In the dimly lit room, everything from the walls to the table to the lamp sitting atop the freezer gleamed with a cold metallic sheen.
Clearly, this was neither a comfortable guest room nor a vaguely businesslike office. The oppressive atmosphere had been deliberately created for one purpose: to place greater pressure on whoever entered.
The entire room was divided into two sections by a long counter. On one side stood a single chair, while the other had several much plainer chairs. It was obvious that whoever sat in the single chair would be there for a long time, while the people behind the counter would be rotated frequently.
The place looked somewhat like an interrogation room, but there were no iron bars like those in a police station. The table, chairs, and counter stood close together, making it resemble a hospital examination room instead.
With a snap, the lights came on. Standing outside the door was a Black man in a Federal Bureau of Investigation uniform, an identification badge hanging around his neck.
Behind him stood a female staff member dressed somewhat differently, more like a field agent. She also wore an investigator's badge on her chest, with a handgun holstered at her waist.
Behind the two of them was a bespectacled white man in a suit, scholarly and refined in appearance. He wore no identification of any kind and looked more like an academic than an Agent.
The Black agent entered the room and sat in one of the plain chairs on the far side of the counter. He removed the badge from around his neck, took out his credentials from his breast pocket, opened them, and displayed them to the figure sitting in the single chair.
"Hello, Professor Rodriguez. I am Jimmy Andris, a member of the