When she started out Jessica had felt strange looking through people’s personal belongings without their knowledge, but overtime she came to understand the process as a kind of ritual. Desperate parents, spouses, lawyers, and insurance agents offered up diaries, insurance statements, and emails as the transactional medium of exchange by which she was supposed to conjure forth their runaway children, clients, and unfaithful spouses.

To begin her latest conjuring, Jessica set up in a Japanese café that overlooked Bryant Park near where her photo of Sahiba had been taken. Jessica found it useful to inhabit the spaces where her targets existed as if the sidewalk would whisper its secrets to her. The café was attached to a Japanese stationery and literature importer that seemed to carter exclusively to the local expat and otaku scenes. With most of the regular cliental either at work or school, the only other patron when Jessica entered was an old Japanese man reading a copy of the Asahi Shimbun.

The aesthetics of the café reminded Jessica of a spaceship, or maybe an iPad, the tables and chairs made of seamless pieces of shining white plastic, three human-sized tablets replacing what would have been a traditional serving counter. The tablets had cute chibifed depictions of food with their names written underneath in English and in Kanji. Jessica ordered a matcha green tea and paid with an app on her phone that linked up to her debt card. Three minuets later, a paper cup appeared in a glass receptacle near the tablets that had two nozzles – the first nozzle injected in steaming hot water and the second injected in a green slurry like mixture. The container chimed as it opened signaling to Jessica that her tea was ready.

Taking her automated tea, Jessica sat at a window side table that overlooked the park and proceeded to pull out Sahiba’s things from a duffle bag that Wilson had given to her when she left the Cloisters. The first thing that Jessica pulled out was the laptop. A MacBook air brand-new when Sahiba would have started college, but now four years out of date, the front casing covered in stickers from various college clubs and events. Setting the laptop aside, Jessica next pulled out four identical notebooks each corn husk colored and spiral-bound. They were Korean-imports and used extensively by bullet journaling aficionados, the silky yet roughly tactile waterproof paper was like driving in a Porsche compared to her own moleskin.

Jessica took the top notebook from the stack and fanned through its pages. The first thing she noticed was that Sahiba’s handwriting was immaculate. Blocks of uniform typewriter-like writing filled the pages, the words pulled from high quality ink that neither smudged, faded, or bled. What felt like a lifetime of parsing suicide notes and various criminal paraphernalia had left Jessica with a strong eye that was able to pick up on subtle habits hidden in the page. Jessica was able to deduce that Sahiba was lefthanded, that she favored a rollerball pen, and that she had a habit of using her free hand as an anchor point leaving the bottom righthand corner of the notebook more worn than the rest. Otherwise, the notebook did not reveal anything beyond whatever lecture notes the girl had chosen to take down. The next two books followed the same pattern but the last managed to catch Jessica’s interest.

It unlike the others had been turned into a personal planner with ruler-straight lines separating pages into days and days into hours. Planners were significantly more interesting to Jessica than lecture notes as she found they give her a much better picture of a person, how they organized themselves to somehow face the big scary world. Sahiba’s planner was meticulous just like her handwriting with different categories of events being documented by different colored felt-tipped pens. Looking at the vibrant blocks of color that filled the pages, Jessica wondered how the girl even time had to eat or sleep for that matter.

”Guess you’re not the only insomniac in New York, who Who woulda thunk?”thought Jessica drily.

About halfway through the planner, a new color appeared in the blocks that caught Jessica’s eye. There in flamingo pink lowercase letters was the word - therapy – appearing every Wednesday at 5 P.M going forward. Some mental math and a cross-reference to the calendar on her phone confirmed that they began about a month after Stryfe’s attack on the City.

Jessica was on the train when it happened taking the LIRR back from Long Island City when the attacked happened. In the moment she hated being trapped in the East River Tunnels like a sardine, only later she would find out the line had gone dark when a drone infested switch operator swung a wrench at his buddy and hit the switchboard instead. And it only with hindsight that she realized how lucky she was that she was in a metal tube underground instead of experiencing the hell that was going on above. She would only find out the true extent of the damage from Kim when the detective dragged her out to get drunk to forget a long night of shoving corpses in body bags and contacting their grieving families.

Jessica drop the notebook on the table and took a swig of her long-forgotten tea. The tea had gone lukewarm, and the sensation of chilled matcha made it feel like she was swallowing a tree. Her face contorted in a corkscrew and she fought off the urge to gag as she placed the tea down on the table and pushed it with a single index finger as far away from her as she could. She rummaged around in her jacket pockets and pulled out a half empty pack of gum. Jessica unwrapped a red-tinged strip and popped it into her mouth letting an aggressive bust of cinnamon go to war with the linger sensation of lawn mulch that hung in her mouth. Jessica chewed in a slow and deliberate rhythm as she turned back to her work thoroughly unsatisfied.

As Jessica picked the planner up, she saw a small white rectangle fall from its place tucked between two pages and onto the table. It took Jessica only a moment to realize that it was a business card, intrigued Jessica picked it up to get a better look at it. On closer inspection, she realized the card wasn’t a pure white, but rather a warm eggshell color and by feel alone she could tell the cardstock was of high quality. Flipping it over revealed a logo written in an instantly recognizable yet understated Rockwell variation.



Curiosity peaked; Jessica decided to pull on this thread to see where it took her. Setting the business card on the table, Jessica fished out her phone and snapped a photo of it. Jessica sent out the photo to Kim with the caption – “Does this ring any 🔔s?”

Placing the phone down on top of the business card, Jessica pulled out Sahiba’s laptop It was a 2018 space gray MacBook Air, the front cover coated in a rainbow barrage of stickers from bands, political movements, and tchotchke stores. Turning the laptop on, the first thing Jessica did was enter into the computer’s email client. As a new window sprung to life, Jessica briefly wondered how untampered with were the materials she was working with. After all, if Chadha’s people were the ones that cracked open the laptop for her couldn’t they have also tampered with the data inside? Jessica’s typical cliental often tried to hide their unsavory or embarrassing secrets from her and they weren’t nearly as well off or entrenched in the political quagmire to worry about some P.I seeing something that she shouldn’t of. Despite her creeping anxiety Jessica had to assume that she was working with the full berth of information, it was the only way to stay sane.

Jessica spit the wad of now flavorless gum into her matcha stained cup as she bjegins to scour Sahiba’s abandoned inbox for references to Haynes Biomedical.

“I'll be a monkey's f*@!ing uncle!” whispered Jessica in exhilaration as her keyword search brought up a single response.

The computer had highlighted a single response. A response contained within Sahiba’s online bank statement. There two weeks before Sahiba had disappeared there was a payment to Haynes for a consulting fee.

“Why would a college student be consulting with a Biomedical corporation. And Chadha’s people must have seen this in their search or otherwise she didn’t know why Chadha was paying them the big bucks. So why would they have not told her about this?”

As Jessica pondered over the implications of her newest discovery, a discovery that raised more questions than it did answers, her phone began to vibrate on the table. Looking down at the caller I.D revealed that it was Kim.

“How you doing girl scout? Sorry about the late reply, I was in the middle of grilling a Jamaican who was slinging kiddie porn out of his tacorita.” answered Kim gruffly. She sounded tired and from the sounds of traffic she was probably outside.

“On her smoke break.” figured Jessica as she found herself craving a smoke, alcohol, pot, something anything, to fill the growing pit in her stomach, but she was on call and she needed to stay sharp even if that meant her paranoia getting the best of her.

“You there Jones?”

“Yeah… sorry. I’m sifting through our ghost girl’s things at the moment so I’m a little districted.” replied Jessica only half-lying.

“That why your askin’ about Haynes?” replied Kim.

“Yeah, the girl made a payment to them two weeks before she went and vanished. The only Haynes I know are the clothing people.” admitted Jessica.

“Hanes the clothing brand doesn’t have a ‘y’ in it you f&$*ing moron.”

“F#$k you, English was never my best subject anyway. Do you actually know anything Kim or are you just jerking my chain because it gets you off?”

“I only believe in consensual chain jerking thank you very much. And yeah, I do, don’t you? They’ve been in the news ever since Stryfe happened.” asked Kim.

“I try my best not to look at the news.” admitted Jessica. “There is only so much spoon-fed bulls*@t, I can deal with in a day. What is Haynes with a ‘y’’s deal.”

“Metahuman Gene Therapy or MGT. Basically they are trying to make new Wonder Womens, Supergirls, or you for that matter. Like steroids but way more f*@!ing exciting if you ask me.” answered Kim.

The idea of somebody wanting to be like her caused Jessica’s stomach to twist. She couldn’t lie and say that her powers weren’t useful sometimes. I mean who didn’t have somebody that they hated so much that they just wanted to throw them through a wall. But they also were nothing but a glowing beacon for weirdos and psychopaths of all shapes and colors, folks like Kilgrave. Even just the very thought of that name made Jessica want to throw her fist through the nearest wall.

“And… why are they in the news?” she replied finally through clenched teeth.

“Courting rituals with the Department of Defense.” answered Kim, the disgust plain on her voice. “They want to set up a trial program to make people like me into superpowered Übermensch. Police forces and military personal prepared to deal with Stryfe level responses without the need of private citizens in tights saving the day.”

“That’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.” replied Jessica. “I barely trust most cops with guns and they want to make them into mini Captain F@!*ing America’s?”

“You don’t need to tell me that.” answered Kim.

“This doesn’t answer why Sahiba would of paid for a consulting fee.”

“Well isn’t that your job to figure it out? Y’know do some actually detectiving like the rest of us?”

“Yeah, yeah. Thanks for the info you insufferable b*@@h.” replied Jessica with a sigh.

“Love you too!” Kim replied with saccharine cheer as she hung up.

Jessica ran her finger over the slightly raised lettering of the business card. And for the second time since sitting down she got that sickly feeling in her stomach that this case wasn’t as cut and dry as it appeared. Jessica didn’t know the whole story yet, but Kim was right it was her job to figure it out whether everyone like it or not.