John Sullivan is on his third name.
It has cost him a family, a city, and most of whatever he used to be. He’d tell you it was worth it. There are children alive who are safer for it, and none of them will ever know his name.
Watching people is the whole of what he is. He sees what everyone else finds a reason not to see, and then he does what nobody else will.
Somebody is doing it to him now.
He can’t prove it. That’s what starts tearing him apart. A car that’s always there and never hides. The feeling of being read by someone better at it than he is.
For the first time, John is the one being studied.
And everything he trusts about his own judgment is beginning to give.