5th - 7th February 2019
Jess’d been pretty much alone through the various journeys she’d taken to hide where she was going. Thanks to some unexpected canceltions she’d also spent rather more time in remote Scotnd, and several nights in spectacurly grotty pubs, than she’d originally pnned. Worse, she’d had to do without a computer - leaving her feeling even more isoted and frustrated. Annoyingly the approaching station ptform was empty, although Jess doubted that the station’s CCTV was linked to anything except a local recorder of some kind. At least, if they did pick up her arcane route, it’d take a while to find her. She slipped out into the fading evening light and made her way through the deserted car park.
She'd never really thought she would need to use any of the several small caches of equipment, IDs, and funds she'd stashed around the country, let alone either of the two safe houses she’d bought. But, she’d done it anyway in a ridiculous overabundance of caution. Right at this moment Jess was congratuting past Jess for her overpreparation, although also cursing her decision to pick stupid little towns. The remote church stood almost hidden, with scrubby pine and fir trees scattered around and mixed in with some leafy trees Jess couldn’t identify. Although most of the mossy headstones were smaller, simple affairs, standing beside the entrance to the chapel was the first of a few rger, more demonstrative pieces of statuary. The angels' worn hands pointed to the sky.
As she rounded the corner, the Kearney mausoleum's entrance appeared, its gate painted and its locks oiled. She had, under one of many aliases several years ago, created a small charity that paid for some maintenance of the graveyard in general, and also for care of the mausoleum in particur. And although Jess’ charity and the church officially held all the keys, there was an unofficial copy tightly gripped in Jess’ hand.
She knelt at one of the neighbouring graves, pcing some wildflowers she'd nabbed along the way and taking a few minutes to make sure she definitely wasn't being observed. Listening to the mixed sounds of the wilderness surrounding the graveyard, and the occasional signs of life from the edges of town, she eventually concluded that this part of her pn, at least, was working. She slipped down the steps and quietly snicked open the well-oiled lock, easing herself through the gate. The smallest casket, pced here after some negotiation, did not hold her favourite dog, contrary to what her charity had told the church. Instead, it held a ptop, a phone which she hoped would hold a charge, a selection of IDs with credit cards, cash, and some very well sealed makeup.
You could, she was well aware, completely change your appearance to the point of unrecognisability. Having her stashes meant she could disappear before she headed to any of the safe houses, hopefully without burning their locations. And while her skills weren’t quite what she’d have liked for this circumstance, they were good enough. She'd reluctantly not included clothing, having realised that sealing the tech from moisture ingress was hard enough. Despite the initial and fairly hefty donation for renovation, the mausoleum had remained persistently damp.
Flicking on the torch, she quickly and dramatically changed her appearance, contouring with makeup (which thankfully wasn’t mouldy), swapping the wig for her own hair (heavily restyled), and switching her grubby clothes for another of her charity shop buys. It’d been slim pickings on the route, but she had managed to get enough that she didn’t stink after days on and off the train. Looking into the small mirror she barely recognized herself.
Now she had some equipment she just needed a little time to prepare some kind of attack. Until then, priorities were getting to the hotel she’d matched to this cache, and then transport. And, pressingly, outside her prepared-for escape, some untraceable way to contact Charlie.
As inspiration struck a nefarious grin appeared on her face and she almost ran to the small shopping centre on the outskirts of town. Hulking like some drab parasitic mollusc on the side of the shopping precinct was the grey concrete of the county library. Half an hour ter she had a printed invoice with one of her other SIM’s numbers as the customer care number sealed into a jiffy bag along with one of her special phones and her very custom firmware. A quick run to the post office, which thankfully was also in the shopping centre, and she sent it next-day guaranteed to Suzie’s.
She strode back to the train feeling rather more settled about making contact, but like she'd been far too visible. A few stops down the line was a town with both cheap car rental and a crappy hotel. The IDs would certainly hold out well enough for that, although she thought that international travel might be a bit of a push. She hadn’t made that much of a fucking mess, she thought, so hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. Though she had several of these caches around, none of them had been created with the level of skill she had now.
Regardless, there was no chance of renting a car this time of the evening, so she made her way into the hotel and booked a room for a few nights. Thankfully the clearly disagreeable owner was deep in a fight with their partner, so Jess was pretty certain they'd barely remember her in the morning.
She took a moment to check the stairs and the hall for cameras: thankfully none had been installed. Feeling a little safer, she marched to her room and kicked a wedge under the door. Able to breathe at st, Jess started to sketch the outline of the next few days. She needed to check that Charlie was safe, whatever that meant right now. She needed to find out which part of the ridiculous conspiracy was after her (or, was it the whole damn thing?). She very much needed a pn to persuade them and potentially her (presumably) former employers from terminating her existence… And, she realised, for the sake of practicality, she needed some more clothes. Eventually, the bathroom beckoned. Then, makeup removed, she slid under the covers and gave in to the urge to cry.
The evening dwindled to nothing while she alternately cried and considered her options. The ptop allowed her to pull down a copy of the cache of documents, and she spent several hours staring at them all, growing increasingly dispirited by the sprawling nature of the names. Politicians, police, civil servants, doctors, nurses… She searched and found the identities of a lucky-dip grab bag of people, but there didn’t seem to be any pattern. Some people who were seemingly working entry level jobs in a startup tech company or big corporation. Other people were managers in financial institutions. One person appeared to work customer service in a call centre. There were even peers and old money types. There was someone from that vile Harrington-Finch family that had been in the papers a while back. There wasn’t any thread she could follow.
Jess ended up nearly smming the ptop shut, her urge mostly tempered by the fact that getting a decent secure repcement would take a chunk out of the limited funds of her current ID. She curled up under the bnket and cursed herself for the lies that had excluded Charlie. Jess’d seen the github projects Charlie contributed to–those ugly but brilliant analytics would be so useful right now. Although, with whatever secrets Charlie had, maybe she’d have steered well clear… If Jess hadn’t dragged her in. A wave of nausea washed over her at the thought of being responsible for the destruction of Charlie’s life. She needed to know if Charlie was okay, but at the end of the day, she also suspected she needed Charlie’s help.
Jess awoke with a start, taking several moments to pce herself. ‘Oh, yeah, crappy hotel’, she managed to drag into her conscious brain. She scrabbled across the bed to the clock and squinted at the anaemic glow from the digits. “Shit, not even 3am?” she grumbled aloud before she burrowed her head back into the pillow and curled into a ball. ‘Okay’, she thought to herself, ‘part (a) of my pn to unfuck this situation is in progress. Tomorrow I’ll know if Charlie…and maybe that mate of ‘ers, Noah’ll ‘elp. Assumin’ she doesn’t murder me first.’ Noah’s initial friendliness towards Jess had shifted to ambivalence and then to thinly disguised annoyance as Jess’d made what, in retrospect, were very poor decisions. Jess ran her hands through her hair and, when light broke through the curtains, uncoiled and levered herself up.
Never a terribly reliable eater, she thought back and couldn't remember the st time she'd had food. Suddenly ravenous, she realized that the chances of the hotel having room service were the same as her chances of surviving returning home. She quietly growled and did another change of appearance.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she made a mental note that, if necessary, the hair could go. Much though she loved it. She was slightly built and baggy clothes plus losing the hair would allow her to pass as any gender. Handy to broaden the array of options, especially since most people only knew of her as someone who indulged her high femme predilection. Feeling a lightness from being as far out of their reach as was possible without escaping the country, or possibly from the ck of food, she stepped out into the morning air and made her way in search of breakfast.
—
Fed and watered, she steeled herself for her continued preparations. Jess briefly watched the early morning workers scudding by before concentrating on another scan of the street. Thankfully, the scourge of omnipresent CCTV didn’t seem to have made it this far north. She’d spotted a few, staring at the windows from under the 1960s concrete awnings.
It was quiet enough that she couldn’t hide in a crowd. Instead she joined and slipped between a succession of individuals, matching her pacing to make sure she appeared to be with them. It felt strange to buy clothing intended to conceal, not to show off, but she quickly grabbed a small selection of items and headed back to the hotel.
She shrugged herself into a change of clothes. Time to boymode. She ughed: How long had it been? And then the sound of the ugh struck her. “Oh shit, voice.” she mumbled.
She tried to drop her voice into her chest and felt for resonance. It was remarkably hard to find the voice, it’d been so long. Eventually she got something that approximated ‘boy’. She sounded kind of like she was in her te teens. Old enough to have a licence and cash for a shit car, young enough to think getting it from a scrap yard was a good idea.
She wiped off the morning’s make-up and made herself look like the boy she’d tried to forget for the longest time. She caught herself staring at the mirror, and resisted the urge to hit the gss. She held the edges of the sink, gripping it so hard she felt like it might shatter. She stared at the face in the mirror and growled “You don’t fucking get to stay this time,” before turning away and walking out of the room.
The morning had brightened. She headed back towards the taxi-rank at the edge of the pedestrian area, hands jammed in the pockets of the – hah, fuckin’ ironic dysphoria hoodie. She traipsed across the cracked blockwork stones, the uneven surface giving her something to occupy her mind. She didn’t want to end up in an A&E expining exactly why she was dressed as a guy, carrying two driver’s licences, one of which cimed she was a guy, and the other of which most definitely didn’t.
She took a moment to gnce at her reflection and realised she’d slid into her normal mannerisms. She surveyed the near empty shopping area for a second. No one seemed to have noticed the incongruity. She couldn’t let that happen again. She’d assumed she could fall back into old habits, but they weren’t there anymore. They’d only ever been an affectation anyway, and now they’d been comprehensively overwritten by her actual self. She realised with some frustration she’d have to concentrate on being the angry young man she wanted people to see. She worried at her lip, contempting whether she had the skill to maintain this persona, and concentrate on her voice, and do both at least long enough to buy the car.
Eventually she conceded to herself that she didn’t have a better pn and stared at her reflection in the shop window. The image in front of her gave her an achingly familiar shudder of revulsion. This was not her.
This.
Was.
Not.
Her.
She just needed him for a few hours. Her staccato breaths gradually steadied.
Just for a few hours.
She stared pointedly at her reflected eyes.
Okay.
Take the rest in. Her–No, damnit, his hair was slicked with oil, and pulled into a shaggy, dirty looking ponytail. The too new baggy hoodie covered a slight frame and hung down over jeans that just topped too new trainers. Shit. She didn’t think about that. She gnced around and angrily stomped over to one of the raised pnters. She gnced around before slipping the runners off and rubbing them in the dirt and scraping them across the rough surface of the brick.
The bench faced an empty storefront, and she dropped onto it, gncing around. With no-one paying her attention she quickly picked at the stitching and scrubbed her sleeves on the bench picking up enough dirt to make the hoodie look at least a little worn.
She stood and examined the boy in the reflection again. She pressed down hard on the urge to rip him away. He’d do. He’d help her survive again. The anger she felt now was real, and its sharp bitter edge drove her rapid walk to the taxi. She subvocalized to check her voice was still where she wanted it. Deep down in her chest. Fucking great. “Those scrappies at the edge of town?” the driver nodded and she dropped into the taxi, spreading out to occupy the entire back seat before zily throwing the seatbelt across her.
The taxi dropped her where a small clump of scrap yards vied for attention. Hopping out she smmed the door with too much force. The “Watch it, mate!” from the driver had the beneficial effect of naturally making her scowl. Dropping payment, she ‘eeny, meeny, miny, moe’d’ her way through picking a yard then stomped through the oily muddy sludge to the sad remnants of a portacabin. A small group of guys sat in a haze of cigarette smoke, legs in work boots propped on furniture that’d seen better days. She scanned the skeptical faces looking at her.
“You got summat with an MOT? Runs alright?” she shrugged to indicate her minimal interest in an answer to the question.
“Huh, yeah, we got a few. How much are you looking for?”
“Couple of hundred, might go a bit north for something better.” Jess gnced across at one of the men looking at her and concentrated hard on her persona, “Hey, you got a fag?” she nodded towards one of the smokers lounging on a sofa that looked older than her.
“This ain’t a newsagent, mate. Get yer own.”
Jess groused, then turned and looked back at the first guy. He waved at a clump of cars, several of which looked to be not total heaps. “Astra’s got a new engine, that’s a grand for that one. The others’ll be more in your price range.” He turned back to the small TV in the corner.
Jess headed over to the small group of more or less intact vehicles. She pled with the universe for a moment for Charlie to appear and tell her which one to pick. Christ, she missed her. Missed her sense of humour. Missed her smile. And right now, missed her knowledge about cars. Since the universe didn’t seem to be wanting to help with that problem, she experimentally tried the door on a decentish looking Fiesta. As it opened she heard a shout from the portacabin. Apparently this was too rich for her money, so she smmed the door and stepped back, looking at the dismal selection.
“Metro’s two fifty”
Astonishingly, it looked fairly clean inside and apart from some rust scabs and a significant scrape to the front wing the outside looked okay. Probably not worth fixing or ciming on, she thought. She pulled the bonnet release.
“‘s got 3 months MOT, no tax.”
Jess took a moment with her voice before shouting back without looking, “Keys? I wanna drive it.” She navigated a particurly revolting looking puddle of oily water and made her way to the front.
“‘course you do.”
She heard, but actively did not watch, as one of the men made his way towards her. She slipped her hand down and grabbed the dipstick, realising in that moment that her nails were manicured and far too femme for the role she was pying. Fuck. She shoved the dipstick back in, dove down and dug her nails into the dirt for a second before retying her shoeces. She stood up and grabbed the dipstick a second time while deliberately scraping some of the engine gunk onto her nails too, before the keys were dangled in her sightline.
“Coming with you, in’t I,” he grunted slightly as he slotted himself into the confined space of the passenger seat.
Remarkably, the car actually did seem to run okay, despite its massive mileage. She didn’t bother to argue the price and tossed the money onto the desk before stuffing her hands quickly back into her pockets and leaving with the V5 in hand.
