More about my story

…

There’s always another story hidden somewhere within the main story.

Sometimes.

This underlying theme was borne out of a dream I had, or perhaps it could be called a nightmare.

Our protagonist hadn’t started out as a broken man, but after an incident that I wrote about his first days on his new assignment, it was out of character, and I had to go back and create a whole backstory.

It’s why the story has a prelude that starts in a hotel room, the beginning of questioning what he’s doing, and ends up in a garage where he and his partner were on the other end of a sanctioned hit.

He survives, but it does fuel the notion that perhaps he’s no longer fit for purpose, that he begins to question the very essence of why he does what he does

It goes deeper than that, and the unseen connection is really a guilt-by-association thing.  His boss, the old stoic and perhaps out-of-date leader of the department our protagonist works for, was asked to retire and refused.

Old Spies never retire, they are removed.

Unfortunately, that also means those loyal to them, and a purge of the department heads’ loyal acolytes is underway.  By the time our protagonist gets back out in the field, his boss is under siege, and he himself is basically sidelined with a job a first-year rookie could do.  It was sold on the basis that he was being eased back in.

So, his boss smells a rat and decides to do his own legwork and find out who wants to destroy him and his organisation.  This investigation is going to simmer, and by the time a second attempt to remove our protagonist goes wrong in the middle of a couple, his boss is executed.

Problem resolved.

Or is it?