Weight and Freedom

Jessica stepped through the doorway, expecting cold air, silence, the vast emptiness of a place designed to keep her hidden.

Instead, she was met with the hum of a city. The distant wail of sirens, the layered voices of pedestrians, the low, rhythmic pulse of traffic. The neon flicker of streetlights casting a pale glow against wet pavement.

Jessica stopped, blinking against the brightness.

She had thought she would walk into a remote facility, a bunker in the mountains, a forgotten monastery carved into the cliffs. But no. She was in a city. Alive, restless, moving.

Jessica exhaled sharply, stepping forward. The door behind her clicked shut. No locks. No guards. Nothing stopping her from walking away.

She turned, glancing back at the unmarked building. It was one of a hundred faceless structures lining the narrow street. She had expected something dramatic. But this? This was deliberate because the best way to hide something wasn’t to bury it deep underground. It was to place it in plain sight.

Jessica let out a quiet laugh, bitter and knowing. Of course. Mr. Black had always been five moves ahead.

She took another slow breath, the air damp with the scent of rain, car exhaust, and human life. She was free. But freedom, she realized, was just another kind of burden.

She pulled her jacket tighter around her, stepping onto the sidewalk. The city moved around her without seeing her, without knowing what she carried, without realizing that she was now the last of something ancient.

The thought made her stomach twist.

Nietzsche would have said she was standing on the precipice of the abyss. That now, more than ever, she was responsible for defining herself. That she had always been the one choosing, even when she had convinced herself she was powerless.

Jessica’s fingers curled into her sleeves.

Nietzsche had believed in eternal recurrence. That if given the chance, you would relive your life exactly as it was, over and over again.

Would she? Would she choose to live this life again, knowing the weight of it? Knowing how many times she had erased herself before?

Jessica exhaled. No. Because for the first time, she wasn’t choosing to erase. She wasn’t choosing to forget. She was choosing to exist. That, she realized, was something new.

She crossed the street, stepping onto the sidewalk of a busier avenue. Headlights flashed in passing windows, casting long, distorted reflections. The city felt real beneath her feet, and suddenly, she didn’t want to just process what had happened .She wanted to move forward.

Zorba the Greek would have told her to dance, to laugh, to drink, to throw her head back and let the weight of the world roll off her shoulders. Would have told her that thinking too much was a sickness, that a person should taste life before it was too late.

Jessica let the thought settle inside her. Maybe Zorba was right. Maybe it was time to stop seeing herself as a consequence and start seeing herself as someone who lived.

She needed whiskey. She needed music .She needed to feel something other than the weight of history pressing down on her. Unexpectedly, she let out a quiet laugh, then wiped the corner of her eye with the back of her hand and kept walking.

The Little Prince whispered at the back of her mind. “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”

Jessica smiled faintly. She wasn’t taming knowledge. She was taming herself. She needed to disappear for a little while. Let the world breathe without her. When she was ready, she would decide. Because the truth wasn’t just a burden. It was a choice.

And Jessica Sanchez? She always played the long game.