Caldwell blinked in the subdued light of the limo. They』d stopped somewhere familiar. He reized the buildings but his brain was too befuddled by what he had just seen to figure it out. His migraine was back with a vengea his adrenalin was doing a respectable job of keeping it at bay. He couldn』t believe what he had just seen. He had a strong desire to see more. He o find out who did this to him.
「What you just saw are highlights of your previous life. Not a full-blown recall but ss of events and images that have made an impression in your mind. Clichés, if you like.」
「Who did this to me?」 Caldwell asked, bile rising in him like mercury in a thermometer.
「You did this to yourself. You disobeyed orders.」
「What are you talking about?」
「Look, I am going to cut to the chase. We are running out of time. I work for an anization called HYDRA. Think of us as an off shoot of Union Security Agency, the outfit that absorbed all the secret agencies of the Union member tries. We get a small part of the agency』s budget even though very few people know we exist. Think of us as the guys who do the Union Security Agency』s dirty digital laundry, the anization to which they outsource certain activities that are not worth their while or that are too sensitive politically for them to get involved in directly. I』ve already told you more than I』ve told any non-agency person and I』ve spent all my waking life w for the agend maintaining that sacred vow of silence. Some years ago I hired you to work for HYDRA in our Eleic ter Intelligence Department. You were our you recruit ever. You were seventeen. We hired you because despite ye you were one of the most notorious hackers in the world. You had a knack, a natural gift if you like, for breaking into puter systems.」
「Me a hacker? Unbelievable,」 Caldwell exclaimed in mock disbelief. Everything was starting to clito plaow. The affinity for puters and hag. Hag was simply an unscious tinuation of the cloak and dagger modus operandi that he had been aced to in his previous life with this HYDRA anization. And there was his inexplicable ability to find what he wanted in cyberspace, which had felt purely instinctive but was obviously much more than that. It was all starting to make some kind of sense now.
「How e I have no recolle of all these things you are telling me?」 Caldwell asked. Fouler looked pained when he replied but it could have been just for show.
「For your own safety the agency decided to block parts of your memory. You were threatening to out the agency. You had bee unstable. The other option was death so you sider yourself lucky.」
「What did I do to deserve the lesser of the two evils?」 Caldwell demanded with bitter sarcasm.
「You were the agencies golden boy, our you and probably most brilliant hacker. We did the right thing in the circumstances.」
「So what does this HYDRA do exactly?」
「We are an offshoot of the Union』s first umbrella security agency. Our focus though is purely on threats faced by the Union in cyberspace. Our remit is information warfare if you wish to use the inal terminology. We started out as a unit of MI6 in what used to be the United Kingdom, where we developed a reputation as one of the best cyber warfare units in the world. When Europe merged into the Union, we were the best out of a dozen anti-cyber terrorism units and so we were allowed to absorb the rest. That made us the largest eleic warfare unit in the w