Weaponized by Nicholas Mennuti, David Guggenheim

Rebecca says with a slight shake of her head.
    “You can smoke in elevators and hospitals here. This is my last chance to smoke with total impunity. I mean…the kids here smoke.” And Fowler’s about to start in on how half the diseases and ailments in the first world are because of people’s luxury and boredom, as opposed to the actual epidemics in the third world, but he decides to keep quiet, because he can see Rebecca can’t wait to talk. “What have you got?”
    “Strange things going down at the airport.”
    “Usually are.”
    “Even stranger today.”
    “Locals’ turf,” he says. “We’re here by the good graces of people who don’t like us to stick our noses in over there.”
    “Right, but it’s not sticking our noses in,” she says. “See…we have due cause. There was a guy on a no-fly list.”
    Fowler perks up. “Say more.”
    “And by order of Langley, we have to—”
    “I know all that. Say more. No-fly guy…”
    “Yeah. Name is Julian Robinson. He’d been grounded.”
    “Know why?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Did we ground him?”
    Rebecca shakes her head. “Not us. No. Not the Agency. Someone did, though.”
    “Name like that. Julian Robinson. Two to one, it’s money laundering. He doesn’t pass my Muhammad test. Guys named Julian Robinson aren’t gonna show up with a bomb in their underwear or shoes. Get a guy named Julian, and he’s been laundering diverted UN money for a third-world despot.”
    “You’re a caveman.”
    “Start asking around back home. But it’s not strange yet. Just a no-fly guy.”
    “’Cause you never let me finish anything. He’s gone. ”
    “Gone? Didn’t security detain him?”
    “Robinson goes to speak to someone about his ticket. Customer-service rep. She tells him he’s no-flyed. Then three guys come and pick him up. Girl assumes they’re security, so she thinks nothing. Then a minute later, actual airport security shows up, responding to the initial alarm set off by the boarding-pass kiosk. And no one can find Robinson anywhere. He’s gone, and no one knows who these guys are who took him.”
    That’s all Fowler needs to hear. He stands up, slides a blazer over his heavily worked-out shoulders. “First thing we need to figure out, did Robinson get carted away by friend or foe? ’Cause it obviously wasn’t airport personnel.”
    “Right,” Rebecca says.
    “I’ll call you from the airport.” Fowler looks for his car keys. “Start checking around, see what Robinson was grounded for in the first place.”

25.
    K yle wakes.
    A series of hard slaps across the face, then a variation in tone, a few gentler ones, and then a final belt across the cheek.
    Someone rips off the hood, and Kyle immediately wishes he had left it on.
    His interrogator shakes out his hand; that last crack left him with some bodily feedback, a hand vibrating with violence.
    The strobe lights are throbbing, suffocating. Kyle can’t find an image to hold on to. Everything blends into an amorphous pulse that churns his stomach.
    He’s in a warehouse. That much he’s sure of.
    In between the strobe flutters, he tries to make out his surroundings. The windows are blacked out, boarded shut. Rain damage has pulped the walls. Industrial ooze drips; smells like sulfur, moves like grape jelly. Exposed wires everywhere, coiled insect antennae.
    “Robinson!” a voice shouts. Chinese, but not a heavy accent; the voice’s owner has spent years abroad. “Robinson, give me your eyes.” Fingers snap. It’s the guy from the airport, the leader of the crew that kidnapped him. “Give me your eyes right here.”
    But Kyle can’t do that.
    He feels like he’s just been born and is learning the world. His hands and feet are bound, and he’s seated on a metal chair that’s been bolted to the floor. The strobes’ rate picks up, an epileptic’s heartbeat. He cranes his neck, sees rats scamper across a bare mattress that’s a mass of electrical wires hooked up to an enormous