The kitchen was chaos—controlled chaos, the kind that only years of professional training could manage. Dishes clattering, flames dancing under copper pots, the sharp hiss of steam. Theresa lay on the cold tile floor, her chest still rising and falling in steady rhythm. Abel had timed the carotid compression perfectly. She'd be unconscious for another twenty minutes, maybe thirty.
He stood there for a moment, staring at his mother's face. The anger in his chest was a living thing, coiled and waiting. But Death Eaters had taught him something useful: anger was a luxury. Anger was a liability.
Abel took a breath, locked the anger away behind mental walls, and got to work.
He found the chef's whites hanging in the back storage—starched and pristine. The tablier came next, the deep black apron that all the servers wore. His hands were steady as he tied it on, adjusted the apron at his back. Professional. Invisible. Just another member of the restaurant staff.
Then he pushed through the kitchen doors.
The dining room was performing a strange pantomime of normalcy. Abel had felt it the moment he'd stepped out of the kitchen—a pressure, like humidity before a storm. The pheromones were thick enough to taste.
He found his target immediately.
The man in the purple suit sat at a corner table, speaking in low, cultured tones to a dark-haired woman across from him. Jessica Jones—Abel had recognised her from his past life. She looked nothing like a hero now. Her eyes were glazed, distant, the expression of someone piloting a body that no longer belonged to them.
The man was older than Abel expected. Distinguished, almost. The kind of face you'd trust in a boardroom. But there was something rotten underneath the polish—Abel could see it in the way he moved, the casual cruelty in his smile.
Kilgrave. The Purple Man. The one who'd enslaved his mother.
Abel approached the table with the practiced invisibility of a server. A plate in each hand—the restaurant's famous black pine oil soup, steaming gently.
"Your order, sir," Abel said, keeping his voice level, his posture neutral. The accent was American, generic, forgettable.
Kilgrave barely glanced at him. "Excellent. Jessica, come. Taste this. Our new chef has outdone himself."
The moment stretched. Abel's hand was steady, but his mind was already moving, already preparing. He'd spent years practicing Occlumency on himself—not with the rigorous training that Snape had put Harry through, but with a desperate, practical intensity. Empty your mind. Make it blank. Lock the doors.
He could feel the pheromones now, thick and suffocating in his lungs. They were searching for purchase, looking for cracks.
"You," Kilgrave said, finally looking up. "The new server. You'll leave now. Back to the—"
Abel grabbed his neck.
It was a simple motion—quick, precise, the kind of move that someone with combat experience would recognize immediately. His hand closed around Kilgrave's throat, cutting off not just his breath but his ability to continue speaking. The verbal compulsion died before it could fully form.
Kilgrave's eyes went wide with shock. His hand went for something at his belt—a gun, Abel realized, watching the weapon come free in slow motion.
But Jessica had been following Kilgrave's orders before Abel touched him, and now she was free of the next command. She picked up her soup spoon with the casual curiosity of someone waking from a dream.
The gunshot rang out.
Abel's reflexes, honed by six years of a magical education and another six of careful survival, threw him sideways. The bullet missed, but barely—he felt it pass close enough to disturb the air. It shattered a decorative plate on the wall behind him.
Kilgrave was gasping, one hand clawing at Abel's grip on his throat. His mouth was working, trying to form words, but no sound came. The gun swung again, more desperate this time.
Abel let go.
Kilgrave fell backward in his chair, coughing, and the moment his voice broke free, the words poured out in a ragged stream: "Jessica. Kill him. Kill him for me!"
The woman's head snapped up like a marionette suddenly animated by strings.
She moved.
Abel had never quite understood what it meant to be slow until he saw Jessica Jones move. She didn't run—she exploded. One moment she was sitting; the next she was crossing the dining room in a blur of motion that seemed to violate every law of physics.
Abel threw himself sideways, rolling under a table. Jessica's fist came down where he'd been standing with enough force to crack the wooden surface. Splinters exploded into the air.
He was scrambling away, already forming the words in his mind—Wingardium Leviosa, Stupefy, anything—but Jessica was already moving again. She was fast, faster than he could articulate a spell, faster than he could react properly. Her second punch came from a completely different angle, and Abel barely got his hands up to protect his face.
Pain bloomed across his forearms.
"Jessica, again! Again!" Kilgrave was on his feet now, still coughing, the gun held in a white-knuckled grip. "Tear him apart!"
Abel's hands moved without conscious thought. "Wingardum Leviosa!"
The words came out rushed, imperfect, without the wand that would normally amplify them. But they worked—barely. Jessica suddenly lurched upward, her momentum broken, her superhuman frame suspended in the air by invisible force. She thrashed, confused, her fists flailing at nothing.
Abel waved his hand outward, and Jessica flew across the dining room like a discarded toy. She smashed through the front window, erupting through glass and frame alike. The force of impact sent her rolling across the sidewalk outside, scattering pedestrians, triggering a cascade of screams from the street.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then Kilgrave raised the gun and fired again.
The second bullet came faster than the first. Abel was already moving, already casting, the air itself bending around him as he touched Kilgrave again. Not the throat this time—a full-body Diffindo, the severing charm, crude and uncontrolled without a wand.
Kilgrave's hand exploded in pain. The gun fell from his grip, clattering across the wooden floor. He screamed—a sound that was half rage, half panic.
"Again!" he gasped. "Jessica, where are you? Jessica, help me!"
But Jessica was already pushing herself through the broken window, adrenaline and the weight of Kilgrave's compulsion driving her forward. She'd been hit hard—really hard—and under normal circumstances, the impact would have broken the bones of a normal peerson. But she was something else entirely. She climbed back into the restaurant, and Abel could see her moving toward him.
Kilgrave grabbed something from the wall—a serving knife—and jabbed it at Abel in a panic. "You can't—I control everything here! Everything! I command you to—"
Abel focused his mind a crack showing in is walls and felt it: the pressure of Kilgrave's will, pushing against his consciousness like a physical force. The pheromones in his lungs were working overtime, flooding his system with chemicals designed to break down resistance, to make him malleable.
He slammed the door shut.
The pain was immediate—a sharp, hot spike behind his eyes. His temples throbbed. He could feel sweat beginning to form on his forehead, trickling down his spine. The effort of maintaining Occlumency while fighting a superhuman woman was like trying to solve a mathematical equation while being set on fire.
Jessica was on him again.
Abel fell into motion, throwing himself behind the bar, using the furniture and the room's geography to create distance. Every moment counted. Every second he spent maintaining the mental barrier was a second his body was slower, his reflexes duller. He could feel it—the weight of it, the drag of dual concentration.
"You will not escape me!" Kilgrave was shouting, but there was fear in his voice now. "Jessica! Jessica!"
The woman was unstoppable. She moved through the dining room like a force of nature, destroying furniture as she came, and Abel realized with cold clarity that he couldn't win a direct fight with her. Not like this. Not while maintaining Occlumency. Not while his magical reserves were so dangerously low.
He needed a different approach.
Abel moved toward the kitchen, Jessica in pursuit, and made a quick decision. He grabbed a chef's apron—not his own—and threw it over the counter as a distraction. Jessica's fist went through it without breaking stride.
Then he bolted for the back exit.
The afternoon air hit him like a physical shock. Behind him, he could hear the sounds of pursuit: Jessica's footsteps, Kilgrave's voice, the restaurant staff's confused shouts. He'd come for one thing—to protect his mother—and he'd accomplished that much.
But Kilgrave was still alive. And as long as Kilgrave was alive, Theresa would never be safe.
Abel pulled the hood of his jacket up, covered his face, and began to run.
He had perhaps a minute before Jessica and Kilgrave realized which direction he'd gone. The rooftops of the city stretched out before him, a maze of shadows and angles. He leaped, pulling himself onto the nearest fire escape, then up to the roof level.
Below, he could hear Jessica shouting his direction to Kilgrave. They were coming.
The next phase of the fight was about to begin, and Abel was running on empty—magical reserves depleted, mental endurance stretched thin, and Occlumency burning through what little willpower he had left.
For the first time since arriving in this world, Abel Shaw felt something like genuine fear.
But he couldn't stop. Not yet. Not while there was still a choice to be made.
END CHAPTER 3