Chris had barely caught his breath when his door burst open with a loud crack, revealing his new friend.
"We're going drinking!" Without bothering to explain her reasons, Jessica crossed the room in two strides and dragged him along with her.
"...Alright."
Chris couldn't quite follow Jessica's sudden shift in priorities. She loved drinking, sure, but taking her new "friend" along right away? Especially after an unpleasant incident like a panic attack? Or maybe it was precisely because of that episode that Jessica had decided to pull Chris out of his dark thoughts? Chris didn't know the exact answer, but...
It was nice.
Someone had actually invited him to a "party." The last time that happened was...
Actually, Chris couldn't remember the last time that had happened. But even if he wasn't much of a drinker, he was fully on board.
"By the way," Chris glanced around the nearly empty bus with mild uncertainty — it was already close to midnight. "Where are we going?"
"Hell's Kitchen," Jessica briefly pulled away from her flask, then resumed her festivities. Yes, Jessica had decided to start "drinking" not on the bus, but before she'd even left the apartment. Typical Jessica.
"Why?" Chris pressed.
"We're. Going. Drinking." Jessica rattled irritably.
Hell's Kitchen. A neighborhood in the western part of Manhattan, and one of the two most criminal and dangerous places in New York, alongside Chris's home of Harlem. Unlike "Harlem," "Hell's Kitchen" was more of a nickname — the area's official names were Clinton and Midtown West.
The place was known for its high density of restaurants and various dives, ninety percent of which belonged to gangs. But unlike the predominantly Black Harlem, Hell's Kitchen had gangs of every variety.
Harlem and Hell's Kitchen had no love for each other. They occasionally worked together, of course — the nature of criminal enterprise limits your list of potential partners — but gang wars broke out there with remarkable regularity.
And for Chris, a born-and-bred Harlem native, even if a white one, the place felt distinctly uncomfortable.
"Don't tell me..." Chris shot Jessica a glance full of carefully concealed hope, watching her sadly trying to squeeze one last drop from her already empty whiskey flask. "You've developed feelings for me and this is actually a date?! That stupid excuse you gave Mr. Kramer seemed suspicious to me from the start!"
Chris immediately doused the fountain of his runaway imagination. Jessica simply looked at him with such condescension that he instantly felt like a stupid, awkward hamster.
"Chris, you're cute," Jessica grinned wickedly. "But 'cute' doesn't mean 'I'll sleep with you' — it means 'cute, go sit in the friend zone for the rest of your life.'"
"Thanks, Jessica," Chris scratched his eyebrow in irritation. "You really know how to encourage a person."
"It's a side effect of age, Chris," Jessica shrugged. "Right now you radiate poverty and virginity from a mile away. Neither one tends to appeal to girls."
"I just had a new idea," Chris said through clenched teeth.
"The kind that goes 'soon I'll be incredibly rich'?" Jessica raised an eyebrow, stepping off the bus with him.
"These aren't empty ideas!" Chris burst out. "Sooner or later I'll come up with an internet business that'll make me a real billionaire!"
"Aw, my little Mark Zuckerberg," Jessica said with mock warmth, leading Chris along. "And what's the idea?"
"A chat platform exclusively for women with a..." Chris shot Jessica a disgruntled look. "Particular personality type."
"And what will your 'magical' startup be called?" the girl asked with a smirk.
"ChatBitChat."
"You little piece of horse—" Jessica cut off her furious tirade halfway, as though a brilliant thought had just struck her. "Chris, that's it! That's your golden ticket off the lonely island of virginity!"
"You liked the idea too?" Chris looked away bashfully.
"Not that stupid nonsense!" Jessica said as if spitting. "Confidence and boldness! Girls love that! You see, my small and inexperienced friend," Jessica threw her arm over his shoulders. "Girls don't go for sweet, eager-to-please boys... They want strength! You need to show them who the real alpha male is!"
"But I always tried to be, you know... gentle about things?"
"And where did that get you, hm?" Jessica raised an eyebrow pointedly. "Right then, my aspiring alpha, when we walk into this bar, you're going to have to... hmm, punch someone in the face!"
"But I don't know how to fight!" Chris answered with a note of panic.
"What's there to know?" Jessica fired back and stepped back from him, crossing her arms over her chest. "Hit me!"
"You mean..." Chris looked around the deserted alley. "Hit you?"
"With everything you've got!" Jessica snorted. "Don't hold back, I've got enhanced durability!"
"How enhanced?" Chris asked skeptically. "Like, you can take a machine gun burst?"
"Have you lost your mind?! Am I your part-time Supergirl or what?!" Jessica snorted. "But I can handle a hit from a beanpole like you!"
Jessica's manner of communication was fairly toxic. Not that Jessica Jones was a bad person — it was more that life had left its mark on her. Chris was the unusual one, really, a shy and uncertain guy who'd somehow preserved those qualities after a childhood in Harlem and four years in a psychiatric ward.
But even so...
That didn't mean it didn't irritate him. It drove him absolutely up the wall.
"Fine," Chris sighed and assumed a boxing stance. Well, at least that's what Chris thought he was doing. Judging by Jessica's bored expression, he hadn't exactly impressed her. "Ha!"
Swinging his right hand, Chris aimed it at Jessica's shoulder, but thanks to a completely crooked trajectory he barely grazed her, and his fist flew straight into the wall behind the girl.
A second of silence, and—
"Ow-ow-ow..." Chris, fighting back tears, clutched his hand as unbearable pain radiated from the impact with the wall. "Son of a—!"
"What was that?" Jessica stared at him in disbelief, unable to process that Chris had missed a target that wasn't resisting and was standing a meter away from him. "Are you joking?!"
"Go to hell, Jessica!" Chris said through clenched teeth.
"Do you understand how pathetic that was?!" The situation was so absurd that Jessica couldn't even laugh. It was all just so... terrible.
"Yes, I understand!" he snapped back angrily. "I keep telling you, I don't know how to fight!"
"You can't just describe that punch as 'don't know how to fight'!" Jessica grabbed her head.
"Go to hell! To hell!" Chris muttered through shame and pain.
"If Mike Tyson saw that punch, he'd die just to get into a coffin and roll over in it!"
The whole idiotic situation was stuck in Chris's throat.
First, he had genuinely humiliated himself. Jessica was right, that punch was terrible.
Second, the pain from slamming his fist into the wall was overwhelming him.
One thing on top of the other, and...
Chris exploded.
"AAARGH! DAMN IT!" Swinging his left, undamaged hand, Chris drove it into the wall. Under any other circumstances this would have made no sense whatsoever. But Chris was "slightly" special...
SYNCHRONIZATION: 6%
BOOM!
What unfolded before Jessica's even more stunned eyes was simply extraordinary.
This time Chris's fist...
With a thunderous crack and a cloud of shattered brick...
Punched clean through the wall of the building.
"Holy hell," Jessica's jaw dropped.
"Holy hell," Chris echoed, unable to believe his own feat.
"HOLY HELL, CHRIS!"
"Jessica, this is just insane!"
For once the pair of friends had a remarkably synchronized reaction. Except...
"Jessica," Chris said through gritted teeth, dripping with sweat. "I think I broke my hand..."
"Enhanced durability hasn't come online yet..."
"Jessica, for crying out loud, help me!"
"Now that boldness right there is your key to success!"
"JESSICA!"
Healthcare in the United States is a topic all its own. But to put it briefly, one very grim and thoroughly capitalist conclusion sums it up.
Medicine had been taken over by private corporations.
Which meant you had to pay for healthcare. And pay a great deal. Health insurance was a headache for ninety-five percent of Americans.
Was it really surprising that an orphan born in Harlem had no health insurance? And no money to pay out of pocket for the care of a broken hand?
"Five hundred bucks," Jessica muttered in irritation. "For a cast and a bandage."
Caring for a broken hand requires not just a cast but also an X-ray and a diagnosis from a professional. In some — particularly outrageous — cases, five hundred dollars can go entirely toward diagnosing a common cold and writing a prescription. That's what happens without health insurance.
And getting a broken hand treated for five hundred dollars in a regular, "official" hospital simply wasn't possible.
So Jessica took Chris to an underground clinic that naturally had no X-ray equipment, but offered accessible medical help. Even if they had to rely on the experience and the "wise face" of an old man who provided that same underground care.
As they say, this was Harlem in two thousand and seven — everyone survived however they could.
"Thank you, Jessica," Chris said, dropping his gaze to the floor in embarrassment as he walked alongside his friend. "I'll pay you back... I definitely will."
Chris was being consumed by an all-encompassing shame.
First, because of yet another mess he'd made, they'd failed for the second time in a row to simply relax and have a good time.
Second, Jessica had to pay for Chris's treatment — and it had to be noted that Jessica herself wasn't exactly swimming in money.
In short, Christopher Wallace felt like a complete nobody once again.
"It's just money," Jessica glanced at him, snorted, and answered. "It's fine."
"I..." Chris bit his lower lip. "I'm really sorry..."
"Enough of that!" She raised her voice in irritation, turning to face him. "Stop wearing your heart on your sleeve!"
"What do you mean?" Chris asked in bewilderment.
"Chris, sometimes you need to keep your thoughts to yourself! You grew up in Harlem, and that's not how things work there!" Jessica pressed her lips together. "Like, for example — why did you try to tell Kramer about your abilities?"
"Why not?"
"Because freaking superpowered people like you and me," Jessica poked him meaningfully in the chest with her finger, "are like a red flag to everyone."
"To who?"
"To EVERYONE!" Jessica erupted. "You won't even have time to blink before you either disappear or end up in someone's service!"
"But Mr. Kramer can be trusted..." Chris continued uncertainly.
"Don't be so naive and foolish, Chris!" Jessica sighed in displeasure. "We can't afford to trust just anyone."
She took one last look into Chris's eyes, then turned and headed in the direction of home. But Chris's words made her stop.
"I'm not as naive and foolish as you think, Jessica." His words carried notes of melancholy. Perhaps these were the most sincere words Jessica had heard from him in all their brief acquaintance. Words that came straight from the heart. "I just don't have to constantly watch my back, because there's nothing to take from me."
Jessica didn't turn to face Chris, but her voice became noticeably softer.
"There is now. So just... be careful."
And without another word, Jessica continued walking. Chris, snapping back to himself a couple of seconds later, quickly caught up to his friend.
"Thank you, Jessica."
No answer came from Jessica, but the unspoken "you're welcome" hung in the air between them.
SYNCHRONIZATION: 8%