The Preying Doctor by Nadia Siddiqui (ebook reader that looks like a book TXT) 📕

waits until he gets the buzz of a text message back, just like the last mission. Only this time it’s only a geographical location and nothing else. Nothing at all.

  7

N othing.

They are giving him nothing.

Nathan waits there for what feels like hours staring into his phone. He’s waiting for them to uphold their end of the bargain they struck before his last case. He’s waiting for another sliver of information as to the person he really is. They promised him they would tell him something. He has a right to know.

Yet, they have sent him nothing other than the coordinates of his next location. He knows he should leave his keys in the trunk to go and pick up his next bus pass. It’s what he ought to do. Yet, still he stares into his phone, hoping it’s a mistake somehow, but he knows it’s not. He’s being punished.

He knows the case wasn’t wrapped up like it was supposed to be. He knows it will be a big fucking cleanup job for them and that he i going to be punished. Nathan has never deviated from the written course of instructions before. Whenever he is given a task he doesn’t ask questions, he doesn’t ask for additional information and he rarely forms an opinion on what he has to do because he knows that each and every prick he’s sent after should have been a lot more scared of the consequences of their actions. More often than not they feel like gods, and they have worked themselves up in their minds until they have convinced themselves of their own immortality. Rarely can they be rehabbed and the prison system is so fucked that it never could punish them properly. Regardless of what the other inmates might happen to do, it would never be real, true justice.

Nathan has never needed extensions, he’s never needed additional information and he’s not programmed to have opinions on it. He’s never stalled or formed bonds like this. Given that he’s worked alone this whole time he’s just assumed it was because he liked it. The other ‘Doe’ operatives never communicate with one another. He couldn’t have called one if he wanted to. Rarely, whenever he is brought into the company headquarters he has seen passing glimpses of them, dressed plainly like him but wearing that same hollow expression as they pass into or out of a room filled with nobody but computers to speak to. He knows they are his team but knows nothing more about them. He’s never been assigned to work with another ‘Doe’ operative.

Working with the Smiths though, it has been like looking into another world. One full of possibility and warmth. A world where their job is something that they love, something that they can make their living off of, but not something that is their identity. Not a single member of the Smiths has allowed it to consume their entire life. It’s a vision of an alternate reality for him. It makes him realize that perhaps that far-off goal of ending his contract, of retiring might be something that he wants more than he realizes. If he can see that, then perhaps he doesn’t need another bit of their information and he can go and find out the answers he’s craving for himself. Nathan knows how stupid it is, how large the repercussions of his own actions would be if he disobeyed a direct order.

Actually, he doesn't. He’s never done it before. Would they send out another ‘Doe’ to collect him? Is there a department that is more lethal than his? Nathan looks over his shoulder out of reflex, making sure that there isn’t another body following him for simply thinking about what he’s about to do as he walks to the bus station counter and hands back his ticket for a refund. Instead, he will go to Muncie, Indiana. He will follow the last lead that he has been given as a glimpse into who he actually is, and he will see if any of his hunches about feeling like he belongs there could have any semblance of truth to them. He doesn’t know what he will find there or, even more importantly, what will find him, but he knows he will have to go. Even if it’s just a short stop, even if it’s nothing more than to look at the city that he is apparently from, from behind the glass window of a bus. He will figure it out when he gets there.

The company broke their promise to him. They didn’t put stipulations or rules on their bargain and perhaps it was wrong of him for not having done so in the first place, but it is something so ingrained into him not to ask questions that he isn’t at all ready to process this strange feeling in his stomach that they have somehow betrayed him. They promised him information for each case that he finishes and then this time to ‘teach him a lesson’ they have broken that promise. He can’t let that slide, not when he can do something about it.

Freedom isn’t something he’s considered having before. Certainly not anything that he thought he didn’t have. Breaking this rule, going against the grain and making a choice for himself is a strange feeling. It isn’t until he has broken his set path of rules that he starts to feel like perhaps he was more trapped than he thought he was. The bus pulls away from the station, and Nathan turns off the cell phone in his pocket.

  The story continues . . .

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