For a long, stretched-out second that felt like an entire lifetime, the only thing that moved in the room was the frantic blinking of Harold Finch's eyes. His face, which had been pale with the shock of seeing the JUSTICE folder, now cycled through a rapid, grotesque series of emotions: utter disbelief, dawning comprehension, and finally, a surge of pure, primal terror as his brain processed the impossible sight of two men materializing from the shadows of his office. He saw us. The magic was gone.
He opened his mouth and let out a strangled, incoherent cry—a sound that was half rage and half a shriek of a man seeing a real ghost. He stumbled backward, knocking over his expensive leather chair, his hands flailing as he tried to put distance between us and him.
The spell of our silent infiltration was shattered. The time for stealth was over.
"Go! Now!" Kevin yelled, his voice a sharp, commanding bark that broke through my own paralysis.
He didn't move toward Finch. He moved toward me, grabbing my arm and yanking me out of the corner and toward the office door. His priority wasn't confrontation; it was extraction. We were deep in enemy territory, unarmed, with our only supernatural advantage having just evaporated into thin air.
Finch, seeing us move toward the exit, seemed to snap out of his terror-induced trance. His survival instinct, the same ruthless instinct that had led him to murder, took over. "Security! Intruder!" he bellowed, his voice raw with panic as he scrambled for a panic button I assumed was hidden under his desk.
We didn't give him the chance to press it. We burst out of the office and into the long hallway of the penthouse, our feet pounding on the hardwood floor. We were a two-man stampede, all pretense of subtlety gone.
"The stairs! Not the elevator!" Kevin shouted, pulling me past the main entrance of the apartment and toward a discreet door I hadn't noticed before, which I assumed led to the emergency stairwell.
Behind us, I heard Finch's enraged roar. He wasn't just a terrified victim anymore. He was a cornered animal, furious and desperate. He knew his life was over. The proof was on his computer. The witnesses who had planted it were in his home. His only way out was to eliminate us.
We reached the stairwell door. Kevin kicked it open, and we plunged into the cold, concrete echo-chamber of the emergency stairs. The heavy fire door slammed shut behind us, the sound of Finch's shouting instantly muffled.
"Thirty-four floors!" I gasped, my lungs already burning. "We'll never make it!"
"We don't need to make it to the bottom," Kevin said, taking the stairs three at a time. "We just need to create distance and confusion. He'll call building security. They'll lock down the lobby and the elevators. They'll expect us to go down. So we're going up."
"Up?" I said, incredulous. "Up to where?"
"The roof," Kevin grunted, his own breathing now becoming labored.
We raced up two flights of stairs, our footsteps a frantic, echoing clatter. We reached the door to the rooftop access level. It was locked with a heavy chain and a padlock. I felt a wave of despair. It was a dead end.
Kevin didn't even break stride. He reached into his duffel bag as he ran and pulled out a small, heavy object that looked like a pair of bolt cutters, but sleeker, more compact. With a single, powerful squeeze and a sharp snap, the padlock broke and the chain fell away. He kicked the door open, and we stumbled out into the open air.
We were on the roof of the skyscraper. The wind whipped around us, cold and fierce. The entire, glittering expanse of Chicago was spread out beneath us like a carpet of diamonds. It was terrifyingly high. The distant sounds of the city were a faint, muffled roar.
Kevin slammed the door shut behind us and jammed a small, metal wedge under it. "That won't hold them for long," he said, scanning the rooftop. "But it'll buy us a few seconds."
The rooftop was a maze of air conditioning units, ventilation fans, and communication arrays. There was nowhere to go. We were trapped on a concrete island in the sky.
"What was the plan, Kevin?" I yelled over the wind. "To jump?"
"Don't be an idiot," he shot back, his eyes darting around, looking for an advantage. "The plan is to change the battlefield." He pointed to a large, adjacent skyscraper, so close it felt like you could almost touch it. A narrow, maintenance catwalk connected the two buildings, a spindly bridge of steel mesh suspended forty floors above the ground. "That's our exit."
My stomach lurched. "You want us to cross that?"
"It's better than waiting for Finch's private security to show up," he said.
At that moment, we heard a heavy thump against the rooftop door. Then another. They were trying to break it down.
"Time to go!" Kevin yelled.
He ran for the catwalk. I was right behind him, not daring to look down. Just as we reached the edge of the roof, the door we had jammed burst open. Two large men in black suits, clearly Finch's personal security, spilled onto the roof, their faces grim. They saw us and started running.
We scrambled onto the catwalk. The steel mesh groaned under our weight. The wind howled around us, trying to tear us from our precarious perch. Below, the city was a dizzying, vertical drop. I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing only on the feel of the handrail under my white-knuckled grip and the sight of Kevin's back in front of me.
We were halfway across when I heard a familiar, arrogant roar from behind us.
"You can't escape!"
I risked a glance back. Harold Finch himself was standing at the edge of his rooftop, his hair a mess, his expensive suit rumpled. He was a man undone, his face a mask of pure, desperate rage. He wasn't going to let his security handle this. He had to see it for himself.
"You have no idea who you're dealing with!" he screamed into the wind, his voice thin and reedy against the howl of the elements.
It was then that I felt it. Jessica. Her presence, which had been a storm of fear and hatred inside me, suddenly coalesced into a single, piercing point of cold, calm, and absolute finality. She had waited for this. This was her moment. Her justice.
I stopped on the catwalk, turning to face him.
"Alex, what are you doing?" Kevin yelled, grabbing my arm. "Move!"
But I couldn't move. I was just the vessel now. She was in control. Through my own mouth, a voice spoke that was not my own. It was a whisper, but it cut through the wind with supernatural clarity, a voice that carried the chill of the grave.
"Oh, I think he does, Harold," she said.
Finch froze. His eyes widened in dawning horror. He recognized the tone. He recognized the cadence. He was hearing a ghost from his past.
"Jessica?" he whispered, the name a fragile puff of air.
"You stole my work," the voice from my lips continued, cold and unforgiving. "You stole my life. You thought you could just erase me. But you can't erase a ghost."
At that moment, a siren wailed from the street below. A real one. Then another. Red and blue lights began to flash against the sides of the skyscrapers. Someone had seen us on the catwalk. The police had been called.
Finch's face, already pale, turned ashen. He was trapped. The police were below, his crimes were on his computer, and the ghost of his victim was standing on a catwalk, accusing him to his face. There was no escape.
He looked at me—at her. He looked at the flashing lights below. And then he looked at the long, dizzying drop. His face, once so full of arrogance and rage, crumpled into a mask of utter, complete despair. The mask of a man who had finally run out of moves.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this," he whimpered.
Then, before his security could reach him, before we could do anything, he took a single, deliberate step backward. Off the edge of the roof.
He didn't scream. He just fell, a silent, dark shape tumbling into the abyss, disappearing into the concrete canyons of the city he had once thought he owned.
A profound, echoing silence descended upon the rooftop, broken only by the wind and the distant, approaching sirens. The two security guards stared, frozen in shock. Kevin pulled me the rest of the way across the catwalk, onto the solid roof of the neighboring building.
Inside me, the cold, vengeful presence that had been Jessica Miller for six long months finally, finally, began to dissipate. The cold ache in my chest lessened. The hatred faded. The sorrow softened. It was replaced by a single, quiet feeling.
Peace.
Her regret was resolved. Her justice, in its own terrible, final way, had been served.
I fell to my knees on the rooftop, not from exhaustion, but from the sudden, shocking emptiness in my chest. For the first time in weeks, I was alone inside my own soul.
The black phone in my pocket buzzed one last time.
[Primary Assignment Complete: Spirit's Regret Resolved.] [Target Spirit: Jessica Miller - Successfully Processed.] [Reward Issued: +100 Merit Points.] [Contract Expiration Timer: Suspended.] [Congratulations, Agent. You are no longer on probation.]