I woke up in a concrete room, cuffed to a chair which was bolted to the floor. A man in a black suit sat across from me, with a small metal table between us. My mouth was dry and everything ached.

“Rise and shine, asshole.”

“What…” I managed to cough out.

“Who are you working for? Who made you plant the bomb?”

“I don’t… know anything.”

The agent rolled his eyes. “Here’s how this works.” He pushed a tablet towards me; on the screen was my sister, making dinner in her home. “For every hour that you fail to cooperate, we kill someone you love. We’ll start with her.”

The rush of adrenaline snapped me into full awareness. Both fight and flight were unlikely, so I had to think. “Wait, how did you get that video?”

“Same way we got you,” the man said, now looking rather smug. He placed a beetle-sized spy drone on the table. “Though hers is full of a neurotoxin instead of anesthetic. Need a demonstration? Or are you going to tell us what we want to know?”

In the end, I confessed. What choice did I have?