The government raised and trained Orphan X to be a Black Op assassin, a lethal machine that performed upon command, no questions asked. Leary of decisions made by his superiors, he grabbed the first opportunity to go solo and disappeared underground. When he resurfaced, X aka Evan Smoak had reinvented himself as the Nowhere Man, a lethal, mysterious, emotionless man on a mission to get vengeance and justice for victims of violence who have nowhere else to turn. The Nowhere Man lives by a stringent set of commandments, one of which is number four, "Never make it personal". A rule he finds increasingly difficult to adhere to after being summoned to the lair of Luke Devin who's suffering a psychotic break and in need of Evan to keep an eye on volatile world events until he recovers. While there, Evan learns of a woman repeatedly brutalized and violated by soulless thugs after having been kidnapped from the subway in New York City. Vowing to find the woman and annihilate her tormenters, X leaves Joey in charge at Devine's and returns to the city. After locating the battered, traumatized woman, Evan is speechless and unable to comprehend when she tells him justice belongs to a higher power, not humans. Standing her ground, she extracts a painful promise from Evan that leaves him struggling with a deluge of emotions he isn't trained to decipher or manage. For the first time in his life, the Nowhere Man faces the dilemma of completing his mission while keeping his promise as he grabbles with conflicting emotions within, including the realization that there are people in his life he cares for. With that knowledge comes the paralyzing fear of losing them. With time running out and X's enemies converging on him from every direction, he’s left vulnerable and off-balance, conditions foreign to him that prove life threatening as he repeatedly ignores the commandment to never make it personal.
Antihero is a major turning point in the life of Orphan X aka The Nowhere Man as he maneuvers a minefield of foreign emotions that conflict with his rigid training and mission. His disgust for the vile lowlifes that attack innocents propels him to use deadly force to prevent them from doing it again and yet his newly found humanity demands he find a way to balance the scales and avenge victims by inflicting pain, not final judgement. The developing relationship between X and Joey is heart touching, almost a father/daughter thing with Joey spreading her wings and Evan worrying about her safety. Another foreign emotion for him. As always, the pace is insane, increasing with each new revelation and shocking turn, and the tone is dire, at best.
When Luke Devine, one of the most powerful men in the world has a psychological crisis, Evan flies to the East Coast to meet Luke. While there, he learns of a young woman who was kidnapped off the New York City subway, clearly in danger and in need of aid. With no name and few clues, Evan and his team track down the missing woman, who was assaulted and abandoned. Evan offers his help―and sets out tracking down the young men responsible. But the woman insists that Evan abandon his usual methods―no vengeance and, in particular, no killing. Which will prove no easy feat given the mounting incoming threats from all sides. In a mission that takes Evan from coast to coast, from the poorest corners of society to the richest, Orphan X must figure out a way to protect the innocent, avenge the victimized, and balance justice, with a measure of mercy.
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