The boy at the check in desk has wandering eyes. Jessica’s passport is clasped in his left hand and she can see from here that he has her details open on the computer; but he’s stalling.

“In town long?” He asks, opening out her passport to stare at her photo for the umpteenth time. His eyes flick towards her like he thinks he’s being subtle, but Jessica can feel him staring at her s. She hates this dress; she hates every dress she has to wear for work.

Unfortunately for her, being polite is part of the job description, “I’m staying here for the next three days, and after that who knows?”

Jessica flutters her eyelashes just to watch the boy smirk like he has the faintest trace of a chance. She passes over her credit card and he holds out the handset for her to punch in her PIN: 9998 – the same as every company credit card she’s had since she first got picked up by her agency.

The screen of the chip and pin machine informs her that it’s processing, the ellipses on the end of the word walking itself out once, twice, three times…

Failed. Jessica frowns at the machine and smiles at the boy, “let me just-“

She tries again, and again. Every time it comes back failed. The boy is beginning to lose patience with her and Jessica is beginning to think that this is more than just a glitch in technology.

“Do you have another machine I could use?” Jessica can feel the sincerity in her smile forcing itself.

The boy shakes his head, “this one’s been fine all day. Are you sure you have your PIN correct?”

“No, I mean, yeah, I mean,” Jessica breathes deep to compose herself, “I probably just need to have a word with my boss.”

“You do that.” This time when the boy smiles it’s like he’s looking at a charity case. Jessica hates it; it’s worse than the dress. “You know, if your boss has bad news we might still be able to work something out.”

There’s nothing subtle in the way his eyes follow the zips in her dress all the way from her neck to her waist. It’s an effort not to physically recoil. She takes it all back, the dress is definitely the worst thing she’s had to deal with today.

Head down, eyes obscured by an overlarge pair of sunglasses, Jessica ducks between the crowds in the lobby to get to the front door. She really does need to talk to her boss, but this isn’t the place to do it.

This wasn’t part of the plan, but it’s not the first time that the plan has been abandoned. It can be hard getting the word out to field agents in time and running scared invariably leads to a stickier end than picking up the damn phone. Jessica just needs to find somewhere she can’t be traced.

There’s a park two blocks away. Jessica picks her way across the wood chips in heels, and drops into the first free swing. Almost immediately, she attracts the attention of a man walking his dog out on the grass; she’s careful not to make eye contact but she can see him lingering out of the corner of her eye all the same.

Jessica calls Seoul twice and waits for someone to return the favour. This can take a while, if you’re really unlucky it can take days. Yoona had been stranded on the Isle of Man for almost a week waiting for some kind of indication that she hadn’t been cut off. She talks about it sometimes, when she’s had too much to drink and has Yuri’s hand to hold – her eyes boring into Jessica’s like she might be able to transfer all that residual fear into a new vessel.

A child screams in delight as their parent pushes them on the swing, just a little higher than last time but it makes all the difference. With more risk it always feels like you’re having more fun.

The man walking his dog is close now, at the edges of the playground, his eyes fixed on the zip running up Jessica’s thigh. Gross.

She shouldn’t stay here for much longer, she’s conspicuous. Jessica glances down at her phone one final time and again sees nothing out of place – she isn’t surprised but it’s hard not to feel disappointed. Head down, she wraps her arms around her midriff and adopts a brisk march that she hopes will make her look like a stroppy teenager that ought to be left alone.

Jessica’s not a teenager, but a little courage in your convictions can get you a long way.

“Excuse me!”

Her head snaps up, the man with the dog has his hand on her upper arm. She resists the urge to put him in a headlock (apart from anything else, Hyoyeon has always told her that she’s not any good at them).

“What?” Try not to sound too offended. Force a smile. It’s easier this way.

“I was wondering how much you charge for a…you know?”

She can’t help it; Jessica runs. She can still smell the smoke on his breath and the stink of his mutt halfway down the highway, on a bus going who knows where. A small town in south New York State, with a rundown motel that she can pay a pittance for while she waits for a call. Once this is all over she’s going to deserve some compensation.

Her phone buzzes and Jessica nearly leaps out of her seat. It’s a text from her mother, asking when she might next be free for a long weekend getaway. Seoul or Cali, whichever is easiest.

Both are far flung enough for now.

Jessica never expects to sleep on these assignments, and yet she always finds herself waking up in strange rooms, where foreign sunlight wrestles unfamiliar curtains.

This morning she is fully clothed, lying on top of the blankets. Her shoes are still on. She slept in a rush, or by accident, or both. Her fingers are curled loosely around her phone, as if she fell asleep still waiting for a call.

Maybe she missed it. That would be a pain in the . Jessica tries to call up the menu but the screen is dark, out of battery. She’ll have to wait.

In the back of her mind she knows they haven’t called; but sometimes it’s easier to pretend that we can’t see the future. In the meantime there a myriad of mundane tasks that she could concern herself with, taking a shower or hopping through channels on the stone-age television until she can find something to pretend to distract herself with.

First thing’s first, Jessica peels herself out of the dress. She doesn’t have anything else to change into, and it’s cold this morning, but she can’t wear it any longer.

Jessica stands in the middle of the room, shivering, and makes for the shower. By the time she’s huddled up in bed, beneath the duvet, her phone is back online and she’s still waiting on that call from Seoul.

 

Jessica’s family never struggled for money, her and Krystal were always well fed and well clothed and a private education was only ever a request away. Wealthy, is the word for it, though it’s always made her uncomfortable to think about it like that. As a teenager, she would come home at the weekend weighed down by shopping bags stuffed with brand name clothing, and try to ignore the envious stares of the other children on the bus.

She always got off first; everyone else lived further out in the suburbs. That never made Jessica uncomfortable. But then again, she never really had to think about it.

Sifting through second hand clothing in a thrift shop, trying to pretend that the children by the counter aren’t staring at her dress with the same jealousy that the kids on the bus used to, Jessica tries to tell herself that her embarrassment is reactionary and not the latent effect of a privileged childhood that she never had to face up to before. Jessica shouldn’t be here, she doesn’t do the low end stuff.

This mole is high class. She wishes. Jessica grabs a pair of jeans that look like they might fit her and the largest hoodie she can find. At the back of the store, stacks of shoes make it hard to spot her size yet alone pick out a pair she might like, and in the end she chooses a set of bright pink trainers that are two sizes too big because they remind her of Stephanie.

 

On the train north Jessica takes blurry photographs of her feet and saves them up for when she’s back in Seoul. It’ll be nice to have a joke or two planned in advance, there’s going to be a certain amount of tension that she needs to relieve when this is over.

America rolls past. Jessica refuses to pick out the details at a time like this. Her knuckles are white over her phone, checking it every five minutes just to be sure…just in case…

It’s been three days. No call, no response. Jessica’s getting worried.

Twenty four hours later they stop at the American-Canadian border. The train needs to be checked over and restocked and sometime after that they’ll have to search through everyone’s passports, just to be sure that they’re not letting in anyone they shouldn’t.

Jessica’s passport is fake as anything, but she’s going to get through. Even if they’ve really gone and dropped her, this clumsy piece of paper is still valid for another two years.

It’s raining; cold autumn showers that transform a perfectly pleasant afternoon into a hazed horizon and a chill deep enough to touch your bones. The clouds keep the sky several shades darker than it should be at this time of day, and as Jessica peers down the platform the train vanishes into the mist.

She’s the last one standing out here, everyone else went to look around the town. She’d be out there with them but she’s almost out of cash and pretending that everything’s going to be ok is easier when no one’s watching you do it.

And Jessica knows. Right now, in this moment, she knows what’s going on. She’s known ever since she boarded the train; she wouldn’t even be here right now if she didn’t.

The dial tone sounds three times before Krystal picks up. She sounds out of breath, like Jessica caught her at the end of a good joke.

“Hey! Wasn’t expecting to hear from you anytime soon!”

“Seoul haven’t called in four days.”

The last traces of mirth die on the line; they never even make it out of California.

“Is it bad?” Krystal hisses. She’s on the move, Jessica can hear the door close between her and whatever friends she might be entertaining.

Jessica doesn’t know.

“I don’t know.”

“Then find out.”

“Listen I-“

“You find out how bad this is and you don’t call me on this phone unless it’s an emergency. Call my other phone if you need me, there’ll be money in your account by the end of the week.”

The line goes dead and the first few passengers start drifting back onto the platform. Jessica checks the time and sees that in a few minutes border patrol will come past and she will have to step up and be counted.

They barely even look at her passport, and then the train is back on the move.

They’re almost in Toronto when Jessica thinks to call Taeyeon. In some ways, she supposes it was the obvious thing to do from the start; but she rarely has much contact with their unit leader these days. When she was younger, this job was harder; but she’s gotten better over the years, and with every improvement the necessity of intervention falls a little further by the wayside.

Jessica was one of the best Faces they ever had, and that’s saying something; considering she was in a unit with Im Yoona.

Past tense. Jessica catches herself, the fat lady has yet to sing.

The number isn’t in her phone but she knows it off by heart, as all good agents should. Her thumb hovers over the call button for a moment, knowing that after this she cannot put it off any longer; she will know either way.

Jessica makes the call.

First there is silence, then the dull bleep of the dial tone. Jessica’s heart leaps into . She’s so close, she can almost smell Seoul…she’s so close…

“The number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please check and try again.”

Someone pushes past her in the aisle and spills their coffee all over her. Jessica shrieks, drops her phone, and remembers that the only thing she has to change into is the dress.

 

Just as she rounds the final corner to his front door, Jessica remembers that she hasn’t heard any confirmation of Wu Yifan’s whereabouts in the past three months. It seems like the sort of thing she should have taken into consideration before she decided to come all the way out here, but she supposes that desperation is liable to stretch hope beyond the plausible, and so here she is.

It’s well out of the city centre, and the streets are quiet. Jessica glances nervously at every window coming up beside her, painfully aware of the shortness of her skirt and the smooth curve of her s below the leather. Normally it wouldn’t bother her like this, but normally she knows where the backup is coming from.

For two minutes, no one answers the door and she fights to keep from crying, or running, or kicking it down. She could so easily do something foolish just to get herself caught.

The door swings open. Jessica feels air return to her lungs.

Yifan peers at her from below a mop of damp hair. He looks less surprised to see her and more disappointed that she came. Jessica’s almost surprised that he’s still working out of the same address that Seoul has on file for him, but he was always a research man; never spent any time in the field.

He stares at Jessica like he doesn’t want her to be there and he probably doesn’t, “you leave too?”

“I wish…they kicked me out.”

Yifan steps out into the street and closes his front door behind him, “you can’t be here,”

“But I-“

“Go! Jessica! I can’t help you.”

She almost slaps him. The frustrated rage twisting its way through her gut feels like it has nowhere else to go, but instead she breathes in deep and on the exhale she tries to let her anger out.

“Fine. But you should go too, Seoul knows you’re here.”

Yifan disappears back into his house and Jessica storms off down the road. This time she doesn’t check the windows, though she’s sure someone must be watching her.

 

Jessica takes one of the tourist buses out to Lake Ontario, back out on the road and sandwiched between strangers to protect her identity. The bus driver had stared too long at the pinch of her hips as she was paying for her ticket, and there’s a young guy in the seat across the aisle sneaking looks at her thighs whenever his girlfriend is distracted.

She doesn’t have the energy to feel offended. Let them stare, it’s not their attention she’s after anyway.

The bus sets off and she figures she could give it one more shot: Jessica fishes her phone out of her bag and flicks through her contacts till she finds head office. Maybe this was all a game, a trick to test her loyalty. It’s not completely beyond the realms of possibility; intelligence agencies always like to play smart, it’s in their very name.

Jessica calls Seoul three times – the third time to make it plain that it’s an emergency. Five minutes later her phone is still sitting in her lap, unmoving, untouched. She glances sideways and accidentally locks eyes with the boyfriend.

The boy across the way has wandering eyes.

Jessica smiles like she means it, perhaps he’ll be useful. Her nails tap against her phone. She can’t wait to throw it into the lake.