Justice Unserved, Nadia Siddiqui [brene brown rising strong .TXT] 📗

his haunches, squatting behind a dumpster and breathing evenly into the arms folded in front of his body.

Today he is Nathan Doe, one of the many Doe-classified team members with no history, a team of men and women that simply do not exist to do the jobs that nobody else can do. Human chameleons able to blend and assimilate. Tomorrow he will be asked to be somebody else, and tomorrow he won’t fail.

  2

O ne month later.

The wound on his head is all but gone. It’s nothing more than a faint scar now, something that his fingers will find and trace the jagged line of, but his hair has grown over it unnaturally quickly. If he didn’t already know that it was there he wouldn’t even be able to see a difference in the style of his brown hair in the first place. The place he had been taken to is all a bit of a blur. Something that he knows that he wasn’t supposed to remember in the first place so he doesn’t mention it. He wasn’t told what he was supposed to have done in that room. He wasn’t told who he was supposed to kill. He knows that this isn’t the first time that he has been ordered to kill somebody, he just knows that that was the first time that he failed. A mistake that he isn’t looking to repeat this time around.

It’s a strange feeling that not knowing information has become so comfortable for him. He has very little knowledge of the organization he works for, but he knows it is something he wanted. He knows that this is a job he volunteered for, an opportunity that he was afforded and leapt at. He knows this is a good gig as much as he knows he enjoys what he does, the constant challenge of it. Or at least he knows he’s been conditioned to like it. He doesn’t know why he isn’t allowed to remember the specifics of his previous job. Part of his assignment is that he’s not supposed to ask questions, and so normally he doesn’t.

Just like today.

He can’t take the time to sit and wonder as to what sort of life he must have led to have ended up on this path. He doesn’t wonder who he was or what his real name might have been. Perhaps he was military or even special forces. Perhaps he was a civilian who was just in the right place at the right time. Perhaps he was somebody bad who did all of the wrong things and then took this new life as a way out of something. Perhaps he was in witness protection and this is what really happens whenever you agree to be given a whole new life and identity. Luckily, Nathan is rarely afforded the downtime to delve too deeply into that downward spiral of thoughts.

He does feel comforted by the fact that he knows most of the people he is sent after deserve everything that is done to them and then some.

Nathan arrives by bus to a small town just outside of Kansas City. He is greeted by a muggy heat, the sort that is going to have his clothing pasted to his body with sweat in no time at all. It’s hotter even than he could have expected, the long road away from the bus station is lifting in mirage lines of heat from the roads. Nathan knows that just outside of the station there will be a plain black sedan waiting for him with the keys tucked up in a keybox under the wheel well. He also knows there will be air conditioning and a full tank of gas.

The phone in his pocket vibrates; a text message alert greets him with the name “Hank Pettyfer, reporter for the Sun Journal,” which is a clue as to the persona and identity that he is to adopt. The one sending the message he now refers to as “Zeta”. All of the paperwork to support this pseudo identity will be waiting for him in the glove box of the car as well as a plain black duffle bag in the back seat with anything else that he could possibly need to sell his identity and look the part. Whenever Nathan arrives at the car and locates the keys, he gets another text with an address that no doubt is also already programmed into the car’s navigational system of whichever hotel room they are putting him up in for the night.

It’s such an easy path for him to follow that he doesn’t have to think at all. He gets into the car and follows the directions, all the while starting to pick through the contents of the file folder that was also waiting for him in the glove compartment. It’s an easy drive, not many cars out at all, and he has nothing else to distract him. The file is filled with case files from recent robberies and break-ins. All three of the senior living communities and one memory care facility have all been targeted over the last six months. The residents have had their things vandalized and stolen. Some of those in the further stages of dementia had bruises placed on their bodies that weren’t possibly made from having fallen. Suggestive in places that none could have consented to. Nursing staff and caregivers have all been placed under review and some have been let go. Employees who have worked places for most of their adult lives are suddenly being looked at under a microscope. The police have said that there are no leads whatsoever and that as they age folks cannot hope to speak for themselves to say what happened, so it’s going to be a case that will be very difficult to crack.

The patrols have been added, private security beefed up, but the sad reality of the situation