"Trish," Jessica Jones said, her voice rasped with worry.

Her best friend was standing just out of reach, held by a pair of thugs, their hands visibly digging into the pale skin of Trish's upper arms. The warehouse lights, hung precariously from the high ceiling, were covered in grim and thick layers of dust, casting shadows on her face, but Jessica could see fresh cuts along her hairline and on her hands, dried blood on the corners of her lips, staining her white cloth gag. She could also feel the anger that radiated off Trish in waves. Like Matt, she was reading the people around her in hues of burning red.

"She's fine," Wilson Fisk returned.

Jessica nodded her silent assurance to Trish that she would get her out of there and to Jessica's relief Trish replied in kind.

"Shall we begin?" Fisk asked, but it was a question with only one answer. Yes.

"What do you need?" Jessica said, begrudging her agreement with him, her agreement to help him with whatever plan he had tucked tightly into his sleeve.

Fisk motioned to a man standing just beyond Trish. He was small, quivering, and in the darkness of the warehouse Jessica hadn't noticed his presence. He stepped forward and Jessica could see he was already wearing surgical gloves.

"Blood, saliva, hair, speech sample, brain wave scan," the man said. Jessica knew he was some sort of doctor, or perhaps more aptly a mad scientist, the one helping Fisk traverse the road to ruining the city yet again.

"Want me to pee in a cup too?" Jessica quipped as she slid her leather jacket off and began rolling up her sleeve.

The Scientist didn't hesitate. He grabbed a needle from the nearby table and approached. It took everything Jessica had not to take the needle from him and stab it in his neck. But Fisk was watching and Trish was still bruised and gagged.

Sighing, Jessica stretched out her arm and waited.

Once her blood had been drawn, saliva swabbed, and hairs plucked Jessica realized the Scientist had no clue what made her immune to Kilgrave's control. It was a mystery beyond them both.

She watched silently as he sighed and muttered to himself, careful not to ruffle an already impatient Wilson Fisk. Every 10 seconds the Scientist turned his head, nervously spying the disapproval in his boss' eye. The tension in the air fueled Jessica. While her submission to these psychopaths was embarrassing, their ignorance was intoxicating. She was earning back the upper hand.

Jessica silently thanked the universe for the gift, as the Scientist flailed wildly looking for a cause and a cure.

"These results will take time and I need set up the next exam," the Scientist meekly said to Fisk, who nodded his begrudging approval.

"Take them," Fisk said to the men holding Trish, and suddenly Jessica felt hands on her own arms as well.

Without much effort Jessica pulled herself free. The men returned, grabbing hold tighter, but Jessica wrenched them off again, one stumbling backward to the concrete floor. She couldn't help herself. It was habit.

"Choke her," Fisk said, his eyes levelled on Trish Walker. The man on Trish's left moved his hands to her neck and seemingly without thinking, squeezed tight.

Jessica had experienced this too many times before. She knew what was happening, she knew what she had to do. She raised her arms in an act of surrender, her eyes pleading with Fisk to relent.

"Release her," he told the man holding Trish, and the man let go. Trish coughed in pain, her gag wet with silva as she desperately tried to fill her lungs with air. The wheezing gasps and gulps she made forced Jessica to hold her position. She didn't want anything else to happen to her friend, her sister. She didn't want to be the cause of her pain.

"Take them to the back," Fisk said and all three men with guns, and the Scientist, began moving Jessica and Trish toward the darkest corner of the warehouse. "Not you, Z."

The Scientist stopped, and Jessica watched his unblinking face as she was led away.

XXXXXXXX

"What is going on?" Trish asked, her voice hoarse and weak. Jessica tossed the gag to the ground and reached out to touch the red mark still visible on the pale of Trish's neck, but then felt better of herself and stepped away in shame.

She moved to the only free chair in the room, sitting, slumping forward, her head in her hands.

"Seriously, Jess," Trish croaked.

Jessica sighed. "We're waiting."

"Waiting for what? Just punch those assholes and get us the hell out of here."

"I can't," Jessica told her.

"Jesus, Jessica. I don't know if you noticed, but I was kidnapped and just recently nearly choked to death."

"Of course I noticed."

"Well, then what are you waiting for? Huh? Because I don't want to find out what happens when Wilson Fisk tells those guys to kill me."

Jessica lifted her head, black hair strewn across her face, the sleep she wasn't getting tattooed under her eyes. "You know who Wilson Fisk is?" Jessica asked.

"Yeah, he was all over the news a few years ago," Trish said, finding a spot on the wall and leaning back. "Daredevil captured him. I mean, Ma-" she caught herself before continuing.

"Matt caught him," Jessica finished.

"Jessica," Trish hissed.

"He knows that Matt's the Devil of Hell's Kitchen. He knows about The Hand and everything that happened at Midland Circle. And he knows about Kilgrave… and me."

"What?" Trish rasped. "How?"

"I don't know. I think maybe he's been having me followed or something," Jessica replied before chuckling. "Or he watches the news too. It's not as if Kilgrave's death was a state secret."

Trish ran a bruised hand over her forehead, pressing on the tension just above her right temple. Jessica was familiar with the move. It was a habit Trish picked up from her mother - thankfully it was the only one.

"So he knows about Matt," Trish finally said. "What does that have to do with me? Or us?"

"He told the guy to choke you and he did."

"And?"

"And he did it without question," Jessica told her, exacerbated by Trish's inability to see what was going on.

"That's what bad guys do, Jess."

"No, this is different."

"I don't understand," Trish told her, fear resonating in her voice. "How is this different?"

"Because it's about to be Kilgrave all over again!" Jessica shouted. Without fully realizing it, Jessica had stood and was now holding the splintered remains of the chair back in her hand. She dropped them and they clattered to the floor.

"Explain it to me," Trish told her, her voice levelling as her eyes surveyed Jessica's swift destruction of the chair. "And don't yell."

Jessica couldn't help but smile. There was a time and place to give her shit for being so cold, being so angry, and Trish knew it wasn't now. Jessica loved that about her.

"Fisk is somehow using Kilgrave's mind control abilities. When he told that guy to choke you, he responded because he really didn't have a choice. Same as the guys who kidnapped me and then attacked me and Matt at his place."

"You were kidnapped?" Trish asked, stunned.

"I told you this the other day," Jessica said, vaguely remembering a talk she had with Trish in her trashed apartment. Shit, she thought. My fucking apartment is still ransacked.

"No, you didn't tell me that," Trish told her, but Jessica was already moving on in her head, trying to find another way to prove to Trish that Kilgrave was, in essence, back.

"These men, that creepy scientist, they don't work for him," Jessica said. "They can't help themselves." She sighed. "We both know what that's like."

"No. That doesn't make any sense," Trish replied. "If he could control people he could have just told me come here. He didn't need to send an army through my window."

Jessica shook her head, not quite understanding what Trish meant. But then her mind rewound to the scene at Trish's apartment, to the destruction and obvious struggle. Trish had been forced to leave, without a smile on her face... something Kilgrave never would have done. Not to mention that calling that kind of attention to himself, right after a prison escape, seemed unlikely if Fisk could have made Trish comply without force.

As soon as those thoughts entered her mind, as soon as she began questioning her resolve that Fisk was truly a new incarnation of Kilgrave, the image of those men jumping willingly from Matt's roof to their certain death filled Jessica. She shuddered with confusion.

What is going on?

"If Fisk is having you followed or looked into or whatever, he would know that I'm not immune. He would know I'm not like you and he would have just ordered me here."

"I know, but those assholes..."

"Are just assholes," Trish told her. "Any reactionary movement on their part is probably because they're dumb, not under mind control."

Trish wasn't looking at Jessica anymore. She had begun searching the windowless room for another exit, feeling the darkened walls for weaknesses they could exploit.

"But you just saw them take my blood, Trish. And the men who attacked me and Matt, they…" Jessica couldn't wrap her head around it. "And that scientist guy tried to push us in here when Fisk told his men to. He had to know Fisk wasn't talking to him."

"The man is a gorilla. If he says jump you don't bother to ask how high. You do it. And that has nothing to do with Kilgrave."

Jessica didn't reply. She was deep in thought.

Trish walked toward her and grabbed her by the shoulders. "Whatever Fisk told you, it was a lie. He doesn't have Kilgrave's abilities."

"No, but-"

"Jess, Kilgrave is dead. It's over. It's been over."

"It's never over," Jessica told her softly.

Trish remained silent. Jessica knew she didn't know what to say.

What if Trish was right? What if Fisk had lied? Madam Gao? Who was she anyway? What could she have gotten from a limp body with a broken neck?

But if Kilgrave was dead, his power buried with him, then what did Fisk want with her blood and saliva and hair?

Sensing Jessica was about to reel again, Trish shook her forcefully. "We don't have time to figure this out now. I need you to help me," Trish told her, snapping her back to the present. "I need you to get us out of here."

Jessica nodded, before remembering Fisk's words outside the warehouse: I'm counting on it.

"Matt's coming," Jessica whispered.

Trish scoffed. "Well, I think you can take these dicks, but if you need backup-"

"No," Jessica said, waving Trish and her near mockery away. "This is where Fisk's lackeys brought me the last time. Matt rescued me. Fisk knows he'll come for me again."

Trish couldn't reply, stunned by the fact that Jessica Jones had once needed rescue.

"I think Fisk is right, Trish. I think Matt's coming."

"So we can't leave?" Trish questioned.

"Where's your cell phone?" Jessica asked.

"They found it as soon as I arrived," Trish told her.

"Dammit!"

"Well, can't we just escape and call him from a payphone?"

"No. Dammit because I don't know his number or that Nelson guy's or Claire's."

"How do you usually contact him?" Trish wondered aloud.

Jessica lightly chuckled. "I don't really. He just kind of shows up." She sighed. "And now, if we leave, he'll be walking into an ambush."

"He's walking into an ambush either way," Trish said. "But if we leave, then it's an ambush with us on the outside."

"If we're on the outside we can't help him," Jessica told her.

Trish shook her head. "So, what? Now we wait for our rescuer to come and then we rescue him? Is that what you're saying? Because that can't be the plan."

Jessica didn't respond.

"Seriously, Jess. That can't be the plan."

Even though she was more confused than before, more unsure of Fisk's power or lack thereof, Jessica smiled. She was ready to fight alongside Matt again. She was yearning for it.

"A payphone?" Jessica suddenly asked. "Really?"