The Night of Seven by Nadia Siddiqui (each kindness read aloud .TXT) 📗

They assign him one of a handful of false personalities that have been put together by the company that he is to assume in order to better fit into the case, to get it solved in the most effective manner.

The problem lately has been that he wants to step into those alternate personas’ shoes...and he wants to stay there. He doesn’t want to get out of them and have to deal with this life where he’s constantly questioning everything about himself and if his thoughts are actually even his own or if they belong to somebody else instead. Are they all just plant memories and ideas from the company? At some point in the last year or so, Nathan turned to drinking. It was sparse at first, something that one of his assigned personalities needed to do for a case to gain the trust of the contact that he was working with...only it turned out to be something more in the long run. Turns out, he has a taste for it. Was that something planted by the company as well? Did he always like to drink? Did he have parents that liked to drink, or were they the religious sort that couldn’t stand even the idea of it? Assuming that he has parents at all.

He knows that he should tell somebody about the fact that he feels like he’s starting to come apart at the seams...but he also is afraid of what will happen if he does. Have any of the other Doe operatives had this issue?

It’s been three days since Nathan finished his last case. He has spent all three of those days rip-roaring drunk, and now his head is paying the price. It takes a long moment for him to understand what woke him up, but his phone is flashing an alert to the text message that he’s got another case. Nobody else but the company has the ability to message his phone. It’s not like Nathan has anybody that he wants to talk to anyway; he’s been alone for as long as he can remember.

Squinting, Nathan’s fingers fumble over the floor beside his bed where the phone is plugged in and charging until he can smack the thing to open the message. The screen is the only source of light in the otherwise pitch-black motel room. It probably smells as bad as it looks...he can’t even remember most of the last three days. That’s a habit that he needs to break himself out of very quickly. He reads the numbers on the screen and recognizes them as coordinates. It takes his brain too long to figure out in his head just where they were going to take him. Las Vegas. Normally, the company doesn’t send him to large cities, but his curiosity is piqued enough that he forces himself upright and starts to carry himself to the shower. He already knows that just getting this message means a handful of things; it means that there is going to be a black car waiting for him out in the parking lot, and the keys will likely either be at the front desk waiting for him, or they will be tucked up under the wheel well of the car where he will need to access the trunk to find all of his case information.

Nathan showers quickly, and since he doesn’t have very much in the way of personal belongings, he is packed and leaving the room in under fifteen minutes. His short brown hair hasn’t even finished drying yet. The keys to the car he finds under the wheel well, opens the trunk, and tosses his small duffle bag of personal belongings inside of it. He grabs the driving gloves and a small folder of information from inside of the trunk and carries it to the car, where he enters the driver’s side door and starts the car. He’s going to need a hell of a lot of coffee for such a long drive. He doesn’t leave right away, intrigued by the information that he finds on the first page of the case file. Apparently, he’s not going to investigate somebody who has already committed a crime, but rather, he’s supposed to be there to ensure that a crime doesn’t happen.

Something in him tells him that maybe he’s not the only one having visions after all. Wouldn’t that be something, if they could use these strange things that happen to them for the better, something that would enable them to save the lives of the innocent people that they later have to avenge if only they could save them before anything even happens? Nathan wants to know more. Perhaps this is nothing more than a simple tip-off, and that’s all that happened. Either way, the interest that he has in it is more than enough to wake him up and focus his energy.

Nathan searches the GPS for the nearest place that he can buy coffee and sets off in his way. A preemptive strike. Isn’t that something? He doesn’t think that he’s ever been to a casino before; perhaps this mission is going to be a collection of firsts for him.

Nathan pulls into a gas station just off of the main highway and purchases a couple of energy drinks and two of the largest coffee drinks that they have, despite the strange look on the cashier’s face for him buying so much caffeine all at once, and Nathan just smiles and shrugs that he has a very long drive ahead of him, and leaves it at that.

As he’s getting back into the car, Nathan’s vision swims in front of him. Just for a moment. It’s almost like a cloud of fog crosses directly in front of him. The fog is made up of faces or events, something that if he could just squint at it a little better, he could see the vision a little more clearly, but it’s just