#echofrost

Jamie and Maya go out together to a bar on a date. While at the bar, a group of up-and-coming indie musicians misinterpret Jamie and Maya's relationship as purely platonic, and they lure Jamie into the woods with them to 'hang out'.

Maya, being more sensible about such things, tries to get Jamie to not go with the band, but Jamie doesn't listen. She's always been hungry for power and influence, and befriending an up-and-coming band would definitely give her some.

Jamie comes home ragged and covered in blood. This isn't the first time that Jamie's come home bloody, but that was usually after Kingpin sent her on a mission or something, not out of random, and not to this scale. Jamie is absolutely drenched in gore, with an empty, hollowed-out look in her eyes.

There's a mysterious string of murders, and even Kingpin himself is concerned. Jamie disappears for hours a day, and Maya has begun to gather her suspicions. Jamie's acting different- she's always been overconfident, but lately she's been acting as if she was invincible.

It doesn't take Jamie long to come clean to Maya- the band tried to sacrifice her in exchange for power, but because the ritual required a virginal sacrifice and Jamie and Maya had been together for quite a while at that point, it backfired, giving Jamie demonic power in exchange for her having a need to consume human flesh. Maya is confused, and a little disturbed, but this is still Jamie. It's still her girlfriend, just... different.

Then, one day, Maya walks into her dad's auto shop/mob front, only to find everyone in the building dead, their organs devoured out of their bodies. She finds Jamie on top of her father's corpse, blood dripping from her sharp-toothed maw.

Kingpin gives Maya an assignment- either she can kill Jamie, and make it quick and easy, or he'll send out people who will do it in far less humane ways. Maya takes the job, both out of a desire to avenge her father and end Jamie's massacres, and also because she wants to be sure that her girlfriend's death is merciful.

Jamie is powerful, but Maya is determined to end this here and now. She tries to convince Jamie to run away with her, and they'd figure everything out somewhere where Kingpin couldn't reach them, but Jamie refuses. She feels like a god, both with her demigod powers and the demonic ones she got after being sacrificed, and she sees herself as untouchable.

Maya is critically injured during their fight, and while kneeling over her in horror over what she did to her, Maya stakes Jamie through the heart, then lays down, expecting to die- but she doesn't. Mysteriously, her wounds heal near-instantaneously, and she gets up. Thats when the police arrive, and take Maya into custody for Jamie's death.

Three, two, one.

Giving her belay line one final tug to check to see if it was secure, Jamie threw herself off the bridge, her breath forced from her lungs as her body made contact with the train underneath. Before she could be pulled off the roof of the box car, she cut the line, dropping to her knees as the train went under a bridge.

If she was to be honest, Jamie was freaking terrified. But this was her ticket out of Roswell, away from the place that had made her feel like a freak. If she could prove herself to Fisk, she'd get a position in his empire, one fitting for someone like her. This mission meant everything.

Her feet pounded against the roof of the boxcar, a sharp clang echoing out as each foot made contact with the train. Darkness enveloped her, the world seeming hazy even with the high-tech night vision goggles she'd been given.

Jamie barely made the jump from the first car to the next, her depth perception suffering from her malfunctioning goggles. 

Screw this, I can't see a damn thing! 

Once she'd secured her grip, making sure she wouldn't fall again, Jamie fought with her night vision goggles, trying to adjust the settings so they'd work, but they just seemed to make things worse. Jamie groaned, ripping them off her head. Suddenly, the world came back into focus. She could see the pitch-black forest like it was broad daylight, maybe even better. 

Even under the new moon, she could still see the bats swooping through the trees maybe hundreds of feet away, as they swooped over the train, past the tunnel- shit. Tunnel?

Jamie dropped, laying flat on the roof of the boxcar as the roof of the tunnel passed mere inches above her head. Her breath was shallow, as she tried to compress her body as low as it could possibly go. 

When the train finally rattled out of the tunnel, Jamie clambered back to her feet, again starting to make her way toward the engine. She threw herself forward, over the gap between the boxcar and the oil tanker in front of her, latching onto the ladder on the side of it. Pulling herself up the ladder, Jamie sprinted over the top of the oil tanker, again making a leap to the next car.

Run. Leap. Run. Leap. Run. Leap.

Finally, she reached the car that matched the description she'd been given. Pulling the small laser cutter from her bag, she crouched down on the roof of the car. The tool activated easily, beginning to cut a person-sized hole into the boxcar's roof. 

Jamie jumped down through the hole, landing in a low crouch. Immediately, she had about half a dozen guns pointed at her face. 

"Well, well, well." A tall man with SHIELD insignia on his shoulder smirked. "Look what the cat dragged in."

Jamie stood up slowly, eyes darting around the car, looking for some kind of escape. There was nothing. She was surrounded. But, things aren't always as they seem.

With a sudden rush of vertigo from overextending herself like that, Jamie seemed to duplicate, multiple illusionary copies of her spreading out through the room. 

What idiots. Jamie mused, as the agents fell for her ruse, hook, line, and sinker. Several of them turned, beginning to fire on the illusory copies of her. The other two were easy to take care of, with a quick knee to the gut to disorient them and a burst of magic to snap their necks. 

In the chaos that ensued, Jamie covered her form with an illusion, making herself near-invisible, and took the suitcase off the pedestal in the boxcar, leaving a false version of it behind. She threw open the doors to the boxcar, making a jump to the next car. She allowed the illusions to drop, choosing to conserve her energy. Almost immediately, the agents were on her tail.

Unfortunately for them, Jamie was faster and more agile than them, especially since they were weighed down with heavy body armor. Years of gymnastics made her limber and flexible, allowing her to stay one step ahead of them and their guns. 

She spotted a long, overhanging tree limb up ahead and made a plan. Jamie crouched to the roof of the boxcar, waiting as the first of the agents climbed up the ladder to her car. Just as his head poked up over the roof, Jamie snapped forward, pressing her hand to his face. 

Supercooled flesh met human skin, and the moment Jamie's hand made contact with the agent's face, steam rose up from the injury, a handprint-shaped mark of frostbite across his face. In that brief moment of distraction, Jamie jumped, grabbing onto the tree limb she'd noticed earlier, then scrambled down into the cover of darkness.

Jamie threw up two middle fingers, doing a quick victory dance before she darted into the woods, the suitcase looped around her wrist. She popped it open, just to look at what was inside. No gold, money, or treasure looked up at her, instead, it was just a small black disk, an official-looking sheet of paper sitting on top of it.

She looked at the sheet of paper, reading off the agents' notes. Hm. Fisk wants an EMP bomb. I wonder what that's for. Oh well. Not my problem.

As a distraction, she ditched the suitcase in the woods, stuffing the small metal disk into her bag. She pulled out the walkie-talkie they'd given her, ready to summon the helicopter they'd said would pick her up when she'd finished the job.

***

"So, am I in?" Jamie dropped the EMP device into Fisk's oversized hand, a cocky grin spread across her cheeks. 

He nodded. "You're in."

"When do I start?" 

He turned to his left, summoning a woman about Jamie's age. She was only a little shorter than Jamie herself, with deep olive skin, dark hair, and rounded yet angular features. "Right now. This is Maya. You'll be working with her."

Jamie nodded towards Maya. Maya gave Jamie a nod in response. 

"If I remember, you said you were fluent in ASL, right?" Fisk asked. "Our last interpreter had some... issues."

"I'm fairly fluent." Jamie replied. "I'm no expert, but..." 

"You can interpret?"

"Yeah." Jamie replied. "I took classes for years. I can interpret."

Jamie laughed as Maya scooted closer, holding her tight like an octopus. While Jamie wasn't quite lucky enough to be able to, Maya was... heavily intoxicated, and as such, her usual inhibitions were down, and she was essentially a giant, cuddly cat.

She wrapped her arms around her girlfriend, mumbling something into where her face was tucked into her chest. Jamie tried to pull Maya off, so she could sign to her, but Maya was adamant on staying at Jamie's side.

Hey, hun. Jamie reached out into Maya's mind, immediately being hit by a wave of wooziness, likely her own body taking in Maya's intoxicated sensory feedback. What did you say?

Mmm... I love you. Even Maya's internal voice was slurred.

Jamie pulled out of Maya's mind, then tapped on Maya's shoulder, then, once she'd gotten her girlfriend's attention, held up the sign for 'I love you'.

"I love you too, babe."

Maya smiled, the bridge of her nose crinkling up as she pushed Jamie onto her back, laying her head on her chest. Jamie propped herself up, so she was at an angle instead of flat on her back, and started petting Maya's hair, careful not to touch that spot near her shoulder that she'd had to dig a bullet out of less than two weeks prior.

Jamie sang softly under her breath, Maya pressed close to her chest. She knew that Maya couldn't actually hear her voice- anything quieter than the roar of a jet engine would be below her hearing threshold- but a far more sober Maya had told her that she enjoyed feeling the rumble of Jamie's chest as she sang, so that would have to be good enough.

Her voice was soft and low, an elegant airy alto carrying the notes to some song she'd heard on the radio a few weeks prior, and hadn't been able to get out of her head since. She'd probably have to look it up later. Maya curled up, nuzzling a little closer to Jamie's body, before finally falling asleep.