Before.

"You from Boston?"

Norman Jayden snapped to attention from his seat in the back of the taxi, the voice that spoke to him intruding as lazily into his meandering thoughts as cigarette smoke. He tried to wave the thick interruption away, but he found that he could not, and that he was forced into the real world once more. He had been staring outside as the car rushed by on the strangely unoccupied Philadelphia streets, disquieted by the rain that refused to fall and grace itself upon those empty roads. Last time he was here, it had been pouring, and for good reason. There was nothing but turmoil and panic that remained as a bitter taste in his memories of Philadelphia, and he doubted that he'd make new ones here. With a sudden blink of his unsettled jade eyes, Jayden removed himself from the churning world outside.

Somehow, he didn't want to think too hard about that.

The taxi driver, Jayden realized, had posed the hazy inquiry to him. The taxi that had picked him up from the airport was a fairly new model; the yellow paint was fresh enough that it had not yet peeled, and the black letters in their flashy block font were far from being chipped, despite the usual weather in cold and quiet Pennsylvania. He racked his brain to remember the company name of this particular cab service, but he couldn't remember. Biting his lip, Jayden glanced down into his lap at his hands, folded modestly and calloused from working on the field. Even at rest, the appendages shook, the palm coming to life on its own. They attempted to face him, glare at his remorseful expression and instill the guilt that haunted him even deeper. He averted his gaze before he stared at them too long; they reminded him further of his insecurities.

Norman Jayden was a man that didn't like to think of his shortcomings.

There are… complications to using this prototype, you know.

"You from Boston?" Jayden cursed himself for ignoring the now-impatient driver, whose eerily dark eyes were staring intently from their reflection in the rearview mirror as he repeated his question. They were stuck at an intersection in rush-hour traffic behind at least seven other cars—Jayden's plane cleverly landed at four-thirty in the afternoon, and now he had to deal with the exceptionally long taxi ride to his hotel in the flow of Philadelphia natives going home from work. The driver internally noted this, as his thick Pakistani brogue gave way to his coffee-colored skin and broken English. His heritage was quiet and strange, like the lack of rain outside. It wasn't that Jayden never saw someone from the Middle East—he lived in Washington, D.C., after all, and immigrants from every corner of the world were common there. It was just that Jayden could sense a sort of intelligent calculation in the man's guise, and he wasn't sure if that unnerved him or not.

"Yeah," Jayden answered. "Born n' raised. What makes ya say that?"

"You have accent," the man pointed out. "You talk to yourself."

Swallowing, Jayden bit back a disgruntled sigh. When he zoned out, he tended to mumble his bottled innermost thoughts. He'd had a few troublesome encounters with that before. The FBI was not a place in which to spill secrets. "Sahrry," he apologized—although he wasn't sure for what. The response seemed correct to him; correct to every situation. Only when Jayden uttered that single, rushed word did he realize that the driver was right—his Boston brogue lumbered heavily with the cumbersome movement of an ogre. It was distracting for some reason, even though he had lived with it his entire life. Perhaps he'd never truly noticed it until now. He was never teased for speaking the way he did, never alienated. But then again, he hadn't really been included, either.

The taxi driver shook his head before flickering his pensive gaze away from the rearview mirror and back to the traffic before him, which was slowly lurching forward from the advent of a green light. "Do not be sorry," he reassured. "Be proud of home." Dropping his serious expression, Jayden watched as he preoccupied himself with a rusting flatbed delivery truck that was trying to muscle its way in front of him from the right lane, honking his horn and shouting in rapid-fire Arabic, screaming possibly what Jayden assumed to be harsh expletives. When the truck finally cut in, the agent restrained an amused smirk as the man raised one sinewy, brown-skinned hand and flipped the antagonist driver the bird. This city was much more insulting and personal than Washington. That was one thing he didn't mind about Pennsylvania—the people. Normally, he wasn't very partial to people. He much preferred being alone.

Be proud of home. That's what he'd said. In fact, Jayden liked to eschew from that very thing. Home. Boston, Massachusetts—that was his literal flesh and blood, and he had the scars and the empty voice to prove it. But a house was not a home. There was no love in Boston. Perhaps it was that very town that had shaped him to be the rushed, silent man that he was today. There was much blood, too much hatred in his retrospect for him to believe that he could have changed anything about himself.

He couldn't be proud of a home that wouldn't accept him.

"You think a lot." Jayden came to realize that he wasn't going to get any daydreaming done in this taxi. Once more, the persistent driver was staring at him from the reflection of the mirror, unblinkingly assessing him like a Great Dane. Jayden could hardly understand him though his murky enunciation. "Police don't think much. You different." With a slight nod, Jayden understood that he was indicating to the gleaming badge around his neck, connected by a beaded chain, somewhat dull and worn from his years in the organization. He'd known for months that he needed a new string for his ID, but hadn't gotten around to buying one. Chalk another one up for being busy, he supposed.

"Ya make a lotta observations," Norman mumbled, his interest now as lackluster as the band around his badge. "I'm waitin' for a phone call. Can ya please be quiet?"

Snorting, the driver rolled his eyes and pulled forward, finally through the clogged intersection as rush hour began its slow dispersing. "Police," he scoffed. "Always working. Ever vacation with wife?"

"Not married." Reaching into his suit pocket, Jayden palmed his cell phone and placed it in his lap, fingering with the buttons absently. He nearly slipped out of mental consciousness again when he saw his right hand, the thick disfigurements criss-crossing back and forth with the intricacy of a highway system. He could feel emotions from days past traveling down those networks, personalities on their own commutes, separately moving to distal parts of his body and turning his stomach in old anguish that he thought he'd banished a long time ago. No, he was forever chased with the scars on this hand, torturing him with their eternal presence. Briefly, he thought back to the ARI, the phantom sensation of the electronic glove on that very hand tickling his skin. He'd solved so many cases with it—and almost closed the largest one of his career, had the Philadelphia Police Department not royally fucked it up. I miss it.

And yet he didn't. It was as bad as everything else addictive in his life.

"Really?" The man's eyes widened with muted surprise. "Not even girlfriend?"

"No," Jayden said. "No time."

"Oh," the taxi driver replied. "Makes sense, then."

"What do you mean by that?" Jayden grumbled. He checked his phone for any missed calls or text messages. Nothing. Irritated, he glanced at the Rolex on his left wrist. 5:47. Captain Perry should've called two minutes ago. Can't that asshole be punctual? With a dissatisfied huff, Jayden put his phone to sleep and ran his fingers through his short brown hair. Perhaps he should take the initiative to phone him instead—Perry was probably waiting for just that. For being the head of the same police department that flipped the Origami Killer case upside down, Perry wasn't very humble. They let the bastard go free, and he can't even show some damn humiliation. Shit, Jayden hated unaffiliated cops. They were terribly inefficient, and that was inexcusable in the justice system, in his opinion. That was why he'd joined the FBI—at least the agency knew what the hell they were doing and didn't rely on brute force to take down their suspects.

"A man with a good woman," the driver grinned, cheerfully flashing the wedding ring on the hand closest to Jayden, "is never overworked." He broke into a belly laugh after that, giving the agent his turn to roll his eyes. Jayden broke eye contact with his conversational partner and started to play with his phone again, steering around his contacts list to find Perry, buried deep in the undisturbed numbers that he hadn't called in ages. Once located, Jayden dialed the captain's extension line and pressed the receiver up to his ear, waiting patiently as the line rang once, twice. He noticed the clouds for a second time—heavy with rain that would not fall and would instead be swallowed, doomed to be carried elsewhere.

"Like I said," he responded to the driver. "I don't have time f' that."