The City of Immortals had more ways of obtaining intelligence than simple torture, because some people could endure extraordinarily brutal physical torment while holding firm to their beliefs. Even interrogators would feel respect for such people. However, the ultimate purpose of interrogation was to obtain information, and any means would do. Thus, the staff of the Gene Laboratory, who had only recently gained a preliminary understanding of Skrull brains, were put to use.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had once possessed a machine for modifying memories.
It was an extremely cruel surgical device that used extraordinarily fine probes to release electric currents and repeatedly stimulate certain neurons in the brain. Whenever the subject tried to recall that memory, the intense pain and the neurons conditioned by repeated stimulation would guide them toward another memory. Agent Coulson had undergone this procedure before. However, the reason the City of Immortals abandoned this surgical machine was not because it was inhumane, but because the method was both crude and unreliable. Subjects could still recover their memories, just as Agent Coulson had. The theory behind the procedure was as flawed as the prefrontal lobotomies of the last century. Its only advantage was that it looked a little cleaner and more sanitary than the ice-pick method of lobotomy.
Thanks to the City of Immortals' and Wakanda's research into brain science, synaptic neural sensors used to direct Power Armor movements were applied to interrogations. Through delicate and precise surgery, interrogators could question hypnotized subjects and excavate memories buried deep within their neurons—this procedure was not without side effects. The vast majority of subjects found it difficult to survive, and even those who did would become idiots after prolonged, repeated questioning and stimulation. Yet sometimes a single piece of intelligence was worth far more than the subject's life. When left with