Title- The Runaway
Author- Victoria
Pairing- Lit
Rating- PG-13, though I suspect strong language will come into play to push that boundary. And just maybe a bit of smut, if I feel up to it...
Summary- 3 years post-finale, Rory is one of the brightest rising stars of journalism. But living the dream comes with a price, and when it comes time to pay up, Rory finds she only has one place to run...

A.N- I apologize if my computer jargon is a little off-base. I know the terms, and I even know what some of them mean, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty, I'm a bit lost.

Prologue: Run

"Into the night,
Desperate and broken.
Sound of a fight,
Father has spoken..."
-30 Seconds to Mars

Her mind is running on autopilot, because if she thinks about this, she's going to panic, and she can't panic, because when she panics she does stupid things and with no one here to calm her down, she'll make a mistake. One false move now...

Rory doesn't want to think about that. She can't think about how close she's already come.

She thanks god now for all the times during those wild nights in her Yale days when Logan would tell her to take the wheel. If it weren't for those adrenaline-filled hours of screaming through the midnight streets as fast as his Porsche (or sometimes the Audi, if the Porsche was in for a tune-up) could go, she would never have had the driving skills to competently handle the past few minutes, let alone surviving at all.

A few white-knuckled breaths are all she has time for. Then the sound of a vehicle cruising slowly through nearby streets makes her blood jump and her stomach boil, and she leaps out of the car. She stares at the three neat bullet holes in the rear window of her car- it's a Nissan, sensible and fuel-efficient, perfect for her commute- and the two spaced neatly in the back gate.

There's that panic again, and she suppresses it. Plenty of time to break down when she finds somewhere safe. Think clearly now, Rory.

It's a moist, foggy night, and for that she's grateful. Intuition tells her that without the atmospheric conditions on her side, she could easily be at the bottom of the Hudson River right now. She glances to her right, and through the mist she sees the glowing Brooklyn Bridge rising up from the river. Her hands are shaking. She clenches and relaxes them a few times to stop the tremor. Not. Now.

Over the last three years, Rory has gotten very good at finding people who may or may not particularly want to be found. She knows the most common methods. Quickly, she grabs her cell phone and hurls it into the Hudson. It would be too easy for someone with any kind of satellite access (and they undoubtedly would) to track her phone's signal back to her. The Blackberry, the Bluetooth headset, and the iPhone follow the phone into the water. It's an expensive twenty seconds, but if she lives to see her grandparents again, she's sure they'd be more than happy to help her replace the items. And anyway, it's going to a good cause: keeping her alive.

She looks through the window of her car and remembers, just in time, to grab her laptop. This thing is her bargaining chip for her life if she needs it. Back when she got the first inkling that maybe this was bigger than she'd initially thought, she'd gotten Doyle to put heavy encryptions on all her files and rerouted her IP signal in order to make the sleek silver notebook as untraceable as possible. Rory crams the computer into her oversized purse- no fancy, functionless Birkin bag, this- and picks a direction.

Rory isn't entirely sure where she's going. All she's sure of is that she needs to be unpredictable. She has to go as far against her instincts as possible, and avoid any potential patterns that a profiler looking at her records could pick up on. That means no Lorelai, and no Lane. She wouldn't go to Paris anyway. As she treks through the shipping yards where she abandoned her car on the waterfront, she wracks her brain for more options.

Deep breaths, Rory. You're going to be okay...

A/N2- Future chapters will have more substance. That's what prologues are for, right? Just so you're aware, I've got a very clear beginning, middle, and end laid out for this fic. No worries about this meandering around and having epic!fail at any point. Also, although this prologue is rather dark and ominous, I promise there's some levity in here as well. After all, it *is* Drama/Romance/Friendship/Suspense/Humor/Hurt/Comfort/Mystery etc. etc... ;) Seriously, it's going to have some cute and sweet times amidst all the wild sh*t going down...