plane it was on the ground) and pressurized the interior; Jenn had actually felt her ears pop. A “pilot” came over the speakers and gave the cabin a status update: airspeed, altitude, flight time. Hendricks had placed a large subwoofer beneath the plane, which produced a constant low-frequency tone to simulate the engines. They’d kept up a constant chatter: Jenn playing the part of the veteran, Hendricks the rookie. During the “flight,” Hendricks had peppered her with questions about their destination, and Jenn painted a grim picture for Tate’s benefit.

They’d let Tate soak up the performance for thirty minutes and then gassed him again. A little more this time. So that when he’d woken, groggy and disoriented, he was easily convinced that he was back on terra firma and being loaded into a car. The same car, as it happened, but with the sounds of foreign voices chattering in the background, there’d been no way for him to know that. Tate had whimpered under his hood.

By the time they had arrived at Grafton Storage, Tate believed. Jenn had heard it in his voice. Somewhere along the line, he’d wet himself too.

While Gibson had been occupied writing his program at the motel back in Somerset, Hendricks had converted one of the abandoned storage units into a rudimentary command center. They had cots, a hot plate, food, and water. A portable generator ran the monitors they used to watch their captive.

Kirby Tate’s cell was a neighboring ten-by-thirty-foot storage unit, which Hendricks had adapted into a holding cell and interrogation room. He’d installed chain-link fencing and a padlocked door across one half of the room. A coil of barbed wire ran along the base. A straw pallet in the event Tate earned the right to sleep. A bucket for waste.

It was primitive and intended that way.

They’d hustled him out of the car and into his cell. Strung him up while he’d made hysterical clucking sounds through his gag. Went on making them while they’d changed into black jumpsuits and pulled on ski masks. By concealing their identities, they gave Tate a glimmer of hope that if he confessed, they would let him go. Even Tate was smart enough to know that if he saw their faces, he was a dead man.