Kind of Blue

Getting out of Budapest was smoother than Jessica had expected—but that only made her more uneasy. With their contact’s assistance, they had new passports, fresh identities, and a carefully planned route back to Belize. It felt too easy, like the calm before the storm.

They split up at the airport, taking separate flights to avoid drawing attention. Jessica, Leanna, Olivia, and Daniel regrouped on the final leg of their journey, exhausted but intact. When their plane finally touched down on the small Belizean airstrip, the weight of their recent ordeal settled over them like a suffocating blanket.

Daniel’s wife, Sofia, was already waiting at the terminal. As soon as he stepped off the plane, she ran to him, clutching him like he was the only thing keeping her grounded. Jessica watched as he whispered something to her, his hands trembling as they cupped her face.

She turned away, giving them their moment. "Doesn’t feel like we lost," Leanna muttered beside her.

Jessica didn’t answer. Sometimes not losing was the best you got.

---

That night in the Black Orchid Investigations office, Jessica sat in her office, alone, a bottle of whiskey on the desk beside her. The soft crackle of vinyl filled the air, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue spinning on the old turntable. The slow, melancholic trumpet notes mirrored the weight pressing down on her chest.

Half a glass in, and she already felt the numbness creeping in. The room was dimly lit, shadows stretching across the walls as the ceiling fan creaked overhead. She swirled the amber liquid in her glass, staring at the reflection of herself in the window. Who was she, really? Just a ghost looking at a ghost.

Leanna had told her—it doesn’t matter where you came from, only who you’ve become. But what if she wasn’t sure who that was? If the world knew what she knew, they’d call her a conspiracy theorist, a lunatic chasing ghosts. Maybe they’d be right.

She exhaled, pressing the glass to her lips. "What if I’m just another one of their projects? A product of Vanguard, playing at being human?"

The thought settled deep in her gut, twisting like a knife.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway. A familiar presence lingered at the door. "Drinking alone again?" Leanna’s voice was soft, laced with concern.

Jessica didn’t look up. "Just thinking."

Leanna crossed the room, plucked the glass from Jessica’s hand, and knocked it back without ceremony. "If you were one of theirs," she said, "you’d be easier to kill."

Jessica huffed a small laugh, but the heaviness in her chest remained. The record spun, Miles’s trumpet crying into the night, a song of solitude and reflection.

Outside, the Belizean night stretched black and endless. And somewhere out there , quiet, patient, methodical, Vanguard was still watching.