Patriot Acts by Greg Rucka

Author:Greg Rucka
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780553904116
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-08-27T16:00:00+00:00

For the first time, now, you are truly alone. There is no one to help you, no one to turn to. There is no network; there is no support.

You stand in the world with a handful of secrets and a set of skills that are, putting it mildly, highly specialized. Marketable skills, when marketed to the right people, of course, but therein is another problem; how do you find those “right” people without revealing yourself to the government or group or cause you have—in their eyes, at least—now betrayed?

If you are smart, if you are at all wise, you have money. Perhaps you even have a lot of it, acquired during those jobs performed for your masters. If you were very smart, if you prepared for this day, some of that money might even still be safe. But regardless of how much or how little you have, it will not last, because the things you need to continue to survive are expensive. Much that you require is illegal, and that brings with it a tremendous surcharge. You are a person without an identity, because every identity you have ever been known by is known also to the people you have just betrayed. And so you must create a new shell, a new name. This is crucial, because without that foundation, you can acquire nothing you need to survive. How can you rent an apartment if you cannot prove you are who you pretend to be?

Your money will not last for long, if at all.

It is possible, now, that you may decide to turn your back on what you know, what you can do. If your departure was a decision of self-preservation, rather than, say, greed, you might now consider trying to adopt what is called a “normal life.” After all, you know many things, you have many skills.

But they are skills that cannot be sold legitimately. You have no references, no recommendations. Your military service, if you have one, cannot be revealed. You have no identity, and thus, no history. Thirty years old, and on the job application in front of you, under “prior experience,” you find yourself forced to write the word “none.”

Certainly, there is work to be found that is not contingent on a well-rounded résumé. You can find yourself waiting tables, perhaps, or working in a garage, or cleaning an office in the middle of the night, but, honestly, how long will that last before your money runs out entirely?

This is further complicated by the fact that you are now hunted. Those you betrayed by departing are certainly keeping one eye open for you, at least for the moment. You have evaded them thus far, and a stalemate of a sort has descended; but they can be very patient, for their resources are nearly limitless; they are waiting to see where you appear next, to see what you have become.

In the end, you make your decision. You will put your marketable skills to use. You will do the thing that you have been made to do.

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