It was something that we had trained for extensively. In the result of capture and torture, disassociation was the greatest weapon in our arsenal: in the world of the mind, an inward-looking world of hallucinations and detachment from the physical, we could hold our resolve. The information we carried would be safe from prying eyes, and our training built in a psychological marker for us to realize what was going on even in our fugue state: a note, to ourselves, signed, informing us that we were dreaming away the horror of captivity.

I’d always been a little disappointed that I never got to use the techniques, being posted Stateside by the Agency.

But that was before I discovered a note from myself on my kitchen table at home.

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