Chapter Text
Jessica took a good look at herself in the car mirror. Her hair: a rich ebony black, flowed out of a low ponytail that could have easily walked alongside those of the Founding Fathers in terms of greatness. Her face: pale, pretty, and with angles so sharp that a mountaineer would try to climb it. Her eyes: thin and almond-shaped, one so dark that it could be confused it for a well, the other so bright that the iris almost blended with her sclerotia.
That was the part of her that most confused those who met her, and then compared their stories. Some say that her heterochromia was something that they didn’t notice until they had her up close. Others reply that you had to be dumb not to see it. To those who tried following the path she had taken, this made it seem as if she shapeshifted. Shapeshifting isn’t possible, they thought. It must be makeup, they thought.
They were so wrong.
Jessica said goodbye to that form, although she was sure that she wouldn’t miss it. She closed her eyes. Her skin tingled. Her muscles contracted and expanded painfully. She felt herself grow taller, and her clothes, which felt too wide to fit her when she had put them on, adjusted. Some weight was added in some places. In others, it was lost. She felt her hair become loose. When she opened her eyes again, it took a bit for her to recognize herself in the mirror. But, eventually, she did.
Her hair had turned a light brunette, had some waves, and was shorter, her skin was darker, her face was rounder and less attractive, and her eyes were now chocolate brown and hazel with bits of green. It was the closest she had ever gotten it to actual monochromia. Any closer, and it would start to hurt.
Without much else to do, she put on her seatbelt, and got back into the road from the small picnic area she had parked in.
She played the radio and sung along to a song about a nighttime bomber squadron made up of exclusively women, who were the best at being stealthy. Then to another one about Jörmungandr. Then to Imagine Dragons.
The rolling hills of Vermont surrounded her, mysterious and unwelcoming in the early hours of the morning. She had arrived there from New York, the state, after finishing her last job in New York, the city. She took another sip from the energy drink she had bought. She had a body to get rid of. But first, breakfast, her stomach demanded.
Jessica stopped at the first place that she found open: a 24-hour gas station. She bought a donut, a mediocre coffee that she downed in the parking lot (her energy drink had run out), and the last map available. She needed a place to rest. In a real town, preferably.
A half hour later, she found herself in Stowe, a small skiing town surrounded by forest. She parked in front of a church, which may have as well been the tallest building in the area, and waited for morning. The stars shone in the night sky. She located the constellation of Aquarius, which was slowly being replaced by Pisces. The area, dark and devoid of people, almost felt post-apocalyptical.
At around nine, she drove to a nearby inn and booked a room. Jessica felt as if there was something waiting for her, something she must seek.
Since she didn’t feel tired, she spent most of her morning in an art gallery, looking at the paintings and discussing them with those around her, and had lunch in the inn. She spent the afternoon in her room, planning how to get rid of the largest piece of evidence of her latest job.
She was Jezebel, one of the best hits for hire, and she served nobody. She had worked for mafias and politicians, for police and crime cartels. But never for a period larger than six months. The last thing she needed was for her father to find out where she was.
The name of her last victim was Andrew B. Genovese. He was a mafia boss, and he was spending what would be the last month of his life in a luxury hotel room in New York City.
Getting in was easy, given what kind of visits he received at night. She just had to pay the girl that was coming in her double her nightly fee. Getting out was simple enough. No one paid any attention to his room, or the woman that left it with a basket filled to the brim with towels and sheets. Killing him, however, was the hard part. Jessica’s outfit didn’t give her much opportunity for her to hide something (the clothing industry really loved to not give women pockets), so she had to strangle him with her necklace, which was a disguised garrote. That man was strong, and he fought until the end. But Jessica had the advantage of surprise and more experience in fighting, and that turned against the man in the end.
Jessica had been a hitwoman for years, but being an emotionless machine was something that she still had to perfect. Every time she was about to put an end to her victims’ (she refused to call them objectives, despite what her occasional co-workers had advised her to do) lives, she had mentally asked for their forgiveness.
The worst kind of objectives were those who were good people, those who had good lives, and she grieved their deaths in silence. It was the best she could do. But sometimes being ruthless was so easy that it was almost worrying. Sometimes her victims deserved to die, like the bastard that currently rested in her car. He had been a loan shark who preyed on poor people and had a predilection for girls that were too young. Despite having seen dozens of people like that man, Jessica still couldn’t understand how people like him could survive to their fifties without being lynched.
Eventually, she decided on burying him in the forest the next day. Jessica went down to the reception desk and asked if they could provide her with information on hiking and biking routes. A few lies, compliments on a fake accent from a place she had never gone to, and a million pamphlets later, she had a plan.
Jessica went to a local restaurant that the desk clerk had recommended to her for dinner and took a walk afterwards. As she was walking back to her room, a distracted man ran into her.
“Sorry”, they both said at the exact same time. The man looked awfully familiar to Jessica, and the man’s brain seemed to be thinking the same thing. He was of a strong, agile constitution. His baby blue eyes shone in the afternoon sun and his hair, a silvery blonde, reflected the light in strange ways, almost like fiberglass.
“Hello, Diego.”, she said when she remembered his name, as a smile slowly appeared on her face.
The man’s eyes opened wide. “Jez?”, he asked. Jessica tilted her head back and laughed.
“Tis I!”, she said. It didn’t dawn on her that that form was the one she had used to enlist in the marine corps, many, many years ago. She had served as a sniper, and Diego had been paired with her as her spotter on one of the training sessions. The session was so long that they started to chat, and eventually became friends. The running joke in base was that they were secretly married, because apparently the brains of their coworkers saw a woman and a man together and thought couple. And now they were reunited, by chance, and by Jessica’s yearning of the hills, despite her being from the Florida swamplands.
“What brings you here?”, Jessica asked. “Are you on temporary leave?”.
Diego shook his head and begun to explain: “No. I left, just like you did. Well, that reminds me...”
The question that Diego was trying to ask was rudely interrupted by another, older man, who entered the conversation like a bull entering a China shop.
“Diego!”, he said in a very worried tone. “Oh, it’s been so long since you left. Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming back?”
The man grabbed Diego’s arm and pulled him back towards a blue pickup truck. Diego’s face was pale with horror, and he let the man take him inside the vehicle. Jessica was also frozen, mainly because she hadn’t seen the man coming, and also because of the fear present in Diego’s eyes.
For a few seconds, she just stood in the middle of the street, flabbergasted. She was pretty sure she had just witnessed how he got kidnaped.